BUT

I have to face a grim truth. I don’t have any novel manuscripts in condition to be sent out to editors or agents right now. Why? Because I’ve spent the last year writing Tijervyn. Now, Tijervyn has been fun, and quite a learning process besides, but the simple truth is that I cannot write for profit and for free at the same time. And sadly, I just don’t have resources and time to completely and truly self publish Tijervyn, so as a project, I’m afraid it has to be shelved. In fact, RichardFife.com is going to go kind of dark. Not in the “going offline” sense, but the “no new content” sense. Consider this more of a web-folio of writing projects, I suppose.

And, to allay the fears of you my loyal readers, I am not going to completely end Tijervyn. But updates are going to much more sporadic. Maybe once a month? I will use writing chapters of Meister of the Secret as a rest-writing exercise. Subscribe to the RSS feed (either main site or Tijervyn only) and you will see whenever I get around to putting up a new chapter.

Thanks for being readers.

I again emphasize, this is a super rough draft. I’m not even looking back over it for simple typos or awkward or repetitive stuff, so please forgive them. Consider this a rather interesting look to see what a true first draft looks like. And that is all, because even though I was thinking of writing a blog post about something meaningful, I kind of realized that would mess with my concept of vacation. Never mind that I posted up a blog over at Tor.com a couple days ago… that’s different. They actually pay me and all that, right? right. Totally excusable. Anyway, see you next week for Chapter 3.

And yes, I’m going to leave that as a cliffhanger, because April and I are taking some time off. Just December, but with the craziness of holidays, I figured you the readers and us the writer/artist could use the time off. But never fear, Tijervyn returns January 6^th, 2012. Until then, I’ve decided I’ll post a few more chapters of Rust on the Blade, since that got a good response from the first. I’ll try and think up some interesting blogs to go with them, but we’ll see when I remember I need to write them.

So, want to get me and April a holiday gift? Well, you can always buy that special someone an ebook for $2.99. Or you can always donate. Or you can review Revenant in those same ebook stores. Or you can tell all those other geeks in your family this holiday season about this awesome online story you’ve been reading. I am, as my friends are wont to say, “just saying.”

So, semi-major reveals in this chapter. That’s about all, because I’m so full of turkey it isn’t even funny (for my non-US readers, we just had Thanksgiving, our national holiday of turkey slaughter and consumption). So, no blog really today. Just the chapter. Enjoy!

First, allow me to briefly mention again that Revenant is for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble for ereaders. For $2.99, you get the edited novel plus a bonus chapter/short story “Lessons of Gorlido” that gives back story on Bryon as well as the world in general. It is also a stellar way to show you appreciate the novel. And if you don’t have an e-reader, you can still write a review, I think. I don’t think Amazon or BN force you to buy it through them to review it. Now, onto my “episodic” blog, for reals! Really!

I have spoken before about the strange nature of a serialized novel verses a real novel. There is more of a need for each chapter to be a short story unto itself while also still moving the plot forward, and because of this, chapters are much more like episodes of a television series. And I will make no qualm about admitting that Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and now Battlestar Galactica have all been kind of guide-books for me in this. And I am now remiss because I feel that recent chapters have been getting away from that feeling and been more just chapters in a book. Sorry.

But I am going to try and steer a bit more back towards the episodic again. Normally, that word is evil, but I think it is good in this case. I have usually managed to keep themes to each chapter, but it has been iffy. Today’s chapter, not so much, as it deals with the several different types of faith, both kind of good and kind of bad, that a person can have. From faith in a religion, to faith in yourself, to faith in others. Yes, that middle one is in there, if you look for it. Next weeks chapter, which I’ll go ahead and spoil a bit, is titled “The Secret”, and yes, it has a lot to do with not just that Secret, but with secrets in general. I really like it. Yes, I have it written already, for once.

Anyway, so yes, I am actually going a bit backwards to how I did with Revenant. The episodic feeling was stronger in the first half of that book and weaker in the second, as I said “wait, I have all these plot threads I need to tie up!” For Meister of the Secret, I spent so much time re-establishing what happened in the intervening months and moving people around to where I wanted them that I am only now getting to the episodes. Now, I already have the rest of the action, such as it were, planned out for Meister, but I think it will lend itself to themed chapters better than the end of Revenant did. Here’s to hoping.

Now, this post will make a lot more sense if you have read chapter nine. I’ll be vague for those who haven’t read it, but you might actually want to read it before this. Go ahead, I can wait if you haven’t. Now then. Did I just do that? Yes. Yes I did.

I’d like to blame Battlestar Galactica for the last couple paragraphs of this chapter, but that’d be unfair. I had been toying around with the idea of what happened for a while, and it really comes down to one thing. Characters don’t always make the decisions we want them to. Sometimes they make bad decisions. Sometimes they realize the decisions were bad, and sometimes they actually don’t turn out to be bad decisions at all, just ones that we wished they would not have made. The decision at the end of Chapter Nine could still yet be any of these, although I will admit, it wasn’t the decision I wanted made.

But, you say, you are the author! You can make the characters do whatever you want them to. Yes, technically you are right. But moving my characters around like marionettes on strings does not a good story make. They are people. They have problems and issues, and sometimes it’s a cointoss which way they will fall. This particular instance was a coin toss for a while, but between me wanting to have a chance to explore and discuss the ramifications of certain decisions, it also came down to one thing. Part of me wanted this to happen because part of me is in every character. So perhaps when I say I didn’t want this to happen, perhaps it is just one of the other characters responding. But, that is good. If everyone got along and made decisions the others agreed with, then it wouldn’t be much of a story. Next paragraph is spoilery, so be warned.

And as to Kira sleeping with Gavrial, I’ll admit, part of me says “But, no, wait, she was Markus’s romantic interest? Isn’t she?” Yeah, well, this is where I blame BSG. I can’t count the number of people I’ve said “But wait, no, those two were supposed to be together! What!?” Lost is probably partially responsible, too, although they didn’t mix up romance so much as just kill all the women off to get a reaction. I won’t be doing that, as I think it is a cheap trick. Regardless, the other reason I went the path I did was because if Kira just kept pining for Markus, it would turn Markus into a Mary Sue. “Oh, woe is me, Markus, sweet Markus, he has forsaken me and I shall just swoon because he is so amazing.” No, Markus is a whiney emo bitch at times, and bit of an asshole others. That turns people off. Gavrial has actually shown a willingness to change and be there, and while I’m not going to say that Gavrial and Kira will be rosebuds and tulips for ever (or even in the next chapter we see them), I will say that another part of me says “Go Gavrial, take that pity sex!”

That is the crassest I’ve been on this website. At least I wasn’t channeling any G.R.R. Martin and being super explicit, eh? Right. See ya next week.

So, I feel like I’m becoming a bit of a Sanderson expert. I’ve read all of his published work except for his thesis and that new media tie-in piece he did, and I am acquainted with him from conventions, and I correspond with his assistant Peter from time to time. So, I sometimes feel a little biased when I review one of Brandon’s books. Well, biased isn’t the right word. See, I love Sanderson’s writing, and Alloy of Law has been no exception, but I’m not going to give anything he writes a five-star pass. In fact, I might be more tending to be harsher in my criticism, or at least more specific, as I am conscious of my propensity to want to give him a five-star pass, thus I raise the bar. Is it fair, no. Is it me and still an honest review, yeah. Anyway, spoiler-free! So, on with the show!
Alloy of Law is a sort-of sequel to the Mistborn trilogy, only it takes place 300 years later and with entirely new characters and a new take on the magic system. Now, our main character, Wax, is not a mistborn himself as Vin was, but instead is a “Twinborn”, a man who can use 1 of the 16 metals for Allomancy and 1 of the 16 metals for Furuchemy. In his case, he can push metal with his Allomancy and store weight with his Furuchemy. I won’t go into that more, because the book actually does it ad nauseum. More on that in a bit. Anyway, Wax is a law keeper from the world’s version of the Wild West that has returned to civilization to take his place as a house lord, but is quickly drawn into the investigation of a mysterious set of crimes.

So, as always, the good stuff first. The writing is strong and enjoyable, much as I’ve come to expect from Sanderson. The story, much like the prior Mistborn novels, is very character driven, with strong personalities and plenty of banter that hides info dumps and “slow parts”. This book is also meant as an entry point to the Mistborn world, and I even tested that by having a friend of mine read it that had not read Mistborn and then discussed the book with him. In this highly unscientific method, Sanderson succeeded. He doesn’t give any spoilers for the prior books while still leaving plenty of hints and clues for those of us that have read them. If you don’t get the hints and clues, you still enjoy the book. If you do, you get a chuckle or a “oh…” type moment.

On to what I didn’t like so much. One: I can tell this was (I think) a bit rushed in the production due to Wheel of Time. This kind of doesn’t make sense, seeing as Sanderson completed this nearly a half year before it hit the bookshelves, at least that is when the advanced copies were starting to appear, but from what I have followed of Brandon, Alloy was really just a spin-off exercise on writing he was doing to stretch his mind that ended up becoming book length. Because of that, it has some weaknesses.

The first is that I think Brandon goes a little overboard on re-explaining the magic. Yes, I have three much longer books under my belt explaining this magic system to me, and this book is supposed to cater to new readers as much as returning, but when there are asides in the last fight repeating, and I do mean fully repeating, how the two halves of Wax’s magic work and interact, it seems a little overboard. Also, the last fight’s choreography was a bit trite, even if the major points were pretty awesome. The stuff that connected them was, well, not hard or boring to read, but after a while I started saying “I get it, Wax can shoot the wings off a fly at 100 yards.”

My final complaint is that the ending was… well, lacking. Several times in the novel, they go on and on about the “reason behind the crimes.” They set up a master-mind king-pin type character that Wax has to face off against. Okay, that is well and good. Wax never faces off against him. Again, not all bad. The ending is very much saying “There will be a sequel”. But what makes all this annoying to me is that, in all of the marketing and blogging about this book, it was marketed as a “Stand Alone”. That means the main drive of the plot, if not every single thread, is wrapped up in a tight bow by the end. That this book is probably half the length of a normal Sanderson novel really makes me feel like I got half a book, not the whole one, especially with all of the major plot threads.

So, spoiler-free short? This is a great book, but Sanderson leaves us hanging a little bit with it. I know recent marketing schemes have called it “A Mistborn Adventures Book”, so hopefully there will be sequels.

Okay, I want to be very blunt: today’s chapter has nothing to do with the Occupy movement that is currently going on, and is not meant to in any way comment on it. That said, I cannot help but acknowledge that there is some level of commentary inherent in the text, and that future chapters dealing with the rebels and the protests will likely also have something along the lines of commentary in it. Don’t you just love dichotomy?

My first assertion comes from the fact that I’ve been planning the mood and feeling of the rebellion and protests since the beginning. I mean, seriously, before I even wrote chapter one, I knew there would be rebels, and they’d be on the fringe and kind of not taken seriously, and there would be massive malcontent protests in the factories with walkouts and all this Occupy type rhetoric. Granted, this isn’t the first time in history that we’ve had the working class getting in a snit over the rich, and I was more thinking of Marxist observations at the time I was planning. So yes, this isn’t all just a spontaneous “I’m going to write about Occupy in the 1890s!”

BUT

I also know that, as a writer, my writing is molded and a product of all I experience. So the recent malcontent in the economy, the bank and car company bailouts, etc, probably could have had some subconscious trigger. But, I really don’t want to preach, so I promise you I’m not going to go down that path. In fact, I’m probably going to continue to treat this topic the same way I do with any. My characters will find the way through it that is natural to them and the story, but I am sure their answers will all of pros and cons they all have to deal with.

Also, I hope to treat this with the same way I treat religion. It is my hope that from my writing, you cannot tell my actual opinions or beliefs on religion. Steampunk is actually an interesting medium for this, even in a secondary world, because part of the conceit of steampunk is that religion is there, in some way, and while you can have the characters going on their own quests of faith or lack thereof, the world is typically much like our world religiously speaking. No proof, and plenty of pros and cons to toss around.

Anyway, that’s it for today. Next week will probably be my review of Brandon Sanderson’s new novel, Alloy of Law. Just a heads up.

First off all, yes, I’ve been reading a lot of Lovecraft and R. E. Howard. How’d you guess? This chapter is a bit of homage more to Lovecraft than Howard, granted, but I think there is more room in Tijervyn for the unthinkable and eldritch than for barbarians. It is also more Halloween-ish, and yes I’m a weekend early for that, but whatever. And who knows, perhaps a Conan or Sword and Sorcery-type feel will work its way in. Or perhaps I’ll just write a short to scratch the itch. Whatever. This isn’t what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is Jak and Gust.

So, I’ll go ahead and spell it out for anyone who didn’t catch it. Jak and Gust are lovers. Did I make a big deal of it in the story? Nope. Am I going to? Nope. At least, not any more than I would of any two characters that are romantically involved. Now here is the really funny thing, though. I had no clue they were lovers (or gay at all, for that matter), until I was plotting this chapter, and it hit me that it would be really poignant to have Gust be the one that actually found Jak. Then, it just kind of hit me like a lightning bolt. Why has Gust been giving Markus so much harder of a time about Jak than everyone else? Why do they both not speak Sentatian after years of working with a Sentatian gang? Why were they two peas in a pod before it the fateful events at Dunny Manor? Lightning, I tell ya.

See, when I first made these characters, they were just two close friends. I did not think “and this couple will be gay” when I was plotting out, because I’ll be honest, that just isn’t something I had ever really thought about on my characters. Yes, I was guilty of ye olde heteronormative bias. I thought I was being fairly progressive by having these two dark skinned foreigners that have equal status to everyone else in the gang, and no one really notes one thing or the other about them. So, yes, it surprised me when I figured out this new depth about them.

And you know what, that is part of the fun of writing organically. If I had hard plotted this trilogy out, I probably wouldn’t have really left the room in the outline for me to even think to do this, let alone actually been able to work it in without major rewriting. I love learning my characters. It is like getting to know a good friend even better.

And I could get into a long winded discussion of LGBT in fiction, but I’ll save my thoughts on that for next week. Yay.

I am actually rather burned out right now. Not on writing, but more just on thinking. So, no blog. I was going to put up some crazy self-affirming “I am a writer” spiel, but meh. Maybe another day. I was going to put up some deeply philosophical spiel I’ve already wrote about the older Conan the Barbarian movie, but I can’t find it, so I think it is on a different computer. So bleh. So you get me saying “Here’s your chapter! Now get off my lawn!” Or something like that.

I told you I’d get back to Markus! Let’s see how long I can stay writing about him. (hint, he is barely in next week’s chapter.) I’m already starting to wonder if I have things starting to spiral out of control. What’y’all think? To I have too many main characters/major characters? Be honest.