But, there is a problem.

The manuscript is kind of in a “not worthy of toilet-paper duty” state. Yeah, four years ago when I wrote it, it was a good example of where my craft was. Well, I’ve kind of grown as a writer in four years. I look at the prose, the dialog, everything really, and I cringe. The basic story is still pretty good (although I do want to tweak it here and there), but I am basically looking at 97k words of uselessness. So, I need to redraft.

Let me be clear in what that means. See, a second draft, in my opinion, is after you do a substantial passthrough-edit that might change somewhere around 20-30% of the words. Thus far, I have never actually done a second draft. This is because I am what is sometimes called a “one draft author.” This means I spend a bucket-load of time outlining and plotting and world-building in separate documents, and then I write a first draft that is pretty dang good and needs maybe 5-10% editing done.

Okay, so, I haven’t sold a book yet, so I guess they need more than that, but it feels like I have pretty well represented my potential at the time of the draft with the first draft. I let it set a bit, then look back through it, and find a few changes I want to make, but mostly am okay with it.

So, what is a redraft? I redraft is where the author realizes the first draft was more like a practice run and rewrites the whole dang thing. I have done I once, with my first manuscript, and it did massively improve the book, but gorram was it a painful process. See, this is because I cannot just use the old prep material. I have to look through it all, decided what is good and to be kept, and then I have to decide what needs cut out. It sounds like it should speed the process up, but honestly, I feel like I am slowed down as I double and triple examine everything, both trying to remember what I ignored to begin with in the manuscript, what I have changed in edits, and what I might have once thought was a good idea and now don’t like.

I am thinking of taking a leaf from what Tijervyn has taught me and just (re)write the first chapter, cares-to-the-wind style, and see how I like it. I mean, I know what I need to foreshadow already: I have written this book before, and who knows, maybe the characters will help me decide where I need to take the new parts of the story.

In fact, I probably will do that. I wrote Tijervyn as an exercise, so I had best use these new muscles. A bastard hybrid of organic writing and world-builder/outliner writing. Mwahaha and all that.

-Start writing for the monies again, in particular, manage to sell blog posts to Tor.com again.

-Do a massive revision on a novel I wrote tentatively called “Of Brass and Blood” which takes place in the same world as Tijervyn, but a few years later (although I wrote it a few years before)

-Write some more short fiction and start really actively shopping the new stuff and some old stuff I haven’t posted to markets.

-Get Revenant into dead-tree form and start working on actively selling it. Which leads to:

-Do yet another edit pass for typos on Revenant, as I found three in Chapter Five alone as I was reading the book for pleasure on my new tablet.

-Maybe (and this is pending everything else getting done) finish Meister of the Secret. Woo! (and I’m sure April will want to kill me)

So yes, busy times, and my funk of the last four months is pretty well banished. I feel great! I will hopefully start getting more regular blogs with musings on writing up here, but that is kind of a minor thing for me at this moment, so while this space might stay quietish, my twitter and facebook will probably be more active. Time to live up to that Phoenix icon I have up on this site, I think.

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.