Words, Words.... Words

Why I Love the Indie Book Revolution

2012-03-01T08:41:00.001-08:00

First and foremost, because I have a writing career.

How specifically has the rise of available indie/self publication helped me with this? As many of my close acquaintances can tell you, patience is really NOT one of my virtues. Also, while I love to write, without some sort of deadline, I don't necessarily love to to finish something before starting on the shiny new story idea takes hold of my imagination. The traditional publishing model requires me to finish a project and then HOPE and PRAY that someone, agent or editor, will like it enough to argue with other people that is should get published. I love being an indie author, because now I can write a project with a specific deadline, get it through my beat readers, and now my editor, publish it, and see instant results. If I'm not liking those results, I can take personal steps toward changing the results.

The second reason I love the Indie Book Revolution, is because so many other writers are also getting a shot to live their dreams. Here's a little known factoid about the tradition publishing model, with a slant toward science fiction and fantasy publishers. I might have an epic fantasy book that's going to be bigger than Robert Jordan and George RR Martin put together. I submit to publisher after publisher, and editors like it, say one or two even LOVE it; however, all their big-fat-fantasy-uber-epic slots are filled for the next three years. Well... then... I get the unpleasant "Thanks, but not for us right now. Best of luck finding a home somewhere else." Publishers have a finite amount of room for each sub genre of fiction they handle. The result, many fine and talented writers aren't getting publishing deals simply because of space on the bookshelf.

The Indie Book Revolution changes that. Truly, for the first time, writers are in control of their own destinies. I've discovered some great writers, who are developing into good friends: I count Christopher Kellen, Jen Wylie, and Shay Fabbro among the closest of them. On the other hand, I've read some bad stuff too, I mean REALLY bad indie books. Though this is not unique to indie writers. The last Stephen King book I listened to on audio made me want to SCREAM. Oh wait... I did. A lot. Over and over. But this serves to further my point. In many ways, control over what books get read and become popular are in the hands of readers and a writers, rather than publishers. Readers have access to more books, written by more writers, than we ever dreamed possible before.

With readers in mind, I'd like to direct you, my readers and followers, to the Magic Appreciation Tour. You can get there by clicking the tour badge on the from page of my blog. The tour is a celebration of fantasy fiction going on from now through the end of May. I'm taking part in it, as are some writers I know and enjoy reading their work. I don't know everyone, and I haven't read everyone's work. I won't say one way or the other, so I don't rob you of the joy of discovering new writers who may grow into new favorite writers.

Check out the site. Stop by the writer's blogs and book pages. Who knows what you might discover. If you do discover someone you like, post a comment here. I'm so busy working on my own writing, I won't be able to get to all the other writers right away, and as most of you read my stuff, I'd be interested to hear who gets your imaginations flowing.

Fighting with Robert Jordan Post Mortem

2012-02-07T22:55:00.000-08:00

Almost twenty years ago, I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Robert Jordan, writer of the Wheel of Time series. Book four, The Shadow Rising, had come out in hardback, and Mr Jordan was signing books at a independent bookstore in Sacramento, California. I do not recall the name of the bookstore, and it, like many independent booksellers closed down. This was before Robert Jordan was the international mega star who reportedly had limousines picking him up from the airport and driving him to the San Diego Comic Con. (I cannot speak to the validity of this rumor, but the hopeful, future, international mega star in me likes to dream that will be me someday.)

At that point, I'd been reading The Wheel of Time for about two years, maybe two and a half. My god mother had gotten me The Eye of the World for my birthday and I devoured it and immediately went onto The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn. Upon finishing book three, I sat down to wait for book four. Yeah, I've heard some newer readers complaining about the time some writers take between books. Well, I've been reading Jordan since 1990, that's longer than some of his current fan base has been alive.

But, enough of my digression.

Mr. Jordan was the first writer I ever met in person, and the first writer to ever sign my books. He was a charming man, very gracious. The line was short enough that he took several minutes to speak with each of his fans who cam to see him. Of course, I asked him about writing. My twenty year old self had dreams of making it as big as Jordan, despite that I didn't really know anything about writing at the time. (I thought I did, but didn't you know everything about everything when you were twenty?) He spoke to me about his process, and how he approached the writing as a linear process, as opposed to some writers who bounce around, writing whichever scene they feel like. The last thing he said, after I asked for the one piece of advice he'd give to a young and hopeful writer was, "Don't give up."

This was two years before I started the short story that would eventually blow up into Spellpunk, six years before the first pages of the first attempt at Tears of Rage, nine years before I figured out that the main character of that project needed to be a woman, ten years before I wrote the original first line on my birthday, "The god Grandfather Shadow opened his eyes in a mortal host for the first time in a thousand years (a line that never made its way into the final draft of book one), seventeen years before I received my B.A. in creative writing from SFSU, and nineteen years before Halloween Jack went in search of the Tomahawk of the Four Winds so he could try and kill the Devil.

In all the years between my one meeting with Robert Jordan I've had some dry spells that lasted months and in one case years, but deep in my heart, I've never given up. I always dreamed I'd be up there with Robert Jordan, with people asking me to sign copies of my books for them, giving advice to young and hopeful writers. I never gave up. Thanks to the ebook revolution, I can say that twenty years later, I'm scratching it out on a bestseller list with Robert Jordan.

So, there we have my little indie book First Chosen right there in the top of the bestselling "Fantasy Series" in the Amazon Kindle Store. I think it's pretty cool. I wish Mr. Jordan could have lived to see this, although I don't delude myself that he would remember me from all those years ago. I would however, politely remind him of our conversation as I asked him to sign the last several books in his series for me. I guess I'm going to have to settle for recounting the story to Brandon when I see him at Bay Con at the end of May.

I'm sure that I'm going to get knock off this list eventually. It happens to almost every writer, and I'm not big enough yet to dream that I'm at the point where I have this kind of sustainability. I will however continue to live up to those words that got me here in the first place, "Don't give up." Thank you Mr. Jordan for telling a twenty-year-old know it all what he needed to hear, even though he didn't put it to practice for more than a decade.

Oh, and just because I think it's cool, here's another writer I'm catching up with:

Two Small Requests With Offers

2012-01-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

Once We Were Like Wolves has been out for exactly one month today! It's opened bigger than any of my previous books, and while I know I have both the Indie Book Collective and the Amazon KDP Select program to thank for much of that, I also owe deep gratitude to my faithful readers that have stuck with me from Knight of the Living Dead and First Chosen. If it weren't for my early readers, who, while small in number, you were loud in voice, kept me going as I got my feet underneath me and my spirits up long enough to see my first Amazon bestseller in Halloween Jack and the Devil's Gate to last December when every book I've put out saw some time on a bestseller list, to now, as I write this First Chosen is holding steady in the middle of the top one-hundred fantasy series list in the Amazon Kindle Store.

Thanks again to everyone who has supported me and my books as I live this dream. I really couldn't have gotten here without you guys. However, now that I've got a taste for success, I'm realizing that we could get more. And yes, I mean WE, because this journey I'm on is not a solitary one. My success here is a shared thing between all of us. Now we're ready to take the next steps toward even bigger and better things.

Reviews
The Once We Were Like Wolves Amazon page is looking sparse on reviews. It's got four, and that's pretty good, but I'd like a few more. So, anyone who posts a review by January 31st, AND sends me an email to bardscloak@gmail.com will get a PDF copy of my award winning story The Half-Faced Man." This story takes place in the same world as the Tears of Rage books, but like "Jaludin's Road" it is set in the continent across the southern sea in The Lands of Endless Summer. The review doesn't have to be a 4 or 5 star, just your honest and well-written opinion of the book. For those four who have already reviewed Once We Were Like Wolves, shoot me and email, and I'll send you the story.

Tagging
This is where things get trickier. See, Amazon has these "hidden" lists that authors can't just put their books in. The only way to get into these lists is for people to "tag" the book into the list. That's how First Chosen got into the "Fantasy Series" list. Enough of you guys tagged me there. Thanks for that! But we're not done. Not yet. We still need to get Once We Were Like Wolves into the "Fantasy Series" list. I also want to get both books into the "Dark Fantasy" list.

Now this whole "tagging" thing confuses some people, so I'll try to make it pretty simple. All you have to do is go to each of the links below and click on the boxes that have anything to do with "series" and/or "dark fantasy." If you want to click on any others, that's cool too, I will not mind in the least, but those are the important ones. Being in those two lists will gain me a huge amount of exposure and discoverability.

Just like with the review offer above, I've got something to give back to you guys. I'm going to be taking part in a HUGE promotion with a bunch of other Indie Book Collective writers during the first weekend of February. When you guys marshal forth and get First Chosen and Once We Were Like Wolves both into "Fantasy Series" and "Dark Fantasy" list, I'll publish the novella I'm working on about how Julianna's parents met, which also has some revelations about two of the important secondary characters we see at the end of Once We Were Like Wolves. It's a love story Tears of Rage style... best of all... I'll make it FREE! for a couple of days after I publish it.

So, there we have it. Two requests for aid, coupled with what I hope are suitable rewards for my loyal supporters. As I said, my success is really our success. Thanks for getting me this far. Let's see how much further we can go!

2012 Begins with a Wake-Up Call

2012-01-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

"We're all in the dark, and we're all not guilty." This one sentence is the most valuable thing I learned while pursuing my Creative Writing degree at San Francisco State University. Thanks to Matthew Clark Davison for this nugget of enlightenment, not just for characters in my fiction, but also for every single person trapped in the human experience. Since graduating, I've really tried to keep this at the forefront of my mind when looking at myself, my flaws, and where I am in my life. I know I keep blinders on for a lot of things, but I also like to think that I'm raising the blinds slowly over time. This blog chronicles a part of my life where I'm stepping out of the dark and realizing where I am guilty, and the steps I'm taking to rectify the situation. And while this blog post is about my recent Joycean epiphany, I have to start last October, because, like most epiphanies, this one came to me in steps.

Last October I opened the first proof copy of TEARS OF RAGE: First Chosen. I've got to say it was one of the coolest experiences of my life. I'd been published on Amazon since May, and sold a few books here and there; however, not one of those sales or reviews posted compared to the feeling of holding a copy of the print book. I took that book to the Folsom Renaissance Faire and showed that puppy off to anyone who would stand or sit still for more than a few seconds, and since I had 3 stage shows a day, that proved to be a considerable amount of people. Okay, let me be honest. I carried that book everywhere and sometimes forced people to stand still long enough to show it off. I was a author with a book, dammit, and people needed to see it.

Several days after Folsom Faire, I went to lunch with my dad. We have lunch once a week at De'Vere's Irish Pub in Sacramento. We've been doing this for at least two years. Of course I had my book to show off. When my dad dropped me off back at home, I couldn't find my book anywhere. This was odd, because I could have sworn that I'd knocked on it in my pocket to make sure I had it when we got into car after lunch. Asked at the pub - they didn't have it. I called my dad to see if it had fallen out of my pocket in his car - no luck there. As far as I knew, the book was gone.

Counter to form, I did not freak out. I was a bit bummed, but shrugged it off as best I could.

Now, one detail I'd neglected to mention about that day my dad and I had lunch: It was raining.

A few days after that, my mother called me and explained that she found my book on her front lawn - where I'd gone after Dad and I had lunch. She found my book on the front lawn, soaking up water. She had it drying in her kitchen. Again, I didn't flip out. I realized that I could use this as a symbol and metaphor for a writing career. If I don't pay attention and handle career carefully with near constant vigilance,disaster could strike. I carry the book around with my now, all the time, to remind me that I am responsible for my success as a writer.

So here's the next problem that lead to my most recent wake up call: Back in October, I still wasn't taking this whole Indy writer career thing seriously. I sold a few books every month - better than the vast majority of self-published authors, and I'd gathered a modest group of loyal readers. I was getting a nice royalty check at the end of each month - enough to buy a tank of gas or two. I was looking at it as, well, it's not that big a deal if I have little hiccups, because it'll be okay, just like the water-damaged, original proof copy of First Chosen.

Then December happened.

All those people with new Kindles were looking for books started buying. December sales on all my books dwarfed everything I'd done in the previous months. I was giddy with all those sales. I was making it! For the first time, the very real possibility of this self-published career thing was drilling itself into my head. Happy dancing happened. Happy dancing happened a lot.

Then December 23rd happened. I received two reviews, one of them being my first two-star review for First Chosen.

Sarah Smith "Rhubarb" wrote in her review of First Chosen:

When I came across "conscious" when the author meant "conscience", I could read no further. Time and again the author made egregious errors ("to" for "too" for instance), and finally I had to stop, delete it, and go on to another author.

Too bad, because Gallowglass shows a lot of promise as a writer. Needs a good editor.

The same day, my Twitter buddy, Christopher Kellan, wrote this in his five-star review of Halloween Jack and the Devil's Gate:

I do have to deduct minor points for a few technical issues - namely, editing ones. More than once, there is a homonym confusion. The most prevalent one is "heals" to refer to the back of one's feet - the correct word is, of course, "heels". There was one other homonym confusion I noticed which I do not now remember.

On the more technical side, I only encountered one actual typo, and for a ~40,000 word work, that's excellent.

Two different reviews of two different books, while each mentioned typographical/proof-reading errors. Both with very different star ratings. Now, I didn't take Ms. Smith's review too seriously at that point, just blowing it off that she was one of those overly-critical, spiteful reviewers who likes to bring people down. She's entitled to her opinion, but not that big a deal. Besides, Christopher had given First Chosen an amazing review and named it one of his top five books of 2011. I immediately went and made the changes in each book and loaded the corrected versions to Amazon, as Christopher also said in his review:

One of the joys of indie publishing is that all of these things could easily be fixed with a quick edit and re-upload to the sites, and nothing is committed to a massive print run where these minor mistakes would be set upon parchment in indelible ink.

So, there we go, problem solved.... or not... Because, really, I still wasn't taking it seriously. I'd uploaded TEARS OF RAGE: Once We Were Like Wolves to Amazon without really doing a thorough proof read. But in my mind, I was still of the good enough mentality. I could fix the few minor errors as they came up.

Then came January 9th. Targetswife wrote reviews for First Chosen and Once We Were Like Wolves. Again , another wake up call.

For First Chosen, she said, in her four-star review titled, "Where' is my red pen?"

So first off, the good: I loved the story line, the characters and the mythology. There was intrigue and mystery, deception and heartbreak and the ever important hope. I found myself rooting for and identifying with the heroine with ease. There is obvious planning behind the story, and I appreciate the subtle details that all tie together. The bad: there is a dire need for an editor as the grammatical errors were abundant. I know this may not bug some people, unfortunately it drives me bananas. I found myself reaching for my red sharpie and had to stop before I colored all over my phone screen. Still, when I finished this book I promptly ordered the second one and will also order any future ones. A little proofreading will go a long way (in this case it would have gone all the way to five stars). My suggestion is to give it a read, but take off your teacher glasses first :)

For Once We Were Like Wolves, she wrote a four-star review titled, "Almost" (Which, incidentally is the same title of Ms. Smith's two-star review above.):

I loved this second book in the "Tears of Rage" series. Mr. Gallowglas has penned a comprehensive story line with rich details that leaves me yearning for the next installment. Colorful and imaginative lore make this book a very fun and enjoyable read. My only complaint (and the reason for four stars) is in regards to the type errors that were sadly abundant. All were minor, nothing that ruined the book but a distraction nonetheless. I look forward to the next one!

That Mrs. Targetswife wrote four-star reviews that both praised my storytelling while also calling me on my proofreading (or lack there of) made me sit up and take notice. I printed Once We Were Like Wolves and started going though it for errors. I was horrified and ashamed at the product I'd allowed myself to publish.

Then, one of my Facebook friends posted this to her wall:

To anyone who writes and self-publishes novels: please have someone do a GOOD editing job! Even if you think your spelling and grammar are okay, it's a good idea to have an editor.

I thought my friend was talking about my books. I've spoken with her since, and she assures me she was not referring to my work, but she still helped kick my butt into taking this self-publishing thing more seriously.

Long story short, I got in contact with an editor, and as a trial, sent her a file of First Chosen. While waiting for her to get that back to me, I went through Once We Were Like Wolves. Errors abounded. My editor returned First Chosen, having pointed out errors I'd missed and even making some suggestions on where I could clarify some things. Having finished my proof read of Wolves, I loaded the corrected version of ToR Book Two to amazon and sent the file off to my new editor. I know that even after my proofing Wolves isn't going to be perfect, but it's much better. It'll be pretty close to perfect after I get it back from my editor. I have since made the corrections to First Chosen and loaded it to Amazon. Now, I'm waiting to get Once We Were Like Wolves back from the editor. Then, it's going to be Halloween Jack and the Devil's Gate and so on until all my current works have gone through the process.

So here I am, stepping out of the dark and realizing that I am guilty. I've got to be even more steadfast in taking care of my writing career, and that means that I can't do everything myself, because, like everyone, I have weaknesses. One of my weaknesses, a serious one at that is my proofreading skills. While I am still ashamed of myself for putting out such shoddy work in 2011, I am making the proactive choice to straighten myself out and become a professional. So, to counter my weakness in proofreading, I've got an editor and will not release another title until it's been through the complete process of getting filtered through my beta readers, editor, and copy editor.

For those of you who have stuck by me, despite the errors and shoddy proof reading, thank you. You can look forward to a much more polished reading experience from M. Todd Gallowglas from this point forward. I'd like to thank Ms Smith, Christopher, Mrs. targetswife, and Jen on Facebook (even though she wasn't actually addressing me) for being so candid about my work to get me to take my writing to a true profession-level mindset. 2012, here we come!

Oh, and because I'm in a snarky mood, I can't resist adding this Post Script. While I truly appreciate Ms Smith for being the first to call me on my crap, and while she's unlikely to read this blog, I think if you're going to call a writer out for proof-reading and copy-editing errors, it would behoove you to spell that author's name correctly. #JustSaying. #MomentOfSnarkDone

2011 in Retrospect.

2011-12-28T23:24:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting at the dining room table, a place where I have done a vast amount of the writing on my last two books. The cats are racing all over the place, chasing each other in and out and over and under boxes left over from the holiday making a racket, as they are wont to do when I'm writing. I'm drinking coffee out of my Boba Fett coffee mug that I just received as a belated gift, and I'm thinking that 2011 has been a rough, weird, surreal ride.

A few weeks ago, I saw the movie Hugo. It is an inspiring fill about a boy who fixes things and, even though he doesn't know it, people. The underlying premise of the movie is that everything has a function, even people. People are meant to do things, the trouble is, we usually don't know what we're meant to do, and even if we do figure it out, the world often conspires against us.

I was meant to tell stories. It doesn't matter if it's on a stage, or in a role-playing game, or typing them into a computer, or just teasing my son about why we don't use Scottsman's heads when playing golf any more. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, stop by one of my shows and ask me to tell you "The True Life Story of How I Invented Golf") I am, in everything I do, a storyteller. I'm one of the lucky ones that has figured out what I'm supposed to do, found myself blessed enough to have opportunities to do it, and fortunate enough to have people willing to see my shows and read my stories to make me successful.

In the last week of 2011, I sat down to lunch in my favorite pub with Damon Stone, one of the creative geniuses behind several of the trading card games produced be Fantasy Flight Games Inc. We spoke for several hours about bringing me in to write fiction for the Call of Cthulhu card game. In the middle January, I had my first contract as a professional fiction writer. We're off and running.

Flash forward pretty much twelve months later: I have four ebooks in the top 100 fantasy books on Amazon. They stayed there for about a day, except First Chosen which held onto a best seller spot for three days in the US and the UK. In October Halloween Jack and the Devil's Gate topped out at #14 on the Historical Fantasy list. I've written ten stories for Fantasy Flight Games. I've been invited to participate in a Horror Anthology. I received an honorable mention from the Writer's of the Future contest for my story "The Half-Faced Man." I had three books in three separate genres hold the #1 best seller spot on Smashwords for about two weeks. I even spoke as a professional writer for the Literature of Science Fiction and Fantasy class at American River College (a class I had taken when I was attending.)

My experiences at Renaissance Faires have been up and down. Some faires were great, again! Others weren't so great. Some were due to environmental factors that I really couldn't do anything about. Others were due to more human factors that, due to being just a stage show guy, also couldn't do anything about. I've made new fans and met old ones. At the Valhalla Renaissance Faire, someone recognized me from over ten years ago. At the Foslom Renaissance Faire, I had over twenty people tell me they come to that faire every year just to see my show. Not the Joust, not the parade of the dancing dead, not even the queen, (I do love you Deborah, but it's pretty cool to be the main attraction for people) they come to see the storyteller. And now they are buying the storyteller's books. I also had a brilliant man who has been a stage and street performer all his adult life, take a look at my show and demand me to believe better of myself. By the time the faire season ended, I was having bigger crowds and better reactions than ever before. Normally as November comes around, I'm ready for the few months break winter gives me. Now, I'm ready to go into next season with stories blazing. I've got at least one apprentice, and it's going to be a whole new "Bard's Cloak of Tales Show."

I won't bore you with the details of my personal drama, but there was much of it. Some is spilling into 2012, but that's what personal drama does. It's all going to work out, because things always do. Just know that when anything gets me down, I now turn to the words of Ray Bradbury, "You must stay drunk on writing so that reality cannot destroy you."

In 2011 I learned that I was meant to be a storyteller. I'm living a dream I've been chasing since I was in the third grade. The think is, I can't be a storyteller without an audience. Thank you all for helping make my dream come true.

Watch out 2012, here we come! For now, Boba Fett needs a refill.

Black Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T13:46:00.000-08:00

I've got a list of blog posts sitting there in my Microsoft OneNote file, just waiting around to get written. I've even sat down to crank one of them out, but I keep looking at the response I received from my last post, that I've really been wondering what I could possibly write to follow that up with. Over the past few days I've noticed a lot of hype over a day that is becoming notorious in American culture, and so I'm going to write on the juxtaposition of and irony surrounding Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Let's start with Thanksgiving. Wait... Let's start with a brief note on holidays in general. Every holiday in the world has two foundations: the truth behind the holiday (which can be very challenging to find) and the spirit behind the holiday.

Some claim that the foundation of Thanksgiving as a national American holiday stems from a political maneuver be Abraham Lincoln toward the end of the civil war. I've heard and seen posts on various websites about how it is a celebration of the subjugation of the Native American peoples by the Puritans. (I am pleased to see other people claiming to be of Native American descent telling these people to, "Shut up and stuff yo face with turkey.") We can argue about these and other ideas on where Thanksgiving started. I'd rather talk about the spirit of what Thanksgiving is. Thanksgiving celebrates a bountiful harvest so that the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth rock wouldn't starve to death over the winter. It's a time when we come together with friends and family and celebrate the blessings we have in our lives.

Then we have BLACK FRIDAY! the first day after Thanksgiving where most of America is transitioning to the Christmas Season, we have the most brutal shopping day of the year. And no, I don't want to get into a religious discussion about the nature and history of the Christmas Holiday. To me it's about "Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men." If you can't get on board with that, no matter you religious, philosophical, and spiritual beliefs, we can't really continue that conversation can we?

I had a bunch of stuff that I was going to say about Black Friday, but I think I can sum it up with this. As of yesterday afternoon, people in Sacramento, CA were starting to camp out in front of Best Buy stores, to spend their Thanksgiving alone, in the rain, just to get the first shot at Black Friday sales. Do I really need to say anything else? Besides, I'd rather focus on this day rather than worry about tomorrow.

Between last Thanksgiving and this one, I have so many things to be thankful for that I couldn't possibly hope to list them all so I'll pick the one I'm most thankful for:

I'm thankful for my fans, both at my storytelling shows and of my books. I'm living a dream, a dream I've had since I was in third grade. You are the measure of my success, and I am humbled by your response to my shows and my books. You are the reason I am an Amazon bestseller, and that three of my books hit the #1 spots on Smashwords.com in three different categories at the same time. I'll never be able to thank you enough.

I can't wait to see where this next year takes us.

The Penultimate Toast

2011-11-14T00:42:00.000-08:00

Well, here we are. Welcome to my little corner of the blog-o-sphere. It's been one heck of a ride since Friday when we started this grand adventure. If you followed the tour schedule, you're coming here from JL Oakley's blog over at: http://historyweaver.wordpress.com. And now you're here, at the end of it all.

First off: if you've missed any of the other blogs during Blog Tour de Troops, you should go check those out. My post can wait until your done. This is one of those things that you're really going to want to save for the very end.

Second, I've been so moved by the support everyone has shown for our troops, I'm not going to give just one book coupon to people who comment, I'm going to give three, and send those three books to a soldier for everyone who posts. You'll be getting coupon codes for First Chosen, Halloween Jack and the Devil's Gate, and Knight of the Living Dead. Surprise!

Third: When I saw that I had the last spot on the tour, and that I was going to be wrapping the whole thing up, I must admit to feeling a little intimidated. I started wracking my brain, trying to come up with something to bring all these wonderful posts together with some semblance of a conclusion. Here is my contribution to our collective honoring of the men and women who serve our country and defend our freedoms.

In the 19th century, toasts were a very important and formalized part of military conduct. Toasting at meals and social gatherings both in the army and navy was highly ritualized. The last, or ultimate, toast of the evening was reserved for the country the soldiers served. The second to last, or penultimate, toast was to honor those comrades in arms who had fallen in service to their country. After any exchange with an enemy where the forces were even remotely closely matched, it could be almost guaranteed that one of their brothers in arms was absent, and would never be joining them again.

The glasses would be raised in honor of the fallen, and the words spoken were simple, "To absent friends."

We are fortunate in the United States to have a volunteer military. Men and women choose the wear a uniform knowing that they might one day be called upon to lay down their lives in those uniforms, and it means that sometimes, all to frequently, someone is missing from the table at the mess who will never join his or her fellow soldiers again. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, and children will also never sit at a holiday meal with these heroes. Too many of us know of someone who has chosen to wear a uniform, gone off to defend our way of life, and will not return.

And so, as I close out the Blog Tour de Troops, I can think of no more fitting words than simply:

"To absent friends."

Veteran's Day

2011-11-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

It's Blog Tour de Troops Weekend. Something like fifty writers are getting together and giving away free books on their blogs to every commentor as well as giving away a book to a soldier. We're also giving away Kindles to soldiers in celebration of the men and women who server to protect our freedoms.

You can start the tour at our head quarters: http://www.indiebookcollective.wordpress.com

I'm not officially scheduled to post in the tour until Monday, but I can't let this day go by without saying something. So, I'll leave you with my Veteran's day thoughts, until Monday, where I may have a surprise or two waiting.

"Soldiers live. And wonder why."
- Glenn Cook. Soldiers Live

This is the day when we celebrate those men and women who have fought for our country and our freedom. As I sit back and think of out country, the United States of America, and all that wee have been, we've had out good moments and bad moments - nothing is perfect - I am proud to be an American. Some of our leaders haven't made the some of the best choices concerning our military over the last ten years, but by god, the men and women of our armed forces stepped up to that line and held it. I have friends whose families have been tested because one of them chose to serve and stand on that line, through all the problems, personal and professional, our soldiers have held that line so that the rest of us don't have to. This is their day, and it's not really enough. Thanks to all who have stood on that line and fought so that we continue to enjoy the freedoms of living in the United States of America.

[T]he unnamed soldier is a gift. The named soldier-dead, melted wax-demands a response among the living...a response no-one can make. Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous-as if cursed-while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?

"Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living. ”
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

Why I write.

2011-11-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

With the popularity of the new print version of First Chosen I got a bunch of questions down at the Escondido Renaissance Faire about being a writer. The two most frequent being variations of: "Why do you write?" and "Where do you get your ideas?"

I'll answer the second question first, because it has the easier answer. I have no clue. Stuff comes to me and I put it down on paper or into my computer after I let it percolate in the back of my mind for some non-specific amount of time. For some stories, it's a few days. For others, it months or years. This part of the process is a mystery to me, as I think it is for most writers.

Now to the second question, which has a much more concrete answer. First off, let me say I hate this question. The question is so loaded with expectations, especially during my time at San Francisco State University where everything was so focused on Literary Fiction and creating works of art that when asked this question, which we were frequently, the pressure was on to come up with some noble reason or purpose we were dedicating ourselves to with our fiction.

The truth is, I just want to entertain people. Yeah, I could go on about holding a mirror up to the human condition and exploring unanswerable questions and offering up examples of moral gray areas, etc, which I do a lot in my fiction, sometimes consciously, as with the Tears of Rage books, and sometimes unconsciously, as I discovered when I went back through Halloween Jack and the Devil's Gate. I find those things interesting, but they are not my motivation for penning fiction. It comes down to wanting to entertain people. I write stories that I wish other people had written so I can read them. I like cool stories, and that's what I try and do with the stuff I write, make them so cool that I get a thrill every time I go back and read them. I know some writers don't ever go back over their own works once the work is published. I can't imagine doing that. I just reread some of Halloween Jack and had a blast with it.

So there you have it, the reason I write: I want to write cool stories. If my work resonates on a deeper level, that's cool too, but has nothing to do with what got me started on this road. If the work doesn't go deeper than being cool, I'm okay with that, as long as someone is entertained. If I hit that mark, I'm all good.

MTG

Best Seller for a Day!

2011-10-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to be part of the Bestseller for a Day Promotion. The idea is the help drive one book to the top of the Amazon best seller lists for a single day. There are wonderful bonus books, five in all. All of them for 99cents each. Great books, great prices, and you can earn a chance to win a Kindle.

Halloween Jack and the Devil's Gate is one of the bonus buys for this event. I hope you'll take advantage of the great price I'm offering for this fantastic read. I had more fun writing this book than I have anything else in my life. Early readers are telling me they're having a great time reading it.

Also, remember that if you post a review for Halloween Jack on October 31st, I'll send you PDF of the deleted epilogue.

Happy reading!

Halloween Jack!

2011-10-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

What a ride. A novel in one month! My head is still swimming from what an experience that was. Then, before I even got a chance to breath, I dove right into Blog Tour De Force Masquerade. Thanks to all who stopped by. I was over at Rachel's blog. A handful of her visitors guessed correctly.

Now I can split my attention between promoting Halloween Jack and the Devil's Gate and working on Once We Were Like Wolves book two of TEARS OF RAGE. Oh, yeah, and Steve Moore is sending me chapters of Knight Terrors, so you will probably get to read the Three Strange Knights again before Christmas.

Enough of things yet to come. I'm here to talk about Halloween Jack. I love this book and I love this character. I had more fun following Jack, his cousins, and Mickey the ogre than I have anything else I've ever written. The story even surprised me in the process of writing it. Howling mad fun! That's all I can say about the five weeks I spent burning through this story.

And now that the story is done and available, I want to share something special with my readers. I deleted a couple of scenes from the book, and I want to give some of you the chance to read it. However, you don't get something for nothing.

Halloween is approaching fast, and with it, I'm giving a special offer. If you read and post a review of Halloween Jack and the Devil's Gate to Amazon on Halloween... that's the important part... ON HALLOWEEN... then email me at bardscloak@gmail.com I will send you a pdf of the deleted epilogue/last scene. I took it out because I have no idea when I'm going to get around to penning Halloween Jack and the Curse of Frost and I didn't want to leave the book slightly open-ended.

So, get the book. Review it. I don't care how many stars you give me. Email me. Get the deleted scene. I won't say "never," but I am unlikely to make this offer again.

WHERE'S YOUR LANTERN?

Blog Tour De Force

2011-10-21T00:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Blog Tour de Force Masquerade! I hope you’re having fun because I surely am.

I’ve taken over Todd’s blog!

Yep, that’s right. It’s mine for the day. I think I'll settle in with a good book and let you guess who I am. Take your time, I have all day.

Want to know what I’m reading, with my feet up, chillin’ on Todd’s blog? Well, I would have read First Chosen, but I read that weeks ago. Absolutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. I read his reviews for this book. Have you?

http://indiebookblogger.blogspot.com/

http://offbeatvagabond.blogspot.com/

http://frustratedyukkymummy.blog.co.uk/

And some older reviews:

http://christopherkellen.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/review-first-chosen-by-m-todd-gallowglas/

http://writingontherocks.com/2011/08/23/review-of-the-first-chosen-by-m-todd-gallowglas

You guys lucked out with him joining this tour. You’re so lucky that he’s giving away a FREE eBook to every person who comments to this post. And sends me wine.

Ok, ok, I lied about the wine part. But seriously, he is giving away some other free stuff too. A proof copy of the print version of his novel First Chosen along with a special book from his storytelling cape or cloak from Renaissance Faires. I hear both are pretty rare!

Plus, every guess automatically enters you in the drawing to win a free Kindle. After this tour, you are definitely going to need it.

Bottles of red wine sent to me get you extra entries.

Okay, I’m lying again.

But you know, a girl can never have enough wine. Oops, did I give away who I am? Person! I meant to say person can never have enough wine. #oops

Where was I? Oh yeah, kicked back with Stevie (that’s a hint) reading Elena Gray’s Widow Maker. This book is CRAZY GOOD! And it’s not the only incredible book on this tour. After this, I’m hopping back on the Ann Charles bandwagon. I hear we’re going through Deadwood again.

Have I given you enough hints? No? Come on, I can’t tell you everything about me. Okay, just a few more. Did you know that I’m a sucker for love? I’m not really into scary…seriously, I’m not. I know I know, it’s close to Halloween and this is Masquerade…I can’t help it. I live love scenes, hot guys who make beautiful music, and always come through in the end.

Nothing scary about that.

Hmmm, what else?

Music! Can’t forget that! As much as I love Stevie, I don’t go anywhere withoutmy iPod. Anywhere! “The Black One” is probably the mostimportant accessory I carry. Without it, nothing would ever get written. And that’s enough for you. No more hints. Start posting so you can get First Chosen for FREE. (just one more hint, FREE is my favorite word)

And don’t forget to leave your email address. Leave it like this so the SPAMBOTS don’t get ya : haha at trickedyou dot com

Well, I gotta go before Todd gets back. I hope he doesn’t mind the chocolate cookie crumbs and coffee stain I left on his blog.

See ya!

Blog Tour!

2011-10-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

Today we kick off the "Blog Tour De Force!" I'm supremely jazzed that the Indie Book Collective has brought me on board. We've been prepping for weeks. Busy, busy, busy! Click the image over in the side bar for the full details, but here's the idea in a nutshell: twelve writers are switching blogs, every comment to the blog gets a free ebook, each writer has a prize, and posting to the various blogs enters you into a chance to win a Kindle. How AWESOME is that?

What's my prize some of you might ask? It's a proof copy of my novel First Chosen book one in the TEARS OF RAGE SEQUENCE. Only five of those exist in the world. I'll sign it if you want and send it to you. But that's not all. I will also be including a book mark from the same cloth of my storytelling cloak that I wear for my shows at Renaissance Faires and Celtic Festivals. For those of you who don't know, I'm a professional storyteller, and my cloak is part of my identity, and among my most prizes possessions. I have never given away a piece of this plaid before, a truly one-of-a-kind gift.

The next post on my blog will not be me, and, at some point this week, I'll be posting to someone else's blog. Can you find me? Click the image for the blog tour and see if you can find where I'm hiding.

What I think "Indie Publishing" truly is.

2011-10-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

Back while I was at the World Science Fiction Convention, I had a conversation with Patrick Nielson Hayden, one of the chief editors at TOR books. I asked him how he felt about the whole "Indie" publishing thing. Well, Mr Hayden went on for some time about his feelings on the eBook revolution, most of which isn't important to this particular blog post. What is important is the definition he gave to publishing. I'm going to paraphrase it, because it's been almost two months, and I don't remember it verbatim.

Publishing is the ability to put books in front of people who will buy them. Just because you have printed a book in either electronic or physical mediums, it does not mean you have published a book

I believe this is an accurate description of the difference between printing and publishing. Just because a writer has taken the time to make his or her book available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, or any other distributor of ebooks, does not make that writer and "Indie" author. It makes them a self-published author.

There are two ways to go from being self-published to indie.

The first way, which happens to be the way the early successes did it, was to self-publish so long and hard, that the work got out and word of mouth spread, generating buzz that the writer couldn't keep up with it. This is how success is made in both traditional publishing and in Indie publishing. A writer cannot become a success without a rabidly loyal and noisy fan base. The self-published writer goes to being the Indie writer when the fan base grows so rabid and noisy that the fan base becomes the center of word of mouth rather than the writer.

The second way, and the route I'm choosing to go, is to join a group of like-minded writers who share the common goal of mutual success. There are a few of these, and I think we'll see more and more of them pop up. I happen to be working with the "Indie Book Collective." I've been working with them for a couple of weeks, and I've already learned a lot from them. You can go check out their web site here: http://www.indiebookcollective.com/

Starting Monday we're undertaking a promotion known as "Blog Tour De Force" and they've kindly asked me to be involved. http://www.blogtourdeforce.com The details in a nutshell: Take twelve Indie writers, have them swap blogs for a week, but not tell who is swapping with who, offer prizes, free books, and a drawing for a free Kindle. Fun for us writers! Fun for the readers! Everyone wins all around!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the beginning of my Indie Publishing career. I'm just getting started.

Remember, just because you've produced a book people can buy, doesn't mean you've published it.

Updates on where I am and what I've been up to.

2011-09-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

First of all, I'd like to apologize for being absent from the blog for over a month. September has been very hectic. Hopefully, October will provide me with a bit more time to fill these pages with the wandering meanderings of my mind.

HALLOWEEN JACK and the Devil's Gate is coming along nicely. It will be available in the Kindle store soon! I'll announce it here or on the "Bard's Cloak" Facebook page first.

I've recently joined an organization called the "Indy Book Collective." It's an awesome group of people dedicated to the promotion and success of indie books Here's the website for you to check out. www.indiebookcollective.com I'm going to be involved in some very special projects with them, including...

A special blog tour in mid October. I'll have more details in the next week, but basically, it's going to be a bunch of writers making guests posts on each other's blogs, except we're going to be posting anonymously. Readers will get to guess who is posting where. If they guess correctly, the reader wins a prize. I'll have more details soon.

Which brings me to the big question: What should my prize be. It should be based off my writing or me as a writer/storyteller. I'd love to hear any suggestions you guys have.

That's it for now. Until next time...
What's your story?

A sneek peek at hard copy cover.

2011-08-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

Here's the first look at the hard copy cover of my novel:

World Con Wrap-Up

2011-08-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

My God there was so much.

I'm not even going to begin to talk about what happened on any semblance of timeline, or even try and codify the events. So much happened in a short amount of time that such would be impossible for me at this point.

I believe this was my most productive World Con, or World Fantasy Con to date. I made more legitimate contacts with people that seemed not just interest in my work, but me as a writer and a professional, even after mentioning my eBooks, which even with the success of John Locke and Amanda Hawking, the traditional publishing industry is still slow to take seriously. Rather than talk about the events, I think I'll talk about the differences in me between this convention and previous events I've attended.

First, I'm much more secure in my work. Part of this is that I've aged and matured as a person, but also that I've been paid for my work, both by Fantasy Flight Games and via Amazon Kindle. The biggest thing is that I embraced my storytelling as a very real part of who I am and what I'm about. In previous conventions, I kept that quiet. When I was getting new business cards, I debated putting my storytelling on it as I intended to hand a lot out at World Con. I realized that I'm proud of the "Bard's Cloak of Tales" show. I entertain people, make them smile, and bring them joy. I am blessed with a very loyal fan base, and if I went off to World Con and pushed those fans under the carpet, I'd be betraying their loyalty and the core of who I am. So, with my fans behind me, I proudly announced myself as a professional storyteller, which I believe helped me enormously.

Second, I was able to put my ebook sales in context of my storytelling show, which also made me look more professional. A very successful agent asked me why I'd want to give a New York Publisher 70% of my work's worth if I've got an ebook career. My responce, "I want a wider market than storytelling in Northern California." I didn't mention that I'm hoping to use my books published by a major New York publisher to also raise awareness for my ebooks. But I think he caught that I understand there are more roads to business success.

Third, I listened to the way people spoke and read their body language. This is an important skill all hopeful writers need to learn if they are going to attend conventions and conferences. Do not be that pushy writer who won't let the editor/agent/writer get to their next appointment. A professional's time is valuable, and they probably have to get to the bathroom after a panel/talk just as much as everyone else. I've made it a point NOT to be that guy. Even before I coined the mantra, "It's a marathon, not a sprint." I seemed to understand that on a fundamental level. I've spent years going to cons, talking to people, and just getting my face out there. Now that I'm actually ready to send stuff out, the pros are taking me seriously.

Forth, I don't look desperate. I might feel desperate, but I make sure that I don't look it. My elevator pitch is practiced and rehearsed, as are most of my responses to common questions. In this, my storytelling experience has really paid off. I'm practiced at not looking flustered in the face of noises and distractions. Ren Faire and World Con abound with them.

I'm sure there's more but I'm still processing everything.

To the hopeful writer who goes to conventions: don't go trying to wheel and deal at your first convention. Take the time to learn the community. Also, each convention is a new community. Don't go to World Con and think that you know how things are at World Fantasy Con, even though many of the same people attend both. Being a professional is about doing your homework and that's part of the game.

More thoughts on World Con coming.

Apologies

2011-08-21T07:55:00.000-07:00

I'm very sorry I haven't been keeping current with my World Con updates. So much has been going on, and when I've had to make the choice between furthering my business contacts and managing the blog...well, sorry, but you guys have to suffer. I feel terrible about it, but not so terrible that I'm going to change my priorities.

I will be posting details of the last two few days as soon as I've got some breathing space. Almost done. Wish me luck.

World Con Day 3

2011-08-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

I don't think I'm possibly going to sum up yesterday in one post, so I'm going to break it up. I'll do the day-time report now, and when I get time later, I'll talk about my awesome experience at the parties.

The morning began with me waiting in line to get into the Lou Anders KaffeeKlatsche. I used the opportunity to get a little work done on Once We Were Like Wolves. Two birds with one stone, Mr. Productive, that's me. As an aside, I'm writing this as I wait to get into the Pat Rothfuss kaffeeklatsche. If you have not read, The Name of the Wind, you must. It is a brilliant debut novel; one of the strongest I've ever seen. But I digress.

After that I went to the "New Pro" Panel. Several writers and agents were discussing things about contracts that new writers need to know, and exactly why writers need... NEED.. agents in the modern publishing world. Do not try this at home kids. After the panel, I spoke with Lucienne Driver of the Knight Agency, and she expressed interest is Dead Weight. Got her card. Remember this detail for later. It's important.

Alright. So the rest of the morning passed relatively painlessly. I wandered around and spoke with people.

Lou Anders is awesome. He's the senior editor at PYR. He is a massive fan boy. He is excited about Science Fiction and Fantasy, loves to talk about books he likes, both people he publishes and other. Of all the editors I've seen this weekend, with the exception of David Heartwell, Lou Anders loves our literature with a blinding passion. He was inspiring and had plenty of examples of writers he believes people should read. I have decided that I really want to work with him. PYR is going to be the first house I submit any of my long fiction to.

David Heartwell of TOR, didn't speak about anything of the publishing industry. He spoke about the history and culture of World Con, World Fantasy Con (which he started), and what he believes is needed to save the traditional modes of our genre. We need more regional conventions, and one convention dedicated purely to science fiction.

Ellen Datlow was awesome, especially because she had a semi-pro writer arguing why he was ready for the big time. Also met a nice lady who edits anthologies and also writes fiction for Fantasy Flight Games. She and I might be doing some business together.

After Ellen, I went back to the hotel room and chilled out, wrote, and did some social media stuff before parties.

Coming soon: Friday night parties.

World Con Day 2

2011-08-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

How am I possibly going to sum up this day? Busy as hell, I guess.

I went to several Kaffeeklatsches with editors and one reviewer for publishers weekly. For those unfamiliar with the World Science Fiction Convention, a Kaffeklatsche is when a group of people, usually around ten - this year it's nine - sit at a table with a pro, either writer or editor, and just chat for an hour. Sat with a few editors from TOR publishing and got their feel for the indie publishing movement, which they insist is still self publishing, and that indie publishing is from a small publishing house not associated with the big six. Patrick Neilson Hayden said that publishing and printing books are different thing, that publishing was the ability to get the book into reader's hands so they can buy it. Not going to argue the point of that statement and how it actually applies to the "indie/self publishing" movement, at least not at this time. Interesting idea.

I hung out with my friends, Brian, Rachel, and ED as the day went on and directed them toward various panels. None of them have been to a World Con, and I'm showing them the ropes. Interesting that ten years ago was my first World Con, and I have my buddy Jim showing me around, a young and hopeful writer, full of dreams and aspirations. Now I am the one showing people the ropes. Kind of cool.

I learned a lot from the Kaffeklatsche with Rose Fox, who is an editor and reviewer from publishers weekly. She's very supportive of the ePub revolution, but part of that is mercenary, because she does freelance editing. But, at least she's honest. Her Kaffeklatsche was also filled with pro writers who came to support her because not very many people signed up to see her. They were all very impressed with my publication with Fantasy Flight Games and the Call of Chthulu card game.

That was during the day...

Then there was the TOR party. What a massively EPIC party. I got some cards and made some contacts. Was a lot of fun. Even got some people to take my Kindle publications seriously when I mentioned my ranking in the new epic fantasy list on the Kindle Store, right between Glen Cook and Fred Sabrehagen. Good company to be keeping.

The best part about the evening was getting business cards from Brandon Sanderson's agent and editor and watching Brandon himself coaching Rachel on her elevator pitch.

All in all, not a bad start to a World Con.... AND IT'S ONLY FRIDAY MORNING!

World Con Day 1

2011-08-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

Wow. Already worth the price of admission.

My buddy Brian and I pulled into Reno about 7:30. It took us a bit to find the hotel and convention center, as they are not on the strip. Got coffee. I set up to do the "Day Job" thing for the last time this week. Thank god for wireless internet. I managed to be productive on the job and get through the registration line. Noon to 1pm had to be the longest shift ever. EVAAAAAR!!!!

Finally, work was done, allowing me the freedom to wander about. First geekasm, fan-boy moment was meeting Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear. We shook hands and chatted for a while. Great guy, very gracious. I'm hoping to get a chance to buy him a beer and chat. Other fan-boy moments: George RR Martin and Glen Cook. For those of you who don't know Glen Cook, go thou forth and read The Black Company Books and The Garret P.I. books.

I wandered the Dealers Room and purchased the creator of #nineyearoldwisdom and #tenyearoldwisdom his birthday present. If you are unfamiliar with these two hashtags, follow my twitter stream: http://twitter.com/MGallowglas.

Went to the opening ceremonies, and boy did that almost get awkward. When asked about the changes to science fiction, Bill Willingham, one of the special guests, brought up how easy it is for people to get their work out these days. He wasn't speaking just of indie publishing, but also that people can make movies on their computers with some pretty cool special effects. Ellen Asher, long-time editor of the Science Fiction Book Club, latched on to the ePub thing and was ready to break out the torches and pitch forks. Writer Guest of Honor, Tim Powers defused the situation with wit and humor.

Looks like the ePub thing is the big fat elephant in the room. The big question is: how much trouble do I want to stir up and how many feathers do I want to ruffle? #Bwahahaha

Parties were lack-luster for the most part - bid parties for future conventions. Brian and I decided to call it a night early in order to pace ourselves for a long weekend. On the way out, we found the bar it appears most of the Pros are going to hang out at. Tim Powers was there, and I let him use my phone to call his wife, as he couldn't get any service on his. Chatted with him a few minutes.

On the way out to the car, we bumped into Brandon Sanderson and his wife, Emily. I've been acquainted with Brandon for a few years. I first met him before his first book was published that the World Con in Boston. For those who don't know, Brandon write fantasy and was hand picked by the late Robert Jordan's wife to finish writing The Wheel of Time, the best selling epic fantasy series of all-time. Fame and fortune has not changed Brandon in the least. He is warm, gracious, and friendly as he has always been. I told him of my work with Fantasy Flight Games and my rank in the Amazon list for new epic fantasies, he congratulated me and asked me to send him a link. He also told me that I shouldn't be embarrassed about it, "Your on the wave of the future." He also gave me a very special gift, which I can't disclose, as he said, "You didn't get this from me." His endorsement meant the world.

And that was the first day at World Con! I'll post again tonight or tomorrow morning about today. I'll also be adding stuff to Twitter, Facebook and Google plus, throughout the day as internet connections permit.

Julianna and Where She Came From

2011-08-03T00:51:00.000-07:00

***Very Slight Spoiler Waring if you have not read First Chosen***

Since the first few people read TEARS OF RAGE: First Chosen, I've been getting feedback, comments, and questions about my main character, Julianna Taraen. I've had a few people say some very nice things about her in reviews on the book's amazon page.

"The protagonist, Julianna, is the kind of strong female who I'd like to see more often, particularly since "strong female characters" have sadly become cliched lately."

"Julianna is believable as a heroine who never chose to be so. She is stubborn, clever, and brave, even as she is terrified and in serious emotional pain."

"There are some really interesting characters in this book and Julianna would have to be my favorite. She, to put it bluntly,rocks!"

I'm still slightly boggled by these quotes and that people are supporting the book as much as they have been. Thanks to everyone.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that people are asking me so much about Julianna, as she is the focal point of the not just this book, but the whole series. The ironic thing, is that she's a newcomer to the TEARS OF RAGE story, granted, her arrival changed the series forever once she stepped into the first scene.

Before I talk about Julianna, I need to talk about the Morigahnti and where they came from. I invented the Morigahnti and Grandfather Shadow for a LARP (that's Live Action Role Playing). For those of you sneering at me for being a gamer geek, Jim Butcher and Steven Erikson are gamers too, and it hasn't seemed to hurt their writing any - but I digress. I wanted to play a more villainous character, and truth be told, Grandfather Shadow was quite a bit nastier in those days than he is in TEARS OF RAGE, but I was younger and nastier and wanted to through my weight around the LARP, speaking in the name of my diety. I invented the title of "the Lord Morigahn" for Grandfather Shadow's high priest, I created a rudimentary language to enhance the flavor of the "Magic" one received by following Grandfather Shadow, and I created the concept of the Galad'fana. Before the end of my first weekend of LARPing with that particular character, I had other gamers interested in following me, coming up with ways to make their own Galad'fana. I called them the Morigahnti, (using the ti from my language to indicate a pluralization.) In time, the Morigahnti grew in numbers, reputation, and culture, and I knew I had something special on my hands that I could use beyond the little weekend gaming things that I did.

So I started writing a novel, originally intended as a stand alone book of one volume. Julianna wasn't in the picture yet. I was writing a story about two brothers who got swept up in the politics between various factions of the Morigahnti. I still have some thematic elements of that story, but it's grown so much beyond that original idea.

Now, as I was fiddling with that story, I took my on and off girlfriend to a couple of these LARP weekends, and while she was iffy about it at first, she kinda got into the groove. She started as being "Julie the Santa Cruz Girl," a transplant from Earth stuck in this fantasy world. I swear she did it just to get under my skin. Looking back it was kind of funny. Long story short, she really eventually got into the gaming, and when I retired my original "Lord Morigahn" character, she took up the mantle of high priest of Grandfather Shadow as Julianna. She played that role with even more cold disdain for those around her than I did. (Oh, and she was my fiance at this point.)

I'd been off writing TEARS OF RAGE for a while, but watching her really got the creative juices flowing. What if a normal girl was called to be Grandfather Shadow's high priest. The creative juices started flowing, I started making notes, pulling things from other half-though of ideas, and a world began to form, around Julianna that was so much more epic than my original one-novel idea. Then, Then it came together when my 2^nd son was born. I was staying in the hospital with the girl who had once been Julia the Santa Cruz girl, who was now my wife. I knew I’d have a lot of free time on my hands, so I took a pile of books with me. I won’t mention which books they were, because they were by fairly popular and well respected authors, but both books had female leads. Both female leads were, in my opinion, sniveling wretches and only survived because of contrived plot twists and the big strong men around them. That decided it. Julianna was the new main character of the book which would blow up into a series.

On my 30th Birthday, I wrote the first sentence to the new novel... and wrote and wrote and wrote. I had three main characters in this new book: Julianna and two brothers. Everyone love the brothers. Not so many people were into Julianna. That really irked me. I was really into Julianna, and felt other people should be too. She's the focus of the whole thing after all. I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote... and still was having problems with her.

Then, many years and a BA in Creative Writing later, I finally figured out what the issue with Julianna was and why people weren't engaging with her as much. Those first drafts all began with her as the Lord Morigahn. She'd think back to the time before, but the reader doesnt' really get to experience the "before and after" of her journey. Even during the journy, I kind of already new where she was going to end up, and so I put a lot of that character into her early personality. But, in my defense, I was still learning how to craft engaging fiction and was still getting a handle on this developing characters thing.

So, for First Chosen, I had to go back to before what I thought of as the beginning of my story. It was almost as if Julianna grabbed me, sat me down, and told me, "Start here you idiot. This is the part of my story people need to read." So I did. She was right. And now, as challenging as she is to write (more than any other character I've ever written, Julianna likes to wander away from what I thought I had planned out) I also love and adore her. Not because she's my dream girl. No, my dream girl is in another book, but I'm not telling which one. I love and adore Julianna because she's become a force of her own. I can feel when she's exerting her will over the story and making her own choices. It doesn't happen very often, because for the most part, we're both on board where the story is going, but every once in a while, I realize that I'm not writing Julianna any more - this realization usually comes after I'm staring at the computer screen for a half an hour or so in the middle of a scene, thinking to myslef, "I know what I want, but it's not happening." Once I let go of that want, Julianna comes alive again and we're off and running.

You can read Julianna's adventures in:

First Chosen (Tears of Rage)

Thanks...

2011-08-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

... To all who participated in July's review contest. I got some great reviews all across the board, and I really enjoyed reading how you all felt about First Chosen. I also took in your feedback, because I know that while it's a good book, it's not a perfect book. I'll be taking those comments into account as I work on Once We Were Like Wolves, which is in progress as I type these words.

I'll be letting the winners of the contest know in the next few days. I haven't completely decided yet, as the competition was pretty steep in some cases.

For those of you who didn't get a chance to review the book in July, I'm going to be having another review contest in August. Stay tuned for details!

On Science Fiction in Academia.

2011-07-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

I wrote this several years ago, in various stages throughout my academic career. I ran into it the other day while searching for other files.

“Theme for Poetry 304”

by Michael Gallowglas

“Everything is science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the reality of the 20^th Century.” – J.G. Ballard,

The teacher told me:

Take a poem and let it move you

to write a new work based on something true

of your own experience, so I to be

inspired by Mr. Langston Hughes.

How can I feel something similar to his pain?

I am thirty-four, white, born in middle class California.

I go to school. I’m an English major because

I like to read, and I like to write stories.

I am the only genre writer in my lit classes.

Or, at least I’m the only one brave (stupid) enough

To mention this to my teachers and fellow students. Time and again,

they dismiss what I have to say because my approach is from:

Asimov, Herbert, Tolkien, and Ellison, (being Harlan, and not Ralph)

Rather than: Melville, Hawthorn, Thoreau, and Elliot.

It’s not easy to stand there and take it, when you claim

that writing isn’t true. Though it resonates with the

same human conditions – It sees and feels, and explores and searches,

and sometimes does it better than “Serious Literature.”

Some of which should be fired out of the canon.

I’m, mostly over it now. Mostly. I see their narrow-minded view.

They do not understand what I love, and because they do not understand,

they fear, and because they fear, they ridicule,

and push each genre to its own literary ghetto.

But that’s okay, because genre writing is here to stay.

Now, I find I pity those who refuse to open themselves to genre,

they will never know the joy of reading:

“The enemy’s gate is down.” – Orson Scott Card

“I will not fear. Fear is the Mind-Killer.” – Frank Herbert

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” – Steven King

“‘Repent Harlequin!’ said the Ticktockman.” – Harlan Ellison

“That we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” – Isaac Asimov

“Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” – J.K. Rowling

These writers and their words are my refuge and the voice

Of a vast tradition worth exploring, but sadly some don’t,

And that makes them somewhat less free.

That is my poem for Poetry 304

“Science fiction is a concerned art form, for even in its shallowest version, it deals with the future and the potentialities of man’s place in it…I write it because it refuses not to be written.” – Harlan Ellison

The above poem was inspired by Langston Hughes’s poem, “Theme for English B” because I was ridiculed in a poetry class for being, “That scifi guy.” It began when the teacher made a flippant comment about my interest in the literature of science fiction and fantasy. More often than not, students and teachers in English departments across the country, often have strong opinions about what “true” writing is and what it isn’t. Most of the time, they are speaking about “literature.” I empathized with the narrator of Hugh’s, “Theme for English B” because he feels that he is not understood because he’s the only colored student in his class. Most of the time, I feel like the proverbial black sheep in literature classes because I like science fiction and fantasy. Their ridicule and prejudice stings me just as much as any ignorant, knee-jerk reaction.

Many people scoff at science fiction saying that it is nothing more than escapist fluff, and as has no bearing on modern society. While Science Fiction is primarily for enjoyment, important messages can frequently be found in entertainment. As long as humans have entertained other humans, they have placed moral and spiritual values in their stories. Aesop’s fables – which have lasted since the Roman Empire – are first and foremost stories to entertain children, but there is a moral lesson to be learned from each one of those simple stories. William Shakespeare did in every one of his plays, such as in Hamlet when we hear the line, “To thine own self be true.” Shakespeare wrote his plays to entertain people, yet today we find his work a treasury of timeless ideas that have shaped the English language and culture for hundreds of years.

Critics of science fiction might say that we find none of these merits in the works of science fiction.

In the 1930’s Isaac Asimov wrote a story about an automated, sentient machine created in a humanoid form. He called this machine a “robot”. The term had never been used before, and this is only one example of how a science fiction story has affected the “future.” While science fiction writers did not get every minute detail right, they have predicted enough of things to come to make a reader pause and wonder. Science fiction not only predicted space travel and man walking on the moon, it also foresaw things that we have today without blinking an eye: television, computers, submarines, organs transplants, and satellites in geo-synchronous orbit. In his ground breaking 1986 novel, Nueromancer, William Gibson wrote about the dangers of Internet addiction when the Internet was taking its first limping steps of infancy. Or, in the words of writer J.G. Ballard, “Everything is science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the reality of the 20^th Century.”

True, while some science fiction stories are so far outside of the scope of realistic speculation, they arouse people’s curiosity of things to come. On the other hand, as writer Joan Vinge said, “Science Fiction is the anthropology of the future,” science fiction can mirror issues present in the here and now.

For example:

Billy smiles as he slams the clip into his .75 caliber Colt ThunderGod™. His thumb flicks the safety from “wimp” to “frag”. Holding it makes him feel like a man.

“ThunderGod™,” Billy says, his commanding baritone reverberating from deep in his barrel thick chest. “Accept no substitute.”

“I won’t trust a man with anything less to guard my rear,” breathes a sultry voice with just a hint of British accent.

Billy turns and soaks up the vision of his partner. Any man who spends even five minutes on the ’Net™ wants Selena™. Dozens of corporations spend millions of dollars every year on case studies to continually refine the archetypal male fantasy. Selena™ is the outcome, the pinnacle combination of physical training, plastic surgery, and extensive model and acting training. Her physical attributes and wardrobe change weekly based on a poll on her web sight. Today she’s wearing a chain mail bikini top, a short, plaid skirt barely hanging on her ample hips, and thigh high, paten-leather boots. Her hair is coal black with white highlights shot through that look like spider webs. She’s dressed just like her part in the upcoming movie STAR WARS™ XVII: PRADATORS™ OF THE MATRIX™. Billy can’t wait to see it.

Logos from her corporate sponsors are strategically tattooed on her thighs, the tops of her breast, and – even though Billy can’t see them – he knows there are twin tattoos just below the curve of Selena’s buttocks. Billy doesn’t even consider her eyes, instead, his gaze lingers on her ample double d breasts and the words “Milk: It does a body good!™” emblazoned upon them. His mouth starts watering and agrees that milk would do his body just fine.

“Are you ready to put that gun to good use?” Selena™ asks. On the word “gun” she pauses and glances down, her eyes full of promises to come.

“I was born ready,” Billy assures her.

“Then let’s get to it,” she says with a naughty smirk, reaches over her shoulder, and draws twin katana from behind her back. The blades of both samurai swords gleam in the pale light cast by the street lamps. Each has glowing neon letters etched on the blade. “Cut through traffic with the Suzuki™ Katana™.”

Billy turns toward the alley where their prey awaits. The walls are plastered with posters advertising everything from movies to clothes to video games to food to personal hygiene products that promise to make one irresistible to the opposite sex. The alley dead-ends about forty feet away. A single door is that far wall’s only occupant.

Making his way toward that door, Billy scans the posters. He’s going to need that information later.

Now that he’s in the alley, he sees discarded wrappers form all the major fast food chains, all of them tantalizing him with the grand prize of their latest contests. Of course, these all tie into several of the movies postered on the wall. Again, he soaks all this in.

They’re at the door. Billy wraps his free hand around the door handle. He takes a deep breath. The moment right before is always his favorite. This is going to be good. Just before turning the knob, he feels Selena lick his lower earlobe, and whisper, “Let’s go have a little fun.” The cool night air tingles against his ear where her saliva left a trail. His toes curl and all his… muscles… harden. Yeah, this is going to be really good.

He twists the knob and yanks the door open. Selena dives through, and Billy follows.

The room beyond the door’s threshold is filled with over a dozen leather-clad, gun-wielding, sword-swinging Badguys™. Each of these Badguys™ is wearing logos and ads for those companies and products that compete with the ones in alley outside and those adorning Selena’s™ magnificent body.

Billy doesn’t bother to count. He takes aim with his .75 caliber Colt ThunderGod™ and starts blasting Badguys™. Selena™ is already cutting into them. In moments the bullets and blood are flying. Billy and Selena move through the room, violent poetry in motion. A minute and a half later, all the Badguys™ are down, the logos they wear are mangled by either Selena’s™ blades or Billy’s bullets.

There is one last Badguy™ in the corner groaning from a stomach wound. Billy walks over to him and empties the clip from his .75 caliber Colt ThunderGod™ into his head.

Billy turns to Selena™. She drops her swords, smiles, and reaches behind her back to undo the straps on the bikini top. Billy knows nothing’s going to happen, but like every time he gets to this moment, he hopes against hope that someone forgets to…

Billy ground his teeth in frustration the moment the virtual reality program ended. He pulled the Virtual Reality™ helmet off his head and slid it under his desk, while outraged cries fills the classroom. Billy stopped doing that after the first few times. It never helped.

“Whining won’t do any good,” Mr. Thomas said from the head of the classroom. “You know you have to wait until high school before you meet the age requirement for virtual sexual experience.”

“But I’m already fourteen,” Lucy Dibiasi said.

“You don’t get rewarded for being held back a grade, Ms. Dibiasi,” Mr. Thomas said. “Stop laughing class and settle down. For today’s assignment, I want you to write an analysis of the simulation noting the effective use of at least ten of the advertisement placements and how those products benefit our lives. Bonus points for anyone who brings one of these products to class and can effectively demonstrate its importance.”

Billy powered up his Tablet PC™ and waited for the two minutes of ads to go by before opening up MS Word™ so he could get to work. One ad caught his eye, and he had the perfect topic for his paper, though he’d have to stop in the school store during lunch to pick up something for class tomorrow. Thank God his parents got him that secure credit card for school emergencies like this.

Many people might ignore Billy’s story, or downplay the messages it conveys because it’s “science fiction.” However, America may be closer than anyone suspects. In the book, Culture Jam, Kalle Lasn, states: “Your kids watch Pepsi and Snickers ads in the classroom. (The school has made the devil’s bargain of accepting free audiovisual equipment in exchange for airing these ads on “Channel One.”) In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes: “The fast food chains run ads on Channel One, the commercial television network whose programming is now shown in classrooms, almost every school day, to eight million of the nation’s middle, junior, and high school students – a teen audience fifty times bigger than that of MTV…”

Advertising in schools is becoming big business, and for good reason. Like the prisoners in Plato’s, “Allegory of the Cave,” students in our current school system sit passively at their desks absorbing information presented to them. In the early 1970’s Paulo Friere introduced the “banking concept of education” which advertisers use against America’s youth, laughing all the way to the bank. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire writes: “The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality imposed on them.”

This creates, quite literally, a captive audience for companies to focus their advertising power. It might not be very long before the advertising giants blatantly flex their economic muscles not only into education, but politics as well. Children born today might grow up to live in a bleak reflection of George Orwell’s novel 1984, where it is illegal for citizens to turn off their TV so the government can constantly pump propaganda into peoples’ homes. There are also TV’s on every street corner, built into walls, and even in the sidewalks. All of these television monitors go both ways, so the government can watch the watchers and know which of their propaganda techniques are working. Or perhaps the future might be more like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, where books are illegal because they get people thinking too much, and firemen burn down houses that have books hidden in them.

Fredrick Pohl, one of science fiction’s most celebrated authors, said, “It’s a pity that taxpayers don’t read science fiction. They might know about the age they’re buying.” Awareness of the future is the responsibility of the individual. People need to wake up and educate themselves on the future their politicians are purchasing (on credit no less) from future generations and do something about it by exercising their voting power. Unfortunately, hindsight tells us that mass mobilization only happens in America during great catastrophe such as the 9/11 attacks and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, or when something happens to peoples’ favorite TV shows. Every year, more letters written protesting choices made in Hollywood than in Washington DC. (It is interesting to note that one of the largest letter writing campaigns in American History was conducted to keep the original Star Trek from being cancelled.) Even though we’ve seen glimpses of many potential futures from the writings of Orwell, Bradbury, Gibson and others, the country’s pattern suggests that its only a matter of time before little Billy will be writing essays about the benefits of the products he sees advertised during his daily (hourly?) trip into the world of Virtual Reality™.

English teacher Harry Thomas watched as his eighth grade students attacked their keyboards. He hoped that this assignment would get some of them into the school store during lunch hour following class, or maybe after school. The school sponsors had only required that the essay list five products, but he thought ten would really get the money in their pockets burning. He could really use a bonus this month.

Harry sighed. He remembered years ago when he first became a teacher. He planned on changing the world, one student at a time. But that was before marriage and kids, car payment and mortgage. Now he was a bit more of a realist. Teachers didn’t get paid enough to live on, but they could afford quite a nice lifestyle with the corporate kickbacks from sales made in the student store. And besides, Christmas™ was coming, and he didn’t want to disappoint the wife and kids.

So, when anyone in academia ridicules me for being interested in reading and writing science fiction and fantasy, I want to demand how much they really know about my genre and how much it has predicted in the previous century, and how much it has influenced our society. Am I really the one who has closed my mind to writing that explores the human condition? Am I really the one who has closed my mind to new ideas? I suppose only the future can tell.

“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. . . . This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.” - Isaac Asimov

Here is the original, “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes.

Taking Pride in One's Work

2011-07-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

I'm sure at this point many of you know that I've got a couple of eBooks available for purchase on Amazon for the Kindle reader. I've been promoting it pretty hard, because frankly, I'd love to be selling enough of my eBooks to be able to give up the "day job" and devote myself completely to writing and storytelling. In order to get to that point, I have also be a sales man about my work, and at this stage of my career, I have to be pretty aggressive in my sales approach. I'm low in the Amazon ranks, so people aren't going to stumble across my works just flipping through Amazon. I haven't earned enough "street cred" to get myself a blog tour yet, but I'm getting there - I hope. But the bottom line is that, yes, I have to sell the books myself, and that means that if I know you, I'm probably going to try and sell a book to you.

Back when I was a sales manager, I took a lot of sales seminars and listened to a lot of audio sales tapes. One of the underlying messages in all of them was, "Be a product of the product." I am a great salesman - as long as I believe in the product I'm selling. At one former place of employment, I was the top sales person for ten quarters in a row - that's two and a half years. In other places, I couldn't sell a darn thing. Those positions didn't last very long. But as long as I believe that what I'm selling has value, I will somehow also find people who will also find value in it and get it into their hands.

I love my eBooks. I think they're great. I know they aren't for everyone, because everyone has different reading tastes. However, I'm proud of the two books I've written and the one I was asked to co-write. I will sing their praises. I believe in my heart that I have put out quality products. I believe in the value that they will bring to people's lives.

Here's the problem: I've had some people jokingly, and not so jokingly, get down on me for being overly proud of my work. They seem to think, or at least intimate, that I shouldn't take pride in the hundreds of thousands of words I've written while honing my craft, not to mention the degree I earned. Well, I do. And when asked if I can recommend something to read, I'm going to point to my writing first. And why shouldn't I? If I was a contractor, and someone needed house repairs, of course I'm going to give them my card. If I'm a web designer, and someone needs a new website, of course I'm going to offer my services. I could go on, but I believe I've made my point.

I know other independent writers who have mentioned things like this also. One even stopped promoting herself as hard as she was and had noticed a decline in sales. That's dumb. People will come up with a bajillion reasons why you can't do something, especially if it flies in the face of tradition. Let's face it, the indie publishing thing is ruffling a lot of feathers amongst publishers and readers a like. Ignore the voices that cry out "no!"

Hello! I write as M. Todd Gallowglas you can find my books here:
First Chosen (Tears of Rage)
The Dragon Bone Flute
Knight of the Living Dead (3 Strange Knights)
I'm proud of the work I put into them. You should get them. Yes, I want the royalty so I can retire and give up this life of crime; however, more than that, I believe each work is an entertaining read, and you will enjoy the time you spend within each story.

Happy Friday everyone! Happy Reading!

Contest Update

2011-07-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a few very nice reviews up for First Chosen. Between Amazon US and Amazon UK, I've got exactly five! Five entries with five chances of winning. Well, that's hardly a contest, now is it? I may be old fashioned, and I know it's not the "popular" view in some circles right now, but I think a contest needs to have winners and losers. So, I'm extending the contest to the end of the month!

For those of you who missed the first post, or who haven't gone to the contest page, here are the details:

Read my Kindle eBook First Chosen.
Review it on Amazon.
At the end of the Month I will pick the best five reviews to be beta-readers for the second book in series, Once We Were Like Wolves.

For the record, I'm not just looking at people who give me five stars. If you feel First Chosen warrants five stars, I'll take it. I'm looking for honest reviews that are well written and discuss the work. I want to see how my potential group of beta readers are going to be able to articulate their ideas about my work in a way that I'll be able to take what they've written and apply it to my second draft.

Here's hoping a few more of you decide to jump on this. If you've already gotten the book, please take a few moments to review the book. Thanks to the five people who've reviewed the book. To those who've clicked "like" thanks as well. In the independent publishing world, reader reviews are one of the most important factors in a writer's success. As I said in my post "A Call To Arms," struggling writers depend on their fan base and early readers to help get the work out. The independent writer depends on them even more so. Thanks for your support!

Google+

2011-07-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

It's shiny. It's awesome. It's win!

I love it.

It has all the best features of Twitter and Facebook without all the screen clutter. Have not even begun to play with Hangouts and Sparks.

Google I have officially forgiven you for blowing it on Wave.

That's all for now. True post about this coming after I can explore further.

Entering the Twitterverse!

2011-07-07T15:46:00.000-07:00

I did it.

I broke down and made a twitter account.

Once I made the decision to self-publish on Kindle, got a couple of books on gaining success as an "indie" writer and both recommended getting a Twitter account to help promote myself. I did, and it did help. I have sales on Amazon UK because of my Twitter presence. Yay me! And while I could go on and on about what Twitter has done to help my writing career... okay... not too much at this point, but it is opening doors... what I really want to talk about is the community I've discovered there.

Now I've been a part of several insular communities in my life, Renaissance Faire, SCA, Ballroom Dancing, Swing Dancing, Gaming, World of Warcraft, RoTC, among others. I've never experienced the breadth of warmth and acceptance as I have from the Independent Writers Community that I discovered through Twitter. At every turn the people have been supportive, offered advice, and been patient with my questions. Indie bestsellers have taken the time to correspond with me. People with thousands of followers have taken time out of their personal writing and promoting to repost my links to my book. Granted, they're just clicking a button, button, but they are also paying close enough attention to what's going on in the various indie writer lists to retweet my tweets.

I know that some people cry out against Twitter, just as they do about Facebook and the Internet. There was even a conversation about it over on my Facebook page a few days ago about all the teenage girls posting about Justin Beiber and such. I ahve only had one day where I saw Justin Beiber posts, and the individuals responsible were quickly un-followed on my list. No offence to young Mr. Beiber, and I don't think he'll take any. I'm sure he's very comfortable with me being outside his target audience. Really, the quality of the internet comes down to the same thing as it does in real life: It all depends on the company you decide to keep.

Now the Independent Writer Community was around before I showed up, and I'm sure they didn't sit around thinking, "that Gallowglas guy is going to start publishing on Kindle, so we better be ready for him," but none the less, I'm very happy they have accepted into their fold.

Thank you all!

Contest Time!

2011-07-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

For the next two weeks or so, I'm running a contest for my novel TEARS OF RAGE: First Chosen. I'd like to generate some traffic, sales, and most importantly, REVIEWS!

So, here's the deal:

I want people to write reviews. I'll be reading them, mulling them over, and figuring out which I like best. The people who write the five reviews I like best posted by the time I go to bed on July 20th will become beta readers for the next book "Once We Were Like Wolves." That means, you'll get to read the book as I'm writing it, and give me feedback. I won't promise to incorporate that feedback into the final draft, as I gotta stick with my vision of the work, but you'll get to enjoy the story before anyone else. You'll get to see those cut scenes the no one else does, and who knows, you might even help shape the next book. If you're really helpful, then I'll probably ask you to beta read for future work.

How to Enter

If you haven't already, go to Amazon and get TEARS OF RAGE: First Chosen. Read it. Go to the book's Amazon page and leave a review. Then email me a copy of the review at mgallowglas@gmail.com. I'll judge the top five, and start sending you stuff on like the 21st or 22nd.

I'm looking for honest, well-written reviews. If all you do is gush about how wonderful it is, and give it 5 stars but only because that's the limit and you just keep reading it over and over and over, that is less likely to catch my eye than a four or even three star review that really goes in depth into the strengths of story, characters, etc.

Good luck! I can't wait to read your reviews.

Be Awesome Wednesday

2011-06-29T08:43:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, and fellow Renaissance Faire Performer, Steve Moore started something a while back on Face book. (Oh, yeah, for those of you who are keeping score, he also wrote Knight of the Living Dead (3 Strange Knights) and allowed me the privilege of tagging along for the ride.) This is what Steve posts every Wednesday.

IT"S BE AWESOME WEDNESDAY! The day we all work together to change the world. One act of AWESOME at a time. Smile at some someone, call someone you haven't talked to for a while. Make a child laugh. Hold the door for someone. BE AWESOME!

I think this is something we should spread around. Sometimes all it takes is a few seconds to turn someone's day around. It's not really that hard, and guess what: It makes you feel awesome too! I suppose that's all there is to say on the subject, except that it takes a little bit of effort to step outside of yourself in a brief moment so you don't miss an Opportunity of Awesomeness.

Keep your eyes and ears open!

Be Awesome!

We're All in the Dark, and We're All Not Guilty.

2011-06-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

This is probably the most valuable lesson I learned from my undergraduate studies in the Creative Writing department of San Francisco State University. I learned this from the best teacher I had, Matthew Clark Davidson. I miss having him as a mentor for both my writing and in my life. Although he doesn't know it, he helped my get over a lot of the hangups I had about how I viewed myself, my writing, and interacted with world around me.

The first important lesson Matthew taught me that to be a student of creative writing was not about the study of writing. He would frequently remind the students in all four classes I took with him, that very few of the Creative Writing Students at SFSU would ever go on to make careers as writers, and that we should not choose that as a focus for our studies. Instead, being that the Creative Writing major was one of many courses of study in the College of Humanities, we should use it as a vehicle to study the human condition. If we can learn to use our writing to give us a greater understanding of the observations we make about humanity, it will serve us well no matter where our careers take us. Thank God I heard these words in my 30s rather than in my 20s, or I probably wouldn't have been mature enough to understand them.

The second, and probably more important lesson I learned from Matthew was when he said, "We're all in the dark, and we're all not guilty." He was speaking about this in terms of characterization in fiction, but it had a much broader scope than that. Even in my early 30s, I didn't quite grasp it until after I'd graduated.

As predicted, I hadn't gotten that six figure advance with a movie deal just out of college, so I was forced to go back into the high-drama world of teaching ballroom dance. I found a new studio that had opened in my hometown via craigslist, and so sent off my resume. I got a call the very next day, set up an interview the the next day, and the next day, I had a job. Now, over the course of working for my new boss and his wife, I learned some interesting things about him, namely that he belongs to a cultish-psuedo-religion that pops up very frequently in the news. Several high-profile Hollywood actors claim membership. Now, I'm not one to knock another person's faith, as for a while in my twenties, I did some exploring into some esoteric spirituality. I'll say this one thing on the matter, and leave it at that: perhaps people should give careful thought to putting their faith in a religion started by a science fiction writer. Just sayin'. On the other hand, if it makes you happy and brings you fulfillment, by all means, enjoy yourself.

Anyway, this boss could never seem to accept that certain reoccurring business problems were not due to the constant turn over in employees, but rather due to certain personality traits that he refused to examine. About the third or fourth time he complained to me about the same problem, but attributing that problem to a different employee, the immortal words of Matthew Clark Davidson came back to me, "We're all in the dark, and we're all not guilty."

Since that moment, I've really tried to be aware of my life and how my choices affect my situation. Currently, I'm in a rough spot. Some of you know what's going on, and if you do, I will rely on your discretion. I know I am in some part culpable to my situation, and it's been perhaps a long time brewing. The trouble I'm having is separating myself from the raw emotion of the situation to really take a good, honest objective look at where I am and how my actions and choices got me to this spot. I think that's the real secret to the truth of that one statement. We choose to keep ourselves in the dark because we don't always have the emotional fortitude and strength of character to face the truth of how our actions and choices have placed us in situations that challenge us more than we care to admit.

Reading Might Possibly Become Cool

2011-06-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I took my youngest son to the local water park. We have season passes, the afternoon was hot, and I needed to get away from my computer. Yeah, that actually happens from time to time.

Before I get into the meat of my blog post today, I want to take a moment to be a dad. It was Mathew's first trip down a real, adult-sized water slide. He was just tall enough to go. Finally! At last! He was bouncing off the walls with excitement. The first one we went down together in a shared inflatable raft. He went nuts at the end. To a nine-year-old it was ZOMG!thebestthing evAAAARRRR!!!! We went on a couple more, until eventually, the wait in line began to win out over the excitement and awesomeness of the slides. Besides, the wave pool was calling. So off we went: Mathew to the wave pool, me to lounge in the shade with my Kindle.

And now, here we go with what I'm here to talk about today.

While I was sitting reading, I got a lot of attention from the 12-20ish crowd due to the nifty-looking piece of geek-tech (as I like to call stuff like this). They all wanted to know what I was doing. Some waited for me to look up, some didn't bother and just asked outright. The only one that was really irritating was a really young kid that kept leaning over my shoulder and dripping on me. However, this personal-space-invading youngster is kind of the point of my post.

Most of the kids I spoke with thought I had some kind of weird new computer thing. I explained that it was just an electronic reader and that it was really just for reading books. It was technically capable of doing other things, but those things were not its intended purpose, and I didn't use those functions much; I just loved my Kindle for reading. I have to admit, I also enjoyed showing off the cover of First Chosen (Tears of Rage), which impressed a few of them.

A couple of kids asked me how much it was. I told them the general price range from the really high-end models, to the low-end one with the ads for $114, I think it is. Most nodded in that sage way that teenagers do when they don't want to look uncool. One kid said something like, "Man, I'm going to have to see if I can get some extra hours at work so I can get one." Then all of his friends started talking about getting a Kindle too, all five of them.

I want to thank those young men, though they'll probably never read my blog for driving home the lesson that I should have picked up from my own blog post yesterday. Without being specific, these five young men were from an ethnicity different from mine, with at least a dozen tattoos among them. I'd been a bit nervous at first about one of them trying to snatch my Kindle and taking off. We had a very pleasant conversation, and while their spoken English wasn't what I'd call perfect, they were all polite and seemed genuinely interested. One of them had the coolest reaction to my published novel, and when I explained Kindle's publication process and that Amazon gives free readers, he said something like, "I'm going to have to pay more attention in English." Another of his friends said, "I'll by your book if you write one." He was speaking to his friend, not to me. This conversation reminded me not to hold onto the stereotypes, again.

I know many people complain about Amazon being the downfall of the traditional book store. This may be so, but I doubt it. Some people will always want to hold that physical book and flip pages. I'm one of them. Book lovers will want to get signed copies from their favorite writers. I'm one of them. I Have a very nice signed book collection. Readers will always want to browse the book shelves, looking for possible new gems without having to click and wait for a screen to load. Again, I'm right there. No, traditional booksellers are not in danger. We may see less of them, or the independent bookseller may make a comeback, but they won't be gone.

As a quick shout out: I do most of my book shopping at http://www.avidreaderbooks.com/. If you're in the Sacramento/Davis area, they are really great, friendly, and if they don't have the book you're looking for, they can get it in a few days.

On the other hand, eReaders are getting more and more popular. They don't take up as much space as a regular book, AND you can keep your entire library with you. My chief joy is being able to have magazine subscriptions again! I was plowing though last months edition of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine while Mathew splashed around. No more pesky back issues causing clutter. I wish more Magazines would jump on the eBook bandwagon, but I digress.

In my opinion, the best thing about eReaders is that they make reading look cool. If that can get teenagers to pick them up and start reading, even if it's just so they can look cool to their friends, or that cute guy/girl on the other side of the classroom/cafeteria/quad, I'm all for them!

Calling a Spade a Spade

2011-06-23T06:57:00.000-07:00

This is going to be my favorite kind of blog post, because I'm probably going to ruffle some feathers by being straight up and telling the truth of how I see it. I understand that people have differing views on certain things such as homosexuality and religion, and that those views fly all over the spectrum; however, I believe that any reasonable, intelligent person will be able to see beyond their personal prejudices and grasp the heart of this soapbox rant.

A few weeks ago, I sent a link to some friends showing an image of a stained glass window (a real one from a real church) showing a young person kneeling in front of a priest. If you have any semblance of a dirty mind, it wasn't a far leap to see why this might be amusing to some people due to an activity suggested and some flack the Catholic Church has taken in news for some choices a very, very small percentage of the priesthood has made. I thought it was funny, mostly because I like to laugh at people who really don't think things all the way through.

Now, I was raised Irish Catholic. I was an alter boy. I never experienced even a hint of inappropriate behavior from the priests at my parish. I still count two of those priests among the finest men I've ever met.

On with the tale: One of my friends - another individual I count among the finest men I've ever met - got really mad. He suggested that we don't put the blame in the right place. He asked, "Why do we say a priest molested this young boy? Why don't was say a homosexual molested some boy." My friend was not suggesting in any way that being gay in any way makes someone a child molester. He was merely suggesting that we take a look at our terminology and pointing out, that in our current, insanely - politically - correct - conscious culture that we can't say something like that about gay people because they are constant victims, but we're free to fire off on priests because they represent the overbearing, patriarchal regime that's lorded over western culture for the better part of two thousand years.

Interesting point.

Anyway, we let the matter drop. I was slightly embarrassed, but still laughed at the image. It's funny in that someone didn't think something like that all the way through. Though it is nice to imagine that such naiveté still exists.

A little while later, the matter came up at a Renaissance Faire. Same friend. Same basic problem. Only this time, the whole thing had been simmering in my subconscious. Moments into the conversation, I was off and running. I'd thrown my soapbox down, jumped right up on it, and the pontification began.

Here is my argument in defense of gays and the clergy:

We shouldn't say a priest molested a child any more that we shouldn't say a homosexual molested a child. We should say a vile, evil, sub-human creature molested a child. We can't say a "man" did it either, because we've seen female teachers doing inappropriate things with their male students. The moment we start labeling any group of people, no matter how large or small, of being the kind of group that does that thing, we essentially do two things: 1) We demonize everyone else in that group, even though they are mostly likely not anything like the INDIVIDUAL perpetrator of the behavior we are demonizing. 2) we are transferring our attention from the behavior to the group, and there by diluting how seriously we consider the behavior. By making it about that group of people, as apposed to that despicable excuse for a human being, we limit the horror of the action and turn our attention away from the criminal.

Crimes, in general, are not committed by social/cultural groups. (Yes, we can cite examples such as the Nazis and the KKK, but those are extreme cases.) Unfortunately, we like to stereotype. In some ways, it's easier than pointing the finger at one person and saying, "You are a monster," even when that's exactly what we should do.

I urge you, the next time you see or hear about something like this, even when the media or person you're getting this information from is trying to pigeon-hole an entire group of people as being perpetrators of behavior X, have the courage to understand that it's about one individual making choices and acting on those choices. If someone is making blatant declarations about those kinds of people, have the courage to remind them that this behavior/action was done by a single individual, not some faceless stereotype. However, don't do this hoping to convert this person's thinking. While you might succeed every once in a while, most times you'll wind up being disappointed. Do this for your own strength of character.

For the record, my friend completely agrees with my take on this.

Until next time, keep your eyes, ears, and thoughts honest.

1000 views

2011-06-20T05:44:00.000-07:00

I just got home from a fair, and checking all my mail and social networking stuff (mostly Facebook at right now) to discover that I've had 1004 page views for my blog. People have liked reading my random thoughts and musings enough to come back one thousand times. Thanks everyone for the support.

Yeah, I know the blog has been pretty sparse so far this month. It's been a choice of writing half-heartedly on the blog or whole-heartedly on my fiction. Fiction won. However, I have some great blog posts tickling the back of brain, some of them potentially quite controversial. I just need to take a few days and decide how much potential trouble I'm going to get into in the Renaissance Faire community.

As far as the "real" work - and by that I mean writing - things are a bit up in the air. A few days ago, I heard back from one of my first run readers about my novella "Shandi." The initial report and the follow up made it pretty clear that this was not my finest our as a writer, quite the contrary. Taking the comments into consideration, I went back and had another look at "Shandi," this time trying to keep an objective view. My reader was correct. Without going into all the gritty details, at the core, "Shandi"doesn't know what kind of novel it wants to be. I've got this kinda of cool idea for a world that hasn't been completely developed. And while I believe this story is worth saving - I've written many that aren't - "Shandi" is going to have to wait a bit for her rescue.

So, it looks like June isn't going to see a new novella for Kindle. Sorry guys. I've got a great one coming in July. "Farmer Hero" possesses the quality storytelling that you expect from M. Todd Gallowglas.

I'm also diving head first back into Dead Weight. my novel about the United States going to war with the Unseelie court of Faerie. The plan is to have that one ready by World Con so I can go a more traditional route in publishing that.

Thanks for the support guys, and keep checking in.

Wow... Just... Wow.

2011-06-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

First Chosen (Tears of Rage) is now available at the Kindle store. It actually went live Saturday afternoon right before my middle show at the Valhalla Renaissance Faire. I'd like to thank everyone in the audience for the massive applause I received when I made the announcement. I held off spamming my social networking sites for two reason: 1) I wanted to see if sales would generate without a whole lot of news, and 2) I wanted to make sure the formatting came out correctly. Response: 1) It did sell some copies without a huge announcement. 2) The eBook version did have some formatting hiccups, but I think I've resolved those.

So, now I've got this novel up on Kindle. I wrote the first words of the book on my Thirtieth birthday. The original first line isn't even in the book any more. Hell, the story doesn't even start in the same place. So many things have changed over the past nine years as I've gotten to know Julianna, Faelin, Grandfather Shadow, and all the rest much, much better.

Working on this small bit of TEARS OF RAGE has really taught me a lot about writing and about myself and where I want to go with the 2nd half of my life. Before now, even with the publications of Knight of the Living Dead and The Dragon Bone Flute, the whole "writer" thing was still sort of hazy. Now with the book going live - the book I've been writing for the last ten years, and had bouncing around in my head since I was twenty-four/twenty-five - it's a little different. When I put the other stories up, I could sum up my thoughts about them with, I hope these do well, and I got excited with each sale and had fun dreaming about the day where Steve Moore (author of KotLD) and I can afford to eat once the royalties start coming in. With TEARS, I find myself wanting it to do well. No, wanting is the wrong term - needing might be more applicable, but it doesn't really work either.

I want to be a writer now, more than anything. Looking at my book on my own Kindle, moments after it went live, and being able to show it off to people at Valhalla was such a rush. I was so proud of myself, and not in a pompous, arrogant kind of way, but more in the goofy, look-what-I-did kind of proud of myself kids get when showing off an art project or the 100% on the surprise quiz in math class to their parents. I'm back to that place where I was in jr high and high school, where I was working on my "novels" instead of doing my schoolwork. I did that a lot. For me, public education was a quiet place to read and work on my writing. I still have some of that writing, and it looks like the writing of someone who didn't pay a lot of attention to his California public education classes, but the seeds of storytelling are there. In the last twenty to twenty-five years I've refined my craft. It's not perfect, but it's getting there; which is a good thing, as this is really what I want to do for a living.

It's been a strange journey to this point, going through fits and spurts of no writing to blasts of frantic production. I've had a few people along with me for a most of that journey, and to them, I say, "Thanks for being patient with me." To those of you who are just starting with me, congratulations, you stepped onto the path just as it's getting exciting. Here's hoping it just gets better and better.

The Best for Last

2011-06-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, 3:45 at the Valhalla Renaissance Faire, I preformed my last show of the weekend. Magic happened. I'll do my best to describe it, but I'm not sure I'm capable of truly putting into words what I experienced, but I'm going to give it a shot.

I decided to tell a version of my novella The Dragon Bone Flute. I've recounted that tale maybe half-a-dozen times in front of an audience, but it's always gotten good reactions. Also, the day was warm, I hadn't slept well the night before, and after cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night from a sick nine year old, I was a bit grouchy. My first two shows went really well, but I didn't have the energy to pull off the story I usually end the day/faire with: "The True Life Story of How I Invented the Game of Golf." I'd spent most of what I had on "Jack o' the Lantern" earlier in the day. So, I decided to go with something a little more mellow and different that what I usually do on stage.

About five minutes into the story, the world around me seemed to fade away. I wasn't even really aware of anything else in the world, not even really myself. There was just this story that I stumbled into, and it didn't let me go until after I finished bringing it into the world. I had no idea what the audience's reaction was. I didn't notice any potential distractions, though supposedly someone handed me money in the middle of the show. I finished the story and did the hawk for my hat, and even that seemed different than normal. I think the only reason I was able to ask for money at the end of my show was from pure habit of having done it for the better part of twenty years. People came up and put money in my bag. I shook people's hands, and I think I said, "Thank you." My breathing was shallow, and I was exhausted. The telling of that tale seemed to drain me of emotion. I found myself alone, sitting on the stage steps. I collected my things and walked away.

I got about a hundred feet from the stage, when I stopped and cried. I'd been a part of something I'd never experienced before. It felt as though I'd been Elzibeth falling asleep in the Dragon's cave and that I summoned the music that created magic. I remember thinking, "What did I just do, and how can I do it again?" The rest of the afternoon/evening, I would randomly have fits where the emotion of the experience would rise up again, and my eyes would start tearing up.

People who I don't remember being in my show came up to me later, complimenting me. My friend Don Hardy, who plays William Shakespeare, had passed my stage going from one of his set gigs to another. He mentioned that even passing by, my show looked so visually different that what I normally do that it seemed mesmerizing, and he asked himself, "What the hell is he doing up there?" In a good way, of course. He had wanted to stop and watch, but being a named historical figure, his schedule is pretty much dictated for him.

Reading back over this post, I'm not doing the experience any justice. I guess "The Dragon Bone Flute" is just going to have to become part of my weekend story rotation so I can see if I can get to that place again.

Cover

2011-06-09T06:22:00.001-07:00

A first look at the cover. Thanks to Ed Litfin for nothing less than perfection.

Random Things

2011-06-08T20:27:00.000-07:00

I'm tired all the time these days and I don't see this state of being changing any time soon. While I've almost got TEARS OF RAGE: First Chosen where I'm pleased enough to put it up - I'm really just waiting on a proofreader or two and a cover - I'm no where near a place where I can get back to a decent sleep schedule again. I've still got all those other projects to do. We've determined that Shandi is going to be this month's novella, which I think is fitting, considering that I wrote it for Robin as an anniversary present last year. We won't mention that, like most my writing projects, blew up in my face and wound up coming in at over twenty-thousand words.

I't like to give a great big thanks to my buddy, Leo Rayz. Leo works with Robin. Leo has purchased both Knight of the Living Dead (3 Strange Knights) and The Dragon Bone Flute for his Kindle app on his iPhone. Leo's not much of a reader. Nothing wrong with that, just not his thing. He's a video games and movies on his home entertainment system kind of guy. He got both stories because he wanted to support his friend. That means a lot to me, especially because a bunch of people I do know haven't gotten it yet, and they are serious readers. I'm not bringing this up just to sound like a needy, attention-starved arteest. I'm mentioning it in relation to my earlier post about supporting struggling artists, especially the ones we personally know. I'd be giving this shout out to Leo if he'd done the same thing for anyone else. So, thanks again Leo. It means a lot.

I love my Kindle. My mother got me one for my birthday, and while I'll never give up books, especially novels, I have discovered the greatest reason in the world for me to own a Kindle. I used to buy a lot of magazines, specifically Azimov's Science Fiction and Fantasy and Science Fiction. The only problem was what to do with all those back issues that sat around collecting dust and causing clutter. Well, enter Kindle reader and all it's awesomeness. I just subscribed to the Kindle version of Asimov's. Unfortunately, it's the only magazine in Kindle version that I'm interested in. Analog Science Fiction & Fact is available, but that's much more hard-core SF than I'm looking for. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more and more genre magazines hitting the Kindle Store soon. I mean, come on! Shouldn't some of those SF pulp mags be the first to embrace this new technology? Right?

Heard back from a writer friend of mine. He gave me a very nice promotional quote for Tears of Rage. I'm also got one from one of my former teachers who is also an excellent writer.

Today while driving home from getting Mathew at school, I came up with a great idea for the September columns of "Stranger than Fiction" over at www.dragonsbay.co. I'm going to the world Science Fiction Convention in August. I know a handful of writers who are known for being gamers. I'm going to see about arranging some interviews with them and ask them some questions about the whole idea of enhancing games using the elements of crafting fiction, and perhaps even how gaming help influence their writing.

Last but not least: thanks to Robin for putting up with me being Mr Grouchy pants while I've lost sleep and writing long hours in order to dedicate myself to my writing.

In the Works

2011-06-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

I've had a couple people ask me about what I'm working on, so I thought I'd give everyone a quick update.

TEARS OF RAGE: The first piece of this massive epic fantasy is just about ready to go. I need to actually get what I have off to my proof readers. For those who don't know, this is my baby. I've been working on this project for over ten years. It's a sweeping tale of adventure and intrigue. I started it to address several of my big pet peeves in fantasy fiction, and it blew up into a rich, complex story that keeps surprising me even as I write it.
UNFOLDING TALES: So far,I have three stories for sale at Renaissance Faires. I'll debut these at the Valhalla Renaissance Faire this weekend. If they go over well, I'll add a few more.
KNIGHT TERRORS (3 Strange Knights, Book 2): Even with people pestering me, and I'm sure Steve as well, we're looking at September/October for this one. We'll probably seriously start the edit and rewrite process in July.
THE HALF-FACED MAN: A short story I wrote about a year and a half ago. I'm dusting this off and sending it to the Writers of the Future contest next week.
SHANDI: A novella that I wrote for my wife. It looks like this is going to be June's Kindle release. Yeah, I know I have been talking in various places about the story of my Gold Farmer coming out in June, but it looks like that's going to be set to July.
DEAD WEIGHT: My novel of where the United State and the Unseelie Court of Faerie go to war. IN three different timelines, a writer must come to terms with his role in this conflict and the find a way to redeem himself. I'm planning on having this one mostly completed by mid/late August. I'm going to be Shopping this one around when I go to the World Science Fiction Convention.
SPELLPUNK: Slowly but surely boys and girls, slowly but surely.

So there you have it. All the major projects I've got going on for the next few months. No rest for the wicked.

Thank You

2011-06-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

I don't think I'm going to discuss numbers all the time here; I'm a writer after all, not a mathematician. However, I do want to talk about some very important numbers today: The Kindle eBook sales numbers.

Knight of the Living Dead (3 Strange Knights): Steve and I published this on May, 1st, Sunday morning of the Tulare County Renaissance Faire. We talked it up all day, and by the time I'd gotten home Sunday afternoon, we'd had 8 sales. Over the next week, we sold 38 copies of the eBook, the second week, we sold 20, third week 8, and finally rounding out the last week of the month with 10 sales. 78 copies in all. While some people might scoff and say that's not a whole lot, considering that our only expenses so far are the fliers I had photo copied before Tulare, that's actually pretty good. Also, I've done a bit of research, and those numbers are better than some eBooks do over their entire shelf life; granted, Steve and I have a bit more of a built in audience. I do honestly feel that our strong opening numbers had a lot to do with all the promotion we did at faire. It will be interesting to see how things look after two weeks at Valhalla.

Part of my morning ritual before I sit down to write is to check the sales numbers. Sometime between midnight and 5am when I open up my computer, someone bought a copy of "KotLD." Whoever you are, thanks for that bit of pleasantness. Looks like June is off to a good start.

The Dragon Bone Flute: Opened it's first wee with 19 sales. I'd hoped to have this one out much earlier in the month, but it took me longer to finish than I'd expected. Originally, I'd hoped to premier both eBooks at Tulare, but as it came closer to the deadline, I realized I could only get one ready. I decided to go with "KotLD" because that's what I'd promised Steve. Also, the cover took a bit longer than expected, which I'm totally okay with. I love the cover, and I've gotten lots of good feedback on it. Thanks Daniel for being awesome and not letting me have something half-finished. So, for a first week, and being out later than promised, I thing tDBF started pretty strong as well.

I did not see a copy of tDBF sold when I woke up this morning, but that's okay. Zombies are in right now. Dragons had their day. So I'll get over it. *sniff*

Raw facts:

KotLD was #34,806 in the Kindle paid sales Lists. tDBF was #35,487. Those numbers might look pretty low and discouraging at first. However, when we consider that there are over 950,000 books available on Kindle, I think that's pretty darn good!

Aside from the afore mentioned photo copies, neither Steve nor myself have paid out any expenses in the publication of these books. The royalties we'll be getting is pure profit. We have not paid for printer ink, paper, envelopes, or postage - the foremost expenses of the writer's life. We did not suffer a long string of rejection letters. The stories are there, available to our fans whenever they like.

The size/length of both KotLD and tDBF make them extremely hard to publish in traditional markets. KotLD comes in at just over 25,000 words and tDBF comes in at just under 20,000 words. Most magazines would shy away from that length, and they aren't nearly big enough for us to try and sell them as actual novels. Kindle provides a perfect forum to put out stories of this length.

Thanks to everyone who has supported the books. I know some of you haven't gotten around to picking them up yet, and thank you guys in advance. Steve and I speak often about how blessed we are to have a loyal and dedicated fan base. Without you guys, we would be a pair of guys chasing a dream. Because of you, we're living the dream.

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T10:01:00.001-07:00

"Soldiers live. He dies and not you, and you feel guilty, because you're glad he died, and not you. Soldiers live, and wonder why." - Glen Cook, SOLDIERS LIVE

I felt this perfect for Memorial Day. My deepest thanks to those who serve, and have served, to keep the idea alive.

Being Brilliant All the Time

2011-05-29T17:01:00.000-07:00

My brain hurts, and I'm exhausted all the time. This is not a complaint. I love it! I'm really starting to build some modicum of success from the thing I love most in the world, storytelling. However, this ever-present brain hurt is a by product of that.

I recently had someone give me a back handed compliment on taking my first steps toward becoming a professional writer. It was the same old thing lots of writers hear. The intimation being, that for some reason, writing is not real work. I had a mixed reaction somewhere between laughing my balls off and wanting to reach the the computer screen ans slap the well-meaning offender. Rather than go off on some tirade of an unnamed social networking site, I decided to vent my frustrations here.

Here's a list of the stuff I've got going on this week in preparation for the Valhalla Renaissance Faire:

Sometime in the next 24 hours, I have to write my column on how people can make their role playing games more engaging by utilizing the tools of crafting compelling fiction. I have no idea what this week's column is going to be about. For those of you interested in reading my weekly column "Stranger Than Fiction," it's up at www.dragonsbay.co.
Continue to promote the crap out of Knight of the Living Dead and The Dragon Bone Flute. If you haven't seen my first Kindle eBooks, you should. Remember that Kindle has a free reader app for nearly any platform: Kindle apps.
Figure out which of my short-short stories I want to turn into "Portable Adventures," i.e., stories on pieces of paper that progress as you unfold them. I also need to decide how many I'm going to test out my first time. I think I definitely want more than one, but how many more? I've got a marketing ploy for up to six, but do I want to shell out the expense for that many without testing their marketability first?
Been fiddling around with June's Kindle novella, titled "Farmer Hero." I'm going to get to work on that in Earnest as soon as I...
finish work on "First Chosen" Part One of a serialized novel/epic fantasy series titled, Tears of Rage. I'm massively behind progress on that one, and I'm anticipation a shortage of sleep this week.
Come up with insightful and engaging blog posts to post here.

I'm pretty sure that's a comprehensive list of everything I've got on my plate for this week. Also, keep in mind that doesn't include other things I've got going on like the "day" job, family, reading (a requirement for being a writer), and all the other things I like to waste what little free time I have left.

Let's make one thing perfectly clear: I'm not complaining about my self-imposed work load. Not in the least. I'm having a great time, and the amount of projects I have going is kind of intoxicating. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get everything done by the first week of Valhalla, but I'm going to try my damnedest.

Here's what I am bitching about: People who don't think that what writers do is work, especially at the beginning of their careers. It's a lot of leg work. It's a lot of selling. You gotta be at the keyboard, generating material, and in this internet-based, short-attention-span society we live in, it's gotta be pretty much brilliant all the time. Second drafts are okay. When you start getting into third drafts, then you're talking about some pretty poor time-management stuff. Fourth draft and beyond, you're wasting time on old stuff, when you could be generating more material.

"Only quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you are doomed." - Ray Bradbury.

"You learn writing by writing, not rewriting," - James Rollins

"Three Rules for Literary Success: 1. Read a lot. 2. Write a lot. 3. Read a lot more, write a lot more." - Robert Silverburg.

I love those quotes. I have a collection of quotes by writers I respect to help pick me back up and get pounding on the keyboard again when the work threatens to overwhelm me. Lately, I've really been taking the whole, write something new philosophy of writing to heart. Anyway, I'm digressing on my original point.

Writers don't have the luxury of taking forever to do draft, after draft, after draft of finely crafted prose before going out into the world with their work. The world has become too fast paced for that. Spending too much time between works it career suicide, unless your name happens to be George RR Martin. But then, we all can't be writing A Song of Ice and Fire now can we?

Here's the next level of that need to be constantly producing new stuff: Everything you put out has to be at least as brilliant as the thing you put out before. The society we live in provides too many detractions to things that don't grab us and keep us grabbed. That's why Jim Butcher is one of my heroes. Between his Codex series and the Dresden Files, he's been putting out one or more books a year for at least a decade. I can't vouch for the quality of the Codex books, as I have yet to dive into them. However, each Dresden book gets better than the last. Noticeably better. As in I-want-to-kill-this-man-and-suck-out-his-talent-better. That's a metaphor. I don't really want to kill Jim Butcher. If I did, I'd never get the end of the series.

So, when people intimate, or sometimes flat out tell me, that writing isn't like real work, I have to struggle to keep myself in check. In most other professions in the world, people can skate by on continuously average performance. Not the writer, not when even one average day at our office can cost us precious readers, as they wander off to something that will hold their interest with great authority. We may not be at the beck and call of a traditional schedule, but we work our brains to the point where they are threatening to leak out our ears, just to stay within shouting distance of brilliance. Then, once we get done with that, those of us struggling at the beginning of our careers have to start being creative all over again, thinking of new ways to get our work out into the public eye. So yeah, forgive me if I get a bit testy when you talk about how much you wish you had an easy job like mine.

Post Script:

I've been working on this post off and on all day. In the middle of it, I've set up another online profile to help my writing at www.goodreads.com. If you haven't been there yet, and really like reading, it's a nice place to get ideas about good books. I'll be starting a new blog there under my author profile http://www.goodreads.com/mgallowglas. I hope to see some of you there. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the blog that comes the author profile. Anyone have any suggestions or things they'd like me to talk about?

A follow up.

2011-05-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

I've had quite a bit of feedback on my most recent blog post.

First of all: I appreciate all of you that jumped up to support me and both my eBooks. I got some traffic on Amazon, and I saw a few more links to my stuff on Facebook. Thanks to everyone putting themselves out there for me.

Rebuttal #1

It seems some people didn't really get the message I was trying to put forth. Perhaps I didn't explain my true agenda very well, as I received some comments about my guilt-trip sales pitch to get people to do the promotional job for me. Yes, I spent a lot of time talking about my work, but only because my work is the closest example I have at hand. Please, take every opportunity you have to support every writer, musician, independent comic artist, stand up comic, etc. We all need it. We don't have big budgets to go around hiring ad space in magazines and newspapers. It's not just about me; it's about anyone you know trying to make it some where with some sort of creative endeavor.

Rebuttal #2

One anonymous reader commented here about Kindle, as several people sent me private messages. One of these messages was downright hostile about me not supporting booksellers by only providing my work via the evil Amazon who is working to put traditional bookstores out of business. (I am paraphrasing here). The other two were less hostile, but did say that they would support me once my work became available in a more traditional format.

Let's look at some facts (I'm going to use writers here, but you can extrapolate this for any form of artistic media):

Supporting me, or any other Kindle-only writer, does not harm traditional book stores. Not a bit. We are not available in print, and thus purchasing our Kindle work does not in any way remove sales from them.
Booksellers are not looking to support struggling writers. At all. They want to stalk their shelves with a sure thing. In fact, the business model for book stores is to buy less copies of a writer's second book if the first book did not sell out. For example: a Barnes and Noble store orders ten copies of my first book, and only sell eight, when my next book comes out, that store will only order six or seven copies of that book. In the writing business, we call that "the mid-list death spiral." Food for thought.
Interesting fact: Shopping at used bookstores does not support writers. Writers see no money at all from sales at used book stores. Yes, I shop at them from time to time, but I do so as infrequently as possible, and try to find something out of regular circulation when I do. So, if you are shopping at a used bookstore due to some ideal that you are supporting the fine art of writing, you're not. I'm not saying don't shop at them. Just be aware of where your money is going.
Libraries are the same way. I understand that books can be expensive, especially when your favorite writers publish in hard-back first. Just know that while you're enjoying that library book, your favorite writer is not enjoying any royalties for that enjoyment. Most library books are donated.

I'm not trying to come off snotty here. I'm just trying to give an honest rebuttal to some of the arguments that I've seen both publicly and privately to my last post. I am a struggling writer. I get up between four and five am every morning to write for two hours on my novel, and that's not including my blog posts, the weekly column I write, the self promotion I try and squeeze in, my day job, getting the kids to school, etc. Yeah, I'm going to reach out to my readers and fan base every chance I get. However, I'm also pleading with you to consider my words not just a call to help just me, but to help any writer, musician, artist, etc you know, no matter what medium they are using to get themselves out into the world.

Concerning Kindle

I love Kindle.

I love books.

Kindle will never replace my love for hardback books. I'm alright with paperbacks, but hardbacks are my thing, especially when they are sign. I have a big collection of them in glass book cases downstairs. The really cool part, is most of them were signed by the authors when I was present. I also love magazines, but I don't love the clutter they create. I have not picked up a copy of Asimov's Science Fiction in I don't know how long. My mother has stated that she's getting me a kindle for my birthday. I will be keeping all my magazine subscriptions with it's tiny little housing. I'm probably going to slowly and surely collect many of my favorite writing reference books so that I can have them while I'm on the road. I have a lap top for writing, but having the reference library on hand would be an invaluable resource.

However...

Here's why I really love Kindle: It gives writers a place to either validate themselves or truly learn that they have no audience outside of their close friends and family. Some writers have gotten very wealthy by publishing on Kindle, writers that would not have been able to find a home with a traditional publisher. Others have not had that level of success, but they are "in print" which means a lot. They may never "make it big" by publishing on Kindle, but it gives them a chance to live a dream, even for a few moment. I know I love seeing the covers of my books, and seeing my name there. Also, for me, as a storyteller and renaissance faires and a contract game fiction writer, it gives me a place for my audience to find some of my stories that I can't provide them with at faires and such.

Yes, Amazon makes some money too, and well they should for providing the hopeful writer with an opportunity unlike anything we've seen before. I've had people get mad at Amazon for me, because these well-meaning people believe that I should be getting more for my work, and Amazon, the EEEVVVIIIIILLLL Corporation should be getting less, if anything at all. Well, they developed this bit of technological coolness, and thus I'm okay with them taking a cut.

The bottom line, internet only sources, such as Kindle, Nook, iTunes, etc. give the hopeful artist a venue for becoming a known quantity, not just on the market, but in their own minds. If you know someone publishing in one of these markets, who you support as an artist in any way, consider picking up their work in this medium. Hell, if you don't want to read my stuff on a screen, even though you're reading my work on this blog via your computer screen, buy it from Kindle, write a review, and email me. I'll send you a PDF copy that you can print out and read the old fashioned way. Maybe you can make similar arrangements with other artists.

I hope this little rant has cleared some things up about where I was trying to go with my rant yesterday. Yeah, I talk about me a lot again, but I'm kind of self-centered when the fingers start flying across the keyboard. Take everything I say about me and apply it to every struggling artist you know.

A Call to Arms

2011-05-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

I just started to sit down to write this blog entry to talk about all the help and support beginning/struggling artists need from their friends, family, and first fans. I have two ways that I write for the blog. Both ways start with an idea. Something pops into my head, and I think, "I want to write about that." I open up up blogspot and set myself to crank out the new post. Then things change in execution. One way is that I go by the seat of my pants, just writing and writing with no care in the world for where I'm going and finally, I think, "This is a good stopping place." The other way is to take my time, take some notes, and think carefully about what I'm going to say. I'll delete stuff, move paragraphs around, and rework stuff that isn't really flowing how I think it should go. This blog post was one of the latter. I've been fiddling with it on-and-off for the better part of the day. Then I had a conversation with a guy I know from the Southern California Ren Faires on Facebook. He gave me the following quote:

"It is unfair to struggling authors to lend books. If you have enjoyed a book, hide your copy, tell your friends about it, and direct them to the nearest reputable bookseller."

The quote is from a writer, Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery (Retired). His collections of "Sea Stories" in the late 60's, were memoirs of his time in the military. He changed the names of the characters to protect the guilty. Thanks to Brad Mitchell for that quote. And while Rear Admiral Gallery was talking about writers, it can be said the same for all artist, because, in a sense, we're all struggling.

Now, what does this mean to you, oh supporter of artist, struggling or otherwise? I'm going out on a limb that you support the arts in some way, especially the artist of this particular blog, mostly because you're reading it right now. True, we get some random hits from people doing Google and Yahoo searches for random stuff, but they are rare. For the most part, my readership logs in to read me pontificate ad nausium because, for whatever reason, we are familiar in some way. So again, what does this quote mean to you.

First:

Buy my books on Kindle. Give up a soda for two days, or your coffee from Starbucks. Klick on the "Like" button. Do a review, give me however many stars you think I deserve. Any attention you give my work on Amazon will help create a little more traffic there. On the same note. Come and see my shows at Renaissance Faires, if you're attending a Faire where I'm scheduled to perform. Not necessarily every show; I know oeople are busy, but it helps generate an audience, and I cycle around my material, so I can make sure to do something newer if I see more familiar faces. These things help.

Do the same kinds of things for other artists you know. Support them in little ways and big ways. Without an audience, artist are merely hobbyist. I firmly believe that. If art is not being observed and appreciated, by someone other than its creator, then well, never mind, i don't want to open that can of worms just yet.

Second (and probably more importantly):

Tell people about the artist you are trying to support, without giving them anything the artist has produced for free, unless the artist himself or herself had provided it for free. (Steve and I have done just this for National Short Story Month. You can find free stories we've written elsewhere on this blog.)

Right after the publication of "Knight of the Living Dead," I had one of my well meaning fans talking about loaning his or her Kindle to people so they could read the story. This fan meant well. This fan wanted to spread the word. I appreciate that. However, to help all of us poor struggling artists out, if we're not giving out freebies, you shouldn't either. Talk us up until you are blue in the face. Tell people where and how to find us! We will love you for it.

Here is the bottom line:

We, the hopeful, struggling artists of the world need you, our first and most often strongest fans, to help us. We may understand how to promote our work, but we only have as much time in the day as any other single person on the planet, and we need as much of that time as we can get to work on future projects. If you really want to see us succeed and be able to put out more of the work you love, please help us. The slang term "fan" comes from fanatic. We need you to be fanatical for us. Pimp us out to everyone you know. Email links to your entire contacts list. Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter about us. If you see someone reading a book that is even vaguely similar to your favorite up-and-coming writer, or the cover look like something another artist you like, ask the person if they've read so-and-so, and sell them on why random person in line should check out favorite writer/artist you love.

We, the artist, cannot make it in the world without you, the fan, talking about us, creating buzz. In this day, in this age, where everything moves at the speed of light, the artist does not succeed or fail on the merits of his or her work. We succeed and fail on the loyalty and voice of our fans. Please, stand up and make yourselves heard.

Please, if you are an artist and have someplace online where you sell your work, add a link to it in the comments line. I will be linking to this particular post everywhere I can. I ask if you are a fan of my work, to email it, link it, post it everywhere, and if you know of another artist with work for sale online, post a link in a comment as well.

Let's make some noise!

First Chosen
Knight of the Living Dead (3 Strange Knights)
The Dragon Bone Flute

One the other hand...

2011-05-26T05:52:00.000-07:00

A while back, I start a series of posts in which I talked about how role-playing games don't transition well to the world of fiction. Then, I started writing my weekly column over at http://www.dragonsbay.co/. In "Stranger Than Fiction," I ramble on about how Game Masters can use various elements of the craft of fiction to enhance their table top role playing games. This got me to thinking, that there are a couple of things that prospective writers of any genre can learn by being Game Masters. I'll touch on the things that I think gaming has helped with my fiction.

#1) Don't be such a control freak. Players in role-playing games do the damnedest things. They go off in directions we never would have expected or planned for. As a Game Master, you just gotta go with the flow. Granted, some GMs will just create situations which force the players back on the proper plot line, but these GMs suck. Sometimes characters take control of themselves while being written and seem to say, "I'd rather find out what happens when I do this." At that point, the writer can either see where it goes, or force the character back onto the original plot line. Brave writers will go along for the adventure of unknown territory.

#2) Dialog. Game Masters have to perform all the characters that surround the players. Sometimes that gets to be a lot of people. To make these other people come alive for the characters, the GM has to come up with some way for the players to recognize when they are talking, especially when more than one of these GM characters is involved in a conversation. Veteran GMs do this by giving their GM characters distinctive voices. Writers should strive for this two.

#3) Don't sweat a first draft hiccup, just keep going. The stories we tell in a gaming setting are perpetually in first draft. If we screw something up, we have to keep going and do our best to incorporate that goof into the game and hope for the best. Some of the coolest twists in games have come from me fixing one of these goofs. Some really cool twists in my stores have come from me not worrying about fixing things in the first draft; however, I still have problems with this one. I'm working on getting better and just pushing through and getting the manuscript finished.

So, to all you prospective writers out there: you could actually learn something about writing and storytelling by getting some friends together and running some games. Besides: it's fun.

Upcoming Changes

2011-05-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

In the next few day, I'll be throwing up an couple of new sub-pages to my blog. Taking an idea from George RR Martin's web site, I'll be adding pages for "What I'm Reading" and "What I'm Watching." The "Writing Challenge" will also receive a page of it's own, and I'm going to do my absolute best remember to post one every day. I'm not sure if updating this sub-pages will send notifications to the subscribers, so you might need to check in from time to time to make sure you aren't missing any new posts.

Do any of you have things you like to see from me? I'm completely open to new ideas.

Appologies

2011-05-23T05:52:00.000-07:00

I suppose I'm getting even closer to reaching the coveted status of... crud, I forgot what words I was going to use to describe what kind of writer I was becoming... not regular, or professional... I had a great word, and poof, it went away. (I dwell in darkness without you and it went away?) Ahem. Sorry. Digression at 5:18 am, who'd have thought? Moving on...

So, I've become... there it is... "Established"... I've gotten closer to reaching the coveted status of "Established Writer" because people are coming out of the woodwork asking me to read and comment on their fiction. While I'm flattered, I'm afraid I must decline, without exception these requests. I have a small handful of people whose fiction I will read and comment upon, but unless your initials are S.M., R.G., P.H., or R.L., you do not fall on this list. If you do have the above initials, and we have not had a discussion about me looking specifically your work within the last few months or so, you are also not on this list.

Fist and foremost:

Critiquing a work of fiction takes time, about three times as much as regular reading. Oh, and that's if and I mean IF the manuscript is actually in a stated where it's really ready for someone besides the writer to go over it. I'm not going to go into all the mental gymnastics I go through while looking someone's work over, but it's quite the mental exercise. I don't have the time to give to everyone who asks me. IF I did, I wouldn't have time for my own writing.

Second:

You probably aren't ready for me to go over your work. This is not be trying to be snotty, elitist, or a jerk. Yes, one of those rare exceptions where I'm just being honest for honesty's sake. When most people want someone they see as a professional or an authority to look at their writing, they aren't actually looking for honest feedback. They are looking for validation.

Yes, yes. You are the exception. You can take it. Superman has nothing on the thick skin you have when it concerns your writing. Hit you with my best shot. If your thinking anywhere along these lines, then you're really not ready. I have sold my writing for real money. People have shelled out cash on kindle for my work on Kindle. I'm scared to death whenever I put my work out there for someone else to read, especially if I've asked for comments and feedback.

Please don't be offended when I tell you that I cannot validate your writing. I'm still seeking validation myself. The only way to validate your writing is to put it out into the world and let go of it and write something else. Then repeat the process. This is the only real test for the validity of your writing.

Tertiary and finally:

I'm not anyone special, so why are you seeking my approval? Just saying. Write, write, and write some more. Judge your current work against your previous work to see if you are improving. Put it out there into the world, there are more than enough mediums for a writer to find an audience. Traditional publishing is no longer the only show in town.

One last question for those who do go out there and establish themselves as writers: I've got this novel I'm working on, would you take a look at it and tell me what you think?

General Update

2011-05-10T23:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been busy. Kindle is an exciting and wonderful thing. "Knight of the Living Dead" is doing well. Not as well as I'd hoped and dreamed for (but only one book can be #1) and better than I expected, we're above single digits in sales. Steve and I facebooked the crap out of it last week, in our various groups and fan pages . This week, we've mentioned it a few times, but nothing like last week, and we're still getting a few sales a day. Exciting stuff.

This afternoon, I completed the rough draft of "Last Dirge of the Dragon Bone Flute." This is a fairly traditional fantasy story on the surface, but the voice and the tale it tells are vastly different than anything I've done before. It's off with several of my first string readers. They're looking it over for massive plot holes, continuity gaps, and of course, typos. Once I get it back from them, make all necessary changes, and figure out some cover art, it will be up on Kindle as well.

Oh, and that's not all the writing I've been doing lately. This week saw the very first post for my new column/segment on a gaming website: Dragonsbay.co. In the weekly feature: "Stranger than Fiction," I discuss how game masters, and occasionally players, can enhance their gaming experience by understanding the core elements of the craft of fiction. At the core of every game is a story, and by understanding the techniques that great writers and storytellers use, Game Masters can take their games to the next level of Epic. The first column is up now.

So, one might think that it's time for me to take a break. Not so! I refuse! Too much to do! As soon as I get done with this blog post, I'm going to start going over the first section of my epic fantasy: "Tears of Rage." I want to have Part One: First Chosen completed and up on Kindle before The Valhalla Renaissance Faire. No mere novella is "Tears of Rage." It is a continuing tale of intrigue and wars between kingdoms and gods. Expect installments every four to size months.

Speaking of Valhalla Faire: The last show of the day, both Saturday's Steve Moore and I will be reading from our various works on stage. Come and see what the hype is about.

Other stuff in the works: I've chosen my June novella for Kindle, "Farmer Hero," an near future sociological science fiction story about a young man working in a Hong Kong sweat factory playing MMOs just to be able to sell the gold in the game for real money. Yes, this really happens. Talking to my client at Fantasy Flight Games about our next project. July and August are going to be dedicated to completing my novel Dead Weight. I'm going to try and find a traditional publisher for that one at World Con.

Whew. No rest for the wicked or the weary here. Thanks to everyone for all the support they've shown. Will keep you all posted as details unfold.

Daily Writing Challenge

2011-05-10T06:33:00.000-07:00

Write a scene in which a character is ranting about something he or she dislikes. Use that rant to reveal a deep core value of the character that he or she does not realize about herself.

Daily Writing Challenge

2011-05-09T07:15:00.000-07:00

Write a scene comprised only of dialog between two characters. Us dialog tags as sparingly as possible. Make each character uniques as possible by the words they use.

On Remaining Humble During Success

2011-05-07T05:38:00.000-07:00

For those of you who may not heard, I'm up on Kindle. Well, at least a story that I co-wrote with my friend Steve Moore is. It's been on Amazon for about a week.

Knight of the Living Dead (3 Strange Knights)

I also recently received my first check from Fantasy Flight Games. Professional Writer, that's me! Right now, I'm not apt to get a swelled head or full of myself from this success, so far. Right now, it's not very much, but it definitely has the potential to grow. How does one make something of themselves through a dream they've had since elementary school and still remain humble? Well, Steve and I have come up with a way I think will keep us down to earth and never ready to discount our fans that will bring us (someday) to the loft heights of literary legendry.

We've decided to measure our success based on where we can eat and what we can order off the menu. Right now, with Knight of the Living Dead, we can each order a basic value meal at most fast food places, as long as we don't super size it. We're very happy to have made it beyond the $.99 value menu. Thanks to all who have allowed us to have this wonderful meal. Oh yeah, and that's just once. One time through a drive through after a fair. That's what our success has brought us. Someday, we might both get to go to Denny's and order separate dishes. Right now at Denny's we'd have to share.

So, now, no matter how far I god with this writing thing, I'll always be able to look back to the time I was looking forward to getting off to the value menu. I think if more people put things into perspective like this, they'd be less apt to let their egos run away with them. Cause when it comes right down to the bottom line, we all started ordering off the value menu.

More on Storytelling in the Modern World

2011-05-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

It amazes me how often people give us information about themselves we'd rather not have, or about other people that they really have no business giving us. Again I'd like to delve into storytelling as communication and communication as storytelling, but this time around, let's look at our responsibilities as a storyteller when we finally do find someone willing to listen to our stories.

The big rule here is, as I'm sure it has been since the very beginning of the first language, know your audience.

I recently had a companion for my return journey from a Renaissance Faire. This young lady had been stranded, as her ride to the faire had overbooked his or her car at the end of the weekend. This young lady lived on my general area and offered me ten dollars in gas money, so I decided to go against my solitary nature and perform a good service for the universe. Well, you know what they say about no good deed going unpunished.

Let's get one thing straight right now: I am not a people person. I fake it really well at Ren Faire, especially just before and after my shows. After a weekend of being surrounded by crowds, and 3 times a day at least putting myself in front of them and making a spectacle of myself, I like to have some quite time on the way home. I listen to my audio books, or just the wind as I drive along. This helps me unwind before returning to the zoo that is my home.

Now, throw this young lady, who I believe mentioned she was twenty-two, new to fair, and desperately trying to make friends. And, oh, she sure did want to be my friend. She kept asking my things about myself, and telling me things about herself that I didn't want to know. I'll spare you the details. Also, it's not my place to tell you her story. Now, I'm not disparaging her as a person. She seemed like a sweet girl. I'm sure she will make lots of at faire. Faire is like that. But she doesn't want me to be her friend. She may thing she does, but she doesn't. I'm hard to be friends with, and she, like most people, is not ready to deal with the blunt honesty I bring to a friendship. I told her this. She didn't get it. Well, until I let her know why.

First, I told her that I didn't want to know most of the details about herself and her life experience that she'd decided to share with me. For the record, I know more sorted details about the intimacies this girl has shared than I do my own wife. And that's including the intimacies I've shared with my wife. She didn't read her audience well enough to know that my part of our shared storytelling got smaller and smaller as she shared. Contrary to what we learned in Kindergarten, sharing is not always good.

Okay, I kind of lied. Sort of. I'm going to tell a story about her, but it's my story, because I'm one of the principle characters. Someone who is very close to this girl was adopted. This adopted person knows their name from before the adoption. The girl I gave a ride to has not been given this piece of intelligence. She informed me that she's been trying to discover this adopted person's real name, because she wanted to know this special person better. I told "Ride Girl" that she was being selfish, had no business asking for that part of another persons story, and she should butt the hell out. Things in the car got very quiet.

Just in case people reading my blog hadn't noticed yet: I consider stories sacred things, most especially our personal stories. If someone decides to share a special story about themselves with you, cherish it. But I've gone into that previously. On the flip side of that, don't squander your stories either, especially to people who don't want them. You'll only alienate them, and, whether you realize it or not, you will embarrass yourself. Yes, I'm aware most of the people that suffer from this story sharing problem do not have the good graces to be embarrassed, so those of us around them wind up having to carry that burden as well.

Anyway, the above is only one of three or four times I called this young lady's storytelling etiquette into question. One indecent earned her a twenty minute no-talking penalty. Twenty whole minutes of not a single vocalization. I thought by about eleven minutes her head was going to explode.

I have met many other people like this over my life. For some reason, people gravitate toward me and want to share their stories with me, usually at the most inappropriate times. I had an interviewee share too many details about his recent weekend at a dancing retreat and the various conquests he'd managed due two copious amounts of alcohol. He did not get the job. I've had friends without kids telling me things that are fine to share with me alone, because we are actually friends, begin to share these things in front of my kids, adult things, that I don't want my kids hearing about quite yet. My friends are not considering the audience in earshot.

Keep these things in mind the next time you have a story to tell. Are the people not listening because we've just forgotten how to listen to each other's stories, or are then not listening because they have listened before, and they don't like the kinds of stories you have to tell?

Daily Writing Challenge

2011-05-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

Write a scene in which the narrator switches from speaking from a limited point-of-view to a PoV that moves more distant, speaking for a group or perhaps becoming omniscient. Strive to earn this transition through the natural flow of prose.

Daily Writing Challenge

2011-04-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

Write a scene with a character in a tense situation, and have the character do something drastic that heightens the tension, resolves the conflict, and also reveals something about that character's inner nature.

Advice to Young and Hungry Writers

2011-04-27T05:43:00.000-07:00

I'm right there with you. Okay, so maybe not so young anymore, but still definitely hungry and getting hungrier all the time.

I've been wanting to be a professional fiction writer for the better part of thirty years. Not knowing anyhting about intellectual property laws, I thought I would write the continuing adventures of Sam Gamgee (not Frodo, but I kinda touch on that in another post). That was back in the forth grade. Fast forward almost three decades.

Last December, I received a communication from someone I knew at Fantasy Flight Games Incorporated, asking if I'd like to write a few pieces for the Call of Chthulu card game. Being a hungry, hopeful writer, I jumped on it, cranked out the stories, sent them off as soon as I had the contract, did the cuts and rewrites they asked, and now I'm waiting on the check. It should be here sometime this week.

Until now, the closed thing to a professional writing anything was back in 2001, where my story "Two Pickpockets" received and honorable mention in the Friends of the Sacramento Public Library Writing contest. A contest I am now ineligible to participate in. Even with that, as exciting as it was, I didn't feel like a real writer.

At some point in March, the guy a FFG I've been working with tells me that he liked my work so much and one of the characters I've created, that they want to expand the character into being a permanent fixture in the game. They're going to make a card out of him. All in 500is words. Pretty cool stuff. But, I'm still not feeling like a Pro. It's not real for me yet.

April 5th, 2011: The creative director I've been working with at Fantasy Flight games sends me four emails. Each email contains a PDF of one of the stories I've written for them. Right at the top: By: Michael Gallowglas. My name in the byline. Twenty thousand people around the world are going to see my name on that byline. Sure, some of the, hell most of them, won't care. They're going to scan that name even faster than they scan the stories I've written before moving on to see what the new cards are. Well, that is if they read it at all. I'm sure some won't bother. It doesn't matter, because I have a byline. That's the moment it became "real" to me. That's when I realize that I can really do this thing I've kind of been chasing after for so long.

So here's my advice to young and hungry writers: and yes Miss Rachel Litfin, I'm thinking specifically at you, get something in print in a reputable market. It may be a literary journal where your only compensation is discounted contributers copies, but your name will be in the byline. It will be real for you. It will make it that much easier to plant your butt in front of the computer/typewriter and compose when other parts your life are screaming for attention.

By: Michael Gallowglas is my new drug. I don't think I'm ever going to get enough of it.

Good luck! Stay hungry!

Writing Challenge

2011-04-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

Write a scene in which a minor/secondary character draws attention to and emphasizes the true nature of a main/major character.

On Storytelling in the Modern World.

2011-04-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

Less than five minutes ago, I was working on finishing up this blog post when I miss-clicked, selected all, typed the word "when," and erased the entire thing. The page autosaved, and then wouldn't let me undo.

Crap.

And, again, crap.

I'd started on my experience in storytelling at Renaissance Faires and evolved into a commentary on how we don't take the time to listen to the stories other people tell us. When my wall o' text disintegrated into a window of featureless white, I screamed. I tried to get it back, but in the process, I lost it for good. I went downstairs. Robin was there, with two. other people.

I explained what happened. I'd been working on this blog post since six am this morning and it was gone. I was nearly at the point of tears.

Robin made honest and sympathetic noises a supporting spouse does, and tried to cheer me up by saying that my second draft will be better. Their is no second draft when the first draft vanishes; it might be just as good, but it's not a second draft - it's the first draft of another piece that resembles the first, but that's about it. One of the other two people present stayed pretty much quiet, eating candy, I think; I was too wrapped up in my own pain to really notice. The final person there told me a story about some stick figure comic strip he or she had seen the other day about a guy who is messing up with his computer and a turtle. The turtle keeps on thinking, "I'm a turtle," until the very last panel, which said, "Turtles have it figured out."

I hope some of my readers are as confused and befuddled by this little nugget of WTF as I am. If anyone can possibly explain the correlation, please enlighten me, because I missed it. What this little moment did do, was solidify in my mind the point I was trying to emphasize in my first attempt at this post.

We, as a culture, do not take the time to listen to each other’s stories.

I happen to be a part of a fairly large social circle. The people I know from Renaissance Faires make up the majority of this body of people, but a few people from work and my gaming life have snuck in. I used to also have a bunch from dancing in here, but as dancing has receded from my life, so too have the people I socialize with from dancing. Within this circle is the smaller circle I consider my close and personal friends. These are the people I invite to my house, the people I share personal details of my life with. Within that circle, and smaller still is, the group of people who actively listen to each other’s stories. By that, I don’t mean remain in the same vicinity while their lungs push air past the vocal cords and sounds come at us. I mean, we listen, completely present with the person speaking to us, giving our attention to the how they are speaking just as much as the words they are speaking. Only by doing that, can we truly be sharing in the truth of their story.

Before I go on, we have to define what I mean by story. Our stories are those pieces of each other that we share with the outside world. The vast majority of our social communication is story-based. Talking about: what happened at school or work, that crappy service we got at Starbuck, the awesome date we had last Friday night, how much we miss a family member who recently passed away, etc. These are all stories, and in many ways, they are more important than the stories I tell on stage at faire. The problem is, due to being oversaturated with meaningless stories, our culture has begun to ignore the stories that mean the most.

Some people might be thinking to themselves, I’m not oversaturated with stories; I don’t even read as much as I’d like to. Well, I’m not talking about books, or the stories we tell each other. I’m talking about the media: hundreds of cable channels selling HIGH DRAMA, with CNN, MSNBC, and most especially, Fox news vying for our attention. And if you think Fox news isn’t trying to sell you high drama, even if you agree with their politics, then you may want to consider spending a couple of days detoxing in a sensory deprivation chamber.

Now, storytelling is humanities oldest art form. When the first grunts evolved a bit so that one grunt meant one thing that was different from another grunt, and the first of our ancestor used the first sharpened stick to kill the first wild animal, he (or maybe she) went back to the clan/tribe with his buddies and they grunted about how epic it was. Don’t believe me? Ask anyone about the first time they ever did (fill in subject of choice until you see a spark light up in their eyes) then ask them to tell you about it. You’ll see something come over them as they relate the tale to you. They will become a storyteller right before your eyes.

Problem: we don’t care about each other’s personal stories any more. The details of our lives, the stories that we live day by day have taken second string to the stories that bombard us every day, and with those big budgets, it’s hard for us mere mortals to keep up.

Case in point: Not too long ago, I was in pain, and trying to relate the experience of my pain to my wife. Part of the reason we share sad stories is because pain shared is pain diminished. I firmly believe this. It’s part of the reason we have such a fascination with tragic tales, we want to share that pain together so it’s not as bad for any one person. Anyway, I was in the middle of my personal story, when this other person present in my home decided to help by sharing this “real” story from this comic strip that was supposed to help, and maybe because it was a “real” story, it would be better at helping me get past my pain than just quietly sharing my pain with me. Again, I have no clue what that turtle crap was supposed to do for me. I think I responded with something like, “Don’t ever try and cheer me up again, because you fail at it.”

As a culture, we’re more interested in sharing the stories we have than listening to the stories of other. It shames me to admit it, but I’m as guilty of this as anyone else I know. I’d apologize for that, but coming at this point, such an apology would be meaningless and trite. My apology will come in the form of change, to be present to the people I love as they communicate with me, not too me, but with me. For without both people truly present in the moment, communication is something one person does too another. When both people are truly present in the moment, communication is something that happens with another.

Food for thought: Most of the time, when someone tells us something about themselves, or something that happened to them, our first reaction is to say something like, “Oh, that reminds me of this thing that happened to me,” or words to that effect. If you do that, then it means you weren’t truly present for that other person’s story, because you were waiting for them to take a breath so you could share your story. Think about that.

An experiment: The next time you suffer the urge to jump into a conversation with your own story that you’re just waiting on the slightest pause so you can get a word in edgewise, DON’T. Let the pause linger, and then, ask them to go into more details about their story. Can you? Can you let go of yourself enough to do that?

Our culture may have done its best to kill our collective appreciation for each other’s individual stories, but that doesn’t mean that we as individuals have to choose to live in that world. We can rise above it, and start caring again. Whose story would you rather pay more attention to: The faceless media giants, or your friends and family?

Writing Challenge

2011-04-23T06:18:00.000-07:00

Write a scene where a character gets rid of something, an object or physical feature, that he or she no longer wants. Have something else, non-physical and unexpected, be lost in the process.

You can't handle... the best policy!

2011-04-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

In this episode of "Words, Words.... Words," we return to the topic of gaming and the crafting of fiction, and this post looks like it's going to be pretty epic, in length as well as topic. Allow me to warn you right off the bat, part of this post is likely to rise some high emotions in those of you traditional fantasy purists.

One of the problems I see with writers who transition from gaming to fiction, and really, with fantasy writers in general, is they can't portray events that happen to characters with any level of honesty. I can already hear some of the cries of outrage: "But it's fantasy!" "It's not supposed to be honest!" "We're supposed to be escaping from reality." This attitude is most likely the reason the literary world sneers at fantasy even more than romance. I say this because, as a genre, Romance is fairly self away; it collectively understands that it is, for the most part, escapist fluff. Fantasy writers and fans tend to take themselves way too seriously, and while some fantasy is brilliantly written, with poignant social commentary, most of it is, at it's core, escapist fluff. So much to the point that a few writers who have sold millions and millions of books around the world have publicly claimed they don't write fantasy. Yes, Mr. Terry Goodkind and MS. J K Rowling, I am calling you out on my tiny little blog with six followers and less than 350 hits at the time of this post. (I'm sure at least a quarter of those hits are me.) But I digress. I will go into the rage and fury these writers have caused to burn deep in my soul, probably when I'm a little more well known and my saber rattling will get me in a lot more trouble. (I can imagine Robin cringing when she reads this.)

Anyway, back to honesty. So, for the sake of this post, I postulate that reality and honesty are not the same thing. Reality is grounded in the hard, honest fact of the nature of the universe. Honesty is grounded in the truth of human perception, and, much of the time, has very little to do with hard fact. One of the first missions of any writer of fantasy is to create a new reality, a world/universe where the facts of science and nature are different than our own. The more honestly the writer can do this, the more the reader is willing to suspend their disbelief and go a long for the ride.

For those of my readers who have never partaken in the activity of a table-top role playing game, let me paint a picture for you of the ominous figure known as the Game Master, or GM for short. Yes, it's become popular these days for various games to get away from that domineering term, but let's face the truth, that's pretty much what they are. The GM usually sits behind a cardboard screen filled with charts, figures, and reference materials for the game's mechanics. Books, dice, and notes for plots and secondary characters are stacked behind this screen, waiting for that moment when the GM will spring his nasty surprise on his poor hapless players. Actions, happen, dice roll, and... more on that later.

Now, that's not too different from many of the writers that I know. True, the cosmetics of the situation might be a little different. The cardboard screen transforms into a laptop, computer, or typewriter - yes, some people still use those, ask Harlan Ellison. The books might be reference materials, and the notes, well, most every writer has notes. And, you get the idea.

The point is, both the GM and the writer are telling a story. In many cases, they both fail in honesty with the same thing: how they treat the character in that story. I've done it. In gaming and in writing, I've failed at being honest. Almost every GM I've ever known has done it, and the few I'm not absolutely sure of, I'd be willing to put a few bucks down that they have fudged things one way or another. For the GM, the lack of honesty is easy to see. We lie about how our dice roll. See, we have this big cardboard screen in front of us, so the players can't see what our dice say. Most often, I cheat at the dice to keep one of the players from dying, but I also do it to help out the "bad guys" when it seems that the player characters are having too easy a time of things. Other GMs I've known fudge things so that the players get screwed. At a gaming convention, I even saw a fairly well known game designer blatantly kill off a problem player and rip up his character sheet. That's extreme, but it proves the point I'm trying to make: GM's, as a whole, are dishonest people.

Unfortunately, more often than not, writers are too. We get attached to our characters, good and bad. We keep saving them from bad crap that should, in all honesty, happen to them. We are cowards that hide behind a constant stream of little white lies we tell ourselves and our readers, all to be able to sleep at night knowing our characters are safe and sound and to avoid a deluge of hate mail from readers who hate us for what we did to Ned Stark.... Wait.... err. Anyway, the point of that digression is that some writers obviously don't have a problem being honest in their fiction, and while we the readers hate it sometimes, well, as another old saying goes, sometimes the truth hurts.

I have an example of how one single writer single handedly began a large part of this honesty mess in fantasy fiction. This also stems into fantasy role-playing games, because this writer pretty much started both. He didn't mean to, but he did. Some of you are going to argue with me, which is good. Some of you are going to be mad at me; I'm already over it. Really though, it's what I believe, and it needs to be thrown out there, even on a blog with six followers and less than three-hundred fifty hits.

***SPOILER ALERT****

In JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Frodo should have died in Mount Doom along with Gollum. Frodo’s survival weakens the overall ending and contradicts the major themes of Tolkien’s epic trilogy, that order is restored by death. It also betrays the story’s ties to Catholic and Anglo-Saxon mythic traditions. I heard this idea from Steven Erikson, author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen at a recent at the World Fantasy Convention in Austin. When Erikson proposed that The Lord of the Rings would have been better served by more a tragic ending where the fallen hero is sacrificed rather than trying to find some place for himself after his fall, I became an immediate supporter of the idea.

Brandon Sanderson, author of Mistborn and the last three volumes of The Wheel of Time gave this reply when I asked him about it:

“I do believe that Frodo needed to die in order to make this story work. Tolkien was a Beowulf scholar, and heavily referenced that text in the making of his stories. Beowulf, as you may know, died during his last battle in the poem. The metaphor is that one doesn’t REALLY sacrifice if one survives, and true classical heroism always ended in death.

“Frodo was so tainted at the end that killing him may have been the more sympathetic thing to do. It certainly would have helped the ‘Frodo as Gollum’ theory to have the two of them, together, fall into the fires together.”

Throughout The Lord of the Rings, order in Middle Earth is restored through either literal or symbolic death. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf the Gray dies in his battle against the Balrog only to be born again, but not as he was. In The Two Towers, Galndolf tells us, “Yes, I am white now... Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been…” In The Return of the King, Strider takes to “The Paths of the Dead” with Legolas and Gimli where he undergoes a spiritual death to be reborn, wholly embracing his role as the King of Gondor and Isildur's hier. Before Strider undertook this journey, some did call him by his true name, Aragorn, but until walking that path, Aragorn denied his birthright. Denethor, Steward of Gondor, dies to make way for Aragorn. At first, Boromir’s death seems to sew chaos into the Fellowship; however, his death makes it possible for Frodo and Sam to part from the Fellowship and to create a place for Faramir to stand as the stronger brother. At the end of Return of the King, Arwen, daughter of Elrond, chooses to become mortal and wed Aragorn, and thought she will eventually die, she will give life to Aragorn’s line, preserving Order in Gondor.

Another thing that Tolkien ignores is another theme he sets up throughout the story: The One Ring brings death to character in the history of Middle Earth who falls to its corruption. Isildur, Boromir, Saruman, Gollum, and even Sauron in the end all perish because of their obsession for the One Ring. There are those who are tempted by the Ring’s power, yet refuse it. Early in The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo attempts to give the Ring to Gandalf, who says, “No!… With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly…Do not tempt me!…I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great, for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.” Gandalf knows to take the ring would lead to his own destruction. However, in the Hobbits, the wizard sees the opportunity destroy the Ring. However, Frodo holds the Ring too long, and when the moment finally comes to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom, he cannot; the Ring has corrupted him too completely. “Then Frodo stirred and spoke with a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls... ‘I have come,’ he said. ‘But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!’ And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam's sight.” It is only because of Gollum that the One Ring was destroyed at last. Frodo even acknowledges this, “But do you remember Gandalf's words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end.”

Sam, and Merry and Pippin to a lesser extent, are the true heroes of The Lord of the Rings. They are the characters that grow the most. Frodo only arrives at Mount Doom because of Sam’s inner strength and fortitude. Sam is the one who, knowing what the Ring is, has the ability to relinquish it, even after having born it for a time. True, Bilbo does give it up, but only by not knowing the truth of it and only with Gandalf’s help. Treebeard and the Ents go to war against Saruman and Isengard because of Merry and Pippin. Merry found the courage within him to help Eowyn defeat the Lord of the Nazgul. These are examples of how the three other Hobbits grow over the course of the books, while Frodo only diminishes. When we reach the Scouring of the Shire, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are the active characters. Frodo speaks and acts only as a voice of “wisdom”, which diminishes the growth in the other Hobbits over the course of the trilogy. They have each learned more about themselves and the greater world outside the Shire, and none of them bear the taint on their souls that Frodo possesses. His presence here robs them of their own heroic journeys, and in some ways, the other three Hobbits have become nothing more than vengeful bullies, only to be held back by Frodo’s voice of reason. It is as if Tolkien degrades Sam, Merry, and Pippin so that Frodo has some purpose here. Had Frodo died, Sam, Merry, and Pippin could have truly completed their own heroic journeys.

Finally, by examining the mythic traditions Tolkien used as a basis for his story, Frodo’s survival shows that Tolkien turned away from those traditions. Evidence of this can be seen in two of the three Christ figures in The Lord of the Rings. Both Aragorn and Gandalf suffer a death of some kind and return stronger. Frodo does not suffer a death and rebirth, and only grows weaker. In some aspects, Frodo has the most blatant ties to Christ, in that, during his moments of greatest weakness, he has a Simon (in the form of Sam) who helps not only to carry Frodo’s burden, but also carries Frodo himself. As Brandon Sanderson pointed out, Tolkien was also a scholar of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon myths. Like most of the heroes of these stories, Beowulf dies in the final battle against the Dragon. Even Shakespeare understood that tragic a flaw requires the hero to ultimately perish, hence the doomed struggles of Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet. Yet, in the end, Hamlet ultimately succeeds in his quest. Frodo shows his flaw beneath Mount Doom: He becomes corrupted and cannot give up the ring. Once this happens, Frodo transforms from a romantic hero to a tragic hero. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, Tolkien did not have the courage to carry out the mythic and religious traditions he had used in crafting the rest of his story, and cheapens every other death, sacrifice, and heroic journey that takes place in The Lord of the Rings.

I've heard it rumored, that Tolkien stopped work on The Lord of the Rings for over a year after he killed Boromir. I have no confirmation of this, only several anecdotal conversations at conventions, though most often these tend to have a grain of truth at the center. If this is even remotely close to the truth of thing while Tolkien was writing his epic, I can believe that he didn't have the courage to kill Frodo at the end. It may have been his plan all along, right up until the moment where Tolkien had his fingers against the typewriters or his pen poised above his paper, and he just couldn't do, couldn't bring himself to do what needed to be done.

This has been a long post, longer than I expected, to justify this point about honesty in fantastic fiction. Yeah, I'm up on my soap box, but it's one of the things I'm most passionate about when it comes to fantasy. We, above all other writers, above all other genres, must honest about our characters and the events they struggle through, cause, and become affected by. If we can't be completely honest in our attempt to portray these absolutely unrealistic worlds (yeah, I know that sounds like an oxymoron) then we can't expect people to buy into fantasy as a truly literary worthy method of storytelling that explores some unanswerable question of the human condition.

Do I expect perfection 100% of the time? No. But come on, being fantasy writers does not give us the excuse to be frivolous and trite. Let's have the courage to grow beyond our roots and treat our characters as honestly as we can, even if that means our characters have to suffer through death, and sometimes worse. On the other hand, we don't make our characters suffer through needless crap because we think it will heighten tension or make them more sympathetic. Oh, man... Now I realized that's an entirely different problem of this honesty thing I've not even begun to touch on, and in many ways, it makes me even crazier than writers who won't let anything bad happen to their characters. However, I don't think I'm going to go into that now. Most of the writers who do that are amateurish at best, even the published ones, and in most cases, their fiction contains so many more errors than that.

So, in closing, writers, please be honest with your fiction and storytelling. Your stories will be stronger for it, and your readership will become a word-of-mouth advertising campaign for you. Well, maybe not all of them, but I certainly will.

Writing Challenge

2011-04-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

Daily writing challenge. I'll post mine after my first shift at work today. I'd like to see some of my other writer friends take a stab at some of these. Yes, Penny and Krista, I'm looking at you.

"Choose two characters worthy of exploration. Put them into a situation where they wind up being Physically intimate. (Though not necessarily sexual. In fact, that's a bit too easy. Try something else.) Use this scene to show details about each character as individuals and characterize there relationship."

Daily Writing Challenge

2011-04-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

I'm going to really strive to be putting these out as often as I can. I encourage those of you who are interested in writing as a hobby, or as a a potential career, to do the same. Either use the challenges I post here, or get some exercises from another source. Writing is one of the few art forms where the practitioners don't want to consider anything they compose as anything other than a step toward finished copy. We despise the thought of writing something with the intent of never using it for anything other than developing our craft. I heard many students grumbling about waisting their time with something they couldn't send out as soon as they'd gotten a grade on it. Okay, I might have been one of those students once upon a time. The point is, just like the musician practicing scales, or the actor practicing lines and going through rehearsals, or the painter sketching over and over again before heading to the canvas, we writers need to do the same.

So, here is today's writing challenge:

"Have a character write a letter to someone apologizing for a past betrayal on the behalf of a second character who does not know that the first character is writing the letter. Then write a scene in which the second character finds out about the letter."

This time, I've actually written a written a challenge, and I'm posting it as a response to this post. If you are a writer, I challenge you to do so as well. Remember: it's not a full story. It's a scene of a page or two, just for practice. Have fun with it.

Review - UNDER THE DOME - By Stephen King

2011-04-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

One of my biggest pet peeves in all of fiction is when a writer has characters do stupid things because the plot of the book requires them to do stupid things in order for the story to keep moving. Two writers come to mind when I think of this, Elizabeth Hayden and Sara Douglass, who I will never read again based on the stupidity of characters who should have known better. I mean, really should have known better. On the other hands, the Game of Thrones hand, we have normally intelligent people who make poor choices, which some might call stupid choices, because they are in unfamiliar situations and/or completely out of their depth. The big difference between the two: the first kind of stupidity serves the plot (blech), the second serves to enhance the reader's understanding of the character, especially the character in a crisis.

In Under the Dome, a strange barrier appears to surround a small, New England town, cutting it off from the outside world. Story unfolds as people deal with this and make choices, good and bad, based on this new situation in their lives. Many of the townsfolk, quite a few of them rational, intelligent people, make very poor choices. King, a master storyteller, never once uses these choices to keep his plot rolling. Yes, the choices have consequences for both the good guys and bad guys alike. People die as a result of some of these choices. However, in King's seasoned hands, these choices are all based on the terrible situation these characters find themselves in, and the events that follow the choices evolve naturally as we would expect from real-world cause and effect. Not once while listening (I got the audio version for company on a long trip) did I ever think to myself, "Oh, King wanted this event to happen in his story and forced the characters to behave in X manner."

Writers can do anything in fiction, just as long as they earn. Sound easy? It's not. Well, not nearly as easy as it sounds. If it was, every hopeful whoever put pen to paper or filled his recycling bin with reams of discarded drafts, heavily marked with corrections, edits and notes would be a bestseller. We'd have no need for editors, and not nearly so many critics.

In Under the Dome, King earns almost every bit of this crazy situation. From the moment the dome appears and the body count at it's sudden arrival starts to rise to the cat and mouse games the various groups begin to play with each other as lines of power are drawn in the sand, King takes us for a grand tour in this surreal landscape. The characters, good and bad, smart and stupid, are engaging and we want to know how they are going to react to this situation they've found themselves in. We're along for the ride because they behave in the way real people, good and bad, smart and stupid, might behave in such a situation. They might not. We'll probably never know, because I'm pretty sure an invisible, impenetrable force field is going to cut off a small town in rural New England. The point is, King makes us believe that this is how they would behave.

I did find a bit of the novel unsatisfying, though in small pieces. First was the nature of the dome, how it got into place, and ultimately how the characters dealt with it in the climax of the novel. I'll not touch on that any more, as I despise any form of spoiler, except to say, this little stumbling block is not nearly large enough to derail my enjoyment of the book. In fact, it doesn't really have anything thing to do with the book's brilliance in any way. This book is about the characters and their reactions and choices to the situation, not about "solving the problem." They do, at least some of them do, and it creates moments of conflict, but it's just one situation amongst many in life under the dome. The other thing that rubbed me the wrong way was the religious undertones throughout the book. Several of the "bad guys" are very fundamentally Christian, though non-denominational. One of the "good guys" is also, though secretly an agnostic at best, suffering from a massive doubt in her faith. By the end of the book, only the bad guys are true believers and a lot of the screwed up things that happen in the book happen "in the name of god." Religion and faith have nothing to do with the outcome of the book, and it made me question why there was so many thematic elements wrapped up in religion when, at the end of the day, it didn't have anything to do with the resolution of the story.

Yes Under the Dome, has some issues. It is not King's best work. However, King on a bad day - which this certainly isn't a bad day for King, just not the best day - is still pretty darn good. Want a good read that will keep you turning pages? This is it, though be warned, like in many Stephen King novels, really screwed up things happen to decent people. Looking for a near-perfect example of brilliant characterization? This is your book. I recommend it to the reader who enjoys a good story as equally as the reader who is seeking to study the crafting of great fiction.

On My Bookshelf

2011-04-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

I've had a few people ask me about which writing reference books I've read and found useful, so I thought I'd make a post containing the books I've collected and kept over the years. This is actually the perfect time to do this, as I've thinned the ranks in our most recent move. Shelf space is tight in my tiny little room so cuts had to be made. I decided to let of of the books I did because of many factors: They weren't really as neat as I thought they were when I was just getting started in writing, they overlap information with books I could not absolutely do without (and lacked the same clarity as books I did keep), or in a few cases, they didn't really have anything worthwhile to say.

I've broken the books into loose sections for the ease of my few readers. I have provided links to Amazon, and yes, I do receive money if anyone uses the links to make purchases.

Grammar and Basics

The Elements of Style (4th Edition)

The Art of Styling Sentences

The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

Spunk & Bite: A Writer's Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style

The Process/Craft of Writing

Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting

Writing the Breakout Novel

Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook

The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great

On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft

Books I Found While Pursuing My Degree

These books require a bit of special attention, as I discovered them in my quest to have some letters behind my name that say I'm kind of smart and have a lot of debt.

From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction

This book focuses on creating "literary" fiction, but don't let that turn you off. There's a lot in here that will help the budding writer. Pages 14 and 15 are worth the entire price of admission all on their own. I don't agree with everything Butler has to say in what I think of as, "The Blue Book," but even the parts I don't agree with are worth looking. He will make you think of how to write through your characters in and entirely new way.

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (8th Edition)

A pricey book. I remember looking at it as I was shopping for books the semester I had "Craft of Fiction" with Matthew Clark Davidson. I gasped, nearly fainted. It's such a small book by comparison to some other. It's worth it. Every penny. Burroway and Stuckey-French cover every aspect of the craft of writing, beginning with process and going straight through to revision. They use examples from all over the literary spectrum to make their points. This is not a book to read once - well, none of the books in this list are - and cast away in favor of other books. This is a book to keep and reference over the long course of a writing career. As you grow as a writer, this book will raise to the same level, giving up more information and knowledge as you mature and hone your craft.

The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing

Written by Alice LaPlante, one of the few teachers at SFSU who not only took my desire - no, my drive - to write science fiction and fantasy seriously, she actually encouraged it and defended it against those naysayers among my peers. She was there with me, taking the very first tentative steps into my novel Dead Weight, back when it was just a short story. She believed in me enough to take me under her wing for a semester of independent studies and brought out some of my best writing ever in my final "Work in Progress" Class. This book also takes a journey into turning writers into master craftsman. The brilliance of Alice book is twofold: 1) the conversational tone she uses to convey what she has to tell you, and 2) the writing exercises she gives that directly relate to the lessons she's teaching in each chapter.

The Business of Writing

Writing to Sell (couldn't find an image link)

The First Five Pages: A Writer'S Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile

Genre Based Writing Books

How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction 101: Where to Start Reading and Writing Science Fiction

Wow, that's quite the list, and I've left out some of my more esoteric that I have just because I think they're cool. I'll post them at some point, but not today. I've given you more than enough reading material for the time being. If any of my limited followers have books they think l should take a look at, I'd love to hear what you've got.

We're Not in Kansas Any More

2011-04-14T18:38:00.000-07:00

Been a bit of time since I've dedicated some time to this blog, and I realize I left off with a bit of a cliff hanger. I'd mentioned going into setting, and the how differences between setting in gaming and writing engaging fiction.

First and foremost, let's get this one thing out of the way: In fiction, the purpose of setting, before all other things is not, as many people in fantasy writing might have you think, to draw the reader into the wonderfully imaginative world the writer has created. No! Not even a little bit! I can hear people reading this silently screaming in protest, and maybe even someday when I make it big, the possibility of professional fantasy writers reading these words long after I've written them. If we don't get the reader immersed in the world right away, then they won't buy into our characters adventures. Nothing could be further from the truth. Readers don't care about your world! They aren't interested in your world. Not in the least, and you can't make them care or be interested in your world, no matter how deeply detailed your descriptions are. Readers care about characters.

In gaming, fantasy gaming especially, a group of characters steps into some kind of setting: a tavern, a dungeon, a castle, a forest glen. The Game Master goes into detail about what the characters will notice on the surface of this location. This description is usually very generic, as it's a pain in the butt for a Game Master to figure out what each character is going to notice as individuals. Once the broad splash of details has been cast out, the players can then ask clarifying questions based on what their characters might notice beyond this superficial description. And this time honored process works for gaming. There's no reason to change it.

Unfortunately, too many gamers-turned-writers use this method of description in their stories. (And more than a handful of currently published fantasy writers.)

This is bad. Bad, bad, BAD!

In the first case: The characters in fiction can't ask clarifying questions about the setting. (Though, that might be a really cool set up for a story.) The reader really can't. Worse: The reader doesn't care. I think I've mentioned that before, but let me say it again one more time, just to be sure you get it:

THE READER DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR SETTING NO MATTER HOW COOL IT IS!

Sure, there are exceptions. There are always exceptions. However, as a rule, even fantasy fans don't read fantasy for the detailed world building an author goes into. They read fantasy to experience that world vicariously through the characters who live in that world.

This brings me to the actual "craft of fiction" portion of this post. Setting should only serve as a vehicle to further develop your characters and enrich your story. Describing your setting, in any genre, for the sake of setting alone is wasted words.

We as readers need to experience the setting through the awareness of the character moving through that setting. Different people are going to notice different things about a place. It's just the way human beings are built. Yes, I realize that many characters in fantasy are of some other race then "human"; however, that's a big fat can of worms I'm not going to get into just now, other than to say that any "non-human" character must have enough human-like characteristics for your reader to identify with him or her in someway; if the character is too alien, then it becomes less of a character and more of a world building/plot devise and falls close to the wasted words category.

Let's take a look at three of the most popular fantasy series of the last twenty years and see how they hold up on this theory. I'm speaking of The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Malazan Book of the Fallen. I'm specifically leaving Harry Potter and The Sword of Truth out of this because the authors of those have publicly claimed that they do not write fantasy. Yes, I have an opinion on the claims these authors have made. No, I don't care to share it at this time.

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

A massive scope of a world. Over a dozen cultures. A cast of hundreds. Thousands of years of history.

Where do we start? With a shepherd boy going to town with his father for the beginning of spring celebration. The complication is added when he sees a mysterious figure whose cloak does not blow in the wind. Then we meet Rand's two friends. Normal small-town guys, who also see this strange figure. Jordan brilliantly grounds us in familiar territory with identifiable characters with the tension of a mystery before launching us out into the big, wide, terrifantastic world he's invented. The result: millions of people around the world are along for the ride, and a very long line it is.

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin

Seven Kingdoms on one continent, oh and that other continent across the sea. So many characters and factions that each book requires a list of who everyone is and who they are allied with. Even the characters who died before the series started need their own scorecard.

This one opens with Lord Eddard Stark out with some of his kids to execute a man for abandoning his sacred post in the Blackwatch. (It's been years since I've read it, so I might be somewhat addled, but I know there's an execution.) Eddard explains to his kids, that the man who pronounces sentence it the man who should wield the sword. We have here a character full of honor and responsibility. He takes his duties as a lord seriously, even the ones he'd rather not have. We also see his children, at least the boys in this scene, especially as we see these opening events from one of Eddard's younger sons. We're hooked long before we see the court or the lands across the sea, even before we know that the seasons are out of wack in the land of Westeros. By the time we do, we're invested enough in the characters to care what that means. If we didn't, if Martin had begun with "the seasons are out of whack, and winter is coming, and it's going to suck for all these people," we wouldn't care less.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson.

Steven Erikson decided to go on an archeological dig for his mid-life crisis. You can read his recounting of it here: http://lifeasahuman.com/author/stevenerikson/. He put his anthropological and arceological knowledge into overdrive with his friend, Ian C Esselmont when they created their world, which has six or seven continents and several hundred thousand years of back story and history. Why that much? Because some of the characters in the series have been alive that long. Talk about information overload. Oh, and take all of Jordan's cast, and Martin's cast, then double them, and you start to maybe get to about half of all the characters that pop up in this series.

Steven opens up his series where empires expand and fall, gods war with each other, mortals play games of power that span across these continents, and gods and mortals manipulate and pull each other's strings for amusement and power. One of the pivotal points of this series, and where the series opens, is a power grab for the throne of the Malazan empire. We see this through the eyes of Ganoes Paran, a young boy as he's talking to the now Empress Laseen. Things are hinted at, but not revealed. After that, we jump years forward, to a fisherman and his daughter, and see them caught up in the schemes of a pair of gods. Normal folks, getting caught up by events far far above them.

Now, at this point, not everyone is along for the ride, as more than a few people I know, intelligent readers all, have problems getting into the Erikson's work. Part of that is because unlike many other fantasy writers, Erikson does not spoon feed his world and setting down his reader's throats. His stories are far too big for that. He must give us ONLY what is new to the character's observations. His books contain almost no descriptions of clothing and the physical descriptions of his characters. He does these only in-so-far-as it is absolutely necessary to convey some portion of his story or to bring out some important detail of a character, either the observer or the observed. His characters gloss over details that they have seen time and time again, listing things by name with little or no details other than that. Like if I were to mention that I saw a really sweet Mustang convertible, and you were narrating the story of your life, you would not think to yourself about all the details, the image of said car would pop into your head; a few images might pop into your head based on not knowing the year, but you're mind would leave it at that and move on. Erikson's characters do the same, so that when a detailed description does come up, the careful and intelligent reader knows that it's important.

Anyone interested in understanding setting as it relates to characterization would do well to read the first few books of each of these series. They make us care, and even though some people might struggle at the beginning with Steven Erikson, in my opinion, he is by far the most talented of the three, with a deep understanding of how to use words to the maximum effect. I easily place him in the same esteem with such writers as Earnest Hemingway and Harlan Ellison.

The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time, Book 1)
A Game of Thrones (Song of Ice and Fire)
Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen)

Sorry....

2011-04-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

I've been absent from this blog for a while. Sorry. Had a lot of things going on in my head that I needed to get sorted out. Well, I'm still sorting, but I'm past the point where the sorting is so loud it drowns out everything else. So it's back to work for me. And by work, I mean the writing.

First and foremost: I discovered this little gem of a blog:

http://bordersblog.com/scifi/category/jim-butcher-and-patrick-rothfuss/

It's an ongoing dialog between two very fine fantasy writers: Jim Butcher and Patrick Rothfuss. It's just getting going, but I've already learned some great wisdom from these men about writing and life. Plus: it's just pure fun.

The writing challenge of the day will return next Monday or Tuesday after I get home and I unpack my Grumpy coffee mug. I will even do my utmost to actually do them and post them.

Got the PDFs of my four short stories in the email from Fantasy Flight Games. w00t!!!!! I keep opening them and getting all giddy at the "By: Michael Gallowglas" underneath the title. I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of that.

Off for now, but more to come soon. Until then, I leave you with this thought:

"The teacher worth learning from is the one still learning themselves and free enough of ego to admit to mistakes and even ignorance." - D. Stone.

Daily Writing Challenge

2011-03-10T18:57:00.000-08:00

Recently, I've suddenly found myself mentoring a few other writers who seem to trust that I have some inkling that I know what I'm talking about. I'm flattered and humbled that they've placed this trust in me. I was chatting with one of my padawans this morning on face book and remembered my collection of writing prompts and exorcises. I have a massive coffee mug a friend brought me from Disneyland. It's Grumpy of Snow White fame. In it are a bajillion scraps of paper that have what I like to call writing challenges, little prompts for no other purpose than practicing writing for the sake of practicing writing. I got the prompts from two classes in school: Characterization and Craft of fiction. I pulled one out and fired it off to her via IM.

Hours later, I've decided to post these challenges here on Words, Words.... Words. I'll be posting what little things I come up with, I'm hoping other people will as well. The work that comes from these pieces is not supposed to be full stories, just quick scenes no more than a page or two just to practice various elements of the craft of fiction.

Todays challenge is:

Take two characters and have them confront each other without the use of dialog or violence.

Where the Hell are We?

2011-03-09T00:10:00.000-08:00

As I said in a recent post, I've been working on rewriting my buddy Steve's story "Knight of the Living dead." We've had a couple of conversations about the piece before going into it, both in person and via IM and email. I've been working it and having a great time doing so. It's a wonderful exercise, taking this very fun, raw piece of work and fleshing it out. The big challenge has been to maintain Steve's voice and being true to his vision of the work. Good for me as a writer to try and be someone else's voice. I'm learning a lot.

The story is very rough, and Steve knows it, but I don't think it's as rough as he thinks it is. It's a fun romp through the land of make believe. I've read bits of the follow up stories. They are much better. Steve is getting better. Much better. The current piece, "Restless Knights" shows his growth as a writer. We're currently tossing around ideas of a venue we can publish these. Stay tuned for details.

One of the things working on KotLD is really helping me with is setting. In my experience, setting is one of the hardest parts of writing fiction. To truly succeed within a story, setting must be more than a list of details about the place a particular character, or group of characters happens to be as the story unfolds. In someways, setting is a character in and of itself. In other ways, setting is a window into the view point character's personality; what people notice gives us insight into how they think and what's important to them. It can heighten tension in the story and ad greater conflict. The list goes on and on.

Steve's story takes place at a Renaissance Faire. The original draft of the story was intended solely for the amusement of Steve and other Ren Faire folk. The details about the setting are sparse. Only the most necessary points of setting required by the story have been given. This is actually a brilliant piece of storytelling by Steve: The story comes to the reader from several first person characters. These characters are intimately familiar with Faire and what it's like. They aren't going to notice or comment on all the details they are used to seeing. They are going to comment on things that are out of place. From my initial reading, I believe the narrators are also relating the event of the story to other people who are familiar with Faire, which is true enough, because Steve did write it for his Faire buddies. The brilliance is that the character know Faire, the audiance knows Faire, so Steve cuts to the chase and gets down to the business of zombies trying to eat people and people trying to get away.

My challenge: Take this sparse bit of setting and make it accessible to people who aren't as familiar with Faires, WITHOUT compromising the integrity of the characters or Steve's original voice. How am I doing that? Partially by breaking off from the story being told by a Faire person to other Faire people. Now its a recounting of the events, partially with the understanding that the audience for the tale is expanding and some of the readers might not be too familiar with the world of Faire. Still, I needed to handle in a way that remained true to the characters. I'm working it in details about Faire as zombies interact with them. The zombies are what's making this different than any other day at Faire, so I figure that's the best way to show off the setting. I think it's working out pretty well so far.

It's getting late. I'm getting tired. The battery on my laptop is winding down. Next time, I'll continue my discussion of setting as it applies to the translating gaming into fiction, and why again, this creates problems.

May all your stories have happy endings.

Thanks to Steve

2011-03-05T00:23:00.000-08:00

I've been in a bit of a funk the last few days. Don't know why, but I made some progress getting out of it. A while back, my good friend Steve of Myth and Magic ask me to help him rework his story, "Knight of the Living Dead." It's a story about Zombies invading Renaissance Fair. I just took my first stab at it this evening, and I gotta say, I feel better. Writing is great for distracting the brain from all the negative crap bouncing around.

I'm also humbled and honored that Steve has placed his tale in my hands. Thanks buddy.

We're discussing several strategies to get this bad boy out there in some format so our friends, family, and fans can enjoy this story.

Earning it part one.

2011-02-24T23:55:00.000-08:00

Let's go back to starting a story in a tavern, that dreaded opener that editors dread, and how that relates to one of the two greatest lessons I learned in pursuit of my BA. (Yeah, I'm going to mention that from time to time. I'm rather proud of it.) Anyway. The lesson I'm specifically speaking about comes from the brilliant Matthew Clark Davison, when he told his Craft of Fiction class, "You can do anything you want in fiction, as long as you earn it." This ties in nicely to turning gaming into engaging fiction. "Earning it" in this sense means, getting the reader to suspend his or her disbelief long enough to slog through the story or novel. This is a huge challenge when dealing with things not in the "real" world.

Side not: Why Stephanie Myers fails and succeeds all at the same time with the Twighlight books (along with a metric crapton of other vampire fiction.) You can't get me to suspend my disbelief long enough to accept that a Vampire with ZOMG awesome sUpEr poawerzzzz is going to hang out at high school waiting to pick up the love of his life. I can't do it. I had to put down Laura K Hamilton's first Anita Blake book in the first chapter because she didn't earn me continuing further. However, in Ms Hamilton's defense, I made it past the first page. The flip side of this is that Myers has an almost automatic win with her audience, teen age girls. (Or women who wish they were teenage girls.) (Or men who are hoping to figure out the secret to getting teenage girls to put out, but if that's the case, Twighlight is the wrong education manual.) I digress. Almost every American Teenage Girl alive today wants a Vampire with ZOMG awesome sUpEr poawerzzzz is going to hang out at her high school waiting to pick her as the love of his life, etc... etc...

Now, back to the tavern business at hand.The Name of the Wind is not only one of the most brilliant (this is my current overly-used word) debut novel of all times, I would argue that it is among the best novels I have ever read. The world and the main character are so richly envisioned that I have been eagerly awaiting the sequel for the last two years. The Name of the Wind is 722 pages of I think 10 point, Times New Roman font. That's a bunch of words, especially for a first time novel. Rothfuss has garnered quite a following with this tale, along with some pretty hefty royalty checks. The irony: His story begins in a tavern.

duh dud DAAHHH!!!!!

Yes, it's true. The book that Kevin J Anderson says, "... a fabulous debut, standing firmly on the main stage of the fantasy genre and needing no warm up act. Jordan and Goodkind must be looking nervously over their shoulders,"opens the way so many editors cry out not to open a book. But, in the same way, but completely differently, I wowed the editors of Black Gate Magazine and sold a story based on one line, Rothfuss sells us on his story, despite being in a tavern. He changes it up. We have an unexpected opening, that really makes the careful reader want to go along for the ride.

"It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts."

We get a completely different picture of a tavern than we are used to in that over-used setting. Noise usually bombards the reader through whichever character is experience this. We want to know more about this silence, and why it is split into three parts. Right their, Rothfuss lets us know that we are not in for the typical fantasy story. Oh, it may have some things that we're used to seeing, but he's going to show us these things in an entirely new light. If you have not read this book, do so. Get it. Read it. The second book The Wise Man's Fear comes out March 1st. I can't wait to see what twists Rothfuss has in store for us.

Like Rothfuss does, and sort of what I did, you can do anything at all, IF you earn it. I didn't really earn it with my line, "An elf, and android, and a lawyer walk into a tavern," because I didn't go anywhere with it.

Again, I can't shamelessly plug these two books enough. GET THEM. READ THEM. Then read them again, you'll learn more about character development that you can possibly imagine, if you read carefully.

2011-02-22T22:29:00.000-08:00

I haven't been feeling well the last week or so with some head cold/ flu thing that completely kicked my ass and knocked me out. I've been fiddling with some stuff here and there, but I haven't managed anything major.

Projects that I've struggled with just to kind of keep me in the habit of writing the last week.

"Jaludin's Road" - I've been changing the narration in this story from a close third-person narrator to a very distant first-person narrator. Jaludin is looking back on these events over the distance of many years, and due to this, I believe the story is much more engaging. We get a greater sense of who the character is, not only as a young man in the story itself, but also the character remembering his actions as a young man. I first used this technique on my story "How the Half-faced Man Taught Me to Walk Across the Desert." This story takes place in the same desert fantasy world as "Jaludin's Road" and I imagine the characters Jaludin and Shayanira meeting someday. It will be interesting to see how they each feel about that encounter.
Speaking of "How the Half-faced Man Taught Me to Walk Across the Desert," I've been doing some tweaking with that one too. I've modified the character of the Master, both in small mannerisms and in appearance to be more in-line with the person who inspired the character. I also read a little line from Robert Silverberg's SCIENCE FICTION 101, as part of his commentary on one of the stories. I don't have the bit directly in front of me at the moment, but it was something like, "it's nice when the end of a story points back to the beginning." I say again, that is a rough paraphrase. I've shifted the scenes around a bit, not too much, but just a bit, so that the end ties back to the beginning in what I believe is a satisfying way. A bit more tweakage, and it should be ready to send off. I'm thinking this one will be off to "The Writers of the Future" contest.
I've been thinking about DEAD WEIGHT lately. Boyscout, Wish, Cendrine, and the girl who could paint have been nagging the back of my brain to come and visit them for a bit. The problem is, I'm not sure I want to go into that dark place right now. It's easily my darkest story, and considering some of the things going on in TEARS OF RAGE, that's saying quiet a bit. I've noticed that I'm getting more and more emotionally involved in my writing, even in these short little blog posts, to the point where what I'm writing is affecting my moods even after I stop typing. I don't know what that might mean if I take up Boyscout's tale again.
Got a message from my contact with Fantasy Flight Games. It seems he liked one of the characters I'd created for my short fiction pieces so much that he wants to talk about adding him to the continuous story arch. This is very cool for me. Of the pieces I wrote, the one this character came out of the one that was the most challenging by far. The weird part about that was it was the one I had the most freedom with. I solved the problem by creating a character idea that I really fell in love, which in turn made for a compelling piece. The sad part about that, and the reason this news is so awesome, is that I don't own him. Due to my contract with FFG, I give over all rights to the works I write for them, including any characters I invent. Hopefully this means I get to explore this guy and expand one his peculiar form of madness for some time.
READING: As I said, I've been exploring Robert Silverberg's SCIENCE FICTION 101, an anthology of some of the stories that shaped Silverberg as a young writer, along with comments by SIlverberg as to why these are master works of writing craftsmanship. It's hard to find, but if you see a copy, I urge you to pick it up. March is going to be a good month of reading for me, and has caused a bit of a dilemma. THE CRIPPLED GOD, by Steven Erikson and THE WISE MAN'S FEAR by Patrick Rothfuss are both coming out on the same day, March 1st. I've been rereading THE NAME OF THE WIND, by Rothfuss in anticipation. My dilemma - I didn't know which to read first. I've got it figured out. I'm going to read Rothfus first. Then I'm going to put everything else aside and reread the entire MALAZAN BOOK OF THE FALLEN from book one to book ten, as well as Esslemont's two Malazan books KNIGHT OF KNIVES and RETURN OF THE CRIMSON GUARD. Maybe, just maybe, by the time I'm finished with that, George RR Martin with have completed the next book in ASoIaF.

That's all I've got for writing and reading currently. I'll get back to my ideas relating gaming and fantasy fiction in a bit.

Thanks all for reading.

Badder than Bad

2011-02-15T00:16:00.000-08:00

I've let some ideas stew in my mind over this last weekend, sometimes on the back burner, sometimes right up front. One time, I almost jumped out of bed near midnight to make a post. But that was at about midnight, and I had to work the next morning. I contemplated putting some of it down and saving it for later, but I kinda felt that I had to get this all out at once; otherwise, it would come out all disjointed.

I'm going to continue tying the pitfalls of fantasy fiction and role playing games together, and how a beginning writer can learn a lot about the craft of constructing fiction by studying role playing games. When last I left you, I had espoused the concept of realism in Fantasy.

Yeah.

I know.

Oxymoron.

But not. Really not.

The truth is, if a writer is going to write engaging fantasy, the writer must ground at least some of his or her work in some aspect of reality. If not, the writer is likely, sooner or later, to lose his or her audience's willingness to suspend their collective disbelief and keep going along for the ride -- more often than not, this loss usually comes sooner rather than later.

Then where do we find this realism in a genre that strives to escape the bounds of reality? How can we give the reader something real to latch onto when the massive scope of our imaginations is up for grabs? First and foremost, we have to start with the characters. The people that populate the multitudes of worlds that exist in the infinite possibilities that fantasy provides for us must be real people. In someways, they must be hyper-real people. Fantasy fiction is filled with stereotypical characters, most of the time having to do with where they stand on the morality scale of good and evil, light and dark. While many of the great fantasy novels deal with the battle between good and evil, the characters within these great novels are rarely at one extreme or another. Yes, many novels or stories do have characters that are wholly good or wholly evil, but we can hardly consider works with such characters as great.

I ran a game that opened with three characters with very little memory come into themselves at an abandoned, two-story house in the modern-day San Francisco Bay Area. One of the characters has a folder naming her the beneficiary in a will. The three characters decide to explore the house. Eventually, they make their way upstairs and find a wooden case that contains an old-fashioned, single-shot dueling pistol... made of bone. It seems a solid piece, yet the trigger and hammer move.

The discovery of this weapon led to almost an hour of hilarity as the players, and thus the characters tried to figure the thing out. At a later point, we were recounting this gaming session to an acquaintance who was also a gamer. (Gamers love to talk about the adventures their characters have as if the players themselves actually lived the experiences.) This friend interrupted the story, saying that had he been playing, his character would have just pointed the gun at another character's head and pulled the trigger. Just to see what happened. We asked why. He replied, "I like playing evil characters."

So much of fantasy fiction is peppered with this kind of character: the vile, despicable character who does nasty things to people merely for the sake of doing nasty, vile, reprehensible things. In gaming, I suspect people play this kind of character because they feel they feel powerless and beaten down in the real world, and they wish to lash out at it, or they suffer from some deep insecurity, or I could just be blowing smoke based on some half-recollected memories of these kinds of characters. The biggest problem with his kind of character is that: while the shock value of the character's first few nasty deeds may get the readers' attention and make them wonder how the hero is going to deal with this baddie, rarely are such villains engaging over the course of a novel or series of novel.

I have to admit, I really enjoy playing villainous characters, but there is a huge difference between villainous and evil. The world is full of bad people who do horrible things. Vary rarely are these people doing horrible things out of some sense on fundamental morality. Some people are wired wrong, sociopaths etc... but they are rare. To be truly villainous, someone has to understand humanity on some level and have a massive self-preservation instinct. Otherwise, said individual (or character) is unlikely to remain free for very long, and in the long run, as I previously stated, not much fun to read about over the long hall.

How do we overcome this as writers? Make your villains human. Give them human motivations for the things they do far removed from just being the high priest of an evil god or the ever-popular unquenchable thirst for power. Give them things they truly care about and weaknesses the hero, or other characters, can exploit. Two of my favorite example of a villainous characters are Jaime Lannester from George RR Martin's A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, and the character Hrahten of Brandon Sanderson's debut novel ELANTRIS. I won't eve begin to touch on Jaime, because that particulate character study could erupt into being my control very quickly, so I'll speak of Hrathen. Hrathen is a religious zealot, a high ranking priest of his religion sent to spearhead an invasion of a foreign kingdom -- a theme common in many fantasy novels. However, Hrathen is different in that he's not a zealot because his heart bursts with the purity of faith; rather, his religion makes logical sense. I found this approach a fresh change. Not only that, he understands that other members of his religion do possess great passion for their faith. He is jealous of these people and interacting with them gives him moments where he doubts and questions himself. Because of Sanderson's fresh take on this theme, Hrathen's story arch is at least as engaging as the hero's.

In an upcoming post, I plan to discuss the flipside of this issue: The character who is saintlike in his goodness.

Hubris and the Inner Editor

2011-02-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a separate blog post for a few hours, following up on where I left of last time. Lost in a train of though, I went back to review what I'd already written, and wow I think I sound pretty arrogant. Here I am, pontification on what makes good fantasy and bad fantasy and how we can relate that to how people play their characters in role playing games - all with only a piddly little short term contract with a gaming company for four tiny 500 word stories. "My, oh my," I thought to myself, "what the hell am I doing?"

My inner editor kicked in, and I started thinking about the reactions people might have over that. I saved that post and immediately brought up a new post to work though that here. We writers are fragile gods. Fragile gods.... I really like that, especially as a term to describe writers.

We craft whole new worlds, either alternate versions of earth or other planets entirely, populated with people who only exist in the ether of the imagination. We play with these worlds, creating and destroying on a whim, at least in the first draft; in future drafts creation and destruction are usually very calculate. I am writer, how like a god! Then I think about it a bit too long. Someone says the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong moment. I read something about craft and technique from one of my heroes. And it all goes to crap. I suck. Why am I even trying?

This is the roller coaster that is my writing mind. From what I've read about and heard about other writers, I'm not alone in this tumultuous love affair with writing. Why must it be so? Why oh why can't I be a Heinlein or a Silverberg or and Ellison, though I suspect that they to have had moments of doubt. Well, maybe not Ellison, or not that he'd admit in public.

That moment, although I've had many such moments in my life, made me realize that I've lived most of my writing career -- career in the sense of engaging in the act of writing, rather than in the sense of getting paid for what I've written -- in the state of being fragile; I need to really try and grab onto that god part more often.

Writers are such fragile gods.

"You're sitting in a tavern and a stranger walks in..."

2011-02-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

Magazines and websites that publish fantasy fiction have wide and varied guidelines. I believe this is because fantasy fiction itself is a wide and varied genre. A writer is free to explore pretty much anything he or she wants. Different publishing venues have different visions of where they want to go and what their target audience wants to read. A magazine dedicated to traditional swords and sorcery in the tradition of Fritz Leiber and Robert E Howard is unlikely to read, much less publish contemporary urban fantasy like Jim Butcher and Kim Harrison. (These are all fine authors for many reasons. The fledgling writer and pro could do worse than read these four with an eye for craft. I haven't read much of Kim Harrison, but she constructs her sentences and paragraphs well, a trait absent in most published urban Fantasy hitting the bookshelves these days.) With this in mind, it is of utmost importance that any writer wishing to sell his or her fantasy fiction understand what any potential market is looking for. I have read dozens of guidelines for such markets. Nearly every single one has a line that read something like, "Please you ignorant hacks, DO NOT send us anything that remotely resembles you recounting the adventures of your Dungeons and Dragons (or other popular RPG) gaming group. WE WILL NOT publish such drivel." Well, okay, maybe they phrase it a little more politely, but that's really the spirit of the thing.

HOWEVER! An exception to every rule exists.

Exception #1: Ladies and Gentleman, I present Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont, co-creators of the world of "The Malazan Book of the Fallen." Erikson is expecting the publication of his tenth novel set in this world and Esslemont has two published novels, and I believe is hard at work on another. Erikson's series is one of the most critically acclaimed fantasy series thus far in the 21st century. Here's the kicker: They are writing about a world they created originally for role-playing game adventures. I have my suspicions of other writers who have done the same, but I cannot confirm that. I suspect from the stigma that comes with such fiction, though Erikson and Esslemont openly admit it, as if they are proud of such roots. Erickson plainly admits to this in his introduction to Esslemont's first published Malazan book, A Night of Knives.

Exception #2: The World Fantasy Convention in Austin Texas. The Friday Night parties are in full swing. I'm wandering around with Robin and a pair of friends we made that weekend; those two friends also hopeful and hungry writers on the prowl for business contacts. I believe it was Jay Lake's birthday party, where Jeniffer Jackson (an agent with the Donald Maass Literary agency) pointed out several magazine editors to me. Two of these individuals were the co-editors of Black Gate magazine. I went up to speak to them, asking about what they like to see. One of them said, "I'll tell you what I don't want to see. I don't want any stories that open in a tavern." (Most clichéd gaming stories open in a tavern where the party of adventures receives a quest from a mysterious stranger.) I immediately fired back with, "An elf, an android, and a lawyer walk into a tavern." The editor fired back with, "I'll buy that story right now." Sadly, I'm only a single page into that story after about four years. I'm having trouble living up to that first line. So I don't know if he would have actually published said story, but it's a great anecdote.

So, what is it about these two examples that gets publishers and editors to look beyond "Don't send us gaming stories?"

In the case of my example, I think it was about shock value and originality. Which is why I'm having trouble doing anything with that particular piece. I've got a lot to live up to in whatever story follows that first line. I've got some thoughts bustling around in the back of my head, but nothing concrete. One of these days, I'll have to sit myself down and just write that bloody story.

In the example of Mr Erikson and Mr Esslemont, it boils down to Three things: 1) They are brilliant! Having spoken with both of them at several Conventions, they are among the smartest people I know. 2) They write well. (Again, the fledgling writer and pro could do worse than read these two.) 3) They have a basic understanding of the human condition and the underlying knowledge of what motivates people on an individual and community scale. Many writers, much less writers who would turn the adventures of their local gaming group into fiction do not grasp that these requirements of good fiction exist, much less have anything resembling a competency of putting said requirements into practice. Hell, I'm not sure I have anything resembling competency of putting these requirements into practice.

I could probably write a dissertation on this from the writing perspective, but I'm actually not interested in doing so. I'm more interested in examining this from the gaming perspective, because I've often wondered why people don't want to see "gaming" stories, when they can be soooooo cool.

Let's get this out in the open right now: I AM A GAMER. I will probably always be a gamer. I think Role Playing games are one of the greatest things to come out of the late 20th century. I think RPGs have saved thousands of teenage geeks kids over the last few decades.

After quite a bit of reflection, I think I know why most gaming doesn't translate into fiction. Most gamers don't actually have any interest in realism in their gaming experience. "But wait!" some of you may be asking. "Isn't the point of gaming to escape from realism?" Yes! However, if one is interested in transforming their gaming experience into engaging fiction, they must be grounded enough in reality for the fiction to engage the reader. "But wait! Reality in fantasy? Isn't the point of fantasy to escape reality?" Yes and no. In order for a reader to buy into a writer's fantastic fiction, said fiction must have some aspect that is so realistic that the reader is willing to accept the unrealistic elements without question.

In my next few posts, I'll examine use gaming as a vehicle to examine the pitfalls of fantastic fiction. Stay tuned true believers!

As a special treat, here's what I've got so far of my stalled story to Black Gate Magazine:

An elf, an android, and a lawyer walked into a tavern.
Just as the lawyer stepped across the threshold an arm, thick as a tree limb and rippling with muscles, blocked his path. A face the color of stagnant swamp water containing a pug nose and a mouth full of teeth leaned in close – so close that the lawyer could smell the dusk-troll’s last four meals, each one rotten meat. It sniffed at him with enough force to pull several of his perfectly groomed hairs out of place.
Both the elf and android moved to interpose themselves between the troll and the lawyer, but the lawyer raised a solitary finger and both backed down.
“You a lawyer?” The dusk-troll sniffed the air a few inches away from the lawyer’s face. “You smell like a lawyer.”
The lawyer produced a business card. The troll shifted its attention from the lawyer’s face to the proffered piece of paper board. Its eyes squinted.
“Can’t read,” it growled.
“Ah.” The lawyer’s utterence held that distinct tone that learned men reserved for those they believe their intellectual inferiors. “The card reads, Irwin Reginald Smith of the law offices of DWC&H, and, I prefer the term, ‘Legal solicitor’.”
“Can’t ya read?”
The troll gestured, pointing his thumb over his shoulder to a sign that read, NO SOLICITING.
“Oh. Well. In that case, I’m a lawyer.”
“Oh. Well. In that case, we don’t serve your kind here.”
The troll moved slightly to the left, revealing a second sign. WE RESERVE THE RIGHT YO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE.

A Journey into Fantasy

2011-02-10T18:16:00.000-08:00

At the moment I am reading SCIENCE FICTION 101 edited by Robert Silverberg. It contains some of the stories that shaped him as a young writer, and he analyzes these works as to why they are not only brilliant stories, but brilliant Science Fiction stories. The Forward of this book is a recounting of Silverberg's rise as a young writer hoping to become a pro. He offers the insight into the crafting of science fiction from people he admired, and how their words taught him. This has inspired me to some extent, not only in my own fiction, but also in how I consider the "genre" that has chosen me as a vehicle.

Right now, let's get something straight between us: I believe that the work chooses a writer at least as much as the writer chooses the work. At least, in so far as those people who are honest with their fiction. Countless examples of copy-cat fiction line bookstore shelves of people who "choose" their brand of fiction in search of literary success, and there's nothing really wrong with that in and of itself. The problem comes for those of use who a drawn to a certain type of story that also seems ripe pickings for those people looking to make a quick buck as a writer.

I have the wonderful misfortune of being a fantasist. My ming turns to the magical and the strange more often than not as I'm writing a story. It's how I'm wired. I've tried writing main-stream and literary fiction. Several of my professors at SFSU demanded it of me. The work this produced was pail, dry, trying-too-hard, and ultimately, dishonest fiction. Perhaps I'll post some at a later date, just so people can see what I'm talking about. However, I digress. I say that I have the misfortune of being a fantasist because, aside from Romance, I can think of no other genre of fiction that contains so a large body of poorly written work -- with a great deal of it (romance and fantasy both) making a metric crap ton of money. And while some of the greatest fiction I've ever read is fantasy, the amount of drivel that one has to slog through to find it is mind boggling.

With this revelation in mind, and with my recent first sale (YAY ME), I find myself needing to explore the ins and outs of fantasy fiction. Over the next few weeks, I plan to make commentary on what makes good fantasy good and why so many people seem to fail it. I may site specific examples, but most likely this will be my own private musings. At this point, some people might be accusing me of an extreme case of hubris that I, unpublished writer, should dare assault the entire spectrum of fantasy with an eye toward literary criticism. At this point, I can merely reply to those people, "Perhaps, but I can do whatever I bloody want with my blog." If you have any disagreements with my assessments, feel free to respond to an of my posts. The bottom line is, I'm not undertaking this critical journey for anyone other than myself. It should be one hell of a ride!