ETA: Next book
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Tridents are used for cathcing fish.
From what I can remember, Satan is depicted to use it, or maybe it was pitchforks. But I don’t see any depiction of demons using tridents, or pitchforks. It doesn’t seem related to them.
Tizzy. It is common for names to have meaning especially in literature.Example:
Lucifer (Bible) = Lightbearer
Draco (Harry Potter Series) = Serpent
Ebenezer (A Christmas Carol) = Stone of HelpMy most favorite was in the children story Charlie and the Chocolate factory whose names are rather descriptive:
Veruca – Wart, a rather unpleasant meaning, don’t name your girls Veruca.
Teevee – TV
Gloop – you know what it means, paired with Agustus (= great), you have “great” gloop
Beauregarde – Regarded Highly; also Violet: “Violet! You’re turning violet!”Names in fiction can be very revealing. Well, some research:
Tizzy – an excited state of agitation; a nervous, excited, or distracted state… defines you very well
Thomas means Twin
Edward means Wealthy GuardianWell, authors tend choose the name of their characters carefully. Some even are so deliberate it is obvious:
Superman
Snow White
Cruela De VilThis is especially prevalent in Roman and Greek literatures. All their names pertain to something about the characters.
Also, in early times, people choose names carefuly. They tend to choose names for auspicious connotations. The meaning of names can be very optimistic:
Jack: God is Gracious
Sophia: Wise
William: Protection
Elizabeth: Oath of GodAfter all, no parents would like to name their children with something awful like Veruca, or Putrid, or Compost. Though in literature authors name villians and awful people awful names.
OK
Back…you know the one thing I’d forgotten about this place I am now, and it’s been 4,000+ years since I’d been here, is that all the dang steam plays a real number on my hair! It makes me look like some sort of deranged nut job! However, the soot seems to do wonders for my complexion!
Hmm, those names for Thomas and Edward seem particularly appropriate…but you can’t know completely why yet. Although the Thomas one should be pretty obvious if you’ve met Rupert.
Names are very important, particularly true names as they reveal your true nature!
As does your birthdate from both an Astrological and Numerological point of view!
Ah…of course.
Got so wrapped up in beta discussions here I forget that it looks dead to those who don’t have betademon vision.
So I posted update to Goodreads/Amazon but not here. DOH!
Beta 2 comments/suggests are slowing down to a crawl at the moment. So unless I hear of more big change requests/suggestions I am going to send it to the editor at the end of the week. [i][b]SPEAK UP NOW AND SOON BETA DEMONS!!![/b][/i]
She needs 4+ weeks; not sure exactly how many as it varies on how busy she is.
Give me a 1 to 1.5 weeks after I get it back to accept or reject edits. Clean it up and get it formatted for kindle and deadtree and get it through the approval process (rather slow for Dead Tree—they have to ship me a galley copy that I approve) and it live.
So it’s going to be early September at this point.
T-A-G
The 2nd edition of the first book…some of these posts in this thread are a bit old…
No “current” plans for a second edition of the 2nd book. Particularly because I have the technical editor working on the first edition this time rather than after publication.
So…first edition, second volume is now at the editor. She is booking 8 weeks, last time she came in early, we shall see. Fortunately, she works mostly sequentially so if beta demons have updates towards the end, we should be safe. Probably should have had this discussion sooner and got her working sooner….Nargh.
sooo… I noticed no one’s posted anything to these forums in almost 3 weeks. Any news? Working on book 3 or a new series? Didn’t you say something about spitting book 2 into book 2 and 3? What ever happened to the other half? Does the super-devil ride a Harley? Do wingless demon’s use jet packs, or hover boards? Of all the magics devices ever devised, you would think heat-death laser eye-wear would be closer to the top of the list. I mean, who [i]doesn’t[/i] want that?
Hi,
There are people posting in the Beta demon forums but even that has slowed down as of beta 4.
The book is at the technical editor; and I’m about to send the latest/extended ending to her this week (Monday). She hopes to be finished in the second half of September and then I need another 1.5 to 2 weeks to get it out there.
A lot of the beta 3/beta 4 editions were centered around the break point of books 2 and 3.
We’ve now shoved some of what was coming in book 3 into book 2 making it a bit longer than book 1. (There are also some other things throughout book 2 that are now going to book 3)
So in short, the book is basically complete, just waiting on editing and working on final polishes etc.
I expect to have it out by the end of September.
In the meantime, I am starting work on book 3.
On the tech issues; yes, there is some serious tech weaponry used in book 2.
T-A-G
So I finished book one a few hours ago, kick ass T-A-G! Also, thanks for the forums on appendixes on the website, gives me more DoA to read while I wait for book 2!
What?!?! Only 2?
Why not 3 or 4 thumbs up?
:d/
I myself have a mixed opinion, mainly due to the spurious allegations T-A-G has made about me being some sort of super manipulative interdimensional drug dealer.
So I give it 2 thumbs (Upper Right, Lower Left) up and 2 thumbs down (Upper Left, Lower Right), netting it out to 0 thumbs.
Reviews are what they are, reading is such a subjective experience by definition.
And I wrote this book(s) for hardcore SF/Fantasy/Gamer readers and such people, almost by definition, have strong passions. I know the crowd, I am the crowd.
The thing is, when one really gets into a book and then have to wait some time for the next, you can build up all these expectations for how you would have written it. If the author doesn’t do what you expected, or hoped, then you get a big huge letdown.
I hope that some who were disappointed will give it another shot later to read it without all the old expectations.
I knew I’d have some problems because I got responses for people that went in diametrically opposed directions in what they wanted to see. No way to keep everyone happy.
So there was this one guy on Amazon who called himself “The Hater” he read both the first and the second and post these 1 star reviews of both.
Hey as long as he read them…the gold crowns still pile up!
But at least hir lives up (?) to hir name. Hir hates. Went to look at some of hir other reviews. Lots of negative reviews, but a few positive ones which makes me almost curious to read the ones The Hater likes.
I think the criticism “I get” the most is probably the rehashing. I knew I was doing it, but I was trying to capture everyone’s reactions and responses. In hindsight, I should have been more efficient during these scenes so as to not over-retell. But I had a lot of people going “I want to know X person’s reactions!”
The POV switching was done in the first book, but since it took place over 30 days, individual scenes were longer. In the new book it’s 1/3 the time and I had to cover a lot of ground so shorter scenes because it was all happening at once.
I knew I was taking a chance, but I figured if you look at the pacing of modern TV shows (MTV generation++++) compared to older ones, I thought it would work for most.
Ah well.
Book 3 takes place over a longer period of time so POV switching will slow down, maybe back to Book 1 levels.
Definitely going to try to be careful and efficient on reaction scenes.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks!
There will be more Tom in book 3.
As I mentioned in the Amazon forums today, the reason there was so little Tom in the first half of book 2 was because he was sitting in his cave waiting for Talarius to regenerate, Reggie to acclimate and most importantly, figure out something to do!
Remember in Book 1, he spent a lot of time sitting bored in his cave making furniture. But because that was on a longer slower timescale, I could just skip in time.
However, in book 2, a lot of important stuff was happening in the aftermath of the book 1 battle, people were doing stuff, stuff that will have a direct effect on Tom in the future.
Therefore, those people who were doing stuff in that time frame got longer sections because in that “time period” they were actively doing stuff to advance the story, whereas Tom and friends were sitting around in a cave.
You note that Tizzy spent his time in the cave (the first half of the book) writing in this forum. If you go back and look at some older posts of his you’ll see him talk about being stuck in Tom’s cave, and he then got in a long discussion with Rosver and others about ruined buildings and such in the Courts…which Tom & Antefalken alude to when they meet up with Damien. His cavemates thought he was talking to himself, but he was actually writing/dictating in this forum he’s got like a magical “Dragon Naturally Speaking” spell or something.
Anyway, book 3 goes back to a larger time scale and now Tom has something, in fact an awful lot, to do. So his story time will get bumped up.
I’m one who give a negative review with 2 stars at Goodreads.
@JMX
Well, it would have been OK to have multiple POV if the POV characters are noteworthy and are relevant storywise or at least give something exetremely entertaining (like Scrat from Ice Age), but many of these POV characters aren’t. Specificaly many of the D’orcs like Ragala-nargoloth. They are a difinition of filler, very unneccesary ones.
Many POV characters are also given too much time they don’t deserve. Vaselle particularly is given lot of scenes and word space when he barely contribute anything. The D’Orcs party preparation is a bit obnoxious too.
It is not that it creates confusion or it is hard to follow, we just simply don’t care about them. And if we don’t care about them, we don’t want to read about them.
Of course, there is also the fact that I can’t see how to push the story forward. The Author Guy keeps saying that they do, but I just can’t see it. I read multiple times and I still can’t see it.
As for the reaction scenes, they are OK, though at times you linger too long on them and of course there are some characters whose reactions we don’t really care like this Randolf. These might be least of my complaints.
Though if I pin one thing that vastly affects my view, its the lack of cohesion. All the characters, all the events, all the details just come together in a erratic and disharmonious manner. There something going on with the council of wizards here, then there is this about the partheon of Tiernon, then something is going on with Oorstemoth too, and there is of course Tom, the mystery book which got with all of these, Rupert suddenly jostle in, and many others.
There is also lot of such things in the first book but they all go together for a solid experience. They layer together beautifuly like layers of lasagna. Book 2 however is so disjointed. Even though I can enjoy many of them individually, they don’t combine into one coherent experience.
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