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Sure…I will fix any that are reported.
You don’t have to go out of your way, but if you see some egregious ones…
I just got the 2nd Edition pushed to people this week, and this morning I got a reader asking why some mistakes he’d flagged in his notes were still there.
Turns out in one case the editor had commented on a wrong word as used by Oorstemothian’s they meant forestal violations (or similar) but said forestall which is a different word, but I missed her question about what I meant.
Then we both missed “Did you get a good luck at them?”
So every error counts!
Thanks for the long input, going to have to keep going back to these.
A lot of these plotlines are just starting, there’s the problem I mention in Fixing Big Issues that the book really needs to be twice as long.
A few notes.
Gadius an Gaius are two of the Knights working to rescue Talarius. Their story really gets going more in Book iii. These are the unicorn riding knights. One is blond/pale wears all white chainmail and rides a white unicorn, the other is Natooran (black) and wears all black and rides a black unicorn.
The elvish freakout starts at the end of book 2. They are very much freaking out, or going to be at the rise of the Orcs/D’Orcs. They are going to be principle antagonists to Tom, the D’Orcs and the Orcs.
The Nyjyr Ennead are the Egyptian gods plotting to steal the book as part of their plan to eventually remove the Etonians (Tiernon and friends) from Astlan.
The Orcs (Tal Gor) are going to help move the Abyss stuff back to Astlan in the run up to war with the Elves
Dante’s Inferno is a dark counterpoint to the Nimbus. It’s a ship designed to drill into the Abyss, or any other plane and server justice. They are planning to go into the Abyss, rescue Talarius and arrest (or kill) Tom. They are going to the Abyss in Book III. They will encounter demons of various parties and battle shall ensue.
Sentir Fallon, Aodh, Lilith teamed up and forged the dagger that Tom reversed. The soul stealing dagger that killed Orcus. Formed by antimus, it has been corrupting the Church and Talarius who was carrying it.
Sentir Fallon did this without the knowledge of Tiernon. Aodh…we don’t know what his God thinks of this, but it may have been tacit approval. Lilith wanted to get rid of her chief adversary/obstacle in the Abyss. Tom concerns them greatly because if he’s Orcus coming back, there is going to be hell to pay because he will come directly after them.
I am working to try and make this clearer in beta 2. The elvish issue in particular is getting spelled out.
Yes, I’ve wondered about that. I think part of it can be environmental, e.g. right book, right time; it hits your current mood/outlook and generates a positive emotion/good time. And part of it is just the outlook of the characters match your outlook, or resonates with it because maybe it’s not your outlook but one you can ‘get.’
But I also think there is something about how much the author likes the book that improves the quality of the book. Does they author really get into the story? And can they successfully share that enjoyment with the reader.
You see this with really big name authors who end up churning out book after book for the money, not for the story. Often times such $ books seem soulless.
An example I like to go with is Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality. He clearly loved writing the first book, On a Pale Horse, and I can reread that again and again. But each successive book gets more and more soulless, like he’s just going through the motions to finish the idea, when he’s actually fallen out of love with the idea but needs to make the thing ‘complete’
This is also why I don’t mind waiting for someone like GRRM to finish ‘the next book’ (as long as he doesn’t die of old age first) because to make it good, he has to ‘feel’ the story and enjoy it. Now of course, that being said, I don’t know if it would be possible to reread all the Ice and Fire books a crap load of times, because one would die of old age oneself while doing so…
I think in the first case; her statement is (or supposed to be) much more sarcastic and derogatory than you are reading it. Will look at it to make it more obvious that she is being quite scathing.
The second case, I think you have a good point. I need to think on this. Being a thaumaturge and a healer, it is possible she would know this, but very few she would be talking to would. I will reword this to be more culturally accurate.
Little Princess…I’d completely forgotten that one. That was good.
jack London’s book were/are a major inspiration for another partially finished novel I am working on (currently about 400 pages) it’s Science Fiction/post minor apocalypse
Have to look into Stinky Cheese etc.
Actually, what you might find interesting in Piers Anthony’s books is–in some series/a few books, I think the ones that started with On A Pale Horse, he had these extra “from the author” pre-blog things. Basically he’d talk about stuff in his life and and his writing process.
I found those very interesting back in the 80’s. They were basically blog entries a decade or more before the web was invented, they were just tacked on to the end of the book(s) like an appendix.
Excellent Info thanks for some critical information.
Will need to discuss this more and how to deal. I do really get the pre-100 part. It was wrapping up book 1.
It’s really all about how to slice and dice a much longer story.
A lot of the stuff you want to cut is actually quite important for later. Such as the Asmeth story line.
BTW I think your Tizzy conclusions may over inflate his ego…you might have gone too broad in your assumptions.
Hmm
Interesting on several points.
Ender…OK, I think he must have done that much later, since I don’t remember that series…he had kind of a lull in the late 80’s early 90’s and I think I sort of tuned him out…or that’s my rather scrambled impression…
Actually, the point you make about splitting the series is something I have seriously thought about. I think the logic becomes far more imperative as you get further along. Let’s revisit at the end…but I think that’s a good thought. The logistics just need to be worked out.
I think what I am going to do is have a latest version posted here on the site for only beta user access.
I expect there will be changes that I will want people to comment on…so there may be mutiple versions coming out….I.e. people get alerts there’s a new one and this issue has been fixed, check it out. etc. So I fear people having to make too many changes. However, if they have Calibre, it’s not hard to change format.
Actually what I really want to do (book 3+) is have an online editor that people read offline and then can come into the web app and make changes/comments and it will note who did what. It gets complicated with 30 or so people doing this, so the application logic is tricky, particularly on the back side where there had to be control for the master editor (author) to select which changes he/she wants and merge together. It’s like “web based super review” of what Word does.
Yeah, I think that is two issues that the new cover does address well.
The size and the scary. In the first cover, he is hunched over coming through the gateway and at an odd angle, so you don’t get size and there are various issues with the model and body parts flowing naturally that can really bug some people. And his original face isn’t as scary.
He went to town on those scales in the new one. My original interpretation was more serpent, Jacob went for dragon and I like the effect quite a bit.
Good point.
I had thought about that, but then decided I needed to move to the main story a bit quicker. May not have been the right idea. When you have the story and back story in your head, and “know things” it’s often hard to see things from an outside perspective.
I think feedback like this, discussion of what makes transitions better is why I want to do a beta program next time. And you need multiple points of view on this. One danger of using local friends is that they may know too much of the story in advance of reading, and don’t get the true “cold opening” experience.
I am thinking to do some of the backstory as an add on short story here on the site and may end up adding it to a later edition of the book. Or perhaps in the “Extended Director’s Second Final Extreme Re-Edit Edition” of the complete series. Assuming a convergence of books and movies happens by the time there can be a “complete series edition”
Yes and yes.
It’s not per se from an RPG, since the book started first. I then started working on an RPG with a friend of mine (years and YEARS ago), and there was stuff we did together like character creation, etc. And then we divided up principle responsibility. He took combat, I took magic.
So the magic system for the book and the game were basically written together. So it’s kind of a weird variation on the two options: Book based on RPG and RPG based on Book.
The book and story and world, existed first (although not complete). We then made the world the “first” campaign setting for the game and I constructed a magic system. In general, the book is not/was not required to follow pure game rules, but rather I tried to write game rules to explain the book.
It’s a classical RPG that has a combat system that’s fairly miniature oriented (it really helps to know where you are facing vs your opponent). It’s more similar to the old Steve Jackson games than D&D in that sense.
So anyway…we wrote up a lot of background info for the game, and I actually had all the non-mechanics parts posted on a site for the game http://www.astlan.com (which I accidentally let expire–and now a squatter wants a couple grand to get it back) I’ve been re-purposing some of it for the book background.
But being “one person” despite what Tizzy says, I’m a bit overwhelmed on the writing/editing/web design/graphics front and so there are short cuts and mistakes that reveal its original nature.
I’d like to finally publish the game someday “Animus” (playing on animus and the Animus of Animosity) but I gotta drag my friend back in to get it out there and updated. Modern Self Publishing makes what we tried to do in a previous millenia so much easier…
The game is/was completely playable, but there were a lot of rough edges we never got smoothed out. Things like a character design system that is rather long for new 1st level characters and insane for creating higher level characters. And player with an animage requires a GM of epic proportions…because what they can do is difficult for the game mechanics. Most of the game is pretty detailed and explicit in terms of rules, but Animages work better in something like the “StoryTeller” universe of games. That and Lesser/Intermediate/Greater “Miracles”
–Onto the other races.
yes, they are out there, the high level overview of many are on the site, just hidden. I am still editing them, and I’d like to get images for those pages, they are very text heavy.
The section is called “The Body Politic” and it covers the races that the majority consider “people” vs monsters. I.e. they or related races conduct trade/commerce/war/etc. Although by D&D terms some are monsters. (Satyrs, Centaurs, Minotaurs, Gorgons, Giants, Ogres, Orcs and their sub races–plus most all the Sidhe (light and dark) etc.) Unfortunately, from a book perspective I only want to put out more “book level” information rather than the more detailed “monster manual” style stuff…so that is where editing becomes a huge job.
Ack, that’s a lot of travel time…you should consider a runic gateway, much faster…
Unfortunately, while that would be a perfect opportunity to read book 2, I’m afraid it won’t be ready in time.
But if I had 32 hours stuck on a plane/train/bus/car, I could get a lot of writing done…that’s about 100 pages, at least if its concentrated in big blocks of time.
Yeah, well good luck collecting them. He is so damn cheap.
I always insist on separate checks when we go out, cause he’s always coming up short in the pool.
BTW you should have seen the fight that nasty daughter of his (the loud one) got in with Lillith at the last Council of Evil meeting!
Linda Evans and Joan Collins could learn a thing or two…
Hi,
I will take your word that I have M4D skills…but I don’t think I do. I assume you mean Mad 4 Destruction??? I need to look more into what you are talking about to speak coherently.
Actually the maps are done in Campaign Cartographer which is a vector based cartography program designed for traditional RPGs etc. It does the maps as vectors and then you basically export it to an image at a particular resolution.
The maps were started a long time ago with their base fantasy set at the time. Newer versions have cooler icons, but I didn’t have time to figure out how to translate all of them to newer stuff/redo.
So anyway, the true original images are vector diagrams. I can generate a giant jpg at any resolution if you can do something with them…or you if you had a way of dealing with the vector images or something it exports to, I have no problem giving that out.
Jerry
[quote] They don’t behave like light does. There is no such thing as a ‘camera’ (and our eye is a camera) that could focus these particles and form retinal images. [/quote]
Correct. HOWEVER. Not 100% true. There is a way that was used in very early accelerators, for example in the early fixed target experiments where the “beam” was of fairly low energy (by modern standards).
At many experimental sites at BNL (Brookhaven), you stand only a few feet from the particle beam, separated by a chain link fence. While not advisable for the last 30 or 40 years. Very early on, these fences weren’t in place and people would move the targets and equipment with the beam on.
They would locate the beam using their eyes. It wasn’t visible directly, but if you got your eyes directly in the beam, the charged particles would pass through the liquid in your eye with a velocity greater than the speed of light in the liquid. This resulted in Cerenkov radiation, which is light and which your eyeball’s rods and cones could detect.
According to some older scientists I was working with you saw sparks and glittering light, sort of like eyeball ‘floaters’ but glowing.
Now, I don’t think this was a good idea even at the time, and certainly a bad idea today, because you are literally shooting a beam of charged particles through your brain, and if that’s not going to cause cancer, I really don’t know what will.
But it is a way of “seeing” this sort of radiation directly.
Not happening here though, not in the book.
And do not try at home, assuming, like Sheldon Cooper, you can build your own home particle accelerator.
