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Well, that goes back to the GoT: everything starts repeating itself.
Once or twice, but when it gets to be a crutch to prolong the story, then it’s a problem.
Someone mentioned Malazan the other day. I sort of think I read at least some of it. Problem is, I am sure it was dead tree, so I’d have to go search through the catacombs for it.
That’s another nice thing about e-books. You can find them very easily. Actually that’s not just books. I can find anything on computer, but notices, etc sent by snail mail I always misplace.
I was just thinking this afternoon how one of my favorite features was the ability to read the same book in different formats.
I like my Kindle PW as a good traveling size. If I forget it on the train or bus, I can use my phone. At home I can use my iPad or Asus Memopad, both are bit bigger than the KPW.
Different sizes for different reading conditions. Now, true a mmpb is good to travel, but for curl up by fire, I prefer trade or hard back which don’t travel. And I never want to buy hard and mmpb
Hi,
Finally, finally finished first draft of The Heavenly Host. Cutting it far closer than I wanted. Sorry for all the delays.
I really need to do a full read through and first full edit. I know from quick edits that there are many wrong words/typos that will need to be fixed.
I think I may go for a parallel pass though. I.e. release the rough version for beta demons while cleaning it up for a second beta edition.
I am going to work Thursday on setting up the delivery mechanism and alerting people that still haven’t clicked, but said they wanted to.
T-A-G
[size=6][color=red]The following links allow you to download confidential, prepublication material.[/color][/size]
[b]By downloading the content on this page you agree to the following:[/b]
Not to share any of these documents or edited versions with anyone that is not in The Heavenly Host Beta program.
If you have a friend that wants to read the book, have them either join the Beta or wait until after publication and acquire the book via Amazon.com
You understand this material is not finished and is unpublished the final version may be substantially different.
As an unfinished work you realize there are going to be errors, mistakes, typos and other issues that the beta program is working to correct.
Not to review, comment on or share information about the material you read on websites or with non-beta readers prior to publication.
If you do chose to review or comment the book after publication, please base the review or comments on the finished project.[url=http://www.astlan.net/TheBooks/TheHeavenlyHostBeta.aspx]The Heavenly Host[/url]
Hi,
Apparently Tizzy posted the links in White Font!
No, the links weren’t there. I am about to add the PDF Link
Still fiddling with other crazy formats in Calibre…it really wants to get device specific. (E.g. screen size/resolution) Can make things look weird in other formats!
I think I might just have people request a version for a specific devices.
Will be posting all sorts of notes and thoughts.
T-A-G
[quote=Iume;2113]I recall there being a post of the things you did and did not want from the beta readers. Could you add that as a link to the top post?[/quote]
Hi,
I am happy to take any suggestions you want to make.
I know there are going to be many typo/grammatical/spelling issues. If you want to note those, great, but after we are done I will be paying an editor to edit this stuff.
HOWEVER, one thing that beta demons can do that editors can’t is understand the context.
An editor can technically correct a sentence or paragraph, but they can not correct stylistic/contextual issues with a paragraph.
A beta demon can. If you feel that you have a better way of phrasing something…submit it. If you think a character wouldn’t say something in a certain way, speak up!
If something makes no sense (often really wrong word typo) submit it.
Anything is fair game though. Stuff you don’t like, stuff that is inconsistent, stuff that ruins the story for you. All feedback is good.
What are the best scenes?
What characters are flat?/One dimensional and need flushed out?
What scenes seem fake or unreal?What favorite character died a bloody horrible death that infuriated you? Oh wait…this isn’t Game of Thrones…never mind….
That’s what took me so long to get it online tonight. There are lots of twiddly things.
What type of Kindle are you using?
As I’ve mention previously…I just finished the final chapter last night.
I have spot edited stuff after writing it, typically the next day.
However, I have not yet done a full read through edit.
I was more interested in getting this out there ASAP.
Yes, there are warts of the typo nature. It should be much better than an email, but it is not yet at the level of the first version of Book 1, maybe 1/5 or 1/4 that.
I am starting the full read through and edit tomorrow, and will post that once it’s done as Beta 2
Hi,
For fast readers, please take care about discussing plot spoilers.
There are some definite surprises coming in the book. Which is why I can’t talk about the next title yet.
I don’t think people will see where things are going, generally yes, but the path, I don’t think so.
So if you get very far in and want to discuss, give a Chapter reference and then use the [SPOILER]spoiler tag[/SPOILER] which you can access from the [BB/] button above.
T-A-G
Well that’s not any worse than what I heard about the first cover…and I did that myself…
🙂
Yeah the face is a bit weird, he is supposed to be looking at his hand in astonishment at the transformation. But unless/until you realize that, it’s a weird look.
You know…Animus, the sort of never really lived dice based RPG that used Astlan as it’s world (and for which I created the magic system and world) used to issue calendars with artwork. My codesigner of the game was, at the time, heavily involved in a school with a good art program so he went around recruiting artists to do artwork for us.
Of course, it was pencil or colored pencil art at that time (stone ages)
I actually have a calendar thing with details in Excel, but I don’t want to give stuff away in advance of reading it so…
One of the most traumatic things in fantasy history was the lineage charts in Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni books.
If people think GRRM is bad, KK was worse.
She has this lineage of multiple families with birth and death dates. When it started, it was “the present” and all active characters had no death dates. However after the first trilogy she went back 200 years or so in time and started telling the story from then until the ‘present’
So you had these beloved characters and you knew the year in which they were scheduled to die. It was gruesome because you’d get to the book in that year, and you’d be waiting around anxiously to see how the current protagonist died. e.g. King Javan’s Year. On the chart he rules for 1 year…then kaput. So you kinda know where the book is going…
Now, on one of the first instances, the death was faked. So while the character died to the world, they continued on shape changed as someone else. You then kept hoping that your later favorite characters would be able to pull the same stunt, hoping against hope there was an escape clause in the lineage chart of death.
Don’t get me started on the WoT.
A series I loved so much at the beginning (I got the first edition Trade Paperback–it wasn’t released in hardback widely, if at all, until book 2 came out, so people could have complete sets) and loved it and the first two or three. And then my god, was he ever going to wrap things up?
I quit around book 6 or so. I couldn’t remember what was happening. Stopped reading them.
And of course, the answer was, he was not going to ever wrap things up. He croaked before he could.
Yeah, that’s important.
I hope to never get that bad. The real problem was that after years of obsuricty Jordan lucked into a giant cash cow. For him, his agent and the publisher.
The publisher really wanted him (I am sure) to just keep turning out “known” “salable” product that would generate a crap load of money for everyone.
He failed to resist.
Of course, one thing that probably helped nudge him down that path is that “ending a story” is very hard.
Wrapping up points and saying goodbye and getting closure is difficult.
LOTR did it, but that’s one of the few that I can think of.
Tragedies are easy to end. The protagonist dies.
Romances are easy to end, cut it off at the wedding.Everything else is trickier. In part, and i think this was on one of my Amazon threads, there is always ‘another evil’ out there to be defeated.
Anyway, spinning a story out huge is far easier than shutting it down/wrapping it up. And that’s a problem for a lot of authors.
So my goal would be to end the current arc. The characters still live on (most/some) and may show up as background/minor characters in other stories.
I also have half finished stories completely unrelated to this that I want to get out there.
So back to endings. If GRRM’s health starts to fail, I can pretty much guarantee the easiest course of action is to just have the White Walkers overrun Westeros and everything. There, wrapped up done. Don’t care about all the machinations, everyone is dead. Goodbye.
Yes, PA has enough irons in the fire that he can swap things to make fresh. It’s not just one series
But I have noticed it works better with some of his series than others.
Many of his series start out insanely good and then sort of get to about average by book 5. If he keeps going, then he sometimes gets inspired and has a great one in the middle.
You can see these up and down “imagination momentum” arcs with Xanth.
Incarnations of Immortality started with his best book ever IMHO “On a Pale Horse” but then was puttering out by the end…
Jack Chalker was the same way.
Now to be fair to GRRM. A single book of his is about 500,000 words, twice the size of DoA Books 1 and 2 each (or together they are about 1 GRRM length book). So if I took 1.5 years to get a second book out, then he should get 3 years for a second book.
Of course, all he has to do is write and show up to conventions. I actually have a day job to pay the rent. So he should have 2x as much writing time as me.
HOWEVER…he’s got a lot of really depressing crap going on. Depressing stuff is much harder to write than happy stuff.
I think this is one way that Piers Anthony churns out so many many books. His stuff is almost always light hearted, that makes it easier to both read and write.
