JULY COMMENT THREAD (NO SPOILERS, PLEASE!)

[merlinscribe]

Greetings, my fellow sojourners, and my apologies for the gap between posts, but there is little new to tell. I continue working on Book Three, which has (amazingly!) required some real-world research trips. At this point I hold myself ready and willing to move a pre-modern army over any possible terrain.

I will be spending some time over the next few days clearing up the backlog of comments. The short version is: there is no publication date for Book Three set, nor has it been delivered.

Questions, comments, explanations, and excoriations below, if you please.

Many Thanks,

--James

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for letting us know that you are well! As you'll note in the comments, there has been concern for your wellbeing. It's also good to know that the reason for the publication delay is your commitment to quality.

Something you didn't specifically say, but which I finally gleaned on my umpteenth read of 'Crown of Vengeance', is that Viellessar is a knight-mage. Nice touch.

I have two questions. The first is that I've been wondering if you've given any thought to writing the details of Pelashia's sacrifice and the events of her time. There was enough said about it in 'Blade of Empire' that it seems a compelling and interesting story.

The second question relates to another's comment, which is that the writer was lamenting the lack of new good stories. I have the same problem and, in the absence of another good book from you, I thought about sharing some other authors in the fantasy venue who also write interesting worlds and characters of notable quality, as well as asking for the same feedback from others. I decided against it because this is your site and I did not want to offend. However, is that something you'd permit? I'm asking because, while it is certainly possible to ascertain desirability of other books by viewing readers' comments on Amazon, the sheer volume of books to research is daunting, and I'd rather have recommendations from other readers who appreciate the quality of your writing. It would also give your readers something interesting to discuss in the absence of new info and books from you. :) If this does not appeal to you, it's okay with me if you ignore the question or say you'll think about it, as I understand that's the easiest and least offensive way to address something one doesn't want to do, and I'll say no more about it.

I'm very much looking forward to reading what happens when Vielle and Runacar make "first contact", as well as the development of the dragons!

Terry

[merlinscribe]

Yes, indeed! The Elves have the Wild Magic in Vieliessar's time, though it functions rather differently than it will for the humans. Well done you for catching that!

I might write Pelashia's story up as a novella. It's fascinating to me, and I took a number of elements for it from the Childe Ballads. You might recognize those motifs as well, if and when I get there.

I think that posting likes and recs for other works my readers might enjoy is a wonderful idea! I will start a thread for that immediately.

[sanders1800]

Thank you for taking the time to let us know. Glad the only reason you were not posting was so you can take some field trips for a better story. I really hope Tor does not murder it.

Not expecting you to be online this morning, nearly had a heart attack. Glad everything was going well for you, feared something happened.

[merlinscribe]

I am back at work on the next book, and will be posting the first 100-or-so pages over on merlinscribe_library beginning in just a few days.

[sanders1800]

YES! Thanks You.

Yay!!

[chichiri]

I'm glad to see you posting here again! Recently I've been wondering at your inspiration for elvish culture and history. It seems to me that you've taken either sengoku era Japanese or maybe Chinese history/culture and overlaid feudal European behaviors on top of it. But maybe I'm totally off base.

Re: Yay!!

[merlinscribe]

Sengoku all the way, and very clever of you! We see the Elven culture in Kellen's time as established, peaceful, very wise, and very stable, but when we look back the 12,000 years to Vieliessar's time, the culture is pretty much...nothing like that at all. So one of the things that needs to happen in the tale of Vieliessar's time is to set up a clear and reasonably logical (and reasonably plausible, I hope) series of events that turn the one into the other. Right now they still have a long way to go to get there, but with the farmers (Landbond; Farmholders) and priests (Lightborn) both being raised up to a position of equality with the nobles (Komen, War-Princes), and with a High King further flattening the social pyramid for everyone, I think they've made a good start.

Re: Yay!!

[chichiri]

Oh I was right! I've known that elves were based on some asian culture for a long time (Cilarnen's comments on them liking tea that tastes like boiled grass, lol) but originally thought maybe it was China (Sun Tzu's "Art of War" and all.) Would it surprise you that what made me wonder about sengoku Japan was recently dusting off my college Japanese to write a note to a new neighbor who comes from Japan? Unlike spoken Japanese, formal letter writing has this convention of a set phrase, generally about the weather, before you get to the actual point of the letter. As I struggled with coming up with an appropriate set phrase, I was reminded of Kellen's elves insisting that he discuss the weather before moving on to the actual conversation topic. Once I started wondering if they were based on Japan it didn't take much to guess you were using the sengoku period as a model for the first war.

One of the things I've enjoyed about your latest book series is the insight of how the elves got from the extremely warlike state in Vielle's time to the elves of Kellen's time. So far it definitely makes sense to me!

On a different topic, I've been pondering dusting off my childhood dream of publishing a fantasy novel (midlife crisis maybe). Do you have any advice for someone just starting out?

Re: Yay!!

[merlinscribe]

Thank you for your kind words. I'm glad the Elven culture seems so plausible to you; that makes me very happy. I think the almost fanatic levels of politeness make sense when you're writing about a culture that has such a long history of hyperviolence; everyone wants to put as big a wall around the anger and violence as possible, and that means a lot of the conversation is going to involve rote forms. (I do hope you eventually came up with an appropriate set phrase.)

Now, on to writing. The best way I have found to finish a book (and I was entirely unsurprised to discover that this is also Mercedes Lackey's advice to writers) is the so-called "butt in chair" method. Essentially, you set aside a block of time every single day (the same time of day if at all possible) of one hour or two (two is better, but not always possible), and during that time, you sit in front of your computer and WRITE. You don't wait for inspiration, you don't revise, or read email, or do anything else. You write. Eventually your brain will give up on trying to convince you that anything else in the entire world--including cleaning your entire kitchen with a toothbrush--is more fun/necessary/urgent than writing. Eventually.

What you write doesn't have to be a novel. It can be a short story or an essay or really anything so long as you are WRITING.

Rule #2 is: finish what you start. It doesn't matter if you discover you have a great new idea on another book just begging to be written (make notes). It doesn't matter if you think the book you are currently working on is awful (writers are no real judge of how good their writing is). Finish the book, because you will learn a great deal from the process.

Meanwhile, learn as much as you can about your new profession. If you hope to go the traditional publishing route, you will eventually need a literary agent. There are good ones and bad ones, ones that just aren't for you, and total scam artists. Find out which is which, and how to query them so that everybody's time isn't being wasted.

If you're thinking of self-publication, you also need to do your homework. You'll be your own publicity and marketing director in addition to being the writer. Look for blogs discussing self-publishing: there are many out there.

Most of all, remember James Macdonald's cogent phrase: "Money flows toward the writer." Take a good hard look at any publicist, agent, agency, packager, ANYONE, who is asking you for hard cash up front. This is a risky business to be in sometimes, and it's a breeding ground for scammers.

With all that being said, the best of luck to you. I very much look forward to seeing your book in print. Or "print".

Re: Yay!!

[chichiri]

I've studied Japanese for over 3 years and tried to maintain it to some extent for about 20 years and it never occurred to me that their crazy politeness rules related to their extreme warrior culture, but I think you're right. Thanks for the insight! (And after a lot of googling I eventually settled on modifying the set phrase "this time of year is hot and humid in Japan" to "this time of year is hot and humid in Japan but it's not like that here." Lol)

Also thank you for all of the advice on writing and publishing a novel. I'll be saving the dreamwidth notification email so I can easily go back and reread it as needed. I likely will try to go the traditional publication approach, but for the moment I'm more concerned in actually having a novel to market. The "butt-in-chair" method makes sense but sadly it will be at least a year before I can actually do that - I have 3 year old twins at home with me, so setting aside an hour at the same time daily to concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of everything else just isn't possible, lol. I'm hoping once they are in school I can start spending more time writing. In the meantime I'm trying to work on character development, world building, and learning what considerations need to be made toward publication as I write.