Mark your calendars!!
The free, 2009 Life, the Universe, and Everything symposium at BYU will run Thursday – Saturday, February 19 – 21.
The speical guests are Tracy & Laura Hickman (Dragonlance authors) and James C. Christensen (yes, the amazing fantasy artist). But there will be more than a dozen other authors there, including: L.E. Modesitt, Brandon Mull, James Dashner, Brandon Sanderson, David Farland, Mette Ivie Harrison, Eric James Stone, Howard Tayler, and a number of others.
Here’s what I’ll be doing:
- Panel: The Principles of Suspense. Fri, Feb 20, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
- Workshop: The 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories. Fri, Feb 20, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
- Panel: Myth and Mythology in SF&F. Sat, Feb 21, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
- Reading: from the forthcoming novel and a few of my other published works, Sat, Feb 21, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
If you want to write fiction, you’ll want to attend the workshop. And if you’ve attended the workshop before, know that I’ve made some significant updates to the workshop content for 2009. I’m always learning, and so each time I teach this I’m able to provide more insight.
You’ll also want to carefully review the whole schedule. There are tons of panels with professional authors on them that are going to be both useful and interesting to writers.
My workshop focuses on three incredibly important things. In the beginning, I didn’t know these key things, and that ignorance stymied all my writing efforts for years. Once I learned them, the way was opened. There was still a lot of work involved. But these principles increased my output of quality material 1000% (literally). The principles allowed me to write the story that got me my current three-book contract from Tor.
I’ve taught it now more than a dozen times to all sorts of fiction writers and they’re telling me they’re finding it very useful. You’re going to love this stuff, and I always enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with other writers. The three things are:
- What a story really is. We’re not talking narrative taxonomy, although that’s included. It’s focused on the story effect upon the reader. And why this is one of the most important things you need to understand when writing fiction.
- Parts & principles. Key principles of character, problem, plot, setting, and text as they relate to #1.
- The creative process. The simple but powerful principles of how to get ideas. How to develop them into story. Why writer’s block is a gift and how to use it to produce MORE. Plus a number of other creative principles I wished I’d known.
It’s a highly interactive workshop. Again, the whole symposium, including the workshop, is free. I don’t know another place where you can learn from so many professionals for such a great price.
Hope to see you there!!
I’m very pleased to announce that Podium Publishing, the folks producing the audio versions of the Dark God books, has cast Alex Wyndham as the narrator for the Dark God series. Production is scheduled to take place in March and April.
I was not seriously troubled by any errors. I saw a few typos and superfluous words here and there, but not a lot. I’ve seen ebooks that are officially released that have a lot more errors than the current Servant ebook has.
By the way, did you know that once you make revisions to an ebook, you can notify amazon and they will eventually send out notices to customers who have bought the ebook so they can get the updated version?
Newbie Indie that I am, I did not know that. That’s excellent news, John. Thanks for letting me know.
As for the errors, I’m glad to hear they didn’t bug you too much. They’re driving me nuts. Every time I find one, I start to believe more and more that some evil genie is sabotaging the document file when I go to bed.
I can’t imagine it’s anything as bad as some of the books out there (especially the ones that are OCR’d without any editing whatsoever), but I appreciate the perfectionism 🙂
Here’s a link to what JohnW was talking about:
https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A1RGGPBKDR1BPZ
Also Amazon have actually added an Automatic Book Update option in the Manage Your Kindle section of the Amazon Store, so people with that turned on would get the changes without having to do anything.
Lovely.
I won’t turn on automatic book update, since it’s an open door for Amazon to retroactively delete purchased content. I also don’t want them quietly rewriting history. Han shot first.
However, I will be buying your books (and ebook) during the book bomb, since boosting your career is very much in my best interest. The better your professional success, the more of your books I get to read.
Thank you. In coming years I look forward to telling people “I started reading the Dark God series before it was a series” in the finest snobby fashion.
Do you sign books that are sent to your PO Box with a SASE? Do you do cartoons?
I certainly will sign a book sent with a SASE, and include my signature cartoon face.
PO Box 157
Laketown, UT 84038
USA
Some things I will not sign, like babies, since I did not author them.
I’d like to give this book as a Christmas present – do you think it will be released before Christmas?
Ghosttie,
Guaranteed. The post-proof ebook is already up and available. The paperback is approved and submitted. All we’re waiting for is for CreateSpace to automatically post the paper version to Amazon which should be done this week. As soon as it’s live, I will let everyone know. I will have a special early-bird price on the paper version that’s almost right at cost.