United Authors Association Conference Oct 24th!

ByJohn Brown

UAACon1.5

The United Authors Association is holding a fiction writing conference October 24th in Springville, Utah, and it’s free to the public!

The conference schedule has some great presentation topics on it by authors who are delighting a lot of readers as well as an editor, agent, and a magician.

I’m going to be presenting on the fundamental core of story–“Scene and Sequel”–expect we’ll be replacing those two terms right off that bat. Hope to see you there.

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  • Raveler Update: The Cover!

    ByJohn Brown

    Back in July, I contacted the talented Victor Minguez again to do this cover. I sent him a creative brief with three scenes that I thought would work well. Victor read the passages, then came back with some sketches.

    One of the scenes was of Sugar, battling howlers in the world of soul. Two parts of the reference I gave were the following. The first suggested an interesting lace pattern that fit my image of Sugar’s skenning. The second was a dead ringer for a howler. It’s actually “Lion,” made of used tires and steel by Yong Ho Ji. Okay I found it on Pinterest. But it’s absolutely gorgeous. I really thought this scene with Sugar would be the one.

    Skenning   Howlers

    Victor’s sketch is below. You can see the howlers in the foreground about to attack.

    RavelerSketchSugarHowlers

    The second and third scenes were of Argoth facing down Mokad’s Guardian and Matiga and her fell-maidens in the final battle. The fell-maidens are women you don’t want to mess with. Some of the reference included these. BTW, if you’re interested in other images I’ve captured, feel free to browse my Pinterest collections.

    Matiga Matiga2 Matiga3Matiga4

    This is the sketch he came back with. His notes explained that the enemy line would be reflected in the sword.

    RavelerSketchMatiga

    I love the idea of Sugar and those howlers. I can see the image in my mind, and it’s awesome. But we felt this would make a more appealing cover. Maybe someday we’ll pay for someone to do that Sugar illustration just for the heck of it.

    The next step was to do a value study. This was the first.
     RavelerValuesFirst

    I wanted to see what a couple of variations might look like.

    RavelerValuesCloseUpView  RavelerValuesMoreFaceSketch

    Ultimately, I thought all three of these were powerful. The first two really draw attention to her eyes and give a great focal point and hierarchy. In fact, I still go back and forth even now. But I did like seeing more of her face. I think anyone of them could have been great, but we ended up going with the third. A little magic from the artist, and Shazam!

    RavelerFinal

    There are a lot of things to love about this. Victor’s gorgeous backlighting and halo effects. The part of the story told in the reflection in the sword. And the fact that this woman is not some fluff bunny, running around in ridiculous bikini wear. She’s even got a bit of sneer or growl going on. My friends, this is a freaking fell-maiden. I also like that Victor etched an important symbol into the armor.

    Here’s the illustration in the cover.

    RavelerFullSpreadWeb

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  • Vote for Servant of a Dark God, American Idol Style

    ByJohn Brown

    The Legend Award

    I was informed today that Servant of a Dark God is on the Longlist for the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy and the Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut. I believe this means the Rapture is close at hand, folks. Or maybe it just means Cthulhu has taken over the North Pole. In either event, Hunger, Sugar, Talen, Hogan, Nettle, Legs, River, the Mother (and the kick butt Hag’s Teeth) can win an award for general awesomeness. They can because voting is open to the public.

    Kind of Like American Idol

    You may ask: Is this like getting the Nobel peace prize? No. You have to have actually done something like take out a group of speedy Somali pirates or write a fantasy novel. These awards are not given out as scratch away prizes at McDonalds (you can get them at Wendy’s). This is an award given to:

    • A full length novel published for the first time in the English language during the year of nomination (2009)
    • Traditional, Heroic, Epic, or High Fantasy and/or in the spirit of David Gemmell’s own work

    The nominees were submitted by editors working within a commercial genre fiction publisher (kind of like Hollywood week at American Idol). All the nominations are then put on the award’s Longlist.  The public then votes for their favorite on the list. The poll opened December 26, 2009. Voting on the Longlist will close March 31, 2010. You’ll notice it is indeed a looong list. But you don’t have to have read all the novels. You just vote.

    The top 5 novels with the most votes will be put on the award “Shortlist.” Then in April the public voting for the winner out of those five will begin, open to all.  See, American Idol, except you can’t vote two gajillion times for the same girl/guy just because of the her/his drool inducing factor. 

    How to Vote

    1. View the list of Legend nominees here: http://gemmellaward.ning.com/page/legend-1
    2. Cast your vote by hovering over the Legend menu item as shown below; you’ll see a red Vote link; click it and select the book you want to vote forGemmellLegendAwardVoting
    3. View the list of Morningstar nominees here: http://gemmellaward.com/page/morningstar-1
    4. Cast your vote by hovering over the Morningstar menu item and clicking the red Vote link.

    Who is David Gemmell?

    David Gemmell was a British writer of heroic fantasy. I’ve pasted two of his covers below. You can read more about him here.

     

    For those of you interested in LDS authors, nominate SERVANT for the Whitney

    Now that you’ve done your part to restore world order in the fantasy genre, if you’re interested in LDS authors/fiction, you can also nominate the Sugar, Talen, Hunger and the gang for The Whitney Award.

    This is an award for novels by LDS authors. It works in the opposite way of the Legend award. In this one, the public nominates novels by LDS authors they like. Then a “panel of industry professionals, including authors, publishers, bookstore owners, distributors, critics, and others” vote on the nominations. Of course, because I’m one of those Carrier Monkeys of Evil Mormons (a future post, folks), Servant of a Dark God is eligible.

    To nominate Servant of a Dark God go here: http://www.whitneyawards.com/nominations.php 

    Whew.  Be happy. I’ll keep you updated to let you know if SERVANT makes the short list for either of these.

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  • Did you like BAD PENNY? Nominate it.

    ByJohn Brown

    If you enjoyed Bad Penny, you can nominate Frank, Sam, Carmen, and the gang to be considered for The Whitney Award.

    Here’s how it works. The public nominates novels they like by LDS authors. A panel of judges reads through all the nominations and selects no more than 5 finalists for each genre. Then a “panel of industry professionals, including authors, publishers, bookstore owners, distributors, critics, and others” vote on the nominations. The winners get some good PR and exposure. It’s not Oprah, but getting the word out is critical, and every bit helps.

    To tell the judges to consider BAD PENNY go here: Whitney Nominations. You have until December 31st.  

    Hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

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  • An absolutely perfect and maddening turn in the story

    ByJohn Brown

    You’ll note the word count on CODG is steadily rising. Today, I experienced a delightful AND maddening turn.

    I find outlines to be immensely useful tools for story development. Of course, there are many more tools in the box–outlines can’t do everything. For example, there are times when you’re drafting a story that you write something and it suddenly generates new options for the story that you in no way could have imagined without getting to that point in the draft. You can get a lot of ideas with an outline, but drafts generate still more. Sometimes the options that present themselves while you’re drafting are so right they give you goosebumps. I got one of those today. Of course, part of why it was so good was not only that it put the character in a perfect dilemma and the reader in a perfect chapter cliffhanger, but also because it was completely unexpected yet logical. 

    This all sounds so good, right? Well, the story turn was so unexpected, it startled me. It’s thrown my outline off. Which means I’m going to have to now revise the working outline. I was tempted to make the story fit. After all, I DO have a deadline. But this story turn is so freaking juicy that I cannot justify the hackery. Besides, working outlines are made for revision.

    I’m riding by the seat of my pants today folks, and it’s exciting. I think readers are going to love this turn.

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  • Goodies from Curse of a Dark God

    ByJohn Brown

    Bow to the dark god, ye minions. Here’s some of what’s coming in book 2:

    • The dogmen of Toth and their maulers
    • The Ungar and the one they call Ruin
    • The tanglewoods of the woodikin
    • Firesteeds
    • Gloryweaves
    • Nashrud the hunter
    • And last, but not least, the Orange-eyed priest of Mungo

    The end is in sight on the first draft of book 2 in the Dark God series, and because this one has been a roller coaster, I had to post some of the coolness before I have to go back into frantic mode. My word count estimates for this book have been so consistently off it hasn’t been funny. Literally. It’s made me panic and stress. It should clock in around 220k. And then it’s going to be cut, cut, cut.

    In the meantime…dogmen of Toth (give it the James Earl Jones).

    Oh, baby.

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