The Next Big Thing?

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author, curse of fierabras, Fantasy, genre, meme, Next Big Thing, novel, questions, synopsis, title, Writing

There is a meme going around the blogging world with the goal of finding out who is writing the next great novel or poem. Yesterday Eric from Sinistral Scribblings answered the questions about his own work-in-progress and was kind enough to tag me afterwards. Like he mentioned, a lot of these memes are really just ways for bloggers to pat themselves on the back, but in this case since it involves talking about a novel-in-progress it seems like something fun to post about.

After all, I have already written over 13,000 words of the first draft over the course of my 14-part series. Perhaps talking about the novel some more will push me back toward writing it again.

1) What is the working title of your book? The working title is The Curse of Fierabras. It came about because I am modeling some ideas on my character, Dante, and his abilities from the concept of a paladin, both from literature and video games. The name Fierabras came from the Song of Roland, which covers the exploits of Roland and the twelve paladins, so I thought it fitting to use that name as the first paladin in this novel. The reason it is a curse is because everyone in the past who was born with this power died a tragic death at a young age.

2) Where did the idea for your book come from? Honestly, it has come from a mixture of ideas I have had over the years. I have so many fragmented scenes and plots that have been stirring in my mind for so long, and this is a way to try and get a main storyline that is able to encompass at least some of them along the way. The ideas have to be pretty good if they have stuck in memory over a long span of time. A lot of my influences have come from other fantasy novels and Role-Playing video games.

3) What genre does your book fall under? Definitely falls into the fantasy genre. Within that I would like to think it could become High Fantasy, although it might be classified more under Heroic Fantasy or possibly even Sword & Sorcery Fantasy.

4) What actors would you choose to play a movie rendition of your book? This is a tough one since I haven’t really considered the possibility at all. Hugh Jackman or Robert Downey Jr. would probably make a good Jerek, and I think a solid action actress like Scarlett Johansson would be a good fit for a leading female role.

5) What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book? Dante Silverstar travels across the seven kingdoms to unlock the secret to his own magic – a powerful magic that could overthrow the Emperor’s tyrannical reign and restore peace to the land – before its curse kills him and his allies.

Full synopsis can be found here.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Like Eric, I would love to have it get represented by an agency. Partly because I wouldn’t be good at self-promotion and partly because it would be nice to get signed by a company like TOR. But I won’t completely rule out the self-publishing route.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your novel? Considering it is still a work-in-progress, I cannot answer this question. I was once on a 1,000 word per week pace with this, which is something I think I could realistically resume or exceed in the near future. I’d like to see a first draft done within the next year.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? It is hard to be so bold as to compare my story to other great books in the genre, so instead I’ll share a few authors that help me to draw some inspiration. The three authors that have probably influenced me the most have been J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Goodkind, and David Eddings. If my book ever gets compared to any other their novels I would consider myself proud.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book? My love for reading and writing has inspired me to write the book. Also the support of some key family members and friends who have encouraged me to continue writing. I’ve always known I had stories to tell but have never seen a major project, like a novel, through to completion. I believe my record, prior to this one, was making it to about chapter seven before losing motivation. It is time to prove to myself that I can finish a full novel and fulfill one of my dreams.

10) What else about your book might pique the readers interest? The first part of the book has Dante fighting for his life in an arena, which is where the first hints of his power manifest. Fans of Ava from the Monster Hunter series will be excited to know that she will be entering into this book at some point and will still be a badass chick when she makes her appearance. There will be a few exciting plot twists along the way, one of them involving an unexpected romance. Plus an elaborate fantasy world, inhabited by a variety of races (like elves and dwarves) and hordes of monsters, will come alive in this novel.

So now we come to the part where I get to tag someone and they take their turn talking about their novel. A few weeks ago I found a blog through the Scriptic prompt exchange and her writing style hooked me immediately. Because I have enjoyed what I have read so far of the Jade Dragon series, I want to know more from Christine at Trudging Through Fog. Tag, you’re it!

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Banned Books Week

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banned books, Banned Books Week, book burning, challenged books, controversial, First Amendment, NaNoWriMo, novel, reader, reading, Writing

Before I get into today’s post I wanted to take a moment to make an official announcement: I am going to participate in this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I will devote my spare time in November toward accomplishing a lofty goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. That equates to an average of 1,667 words per day in order to accomplish that goal. But to those who succeed, they will have about 175 pages of a novel written.

The obvious choice for me is to pick up where The Curse of Fierabras left off and continue the story of Dante and Jerek after their escape from the Capital. You can find my NaNoWriMo page here, and I will attempt to leak a few excerpts and updates on my progress throughout the month.

So look forward to the finale of Ogre Hunt in the next week or so.

Last Saturday kicked off an annual event that I have been a supporter of for many years: Banned Books Week. While this post is coming along much later than I would have liked, I simply could not let this year pass by without making some sort of post in honor of this great cause. So here is some information about Banned Books Week.

What is Banned Books Week?

Readers across the world unite for a common cause at the end of September each year. They proudly display traces of their literary protest by creating websites, lists, Facebook posts, blogs and tweets about the event or their participation in the event. Bookstores and libraries place the forbidden material in prominent displays. The week is about expressing your freedom to read.The first Banned Books Week started in 1982 as a response to the growing number of challenges being placed against schools, bookstores and libraries. According to the Banned Books Week website, more than 11,300 books have been challenged since its inception in 1982. Last year there were 326 reported challenges against books, and the top ten can be seen in the list to the right. The foundation for Banned Books Week, and its importance according to the American Library Association, is

“Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week.”

Why are Books Banned?

Most often books are challenged with the best of intentions: protecting children and others from perceived potentially harmful information. Depending on each individual, this could be a wide range of things from religious beliefs, violence, profanity, sexuality and ethical matters. There have also been instances where books were challenged for reasons such as police officers being portrayed by pig characters and the author having the same name as someone with disagreeable political views. In the latter case, concerning the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, the accusation was a little off the mark. According to the American Library Association, the top three reasons cited for challenging materials are:

1. The material was considered to be “sexually explicit”
2. The material contained “offensive language”
3. The material was “unsuited to any age group”

Concerned parents certainly have a right to monitor what their children are reading, just like they monitor their children’s television, movie and video game habits through the rating system. The line is crossed when parents, teachers and librarians begin to try and restrict what other people’s children can read. The Library Bill of Rights has an interpretation of the Free Access to Libraries for Minors posted on the ALA website:

“Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents—and only parents—have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children—and only their children—to library resources.”

When the motion to challenge books exists, it is a violation of the First Amendment. In the case of Texas v. Johnson, Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. made the following statement:

“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

Where Can I Learn More?

There are many places where you can learn more about Banned Books Week and its importance to your First Amendment rights. There are also a lot of lists out there recommending books to read. The following list is far from comprehensive, but it is a great place to start to expand your knowledge.

• Banned and Controversial Books
• Banned Books Week
• 100 Great Banned Books
• 25 Banned Books You Should Read Today
• Delete Censorship
• American Library Association
• 17 Banned Books You Read As A Child
• The 11 Most Surprising Banned Books

Did you read a banned book this week in honor of this event? What is your favorite banned book?

Writing Lessons from Blogging a Serial Novel

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blogging, contest, learning, lessons, marathon, novel, plan, running, schedule, serial novel, social, synopsis, Writing, writing prompt

Much like the end of my serial novel, I had planned on making this post a lot sooner than this. Unfortunately, life happens sometimes and creates delays. But I still wanted to take the time to reflect back upon the things I learned by writing a serial novel on my blog.

1. Writing with a schedule helps – For the first thirteen installments, I was making a post every week. Sure, I didn’t have a specific enough schedule to make each post fall on the same day of the week, but by the time Sunday rolled around I knew that I needed to get a post going because the weekend was almost over. There were weeks where I wanted to do other things but I chose to prioritize writing instead. Without a deadline (real or imagined), it is easy to put the writing off until another day.

2. Blogging makes it a social task – While comments were few and far between, I knew I had a small handful of people looking forward to reading the next installment each week. This readership, along with the schedule, kept me from waiting too long to write the next part. Because I didn’t want to risk losing the readers I had already gained. If I was just keeping this saved on my hard drive I probably wouldn’t have made it thirteen weeks, even with a schedule. So even if I don’t want to put something on my blog, finding a small group of people who would read my writing each week would be a motivator to keep writing.

3. A plan is helpful but not essential – When I started, I didn’t have a title much less an idea of where this story was going. It was just a guy who was captured and being dragged into the capital, and then he was forced to fight for his survival. My initial thoughts, after writing part two, were that Slate would survive the first battle. As a writer, I was surprised to find that I killed him off, bringing Jerek into the role of a main character instead. After a while I was challenged in a writing prompt to write a synopsis, which made me stop and think about where it was heading. And once I finished that, I had a very clear idea of where things were going. I didn’t need a plan to start things off, and if I didn’t write until I knew exactly what would happen I would probably never start, but thinking it through helped a lot.

4. Regular writing breeds better writing – There is a noticeable trend in my blog posts. Over thirteen weeks my writing improved at a pretty steady pace. Not just the serial novel, either. All of my posts, as well as the poems I was writing for my summer class, got better when I was writing regularly. I can compare this to running. When I started running my body struggled to endure the distance but, as I ran more often, I was slowly able to go further and it wasn’t as taxing on my body. My writing endurance increased over those months, allowing me to do more writing and to produce better writing in the process.

5. Writing a novel isn’t a contest – I could have written more words each week, or made more than one post per week, but I chose to pace myself instead. I wanted to be able to focus on other things in my life, as well as make other blog posts along the way. In the past I tried forcing myself to write 500-1000 words on a single project each day, and it usually went great for about a week. And then I felt drained and took a break from it, never returning to that project. Writing a novel is like running a marathon: you can’t go all out in the beginning and expect to endure until the end at that pace. There might be miles where you can go faster, but you want to try and find a steady rhythm that you can maintain for the long haul. If you try to go too hard the whole way, you won’t reach the end.