Nine Princes in Amber

Hello all! Hope you are having a good start of the week. The past few weeks I have been unable to update the blog on Mondays, for some strange reason I am now too busy on Mondays to do a decent update, so from now on, Tuesdays will be chosen day for updates. On to this week’s post!

Life went back to normal last week, well, as normal as it can get, and this is what I have been up to:

Books

Well, I think I have discovered another great fantasy series: The Chronicles of Amber. The Nine Princes in Amber is not your cookie cutter fantasy novel, and you might have a bit trouble at first of understanding what the book is about, but once you do, you will not want to stop reading.

The book follows the adventures of a mysterious man who was involved in an accident, and has partial amnesia, as he discovers his place in a world that seems a bit strange to him. He will be surrounded by people he identifies as being important, but that he cannot identify as friend, or foe. He will discover a deck of cards that will jar his memories and will incite the adventure to regain his life.

The book is veiled in mystery and in intrigue, enveloping Corwin, the main character, in a web of frail and hostile family relationships, of not knowing who to trust among his various siblings. I won’t write more of the book because I don’t want to spoil the story for those who want to read it, but I highly recommend you give this book a try.

I am reading book two, Guns of Avalon and will finish it during the week.

I am also reading, well, trying to finish anyway, Pattern Recognition, but the reading has been slow and treacherous. I.have.to.finish.it.

I am a big fan of mystery novels as well. My dad bought, a long time ago, the whole Agatha Christie bibliography, and I since I was about 12, I have read most of them. So I got hooked on the genre, and again thanks to my dad, I discovered novelists like Leslie Charteris (the creator of The Saint), Harold Robbins, Robert Ludlum and Patricia Highsmith. The latter became one of my favorite authors, and one of her characters, Thomas Ripley, is as dear to me as Huma, or Raistlin, or Gandalf are.

So, I am going to dive right into Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files this week, and see how it goes, hoping that a good mystery set in a world where magic and vampire and monster are real, will entertaining and good.

I am also craving for a good historical novel. I am a HUGE fan of Wilbur Smith’s work, and River God remains on top of my all time favorite books, along with the Sun Bird. He manages to combine good stories, romance, adventure and magic (Taita anyone?) with a historical backdrop that just make his books irresistible. I think I will give Smith’s Courtney series a look.

Another writer that I like in this same genre is Judith Tarr, and her stand alone books like The White Mare’s Daughter or The Shepherd Kings are also among my favorites. She has some fantasy novels out there, and will try to give those a look as well.

The Black Company is on vacation until I finish some of the books listed above :D

Writing

Well, it has been a good week for me. I have begun to understand my own writing process and I am proud of being to stick to my own daily word count goals and to advance at the rate I want to do so. Writing 2,000 words might not seem like a lot, but 10,000 words a week, at least, begins to unveil the clear destination of finishing my first draft of the novel. For the Druid’s grove, I am about 30,000 words into the first draft, and I want the novel to be finished in December. Again, this will de the first draft and it will still a lot of work, but the first step is actually writing it and I am well underway.

The short story for the contest is now being edited and reviewed, I think I need to rewrite very few scenes, because the story flows, well, at least I liked it :D.  The story should be ready and sent before the October 31^st deadline I set last month.

Also, I am writing a small horror story for another contest, as well as a small short sci-fi/fantasy story. Both should be under 4,000 words, but the ideas that I have should make my stories shorter. Those will be written and edited within the next two weeks, all the while I will still be working on the Grove.

I know that is a lot on my writing plate, but I need this, I need to write as much as possible.

Well, I will see you all next week!