Guns of Avalon

Good Tuesday to all! This has been a fun week for me, and I hope it was a good for you too. On to this week’s post!

Books

I am still well into my romance with The 1^st Chronicles of Amber. I read book 2 and 3, Guns of Avalon and Sign of the Unicorn.

Guns of Avalon is a great sequel to Nine Princes in Amber, it has so much depth and the descriptions of the places the Princes call Shadows reach epic and oneiric proportions. Corwin’s quest of conquering Amber is derailed, but his determination to sit on the throne rivals only that of his brother Eric, who is the actual ruler of Amber. This is a book that allows us to get closer to Corwin, thus revealing some of the truth hidden inside his imperfect memories.

Sign of the Unicorn is a faster book; it has a relentless pace that will navigate us through the political turmoil and family conspiracies brewing in Amber. The Shadow Road might be explained, the curse Corwin launched might come back to haunt him, brothers lost might be found and allies might become traitors. The key word here is might :P

The books were written in the early seventies, and it shows. This is a brand of fantasy that has a message behind it, not hidden, but subtle in its presence. This is a series about family, about loss, power, politics, treason and Shadows, the latter are wondrous worlds created and inhabited by the Princes, or their own shadows. I had wanted to read a fantasy series that evoked the sort of epic world where I could visit and relax, and rest my mind, and Amber is such a place.

I am already reading book 4, The Hand of Oberon.

I still managed to squeak by a few more chapters of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire, Volume 1 of the Mistborn trilogy (or quartet, since a new book of the series is due to be released a month from now). Like much of what I have read from him, the book is just massive, the people that inhabit his worlds are rich and colorful and interesting, customs and folklore and magic are well balanced and make for a great read. I will post more of this book next week, but again, what I have read is really good.

The Dresden Files are still on hold; I did not manage to read a single page of the first book, Storm Front, but will try to get a few chapters under my belt this week.

The Black Company is no longer on hiatus! I did manage to read quite a few chapters of the fourth book, Shadow Games, but wont comment on the book until I am done, hopefully next week. Croaker, I still love you!

Games

I am playing Dragon Age again; in between session of Final Fantasy VII of course (I am in Disc three, so I will take it easy and milk it as much as I can). Dragon Age: Origins is one of the greatest games I have ever played in my life. The scale of the world, the voice acting, the animations, the cut scenes, the story and the characters that will accompany you throughout makes this one the best RPG’s ever made. I have played this game twice already, both times (go figure) I played following the Human Noble origin story and because I bought the Digital Deluxe edition, I had a couple of quests that added a very good ally in Shale and gave me a place to keep my stuff (Storage space is a bitch in this game) in Warden’s Keep.

I usually like to play characters (in games where choices do have some sort of impact on the development of the story), tending to be more on the good side. With the two human characters I managed to fall in love with Morrigan, the sexy witch everybody hates to love or loves to hate.

For this go around though, I created a City Elf and will try to be more on the neutral side. I will let you now how I am doing.

Still waiting for SWOTOR to be launched!

Writing

Well, on Friday my two writing buddies and I discussed and dissected my short story, X’s Game, so that now I can edit and rewrite it at will, for the second and third drafts. The good news it that the story is a go, they liked it, the bad news, well, there are no real bad news. It still has a long way to go and I need to work on it still. But, we are getting there!

The Druid’s Grove is coming along fine, today I hope to finish Chapter 20 and will be a couple of chapters shy of finishing the Elven part of the story, which is the real meat and potatoes of the story. The Human and Dwarven part are going to be smaller. I love to write!

I have laid my goals for the final weeks of the year. I want to be writing 10,000 words per week, 2,000 words per day (I won’t write on Saturdays and Sundays, not yet anyway) and last week I fell short 3,000, but I am getting there.

The Druid’s Grove word count: 36,811

See you all next week.

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!