I am beyond excited….and more than a little terrified. I actually have an artist working on the cover art for Spell/Sword.
Cyberman – Mike Groves [poopbird]
I insist that you click on this super-rad Cyberman art and check out some other examples of his work. He’s got a lot of style-flexibility, but everything he does is interesting, distinctive and [as mentioned] on the north side of Rad. We had a great brainstorming session last week, and I should start seeing sketches in the next couple of weeks. I almost wrote ‘barnstorming’. I really want to have a barnstorming session in the immediate future.
Mike Groves – aka Poopbird – is a phenomenal artist, living in my hometown of Athens, GA. You should follow all of the links below and rub your grimy internet-hands all over his virtua-product. He is also an amazing tattoo artist, so if you need some ink (especially nerd-ink) he’s the man to call.
I can’t wait to see what he comes up with — even though the anxiety-engine in my head is already revving up. Cover art means we’re getting closer and closer to the book being real, and launched into the world where everyone will hate it.
That’s not to say that it is a falsehood, or a pure fabrication. Certainly there are many who call themselves salesmen that deal in outright deceit, but they’re just liars. Plain ordinary liars.
No, salesmanship is all about awareness. Complete knowledge of the product: it’s particulars, benefits, problems, logistics and idiosyncrasies and your most reliable perception of the character of your customer. Everything you say, everything you withhold is an attempt to calmly weave the product into the customer’s needs and desires. You concentrate on what you know about the product, and carefully present only the parts that you intuit will be attractive to your mark. You are creating a narrative, a workaday tale — a story with purpose. To make the sale. To win.
This is antithetical to the creation of art. An act of art should always be an act of truth. Individual truth — the opening of the inner eye and allowing the energy of your private whirlwind to express into your medium:something. Anything. As long as it’s true. Or real. Or important.
I’m still a ways from publishing Spell/Sword — but I’m already thinking about how I am going to sell it. The plan remains to self-publish, then grassroots my ass up the zeitgeist to something more than a blip. Financially and culturally. So I need to be able to sell the book. To other artists, to family, to friends, to total strangers, to people who love fantasy, to people who hate it, to people who never read. But every time I approach the problem in my head, I feel this enormous lassitude. It feels wrong.
In my day job, I am a salesman. I’m extremely good at it. But the key seems to be my total lack of concern. Apathy towards the product, and disinterest in actually making the sale. It allows you to be dispassionate and objective — truly focused on reading the situation and the customer. But with the book, where I’m hopelessly invested in the product and emotionally overwraught in the sale – it’s much more difficult.
It doesn’t help that I’m specifically trying to find my own little niche in the genre. It feels cheap to say “Oh, it’s just like ‘X’ and nothing like ‘Y’, and if you like ‘Z’ then buy, buy, buy!” But when I try to pitch it on its own terms, it just sounds hollow and uninteresting.
There’s a guy, and he has a sword. And there’s a girl and she’s got magic. They don’t like each other, then some shit happens and then they do. Also: hi-jinks.
I could do a laundry list of the random things in the book.
Electric-Eel Powered Jukebox. Prescience. Dwarven ghosts. Lesbian bards. Sweaty wyverns. Hangovers. Friendship. Mailboxes. A devil-spawned assassin. Fairy tales. Horse euthanasia. Wizard duels. Mysterious backstories. Prophetic dreams. Cheese. Plot-holes. Garden plots. Sorcerer bondage. Magic swords. An ogre with red boots. A blue fish. A white bridge. A first kiss. A last breath. Hyper-intelligent frogs with steam-powered roller skates. Banter.
Okay, I wound up kind of liking that one. But still, the problem remains. All that sounds fun, but I don’t know how convincing it is. Part of me wants to sell the book the same way that I wrote it. Honestly, with great love and with no artifice. Well, maybe a teensy bit of artifice.
This is important. This is true. This book is real. It matters. Or at the very least, I need it to matter.
So, yeah. Buy it or whatever.
Oh, my. This question is in bold. On WordPress, that’s like a Tumblr post dissing Doctor Who — it demands a response. What do you look for on the back of the book, or in a sales pitch for a book, when you’re considering reading something from an unknown author?
Certainly they can be built inside the human mind, but at least in my experience, they often come from elsewhere. The ether, if you will. Often when thinking of a character name, or a detail I just make a space in my head and let the idea pop in. I have total faith in these moments, even though I couldn’t explain the rationale if I had a gun to my head.
Admittedly, this may just be a justification for an unwillingness to slog. An idea presents itself, complete and shiny — why go through all the work of outlines and planning and research, just tune in the radio station and let it blare.
But, I am intrigued with the physical precense of ideas — that they could have an origin…and a purpose. With the past few stories I’ve been working on, I’m rolling around the concept of an Evil Idea. A malevolent entity that travels in the heads of mortals, infecting them like a virus. As weird as that piece was, I guess ‘The Option’ is a good enough name for my Big Bad as any.
This is a bit of a re-tread of Inception’s philosophical themes, the power of an idea — the immortality of an idea. Same goes for the V for Vendetta memes flooding the internet yesterday, you can’t kill an idea. People live and die for ideas, the course of entire civilizations turn on one or two great ideas.
That sounds like a great villain to me.
Is this too esoteric to support some fiction? Just too weird? Thoughts? Can’t you see that this question is in bold?!?!?
unpleasant to move, so the Option did not. The walls of the manor were flat and blank, except for the occasional bit of rot or inch of char. There had been a fight. The Option had lost.
“What did I want?
I wanted a Roc’s egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword,. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a like wench for my droit du seigneur–I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, “The game’s afoot!” I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Thoros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be–instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road
Gustave Doré Plate XX – “Lancelot Approaching the Castle of Astolat,” circa 1867-69
Write only what you know. You are in danger, Scholar Dryden.
My name is Emory Dryden.
I sit in my study in the East Tower. I am left-handed, and have to hold the quill carefully to avoid getting ink on my palm. The fire has died to embers. There is a brown plate to my right with a stale piece of bread on it.
It is two hours before dawn, by my estimation.
I can remember my training, and my years of service in the Legion. The Iron Legion of Gilead. The surplice that I wear is a faded green, the color of my order. The Knights of the Scroll. Those that rise above the rank and file of the Legion join one of four chivalric orders. The Scroll, the Bow, the Sword, the Wand. The Scroll is the order tasked with military intelligence — espionage and research.
I am studying a recording. A recording recovered frm aaaa
I am sitting at my table, in the center of my chamber. The fire has died to embers. The brown plate, the stale bread.
My name is Emory Dryden. I am a Knight of the Scroll.
My mind is my weapon. I will not surrender.
There is something inside me. The plate is brown. I must remain calm. The bread is stale. I must keep writing. I am sitting at my table. Understand and defeat this enemy. The fire has died to embers.
The words. The words of Teon. They have infected my mind. Somehow, I don’t knowwwwwww. The plate is brown and my surplice is green and the bread is stale and the fire has died to embers. Is this what he meant? It isn’t over. The plate, the green, the stale fire has died. Is this the Dark ooooooo—- the green plate fire has died of stale, the fire green plate has stalled and died, I am Emory Dryden I am Emory Dryden and I am a Knight of the Scroll -fire plate stale green brown died embers, embers the embers, the embers the EMBERS I must fire stale bread, stale bread must fire embers burn, embers burn, embers burn, embers burn——-the plate the bread me the tower the embers the knight the night the hand the left the right the stale the end the fall the flwr–
Look, I’m honestly excited that the popularity of HBO’s Game of Thrones has pushed this tale into pop culture. I really am. It’s exciting to watch new people discover the characters and the world — leavened with a small sense of superiority and anticipation watching them blunder into the many dark corridors of the narrative. I know everyone who’s read Storm of Swords is almost beside themselves watching the new flock go bleating into Season 3 of the show — we all can’t wait to see their reaction to certain nuptials around the corner.
So, this is not one of those — “GET OFF MY FANDOM, NEWBS” — sort of posts. It really isn’t. The more the merrier — it’s fun to see the norms talking about High Nerd Cant in the same breath that they discuss Taylor Swift and the NFL. And, the more people that are involved in the story — the more we spread the pain waiting for Winds of Winter and Dream of Spring, the final novels in the cycle. There’s something beautiful about all of mainstream America being just as involved in these stories as the rest of us nerds, and just as terrified at the possibility of GRRM never finishing them.
But.
She has dragons. Get her fucking name right.
But there’s this one thing.
This one fucking thing.
It’s something that only the new fans do. It’s a dead give-away that they’ve never read the books and it makes them look and sound fucking stupid.
So please, consider this a helpful tip. And stop fucking doing it immediately.
I first noticed this, during convention season — but now it’s everywhere as people post their Halloween pictures online. It’s always a picture of someone cosplaying Daenerys. But that’s not the thing. Dressing up as characters from GOT is awesome. That is seriously not the thing.
Admittedly, I’ve seen some rough-ass Daenerys costumes — but me being catty is not the thing.
This is the thing.
Whoever posts the picture will caption it as ” Jane Doe is dressed as Khaleesi!”
AS KHALEESI.
No. Wrong. Forever no.
Now…I know you’ve only seen the show. I know there’s a lot to keep track of. I know that the other characters call her Khaleesi about every five seconds. But that is Fuck-Balls Wrong.
‘Khaleesi’ is a title, you stupid motherfuckers. Dany was married to Khal Drogo — who is referred to several times as THE Khal of his khalasar. ‘Khal’ roughly translates to ‘chief’ or ‘leader’ or ‘king’. When Dany marries him, she becomes THE Khaleesi.
So, when you say you are dressed ‘as Khaleesi’ — it’s like you dressed up as Queen Victoria, and then posted a pic with caption “I dressed up as Queen! Next week, I’m dressing up as Mailman! Maybe I’ll do Dog, or Armchair the week after that!!!”
Khaleesi is not her name.
Her name is Daenerys Targaryen. Mother of Dragons. Daenerys Fucking Stormborn.
She takes proper nouns very seriously.
I mean, she has like eighteen names — couldn’t you use one of the correct ones?
I love that character. And since you went to all the trouble to dress up like her – I’m going to assume you love her to.
Get it right.
She is the Prince Who Was Promised, Azor Azai, and she is the blood of the dragon.
You’ll know what all that means when you read the books.
Inconsistencies: There are several portions of the recording that do not seem to bear up to scrutiny. Without further knowledge of the events surrounding Teon’s death, I am unable to know whether to attribute these inconsistencies to his delirium, or to perhaps some sort of metaphorical meaning.
At the beginning of the narration, Teon insists that he brought the darkness with him from the Precursor’s Home. He seems to be drawing some sort of
Library by daRoz
connection between this darkness and the ‘evil’ in his left hand. This evil seems to be the influence that lead him to creating the Machine, and the ultimate destruction of his civilization.
But then he speaks of the tree. And my credulity is overtaxed.
I can stomach the idea that somehow he survived a fall from several miles height in the atmosphere, the physical might of the Arkanic’s is referenced in several bits of lore from that period. But, the idea that a root of a tree maliciously grew into a spike in the exact place where he would land is absurd. Even if we accept the thesis that somehow the tree has sentience enough to do so, and the foresight to prepare this trap in advance — that Teon’s falling body could somehow manage to fall exactly onto that spot is simply unbelievable. The odds against it are astronomical.
Once again, I must return to the speaker’s state of mind. He was a man at the end of his life, in a great deal of pain — remembering another moment of incalculable trauma.
But, accepting Teon’s story at face value for the moment — I am still left with several broken chains of reasoning. He claims that he brought evil with him — and the root’s placement through the left side of his chest is not lost on me — but somehow the tree germinated that seed of evil into a blue flower. When Teon is saved by Jalyx, he takes pains to mention that the flower ‘disappeared somewhere in my chest.’
So, the tree was evil, and Teon brought evil, and the flower was evil and the flower was evil and the flower was evil and the flower was evil and the flower was evil and the flower was evil and the flower was evil, but somehow it took hold of him, leading to the evil in his left hand — and the downfall of his race?
So much is unclear, if only he could have spoken more plainly — or if I had the wit to decipher his warning.
Ah, but I must remember to keep a proper skeptical outlook — as much as I feel empathy for this being’s plight, I am sadly making my way to the conclusion that he was mad when he recorded these words.
Summation:
Dozed off for a moment, only a bare hour or two before dawn. Must forge ahead.
I find his description here most chilling.
“That was the curse, the horror of it all. I can see it now. The shining cities, the bridges of purest white, the towers of glass rose again — but everything we built, everything I built had in it a flaw. A shadow. Twisted lines carefully placed by my left hand. Note by note we sang, but each verse hid a darker chord.”
How horrible. To find every work of your hand turned to your downfall. And for the present time, where Arkanic relics are of supreme value this is a most unsettling thought. Many of our cities are built on or near Arkanic ruins — and much of our mechanical lore is developed from recovered technology. Crudely, all admit. We do not have the spark of genius and mastery that they did — but every year we grow more clever in our copies and begin to make our own innovations.
If what Teon said was true – if everything the Precursors built had a flaw, a ‘shadow’- then we may be marching our way down a path lined with bones.
I find myself at a loss. What can I possibly report to my superiors? I can conclude nothing from this recording, but it suggests so much — so much that my soul tells me is of vast import. We discovered this recording as part of a different investigation. Reports of a manor in the hills south of Carroway, a place of horror. The local populace filled my agents’ ears with tales of demonic forces, lost children, sickness and death. Could there be a connection between the mnr—-
My quill stutters as I write. I know I just had a thought, but I can feel its absence in my mind. What is happening?
I scan my eyes along the words I have written, but I skip over the previous paragraph. At first absently, then with a growing feeling of dread. Something is keeping me from reading what I wrte–
No. Calm yourself, Dryden. You are a Knight of the Scroll – your mind is your blade. Kept sharp and keen in service of the Legion. I know not what I have stumbled on, but I MUst remain calm. I am the master of my own will. I am the master of my mind.
Impressions of the Speaker: The Arkanic language is an oddity. Rhythmic and focused, but with a strange undercurrent – as if the speaker is humming a harmony to every word. When written, the complexity of the symbology and mathematics at work are staggering — but when spoken, it seems to hover on the edge of sensibility. As mentioned earlier, a simple Translation Enchantment is sufficient to make the words understandable– but I find myself listening again and again to Teon’s words in their original form.
Greg Guillemin
The words are alien, but I find myself deeply affected by them. Teon is clearly in great pain, but there remains a quiet beauty to his speech. I compare it in my thoughts to an oboe, old and showing the impression of many careful stains in the wood. The moments where his reverie lingers on his lost companion Jalyx, his tone lightens before dipping again into the morose chords of his tale.
The beginning and the end of the recording, his words show clear signs of hysteria. His words crowd together, speaking too fast. Towards the end of his tale, his words grow further and further apart — until he falls silent for several minutes. When he speaks again, it is with great terror and desperation, referring to the removal [?] of his left hand. I have listened carefully to the silent minutes several times, but can detect no sounds other than a low sigh, which I presume to be Teon’s labored breathing. In the dark hours of the night, I half convince myself that I can hear a slight scratching sound on the recording — but my daylight ears can detect no such noise. I attribute this to a simple trick of my distracted imagination.
But taken all together, his words leave a clear impression. A learned, gentle man caught at the darkest of moments. I would not presume an unwelcome familiarity to such an august personage, but I must add: I like Teon. I sadly believe that much of the recording is a result of his delusions, or the pain of his mortal wound — but I still find his plight deeply affecting. It would not be wrong to say I grieve for his passing. Strange, I admit. This recording seems to come from the end of the Arkanic Civilization, which our scholars place around -1564 VA. This means that Teon has been dead for 2,729 years. But I am [perhaps?] the first to hear his valediction.
I mourn him, as if he had passed days ago. I will not mention this in my formal report, it is not germane or pertinent.
Origin of the Precursors: It seems clear from Teon’s words that the Arkanic race came from not only another planet, but perhaps an entirely different dimension. This flies in the face of much of current scholarly hypotheses. Also, the brief mentions of their sound-based technology is fascinating. I am not a specialist in that field, but I hope that these brief allusions will be illuminating to my colleagues.
I am uncertain about his description of how our world ‘pulled’ his ship into its orbit. Perhaps this is the memory of a child in danger and stress — being recollected by a dying man. I was startled to hear him use the name of our planet, Aufero, with practiced ease. I have never studied the origin of our world’s nomenclature, but I shall make it a point of study when time presents — but how remarkable that the planet has carried its name for nearly 3000 years.
Artist Unknown
The End of the Precursor Civilization: Here, Teon is maddeningly vague. Clearly it was a subject of great distress, but I wish he could have been more specific. What is this Machine that he refers to, exactly? It is clear that it was constructed as some sort of implement of war to battle the ‘Dark One’ that destroyed their home world — but what was it? If it was as potent as described, how can no signs of it remain? Something created by the Precursors’ own hands, that brought down their entire civilization — surely some relic must have endured for our study.
Side note. Teon refers to the ‘Dark One’ several times, but is strangely inconsistent about his usage. Initially it seems to refer to a Death-figure, similar to the depiction in many of our current cultures. But then he attributes the destruction of his home world to this being’s forces. Regardless, this Dark One seems to be a major figure in the culture/religion of the Arkanic people — I must cross reference this with the iconography of the murals found in the Gryphon Ruins near Quorum. So much study, so many new avenues opened by this simple recording!
Inconsistencies: There are several portions of the recording that do not seem to bear up to scrutiny…
spell-sword.com 