Category: Writing

Reason Number Five Why My Book is Worthless: The Dream

G. Derek Adams2 Comments

I am a creature of avarice and cynicism.  Pure altruism, idealistic devotion, working on faith — these are all grand, wonderful things that I have a serious problem operating with. If I’m doing something, if I’m working towards something, I need there to be a concrete goal.  A carrot on the end of the stick. I want my paycheck. I want my experience points, and if I break all the jars there better be some fucking rupees shining inside.

So, how am I able to keep working on my self-published fantasy series? A difficult task with innumerable pitfalls, hurdles, frustrations, despairs, and sorrows — a task with little immediate gain, far less ultimate reward…and an atom’s breadth chance of eventual success in the world at large.

Come close, let me whisper it to you. What I see at the end of the road, my dream job.

Reason #5: The Dream

I wake up in the morning around 8:30. I lay in bed for a bit and collect myself, maybe thumb through the internets conveniently distilled onto my phone. Then I get up, conduct my morning toilette, walk the dogs, feed the dogs, pet the dogs.  Household tended to, I head to my office.

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The Author in Repose

At first it’s just a desk in the back of the house, but slowly as time passes it morphs into an office. Some quiet corner made of brick and steel, with comfy leather chairs and an upstairs loft where I’ve constructed a nap room.

I sit down, sometime around 9:30-10. I flip open my noble Chromebook, or jab the spacebar of the hulking computorial behemoth I’ve purchased with my latest writing advance.

And then I write.

I write stupid stories, and funny stories, and stories full of blood and woe. Stories about Jonas and Rime and their long, strange journey.

And somewhere out there in the stranger world, people pay to read them. They pay me enough that this is all I need to do.

Some hours later, friends wander into my office and I stop working. I go for a long late lunch, then come back to my office to write some more.

I knock off in the early afternoon to beat the traffic, and because it’s time to go pet the dogs.

I walk home, planning the evening and letting the day’s stories settle and writhe in the weird back 40 of my brain.

The next day I do it again.

That’s my dream. My carrot, my XP, my rupees in the jar.

That’s why the book is free. Because that dream is way better than the buck I’ll make from you buying it.

So give it a shot, eh?

Spell/Sword

FREE KINDLE EBOOK ON AMAZON

8/30 — 9/3. 2013.

Reason Number Four Why My Book is Worthless: The Next One is Coming

G. Derek Adams2 Comments

Spell/Sword is not an epic trilogy. It is an episodic dodecasaga with extra walnuts and chocolate syrup.

For those of you that have read the book, fear not! There is a Grand Plan, a Tragedy Writ Large, a Plot If You Will. But instead of cramming it all into a neat Star Wars/Lord of the Rings box — it’s in a shiny manga box.  Each book is designed to stand on its own as the adventure du jour, the Beast of the Week, almost like tuning into an hour-long anime — but slowly at first, then with alarming regularity the shape of My Nefarious Design will be revealed.

Spell/Sword is my first book, and my pride and love for it is embarrassing. But what keeps me pushing it, keeps me bullying friends and strangers to give it a try, is the excitement of where we are going — of what comes Next.

elijah2

Reason #4: The Next One is Coming

The second book is called The Riddle Box and it picks up a week or two after the events of Spell/Sword.

And before you ask, yes, Jonas and Rime have already lost the wyvern. And, no, I will never explain how.

If you don’t read the first one, how will have any chance of reading the second one, where this absurdity takes place?

“I have a sword,” Jonas finally spoke up. “Though, Funnicello confiscated it.”

“It is most likely stored in his quarters, guardian. As well as a few other simple blades and—” Lord Bellwether took a breath to finish his sentence, but was forestalled when the bard finally sprung from his pose of studied apathy and bounded up a few stairs, then turned placing his fists on his hips.

“I have a weapon,” Geranium sang.

“Err. What?” Father Andrew raised a hand in confusion.

“The greatest weapon, the only blade any true Bard of Gate City could need,” the tall man in the cobalt coat let his voice fly up a careful scale, the last words an arpeggio.

Rime bit down on her frustration and slogged back through the blood to throttle the bard. “Can’t you all tell? He’s been waiting to say this, he’s been dying to perform this little scene and I won’t—”

Trowel, Coracle and Neriah all shushed her,then turned their attention back to the bard. All of the female guests. Rime spluttered.

Geranium the Eruption snapped his pink-neon fingers.

“Lady Moon-Death, come to me!” He held his hands up high with ecstatic abandon.

A metallic twang came from the second floor, a gryphon-roar of music.  The black guitar howled through the air and stopped directly above Geranium. It lowered itself slowly, a quick rainstorm of notes spattered from the strings. The bard’s face was beatific, and he cradled the instrument close as it came to him.

“Forever, my love,” he crooned.

The three female guests applauded, and were quickly joined by the priest and the almost forgotten actors across the lobby.

“Thank you, thank you,” Geranium smiled with thousand-stage familiarity.

So get on board, dammit! Or you’ll never read the part where Jonas investigates a giant safe shaped like a cow.

Spell/Sword

FREE KINDLE EBOOK ON AMAZON

8/30 — 9/3. 2013.

Reason Number Three Why My Book is Worthless: No One Is Reading It

G. Derek Adams2 Comments

A little on the nose? MAYBE.

Spell/Sword Fan Club - Third Meeting
Spell/Sword Fan Club – Third Meeting

Reason #3: No One Is Reading It

Here’s a short list of people in my life who haven’t read Spell/Sword.

  • My father
  • My brother

    The Former Secretary of the UN hasn't even cracked the cover.
    This Former Secretary of the UN hasn’t even cracked the cover.
  • My sister in law
  • My girlfriend’s parents
  • My cousins
  • My former roommate
  • Neil Gaiman
  • President Barack Obama
  • Janelle Monae
  • Pat Rothfuss
  • My Pen Pal in Japan
  • 35% of my  D&D Group
  • Jonathan Franzen [big surprise, there]
  • Lev Grossman [he isn’t allowed]

It’s the sad truth of self-publishing. You’re always trying to expand beyond your social circle and break through to new readers, fresh readers, readers who you can’t drive to their house and stand over them while they read it.

And, as is clear, I’m not even getting 100% permeation of my kith and kin.

I’ve made the book an Amazon exclusive for several reason — but one of which is the ability to make it free like this at regular intervals. I’ve never understood why so many self-publishers are nervous about this, becoming over-covetous of the trickle of money you get for each sale. Right now, it’s WAY more important that people read the book than buy the book.

After the initial burst of interest in the book on release, it’s slowly dwindled to a slow, agonizing grind. A book here, a book there., a new review this week, a few stars doled out on Goodreads that week. I’m really hoping that this Free-stravaganza will help get my book out into a wider circle.

Every new -sucker- reader is another win in my book. And FOR my book.

Spell/Sword

FREE KINDLE EBOOK ON AMAZON

8/30 — 9/3. 2013.

Reason Number Two Why My Book is Worthless: Friendship

G. Derek Adams5 Comments

If you held me at gunpoint, and put my feet to the fire, and drilled down, and wouldn’t take no for an answer, and just didn’t let it go, and whined a whole lot about it, and made it a huge deal, and kept that up for a fortnight and demanded that I tell you what Spell/Sword is about — then I would probably still shrug.

It’s kind of about a lot of things.  Adventure, genre-defiance, gonzo ridiculous action, minotaurs, music, entropy, bunnies, sorrow, death, etc. etc. etc.

But way down at the bottom, in the guts of the thing, it’s about Friendship.

Reason #2: Friendship

Some awesome Homestuck cosplay.
“The human disease known as friendship.’ – A. Hussie / Some awesome Homestuck cosplay.

BLECH. Really? That’s the big theme I want to toss my literary cap at, like Sean Connery at the beginning of most of his James Bond movies? MS. MONEYPENNY IS NOT IMPRESSED.

She is never impressed.

There’s a lot of darkness in my little world. [And in my head as well, but that’s another conversation]. Lots of evil and sorrow and just shitty, shitty maturity and growing up that Jonas and Rime have to deal with. Even in book one, they both have a lot of shadows gathering around them. Rime is going slowly insane, Jonas is a deserter running away from some dark times. Unlike most fantasy protagonists that at least get a chapter of idyllic chilling in their author’s version of the Shire, I dump both of them onto the page in the rudest way possible. Jonas is drunk and in a pitched fist-fight with an ogre, Rime just committed a calculated murder to protect herself from betrayal. They both appear in battle, in trouble, with no one to stand at their side.

KIND OF LIKE LIFE, MS. MONEYPENNY.

It sounds super banal even in my head, but I’ll go ahead and type it. One of the many stupid epiphanies that I’ve found in my life, is that friends make the difference.  Knowing that you’ve got some goddamn backup in this world is all that keeps your feet moving some days.

The core of the book is my boy and my girl learning that they are better when they work together. Two people, two travelers against the world. Neither is quite complete apart, and together they can go toe to toe with the nastiest things my peapod brain can devise.

Because it gets worse. It gets so much worse. That’s the truth of the world, our world and mine. It always ends, and most often it ends with tears.   Youth and joy and glory and adventure all fade, everything falls to dust.

WOW. That got depressing.

But that’s the point. Friendship is the shield, the bond that will not break. It’s one of the few weapons we, and Jonas and Rime have to keep them going.

Still not impressed.
Still not impressed.

SO YEAH. Navel-gazing aside, the book is going to be free in just over a week.

Spell/Sword

FREE KINDLE EBOOK ON AMAZON

8/30 — 9/3. 2013.

Reason Number One Why My Book is Worthless : Sideways

G. Derek Adams2 Comments

This will be an n-part series leading up to the Amazon Firesale for the Kindle version of Spell/Sword. It is going to be absolutely free 8/30-9/3.  The plan is to write one of these a day to really crank up my self promotion levels, so when I’m at Dragon*Con, I won’t feel any remorse about begging total strangers to read the book.

But hey, I’m super lazy, so n could very well equal 2.

Reason #1: Sideways

Sideways the Assassin. Official FanArt
Sideways the Assassin. Official FanArt

If the damn book wasn’t ridiculous enough, I had to stick in this goddamn character. Those of you that have already read the book are currently nodding sagely, maybe pursing your lips in disgusted agreement. Those of you who have not read the book, let’s play a game. I’m going to describe this character, and you yell when you hit your personal Preposterous Fantasy Drivel Maginot Line. [PFDML]

Okay. Deep breath.

Sideways is an assassin. A mercenary, a sellsword, a blade for hire.  He’s extremely fond of witty banter mixed with his obscenely

Unintentional Cosplay. But still, get the horns right , loser.
Unintentional Cosplay. But still, get the horns right , loser.

talented swordplay. He also seems to have some sort of moral code [AHHHHH.] he doesn’t kill for pleasure, and seems to have an overall genial position for a hired killer. He is also a devilkin. [YELLING.] The blood of devils is in his family, mixed with human heritage. He has orange skin, [NOOOO.] eyes the color of ketchup [WHAAAAA?] and ‘horns’ that look more like misshapen coral growths than anything that would appear in Lucifer fanart. His constant companions are a pair of shortswords, a flaming sword named Sunhammer [ARGGGGG.] and a gray sword of indeterminate magical function named Chester. [BLUH!] ‘Chet’ for short. [ALL OF THE SCREAMING, LIKE WHEN ALDERAAAN WAS BLOWED UP IN STAR WARS. EXCEPT IT NEVER GOES SUDDENLY SILENT. JUST SCREAMING FOREVER.]

Sigh.

He also fights a minotaur, kills about 75 sky pirates, crashes an airship, rides a wyvern, and takes a nap on a porch.

So, you see, it’s a very good thing that my book is going to be free in about 10 days.

Spell/Sword

FREE KINDLE EBOOK ON AMAZON

8/30 — 9/3. 2013.

Paradox Headache

G. Derek AdamsLeave a comment

[Pro Tip: Don’t EVER get me talking about time travel.]

Time manipulation can produce many unexpected and strange effects.

Several of which have only been hypothesized by researchers in the field. Eyewitness accounts are rare, and are almost completely discredited. The problem with this esoteric study is that it requires a unique vantage point — one would need to be able to observe multiple points in time simultaneously, using a common frame of reference.

Which is impossible, of course.

However, theoretical time researchers have postulated the following scenario.

*The Apple Tree Scenario.*
Premise: Time travel exists. One can witness the full life span of an apple tree, from seed to sawmill. The researchers choose two

Artist - Dani Azahed
Artist – Dani Azahed

points of reference, to limit the variables. The tree is 2 Years Old [a sapling] and the tree is 50 Years Old [full grown].

Experiment A: A researcher travels to the sapling and cuts an ‘X’ into the bark.

Result: An ‘X’ appears in the bark of the full grown tree.

Experiment B: The researcher applies a salve to the cut that accelerates natural healing and bark repair.

Result: The ‘X’ disappears from the bark of the full grown tree.
This scenario suggests that time seems to have a certain amount of elasticity. Cause rippling forward to effect – the observed node, or foci of attention alternating between multiple states dependent upon the actions taken in the past.

Of course this is a very basic thought experiment, which was not nearly exciting enough for these esoteric scientists. They began to hypothesize, what if the tree were a person? What would that person experience as they suddenly manifested a scar? Would memories of the assault appear in their mind, or could they simultaneously remember the previous continuity? And how would they feel when the scar disappeared? Can the human mind contain multiple concurrent events? Different versions of the same event all of which happened, and didn’t happen?

It gave the researchers a headache. So in a fit of self-mockery, the researchers dubbed the possible human effect, the *Paradox Headache.*

Something there is…

G. Derek AdamsLeave a comment

Something there is

like black iron

in the spine of humanity

fragment uit ‘123 DOOD’ Artist: illustrafrieke
fragment uit ‘123 DOOD’
Artist: illustrafrieke

not always, not forever

but enough

enough to preserve

to stand in the wind

enough to unbend knees

and grit teeth

found when we seek

proof again

that we are

to be feared

a horror of human will

great weapon of the mind

skeleton-metal and unbroken

singing in our bones

how terrible

and certain

the salamander birthright

of the children

of man.

Real Life Cluster Bomb

G. Derek AdamsLeave a comment

And…whining.

We just moved into a new house that we are renting. A house that was not cleaned, painted, repaired or in any way made ready for our presence.  We have about 40% more stuff than can easily fit in the storage spaces in the house. Upon move-in we discovered three gas leaks, one in the stove. The stove is crammed full of food residue, and the floor underneath it is caked with grease.

Our landlord is doing everything they can to fix the problems and get the house up to snuff, but we’re still 20 steps back from elijah2where we wanted to start moving into the house.

I’m in a local production of Hamlet, playing Claudius and the Ghost. I have to be off book [all lines memorized] by Thursday. I’m about 30% of the way there, and have a full work week, plus rehearsal every evening.

So at work, in the evenings, getting up early to cram my lines — doing the best I can to unpack and get the new house squared away.

Plus  this wacky-ass writing experiment, Runeclock on top.

So, upshot — writing on The Riddle Box has ground to a halt. I’ve been trying to snatch some time here and there at work, but right now learning my lines is the most pressing.

I’m going to try my damndest to at least eke out 4 pages this week, bringing the rough draft to a nice 85 pages — but I’m kind of riding the whirlwind this week.

I honestly love weeks like this where I’m creatively taxed in multiple directions and mediums — but the extra toll of moving, unpacking, and sorting out the problems with the new house are making me feel stretched out and paper-thin.

But hey, the show opens next week! Then all that’s left is the crying. And the drinking. And the unpacking.

Runeclock- New Sessions

G. Derek AdamsLeave a comment

[HA. Still writing more for Runeclock than Riddle Box. Bad writer. BAD.]

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Haunted House

The fire crackled and spit sparks into the air as the malformed log fell into the embers. Lucht had placed it with great care for maximum light and heat, but it required constant tending.

A rustle of leaves as the wind sidled through the trees of the Proust forest. It was late autumn and the winter chill slinked from tree to tree, occasionally sticking its head out to menace the children with its cool breath. Winter and the wind were old comrades and they hoped to hasten their time of celebration.

But for now the fire kept most of their plots at bay, and the evening dark also kept a respectful distance. Trigger considered howling at the sliver of moon he could spy through the canopy, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. A repast of over-cooked asparagus and sausage was digesting nicely in his stomach. The children sat around the fire, each preparing their marshmallow with the solemnity of a ritual. Mark jealously guarded the bag of white sweet fluff, but was easily overruled by the other’s requests and his sisters commands. Nora jammed another marshmallow into the coals to get the perfect obsidian-black crust she preferred. Jema sat nearby, a trifle jealous as Crim casually held his steel arm in the fire with a fistful of marshmallows.

 

To the Blackboard

The instructor’s voice droned on, a litany of suffering, torment, and bland history tumbling across his teeth like an ankle-deep brook. Mr. Tavis was a brilliant man, but he had a complete apathy towards the interest level or attention span of his audience. All he required was their silence.

The cadets did their best to remain focused with varying degrees of success. Exams were close, and the information they were wading in was pertinent and most definitely on the test, but the late afternoon sun made it all too easy to allow their minds to wander. The sun slanted across the far wall of the classroom and moved as all too slowly. The class would soon be over, but it was not quite yet.

“Now.” Mr. Tavis popped a brief pebble in the water. “That’s a brief review of the major events of the Blank Invasion that precipitated the War, does anyone have any questions before I go on?”

The short-statured man leaned against his desk, and scratched at the dry skin that plagued the back and sides of his neck. It had earned him an unfortunate nickname among the less-kind students of the Academy. Mr. Iguana. It didn’t help that he sometimes licked his dry lips, or allowed his wide eyes to move around the room like a desert lizard.

 

Runeclock – Treasure

G. Derek AdamsLeave a comment

The green-guards Jak and Kanley lumbered onto the gazebo like a stork and a penguin. The two friends quickly scanned the Midway, but saw neither their young quarry or the danger that lurked between the garish-colored booths of steel and light.

The children regrouped and followed Crim’s lead faster and faster towards the great wheel. The golden sun was beginning to set and it’s fire showed the great bones of the Ferris Wheel stark-skeletal as they approached.

The steel-touched boy lead them to a tall booth right near the base of the Wheel. It was shuttered and dark. His rust-flecked hand sparkled in the late sun as he held it up in caution. The scatter-wag band of children, bandits, dogs, mysteries and wonders as one crouched behind a tall sign advertising the Wheel’s wonders as they watched.

With practised ease, Crim popped a latch with his metal hand, and slithered up inside the booth. A few breaths later and he emerged, triumphant with a battered cardboard box.

Crim came into the circle of the others with his treasure, and proudly displayed it all to see. There were more than a few toy ray guns, but also several action figures of various type painted in eye-scorchingly bright color. A gargoyle, a green knight, a tiny man riding a beetle, one ridiculous figure that carried a sword far too large for the plastic arms to bear the weight.

The steel-touched’s eyes sparkled. “Regular haul, ain’t it? Proper.”