Iron King by Julie Kagawa

So I saw this blog post in my drafs folder from April, apparently I never got around to posting it. This is a quick high-level review for The Iron King, by Julie Kagawa.

This book has taken me a few weeks to get into, but it's worked itself up to an interesting story. Two things of note, which I hope to discuss more in the future are:

• Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness - Many fiction stories I've read seem to feature the Queen of Air and Darkness as the leader of the Unseelie court. But my Ireland-addicted friend said that she has seen no basis in Myth. Interesting.
• The Nevernever - Both dresden and this book call the home of the Faerie the Nevernever. I wonder if that has basis in myth.

The overall story isn't the most memorable, but it wasn't notably bad either. As I said, I read this back in April, so it's not very coherent. What I do remember of the book, is that I was a bit disappointed in the ending. Unlike Demons Lexicon, where the ending confused me, this one was sad because of unanswered questions. Something came up early enough in the novel that I thought it would have come up before the end. But it didn't. There are sequels to the book, and I will probably check them out eventually. In the meantime though, it's not very high on my todo list.

Book Review: Rachel Vincent, Cassandra Claire, Sarah Rees Brennan, Jim Butcher, Sarra Cannon, Michael Buckley

39 Clues: Into the Guantlet 
And with book #10, the 39 clues is finished. It's a middle-grade book, and as such the ending is more or less the only one that could have happened. However, it was well executed, and there was a twist or two that I didn't see coming. This gives me a little perspective when I look at the series as a whole. There were plenty of twists, plenty of secrets. While many of them were not foreshadowed fully, they were consistent, even across different authors. That may be something I haven't really talked about: There were about 5-7 authors for the whole series (a couple wrote two-3). There was some minor inconsistency of characters (mostly the side characters, not the three main ones), and I'm sure that more than once the authors threw a loop for their compatriots to deal with. It must have been an exciting trip. As far as the series itself goes, as a middle-grade series, I feel it did it's job. It is not the best series I've read, for this point in my life, but it was enjoyable.

My Soul to Save
The second book in the series by  Rachel Vincent. This one brought up some Faustian themes, mixing them with the very rich mythos that she's woven for the characters. The trip to the underworld was pretty crazy, and I'm hoping will get addressed more in future books. As it were, the worldbuilding continues to impress me. The romance is still a little strange, but it's easy to imagine that true of most relationships at that age (having not been in one myself, I can't comment more fully). Other than that, this remains an impressive series, and I hope to read more soon.

Demons Lexicon
First book in a series by Sarah Rees Brennan. The book held my attention, and was rather well executed, right up until the ending. The book follows two brothers who are running from magicians. Magicians, like in Bartemeus, summon demons to give them power, and the two brothers have run afoul of a group. As premise goes, it's not bad. There's some cool worldbuilding, like the dances at the goblin markets. However, I was very unsatisfied with the ending. It was confusing, and while I got the twist (had guessed it only a few pages earlier), I didn't really like hte resolution. I'll probably give her another shot, but it's on teh back burner for the moment. Cut the ending, and it would have been a great book.

Clockwork Angel
A friend of mine doesn't have much respect for Cassandra Claire. This is the first book in her second trilogy, set in the victorian (steampunk) time. The thing that caught me about the first trilogy is the awesome use of runes for the shadowhunters. The shadowhunters are a group of more-than-humans who try and protect teh regular humans from the "monsterous" downworlders. The worldbuilding caught me pretty strongly in this one two. We see more of downworleder society in this one, which I enjoyed, but I still think the runes are some of the best worldbuilding in the setting, and the one thing I keep wanting to find more about.

Side Jobs
Jim Butcher has collected a bunch of short stories, novellas, etc. that have been published in various anthologies and released the collection as it's own novel. Awesome idea, for those of us who don't want to go out and buy the dozen anthologies that contain some of his work. He still has more out there that are not included in here, but it was a great start. Some of the stories caught me more than others. The one from Thomas' viewpoint let me see deeper into some aspects of the setting that, by their nature, can't be shown from Dresden. And I liked them. The one from Karrin's viewpoint was an interesting story, if a bit emo. Personally, I think I'm more excited about the next book in the series than most of these side novellas.

Inner Demons
For another shameless plug, Sarra Cannon has released book 2 for general consumption. If I had an e-reader, I'd totally be all over this. In the second book, the world is starting to be fleshed out more, and the girl really starts to learn more about her magic.

Sisters Grimm: Fairy Tale Detectives 
The last book I'll talk about is the new series of Audio books I'm starting, by Michael Buckley. The premise is a pair of orphans who are descendents of the Brothers Grimm, start taking place in the family business: acting as magical detectives to the everafters, the fairy tale creatures. Again, a middle-grade book, I didn't really expect any great revelations. Still, there was enough of a twist to keep things interesting. Mostly, I'm reading it for the random literary and fairy tale creatures who pop up every now and again.

Book Review: Too many to name.

I'm a little behind on my book reviews. Between NaNo and my research, I've not had much time to write it up. So here's a quick catch-up, some of these I may revisit with more fevor later.

39 Clues: Beyond the Grave by Jude Watson
39 Clues: Black Circle by Patrick Carman
39 Clues: In Too Deep by Jude Watson
39 Clues: The Vipers Nest by Peter Lerangis
39 Clues: The Emperors Code  by Gordan Korman
39 Clues: Storm Warning by Linda Sue Park
Rather than going through each of these books individually, I'll talk a bit about this chunk of books as a whole, since they're from the same series. The story is developing, and it's taking a different route from the standard Alchemists Stone, which is cool. That only happened in the last couple books though, so it's still got potential. The Black Circle was one of the better ones I read, with a very nice exploration of Rasputin and Russia. There was a new character introduced who I kept hoping would become more important, but she has yet to do so. As things are winding to a close, the plot keeps thickening.

Secret World Chronicles: The Hunt
Secret World Chronicles: World Well Lost
The next two books in the Secret World Chronicles, by Mercedes Lackey and Steve Libby. More awesome superhero goodness. The story is really interesting, and I just love some of the characters (two in particular). I found out that this was inspired by the game City of Heros, which makes me kinda want to play it now. Lots of potential for awesomeness. The story has taken a hiatus since early september, and I keep hoping that they'll come back to it. Maybe I'm getting my hopes up though.

Thomas Riley
In this debut book by Nick Valentino, we've got my first real introduction to Steampunk. I picked it up at the Decatur Book Festival, and I haven't regretted it. It's a nice story, involving alchemy and steampunk and all kinds of other things. Pretty simple, for all that. I don't remember all of hte end, it got kinda hectic, but I'm happy with it.

The Red Pyramid
New mythological-based Urban Fantasy, by Rick Riordan. This one is leveraging Egyption mythology. In general, I know much less about this than I do Greek/Roman, but that didn't stop it from being a good story. The mode of telling is also interesting. It's two kids, and they're 'fighting' over hte rights to tell the story, but in several places they're explicitly addressing the reader, as if the whole thing is a letter or warning to the reader. It's well done, and it's what sparked some of the inspiration for my nano novel (in voice).

The Way of Kings
The new epic fantasy by Brandon Sanderson (and I do mean EPIC). This thing's a brick. For all that there's little sorcery, there's some really awesome magic going around in the world. Most people can't do it, and those who can can't do everything they used to be able to. People are in a war where they have barely a notion of what they're fighting for. All in all, there's some fascinating things in here. The magic has made me think, and it may be worth re-investigating as I pull things together for my rewrite of DragonMage.

Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians
This is a middle-grade/ya book by Brandon Sanderson. It seems to have largely be written as an experiment. It contains a lot of commentary on the craft of writing, since the protag considers himself a novice writer. Or something. He keeps doing things and commenting about how a writer shouldn't do them. Beneath the writerly commentary is a story about two worlds, in which librarians are evil and people can do amazing things with lenses made specially out of sands. Better sand means better glass, and so it's a hot commodity. Some strange ideas, some interesting ones. We'll see if I pick up sequels.

My Soul to Take
The first book in the Soul Screamers series, by Rachel Vincent. This is one of hte best YA books I've read recently. She took a different direction on the whole supernatural kid angle, the kid is not a mage, not a vampire, not a werewolf and not related in any way to the Fae. That right there is reason enough to give it a try. Don't get me wrong, I love books about all of those, but it's nice to see something different that still holds your interest. Since the reveal of what she in fact is is a big spoiler, I won't mention more here. Suffice it to say she did everything I thought was redeeming Twilight (which wasn't much), and made it awesome. I just grabbed book 2 out of the library yesterday.

The Black Prism
This new novel by Brent Weeks is the beginning of a trilogy I guess? I wasn't sure about this one, since it was targeted facebook advertising. It worked though. I enjoyed the book. The basic story is simple, the world in the aftermath of a brothers' war. Like Way of Kings, this is the introduction to a world, and so there often seems to be more worldbuilding than plot building. I guess you can get away with that in a series, though I would have liked to see more direction in this one. The primary magic system, based off of light, is really fascinating and has earned this book a second look in my eyes. Unfortunately, their little test keeps putting me as hopeless :(

Terrier
This is actually a reread of one of my favorite books by Tamora Pierce. It's kind of amazing that I love this book so much, since it's pretty low magic, but I love the characters, especially the narrator. The story is told through a journal, which had more influence on the voice of my nano novel than anything else. The treatment of slang and vernacular in this book is also very fascinating. The story itself is about a young overconfidant girl who gets in over her head as a trainee guard.

Bloodhound
This is the sequel to Terrier. All of the above awesomeness, except she's now a full guard.

Beautiful Demons
This one is more of a plug than the others. Sarra Cannon is actually in my critique group, and so I got to read the draft of this. It's available on amazon and b&n as an ebook, and is a really fascinating story about a young girl coming into her powers. Totally worth the $1 she's charging for it.

The End of NaNoWriMo

I had grand plans to update daily about the NaNoWriMo process. But after the first couple days, I was  pretty overwhelmed. It was a long process. I stayed mostly on track for the first two weeks. I lost a bit the first weekend, but managed to catch up. The second weekend, things took a turn for the worse. I was out of town and didn't get to write the whole weekend. Once I got back, I was overwhelmed by how far I had to go to catch up. I wrote a little over the subsequent week, but had a really hard time keeping motivated. I got week two'ed in week three. Go figure.

That weekend however, I mostly managed to turn things around. By the start of Thanksgiving week, I was mostly caught up. Unfortunately, it was thanksgiving and I got behind again. Due to my new netbook (see http://magiuspendragon.tumblr.com for details about what I intend to do with it), I didn't get any writing done the following weekend. By the time Monday came around, I was almost 8000 words behind, and had only 2 days left. Due to the generous motivation provided by one Arumi, I managed to plow through the last two days. I achieved a win at 6:30pm on Tuesday, Nov. 30th, with what is easily my best piece of writing to date.

So the big question is what now? Truth is, the story isn't done. It needs at least 10000 more words. I promised said Arumi that I would finish before the new years, so that's the first goal. After that, I've joined up with some women in a critique group, so I'll be diong writing for that. Mostly, I plan on revisiting / rewriting my first novel, Dragonmage. There's plenty wrong with it, and I've learned a lot since then. If the process of writing my NaNo novel has taught me anything, it's that I still have some things to learn, but I am learning. I'm improving. It's making a difference.

The next project is one I've been keeping kinda under wraps. But looks like I accidentally committed to it at the TGIO party last night. A friend of mine has inspired a story. But rather than tell it in the written form, I'm going to write, direct, produce, and compose for a short animation. I'm aiming for less than half an hour, though how close to that will depend on how big the story is. I don't have much other than it's titled The Kat Files (okay, maybe too similar to the Dresden Files, or the X Files, or any of the otehrs :p), and is about a detective (PI or Cop, up for grabs) who's also a fallen angel.

The last thing I'll be working on is the tablet project alluded to above. Read the other link for more information.

The last thing I'd like to do before wrapping up this post, is to discuss something about how this years process for NaNo was different than my last two years. Anyone who's known for my NaNo past, knows that I have been rather unlucky. My original goal for the month was 25000 words, rather than 50. This year, I plotted more than I ever had before. It helped a lot. I was us8ing my combined system, between the 7-point plot, and the 8-act structure, with Jim Butcher's Scenes and Sequels. As I progressed through the story, the 7-point plot became the most helpful, with Scenes (but not sequels) second. Sequels are where I have a lot of work to improve. I still like the idea, but as I was writing, I realized that these were more cues than plans. It was still much better than anything else I've done.

NaNoWriMo: Day 3

Yesterday's write-in was basically a success. I didn't get as much written as ... well just about anyone else. But that's okay. We had about 6 or 7 other people show up, 6 that I can remember anyway, but I felt like ther ewas more. There was mostly writing, we didn't even get to introductions until half the people had left. But there was some good discussion about kidnapping, Write-Or-Die, and when to kill your MC. At least those are the three I remmeber off hte top of my head. We went out to dinner afterwards, which was kinda dissappointing but it was food.

I'm about a day behind. I was 2k behind when I went to the write in, and 1.2k behind when I left it. I'm about 100 words behind yesetrday's goal now, so I'll be able to catch that up, but I don't know that I'll get the full 1667 on top of that I needed before heading off to bed tonight. We'll see how it goes though.

NaNoWriMo: Day 2

Yesterday was pretty fail as a writing day. I tried to write some in the morning, but I just wasn't feeling the chapter. I managed to make about 1000 words, so I have to play catchup today, but we're having a write-in at my university library. I'm hoping this will help me catch up, but we'll see tomorrow! As frustrating as yesterday was, I didn't feel the great need to quit already. In fact, if anything my goals have escalated. I had originally set a 25000 word goal for the month. However, since Monday was actually on track, I've decided that if I can end on track on Sunday, I will go ahead and aim for the full 50000. We'll see how it goes!

NaNoWriMo: Day 1

I've been absent from this blog for a while, but with the beginning of NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org) yesterday, I've decided to blog about the process. I've made good progress on plotting, I'm onto the last 3 sequences. I'm hoping by the time I get to there, it'll be either not November, or I'll have figured out how to get to the ending, and what the last few plot pinches are.

So yesterday was the first day. I probably broke some kind of record by almost giving up at 10am, with < 500 words written. Things were slightly better over lunch, when I took an hour or so to hit 830-some. This was my official goal for the day, since I was intending on only hitting 25k for the month, instead of the full 50.  Things were looking grim though, as I wasn't happy with the content of the writing at all. There was something missing.

After I was done with work (around 5pm), I went home for dinner, and started to revisit the writing. Rather than try and plow forward, I decided to go back to the beginning and add in whatever I felt was missing, reword / reorder some sentences, etc. I didn't completely axe any sentence, which probably fluffs my wordcount a bit since it's commented (doesn't appear in the final document), but it's in the NaNo spirit. I'm happier with it, even if looking at my writing buddies list makes me depressed. I tried to get more done this morning, but that seems to have not worked too well. Maybe I'll manage a good chunk of writing over lunch, since I won't have time this evening unless I don't want to sleep tonight.

NaNo Plotting

So I was going to have some more modeling stuff today, but there was some issue with my rigging and I didn't have the energy to keep working on it. So instead, I'll bring you all up to speed on the novel idea I'm working on for November. At the moment, it looks like while I may not be officially attempting to hit the 50k goal in November for NaNoWriMo, I'll probably be starting this novel then. 
The novel is still in the very early plotting stages, but I have some snitppets of information that I can hand out.


So here, we shall start with the Story Question:
When her father disappeares, 15 year old apprentice artificer Ariadne sets out to find him. But will she succeed when her new mentor seeks to use her for his own ends, a secret shadow-council seeks to destabilize everything she holds dear, and everyone starts blaming her for a rampaging automaton terrorizing the streets?


For those of you who haven't heard, I'm using this story to explore a little of the Steampunk stuff I've been looking at, and I'm also leaning towards a YA novel this time around. Whether it'll stay there remains to be seen. So I'm setting this in a mostly-victorean era, like most Steampunk, but with my own little twists. The steam machines are quite a bit more pervasive (hence steampunk), and are created through a craft I'm calling Artifice. I didn't want artifice to be purely mundane science, so I've included a little bit of elemental power, with inspiration drawn from the Herbie Brennan books I reviewed earlier. Each machine is powered by Trapping an element in a labrynth mechanism. As in my previous novel(s), there are 6 elements (subject to change): Fire, Water, Light, Earth, Air, Shadow. 


After discussing the ideas with a friend for a few days, I've settled into the understanding that each of the elements will be used primarily by different groups within society. Many artificers will dabble in a 2nd, to try and bring aspects of another guild's work into their own (I use the word Guild here loosely, but that's some of the inspiration for the groups). 


Fire - Fire is the element of the military. This covers both the standing military, as well as police, city guards, etc. They primarily focus on weapons and armaments.
Water - Water is the elemnt of the Artisans. They make little tools and devices to make both life, and their own work, easier and more enjoyable. I'm thinking that I'll aslo stick entertainers into this group, but I'm not sure.
Light - Light is the elemnt of the Brotherhood, the ruling religious organization. I'm seeing them mostly as a monastic order at the moment, though they're not without their share of combatants.
Earth - This element is used by the builders, people who make the buildings (or large scale demolitions) and other large construction projects that people need for society. The line between them and Artisans are pretty thin, but I see them more as making large scale projects, rather than tools.
Air - This is the element of transportation. So we'll get to explore airships a little, though even cars / motorcycles / whatever, or maybe even air-powered gondolas to run the Canals of Venice. 
Shadow - This is the element of teh Guild (this is why I said I'm using guild loosely). In this context, the guild is pretty much the Thieves and Assassins of the country. they have enough power to keep the Brotherhood from completely snuffing them out, and shadow is used as a secondary element to bring in aspects of counterintelligence even by legitimate organizations.


Beyond that, things are getting a bit fuzzy. One of the major sideplots to the novel is going to involve her Licensing Exam. The Brotherhood requires that all trained Artificers be licensed (which obviously has some undercurrent of control implied), and will punish practitioners of unlicensed artifice. Ariadne is shaping up to be the kind of person who reaches a bit too far, and tends to get in over her head. For her project, she's going to try and make an Automaton. All her research will suggest that she needs to either master Light, Fire, and Water, or Shadow, Earth and Air (two trinities, still working on a cool name :p), though there's no good explanation for why that'd be better than any two alone. 


That's most of what I have so far. Structure-wise, I'm exploring a new concept: the 3-act, 8-sequence structure as proposed by Alexandra Sokoloff. However, rather than planning for the 15-minute sequence (this is derived from filmmaking), I'm going to try and have about 2-3 chapters, each with at least 1-2 scene/sequel pairs. This is fitting with with the 3-5 scenes she suggests should be present in a sequence for film. However, rather than having my leaves be just scenes, I'm replacing them with Jim Butcher's Scene-Sequel pairs. 


Now I just have to go about filling in the middles.

Book Review: Peter Lerangis, Laura Anne Gilman, Mercedes Lackey, Jonathan Stroud, Herbie Brennan, Charlaine Harris

To follow up the book festival, I thought another book review post might be interesting. So let's see what I've been up to in the last couple of weeks.

The Sword Theif
Book 3 in the 39 clues series, this one written by Peter Lerangis, sees the duo off to Japan. In this book we find out more about what the 39 clues are all about. There was also this awkward romance budding between two characters (who, I might point out, are cousins), and more secrets dropped about the kids' mysterious past.  I'm not sure I like some of the character changes that happened here (mostly the romance and the ending), but the series itself is still promising. It might be a long ride though.

Hard Magic
I've been eyeing this book by L. A. Gilman  for months. Anyone following me on twitter has noticed this, since I tweeted about it when I picked it up. They had it on the 1 week shelf on the Library when I was dropping off the previous book, and I just had to grab it. What I didn't realize going in, is that this is a spin-off series of her other series. However, it was self contained and intelligable. The plot centers around a team who become a new magical forensics squad, similar to CSI. The magic system still has room for expansion, but the view of magic as current (in fact, this is why mages can't use electric appliences: they run on the same frequencies) is kinda cool. I'll be watching her more carefully. This is also the first UF I think I've read that treats alternate relationships as just another thing, without making a big deal of it. The MC is bi, and one of the other characters, it turns out, is involved in a 3-way relationship. The MC speculates a little about this, but it's pushed aside to make way for more plot. It's presented with the same lack of consideration as it would if it was a heterosexual relationship. I found that intriguing.

The Invasion
Book 1 in the Secret World Chronicles, by Mercedes Lackey and Steve Libby. This is actually a podcast audio book, which is a new format for me. I've listened to some podcasts before, mostly gaming, and I've listened to plenty of audio books (probably more than half of the ones I've mentioned here have been audio books, though I haven't kept track). This one is set in 2004, but with superheros existing. Superheros grew out of WWII, and are managed by a worldwide organization called Echo. However, in this book, we see a surprise invasion by a mysterious Nazi force, mostly metahumans and humans in superpowered suits. The story jumps around in each chapter from one character to another, and they only start interacting with each other in the 2nd book. Still, I haven't been able to stop listening.

Shakespeare's Landlord
Most people know Charlaine Harris from her Southern Vampire Mysteries (a.k.a. True Blood). However, in her Lily Bard novels, the situation is quite different. This is, in many ways, a much more mundane mystery than the UF I've been reading. It starts off as a girl in a small town with a clear past to hide. However, as it unfolds, and we learn more about her past, well it's one of the most heartbreaking backstories I've read. There's no supernatural here, and I'll be honest I spent a good chunk of the beginning looking for one. While this may have stopped me from picking it up in the first place had I known, now that I've read it I'll most likely add the next couple to my list. The next 2 I already have on audio book courtesy of my mom.

The Golem's Eye
After about 2 years, I finally got back to the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. Book two finds our hero crawling up the government rungs. He's his own magician now, and has gotten himself in over his head tracking down the Resistance. It had been so long since I'd read the first one, that truth be told I didn't remember a bit of it. I was still able to follow most of this, but I'm sure there were many back references I didn't get. The Djini's habbit of including footnotes in his work are rather amusing. It only occured to me partway through the 3rd book that the Djini's sections are int he first person, while the other sections are in the third. This is another book that's also strangely political, but since the MC is young and naive, it really boils down to who's trying ot take advantage of him today. Some of these ideas may end up leeking into my WIP if I'm not careful though (more on that later, I've done some significant effort in plotting, but I'm nowhere near done).

Ptolemy's Gate
Book 3 in the Bartimaeus Trilogy has changed the nature of John and Kitty's relationship pretty completely. He is now even higher on the government totem pole, and is running his poor Djini raggid. While I can't remember the "main" conflict, what's stuck with me is that this novel is an interesting treatment of trust, what trust there can be between a man and his deadly slave anyway. I just can't seem to remember what lead them to that place in the first place...

Ruler of the Realm
The Third and Final book in Herbie Brennan's Faerie Wars novels finally wraps up some of the storylines. The demon's mechinations have enough plot twists to keep everyone guessing, though whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is left up to you. The romances come to a heel, at least to a certain extent, and all in all, not a bad book. Though I don't think I'm going to make particular effort to keep an eye out for sequels anymore.

Decatur Book Festival

This past weekend, I was in Decatur, GA for the Decatur Book Festival. I got to do everything I wanted to, but not everything I hoped to. In general it was a good experience, but we'll have to see if it's worth going back to, at least depending on the company.

So friday was full of driving. Because of Ben's work schedule, we couldn't get out until almost 2:30. Which would have been okay, except that he wanted to stop at his Dad's place, which added another hour of driving and 3 hours of socializing. I don't begrudge him the opportunity much, but I would have liked to get to the hotel before midnight, not 2:30am.

Saturday, we got started pretty late. And by we, I mean he. We got to the festival just in time for the panel on Worldbuilding. The lines for the signing afterwards was huge, and we didn't get to see Brandon Sanderson. (As it is, he was signing in Raleigh last night, but I had other plans). After that we walked around, I ended up buying a book that the author called a "Gateway Steampunk" book, as well as Skin Hunger, which was by one of hte other panelists, and the book from the panelist I was there to see (THe Exiled Queen).

Sunday, we got a bit of an earlier start, just a few minutes late to see Cassandra Claire. Her line was, if anything, longer, and I was about halfway through instead of at the end. I still managed to get the two copies, one for me and one for Stephanie. There were also a few other things that are on the maybe list, and so I've marked them down and will be investigating them later, when I have a bit more wiggle room in my budget. The downside Sunday, was that because of the lines for Claire, I missed seeing Lev Grossman. I didn't even know he was going to be there, but it would have been cool to stop by. If I knew, I would have brought my copy of his book. I reviewed it earlier, and it was a little strange, but it would have been interesting all the same.

Posing my dragon

So I've made some progress on the armature in the last week. There's still some issues, and I think that making the controls more clear would help, but all in all not bad. I think the worst part is the way the feet deform when it's posed. I don't think you can see them because of the box, though. One of the design students who works with me has said that fixing the little issues is one of the most annoying / time consuming parts of rigging a character. I doubt I'll get more done this weekend, but here's two poses I was able to make.

Enjoy!

Modeling: Dragon Feet!

I'm getting more and more happy with how this dragon is turning out. The head and tail are a little strange, and I might go ahead and enlongate them at some point. I think the next detail to add is the teeth. I've also set up a camera and rendered the scene. All in all, not a bad days work.

Book Review:

I think It's time for another book review post. I've gotten through a few books in the last few weeks.

Wake
The first book in a trilogy by Lisa McMann was a rather strange book. The premise is pretty interesting, it's about a girl who gets pulled into peoples dreams any time she's near someone sleeping. The dreams themselves are strange, as dreams often are. As usual, there were a couple themes that made me uncomfortable, but all in all it was a decent story. The really strange part was the book was written in present tense. At first I thought it was just for the dreams, and hte rest of hte book would be in the more common past tense, but I was wrong. It made it awkward to read, and gave the whole thing a very surreal feel.
Waking the Witch
Waking the Witch is the latest book in Kelley Armstrong's Otherworld series. I think this is the only author I can think of who maintaines my interest in her as much in the latest book as in the first one I read, and this is the 15th book of hers I've read (11th in this series). The ending is a cliffhanger/ huge surprise, which isn't something she usually does in her books. It made me feel like the story wasn't finished, which is very strange, but apparently this is a 2-part story, and I have to wait another year to find out what's happening. Personally, I think it'll be worth the wait.

Jealousy
The third book in Lilith Saintcrow's Strange Angels series. The mythos is really interesting here, and I wish I knew if it was based on something or not. Secrets start worming their way out, and we find out a lot more backstory in this one. She weaves the two stories together well. To me, more of this book felt about the backstory than the current one, whereas the previous two were more tied to the current timeline. But there's still plenty of story to be pursued.

Elantris
I mentioned a little about this book in a previous post, because it made me think of undead. Written by Brandon Sanderson, it's a very political story, which I don't always like. This one, however, made me wonder if there was a sequel. There were times when it was predictable, though it had it's share of surprises. Some of them were because we had no way of knowing some features about the world, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Shamans Crossing
First in the Soldier Son's Trilogy by Robin Hobb, this was another pretty political book. It's set in a colonial-era fantasy world, and centers around a conflict with Civilization vs the more primal wild. There's some strong feminist leanings in there too, but it felt kinda heavy handed at times. This is probably one of the few books that made me actually hate characters that weren't an outright enemy. The characters were cast to be annoying, and I really felt it. I mostly picked up this book because the sequel kept catching my eyes in bookstores, and I never realized it was one. We got a free copy at Comic Con in NYC last year, so I've been trying to read it. I'm unsure of how I feel about it, but I'll probably give another book a chance, it wasn't that awful.

The Purple Emperor
As I mentioned with Faerie Wars, I had read this book a few years ago, but couldnt' remember anything about it. The 2nd in a series by Herbie Brennan, the book picks up pretty much where the previous one left off. I thin the series is a Trilogy, but I'm not sure. Truth is, I'm not sure what else to say about it.

Artemis Fowl
Another series I had read a few years ago is Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series. The newest one is about to come out, and I grabbed this to read with Krystal when we were driving around. I'd forgotten much of it, and it ended differently than I remembered. Maybe I was remembering a later book. In this world, Leprecon is actually LEPRecon, so rather than a race it's a group of police officers. The mythos is pretty interesting, and while the 10 yr old supergenius is a bit far fetched, it's still an intriguing tale.

Dragon Legs

I've added dragon legs to my model. They're not perfect, but the shape is a good start. Here are the photos.

Vampirism and Agency

So I was reading Brandon Sanderson's Elantris all week, and while it has nothing to do with Vampires, it brought up an interesting idea. So one of the groups of people in the novel have an affliciton which stops their hearts, lungs, etc. It's a very functional approach: they only need air to talk, limbs to move, etc. Food isn't necessary, but they still have a hunger. Anyway, the characters are very hard to kill, though their bodies never heal (and so pain is a big problem). As with vampires, there's only two ways to kill them: beheading and fire. Same with vampires, which is where I think I got this connection. In most vampire mythos, both are the best ways to kill a vampire. Steaking and garlic depend more closely on the story.

Anyway I was thinking about why this is. You have an immortal body, you don't need air or food. It's mostly understood that most of our body is simply in service of our minds (or at least, it's a common assumption, from what I know). So what happens if you behead someone who doesn't need their body? They can't do anything. Talking requires lungs. At best, they could move their eyes. Same with burning, without a body you remove a minds agency. Even if the consciousness can survive without a brain (it's unclear, there's only weak evidence), without a body, all it can do is ponder, and despair.

Of course, the point of all this in the Novel is to establish the necessity of Hope, and in some way Vampires work the same way. Hope is what keeps them from turning into beasts. Maybe there's something to be said for being an agentless being.

Book Review:

Well, It's apparently been quite a while since I've done a book review blog. So let's see what we can pull together.

Mark of the Demon
The first book in Diana Rowland's Kara Gillian series, Mark of the Demon was a very impressive book. Although I'm not sure how I feel about her reaction to the demon, the plot twists and turns kept me glued to the page for the whole day. I burned through it pretty darn fast. It's possible that I'd be less impressed on a second read through, but for the moment I'm keeping an eye out for her next one.

Strange Brew
This book is an Anthology. I don't remember a lot about every story, but I'll write about hte ones I do know.

•   Seeing Eye - Patricia Briggs: This was about a blind witch helping a werewolf track down his brother. Really interesting short, especially the twist near the end.
• Last Call - Jim Butcher: Dresden Files short, in which Harry tracks down someone who's poisoned his favorite beer.
• Death Warmed Over - Rachel Caine: I don't remember all the details of this, but I remember really wanting to know if she has other books written in this world. I seem to think it's a war between witch factions.
• Vegas Odds - Karen Chance: Don't remember this one either. Hmm.
• Hecetate's Golden Eye - P.N. Elrond: This was about a girl who hires a detective/magic user to track down and steal this amulet from a sister who wanted but didn't deserve it.
• Bacon - Charline Harris: Set in the True Blood world, don't remember more.
• Signatures of the Dead - Faith Hunter: Set in the Jane Yellowrock world. I think I liekd the narrator here more than Jane, though I haven't read Jane yet. It's on my shef, i swear!
• Ginger: A Nocturne City Story - Caitlin Kitteredge - Umm...yeah. Not putting it together.
• Dark Sins - Jenna McLane: Another one I don't remember. I'll probably try and glance over these and give another entry later.

Evermore
Evermore is the first book in Alyson Noel's Immortals series. To be honest, elements of hte plot reminded me very strongly of Twilight, with a slight twist. Still, it was interesting to read. Plot was stronger than Twilight (though that's not saying much), and I liked the narrater most of the time. She was a little dramatic, but it's YA.
Betrayals
Betrayals is the 2nd book in Lili St. Crow's series. I am getting drawn into this series quite strongly. She's now in a school of people closer to her own..demenor. It's kinda fascinating. I still am not sure where she's getting her mythos, but it's fascinating to see another side of vamps and weres.
SpellCrash
SpellCrash is the latest book in Kelley McCullough's WebMage series. Hacking/Coding, Greek GOds, and Magic, all rolled into one nice aweseome bundle. There's some character decisions that I wans't as fond of in this book, but overall it made nice progress. The ending looked like it was gonna suck and then got better very quickly.

Demon Hunts
Demon Hunts is the latest in the Walker Papers series by C. E. Murphey . The series brings shamanistic traditions into the modern day world, and is quite fascinating. I'm not as grounded in shaman mythos as I am some others, but I thoroughly enjoy this series.

Last Olympian
The last book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, by Rick Riordan finaly brings the story to a close. While the world isn't closed, this hero's journey is pretty much ended. It was a good ending, and reallyi shows the uncertainty of prophecy.

Faerie Wars
The first book in the Faerie Wars series, this details the adventures of a prince of the realm and his travels into a parallel universe: earth. I had read the books a while ago, but couldn't remember them well and thought I'd give it another go. While one of the MC's is a bit naive at times ("How can she be a lesbian, she has two kids!"), it's a pretty decent book.

How to Train Your Dragon
This is the book the Movie was based off of (If you haven't seen the movie, I highly doubt you'd regret it. Unless you're a weirdo who doesn't like dragons). This is apparently the first book in an 8-book series. THe plot is very different than the movie, I suspect only a few characters names were actually used in the movie from the book. Most of the characters are rather different as well. But it was still an enjoyable read.

New Kid in School
It's pretty rare I'm dissapointed by a book, but this one was one. The first book in the Dragon Slayers Academy books, the book was okay (if childish, but it is a children's book), until the very end. The ending was such a big letdown.


Maze of Bones
This series, the 39 clues, is put out by Scholastic, and written by a group of writers. The story is about a pair of orphans who are members in a very influential family that apparently includes people such as Ben Franklin and Mozart. While the believability of such a long-branching family streatches a little, the books themselves are pretty interesting.
One False Note
 This is the second book in the 39 clues series. Most of what I have to say about this book was said above.

Good Omens
Yes, that's right. It took me this long to read Good Omens, by Neil Gaimman and Terry Pratchett. Great story, and I never quite knew where it was going to go. The ending was a little unexpected, but follows well from the rest of the story.
Brisingr
And the last one I'll talk about for today, looks like, Is the 3rd book in the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. This was originally thought to be the last book, but a 4th is coming out to finish the series. WHile the plot is decent, it drags a little. However, my favorite part is some of the names. They're so intriguing, with what I assume is strong nordic influence. Still, this is part of what prompted the creation of the model dragon I was posting about the last two weeks.

Wings!

Happy 4th of July everyone. Well a day early. In any event, today it seems I'm going to post another segment on modeling. Since we last saw our dragon, He was a poor wingless beast. I've since added wings, and that's the major contribution since last time. I've been trying to figure out how to do the legs, and they keep evading me. Not sure why, they just do. If I try again later today, I'll update this blog post. For the time being however, here's some images of the shiny new wings.

3d Modeling: Dragon

So I started working on a dragon for my story, and because it's a fun modeling attempt. It's looking decent so far. I'm pretty happy with the head, though the horn looks a little strange. The body is still a work in progress, and I havent' started on the wings / legs yet, because they're pretty tricky to get off the ground. The little weird spot on the back is where I've set it up for the wings to come out of. Looks a little different than when I'm editing it, but hopefully it'll come together.

Game Mechanics and Worldbuilding

I've realized lately that there's one very critical thing missing from my previous explorations of magic systems. And that is, you need to include growth. It's not interesting if the character(s) know everything there is to know at once. Or even after a short time. There should be a way to grow and learn new things. I've been thinking about this more recently because of a possible new endeavor to amalgamate some of my favorite game systems together, and use my writing world as a base for an RPG. It could be awesome, or it could be terrible. For the moment at least, you all are along for the journey.

Game System
So for the non-gamers among you (which should be all of you, since I don't think I have more than one reader :P), an RPG is loosely broken down into two parts: The Game System, which has all the die mechanics, status changes, etc., and The Setting, which has all the flavor. In most cases, the two are intertwined since we want aspects from the setting to have rules-based effects. However, for the purposes of this discussion, the System is the toolkit which you use to build the Setting. Claro? Awesome.

World of Darkness
So I'm using two systems for the base at the moment. The first one is White Wolf's World of Darkness. Because of copyright laws, I have to be careful how much of this I use (or share, mostly). For those of you who are unfamiliar, I'll say that it's a die pool mechanic, in which you roll a collection of 10-sided die (d10), in order to resolve an action. There are several types of rolls, and one distinction never quite sat well with me. It's a reasonable distinction in most terms, but it gets fuzzy when magic is introduced into the system. This is one of the things I hope this combination will address.

Fate
This system I'm a little more free to discuss in detail, as it's published under an open-source license. The system uses Fudge dice, which are a set of 4 dice, with equal probabilities of being -1,0 or 1. To this a skill can be added, usually between 0 and 5, to resolve an action. Other than that, the system is driven by consumables called Fate points, which allow you to take advantage of various situations. The main thing I am intending to steal from this system is some of the mechanics surrounding Aspects, which trigger the use of Fate points. In addition, the inclusion of zones and barriers for combat (to help determine how easy it is to effect another person), sits well with me.

Combination
I havent' compleately planned through how these will be combined. There are some points that cross over very well, and others which will force some thought. The basic mechanic I think will be the d10 die pool, with the inclusion of aspects. Some aspects will likely be taken from World of Darkness' core mechanics, but I want to include at least 1-2 more in some way.

Setting
In order to continue discussing my plans, we should talk a little bit about what I want out of the setting. This material is none but my own, and so I am freely allowed to share it. (At some point, I should figure out how to discuss the actual copyright of what I post on here, since I've been giving a lot of information about my creative works).

Magic Themes
I planned on discussing this more in a previous post, but somehow I got sidetracked on what I meant by this. In a broad sense, this encompasses the ideas behind the choices I put forward before. The most straightforward examples involve finding cultural mysticism practices, and learning about their themes. Personally, I think the work I'm piecing together encompasses bits of various parts of it.

So what is the place and function of magic in my world(s)? Well, the system I'm putting in place allows for some fluidity in the matter. This is because I've drafted stories which cross the boundaries of several worlds, and so the system I put in place should encompass all of these, and allow for meaningful transitions between them. I'm currently thinking about rating a world on a scale from 1 to 5, though I might redefine the levels if I find more granularity is required. Here are my thoughts as they stand now.

1. No Tech, Highest Magic - This would describe a world in which humans live in more of a semi-symbiotic relationship with magical creatures. The creatures use will, rather than tools, to shape their environment.
2. Primitive Tech, High Magic - This would cover early hunter-gatherer societies. The world would still be inhabited by a plethora of magical creatures, but the abilities of man would be tempered by their tool use.
3.  Medieval Tech, Middle Magic - This is closer to the more traditional fantasy setting. This is roughly the setting for DragonMage.
4. Modern Tech, Low Magic - Modern day times, but still with the insertion of magic.This is roughly the setting for PhoenixFire.
5. Futuristic Tech, Lowest Magic - This is my futuristic setting, and the reason that I'm thinking about turning an RPG out of it. This is roughly the setting for both my short story (title needs work though), and ChaosStorm.

The tradeoff between technology and magic is one I'm particularly attracted to. I think I'll also tie it into the theme I've been messing with of Order vs Chaos. The big question is which side is tech, and which side isn't. Magic as Chaos, and Tech as Order would be more traditional, or at least more expected. It also matches my antagonist better, and therefore the whole plot. However,  on a personal level, I'm more interested in the other direction.

I think this'll do for now, there's some more noodling about, but maybe next week.

Super Secret Sumer Scheme #2

So I've been back and forth what to write about this week. Truth is I haven't made any progress on any of my projects to write about them here, hence the late post.

So instead, I'm going to answer the question that I know some of you have been asking: What was my other super secret summer scheme? The Previous one as you might recall was to amp up physical description by modeling characters in a 3d environment. I've not given up on that, but I need better photos before I can move too much forward.


Anyway, the second project is what I'm here to talk about. So it's been on the todo list for a few months now, possibly earlier. I'm going to try and write a musical. Now I've no reason to believe that it'll be any better than anything else I've written, but it'll be a new experience.

I'm still working on the plot, but I've basically got a guy who's lead a rather unassuming life. He's always taken the safe road, afraid of risk. The scene opens up with his funeral. After he dies, rather than going onto the afterlife, he's sent back down as a guardian angel (I guess more of a conscience, I'm playing off the angel & devil who live on your shoulder), to a guy who is trying too hard to win the girl of his dreams. His counterpart, of course, has his own agenda, thoguh I've not yet figured out what that is.

The only other musical number I've any idea for is a nice sweet song about second chances, which I think may be the theme of the musical. Now I just have to figure out how to tie it all together.

More 3d modeling

Despite the hangup of the past few days, I've still been working a little on the modeling. I downloaded makehuman to get a quick generic mesh to build off of (honestly it's a pretty good mesh, but since it's in so many peices (separate objects, not just groups) i can't really rig it or anything for poses, so I'm still going to revisit that), and have started working on some clothing / accessories. So here's a screenshot:

So it looks pretty good, I'm mostly happy with the design for this particular outfit. I'm still messing with a few ideas, but we'll see. The ovalish thing off to the side is going to become a sword at some point, even though the sword isn't the most appropriate for this character (I'm still working on how to make that work). I'm probably going to make at least 2, if not 3 outfits and a couple poses for the characters, once I get more of the hang of how this all works.


So far, the outfit is just using simple materials to get the colors. I've tried including some textures to add topology, but the bump maps don't seem obvious, at least to me. It might just be a zoom thing, and it might only be at render time, I haven't messed with it much. One of the things I am going to do is add a sigil for the character. I've started designing it, using Alchemy, but I'm not sure how i feel about the overall shape. Still, I'm going to play with it and try and get some more gradient coloring going on once I get home and can review the videos I have on how to do it.

As you can see, the shape isn't great, it's a little strange. It has some promise, but I have to do some thinking before I can include it into the previous work. The colors are also going to be played with, and if I can figure out how, i'd like to get the compositor working on it to make it glow slightly.

Storytelling

So I'm a few days late on this post, but that's because I had a really hard time thinking up a good topic. However, while I was on the plane today, something occurred to me. I don't think I've ever met a writer who hasn't described the sensation of their characters talking to them. Many of them say the characters tell them the story, and they just write it down.

The catch here, is that it doesn't seem to happen to all of us. Or at least, I've never managed to get into that sort of grove. It may be that the characters aren't well formed in my head. It's something I've been working on, that's why I'm playing with the modeling software. (Incidently, goal for this week is to start working on some clothing / props, assuming I ever get more stable internet).

This got me thinking about whether or not storytelling was a learned trait, or something more? I'd like to think I have interesting ideas, or at least they sound interesting to me, they just are a little incomplete. When I sit down and write them, it just doesn't come out that well. There are some things that I've been working on recently (with the magic system etc.) that may help me narrow this down, and get a clearer picture of the characters, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, what do you think: Storytelling skill is inherited? something you can work on? or just a glass ceiling?

Book Review: Jim Butcher, Jenna Black

I know this entry is late. I had fully intended on posting about the character modeling, but there's been some barriers. So instead, you get another book review post :).

Small Favor

The bad guys are back, and stronger than ever in the 10th book of the Dresden Files. The fae are back and calling in favors, and as usual, Harry pisses off everyone and somehow makes it out alive. The ending has some beautiful irony, though it brought up something that apparently was in one of the shorts I missed.

Turn Coat
There have been hints of a conspiracy behind the scenes in the other Dresden Files books. In this one, we see it come to life. My favorite character gets some awesome scenes in this book, and there are some AMAZING sequences when Harry walks in on his allies in compromising situations. There's also some big mysteries thrown around w/o explanation, with the hope that they'll come up again in the future.

Changes
The latest book in the Dresden Files starts and ends with a spoiler. It's a really tough one to talk about without giving stuff away. Some thinly veiled awesomenesses include my favorite character coming up with a spell titled "The One Woman Rave", which leads to a sequence with another character dancing while swordfighting. Pure awsomesauce. Harry actually mouths off to Odin, and gets away with it. Yes THE Odin. This book saw a few instances of magic that didn't click, or the MC getting around limitations through sheer contrariness. Some of it I'm not sure how I feel about, but it's worth investigating in the future.


The Devil Inside
The first book of the Morgan Kingsley, Exorcist series by Jenna Black. A good chunk of the reason I picked up this book is because the author will be signing in my town on Thursday. After reading the book, I'm pretty excited :). The story takes place in a world where possession is legal, as long as the host consents. So Demons are everywhere, and the heroine isn't a fan. She works as an Exorcist, getting rid of demons that are illegally possessing someone, or who have killed. And then she finds out she's possessed herself, without her knowledge. That part strained believability a little, but for the most part it was a very enjoyable read.


Modeling
So just for completeness, since I was intending to talk about it, I'll speak for a bit on what happened with the modeling. So I've finished the torso, and started on the arms and legs. I don't remember if that was in the last picture I posted. This weekend, I started in on the head and found out that my reference images are too far off to be helpful. I tried moving ahead anyway, but all the proportions are off and, to be frank, it looks pretty terrible. I'll have to do some thinking about how I want to progress.

Building a Magic system

As we prepare to run Dresden Files for the summer, I've been thinking about the magic system for my novels. I mentioned it in an earlier post, some of the rules and considerations for magic in general. This time, I'm going to take a less structured approach, but instead discuss some of the things I've been considering for my own system.

In my previous post, I discussed three basic portions to a well-defined magic system: Source, Control, and Drawbacks. To this list, I'm going to add thematic considerations, and move forward from there.

Control
I'll start with this for no better reason than it's first alphabetically. In the first iteration of the novel, I had nothing but a pure expression of Will. From a magic standpoint, that's pretty boring. In the second case, I was dancing with ideas of Sympahty and Runes, both of which I discussed a little before. In the latest version, I've got a highly individual, varying expressions of control. I've picked mostly 5, but there's some room for other consideration.

1. Blade - This is a variation of the physical / dance expression of magic found in Marie Brennan's Doppleganger (I believe it's been re-released as Warrior & Witch). The energies are focused through combat (will probably include dance here). 
2. Bard - This one explores the magic of Song. 
3. Weaving - This might be weaving fabric, or it might be more general symbology. There's still some room for exploration
4. Herbology / Alchemy - This one is mostly for a single character, but a couple others can get some use out of it. This weilder makes potions, poltices, etc.
5. Smithing - The act of creating an object, and binding energies to it.

Some of these might get transformed with the Themes I talk about a little later.

Source
 The one thing that hasn't changed since this story's conception is that the source is elemental in nature. The elements also will be part of the expression of magic, parts of the themes. More on this later.

Drawback
This is the big thing. I've no idea what drawback I feel like employing. I've been dancing with a couple life energy ideas, or working out a weakening of emotion, but that seems...well dangerous. I dont' want to give my magic users cause to forget emotions, because then they'll all become psychopathic. So I don't think I want to go that way. Memory is cool, but I'd feel too much like a rip-off.

Themes
In this, I'm investigating the sorts of magical effects. That's kinda what I mean by themes here. As mentioned before, I really want to have the elemental effects. I was having a few other effects per person, but I've recently decided that each character gets general elemental control, one literal expression, and one figurative expression. I'm not sure yet how the first two will be separated in all cases, but some of them will be handy. For the character I've posted before, Jeshi, the element is Fire. Her figurative expression is giong to be the blood magic, which I've been workign on. It might not be as figurative as I wanted it to be, but I think it'll fit. Blood is the carrier of the inner fire, and as such is symbollically attached to a persons life force, and to their magic. My protagonist for the first book is going to be limited to Water, as much as I wanted fire as well. That was too mary sue-ish. The literal expression is going to be a mistform, which might still be mary sue-ish, but I think it'll work. THe figurative expression will either be traveling magic, or shapeshifting. While I prefer the latter, the former might be more useful. If I decide to limit it to one personal expression, then I'll drop the mistform.

So that's about all I've got for the moment, but I think it's a decent start.

Character Modeling (Take 2), Book Review: Lisa Shearin, Jim Butcher, Julie Kagawa, Dan Brown, Kelley Armstrong

It's been a while since I've done a book review, so I have plenty to talk about.

Blood Rites
Book #6 in the Dresden Files pu the hero in a quite unusual situation. At the risk of a spoiler, I'm just going to say that he's investigating murders in a rather unusual setting. There were PLENTY of LOL moments, many of which came up because of the situation. We also find out more about Thomas and the White Court Vampires, which is pretty cool as well.
Dead Beat
 Book #7 in the Dresden Files brings Necromancy into the fold of things that go bump in the night. We get to meet more Wardens as well, which is something I had been looking forward to the entire series. Some fallout from an earlier book is also explored in great deapth, and this is the first time we see Harry truely outside his magical league. Refreshing.
Proven Guilty
Book #8 in the Dresden Files brings the character who's fast becoming a favorite into greater light. Harry goes to a horror convention, and sees his friends daughter all growed up. This would be so much easier if I was allowing myself spoilers, but I did really enjoy this book :)
White Night
For the last Dresden Files book this week, we see book #9. Here there's someone killing women, and they leave messages for Harry..messages that only he can see. His first love comes back, and adds to the complicatedness of the situation.

The Iron King
Written by Julie Kagawa, this book was actually suggested by Rai, even though she hadn't read it. A girl finds herself thrown into the world of Faeries, accompanied by the now-infamous Puck (yes...THE Puck). We see both the courts of Winter and Summer, which are lead by their typical leaders, Mab and Titania (incidently, Dresden uses them too, but even some non-Mab queens of the winter court are identified as the Queen of Air and Darkness. I think there's something here, but I've not the knowledge to chase it down). Still, we even see hte rise of a new threat, and the sequels still have room for a few big twists.

The Reckoning
The last book in the Darkest Powers trilogy by Kelley Armstrong(Site #2. Chloe and the others are starting to learn more about their abilities, and what that entails for them. This book marked the end of their original arc, but she's seeded the next arc, and they will eventually meet up again. She does that a lot. I also got to meet her on Wednesday, which was a boatload of fun. She read the first chapter from her new book, and it sounds like it'll be a fun read.


The Lost Symbol
I know there are people out there who will loose any respect for me since I've read this book, but  it was an entertaining read. Like many of Dan Brown's books, there are many huge infodumps, some cleverly disguised, some not. The plot was twisty but confusing. The portrayal of the masonic brotherhood was interesting, though not very flattering to that same brotherhood. It's given me the idea to try and work with some secret society things for my Mage game, but more on that later.

Trouble with Demons
The last book I finished (just yesterday in fact), was the third book in Lisa Shearin's Raine Benares series. The cover/title was for this book was what got me to pick up the series in the first place. The Demonology professor who got elaborated on in this book is quickly becoming one of my favorites. I hope she comes back. I've been on a Demon kick recently, and this helped with that. It also got me thinking about some more details for my magic system in my own novel, but that's for another post.


Character Model
So last time didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I did a few things that were, in retrospect, pretty obviously wrong. I've told some of you, but what I basically did was start over, and try a new method. There's still work to be done, but it's a much better start than last time.

First attempt at character modeling

So I've started, over the past few weeks, to try and model one of the characters for my novel. So far, I'm pretty unhappy with it, but it's  awork in progress. I suspect, at the moment, that I've included too many polygons, and it's becoming hard to clean things up, so when I make some small mistake, it blows up quickly.

However, in the interest of completeness, I'll post what I have so far here.

Breasts are definately harder than I expected, and if I went back and did them again, I might have a better shot. However, as it is, I tried it one way and am somewhat regretting it. The hip/groin area I'm also not happy about, though it's much better than it even was just this morning. All in all, progress but this is going to take some work. Arms and Legs are my next major area to tackle (as you can see, they're quite low detail).

Burning Wheel Postmortem

It's been a while since I brought gaming into this blog. So I think it's about time. My regular gaming group has been trying a bunch of systems recently. Trying to find the ones we really like. After a successful session at MACE and listening to some podcasts about it, I decided to give Burning Wheel a try. After dropping about 75 bucks on books, we played a game this semester.

Pros:
So the system has some definite pluses. It's pretty realistic, which is a plus and a minus. For people who like that in a game, it's pretty hard to say "But shouldn't my x do y against z?" It's also got some great storytelling aspects. I've mentioned beliefs & instincts before, in my character post. While these are really useful in setting the stage for a story, there's more to it and we'll revisit it later. It also has brought up some interesting questions about failure, which I'm going to be bringing more into my other games. This was probably one of the biggest wins for getting involved in this game. Their ideas with skill chains is also really interesting, and has brought a good twist for a story to bear. Some of the stuff in the magic book is also pretty cool, and merits further investigation.

One of the more interesting parts of the system is character creation. You basically write your characters history through the creation process. They also use a system of Traits that let you really customize your character, and define what he/she's like. All interesting ideas, but it seriously limits the setting because of the amount of work to transfer these.

Cons:
So despite some of the good points, there were some issues. We had a really hard time sorting out beliefs and instincts. While they are good for narrowing in on a character, getting them into play is pretty hard. Maybe we need more experience writing them, I'm fully willing to believe that. However, it's a steep learning curve, and that just wasn't what we were prepared for as a group.

The other main problem, I already alluded to, was the crunchiness of the system. Lots of die rolls to resolve things. Many of the rules are "optional", in a sense, but most of the players got lost in the shuffle. Again, I'm sure we weren't doing things completely right, but the learning curve was just steeper than we expected. The core mechanic is straightforward, but you miss out on a lot of the setting that way. For instance, adding something as simple as Armor to the game adds a whole level of complexity to the fight mechanics, even without the full scripting.

Conclusions
So it's a nice system, and I got something out of trying to learn it. But the learning curve was steeper than we were willing to commit at the time, so I think I have to save it. Maybe in a few years I'll find a group willing to try again, but for now we'll keep digging our heels into World of Darkness, and exploring a few other systems. We're about to dig into the Fate system, for Dresden, and a few others high on the todo list. Should be an interesting year.

Physical Description and my Super Secret Summer Scheme

Today we're going to talk a little bit about description. As a storyteller, I think description is one of my weaknesses (though let's be fair, my strongest strength is an average to below-average command of plot...). I've noticed it more and more in my RPGs which makes it really hard to set a good mood. I noticed this very strongly the other night when I was using a description from a module, for a body orchard (a grove of trees etc. which are basically made out of human flesh. Flowers w/ ears, trees with eyes and blood running down the trunk...it's a poignant image.)

So the trick of course is to balance plot and exposition. Margaret Roland wrote a post about this last week in the Magic District blog. Her big comment was that you have to balance what hte reader needs to know and what the reader already knows. Stephen King mentions in his book On Writing that adverbs should only be used if they change the readers perception of the event. Chuck Wendig makes a similar post in his blog post on physical description. His argument is that you pick one salient feature of your character, something that's exaggerated, and bring that description into play. What distinguishes your character from any other person. Jim Butcher mentions similar ideas in his post on Characters, between his arguments for exaggeration and his tags & traits model.

So I've come up with a plan to help with this, at least with my characters. We'll try and talk more about scenes and scenery in another post. So for characters, I have a hard time holding a good image of the character in my head. Certain aspects are usually exaggerated traits stolen from people I know IRL, which is a dangerous road to walk down since if they don't like the character, that's an issue. So despite my complete lack of any artistic ability, I'm going to try and create a visual representation of some key characters. Probably going to select a few characteristic poses, and maybe a couple other aspects. I'm going to use Blender, an open source 3d modeling software. I've been watching tutorials in much of my spare time for this week, and I think I've got a handle on the workflow and controls. I started modeling a simple cruciform sword, and I might post it online once I've added some more detail to it.

The trick with modeling people, at least at first from what I've seen from these tutorials, is working from a good set of reference images. At least 2 shots, one from the front and side in the same pose. The one people seem to like to work with is the Da Vinci pose, that he used to illustrate the proportions of hte ideal man. The problem is I haven't managed to find some reference images, and there's a few reasons I can't really ask anyone, most obvious being that the less clothes the better.

So the current plan is to try and get some generic body references, and then use whatever pictures I have (either on my hdd or facebook), to try and get some better individual detail. So my homework for the week is going to be to try and find images I can use for the bodies, one stock male and one stock female, and then we'll see about modeling that first. The other thing I'm doing in the short term is starting to think about poses, and props, for each of the 3-4 characters I want to model. Current plan is my 3 protagonists and my main antagonist, and then I'll go from there. May also do the lead character from my short story, but we'll see how things go.

Book Review: Jim Butcher

I had intentions for this week, but they didn't pan out. Instead, I'm going to go ahead and do a review of the last book I read. I have two library books really soon in my queue, and two new books taht I might read sooner rather than later.

The book of the day however, is Death Masks, by Jim Butcher. Like the previous one, we're starting to see more connection between the books. This one involved the Knights more, which was kinda cool. There was some interesting religious aspects, made more interesting by the fact that I started listening to it on good friday. The MacGuffin so to speak in this one turns out to be the Shroud of Turin, the one which Jesus was wearing during the resurrection. There was also some cool stuff about a 7 yr old girl with the knowledge of all the world. Heady thing.

Sorry for the short entry, I'll try and do better next time.

Writing Experiment: Scene 1

Here's the first scene. It's a long time coming, but I hope you enjoy it. I'm not happy with the way it ended, but it managed to add a nice new element to play with in the story. Hopefully w/ some revision it can be fleshed out into a better scene.

***


``I give up.'' Cat dropped her head into her arms, resting on the
heavy wooden desk. She pressed her forehead against the smooth vaneer
finish, blocking out the flickering light with her arms. ``I just
can't do it.'' She felt the warm pressure of a hand on her shoulder.

``You'll get it Cat, just focus. Use your frustration. Fire feeds on
emotion.'' She turned and looked up into the starling blue eyes of her
cousin. ``Just take a few deep breaths.''

``Easy for you to say. You're a natural.'' He sat down beside her, and
pushed a book across the table. ``Another book? Do you really think
this'll help?''

``Come on Cat! It took me months to track down that book. The
Alethenian Codex were supposed to have been destroyed. Do me a favor,
just try it.''

She ran her hand along the worn leather cover, inhaling the musty old
book. She dropped the book as a fit of sneezing came over her. ``Damn
books. One of these days, you'll be the death of me Michael.''

She gently opened the book, squinting to read the careful writing
inside. As she worked her way through the writing, her head swam with
images. The mages described in this book were not just
elementalists. They talked of drawing higher magics, bending other
parts of the known world to their will.

She read more carefully until she saw something that made her blood
run cold. ``Michael? Are you sure this is a good idea?'' Her hand was
shaking as she slid the book over to him. ``The codex were destoryed
for a reason. We've stumbled across something dangerous.''

His lips moved as he read the passage. Cat closed her eyes and tried
to push the images into the back of her mind. Such callous disregard
for human life was abhorant. ``They really think this worked?''
Michael's voice was a harsh whisper. He slipped the book back towards
her. ``It's still one of the most complete treatises on magic that
ever existed. If half of what they write is true, it might still be
helpful.''

She sat back up in the chair, taking deep breaths that filled up her
stomach. She pushed the breath deep inside her, feeling the power stir
inside her. A spark warmed her belly, and she blew it out into her
hand.

``Oh please, you call that a fire? Even a mundie can do better. Maybe I
should bring one of them in here.'' The spark faltered and she dropped
it. A book slammed shut behind her, casting a plume of dust into the
air. The small candles flickered, casting pale shadows along the book
on the table.

``What are you doing here? Don't you have some children to steal or
something?'' She bit down on the venom in her mouth, closing her
eyes. ``Get out of here Sam, I'm trying to work.''

``Sitting there all day with your nose in a book isn't going to
help.'' He waved his hand, pulling shadows down over the book in front
of her. ``You can't learn magic from books, no matter what Michael
says.'' He smirked, and got to his feet. ``You two enjoy
yourselves.'' He flipped a match onto the table in front of
Cat. ``Maybe you can use that to finally start a fire.''

Before she could blink, Michael was out of his chair and punched Sam
squarely in the jaw. Sam touched his fingers to his busted lip. ``You
actually hit me? A lord of the council assulted me. Well the council
will love to hear about this.''

``You leave her alone,'' Michael growled. ``The Princess has more pull
than you'll ever have.'' He punched Sam again.

Cat stood up as a third punch landed. ``Stop it, both of you.'' She
took a few more steps and felt a wave of power pass over her. She took
a few deep breaths to steady herself. ``Michael, stop. Just let him
go. Sam, it's time for you to leave.''

``Aww Princess, we were just starting to have fun. Can't stop until
someone looses an eye, right?'' He winced from the pain as he
grinned. ``Can't stop till then.''

``Leave! Now.'' Anger swelled in her as she pointed at the door. Power
flooded from her, leaving her weak at the knees. A burst of flame
lanced across the room and struck the door in a shower of
sparks. Michael just barely managed to pull Sam aside as the door
burst into flames. His face was pale and his nose, lips, and ears were
oozing dark red blood. He scrambled to his feet and ran through the
door.

Cat stared in horror as Michael started calling water. He doused the
flames, and sat down next to her. ``Well, I guess now we know. Blood
magic exists after all.''