Writers Block

So I've been having really severe writers block for the past 2 weeks. This is why this blog post has been so delayed. I made a promise in the last post that I'd talk about the magic system, and pull together Jeshi's character based on the tarot reading. Neither of which has come together in my head. I'll write out what I have so far of the magic system. I came up with it kinda randomally a few weeks back, and I've become very attached to it. The piece I'm not figuring out yet is the partitioning of magic. For the novel, I don't want a HP-like everyone can do everything magic system, but a more focused one. On the previous draft, I used my 6-element spread as a base, but it was a bit unwieldy at times.

The reason I wanted to rework my magic system was that I didn't have a good controlling factor, or drawback. There was no downside to doing magic. In addition, I'd been thinking about Onieromancy, Dream magic, a lot for the Changling game I'm playing in. Somewhere along the way, the following dream magic came out, and it's been growing.

It started when I was thinking that I have a few magic sparring scenes in the book, but they aren't too interesting for the most part. One thing that could make it more interesting is if they could have these sessions in a dream realm instead. And so I decided that all Mages are Lucid dreamers, and that they can have dream adventures. This necessitated a division between the dream reality and the material reality. So I decided that in order to use magic to affect the material world, the mage must enter a state of waking dreaming, to bring their consciousness into the dream world. then they slowly phase the effect into the material world. The danger is that if you phase too much of the dream world into the material world, your consciousness can get trapped behind; Since you were already "awake", you can't be woken up, you're trapped in the dream world.

Now that gave me an interesting drawback, and so I settled on it as the metaphysics of the magic. I still want that partitioning, and most of my mages' abilities are staying as is, but I've been struggling to put the two together into a cohesive whole. However, I'm pretty set on thsese metaphysics, and most people I've talked to it about have agreed that it's an interesting idea. One of them even took it and wrote his own short story about it. Not sure if I should read it before, or after, I start writing my own.

Another debate Iv'e been having recently is whether or not to include a prologue. it's become more and more a staple of fantasy. Dan Wells, in his 5-part talk on story structure at BYU's Life, Universe and Everything seminar, discusses what he calls teh Ice Monster Prologue. It's from Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin, and it allows him to interject a bit of fantasy, to say "This book will have magic, and monsters, and action, but you have to put up with some boring preliminaries first." The Matrix does the same, and most of the Harry Potter books start with a prologue vignette from another POV. I've been thinking about including sucha  prologue myself, but it depends on how much time I'll spend in the normal world before adding in the magical elements. Unfortunately, because of the writers block, I haven't plotted enough to see whether or not it's necessary. It's an interesting scene though, and so I may write it up anyway.

Lastly, I'll talk a bit about books. I'm still on track with my reading challenge, and have read 10 books since my last blog post.

White Cat
Book 1 in the Curse Worker's series by Holly Black, White Cat introduces us to Cassel, a kid from a family of con artists. He also happens to be the only one in his family who can't work curses. The story starts however, when he starts having strange dreams, and finds himself sleepwalking out to the roof of the boarding school he's attending, presumably in order to jump. This allows the plot to catch up with him, and sets him on quite an adventure. This was actually one of the things that got me started on thinking about my partitioning for Magic. In this world, there are 7 types of curse workers: Body, Memory, Dreams, Luck, Emotion, Death, and Transformation. All useful tricks, it got the wheels spinning about what sort of partitioning I really wanted.


My Soul to Keep
This is the third book in Rachel Vincent's Soul Screamers. This is the first time the romance of the series is really challenged, and it's challenged hard. In this story, the super-addictictive supernatural drug has started to make the rounds among the MCs friends, in the mortal world. it's quite a trip to see her tracking down how it's passing in and out, when it's not supposed to be able to. I definitely enjoyed this book as much as the previous 3, and have picked up the 4th book for reading in the next couple of days.




Crimson Wind
Book 2 in Diana Pharaoh Francis' Horngate Witches series. I hadn't remembered a lot about the first book, sicne it had been a year since I read it, but I enjoyed this book just as much. In this book, Witches arent the best people, in general. They're almost completely driven and consumed by greed and power. The MC is a servent bound to a witch, something called a Shadowblade. Shadowblades and Sunspears make up the witches defensive forces: Sunspears can only be out in the day, and Shadowblades can only be out at night. The issue is that the Guardians, basically the magical guards, are starting to wage war on humanity, and it's up to the MC and her friends to try and stop them. In this one, we finally see the event that the author had reported in John Scalezi's The Big Idea blog, and it was just as awesome as I could have hoped for. All in all, I'm enjoying the world and can't wait to see more of it.


Trick of the Light
This book has been touted by the author and many readers for it's surprise ending. And let me tell you, it packs a punch. The MC is a bar owner who's also supporting/helping two "brothers" (they're foster brothers really) in the fight against demons. Demons are all over the place, especially in the MC's town: Las Vegas. The plot kicks off whne the MC finds a clue leading to something called The Light, a weapon that both Heaven and Hell are desperate to get their hands on. And the MC gets caught in the middle, with her own agenda to follow. The surprise ending delivers on the hype it's been receiving, and so I won't spoil it here.


Magic Strikes
Magic Bleeds
The Kate Daniels series, by Ilona Andrews, has seen some of the best worldbuilding I've seen in Urban Fantasy for a couple of years now. I had read the first 2 books a couple years ago, and remember thinking that it (especially the first one) left me with more questions than answers. However, upon reading these I'm not sure where I got that from. Weres are pretty much treated as expected, any mammal form can be used as a ware base. There's also a subset of Wares which are animals in their birth form, and are able to turn human later. Naturally, the more traditional kind aren't too fond of this other kind. The more interesting point of worldbuilding is the Vampires. Vampires are mindless rage-filled creatures. They are only held in tight control by Necromancers, people called Masters of the Dead. It's one of the best treatments of Vampires I've ever seen. Magic Strikes is about an attack on the Shapeshifter community, and a supernatural fightclub-esque thing called the Midnight Games. Magic Bleeds is about a mysterious magical plague. Both of these books seem to bring out some of the awesome blood magic in the world. The blood magic has some awesome features, some of which I wish I could steal and bring to Jeshi. Problem is, now that I've read these, my own idea seems either lackluster or derivative. Cant' decide which is worse.


Cat's Claw
Book 2 in Amber Benson's Calliope Reaper-Jones novels. Callie is Death's daughter, and after a lot of bitterness on both sides has been pulled into the family business. This plot is designed to show us more of the process by which souls are treated, and we get a nice characterization of Bast, and the Egyptian dead. Any Buffy fans will also recognize Amber Benson as the actress who played Tara. Yes, they're the same person. I don't really have much to say about this book.

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn
I picked up this book at Comic Con, 2 years ago, and hadn't gotten around to reading it yet. I decided to read it on the plane ride last week, and was able to pretty much tear through it on the way back. It's a quick read, setting up a series based on a fantasy Chinese culture. There are 12 Dragons, which correspond to the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, and each of these dragons bind themselves to a human, called the Dragoneye, and grants that human powers of magic. The MC is one of the hopefulls to bind himself to the Rat Dragon, who's year has come. But of course, its a novel, and everything goes wrong. It was a very enjoyable read, and I'm looking forward to teh sequel in April.

A Touch of Dead
This is a collection of short stories in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse universe. I've only read a few of the books, and that's been scattered througout the series. Some of the worldbuilding and word choices in these short stories made me go "WTF?" For example, the Fae are allergic to Lemon and Limes. Deathly allergic. One of the characters is actually killed as such. Maybe it's a function of not having read most of the series, but it threw me for a loop. In the same story, she also uses the term 'fundament" to refer to her butt. There are a couple other word choices which made me feel like the author was reaching for a thesaurus, but the character is a simple barmaid. Well, not so simple, but still.

I Am Not a Serial Killer
I've been listening to Dan Wells talk on Writing Excuses, the writing podcast with Dan Wells, Branden Sanderson, and Howard Tayler. This is Dan's first book in his series about a teenage sociopath. The MC struggles to not give into his obsession for serial killers, mostly because he thinks he could easily be one. The plot kicks off however when people start dying, and his unique obsession allows him to see more into the murders than anyone else seems to be able to. When the supernatural elements come into play, the MC seems to be the only one other than the killer with the full picture of what's going on. The plot though, is less about the murders and more about how the MC, John, deals with the relaxing of his strict rules and battles with the monster, the serial killer, inside him.