Project Updates

I started out the year hoping to blog weekly about my writing and art endeavors. I also started out the year thinking I was going to have a lot of them. Neither of these has worked out well in the past couple weeks. So what's been going on?

Writing
DragonMage
I've been bouncing around a bit, trying to find the plot. After the last post, I finally managed out some plot arcs an start on writing. I got through the prologue, a really rough first chapter, and the third chapter before I realized two things: 1) My outline is too sparse, 2) I didn't have quite enough conflict. These are related. For this project, I had mostly thrown out the 3-act structure ideas, and just tried to break my story down into roughly 30 scenes. The plot arcs are much more closely tied than in Ariadne's Labyrinth, which I consider a good thing (the golem plot never quite fit into the rest of the story). The problem is that not every plot point has conflict, and so not every plot point is really strong enough to carry a 3000 word chapter. For example, chapter 3 that I wrote ended up combining 2 of the plot points, and still had about 5-600 extra words of drudgery inserted just to make the wordcount. My current plan is to look more closely at the 3-act structure again, add in a couple extra subplots to explore some themes, and try and line up the climaxes better. This might entail slight changes to the ending, since I realized I was missing the really dramatic climax.

I have sorted out more of the magic system, strangely enough by ignoring the issue I was having earlier. It's more cohesive, but there's a little thread of uncertainty as to how robust it is. I'll try and get up a dedicated post about it over the next few days.

Kat Files/Dirty Angel
I don't know how much I've talked about this project. The Kat Files came out of a conversation with a friend (strangely enough, named Kat). All she did was offer the working title though. I wrote the first few pages of a script, as part of a severely reduced Script Frenzy endeavor. Finding the plot for this piece has been a lot more difficult. After writing in one direction for the plot (making the plot about her friend finding out about the war and trying to get herself involved), I stumbled across a much more interesting plot involving blood. Because it's always about blood. The problem of course is that this plot really came out in the penultimate scene. The current plan is to revisit the first couple scenes, either compressing them severely, or cutting them entirely, and moving the penultimate scene to the beginning, and moving forward from there. The plus side here is that the plot is much more interesting. From a story structure perspective, I had originally planned on 7 scenes,  but after discussion with the writing group, I'm not convinced that having a scene for each of the 7 plot points I'd laid out is a good thing. The piece has also been tentatively retitled as Dirty Angel for the time being. Whether this seems to lend itself more to a porn title than an animation remains to be seen.

General Writing Thoughts
I think my ties to the 7-point structure is becoming more of a hindrance. The idea is really meaningful, and I think it structures the vast majority of plots. The problem I seem to be having is that not every plot point stands on it's own as a chapter. And that's okay. This is a much too literal interpretation of the method.  I think what really needs to happen is that these plot points should set out a skeleton for the plot. Some chapters can support multpile points, and sometimes multiple chapters are needed to support a single point. And so, instead of driving chapters, these events are things that need to happen during the course of the plot. The plot however, is going to be dancing around them and will become much more centered on interesting conflicts for the characters. Looking forward, I think I'm going to try two experiments. Hopefully by putting these out on the blog, I'm going to be held accountable for them. The first, I'm going to select one of my favorite books: Haunted, by Kelley Armstrong. I'm going to do a chapter-by-chapter structural analysis. Hopefully from there, I can try and extract these 7-points, scenes and sequels, and the three act structure, to see how they all fit together. If some are missing, then that's okay too. The second experiment is to try a scene-sequel outline holding the 7-point plots in my head (or on wiki, as it may become). With any luck, this will be informed by the first.

Depending on how the first experiment goes, I may also try a similar approach with Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear, both by Patrick Rothfuss. This has been kicking around in my head due to two things: 1) My marathon read of Wise Man's Fear (for those of you who hadn't heard, I read the entire 900+ page book in one, 13 hour, sitting.) 2) Mark Reads. If you haven't read him, I highly suggest it. The project started at buzznet, when he started reading Harry Potter and Twilight. He went through each story one chapter at a time, and blogged about his reactions. He's since bought his own domain (markreads.net) and has continued. The idea of a chapter-by-chapter reactionary blog post is really interesting, and it's fun to watch him rediscover books you love (or hate) and watch his reactions. I've thought about doing a similar review of the two Patrick Rothfuss books, but since there's 250+ chapters between them, this would take most of a year, even blogging daily. Still, a quicker pace might still be a meaningful experiment for the summer.

Art
I've been delayed in my art and modeling projects, mostly due to work, writing and reading. The reading challenge has taken up much more of my time than I originally anticipated, and so some of my other projects haven't gotten done. I may not do much more modeling this year. I hope to still finish the logo I've been working on, and will do some preliminary design work for my AetherCodex project, but the modeling for the Dirty Angel movie will be postponed.

Reading
I won't be doing a full dump of the books I've read recently in this blog post. I'll try and do a dedicated one in a couple of days. I'm slightly behind on the challenge, about 10 books (At 36/150). This can be fixed with a couple dedicated reading days, but that may not be possible until the summer.

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.

Need a title

Many things to talk about today. Let's start with a review of last week's writing group. Last Thursday was the first day the writing group had gotten to look at my writing. They had a lot of comments. I agree with most of them, and about half of them were actually covered by the previous blog entry.

First thing, they didn't like the characterization of the narrator. Apparently she comes off as younger than I intended, and more masculine than I intended. Same with James. So I either need to grow them up, or let them be younger. I'm not sure which I'd prefer. THey also agreed with my assessment that the diary wasn't working. It introduced more problems than it solved, and while I like the idea, it's not well executed. It'd take some serious work to get things up to shape that way, and it might be safer to just remove it all together.

While they loved the worldbuilding, they thought there wasn't enough exposition about it. I was so worried about avoiding an info-dump (esp. because of the diary medium), that I didn't actually accurately describe the setting. Going into deeper detail of the crazy artifice would have been awesome. They agreed that there wasn't enough emotion (/ reaction), which I knew. Some of the reactions were also out of character (wondering something the character would know). And the stakes weren't well defined, or didn't generate the correct worry/fear, because of the lack of depth in the explanation of the guilds. THe book came off as too much of a McGuffin, probably because it was introduced accidently. On a more amusing note, they expected a note in the bakery scene (which was present, but cut out in edits).

So it sounds like I have 3 main things to think about for the next step: Think a bit harder on my characterization (make sure they seem the age they're supposed to, etc.), provide more description / grounding into the setting, and show more reactions / emotions. Beyond that, some elements of craft (consistent capitalization, formatting, etc.) need to be read through a little more carefully before I throw it up online.

So, with that in hand, I want to talk a little bit about my ideas for my DragonMage rewrite. Now only a handful of people have read the original draft, and frankly it has a lot of problems (I almost wish I had submitted a few chapters of that just so the group saw how far I came before what they saw / tore apart ;)). I've been tossing around genre considerations for a few weeks on it. As written (or at least, as it was in my head), the novel is the first in a trilogy, with each book in the trilogy in different genres. It's not going to work that way. I was listening to an interview, with Patrick Rothfus, at San Diego Comic Con. He talked about his definition of urban fantasy, and fairy tales. This got the gears rolling in my head. The basic premise of his definition is that there are two worlds, the mundane normal world, and the magical other (faerie) world. And basically, the plot happens during the interaction between the two worlds. So, by keeping Magic in the shadows, I could in effect leverage Faerie/UF themes and tropes to keep consistency through the three novels, as they jump from setting to setting. I'm still thinking through all the ramifications, but it is a promising idea.

The other idea I've been kicking around lately is a different way of fleshing out characters. My characters are pretty 1D, and they need more. Secondary characters suffer more than primary, naturally, but even my primary characters have some problem with this. I've heard a couple people mention t his method before, but I never read too much into details, and I've never investigated it myself. So, for this blog entry, I will attempt it. THe basic idea is to do a tarot spread for the character, to discover who they are, what blocks them, and what's in their future. From there, I hope I can plan an arc for the character that is interesting, and I can more consistently characterize them.

So, for this exercise, I will pick the narrator of the sequel for DragonMage, Jeshi the Bloodmage. I've talked about her a little before on this blog (which is why I'm starting with her, truth be told), but this may completely reinvent her.

The spread I'm using is called the Mandala Spread. The deck I'm using is the Shapeshifter Tarot, which includes all the minor arcana and major arcana (though renamed to fit the decks themes), as well as three extra major arcana.
So let's get started!

1. An overview of self - Seeker of the Earth: Initiation, inner and outer strength
2. Ambitions / Goals - The Sacred Flame: Emotion, Energy
3. Ideals, Dreams - The Warrior of the Earth: Self-responsibility, Shapeshifting
4. Real achievements to this time - Deception: Spying, Loss through deception, wrong choices
5. Dependencies, Faulty beliefs - Wealth: Abundance, Gain, Family, Strength
6. Strenghts and positive traits - Abundance: Healing, Success, Prosperity
7. Faults and Weaknesses - Transformation, Release, Renewal
8. Self Perception - Happiness: Contentment, Success, Love
9. Desires - The Lovers: Attraction, Enticement

Well, I'm not sure how I'm going to put all that together. A lot of the data seems to fit more with Sabine, rather than Jeshi how I originally imagined her. (Though the tie to energy is how blood magic works). Look for my next entry on the magic system, and an attempt on how to tie it together.


Before we close, an accounting of the two books I've finished since my last entry.
Witch and Wizard
  The first book in the series by James Patterson, Witch and Wizard tells the story of two young kids who get arrested under charge of witchcraft, and it changes their whole world. The mythological worldbuilding is decent, but the political  landscape pulled me out of the UF genre, where I thought I was. I had a hard time believing in the New Order, at least as it sit in modern time, though the rest of the setting was placed as such.

The Problem Child
Third book in the series by Michel Buckley, we see an arc I've always loved in fiction: Magic addiction. Probably because I'd be prone to it myself, I always sympathize with characters who get touched by magic and find themselves overwhelmed, and reaching for it as a first solution to every problem. The stakes are higher now, and the villain has been revealed to be a pawn. All in all, a good step forward. They're keeping the tension high, even though they've made progress on what I thought was the overarching plot.

First crit submission and first week of reading

I spent the first week of the new year revisiting Ariadne's Labyrinth, my NaNoWriMo novel. Revising the first couple chapters after two months was a very different experience than writing them in the first place. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite the experience I had hoped. While I was writing, I thought it had a lot of promise. No matter which way you look at it, it's probably the best thing I've written. But, while revisiting it, I noticed it had a lot more problems than I originally thought. Part of it is that the parts I really like are in the middle, and part of it is that I've misrepresented to myself how promising it is.

The plot has some promise. They spend too much time getting locked up, kidnapped, and stuff like that. I need more inventive things to go wrong. The novel is still a little cooler than I wanted, emotionally. The conflicts are too physical, and too constant. One of my beta readers said the whole thing read like everything was going wrong. To a point, this was intended: I was following the Jim Butcher school of narrative conflict. However, they're all the same sorts of conflict. More varied conflict might give some relief on one axis while pressuring the other, making the novel feel more believable and less "everything's going wrong."

The ending is weak. More accurately, the ending isn't earned by the novel. I had the ending in mind since I started, but some of the key conflicts that were supposed to be resolved weren't brought into enough light to make it worth it. Because they weren't set up, the ending feels like a bit of a cop out for me.

I also had some weaknesses in characterization and physical description. I didn't paint a good picture of my characters. My narrator was pretty consistent, but my secondary characters weren't. Christy started out really bubbly and fun, but she mellowed out later. This wouldn't be a problem if it was gradual/intentional, but it was kinda abrupt. I had chosen some descriptors for Ariadne but not my other characters, and because Ariadne was the narrator, and because of the mode the story was being told through, there wasn't a good way to include some of them. Maybe it doesn't matter, but something worth thinking about.

The mode fo the storytelling didn't come through as clear as I wanted either. The whole thing is written as part of a diary series that Ariadne, the MC, is writing to her (dead) mother. THere are some small hints of it, but it's not clear and sometimes I don't like how it comes out ont he page. It's always kind of awkward to address the reader, even if the reader is dressed up in another character.

I'm sure there's more things I can improve on, but these are just hte ones I've noticed recently. Now, onto my reading analysis.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Almost everyone I know has heard of the book by now. The re-mastering of Jane Austin's famous work with the addition of the zombie hordes. Now I haven't read the original, but I'm fairly familiar with the story through various movies (see: Bride and Prejudice, Pride and Prejudice (2005 w/ Kiera Knightly, and Lost in Austin), but the pacing in a movie is always very different than in the book. I could see the skeleton of Austin's plot beneath the zombies and I remember thinking that I hadn't realized how slowly the whole thing moved. The zombies spiced up the interaction, but I kept wanting the romance to shoot forward. In a way though, this was more honest and more believable than many storybook romances. Some of the new additions also made me laugh out loud during the reading. Calling the Zombies "Unmentionables" was a chuckle about every time. And then there were several "ball" jokes, and the description of trousers clinging to a man's "most English parts". A bit childish, to be sure, but every once in a while the timing would be impeccable and I would laugh. It almost makes me want to read the original.


Counterfeit Magic
This is the latest novella in the Otherworld series, by Kelley Armstrong. I love her witches, possibly because I'm a magic whore. This novella is about a Supernatural Fight club, being investigated by Paige and her ward Savannah. Apparently Savannah's been growing up fast, it's such a difference seeing her in her early 20's instead of when she first shows up on the scene. This novella suffered from the same problem I had with Waking the Witch, which is also a Svannah-centric story: The ending feels like it's not over. Waking hte Witch was specificially supposed to be a cliffhanger, but I'm not sure this one was supposed to be. The main conflict was dealt with, but some of the other things weren't tied up. While I love the plot, I feel like this isn't my favorite work of hers.


Patriot Witch
This was a premeditated random choice. I know that sounds weird, but bear with me. I don't know how I stumbled across it, and if it wasn't about Witches, I probably would have left it on the shelf. The first in a series by C. C. Finlay, it's a historical fantasy, based around witches in the Revolutionary war. I'm not much of a history buff. I think the opening conflict was one of the first shots fired in the war, which helps draw the MC into the conflict a little more thoroughly. The conflict at the farm was pretty interesting, but I was getting lost by the time they left and started operating in the greater War setting. The ending was a bit confusing, though it might be because I was rushing it a bit.


The Unusual Suspects
Book 2 of the Sister's Grimm, by Michael Buckley. This one has the kids finally going to school, only to find out everything's going wrong. We also find out more about who has kidnapped the kids' parents, which is seeding the next book. How they'll drag out the conflict over the next five books, I don't know. But it's a nice read, for what it is.

2010 in Review: Books, Writing, and Goals for 2011

One of the things I set forth to do in this blog was account for my reading and writing. So before I go onto my goals for next year, let's take a look at how I did.

Reading:
I was telling a friend that this year was one of my slowest years in reading. For those of you counting at home (see posts tagged reading), I read 80 books in 2010. The two of which is going to be present in this entry. About 5-7 of these books were re-reads. In an effort to interject more commentary into the blog, let's get some lists.

Top 5 Authors from 2010:
Jim Butcher - I finally got around to reading the Dresden files this year. I can see what all the fuss is about. The first two books were slow going for me, but once the meta plot became more prevalent, I started to enjoy it much more.
Lili St. Crow - Her strange angels books sucked me in quickly. I still want to read some of her others, but her worldbuilding was fascinating, and the plot solid.
Rachel Vincent - The two books I read by her are quick contendors for the best books I've read this year. While I didn't enjoy her Shifter series as much, there's no short of awesome in these two.
Kelley Armstrong - One of my favorite authors ever, she's one of the reasons I started writing.
Brandon Sanderson - This is the first time I've picked up any of his books, but between them and the awesome podcast, he's earned my respect.

Top 5 Adult Books from 2010:
Proven Guilty - Of all the Dresden books, this still holds the place as my favorite.
Way of Kings - The crazy gravity magic and shardblades made this book a win on it's own.
Angelic - I love Eve, and can't wait to see more of her.
Hard Magic - Probably one of the best books from an author I hadn't heard about before this year.
The Devil Inside - Amazing concept, and a new take on Possession I hadn't ever expected to see.

Top 5 YA Books from 2010:
My Soul to Take - See blurb on Rachel Vincent
Strange Angels - See blurb on Lili St. Crow
Terrier - Tamora Pierce is another huge inspiration for me, and this book is no exception.
Lightning Thief - The Percy Jackson books were a new read for me. The first one was great, and I enjoyed the movie as well. The later books in the series didn't quite hold up to the first though.
The Reckoning - See blurb on Kelley Armstrong

5 Runner Ups: Books / authors that bear mentioning, even if they didn't make the lists
Sarra Cannon - I know it seems a bit plug-y to talk about someone in my crit group, but her books are a contender for hte best YA books I read this year. And I read a lot of them.
Magicians, by Lev Grossman - The only reason the book didn't make the list was some of the drug themes turned me off. It's still a solid book, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
Clockwork Angel, by Cassandra Claire - While not the best plot I've read this year, the worldbuilding in this book deserves some recognition.
Demons Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan - Other than the ending, this book would have made the list as well.
Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians - While not a world-shattering book by itself, the commentary and devices used to play with the fourth wall are rather amusing.


And now, for the two missing book reviews:
Legacies
A new series by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edgehill. Mercedes Lackey is one of the most prolific authors I've ever read. Some of that is due to the fact that she's a frequent collaborator. However, I've never read a book of hers that I didn't enjoy, and that didn't make me think. This book is a UF setting in a school, which has become increasingly popular. Her treatment of Magic here really caught me, as it's very similar to what I hoped to do with my own novel. It's an elemental system, but rather than controlling elements, characters get 1-3 powers which are thematically related to the element. Pathfinding is an Earth talent, whereas invisibility is I think an Air talent. Combat Magic falls under fire. There exists elemental controllers too, so it's a pretty rich background within which to work.

Cast in Shadow
Somehow I missed this book in my blog posts. This is the first book in the Chronicles of Elantra, not to be confused (as I often did) with Elantris. The MC is a girl whos' been brought in off the streets to become one of the elite guards, called the Hawks. The departure from standard fantasy races is pretty intriguing, as she has winged Avians, and cold but mysterious Barrani. Sure, they sound like elves, but they didn't look like them. The plot involves a good mystery, which still raises all kinds of interesting questions. I should pick up the next book at some point.

Writing
I didn't write as much as I wanted to this year, but all in all it was a good year for writing. I finished a novel, and won NaNoWriMo for the first time. I also learned more about myself as a plotter, and spent a lot of time investigating the craft of writing. I learned a lot. The book I did finish, Ariadne's Labyrinth, is quite possibly the best thing I've written to date. It's not perfect, especially in the final third, but it has promise. I also joined up with a Critique group this year, and will be submitting my work in a week to be reviewed by the other members. I'm a little nervous, but it should be good for me.

Looking Forward: 2011
So what about my goals for next year? Let's start with the writing goals, since they're more numerous.
I intended to write a lot in 2010. It didn't happen. I wanted to rewrite basically everything I've written to date. Now I see that it was a bit too steep to require. So I'm going to narrow it down a bit.

• I want to revisit my trilogy. For the purposes of Goals, I want to rewrite Book 1 by the end of the year. Depending on how the other goals are doing, I may seek to rewrite Book 2 as well.
• NaNoWriMo: I won this year, and I proved to myself I can do it. Whether I'll continue to aim to do so is a different matter. It all depends on what sort of plot I come up with.
• Animation: I'm hoping to work on a short animated film. I don't think I'll complete it in 2011, because of the ambitiousness of my other goals, but I want to get the script written, and one of the other pieces: Voice Acting, Character Modeling, or Music.

Reading

And this is the most ambitious goal of all. As I said, i read 80 books this year. I was not trying to push myself, and this is probably even one of the slower years. I didn't finish a book at all in the month of November for instance. I feel like I could read 100 books in the year if I set my  mind to it. But this is supposed to be about pushing myself, and pushing boundaries. And as such, I'm going to attempt to read 150 books in 2011. It's going to be a long ride. I have to average 3 books a week, which while doable, is one of the most ambitious goals I've ever set for myself. All of this, of course, depends on the length and density of the books. 150 YA books is a much different prospect than 150 Epic Fantasies. Of course, I have a mix on my todo list. About 25-30 of the books will probably be Audio books as well, which have a different time requirement. All in all, it should be an interesting Journey.

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.