Writing the Tree of Dreams has begun.
It’s official. My first attempt at writing a novel has truly begun. Stay tuned here for word count progress if you are so inclined. First go round is a very rough draft – mostly story flow. I will be adding a lot of detail on the second draft probably about doubling the length.
Project begun, January 25, 2012
Days of Writing so far: 3
Current Progress: 3221 words
Chapters Done: 1.5
Average Words/Day: 1073
Goal: 300,000 words
The Tree of Dreams is to be a fantasy novel – the first of three, the second of five. I am finding it easier to get started on book 2 than book 1. So if I ever become successful, you can look forward to a very nice prequel and even a future novel (or series) that takes place well after the dust has settled.
A little background of the series. The world is my own creation called Zarathuz. You’ve got all the classic elements of fantasy – unique races, detailed magic systems, and an antagonist set on the total destruction of everything that is natural and good. Everything is original – well as much as anything can be. We all take inspiration from our experiences, and therefore nothing is truly original.
I have detailed the plot enough to get going on the story telling and have outlined my main characters. I wish to develop flawed and complex characters with their own unique struggles and individuality. The plots will be twisting and some turns will just plain shock you if I do my job right.
As this is my first novel, I don’t expect to even finish it this calendar year. Perhaps you will see it in 13 – a good number! Keep tuned for updates. This post will be sticky so just visiting zcreed.com will give you my latest word count without digging through all the other posts and reviews.
As far as reviews go, I will definitely keep writing them so don’t go away!
Book Review – The Emperor’s Knife #TEK, book 1 of the Tower and Knife trilogy by @Mazarkis_W
I just finished reading the debut novel by Mazarkis Williams, The Emperor’s Knife last night (this morning) at 5am. I’m slightly tired, but hey, it was worth it! The Emperor’s Knife is a well written story with very good use of language that guided me with a constant sense of foreboding while displaying unique magical systems, and plenty of blood, brains, and sex.
This story on the surface is about a magical disease that when it infects its victims it slowly covers their skin in geometric patterns until no clean flesh remains and they either die or become slaves to an unknown (and evil) master. Despite magical protections, the sickness has set root in the very heart of the empire – the emperor himself. The story is about multiple characters’ attempts to both save and unseat his Majesty.
When I initially read this blurb, I was immediately hooked. This story made me think of Weis and Hickman’s Death Gate Cycle, and Brett’s Warded Man, and even Week’s Night Angel series – all of which I enjoyed immensely. I jumped on Amazon (.co.uk) and placed my order. Alas, Amazon was super slow about shipping to the USA, and to top it off after they finally arrived one of (I ordered two copies) the books was missing, and the other was kinda banged up… not what I wanted for my book-snobbery bookshelf! Amazon did fix this and I at least had my reading copy to use. I dove in the first chance I could get.
I have always been intrigued by mazes and labyrinths. A labyrinth is much like a maze and yet completely different. While they both have lots of twists and turns, a labyrinth only leads the journey in one direction. Mazarkis managed to pull off something new – he created a maze of labyrinths with multiple patterns all arriving succinctly at the same spot.
Multiple character plots are threaded together very well so the reader knows mostly what is going on throughout the book. The book’s length is average for a fantasy novel today, but reads quite quickly due to the faster than normal pace and the shorter length of its chapters when compared to most other fantasy novels I have read. I may be alone in this, but I find this refreshing – in my opinion too many books nowadays could have easily been half their original length through editor and author distillation while still managing to tell a great (and in many cases better) story. At the end of the book Williams’ character plots have all joined neatly together or have ended in their telling leaving the reader quite satisfied with the tale. This clean ending opens up the field wide for book 2.
The characters were well thought out and stayed true to themselves throughout. I did feel some of the characters fell into friendship/love too quickly – or perhaps not too quickly, but just that the building up to these levels of relationships wasn’t fully divulged to the reader. Still, the characters were outstanding. They all had their own mentalities, passions, motivations, tragedies, and vices. All the characters were flawed and very human.
The one thing I felt lacking in The Emperor’s Knife was world building. I wanted to hear the Persian influenced music in the background, smell the roasting kabobs over the open fire, and hear the throng of people crowding the streets of Nooria in the evening hours. I would like to hear from the commoners themselves what its like surviving in the Cerani Empire. While you get the feeling that the world is immense, the story is primarily told in two locales – the desert and the inner palace. There was no real hustling and bustling in the streets and no venturing into any of the smaller villages dotting the landscape. All this said, the desert is a beautiful place in itself – it just felt empty to me. On the reverse, this emptiness adds to the sense of foreboding throughout the book and the quick pacing which made it so enjoyable. I read an interview today where Mazakis Williams said the next book in the series will be half focused in a more European stylized section of his world. I look forward to exploring this expansion.
Lastly, the magic systems were just awesome. The patterns themselves hold some mystical secrets more ancient than the elemental magics of the mages’ tower. And the mages’ magic was quite unique as well even though we only saw glimpses. Fans of unique magic systems will be pleased.
I am wavering between 4 (loved it) and 5 (crazy about it) stars. Regardless of the rating, I highly recommend whoever likes original fantasy to give this book (and series) a read. I look forward to the rest of the series and wonder where Mazarkis will bring me next.
You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Emperors-Knife-Tower-Trilogy/dp/1597803847
Book Review – A Dance With Dragons #ADWD, book 5 of A Song Of Ice And Fire #ASOIAF by George R. R. Martin #GRRM
To preface this review, I wanted to inform you that this is a review of the unabridged audio-book version of A Dance With Dragons (ADWD). Every word of the book is read to the listener in an unabridged reading with the actor changing his voice slightly for different characters and using a neutral voice for narration. I have listened to all of a A Song Of Ice And Fire (ASOIF) in audio-book format as I simply don’t have time to sit down and read such lengthy novels. I highly recommend this type of “reading” for people who have to commute a lot or spend lots of time working with their hands on mindless tasks (for me this entails renovating my 1850 home and landscaping the backyard).
Not wanting to write a spoiler review, let me just say “wow, I did not see that coming!” I think you will be shocked toward the end of the book – I was both saddened and very curious to know more. I can’t say more than that without spoiling it. A Dance With Dragons is better than night soil!
In regards to how long it took for Martin to write this book, I agree with Brent Weeks’ opinion post that George’s readers probably shouldn’t have to wait almost 6 years for the release of a book, but on the other-hand I can understand why it would take so long to write a book like ADWD. It seems to me the average author takes one to two years to write a book. ADWD is fully twice the length of the average novel that comes out – it is truly epic in both scope and words. In addition, George was working on other books in that time-frame as well as dealing with the HBO adaptation of A Game Of Thrones. With these considerations, I see how it could take between three and six years to write the sequel (or in this case parallel) to A Feast For Crows (AFFC). Still, I just wish it didn’t have to take that long. Now that the initial push with HBO is done, with all the publicity and now Hollywood behind him, and a horde of new fans bugging him, I think we can expect to see the next book in the Song coming along within two years – but really, who am I to say?
All that out of the way, now onto the meat of the review. ADWD is an exquisitely written gritty tale, peppered throughout with colorful terms such as “night soil” pulling its readers a little deeper into George’s imagination with every page turned. Simply stated, Martin is just an excellent writer and his huge world is highly organized. The scope is vast with so many plot-lines, sub plot-lines, and side plot-lines keeping the reader entertained and always guessing. His story contains many players – both main and side characters – and you never really know which ones are going to die next. George revisits some of the characters that we didn’t see in AFFC just enough to keep us up to date on what is going on in their lives, while he focuses more on other characters and developing their stories more fully. You will find yourself falling in love with characters you hated in previous books, and you will despise some characters even more! George does a great job with getting us to know his characters, understand what is in their minds and hearts, what motivates them and gets them to do the things they do and even why they repent. It is a joy to watch martin break his characters both mentally and physically as he does it so fantastically. George really knows how to tell a tale and ADWD will leave every epic fantasy reader satisfied that they got their money’s worth.
This tale stretches across two continents and really beings to bring the whole story we’ve been reading thus far together. And the dragons, wow! These are some ferocious beasts. These creatures are not the little dragonlings that were crawling on Daenerys’ shoulder on the HBO version of A Game Of Thrones. These creatures are huge behemoths that can spout large gouts of flame effortlessly and endlessly to consume their prey and foes. These dragons are nasty, nasty creatures – there is not much controlling them as they are truly wild beasts.
As with the other stories in the Song, ADWD does move along rather slowly compared to many other authors out there. You are however rewarded with richer detail, but not so much as some authors I’ve read who make you want to skip five pages just to find out what is going on. George balances description with plot very well – perhaps balanced more on the description side, but not too much that he keeps you from wanting to read further. It is a page turner and you won’t want to put it down.
The only true downfall I can put on this book is that it is actually only half of a story. A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons are mostly written parallel to one another as the scope of the series has become so vast, Martin simply can’t capture a section of a timeline in one book. While I knew this before I even started ADWD, I ended up missing my favorite characters like Samwell, Brienne, and of course Jaime. We do catch snippets of them, but I miss reading them especially after we’ve been waiting more than 5 years. ADWD and AFFC being the whole of a single book also begs the question, will ASOIAF be eight books long now (previously the series was estimated to be 7)?
George seems to be holding true to his philospohy that evil always triumphs over good, chaos over order, falsehood over truth, and darkness over light. But as always he leaves the door open just a crack so that at the end of this series (however long it may be) the good guys could still possibly win out and may indeed triumph. But time is running out. Winter is here. It is a fact that can now be seen even on the Dothraki Sea. Are the dragons going to be the power that defeats the mysterious god of ice we’ve barely heard mention of? Who is Varys actually working for? Lots of questions arise from reading ADWD and hopefully they will begin to be answered in the next book.
Recently ADWD was voted on goodreads.com to be the best fantasy novel of the year by readers like you and I. This is definitely deserved. I voted for Patrick Rothfuss’ The Wise Man’s Fear and even after having finished ADWD I would not change my vote. It was a tough year for Pat going against George. I am sure Wise Man would have won had there not been the media hog (deservedly so) that ADWD has become because of HBO. I’d bet 80% of the votes for ADWD would have gone to Rothfuss had ADWD not been in the running, putting it probably on the top, closely contested with Erin Morgenstern’s breakout novel (which is definitely now in my to-read list). But those are the breaks – they WERE released the same year and even if both ADWD and TWMF are excellent stories deserving of the number one spot, “there can be only one”! I am very happy to give A Dance With Dragons 5 out of 5 stars!
You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Dragons-Song-Fire-Book/dp/0553801473
93/7 Beef – a Fraud? #greed #lies #health @walmart
Okay, this really ticks me off. So Kim went shopping today at Walmart (which we rarely do preferring our local Stop & Shop’s food quality). I am making a big pot of chili. She got 2.25 pounds of ground beef for that and Tacos. She bought 93/7 beef, paying the extra premium for the leaner meat. Below is a photo of the label:
And another photo of the nutritional information:
When I first took the meat out, I immediately knew something wasn’t right. Usually 93/7 meat is a bright red color, but this meet was more on the pink side. I chocked it up to Stop & Shop versus Walmart quality difference. After the meat started to brown I figured out what was wrong. This was NOT 93/7 meat!
After the meat was done cooking I was astounded at how much fat was in the pan. I usually get about a tablespoons or two from a pound of meat, so two and a quarter pounds should give me maybe a quarter of a cup, right?
I spooned the extra fat so it wouldn’t go down the drain into an empty Bertolli glass tomato sauce bottle.
Thinking maybe Walmart’s distributers inject their meat with water I looked to see the breakdown between fat and water. Nope… Looks like it’s all fat to me.
Now this was not a scientific experiment, but I think it shows yet another way Americans are being duped by corporations. I just hope this practice doesn’t spread to my Stop & Shop!
- BlogPress for iPhone
Location:Knight St, Ashaway, RI,United States
#Recipe – Delicious Low Fat Smoked Salmon Cream Cheese Spread – Goes GREAT on Thomas’ Bagel Thins.
Equipment you need:
- A Smoker
- A GLASS, PLASTIC or CERAMIC Bowl for Brining (Do NOT use metal – salt can cause metals to leech and can poison brined meats)
- Aluminum foil
Ingredients:
- Salmon – 1.5 pound filet (You can smoke more salmon, but the recipe requires only 1.5 pounds)
- Kosher Salt – .5 cups (Salt:Water ration is 1 cup salt to 1 gallon water – Do NOT use iodized salt or common table salt)
- Water – .5 gallons (Brine solution should cover submerged meat)
- Apple Wood Chips – 3 to 6 ounces (These burn slowly, releasing that delicious smokey flavor)
- Fat Free Cream Cheese – 8 oz tub (You really don’t need low fat or regular cream cheese as the salmon has plenty of – healthy – fat content already)
- Lemon Juice – 1 tablespoon (To retain freshness and color)
- Dried Dill – 1 tablespoon (You can substitute any dried or even fresh herbs to taste)
- (optional) Chipotle Hot Sauce – 1 tablespoon
Directions:
- Mix brine solution with water and salt in brining bowl (do NOT use metal)
- Soak salmon filet in brine solution for 12 to 24 hours (do NOT exceed 24 hours or the salmon will get too salty)
- Take salmon out of brine solution and pat it down with paper towls to dry it off
- Place salmon on aluminum foil and put in a cool, dark place (on a rack in your oven – works even better with the convection fan turned on without heat, do NOT refrigerate)
- Wait 3 hours for salmon to air dry (Salmon should form a pellicle for best smoking results)
- Take salmon out and place in smoker
- Fill wood chip burner bin with 3 ounces of apple wood chips
- Smoke salmon at 210 degrees for two hours
- (optional) Fill wood chip burner bin with 3 more ounces of apple wood chips
- Smoke salmon at 210 degree for another two hours
- Remove fully cooked salmon from smoker and allow to cool (Refrigeration is okay now)
- Remove salmon skin and undesirable parts from filet and throw away (or compost – fish is a great fertilizer for roses and other plants)
- Mash the good salmon up in a bowl
- Mix in the tub of cream cheese and stir well
- Mix in the lemon juice
- Mix in the dill (or other herbs) and the (optional) chipotle sauce
- Serve as a spread over your favorite bagels or Thomas’ Breakfast/Bagel Thins
Look what I’m reading! Lord of terror himself, H.P. #Lovecraft.
I bought the beautiful B&N version of the complete fiction. Gilded edges, leather binding, fancy cover.
But what’s inside? Dare I open these pages? The Tomb, Cthulhu, oh the horror…
- BlogPress for iPhone
Location:River Rd,,United States
Book Review – Black Sun Rising, Book 1 #Coldfire Trilogy by C. S. Friedman
I saw this book on the shelves years ago but I was a starving student at the time and passed up the opportunity to read it then. I won’t lie, the gorgeous cover art dragged me in, but as I read the flap errata in the Waldenbooks, I found myself very intrigued by the premise. The fae are alien, vampiric creatures that feed off of humanity… hmmm. I put the book down and walked out of the store, but that flap’s contents have haunted and influenced my own notions of the “fae” ever since. To that I thank the author, Celia. Recently, I decided to track down that book and thanks to my Google-Fu I found it! This is one of those times where I chastise myself for not buying this gem back when I first saw it on the shelves.
Black Sun Rising is a cross between fantasy and sci-fi (more on the fantasy side) with many dark undertones to it. The main characters are a priest, a human who has traded his soul for eternal unlife, and a sorceress.
Before humans arrived on the alien planet, the world was in perfect balance. If there was a great period of flooding, the creatures would quickly evolve to breathe in and out of water. If one species became too prolific, something would evolve to take it down a notch. Think of Darwin, but on steroids, not directed by random changes in DNA but DNA is changed to fit the new environment. An interesting concept and well portrayed in the story.
In this world, magic is accomplished by the fae who can almost be thought of as a flow of invisible spirits manipulating the world around them. Sorcerers(esses) manipulate the fae to do their bidding while the fae feed on their emotions. Some fae feed on dark emotions such as rage, pain and despair while others feed on joy, love, and faith. Over time demons were “born” out of the humans’ imaginings and took the forms of earthly monsters such as vampires, succubi, and even pagan gods.
The writing has a dark tone to it – scenes of torture and gruesome death are scattered throughout – I had eerie feelings as I read a few certain sections. Mankind fears true night for that is when the most devious fae (and in rare cases men) come out to feast on the humans inhabiting their world. Mankind has somehow learned to survive in this harsh world through the use of suppressing their own emotions, arming themselves with light, and manipulating the fae to protect them from the demons of the night.
The characters in the book are well defined. The priest is kind of a rebel in his own faith, but faith he does have. The undead has a weird sense of honor that makes sense, and the sorceress is an adventurous sort who is not afraid to risk her soul in search of knowledge. I read one review talking about how the characters were flat. I didn’t see this at all.
The story takes you through some twists and turns, but mostly I felt it was pretty straight forward, but not to the point where I ever really knew what was coming next. I really enjoyed this story, but more over I absolutely loved the original ideas behind it and for that reason I am pleased to give this sci-fi crossover fantasy novel 5 out of 5 stars.
You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Rising-Coldfire-Trilogy-Book/dp/0886775272
Book Review – The Red Wolf Conspiracy, Book 1 of the #Chathrand Voyage by Robert V. S. Redick
Another one of my favorites, Robert V. S. Redick spins a splendid tale on the high seas about the voyage of the Chathrand, the last remaining great ship which can sail across the Ruling Sea, and it’s assumed demise.
The Red Wolf Conspiracy is a book that had been on my radar for some time. I decided to finally give it a go this fall, and it quickly became one of the few novels I truly could not put down. I found myself sneaking around the house to get in another chapter – or even a page – when I was supposed to be doing something else (like tending to my four year old daughter or cleaning the dishes).
What was it about Red Wolf that I loved so much? First, I loved the writing. Robert V. S. Redick’s language brings you square into a fantasy pirate setting where you can taste the ocean spray on your lips, feel the sting of its salt in your eyes, and hear the tolling of the harbor bells as you drift past them on your loosely lashed together raft. The story is written so teens can enjoy it and adults can love it. No foul language fills these pages, just a lot of dreamy adventure. I haven’t read any of the Redwall series, but from what I do know of those beloved books I imagine this novel is similar in a lot of ways yet at a more advanced level appealing to both younger and older crowds.
The characters were defined quite well, and the fact that the main protagonist’s only magical power is the ability to understand other languages is quite unique. A talking animal (a mink I think) plays the part of a powerful sorcerer from another world on a mission to save both worlds from an evil wizard. Some may think talking animals amount to a childish story and not want to read it. Okay. Well you can feel that way, but you’ll be missing out on a great, great book!
The story line itself is linear, very orderly and filled with excellent scenes. One scene in particular (an underwater scene for those who have read it – but I won’t go further for fear of spoiling) left me stunned at the visualization and originality the author employs. Red Wolf Conspiracy is actually only the first part of a longer story, so you are left hanging a little – but in a place where you don’t feel you have missed out on anything. I can’t wait to read the next book – I just need to find the time now… maybe a babysitter or a house cleaner.
Due to the gorgeous writing style, in depth characterization, and unique magic powers, I am very pleased to give The Red Wolf Conspiracy 5 out of 5 stars.
You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Red-Wolf-Conspiracy-Robert-Redick/dp/034550884X/
