At the moment I’m between books, having finished the last one and not picked a new one yet, so there’s no Teaser Tuesday for the week. Instead I reached into my vast pile of rejection letters and pulled out this one, from The JABberwocky Agency, for a book that you may have seen mentioned here once or twice …
Category: Writing
“The War of the Ravels”, Then and Now
So lately I’ve been doing mostly Teaser Tuesday posts, which are quick and fun, but for the last post of the year I thought I would go back and do another comparison of an original scene from the Shards follow-up, The War of the Ravels, and the same scene as it currently stands in the draft revision. (The final revision will be done in 2013.) Although the scene name remains the same for the moment, and the activity in the scene is similar — Mercy is still going after Daras-Drûm, AKA the death-wind — the setting has totally changed. There’s no longer a flashback to Yexandor’s place (which in the current version was no longer a temple, but instead a fallen tree) and a certain blue-skinned sorcerer, whose influence is alluded to in the original scene, is no longer involved in the death-wind’s activities. But other than that it hasn’t changed at all.
Teaser Tuesday 12/11/2012: “Tears in Rain”
This month my free book from Amazon is Tears in Rain by Rosa Montero. The astute reader may recognize “tears in rain” as part of Rutger Hauer’s epic Famous Last Words in the film “Blade Runner”, appearing here as listed on Wikipedia:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. [laughs] Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like [coughs] tears in rain. Time to die.”
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Teaser Tuesday 12/4/2012: The Apocalypse Troll
So at the moment I’m reading a book by David Weber with the somewhat unfortunate title The Apocalypse Troll, which always makes me snicker a little, perhaps because of Dennis the Vizsla’s run-in with Obvious Troll a few years ago. (However, the Troll in this book is not obvious. At least, not once it stops firing nukes at the U.S. Navy.)
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Teaser Tuesday 11/20/2012: “The Half-Made World”
Well I finally paid for another book, The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman. Why, you ask? Two reasons:
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Teaser Tuesday 10/23/2012: “Bad Juju and Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem”
So my quest to save money continues this week with Bad Juju and Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem, a collection of short stories by Jonathan Woods. It’s sort of like what you might get if Joe R. Lansdale, Elmore Leonard, and Carl Hiaasen spent the night together drinking and trying to top each other with crazy stories about life in an unnamed Caribbean republic. For some reason, the setting keeps making me think of a much, much seedier version of Catalina Island, probably because that’s the only island I visit on any sort of regular basis.
As Ariel’s hands grabbed my throat, I kneed him in the jewels as hard as I could. The next instant he was writhing on the floor like a dying insect.
Oh, ouch. I’ve got nothing to add to that one!
And, of course, here is this week’s excerpt from The War of the Ravels, my current work in progress:
The sun lay very near the horizon now, thick and red, coloring the sky with swirls of angry color. The bottom of the chasm became obscured by a thick layer of luminous fog that oozed up from the sea, as if someone had dumped a massive quantity of dry ice into the water and then lit it from below with flood lamps.
Hmm, that can’t be good …
Teaser Tuesday (Or Wednesday Or Whatever If I Screw The Date Up Again): “Pines”
This week I’m reading Pines, by Blake Crouch. This is another Prime freebie for the Kindle, thus continuing my effort to avoid spending money on books for a while — an effort which has probably just been extended by another few months due to my iPod’s unfortunate high-speed encounter with a tile floor. Deceleration trauma is rough on small spinning drives! Anyway, “Pines” is about a Secret Service agents who awakens in a small Idaho town following a car crash, and has a rather rough time leaving. I’m almost finished with it and, while I figured out the Big Twist well before the Big Reveal, the rules say no spoilers, so I had to choose my two sentences carefully. Here goes!
“It’s done,” Pilcher said, “and you’re my new sheriff. Welcome aboard.”
Believe me, this falls into the category of “An Offer You Can’t Refuse”.
And now, of course, here is this week’s teaser from The War of the Ravels:
The innkeeper tugged his blade free again, and accidentally dropped it this time. It failed to penetrate the ground, ending up lying on its side like some sort of unintentional metaphor.
Teaser Tuesday 10/10/2012: “Feed”
So right now I’m reading Feed, a — wait for it! — not-quite-post-apocalyptic zombie book set in a future America in which people never leave the safety of their homes, preferring to communicate and interact via the Internet, where one is less likely to get attacked by the undead. (Getting attacked by trolls is, of course, still a risk.) The main characters are a trio of bloggers who follow a presidential candidate on the campaign trail, reporting on the stops and events and trying not to get eaten.
My father has always had just one piece of advice about zombies and ammunition, one he’s drilled into my head enough times that it’s managed to stick: When you have one bullet left and there’s no visible way out of the shit you’re standing in, save it for yourself.
Dads are always ready with the good advice! (A certain character from “Deep Rising” may wish he had learned this particular lesson.) Let’s not forget a couple of other important ones, like “Cardio” and “Double-Tap”.
And of course, here’s a little teaser from the upcoming conclusion of Shards:
One did not leave the husks of swatted flies lying about one’s kitchen, especially when expecting visitors. Untelleh would come to the castle once she had been restored from her exile, and it would hardly do to receive her atop a pile of slaughtered Rittandics, like some sort of barbarian despot.
Teaser Tuesday 9/25/2012: “Ghosts of a Tired Universe”
So now I’m reading a book called Ghosts of a Tired Universe, which is not to be confused with “Ghosts: The Complete Series”. For one thing, so far, this book doesn’t have any actual ghosts in it. This one is under the impression that it has something profound to say about Physics and Art (which, in the context of the book, would definitely be capitalized). I haven’t quite decided what I think of it yet, but I’m still reading, so it’s one up on the dreadful Seed from a few weeks back.
Dormius didn’t know at the time that the addiction to brightness had begun to seep into him as well. He too would one day have to rise from that subterranean playground and grow into the being he was meant to become.
Hey, Dormius, be careful with that. Sometimes, growing into the being you were meant to become gets you stabbed by The Slayer and sent to a hell dimension.
And of course, here’s a little teaser from the current section of The War of the Ravels that I’m working on:
“I delivered clothes to them as well, though whether that—” Here he wrinkled his nose a little. “—woman chooses to wear them rather than go around the common room in her shift remains unknown.”
Readers of Shards may be able to guess whose line that is; and the woman in question isn’t Mercy, of course. After all, Mercy is not, at the moment, a woman — she’s an elf. Semantics!
Teaser Tuesday 9/18/2012: More “Ghosts: The Complete Series”
Still reading “Ghosts: The Complete Series” by Amy Cross. At this rate, I’ll be finishing it up just in time to become eligible to borrow another book from the Kindle Lending Library. After spending all my book money for, oh, the next year or so on car repairs last month, this is a good thing. Long books FTW!
“Just tell me,” I say. “Don’t say I can’t handle the truth.”
And in case you were wondering, she is not talking to Jack Nicholson.
And of course, here’s this week’s teaser from “The War of the Ravels”!
In effect, she would be using herself as the battery to power Daras-Drûm’s prison. That might work for a while, but the way everyone talked about this entity, she didn’t think she’d be able to contain it for very long; you didn’t get to be nicknamed “the death-wind” without having some kick.
Indeed, one way to get nicknamed “the death-wind” is to be a demonic entity with a group of necromantic priests as followers commanding legions of the dead; another is to be Tucker the Vizsla. Guess which one Daras-Drûm is …
Viscosity 