A.J. Maguire

Author: ajmaguire

  • Star Trek Into Darkness Review

    That’s right.  This science fiction geek totally went to see Star Trek this weekend. I’ll admit that I sorta knew what was coming because I follow Tor.com and they had some reviews up there (they said not to read the bottom comments due to spoilers, but I read them anyway because … yeah … I just couldn’t help myself.)

    Anyway, I enjoyed the movie.  No, scratch that, I loved the movie.  My mother and I had several debates about it because she is … Well, let’s just say I’m a Trekkie because she was a Trekkie first.  I was sort of born into it.

    She was not so happy about certain plot elements that mirrored the old movies.  Me, I liked the fact that they did this.  As a storyteller myself I can see why they did it and where they were going.  My mother, on the other hand, was hoping for something new.

    And, let’s face it, the whole point of Star Trek is to see something new.  They “boldly go where no man has gone before” and encounter “new life and new civilizations.”  So I do see where she is coming from.

    (Mild spoiler: the very end of the movie seemed to suggest that any future movies within the Star Trek genre were going to head out into unexplored territory.  At least I hope that’s what that whole sequence meant.)

    That said, I’m going to have to agree with some of the other reviews I’ve read on this subject and that is on the matter of James T. Kirk himself.  The last movie left his character rather smug.  I mean … of course, they were going to make him Captain.  He basically saved Earth.

    This movie ripped that smugness away from him.  It helped him grow up.  The Captain Kirk that is now at the helm of our beloved Enterprise is one we can rally behind more fully.

    So!

    I loved the movie.  I loved the character growth within the movie.  I even loved all the tongue-in-cheek brushes we had with the older films.

  • I’m a Guest!

    This week I’m a guest over at Toni V. Sweeney’s blog!  I talk about the trouble I had naming a particular character in the upcoming serialization of Persona, and … well … the difficulty in picking names for fiction in general.

    If this is an issue you’re familiar with, or you just like seeing how crazy writers really are, then head on over to Toni’s blog!  I’ll be there for a week.

  • Iron Man 3 – Review

    All right!  So we all know I’m a comic geek and it shouldn’t be a surprise that I totally dragged my son to go see Iron Man 3 today.

    I have adored Robert Downy Jr. as Iron Man and he did not disappoint in this third installment of the franchise.  In fact, his portrayal of Tony Stark felt even more genuine this time since the poor man was still recovering from the fight in Avengers.  We got to see him struggle with the understanding that he is not invincible, that he might not have what it takes to keep those important to him safe.

    As an author who pays attention to characters, this movie really exposed that struggle in a vivid way.  Also, we got to see Tony fighting without all his cool toys.    Granted, we got to see a LOT of his “toys” in the end, but during the rough middle — that point where the character has been stripped of everything — Tony had to sort of get back to basics.

    And I won’t lie, I totally adored that it was a kid who helped him figure that out.

    Now, I do admit that something felt a little off in the movie.  After a great deal of thought, I’m going to point at the music.  I missed heavy metal blaring out.  I understand they were showing a different side of Tony, that the character was changing and the movie needed to help reflect that, but … dude … Iron Man needs that oomph.

    Which brings me to my final point; Pepper.  I don’t want to spoil the movie (remember, I hate spoilers) but Pepper did something at the end of this movie that made me twitch.

    Please don’t get me wrong.  Pepper is a strong character.  She has to be in order to survive life with Tony Stark.  But that strength isn’t really reflected in a physical form.

    Now, I’m an author who writes female protagonists who kick serious butt.  I’m normally all for women getting gritty.  But that tendency has to be shown very early on.  The Pepper we’ve seen from the beginning wasn’t really like that, which is why this particular moment in the movie threw me off.

    So!

    All in all, I loved the movie.  I missed the music, but Tony’s journey was an excellent one to follow.

    And my son … Yeah, he just loved all the suits.  (He’s five.  He doesn’t get the whole “heroic journey” thing yet.)

  • Research

    This week I rewrote almost all of Chapter One of the WWII project, which I think I might title Sullied Heritage instead of Crossweathers, but we’ll see.  (Many thanks to Tressa Green for taking a moment out of her day to  help me brainstorm.)  In the middle of the rewrite I came across several problems that deal completely with research.

    I couldn’t for the life of me find record of the Elaine, though I know I found it in an obscure book several years ago.

    That wasn’t too much of a problem, I just started researching different boats that sunk and came upon the Ceramic.

    However, the Ceramic sunk right around midnight and there was a massive storm going on at the same time (which accounts for how many souls were lost at sea after the sinking).  The original draft had the boat sinking in the late evening with the sun setting.

    So my rewrite had to change the time, date, and weather.  But all of that is really OK with me because I feel like it’s a stronger chapter because of it. (Of course, I’m rewriting stuff that I wrote almost ten years ago, so it’s bound to be stronger now.  I think I could sneeze a sentence better now than I wrote back then.)

    All of these changes got me to thinking about how different it is to research things today.  Ten years ago I was in the library a lot and even purchased several books on WWII to help me.  I do still love the library, but a lot of the information I need is far easier to get a hold of via the internet.

    Such as the rationing in both America and Germany.  Or the names of which boats were taken down by submarines in the Atlantic.  Or the bombing in Ulm in 1944 (which I didn’t know about until I started this research).

    There are some things that I learned through people, though.  Such as the yellow pill that was rubbed into margarine in order to make it look like butter.  (I’m not kidding.  Apparently that’s real.  I’ll never look at margarine the same way.)  Or the eyeliner women used in order to draw a line on the back of their legs so that they appeared to be wearing pantyhose.

    I say all that to get to the main point, which is that I super love the Googles.  I got more information out of one night of research than I had in hours scouring the library ten years ago.  And it inspired me to add a Fact vs. Fiction page onto the story blog for the WWII novel (which is still scheduled to begin release June 1st.)

    This page will take what I put in the story — such as the sinking of the Ceramic — and explain what really happened versus what I chose to include in the book, with a little bit about why I chose to do it that way.  It’s mostly for those history buffs out there.  Or people who might be curious.  And, of course, for me, since I find the whole process of researching this novel fascinating.

  • Theme Songs

    Every book I write tends to have a specific soundtrack to it.  It’s what I listen to for thirty minutes or so before I sit down and actually start writing, which I know sounds a little crazy but … Eh … Whatever works, you know?

    Sedition was written listening to the Gladiator soundtrack.  Seriously, that’s how Trenna Silvanus “grew” for me as a character.  However, that music didn’t fit for its sequel, Saboteur.

    No, for Saboteur I totally rocked the Thor soundtrack for like eight months straight during the initial draft.

    Witch-Born was a little tricky.  I actually don’t remember the name of the band who made the album I listened to, or the album itself.  It wasn’t my usual fare and got lost during one of the great computer renovations of 2009/10.  It was heavy metal, though, I remember that.  No lyrics, just some really hard guitar playing.

    I totally blame the whole concept of Winter Tournament on that album, though.  I had some seriously cool battle scenes whizzing through my head thanks to that music.  Not all of them made it into the book, of course, but a couple key moments did.

    Deviation, which I am excited to announce will be released through Double Dragon Publishing in Summer 2014, was written to the music of Battlestar Galactica Season 3.

    And Dead Magic, also to be released from Double Dragon Publishing, had a theme track with The Planet of the Apes.

    I imagine you can see a pattern here.  All of these soundtracks had no lyrics.  It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that when I’m ready to start writing on Usurper I plug in my headphones and listen to The Chronicles of Narnia.  (If you laugh at that one, then you didn’t pay attention to the music.)

    However, my WWII book Crossweathers is utterly different.  I thought that listening to the Band of Brothers soundtrack would shove me into Nazi Germany and help me soak up the “mood” of the book long enough for me to write it, but I was wrong.

    Normally I would be in a state of panic without a “theme track” to follow this close to my committed time for working on the book.  (I’m scheduled to start revamping a chapter a week starting Monday, April 29th.  And then I’m going to start posting the work as a free, serialized novel on Wattpad June 1st.)

    But I stumbled onto this gem of a song by Ross Copperman called “Holding On and Letting Go” and the story just clicked in my head.  So, while the song has lyrics and what have you, I have still labeled it the “theme track” for Crossweathers.  (That’s just for my personal reference, I have no connection with Ross Copperman.  It’s just the song I will listen to before I get to work.)

    Does anyone else have “theme songs” they listen to when they write?

    Better yet, do you think you have a theme song for your own life?  (I watched Sound of Music last night and decided “How do you solve a problem like Maria” was totally appropriate for me.)

  • Trunk Novels

    I’ve gone through and deleted most of my trunk novels.  To be honest, several of them were dissected; meaning I took characters I enjoyed or a concept I thought was cool and then placed them inside a different book.

    In fact, Nelek Dyngannon from the Sedition series came from a trunk novel.  And the concept of the “tapped” came out of my alien abduction story.

    But there is one trunk novel that I just can’t seem to let go of.  I keep telling myself that I’m going to re-write it.  It’s my World War II story and I started it at least ten years ago.  I have close to ninety thousand words recorded from that story, but it’s all in bits and pieces.  There are sections missing — important sections, too.

    And there are at least three different endings I could choose from.

    I could assign this book as a “little darling” or I could attribute my inability to let it go to the fact that I love WWII history.  (Not that I love all the terrible things that happened, of course.)  But for whatever reason, I just can’t seem to drop it.

    So … I think I’m going to go ahead and start the rewrite this summer.  I’m already on the last leg of Usurper (Hurray! The characters have reached the mainland and are headed to war!) and the second book in the Tapped series is already underway.  (Meaning it’s been outlined and I’ve decided which POV characters I’ll have.)

    Now, because this is a trunk novel and what I could consider a “little darling” I am going to do something different with it.  I’ve been hunting for a project that I could post online for free via Wattpad and a story blog for some time now and this one seems to fit.

    For one, I have no real hopes of it ever getting published.  As much as I love history, particularly WWII history, the book is utterly fictional and I fear many people prefer to read WWII books that are at least loosely based on a true story.  We’ve been spoiled by Band of Brothers and other such stories.

    For another, there are elements in the story that stretch the boundary of belief.  For example, the original story-line had our heroine (because yes, I have to write a female protagonist, we all should understand this by now) getting shot down in a plane over the Baltic, where she was picked up by the Nazi’s.

    That story line was rejected during one of my gazillion edits ten years ago and changed to having her boat sink — the Elaine, by the way, which is a real boat that was really sunk — but even that story line makes my “suspension of disbelief” feel like it’s getting thrown into the atmosphere.

    See what I said about a re-write?

    I’m actually still struggling with the idea of keeping the book in this particular format (the boat sinking sequence) or going ahead with writing a new opening sequence.  It’s sort of like having to stress the Fiction in Historical Fiction rather than stressing the History.  The boat sinking makes for a great, exciting opening, and it seems to be my style to start things in the middle of the action.

    But, while the Elaine was a real boat, the people I have written are entirely fictional and the idea of Nazi’s taking in a half-drowned American woman and not assuming her to be a spy is a stretch.  Granted, the book starts prior to America entering the war, but still … Yeah …

    Side note — I did read about how the Allies planted fake information on a body and let it float to the enemy, who took the bait and thought the information was real.  Which, to me, was supremely clever.  What’s more convincing than a dead body?

    So!

    Starting in July (probably) I will set up the WWII story — titled Crossweathers, by the way — on Wattpad and give it a story blog.  I’ll post a chapter a week after that.

    I know some people manage to put two chapters up a week (LJ Cohen, for example) but I am still in school and have other deadlines to meet as well.

  • Graphic Detail

    As I’ve set aside my science fiction while readers are going through it I picked up Usurper again.  That’s the third book in Trenna Dyngannon’s series for those unaware.  Trenna is, by all appearances, my most popular character and I have to admit I love writing her.  She’s gritty and tough and vulnerable all at once … and funny.

    Diving back into this High Fantasy novel I noticed a stark contrast between the amount of graphic detail I provide with Trenna as opposed to my science fiction. It may be because I’ve “lived” in the world of Dyngannon for so many years that I see it more clearly, but I’m not sure.

    Science fiction … or at least space science fiction … tends to limit my graphic detail to what you can see on a space ship.  If you’re not in the pilot’s nest looking out the viewport then basically there’s just ship … more ship … and, Oh, look, even more ship … to see.  Which, I’m sure you can all imagine, can be a challenge.

    Now that I think about it, this probably explains the drastic difference in word count between my 100,000 word High Fantasy novels and the 65,000 word Science Fiction.  Reading through the manuscript again I can see how this story (the science fiction story) is more involved with the characters and their growth than my previously published fantasy novels.

    So there was really a trade-off.  What little I have involved in graphics was made up for in the personal journeys of the characters.

    That said, having written the science fiction I can now see how I am implementing what I learned about the “personal journey” into my current fantasy novel.  I believe this will make for a stronger all-around book in Usurper and am excited to see how it turns out.

    For the science fiction, I am challenging myself to take the whole book through a purely “Graphic Detail” edit.  That means I will be focusing completely on description.  I’ll probably even use a different colored pen.  (Pardon me as I squee.  I do adore having any reason at all to use different colored pens in my editing.  Red just … you know … hurts sometimes.)

  • All Part of a Balanced Diet

    In the terms of a friend of mine (L.J. Cohen, author of The Between, which I totally recommend for any YA fans out there) I managed to finish the “gut-renovation” of my latest science fiction novel.  It’s only on the second draft and is now in the hands of my Alpha Readers.  (I love you, Alpha’s!)

    As I was in the middle of this gut-renovation I found myself yanking out several info-dumps in the middle of the manuscript.  While it was necessary for the rough draft to have all that information in there because I’m not exactly a scientist (as in, my brain nearly melted during science class last semester), I knew I couldn’t keep it all in the novel.

    Info-dumps are notoriously boring.  And a boring book is nearly always relegated to propping up an uneven table or, in the case of Armageddon, kept for fuel during the subsequent nuclear winter.

    However, I did have to find new and clever ways to explain the science behind space travel and the notorious “tapped” soldiers who star in the novel.

    At least I like to think some of it was clever.  My Alpha’s will let me know here in a couple of weeks if I succeeded.

    But it really got me thinking about how novelists have to find the appropriate balance between how much information is too much information.

    Let’s go ahead and assume the novelist in question has taken a permanent marker to all the info-dumps in the manuscript, they still have to find a way to get the truly important stuff on the page.  And preferably in an interesting way.

    For me the trick came in two parts.

    Part One : Identify what the (highly intelligent, wonderful) Reader needs to know for this book in particular. 

    Tapped is the first installment of a much longer series.  It is the introduction and therefore has to set the ground rules for the rest of the books.  For those of you who are writers, you know how difficult it is to introduce a world, or in this case a galaxy, that is complete with political systems, travel considerations, scientific progress, and the impact everything has at the individual human level.

    So!  I boiled everything down to three main points of interest that the Reader would need to understand in order for the novel to make sense.

    #1) They had to know the human race was stretched across the universe and that inter-stellar travel was a regular thing.  (This was easily achieved since 3/4 of the book takes place on a “jumper class hauling ship.”)

    #2) They had to know there was a war that split the human race into two different factions; that of the Consulate, which regulates everything from Jupiter through Gliese (an earth-like planet very, very far away) and that of the League, which regulates Mars and Earth (the last bastions of freedom.)

    Author’s note:  I totally wanted to use “Coalition” instead of “League” but it sounded too much like “Consulate” and I wanted to make sure they were all separate in the Reader’s mind. 

    #3) They had to know how “tapped” soldiers were made and what they could do.  (This was also easy and fun because … yeah … most people know I love a good fight scene.)

    Part Two : Identify the least amount of information needed in any particular scene. 

    The first part looked at the book as a whole, the second part looked at each individual scene while I was editing.  In this part, I really only asked what was affecting the individual characters on the page.  Because if the character’s weren’t affected by the science or politics, then the Reader didn’t need to be either.

    The result is that the characters actually interacted with the three main points I needed the Readers to understand for the book.  Which, I hope, made for a more solid and interesting book.

    Like I said, I’ll know here in a little bit if I actually succeeded at this.

  • Dead Magic Coming Soon!

    In preparation for Dead Magic’s release … which is apparently coming sooner than I’d imagined … I’ve decided to start adding some content.  You’ll noticed on the top bar that I’ve added a new page called “Magnellum” which is the world in which Dead Magic is centered.

    Also, on the sidebar (under the title Blogroll) you can see a link to a teaser/snippet page.  That will actually take you to a page with ALL my books on it.  You can click through and read teasers of each one that has been published to date.  Including a small teaser page for Dead Magic, which I will edit and make bigger after its release.  (Right now you can read the very first scene of the book.)

    When I have an actual date for its release I will start another release party.  (I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I’ve done one of those.)  And I’ll do some Giveaway’s and throw out a bunch of free content delving deeper into the world of Magnellum.

    In the meantime, the Magnellum page on the top bar goes through a list of the noble Houses in Magnellum.  I won’t lie, the political spectrum of Magnellum was difficult to create.  We get to see the noble society at its peak in Witch- Born, but in Dead Magic I got to dive into the history behind Magnellum and really work on the mythology behind what created the Witch-Born race in the first place.

    It actually took me several passes at the manuscript before I was able to settle on something that both made sense and entertained me as a writer.  (I mean, if I don’t find it entertaining then who else will?)  I’m not going to spoil the book before it’s even come out, so don’t worry.  We all know how I feel about spoilers.

    However, as an author, mythology and world building are the two most enjoyable and most frustrating parts of the writing process.  During the first draft I’m just having fun with the characters and running through what I call the “bare bones” of the plot.  So at that point world building and mythology are a ton of fun.

    When I get into the second pass of the book and start really looking at the mythology is when I get frustrated because it almost always needs to be fixed.  That’s when the real work happens for me as a creator.  I may know the characters of the story but I don’t really know the story yet, you know?  So there are weeks and weeks of brainstorming what parts of the mythology need rewriting and — most importantly — how I can take that mythology and turn it into something intimate for the characters on the page.

    Because a neat mythology doesn’t necessarily make a great story.  That mythology has to work with the characters.  It has to shake them up somehow, and that’s what I was looking to do in Dead Magic.  I’m hoping I managed it.  We’ll see what readers say.

    As with everything I write, I wouldn’t ever publish anything because I always think something needs to be improved.

  • Dreaming Word Choices

    Well, I was have a great time editing Tapped before school got in the way.  I’ve got an Environmental Science final next week and a MASSIVE reading list for two other classes as well.  I’m going to call this a mixed blessing because I was starting to see words in my sleep.

    Yes, dreaming word choices is sometimes a problem for me.  As crazy as it sounds, I always know when I’ve been staring at the same manuscript for too long when I start arguing with my internal editor during the REM cycle.  It normally goes something like this —

    Me: “He reached for the small …”

    Enter Editor’s voice: “You mean half-inch.”

    Me: “Fine … He reached for the half-inch computer drive …”

    Editor: “Are you sure you want to say ‘computer drive’?  I thought it was a hacking device.  You should keep it standard and just call it a hacking device.”

    Me: All right, all right.  “He reached for the half-inch hacking device …”

    Editor: Well, that sounds funny.  Too many “H’s” right next to each other.

    Me: (with a growl of frustration) “He reached for the half-inch device …”

    Editor: Now that’s too ambiguous  you need to tell us what kind of device it is.

    Me: I hate you.

    Editor: Oh, and isn’t the character sore and beat up at this point?  So wouldn’t he really be straining, or stretching, or fighting past his injuries to try and get the hacking device?

    …..

    Yeah, that’s about how those dreams go.  As funny as that sounds, it’s really not very restful.  I normally wake up feeling like I’ve been working all night … and in some respects I have.  In any case, that’s why I’m thinking this whole school issue is a good thing, because I might be overwhelmed by homework, but at least I’m getting sleep.