A.J. Maguire

Author: ajmaguire

  • Twas Four Days Before Christmas …

    Merry Christmas!  Well, four days early anyway, but I have no intention of being online on Christmas so I thought I’d better say it now.

    A friend of mine started me on this whole yearly goals thingy a while ago and I’ve found that it works wonderfully.  So!  Let’s see how I did last year …

    1) Submit Deviation to TOR.  — I did this.  It was scary, but I did it anyway.  They sent me a very polite rejection letter, but at least I had the guts to send it out, you know?

    2)  Record Deviation in preparation for releasing it as a free podiobook. — Uh … yeah.  I didn’t do this.  I didn’t even come close to trying to do this.  

    3)  Complete Dead Magic. — Totally did this.  Dead Magic was finished just a couple weeks ago.  It is DONE!  My Alpha readers have it and the publisher wants it by March 1st. 

    4)  Take a huge bite out of Usurper. — I actually did this too.  It’s in the last half of the book now.

    5)  Kick my schoolwork in the batoosh every semester. — Ahem … I managed to do this too, thank you very much.  Because if there’s one thing I am Miss Awesomepants with, it’s school stuff.  

    6) Climb 3 Mountains — … Well … you see … my whole State sorta caught fire over the summer.  I literally couldn’t climb any mountains because I might have been turned to cinders if I’d tried.  I did manage to go up in the Spring, so I climbed a whole one mountain.  But in the words of Gandalf the Grey; “A single solitary peak” was still a peak.  (Alas, no Thorin Oakenshield was there to greet me, but, hey, you can’t have it all.)

    And that’s it.  That’s my end of the year review.  Writing-wise and School-wise, I did pretty darn good.  And since the world didn’t end today like everyone had planned, I’m looking forward to another productive year in 2013.

     

  • The Hobbit Movie Review

    My mother drove two hours up to my city so that we could go see The Hobbit yesterday.  We planned it for right after my first final — which was an oral exam that was quite terrifying, if I must be honest.

    I was a little torn about The Hobbit since I didn’t like the book so much.  Bilbo drove me a little crazy with all his whining about home, which made it hard for me to get into the book.  But, I figured if anyone could make his character likable for me, it would be Martin Freeman, who I’ve loved as an actor forever.

    And I was right.  Freeman’s portrayal of Bilbo was wonderful.  He whined a bit, but Freeman was able to make me understand why Bilbo was so out of place.

    The surprise for me was Richard Armitage as Thorin.  The man downright captivated me as Thorin.  As a writer, I am constantly watching for those things that really define a hero.  You know, the kind of hero everyone wants to rally for, who gets up after getting knocked down and faces a foe they know they can’t defeat but fights anyway.  Armitage made that kind of a hero.

    I loved it.

    There were some awkward moments in the beginning that felt far more comical than I was expecting, and I nearly face-palmed myself when Bilbo said he had to go back for his handkerchief (though, if I’m remembering correctly, that was in the book) but Freeman’s Bilbo made that an understandable moment for me.  Rather than being annoyed, as I was when I read the book, I was amused.

    My Mom did mention that she should have taken a motion sickness pill before we went, though.  She loved the movie, too, but I just thought I’d warn everyone.  If you get motion sickness a lot, you might want to take a pill before.

    So!  It’s a great movie.  I’m looking forward to the rest of them and, if I could applaud the actors and crew for their work, I would.

  • December Mayhem! (And Rise of the Guardians Review)

    Well, NaNoWriMo is officially over.  My hats off to everyone who managed to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  That’s just crazy cool and you all deserve a cookie!

    In case you were wondering, I did manage to finish writing Dead Magic.  I got it done Monday last week, so I was way ahead of schedule and had the Epilogue written and everything.  Now I just need to type up the last 5 chapters and throw it out to my Alpha readers (( I love you, Alpha’s! )).

    Because of school I have to schedule out my time differently.  So!  On Saturday (December 1st) my son and I had a play day.  We decorated the house, put the Christmas tree up, strung lights and made giant gingerbread men.  It was a blast!  We also went to see Rise of the Guardians at the movies.

    Honestly, I loved the movie.  It was touching.  And funny.  My son walked away claiming that he wanted to be Jack Frost — which, given the backstory they gave the poor fellow, I was torn about — and cheering that the Boogeyman had been subdued.  (Sorry if that’s a spoiler but I mean … it’s a kids show and that’s the bad guy, do the math.)

    Welcome to December!  I hope everyone is excited for the holidays — however you like to celebrate them.

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    Well, as I tend to do a lot of top 10 lists, I think I should do the top 5 things I am thankful for this year.  I am an optimist, so I tend to be happy about … well … nearly anything.  If I got a flat tire I’d probably be less inclined to be happy, but I’d think something along the lines of; “Well, at least I have my cell phone to call for help.”

    But I still think it’s important to focus on the things that have really made your life a good one.  It’s just plain unhealthy to dwell on bad things and melancholy.

    So!  My top 5!

    1) Always and forever — I am thankful for my son.

    2) I am thankful for the rest of my family — including the one’s who are currently in the military and in dangerous areas.  I’m grateful that we haven’t had any distressing news from them.

    3) My chance to attend school.  This has been a major growing experience for me — even if it is a headache a lot of times with tons of homework to do.

    4) My cat.  I do love my cat.  He kills spiders for me.

    5) My writing.  I love the fact that I am a writer.  It means I’m a little weird and I see things differently than a lot of people, but the actual process of writing gives me too much joy for me to ever give it up.

    I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!  If you’re doing NaNoWriMo then hurry up and eat your turkey so you can get back to work!

  • National Novel Writing Month

    It’s here!  National Novel Writing Month is here!

    Since I’m not actually participating this year I thought I would just send out a quick note of encouragement.  To all of you crazy people out there, frantically writing non-stop for the next 30 (well, 27) days, good luck!  Don’t look back.  Don’t edit.  Just go!  You can edit in December.

    Call your characters Brian Gatorade because a Gatorade bottle happened to be sitting on your desk while you were introducing him to the work in progress.  Throw a flying kangaroo in there somewhere.  Take a bath tomorrow, just keep your butt in your chair today.  (I hope you bought Febreeze so your family can spray it whenever they walk past you.)

    If you have kids they should be stocked up on candy from trick-or-treating so don’t worry too much about what they’ll eat.  (That’s actually a complete lie.  Please feed your kids.)

    But mostly, have fun.  If you’re not having fun then you’re not doing it right.

    I’d be having fun with you were it not for the 3.5 chapters I have left to go on Dead Magic.  The end is so close on that one that I can just taste it and I really, really need to finish.

    So good luck!  Have fun!  It’s writing mayhem!

  • Costumes

    Last weekend I had the pleasure of riding the Thunder Mountain Railroad train to the pumpkin patch with my mother and my son.  It was great fun and my son got to pick out two pumpkins — both of which have been properly carved and set outside our door.  Then, because we had a bit of time before my mother had to go home, we went costume shopping.

    It’s been a while since I’ve done that and I was more than a little startled at some of the costumes they had out there.  In particular, costumes for women that were blatantly meant for sex appeal.  I’m not going to rant and rave about that.  Honestly, if you feel comfortable in something like that, then have fun.

    However, there are many of us who would prefer to wear something fun without freezing in the late October weather.  There was only one small section of costumes that fit this bill and one of them included a Gumbi outfit.  (There was also a cute wizard costume but it was over a hundred dollars and I’m afraid I’m too cheap to permit myself such a purchase.)  I ended up purchasing a Star Trek costume even though it was made for a man and twice my size.

    Since I am a geek, this made me happy.  Even if I did choose to forego the Spock ears and just get a phaser (which has been commandeered by my son as one of the coolest toys we own).  In retrospect, however, I would have been three times as happy with a female Star Trek costume.  I can’t imagine this costume store had run out of such a thing since its shelves were full to bursting.  Which means they just didn’t think to put it in stock.  As if every woman in the world wants to wear fishnet pantyhose and above-the-thigh skirts.

    Like I said before, if you enjoy wearing those things then that’s fine.  I just wish they had a little more variety for those of us who don’t.    And I should probably qualify that statement with the fact that this was a family costume store, not just an odd-ball store.  My son is going to be Bumblebee from Transformers and they had plenty of stuff in there for him as well.

    But I’ll have fun on Halloween anyway, dwarfed in my Star Trek outfit and using my phaser every time my son does something silly.  I’m sure I could have found something online that fit me, but half the fun of Halloween is hunting for that costume and rifling through the stuff in the store.  As much as I love doing things online, using my Kindle, and rating books on Goodreads, there are still some things that you have to do physically — if only to get out of the house now and then.

  • Haunted Houses

    One of the first stories I ever wrote was about a haunted house.  I’m afraid I need to qualify that statement with the fact that this story was written while I was still in grammar school.

    By the way, I’m not sure why people call it “grade school” since every school has grades.  To me, grammar school has always signified that period of time when learning how to read and write were still relatively new.  The moment we step up into the higher grades we start focusing on more abstract thoughts.  So!  When I say grammar school I mean somewhere in the fifth or sixth grade.

    Anyway, the story was terrible.  The grammar was horrifying and my inability to fully understand how POV (Point of View) worked left me with a page full of chaotic voices.  It was called Noises Next Door and it was written in pencil on a single subject notebook.  And as awful as it was, I can point to it as one of the moments where I fell in love with writing.

    I took all of my friends and put them through an adventure, investigating a strange house that — you guessed it — made noises at night and sat right next to the home of our hero … Which, sadly, was me.  (Oh, come on.  I was like ten when I wrote it.  Give me a break.)  But everyone had their part to play in this little story.  I know I shoved my brother into a labyrinth with our cousin Peter.

    Yes, yes.  I went the parallel universe route with the house.  But I did have a witch behind it all, so it was quasi-haunted.  If you can make the leap that ghosts are actually remnants of a parallel universe trying to call for help.  (Again, I was ten.  I threw everything under the explanation of magic back then.  No rules.  Just big, unfathomable magic.)

    I did write it during the month of October and ever since then Fall has been my time of particular inspiration.  From October through December there is something in the air that spurs my muse into writing.  Maybe it’s the colors, or the changing of seasons, I don’t know, but I get excited in the middle of September when I see it coming.  Even over the last year and a half, as my plate has been full with school, I have had to keep 3×5 cards close by to record ideas and thoughts that hit me during these months.

    This week instead of new ideas I was reminded of that first story about a haunted house and a witch.  I couldn’t help smiling, remembering the excitement and my maladroit attempts at plotting.  It really was terrible, but it started me on a path that would forever shape my life.

  • Fun with Ghosts

    I really hate things that I cannot control.  I am, to an extent, a control freak.  So ghosts scare me.  Anything I can’t pick up a blunt object and defend myself against makes me nervous.  Zombies scare me too, but I’m fairly confident I can bludgeon them away from me if I have to.  That said, I still manage to use them in my fiction sometimes.

    Well, now that I think about it, there are strange apparitions in most of my novels.  Saboteur, however, had more of a “future ghost” thing going on and that was all dealing with magic.  But my favorite ghost from one of my personal novels has to be Baldemor Delgora from the Witch-Born series.

    Why?

    For starters I love his name.  Baldemor Delgora just rolls off the tongue in a pleasant manner.  It sounds old, though the ghost is of a little boy and I find that contradiction fun.  We only get to see him twice in Witch-Born, but the sequel Dead Magic has him turning up again.  (Dead Magic is nearly completed, by the way.  It should be done at the end of November.)  He’s more active in this new novel and he has lost his friendliness — inasmuch as he was ever “friendly” but he does attempt to hurt three different people this time.

    In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I might give a snippet of Baldemor in action.  This is from Dead Magic, which is under contract and will be out sometime next year.  For those unfamiliar with the novels, Witch-Born is set in the world of Magnellum, which is a steampunk/magic blend where Witches are nobility.  The Witches use their magic to hold up the barrier separating Magnellum from what is known as the Wild — a primal force bent on killing everyone inside Magnellum.

    ***

    Valeda had the disturbing sensation of something very cold sliding down her spine.  The only sound came from the waterfalls crashing into the lake just beyond, though Valeda could swear she heard a low, deep humming from the boy in front of her.  He hadn’t answered her yet and the House Witch had given no explanation, so Valeda kept quiet.  If she was being honest, she was terrified.

           There was something malicious about the boy, something intense and powerful that clung to him.

           “In truth, Miss Quinlan, I’m not sure how to introduce you,” Elsie said at last. “The form before you is that of Baldemor Delgora.  Baldemor, however, has been dead for centuries.”

           Valeda swallowed down her fear. “Centuries?”

           “Until recently he talked.  Sometimes he would warn people away from the Lake.  But he’s changed now.  He’s more Wild than anything else.” The Witch tugged at her earlobe and frowned. “The Wild is coming, Miss Quinlan.  Very soon, I’m afraid.”

     

  • Scary Stories

    Given that it is now October it seems appropriate to list my favorite ghost stories.  Or, well, the stories that creep me out the most.  There are many ghosts that populate literature, even if the stories are not necessarily “ghost” related.  Horror is not my favorite genre and I tend to stay far away from it, but I do enjoy Scott Sigler.  Of course, Mr. Sigler is mostly known for his alien football series, but I have read some of his other stuff and they do tend to get under my skin.

    That said, aside from Scott Sigler I don’t really read Horror.  But I have seen some movies so you’ll notice that my list is mostly of those.

    #5 – Edgar Allan Poe – The Pit and the Pendulum as well as The Raven.  Come on, who doesn’t get creeped out when reading “Nevermore.” 

    #4 — Wait Until Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn.  This book scared the crap out of me when I was kid.  Seriously.  I still have a fear of kelp. 

    #3 — Ancestor by Scott Sigler.  Congratulations, Mr. Sigler.  You have managed to make pregnant cows something to fear. 

    #2 — It by Stephen King.  Yep.  Clowns are suddenly horrifying.  This would be one of those that I watched rather than read.  I just can’t sit in a state of fear for the days it would take to read his work.

    #1 —  Rose Red by Stephen King.  This is another one that I watched rather than read.  It was shown in a two-part session a couple of years back and I remember I couldn’t sleep that first night.  I was seriously that terrified.  

    Those are my top five scary stories.  Rose Red sits there at the top of the list because of that horrible night I spent unable to sleep.  Anyone have a better story?

  • Tragedy

    As I’ve been consumed by Doctor Who for the last few weeks I couldn’t help but start dissecting what it is about that show that I truly love.  Aside from it being funny and quick, the Doctor stands as one of the most tragic characters I’ve encountered.  He is alone, the last of his kind, floating around all of time and space in a blue box that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and armed with nothing more than a sonic screwdriver and an indomitable hope for humanity.

    In the midst of all the fun and quirky bits of the show, Doctor Who maintains his tragic streak.  Perhaps the most profound episode I’ve found so far is the one titled Midnight by Russell T. Davies.  This one is in the middle of the fourth season and I have to admit that Davies is a genius.

    WARNING : There are spoilers ahead.  If you haven’t seen that episode, don’t read further.

    Davies put the Doctor in a little box that is not bigger on the inside than it is on the outside with a group of strangers on their way to see some diamond falls.  And then he broke the box — Davies, not the Doctor — and watched as the human elements of the story spiraled out of control.  We get the lady Sky suddenly possessed by some other kind of life-form that learns very quickly by mimicking the people around it.  Granted, it is creepy to have someone copy everything you say as you’re saying it, but the real genius of the story isn’t the alien trying to learn so much as the reactions of the rest of the people on board.

    Basically, we had a whole show that didn’t really move out of the box and managed to remain intense and profound.  By the end we’ve seen a breakdown in humanity as the focus turns from stressful “Well, now we have to wait for rescue” to “Survival of the fittest” until nearly everyone is trying to throw the Doctor out of the ship (where he will die).  The tragedy of this story isn’t necessarily the death of one of the characters, but the ugly desperation that infected everyone.

    These humans that the Doctor finds so much hope and affection for are also capable of horrible things.  He’s not naive enough to not be aware of their capacity for evil, but there is so much disappointment in him when he sees them turn the wrong direction.  So the tragedy comes around when his hope for the best in humanity is tarnished by the actions he sees.