A.J. Maguire

Tag: Fantasy

  • Science Fiction vs. Fantasy Take 1

    My first official Science Fiction will be released next month through Double Dragon Publishing. (That’s Deviation, for those of you just joining us.) Also, the sequel to Witch-Born will be released next month as well through the same publisher. (That’s Dead Magic.)

    One science fiction, one fantasy. (Yes, I count Dead Magic as fantasy even though it has steampunk tendencies in it. I mean, it deals with witches and magic, it just makes sense.)

    It’s interesting to me to see the differences between Science Fiction and Fantasy. I know that you can find both right next to each other in the bookstore. They’re categorized as Speculative Fiction and in some cases you can find them all on the same shelf/shelves.

    But they are very, very different to write.

    That’s probably obvious since they’re also very different when you’re reading them. Still, there are unique challenges in both genres when you’re writing. For example, you have a little more leeway in Fantasy. Everything still has to make sense, you can’t just explain everything away through magic. Magic itself should have rules and everything in your fantasy world reacts to those rules.

    However, the cultures, lands, people and other aspects of a fantasy world are primarily yours to decide. You just have to stick to your set of rules.

    With Science Fiction — or at least the science fiction I found myself writing — there are already rules and parameters that you have to stick to. Such as our planetary system. I only visit one other planet, Mars, but trust me … the research involved in knowing that planet well enough to put people on it was astronomical.  (You can kill me for the pun later.)

    Mars is a real place. It has terrain. It has features. (It has Mount Olympus. Seriously. Look it up. It’s this volcano that just kept erupting and grew to a major height. I totally swiped it for the book.) But because Mars is a real place all those features, all that terrain, had to be taken into account. I did terraform the planet to sustain life in the book, which altered the terrain a bit (aka — gave it plant life) but the mountains and the ridges and the canyons are all still there.

    This isn’t to say that you can be lax in Fantasy. If you build a world and put The Lonely Mountain on one section of the map, you certainly cannot go relocating that mountain halfway through the book.

    It’s more like this; in Fantasy you’re creating everything. In Science Fiction you’re finding ways to break or otherwise mold what already exists.

     

  • Usurper Update

    A lot of people have been asking me about Usurper lately. Which, let’s be honest, makes me happy since it means everyone really, really likes Trenna’s stories and wants to see what happens next.

    So! For this week’s post I’m going to go ahead and give an update on where I am and … because everyone has been so very patient … I’ll include a snippet at the end.

    I am right at the end of Usurper. And I do mean right at the end.

    All the pieces are in place. All the characters have made it to their destinations and are gearing up for the final battle. All I need to do now is finish that final battle. But battle scenes take the longest for me to write.

    They’re also my favorite bits to write, but they still take the longest because it’s hard to bring clarity in the middle of swords clashing, people screaming, and wounds being inflicted. Every character has a different set of motivations that become all the clearer amidst bloodshed — remember the end of Sedition?

    I will have Usurper’s draft completed by the end of April. It will go in to my publisher/editor people on May 1st. After that, we’ll be waiting on the publisher and all that jazz, but this publisher tends to be very quick about getting things done so … Yes, you will (should, most probably) have Usurper in your hot little hands before 2015.

    But I should warn you … there’s a lot of action in this one. Trenna’s back at her prime and getting her hands dirty.

    Well … see for yourself … (Please remember, this has not been edited yet. Any and all grammatical errors are the hazards of the craft.)

    She spotted the assassin first. Sitting at the table nearest to the hearth, Faxon Mylonas was profile to her, looking almost exactly as he had twenty-odd years prior. Trenna felt real fear curl in her gut at the sight of her son and husband sitting near the man, but her anger overtook that emotion when she spotted Troy. Trapped between the assassin and a woman whose occupation could only be that of a Blood Mage, Troy’s eyes were puffed and swelling and he was holding a bloodied handkerchief to his face.

    Liana was moving before Trenna could stop the girl. She saw Faxon tense and knew he was preparing for Liana’s advance.

    “Big T, thank gods,” Barmy stood from his stool. “I tried to warn them …”

    “Thank you, Mister Friggs. May I borrow your stool?”

    “My stool?” Barmy’s face creased in puzzlement.

    Liana drew her cutlass, which sent a hiss of alarm through the already tensed room.

    “Well, yes, I suppose …” Barmy stopped when he spotted Liana’s advance, gasping with further horror.

    “Thank you.” Trenna grabbed the stool and started forward. She waited until Faxon stood, until he had his full focus on intercepting Liana, before she flung the chair over her shoulder with all her might.

    It struck the Blood Mage on the side of her head, startling everyone at the table. Trenna took her advantage and rushed forward. The red-headed Mage fell against the table, dazed enough that she wasn’t prepared for Trenna’s second assault. She got to the table before the mage could find her wits, grabbed a fistful of spiky red hair and slammed the woman’s head into the hard, pitted surface.

    With the flick of her wrist, Trenna snagged the dagger from her belt loop and held it to the unconscious woman’s throat in clear warning.

    Faxon didn’t move. Whatever attack he’d planned against Liana had ceased and his wild, golden eyes fastened on Trenna. Nelek, Kaden and Troy had moved during the attack. Nelek stood with the boys flanking him, not entirely out of harm’s way, but at least they’d have a sporting chance now. Liana’s advance had been stalled as well. Trenna saw her slide toward Troy.

    “Hello, Trenna.” Faxon still didn’t move. “Nice to see you haven’t lost your civilized touch.”

    (And to answer … yes, I mean the Faxon you met in Sedition.)

  • Sequels & Teasers

    I did not finish Usurper by the 2014 deadline. I felt a little bad about that, but then I looked at all I accomplished in 2013 and decided one miss wasn’t going to kill me.

    Besides, I was stuck in Usurper because I knew Trenna and company were going home to Kiavana and I needed to figure out what had changed while they’d been away.

    And boy, a lot has changed.

    When I wrote Saboteur and Nelek had his brief visit home I didn’t have much trouble because … well, because 20 years hadn’t passed and there wasn’t much different. But walking into Kiavana Fortress now has to be both familiar and foreign.

    This is the key to sequels, I think. This mesh of familiar and foreign, the appearance of beloved characters and the surprise of new situations … this is what can make or break a sequel. And it’s supremely hard to do.

    Honestly, I don’t think I quite managed it in Saboteur. In my defense, Nelek isn’t in Kiavana long enough for it to really matter. But in Usurper we get to spend quite a bit of time in the castle, and I am very excited by it.

    Fans of the books should be pleased by what they find. (At least I hope they are. I was.) And because I promised a bit of a teaser on my Facebook page, I’ll post a bit of what I wrote this week.

    —– NOTE: This is an unedited version ——

    Troy dismounted his horse and frowned at the ruins. They’d ridden most of the night, resting the horses just long enough to eat and this was what they were looking for?

    It might have been a manor once but age and weather had crumbled the walls to an almost unrecognizable state. The dilapidated building was situated on a small inlet with a wide, undisturbed lake surrounding it. The forest seemed to be doing its best to overtake the half-collapsed conical towers. Vines and weeds crawled over pale stone, and peppered throughout what he could only assume had once been the courtyard were small trees sprouting between bits of rock.

    He didn’t know whether to be sad that a manor could be reduced to such a state or amazed at the relentless growth slowing eating away at it.

    “What is this place?” Liana asked.

    Her voice was quiet, almost reverent, and when Troy looked at her he saw her shiver. She kept hold of her horse’s reigns but her blue gaze was fixed on the highest wall. She looked unsettled, maybe even frightened, and Troy frowned some more. He looked back at the ruins, trying to see what she saw, but could only find rough rock and greenery. He wondered if something in her Eldur blood was speaking to her but was afraid to ask. He found everything dealing with magic to be deeply troubling.

    “This was my mother’s home,” Nelek said.

    “Grandmother Auliere?” Kaden asked as he dismounted.

    Troy moved to tie his horse to the nearest tree. He felt painfully out of place and needed to do something so he busied himself with unloading his saddle bags. He knew Kaden would scoff at him for thinking it, but when it came to Dyngannon family history he knew he didn’t quite fit. He was human, the son of their mother’s rival, and while Trenna had always called him a sign of peace for the future, his love and involvement in their family could not blot out the past.

    He pulled his sword from the saddle and started strapping it on, barely listening to the conversation behind him.

    “Brenson and I used to spend hours swimming in the lake,” Nelek said. “There’s a river that runs just past Kiavana fortress and ends right here. One of my earliest memories of your mother is in that river. Our camp was overrun and we had to flee.”

    “I didn’t take mother for the running sort,” Liana said.

    “I’m sure your mother would have loved to stay and fight,” Nelek said. “But she was my bodyguard at the time. Her first duty was my safety. So we ran.”

  • Endings and Hate Therapy

    Carver Edlund said it best in Supernatural; “Endings are impossible.”

    You have to tie everything up, bring all of the characters into a place of resolution and no matter what you do it will always feel like you missed something. In fact, on the next few edits it’s very likely that you’ll find one or two subplots that never got resolved.

    Don’t panic. It happens. That’s what editing is for, after all.

    My first published book Sedition went through four different endings. Witch-Born had three and Deviation (due to release in 2014) had five. That’s a lot of re-writing and re-plotting. It was frustrating and I went through weeks of what I like to call my “hate therapy.”

    Basically, “hate therapy” is when I become disgusted with everything I’ve written. From what I understand every writer has this problem at some point. We all come to a place where we stare at our work and can find nothing salvageable about it.

    The inner critic comes out in full force, identifying poorly worded sentences, cliché’s we hadn’t noticed before, and weak characters that suddenly remind us of tin soldiers. You know, identical soldiers made of tin with no inner workings, no motivation, and no reason to exist.

    By now you’re wondering why I call this “therapy.” There doesn’t seem to be anything therapeutic about loathing your own work.

    I learned a couple years ago to embrace this natural period of a writer’s life. When I’m in the middle of “hate therapy” I know I am being too hard on myself and, at the same time, am able to identify some very important things.

    Like tin soldiers running rampant on the page.

    But instead of dwelling on how bad it is I embrace it as a challenge to fix those things I’ve done wrong.  That’s when it becomes therapy. When I turn all that angst into a productive outlet I almost always find myself enjoying the work again.

    Persona is coming near to its ending. For those following it online you’re still in chapter fourteen, but I am in the middle of chapter eighteen. (By the way, I dislike chapter fourteen and will be editing it.)

    I’ve always had a particular place in mind for Persona’s ending. In fact, I have stubbornly re-worked and worked again and altered my outline in order to preserve this ending. Timelines are crazy hard to keep in check when writing fiction, especially if you’re dealing with something as well documented as World War II.

    But about a week ago I had a eureka moment and figured out how my characters get from point A to point B (the ending) without screwing anything up. The timeline is mostly preserved. The actions make sense. More importantly, this ending leaves a profound impact on the characters and, hopefully, the reader.

    Persona and Saboteur are the only two books I’ve written where I knew the ending before I got there. To be honest, I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing. Knowing the ending still gives me a struggle because I find myself working harder to make sure the entire book deserves the ending that I’ve planned.

    I still have to go through “hate therapy”, it just happens earlier on in the book. But at least I don’t have to re-write several scenes like I did with Sedition, Witch-Born and Deviation.

    So … Yes. Endings are impossible. They’re heartbreaking, irritating, and hard work but if we do it right then it’s all worth it.

     

     

  • Making Time to Write

    Between work, school and being a single parent I’m told that it is impossible for me to have the time to write as well.  And I suppose for a lot of people that might be true, but the sad fact of the matter is that I just can’t function properly without some story going on inside my head.

    I call it my “back reel” — that weird, unidentifiable space in my brain that is constantly collecting story ideas, running through plot fragments, snagging hold of a stranger’s face for use in a description and … well … pretty much always driving me insane.  The point is, it’s always running and if I don’t get it out on paper I think I could explode or something.

    So how do I write while attending school, working full-time and being a parent?

    Well, the first thing I do is listen to music at work.  Right now I’m rocking the Pacific Rim soundtrack because it totally revs me up for the edit on Tapped I’m going to be doing here in a few weeks.  I haven’t actually started on those edits, but I do keep some paper nearby for any instant inspirations that hit me.

    Now, I’m lucky enough to have a job that allows me to put my headphones in and pretty much ignore everyone else while I get my work done.  This gives my muse plenty of space to run in and by the time I get home and the kiddo in bed I’m ready to start writing.

    Yes, I do the writing thing before I do my homework.  I have to.

    If I didn’t do it this way I’d be distracted from my homework.  Plus, it gives my brain a chance to acclimate from the work scene to the home scene.  So by the time I’m done with my writing hour I’m ready to do my homework.

    After I’ve gotten up and done some dishes, swapped out the laundry and checked on the kiddo, of course.  And at the very end of the night, when the homework is done and the writing is carefully tucked away, I watch something.  That’s what gets my brain to stop thinking so hard so that I can get a good night’s sleep.

    It amuses me when someone says they really want to write but don’t have the time for it.  To be really harsh about it, they’ll never have the time to write if they continue to think like that.  You have to make it a priority.  Once you do that, you’ll find a way.

  • Writing In A Different Genre

    I am primarily a Fantasy and Science Fiction author.  The three books I have out for sale right now are all fantasy and I do have a science fiction scheduled to be released next year.  So when I started work on my historical fiction novel Persona I felt like a fish out of water.

    Suddenly moving shadows had nothing to do with lurking monsters.  And the idea of genetic enhancements stretching the limitations of the human body wasn’t an option.  Suddenly I had to deal with real people, real problems, and real settings.

    To make matters worse, I chose to limit my point of view character.  Normally I write within two or three characters, but in Persona I limited myself to just one, just Megan.  Because I wanted this to be a “Who am I?” story I wanted the so-called camera lens to be focused entirely on Megan as she struggles through Nazi Germany.

    And these were the best decisions I could ever have made.

    Let me tell you what I’ve learned about the writing craft through this experiment.

    1) My other writings are severely lacking in setting.  Yes, you can see some imagery and I give a sketch of what you’re looking at, but the settings in my other books don’t have the character that it should.

    2) I have learned how to reach deeper into the personality of a character through Megan.  By limiting myself to Megan I can now see how very vague I’ve been with other characters.  (Even my beloved Trenna, though I think she’s purposefully private in many matters.)

    3) The use of a theme-based outline has been supremely enlightening.  Rather than just following the plot to its conclusion, this outline has been able to focus my writing on Megan’s journey to self-discovery.

    I’ll use an example from this weeks posted chapter.  We’re in chapter seven and Megan comes home to find a POW hiding in her bathroom.  That’s all plot and action.  My outline goes further to the main question of the scene; What will Megan do with this man, and what does it say about her when she does it?

    There are more practical issues that I’ve learned during this process as well, most of them having to do with taking ownership of the story and my craft.  But the main thing I want to say is that this decision, to write something outside of my comfort zone, has been incredible.  I highly recommend any author to try it.

    Pick a genre outside of what you normally write and commit yourself to it.  If it’s just a short story then that’s fine, the point is to look at how writing within this new genre is different.

  • What I Love to Read – Round Robin Blog Post

    I have boxes of books everywhere in my apartment.  Some are hidden in my closet, some in the storage unit outside, and there’s even one under my bed.  I normally rotate the books on my shelves twice a year just to keep my library choices “fresh”.  So it goes without saying that I love to read.

    When I visit the bookstore I tend to linger in the fantasy/science fiction section.  (That makes sense since I am primarily a fantasy/science fiction author.)  There’s just something about walking on another planet that appeals to me.  I love seeing familiar things made unfamiliar.

    Like dragons, for instance.  How many different variations of dragons are out there now?  Eragon gave us a feathery version, The Smoke Thief gave us a strange misty-version, and there was one I read a while back that had a really cool wyrm hiding in the center of the earth.  (Forgive me, I can’t remember the title of that one.  It’s in one of my buried boxes and I won’t get it out until October.)

    But as much as I love science fiction and fantasy, I also love Ken Follett and all his World War II books like The Key to Rebecca or The Eye of the Needle or, my particular favorite, Jackdaws.  Mr. Follett has a real grasp of strong, complicated women.

    Oh!  And I can’t talk about my favorite books without mentioning Diana Gabaldon and the Outlander series.  Those books let me walk in another time and really breathe life as it once was.

    And finally, when I want to laugh and escape for a little while, I’ll buy a Jennifer Crusie novel.  She’s a romance author but her characters have so much sass and approach life with enough verve that I actually want to sit down and have lunch with them.

    Round Robin Continues!

    Billie A. Williams is a mystery suspense author.  Check out what she loves to read on her Blog at http://printedwords.blogspot.com/.

  • Fact vs. Fiction — Chapter Three (Persona)

    For those following along with the serialization of Persona, here is the Fact vs. Fiction page for Chapter Three.

    So far this whole experience has been incredibly fun!  If you’re just hearing about it, Persona is my WWII novel that is currently being serialized online for free.  You can find it at its Wattpad address or at its story blog.

    But here’s the battle of Fact vs. Fiction in Chapter Three!

     

    Chapter Three – Fact vs. Fiction

     

    Fact:  When I was in high school I took German as my second language.  (We totally watched The Sound of Music and The Great Escape during school.  It was awesome.)  But I remember our teacher Mr. Vanburen (yes, I totally snagged his name because he was one of my favorite teachers and I wanted to immortalize him somehow) said that there were different dialects in the German language.  It is much like anywhere else, I imagine, with different accents coming out.

     

    Doctor Who fans will remember the Ninth Doctor being accused of coming from the north (of Britain) and his response was; “Lots of places have a north!”

     

    So!  The idea of Uncle George’s “language game” isn’t too far-fetched.  It’s a little weird, but that gets explained as time goes on.  Uncle George isn’t the most honest of fellows, after all.

     

    Fiction:  I shoved Megan into a converted storage room on board the ship because I really didn’t know where they would keep a stranded girl on board.  I always imagined it was positioned just beside or inside the sick bay so that Herr Schuler could see to her.  Let’s face it, this sequence of events is very fictional and I doubt they had a manual for what to do when they picked up a half-drowned woman.

     

    Fact:  There really is a place called the Jade Bight.  In Germany it’s called Jadebusen and it’s a bay just south of Wilhelmshaven.  I had to mention it somewhere because, quite frankly, that’s the coolest sounding name in the world.

     

    Fiction:  This is only a quasi-issue because Megan isn’t in the military and really doesn’t know what’s going on, but in the event someone was taken on board a ship like this they would most likely be kept alive.  The whole “remand her into custody of the port authority” is semi-realistic.  VanBuren would need to give her to his superiors, who would then direct her to military intelligence for interrogation and then relocation to a camp.  (More about this in Chapter Four.)

     

    Fact:  My original draft of this story had four other POW’s on board the ship, which Megan was kind of interrogated through because Wycoff forced her into the same room with them and then listened to see if she revealed anything.  She then set about trying to help rescue these four men, which she managed during a bit of a battle, but she still got stuck going to Germany because she had to act as a distraction in order for the men to run.

     

    It was a fun sequence, but after quite a bit of research I dug up the fact that it was very unlikely for prisoners to be taken on board ships like this.  Which meant if I had Megan rescued then I had to dump the other four guys.  I mean, I was already stretching the whole suspension of disbelief, so I needed to trim it down.

     

  • Story Bibles (aka – Consistency, People!)

    A friend of mine uses a Wiki to keep all her files straight while she’s writing a book.  I’ve seen software designed to help maintain little “sticky-notes” to help authors as they’re in the middle of creating their fiction.  Both would fall under what I define as a “story bible”.

    Basically, that’s the spot the author goes to in order to remember all the crap … uh … I mean brilliant details … they have written to help keep their story feeling real.  Because those details are important.  Details are what keep us grounded in a particular work.

    (I heard a rumor George R.R. Martin got skewered for renaming a beloved horse in one of his books.)

    Easy example … Harry Potter’s round-framed glasses.  If those glasses had changed at any point in the books I think Rowling would have been deep-fried by her fans.  You see those glasses and immediately you’re on the lookout for jumping chocolate frogs (also a detail) and people running for a brick pillar, heading for Hogwart’s train (yet another detail).

    Now then … Until I started writing sequels to my books I never kept a story bible.  The characters and worlds were fairly clear in my head and I was stupid enough to think I wouldn’t really need one.

    Saboteur isn’t really a good example of my needing a story bible because it took place in a part of the Dyngannon world that I’d never visited before.  But as I am currently writing the third book in the series (Usurper) and I am revisiting places both in Saboteur and Sedition …

    Yeah.

    I’m wishing I’d went ahead and written one out.

    It’s not so much the characters that worry me — I know who I want to show up where and why and what impact that’s going to have on the story — but the descriptions, the landmarks … those I might have some trouble with.

    My solution?  A notebook.

    I love that people can use technology to make Wiki’s and such, but there is just something about having my scribbles in weird margins, writing running vertical across the page, and using multiple colors that just appeals to me.

    What can I say?  It’s a jumbled mess in my head, it’s going to come out bizarre on the page, too.

    The only exception I have here is the notebook for Tapped.  That story bible is far more organized than any of my others.

    Then again, it does have the outlines and big plot points for 7 novels and novellas in it.  That’s right.  I said 7.  There might even be more than that.  I’m not sure.  I think I could do it in 6 but the whole series has a very episodic feel to it.

    And I’m looking forward to the novellas.  There are at least two of them.  So, technically, I could do the series in 4 books with 2 novellas tacked on.

    I think.

    But really, who wants to put a limit on a series about rescuing refugees?

  • Quests

    So there I was trying to take a nap because I’m either coming down with something nasty or have finally developed allergies — Hopefully I’m just getting sick.  I really don’t want to look forward to a seasonal allergy every year — when I opened my eyes and saw something strange on my bookshelf.

    Image

    Do you see it there?  Right between Jennifer Crusie and the Fantasy Reference Guide …

    It’s an old hardback notebook.  I kept squinting at it, trying to figure it out what in blazes it was when it hit me; it was the first notebook my mother ever gave me.  I’d already shown an interest in writing with “Noises Next Door” and “Noises in the Night” so she bought me this notebook to write in.

    Author’s note:  I was like twelve when I wrote those stories, people.  The titles are bound to suck.  And trust me, the stories were awful, too. 

    So I got up and pulled out that book and started reading the whole six chapter story I wrote in the sixth grade.

    It’s title?  Quest for Bravery … (with “bravery” spelled wrong, no less.)

    I used far too much punctuation and too many people were shouting, and for reasons I can’t understand I actually chose to write in cursive.  (I don’t think anyone writes in cursive anymore.  Not straight cursive, anyway.  I use a bastardized cursive-plain-text-print myself because I know that nobody else has a chance of understanding it.  It’s called author security.)

    The story was about a girl — yes, I’ve always written strong female fighters — who, for reasons I don’t explain in the story, is beholden to a wizard.  Said Wizard’s name was Henry because that was the oldest sounding name I could come up with at the time.  (Again, I was twelve.  And anyway, aside from Prince Henry how many “Henry’s” do you know that aren’t getting up there in years?)

    So anyway, the girl in the story was named Amanda Forcalmer (points to me for not using my own name that time) and she basically served Wizard Henry.  And for six whole chapters she got to meet a prince, fight a dragon, save a princess and then leave said prince.  (Again, points to me for not writing a romance.)

    It was really horrible writing-wise and I laughed as I read it.

    And then I started thinking about how many quests I have been privileged to go on both in my real life and in my writing life.  In real life I have jumped in the ocean in Alaska (that’s cold, by the way), swam in the Caribbean twice, lived in Hawaii, traveled from coast to coast, and been in the Army.  While none of those can be categorized as a “quest” per se, it has been an adventure in learning who I am as a person.

    In my writing life I’ve quested for the Ebony Blade in Sedition, fought against prejudice and for the safety of family in Saboteur.  I’ve hunted for nobility in Witch-Born and learned how fickle Fate can be in Dead Magic.  I confronted the demons of inner self in Deviation and am neck-deep in the quest for self-understanding in Persona as we speak.

    And I’m only 34 years old.

    We writers tend to bemoan how lonely our jobs can be.  We set out to tell a tale that no one else can.  We might get research and inspiration from the people around us, but in the end we’re alone as we write it.  And yes, the solitary act of writing can be hard sometimes.  But it is totally worth it.

    Because we writers are uniquely blessed.  We have quests like no one else in the world.  We create worlds in order to draw out and pinpoint certain aspects of human character.  We see reality differently.  We see people and what motivates them because we understand that the underlying motivation is what dictates what we do as human beings.

    So if you’re a writer then embrace that solitary time.  Take that quest that no one else can and share it.