Showing posts with label GRRM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GRRM. Show all posts

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Road Trip: Santa Fe in Snapshots

The best excuse to not write for a week is a road trip across huge empty country to a picturesque destination. Just got back from Santa Fe, NM, with several shopping bags of loot and a few snapshots worth sharing.

We explored ...

LOCAL ARCHITECTURE



LOCAL ART





Pedernal - From the Ranch I, 1956


LOCAL FOOD

Classic food at MARIA'S, where they serve the best margaritas in town.

LOCAL LANDSCAPES



AND (for me) THE PRIZE...

LOCAL LITERATURE



Fans will know that George RR Martin calls Santa Fe home. This happens to be the movie theatre he purchased and renovated a couple years ago. It features a coffee shop, art exhibit, and book store that sells only signed copies of his books and books by several other authors. What did I buy? A signed copy of Dying of the Light, and a gorgeous illustrated copy of The Ice Dragon. My only regret is not staying long enough to watch the feature film and enjoy a cocktail named after the icy wraiths in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Well, there's always next time.


Friday, March 6, 2015

AGoT fan prefers the books...

So, I started reading Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire years ago, right after Book 3 came out. I love the grotequery of the characters so much that I haven't wanted to watch the HBO series and have someone else's vision of the story mess with the lovely (ugly?) vision in my head, not until well after the last book is released and I've read it a couple times.

However, if I were to watch any version of A Game of Thrones, it would be this one, which I found on Sploid today:


(the full length animated version is at the bottom of the Sploid post)


Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Fury of the Falcon, Progress Report #1

Well, anyone who has visited my Facebook page has seen that rewrites on Fury of the Falcon have begun, but for some reason I neglected to update my blog about it. Getting back into the routine of writing has been difficult. Actually feels like learning a drive a new car. The peddles don't feel natural under my feet. Stop, start, lurch forward, hit the break. Eesh.

But as of yesterday, chapter 3 is underway, and things are a bloody mess. For the characters, I mean. Sons ended on dark, negative notes, as a middle book should, and now my twins are scrambling to pick up the pieces. But I refuse to give spoilers.

The most difficult part of starting this book, for me, is trying to decide how much back info to provide, as reminders of what happened in Sons. I shouldn't expect readers to remember the small details, but I don't want to insult their intelligence and hand-feed them stuff they are sure to remember. How do the pros handle this sort of thing? Of course, I picked up a book by my favorite author to compare methods. GRRM's A Feast For Crows picks up only moments after A Storm of Swords ends, or even backtracks a bit in the case of some characters. I started with the first Cersei chapter and read it critically, looking for those reminders, and looking for what George did not include. He didn't bother describing characters he'd described in Storm. Only the beaten gold of Cersei's hair and the color of cloaks. Of course the color of cloaks. That's vintage George. But there were other hints he had included that prompted me to go back into my opening chapters and add a few more tidbits. But all the while, the Cersei chapter pointed forward, as the characters begin a search for a murderer and as Cersei plots her next move against her rivals. Hopefully, I can learn something here and apply the method to my own chapters.

It's a fine balance, and I'm not sure I've achieved it yet, but we'll see. Thank God for revisions.

RECENT PROGRESS
Chapter(s): 1-3
Pages Revised: 3
Became: 7 pages
New Scenes: 1
Death count: 1 
Good things that happen:  A great cleansing begins
Bad things that happen: captives suffer the lash and a long journey into the unknown


Saturday, April 13, 2013

Falcons Saga, Progress Report

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LAST WEEK'S PROGRESS
Chapter(s): 20-22 
Pages Revised: 30 
Became: 44 pages 
Death count: 100+ 
Good things that happen: Well, at least someone escapes the carnage. 
Bad things that happen: The schnizzle hits the fan. Innocence and security are illusions that have been shattered. At last.

In these three chapters, there is so much build-up to the (undisclosed) catastrophe that I was really shocked to see that in the original draft the actual catastrophe was over in less than three pages (?!). That wouldn't do at all. The catastrophe has to equal the weight of the build-up, else a reader might sneeze and miss the payoff, and that will never do. Therefore, I spent several days last week, expanding the carnage. I was trying for a GRRM "Red Wedding" kind of scene, but I'm not sure I nailed it. Nevertheless, it made for disturbing writing. There are good reasons why I don't write hack-n-slash or horror. My stomach, my nerves couldn't handle it. Point is, the bloodshed has begun, and for the Sons of Ilswythe, nothing will ever be the same again. And that's the way we like it.
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