Today I have a post up at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist. I first “met” Patrick St. Denis in 2005, when he began his list with a number of book reviews, including very kind reviews of my LonTobyn Chronicle. And so it seemed natural that as I tour the intrawebs publicizing the release of the Author’s Edits of Children of Amarid, The Outlanders, and Eagle-Sage, I should stop by Pat’s wonderful site.
Today’s post is called “Learning From a Younger Me,” and you can find it here.
As the Summer/Fall Blog Tour continues, I visit today with friend and fellow writer Ken Schrader, who interviews me about the Author’s Edit of Children of Amarid, and writing stuff in general. Come on by and join the conversation! You can find the interview here.
Today I kick off my Summer/Fall 2016 Blog Tour with a stop at the Word Nerds blogsite, where I’m interviewed by Bethany Warner. We discuss the re-release of Children of Amarid and the rest of my LonTobyn Chronicle, as well as the process of editing these books, which were the first I wrote as a professional. Come by and read the interview here, and you can enter for a chance to win a Blog Tour gift certificate!
This is still the work of an inexperienced writer. Comparing The Outlanders to the work I’ve done more recently, I still cringe a little at the habits of that younger me. But I also see growth, a writer beginning to master elements of his profession.
And, to my surprise, I see as well things that I need to be reminded of today as I think about where I ought to go next with my career and my craft.
Today’s Quick-Tip Tuesday post at Magical Words again discusses my revisions of my first series, the LonTobyn Chronicle, and what I have learned from that younger version of myself. It’s not just a matter of correcting youthful mistakes; at times, I’m finding that I need to emulate more some of the things I used to do. Sounds interesting, right? Then read the post! You can find it here.
To fans of the original, thank you for the support you’ve shown me over the years. I couldn’t be more grateful. To those coming to the series for the first time, welcome. I hope you enjoy reading these novels as much as I have enjoyed revisiting them.
Nineteen years ago, I realized my lifelong dream of becoming a published author of fantasy with the release from Tor Books of Children of Amarid. I followed that up with the second and third volumes of my LonTobyn Chronicle, The Outlanders and Eagle-Sage, books that would win me the Crawford Fantasy Award and establish me in the business.
I have always loved these books, and yet, as I’ve moved forward with my career, I’ve also been aware of their flaws. They were passionate and decently written, but they were also plagued by many of the problems endemic to first novels. For years, I’ve wanted to go back and edit them.
In 2005, they went out of print. Eventually, the rights to the books reverted to me, and at last I was able to revise them. This month, the long process of preparing the books for re-issue finally comes to fruition.
I’m delighted to announce that the Author’s Edit of Children of Amarid is now available from Lore Seekers Press in ebook format and trade paperback. The book bears the original art work by Romas Kukalis, as will the subsequent volumes, which we hope to publish in September and December respectively. I have not changed the story in any way. The plot twists, characters, world building, and magic system all remain as fans of the original novels will remember them. But the prose has been polished, made leaner and more concise. The result is a novel that reads as I wished it had all those years ago.
To fans of the original, thank you for the support you’ve shown me over the years. I couldn’t be more grateful. To those coming to the series for the first time, welcome. I hope you enjoy reading these novels as much as I have enjoyed revisiting them.
And finally, to those attending ConGregate in High Point, North Carolina next weekend, please come to the Friday night book launch. My book will be one of several feted that evening.
I’ve noticed an incredible amount of extra verbiage in my early books — filler, if you will: superfluous words that add little to the storytelling, but clutter up my prose. For the wordiness-intolerant, these words are as unwelcome as, well, Wonder Bread at a luncheon for the gluten-adverse. How much is “an incredible amount”? In Children of Amarid, book I, I cut 20,000 words without touching plot, character, or setting.
It’s another Quick-Tip Tuesday over at the Magical Words blog site. Today’s post is about self-editing, and specifically finding ways to tighten up our prose. I’m editing my first series, the LonTobyn Chronicle, for re-release later this year, and I’m doing a LOT of cutting and tightening, so this is definitely on my mind right now. Find out what I’m thinking as I edit my work. You can read the post here.
Enjoy, and keep writing!
We never know when we’re going to draw upon experiences in our lives, be it for setting or character, plot or emotional content, dialog or action or romance or any of the myriad other narrative elements that come, at least in part, from our own lives.
We writers are pack rats. We hoard everything. Maybe not in a physical sense (though I’m that kind of pack rat, as well), but certainly in a conceptual sense.
It’s Quick-Tip Tuesday over at Magical Words and I have a post up today about travel, experience, and turning memory into narrative. I’ve been drawing on my own travel experiences for my fiction for nearly twenty years, and as we move into summer travel season, it strikes me as a good time to discuss such things. The post can be found here. I hope you enjoy it.
I owe an apology to all of you.
Seriously.
To every person I have critiqued at a Live Action Slush, to every student whose manuscript I’ve marked up, to every aspiring writer I’ve advised with arrogant confidence, I am truly sorry.
For what, you ask.
For failing to realize just how fortunate I am, and have been, to have the career I’ve had.
What has brought this on?
Well, I am editing Children of Amarid, my very first novel…
It’s Quick-Tip Tuesday, and I am at Magical Words with my post. I am in the midst of editing my very first novel, Children of Amarid, book I of the LonTobyn Chronicle. Why, 20 years and 19 books later would I do this? Because I have the rights back, and I’m going to re-release the series.
What I’ve found is a book filled with many of the common errors I encounter in the first novels of aspiring writers and students with whom I work. That’s not surprising — this wasn’t just my first published novel, it was my first novel ever. But still, going back and editing the book has been an eye-opening experience. Read about it here.
Enjoy, and keep writing!