This weekend in San Jose, California is the World Fantasy Convention. I will be attending where I will be making contacts with authors, agents, and editors. Hopefully someone will be interested in my book and if I get lucky, I’ll be able to send my first 3 chapters to interested people for them to read through it.
The last few months have been very hectic. At the moment, the progress bar states that I’m 60% through my book, but the actual value is quite a bit higher than that. I’ve been doing extensive rewriting in many areas and I just haven’t bothered to tally up my progress as of yet. I should have a substantial update in the next few weeks. I’m very excited for the changes I have planned for the manuscript.
As many of you have noticed, I have not posted anything in a long while. The last month or so has been extremely busy for me. Because I am not yet a published author, I have been searching for a job where I can make some money and still have time to write. I found one with the help of several good friends and I will be starting tomorrow morning.
Last night, I got back from a Caribbean cruise, which was an absolute blast. I didn’t do anything at all with my writing during the last week and it was a good break. I feel refreshed and I’m motivated to hit the ground running. With my new job, my writing time will be cut shorter, but I plan on having my time be used more effectively with my writing, since I sort of need to with 30-40 hours taken out with the job. You all should see my progress bars jump this week, and over the next few weeks.
Also, I have been reading the Runelords series by David Farland, but had to stop after book 4 because the library didn’t have them before I went on my cruise. But I have started on Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series since I have heard excellent things about it and I really enjoyed the Legend of the Seeker TV series.
Finally, I will be posting my For the Holy Light short story set in the Warcraft world sometime this week. This is the same story I submitted to Blizzard Entertainment back in March of this year.
Here it is in print! Warbreaker is a book Brandon wrote over the course of a couple of years. He released each chapter as he completed it. When we finished the first draft of the book. He went back through it and posted revisions as he got to them. Now, we can see what he’s done from the 1.0 version of the book to its current print release format HERE. (middle of the 4th paragraph is a link) For those of you interested in writing or just curious what all goes into an awesome book, take a look at that document. It will blow you away.
A couple weeks ago, I spoke to Brandon about the release of Warbreaker and he was very excited. He had a lot of fun writing this book and really enjoyed the story. If you’ve liked any of his books, go pick this one up.
Man oh man. I am a huge Star Wars fan and this trailer shown at E3 this week blew me away. If you haven’t seen it, hurry and click the link above. And make sure you watch it in HD fullscreened.
I’m also a fan of MMO games which is what this one is going to be. When I heard Bioware was slated to make the game a couple years ago, I was very happy. They make excellent games. With Star Wars and Lucasfilm behind them, this game should be nothing short of awesome. The storyline that is introduced here even adds to my excitement.
For those who don’t know, the scene taking place happened 3,000 years before the Battle of Yavin (Star Wars: A New Hope) during the Sacking of Coruscant by the Sith Empire. The several millenia previous to A New Hope are filled with amazing stories and experiences because it was the height of the time of the Sith and the Jedi in both knowledge and power.
I’m going to be watching the development of this game quite closely. It will be interesting to see how the game will turn out with regards to the actual storylines, playable characters, and overall game playability.
Here’s the final day of CONduit. Finally. This post will be much shorter than the previous one, mostly because I spent less time in Salt Lake on this last day.
I got to the hotel a little before noon and decided to sit in on the last couple of minutes on a panel about Firefly. If you don’t know what Firefly is, repent! Do it now! It’s only one of the greatest TV shows ever created. Seriously, it’s good, go see rent it.
And now for the second day of CONduit, which happened May 22-24 in SLC.
Today, my friends, Josh and Ben, and I carpooled to the convention. We all had similar plans for the entire day so we figured we’d drive up and hang out all day, which we did to great effect. At noon, we went to a panel entitled “What can writers learn from Harry Potter?” This was a rather interesting panel because it’s purpose was to find out why it was successful and how we as writers can produce something close to its level. We talked about all kinds of things from Rowling’s writing style to how she implemented certain characters and story arcs. All in all, it takes a lot of planning and creativity to produce a series that can even begin to match phenomena.
On the weekend of May 22-24, I had the opportunity to go to CONduit, a science fiction convention held in Salt Lake City, Utah ever Memorial Day Weekend. I had a blast and was able to meet up with some aquaintances in the field of SF/F as well as make many new friends. The theme for this year’s CONduit was “The Evil Overlords” which I felt was particularly fitting for me since writing “bad” guys can be challenging. The panels I attended were great, but it was in my socializing where I was able to glean information and cultivate relationships that will further my writing. Below the break begins the day-by-day report.
First off, CONduit is coming up this weekend up in Salt Lake City and I will be attending. I’m excited for it because this will be my first real, big writing convention and there are a lot of good panels being offered. Not to mention, the book signings and readings. I have already met many of the big authors who will be attending, but it will still be good to see and talk with them again. I’ll be writing a couple of posts on my CONduit experiences this weekend.
On to Angels and Demons. The movie opened this last weekend and my wife and I were invited by some friends to go see it with them. We planned on seeing the movie sometime this summer, but we couldn’t turn down this invitation. For those of you who have not read the book, the book takes place before The Da Vinci Code, but in the movie, it takes place after….. Yeah. That isn’t exactly in keeping with the storyline, but fortunately, the two books don’t require the other.
This last weekend, I took the opportunity to go see Star Trek. It is a rare event that I would go to a movie on release weekend or even to the theater. With movies coming out on DVD faster than ever before, I can usually wait until Blockbuster or Redbox has them. But I couldn’t do that with Star Trek, nor did I want to.
Star Trek is an amazing show and story; it is something that connects all age groups of sci-fi fans. I remember watching many of the TOS and the Next Generation both in American and when I would travel to Germany to visit family in the summers. I never really got into DS9 but I did watch a bit of Voyager, despite my dislike of Kate Mulgrew’s portrayal of her character, Kathryn Janeway. I have also read many of the books in the Star Trek universe, including the numbered books in the TOS and TNG subuniverses as well as other novels that seemed to be more standalone, like the ones William Shatner wrote.
A couple of weeks ago, by brother-in-law told me about a TV show called Legend of the Seeker. And boy was he up in arms about it. For two days straight while he was visiting us, he constantly talked about how awesome it was. When he told me the title, I wasn’t really sure what to think. It sounded like a fantasy and I immediately thought back to Xena and Hercules. Despite their corniness, I watched them as a kid. Mythology is still something that holds my interest which was why I watched them in the first place, I think.
With Seeker, I was afraid that the show would just not quite hit the level of “good.” He showed me clips of the first episode to convince me of its coolness and I have to admit, I became more open to the idea of watching the show. Unfortunately, I had to wait a couple of weeks because the end of the semester was nearing and I had a lot of stuff to finish for school. So, a few days ago I began to watch Legend of the Seeker with an open mind.
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Posted by sundart 
Posted by sundart 