A Night With the Kings In Queens

Continuing my epic theme for the summer, last Thursday I embarked on an epic quest to return to the city of my birth to see my favorite band play in the stadium of my favorite baseball team. If you follow me on social networks, you know that I am a rabid fan of the Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York and my favorite band is the Foo Fighters. I've always been a Foo Fighter fan but became obsessed with their HBO series Sonic Highways. I love the story of a story and following the stories of music in the cities they chose to record the songs of their new album in was must watch television for me. Like many writers, I find music inspirational and combined with the recording process and the narrative nature of the episodes of the show, it inspired me in so many ways. When they announced the summer tour and saw that they would be playing Citi Field, I took to begging both my wife and mother. Christmas 2014, birthday 2015, Father's Day and Christmas 2015 would all be spoken for if they got the tickers for me. Well, the wife came through and we were off to see the Foos.

Now, if you've gotten to know me, you know that I firmly believe that the journey is vastly more important than the destination, but this is one of the few times that the journey was awful (missed train, extra hour in the car in northern New Jersey traffic, a mind screaming migraine and a frantic 45 minute walk across town instead of a subway trip because my brain was locked because of my head). My wife was pretty much ready to leave me. Well, several bottles of water and 4 Advil later, I was adequate enough to make our way on the 7 line to Queens. The subway trip was the first sign that things were going to be okay. We made it to our seats just in time to hear the opening chords of Everlong and I felt the headache abating enough that I could feel my shoulders and head starting to rock.

Citi Field was amazing. Truly, a cathedral for baseball and I can't wait to catch a game there. And as a concert venue, it was amazing. The concert didn't disappoint. It was two and a half hours of rock and roll epicness. It was amazing. I danced. I cried. I sang along. I had a night that I'm still smiling about five days later. Dave Grohl rolled out on his Iron Throne-esque throne of guitars to hold court in Flushing with 40,000 courtiers screaming adulation and admiration.

Dave is a natural storyteller and exudes a king-like charisma that is second to none in music right now. He makes it feel like even though my wife and I were sitting behind home plate on the second level and the band was in deep center field that we were packed into a small club of 40,000 people. They weaved through pretty much all their hits and only two songs off the new album, including a chillingly beautiful acoustic set of "My Hero" and "Times Like These" that turned two great hard rock songs into melancholy ballads. They covered a few songs, including snippets of some great classic rock songs, when Dave introduced the rest of the band. Being a teacher, I'm not going to lie, "Schools Out For Summer" was nice and I found myself singing a little louder during the chorus. They closed it out with "Best of You." I recorded it on my phone for my daughter, who loves that song.

The Foos put on an amazing show. It far exceeded every expectation I had and I am glad I went. We wound up having a great Friday in New York that capped an amazing 24 hours that I'll never forget. While in NY, the epicness continued as I ate lunch at Eataly, where I found my mothership: the Nutella Bar. Three words: Nutella banana crepes.

Oh, I also made eye contact with Bo Derek. But that's a story for another time. For now, I'm climbing back into the writing world, inspired and overjoyed at the experience of seeing my favorite band live and in person.

Dragons of Autumn Twilight Re-Read: Part Two, Chapters 1-4

So I've once again fallen behind Tor.com's pace, but I've been doing other stuff, but I managed to catch up today and I'll post my thoughts here and there in relation to these chapters, so here goes. Thus begins Part 2 of Dragons of Autumn Twilight:

Chapters 1 & 2:
So the companions return home and find it destroyed. The interesting thing about the start of this chapter is that it mimics the opening of the book (a nice text structure) and that despite the madness of what happened to Solace, some of the people are trying to carry on their day-to-day lives. It plays with the trope of the inn being the center of the fantasy universe quite well.

We get some well done flashbacks in these chapters too (I'll comment more about this later), especially this one as we get Tika's POV of what happens. The dragon carrying the inn down from the trees is actually that comes across as brilliantly terrifying.

Tika is a nice point of view. It's another attempt by the authors to give us a "non-D&D" perspective as she is not a warrior or magic user (I know, I know, she's a low level fighter). She's a "normal" person coping with this almost better than our adventurers. Granted, Tika is the cliched fantasy (dare I say buxom) barmaid that exceeds our expectations immediately. What is the damage for a frying pan in an AD&D game?

Then we get the most thinly veiled Gandalf expy in the history of fantasy lit. I know that Fizban is a more significant character, but he's almost note for note Gandalf the Gray, isn't he?

And by the end of chapter two, they are captured again. Sometimes it feels like they should be called the Prisoners instead of the Companions.

The one other thing that really strikes me about this chapter is for the epicness of the story so far, it's really taken place in a very, very small area of the world. And there is a lot going on in such a small space. I'm not sure what I think of that. I get that it's sort of a hobbled together D&D world, but it comes across as kind of sloppy: the mostly human Solace near barbarian tribes near elves (we'll get to that later) near a dead city near the sea where there seems to be very little mingling between these groups. Just some pretty sloppy world building.

Chapters 3 & 4
Over on Tor.com, Gilthanas seemed to catch some hell from people, but I'm going to be honest, I like some of the characterization of him in these chapters is pretty different for elves, who are usually described as these aloof super magic using warriors. In this, Gilthanas is presented for what he is: the second son to a monarch, more interested in being an academic than some kind of warrior. Kind of like a certain, wildly popular Targaryen prince we all know and love.

Tanis has finally gotten under my skin the way he has everyone else (it seems) on Tor.com. For a man supposedly in his early 30s (or whatever the half-elf equivalent is), he's a whining little teen isn't he? I can only imagine how emo (to use Justin and Mahvesh's expression) he was back then...I'll bet he wore skinny jeans and a Golden Girls t-shirt while trying to diddle his cousin....ewww...but to be fair, there is no blood there, so it's all good...am I right people??

The rescue this time is another cliche and reads like another random encounter from a chart in a module. I've extolled how one of the strengths of AUTUMN so far has been the action sequences. This one falls flat. It's slow and takes to long when compared to the rest of the book. It reminds me a bit of a movie that needs to be 90 minutes and needs about 5-10 minutes of filler, so we get Sturm's depression at being caught, Caramon's hunger, Tas's boredom, Gandalf Fizban's goofiness, a flipping gully dwarf and Goldmoon needing to find the "leader of the people" (read: a MAN!).

That last bit is important and kind of annoying. She just died. She watched her man die. She brought the gods back into the world and she's not the leader. She's not good enough to be the leader of the people. I mean it's bad enough that the best she can be is the "Cheftain's Daughter" but this is overkill Jesus. (See what I did there?) Come on. There are tropes I can excuse or defend, but this isn't one of them. It's actually kind of a bummer to read it now. I wonder what my 13 year old self thought. Hell, I'd love to read the damned editor comments on this that made this decision.

The rescue finally comes and this time it's the elves as we've come to expect them. A bunch of Legolases in the woods picking off the enemy while freeing the prisoners...with no plan beyond that. Jeez, elves are obnoxious everywhere, aren't they?

Epic Summer

July 4th. For those of use here in the states, it's Independence Day. The day we celebrate by eating and drinking in excess while blowing shit up with fireworks from China. Good times. It's also pretty much the beginning of Summer for me as a teacher. Well, not exactly, but sort of. Summer has gotten off to a good start so far. In the last six weeks I managed to put the finishing touches on THREE projects. I'm very happy about finishing them. Makes me feel accomplished, so let me talk about them:

1. THE SEVEN LABORS OF NICK JABLONSKY: YA Contemporary; 75k. Book 1 of THE JABLONSKY CHRONICLES. I described vaguely as a cross between FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and the writing of Lauren Oliver, Eric Devine and Sherman Alexis.  I first conceptualized this book way back in the summer of 2013 and started it then. For such a short book it took a long time to finish. As with all of my writing, it turned into something other than what I first imagined. I'm very happy with the end result and think that it's some of the best writing I've done so far. It's very different than my usual writing and I really liked writing it. My agent already did his first read and told me that he's going to read it a second time for notes. A lot of his initial observations were pretty spot on and I think I have some ideas how to make the next draft work even better. 
2. THE LOST SCION: YA Fantasy. 117k. Book 1 of THE RETURN OF THE FALSE LORDS. A "boy" GRACELING crossed with THE THREE MUSKETEERS by way of THOR: THE DARK WORLD and Bollywood, this was originally called JAIMAN ZARACHEK AND THE SISTERS OF KHODA, then simply THE SISTERS OF KHODA, I decided I needed a new, better title and a slight change of concept. It was intended to be more of a "fantasy adventure" and as I wrote it and rewrote it I came to the realization that it needed to be "more epic," related to my theme of an epic 2015. The rewrite wrapped up in mid-June and it was really just the last third that needed to be ramped up. So I spent some time in my writer's notebook, trying to arc out the whole series. What started as a concept of 8 books was cut down to a trilogy with a few novellas and novelettes thrown in for good measure. I came up with a structure for the books (I have a feeling that I'm going to get to be known as "the structure guy.") and came up with the general idea for the three books. For now, though, SCION is in the trusted hands of my betas (my usuals, plus two new betas) seeing how the book works. 
3. SPRING'S TEMPEST: YA Epic Fantasy. 131k. Book 2 of SEASONS OF DESTINY. Game of Thrones meets 90210 told from the point of view of those still learning the game of thrones in the tone and style of Tamora Pierce's SONG OF THE LIONESS. (My agent came up with that and it still gives me the chills!) This was the MS that I lost when the operating system crapped the bed on my old work rig and I didn't back it up. (Moron!) The good thing is that I think this is a better draft. I cut some crap that needed to go and made an actually tighter draft. In the HD loss, I also lost an early working draft of Book 3: SUMMER'S GLORY, but I reimagined a very detailed outline (which I'm going to have to do again since finishing the draft) and figure if we get a deal, I can just start chugging away as soon as possible. 

Now comes the hard part...what's next. I have a handful projects in mind, all YA and all smaller in scope but definitely sticking with my theme of epic. I've talked about trying Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k method, but my plan is to really attack writing to get a high volume of writing done. Here's the plan, with teases of the new projects:

1. THE PENSIONER'S BROOCH: A novelette project I've been kicking around for a while and I'm going to try and high volume this puppy and get it done in 3-4 days while planning the next few projects.
2. FRESH TRACKS: A YA "historical" fiction story that takes place in 1990 focusing on skiing, rivalry, young love and mix tapes. I'm going to try and mimic the epic fantasy, multiple POV style in this and set it up the way I would have set up a mix tape back in the day. 
3. THE GREAT NORTHPOINTE-SILVER PINES WAR: Another YA "historical" about the escalation of a prank war between two neighborhoods in 1987. Might take place in the same "world" as FRESH TRACKS and will be told in a similar fashion minus the mix tape element. 
4. THE NEXT TOWN OVER: YA something. I don't want to reveal to much, just think Steven King's THE BODY (STAND BY ME) crossed with THE GOONIES with a twist that I don't want to talk about. 
5. LITTLE STEVIE POMEROY: YA/MG? horror? I've talked about this before and it's something I want to revisit at some point. Think ET but with more malice and from the deep sea instead of deep space. 

Readingwise, I just finished HALF THE WORLD by Joe Abercrombie and it's fantastic. I have an ARC of HALF A WAR and I'll be jumping into that along with a few others, including Lou Anders' NIGHTBORN. I'll be kicking the DRAGONLANCE re-read up again in the next day or so, plus I have a SUPER SECRET reading project I can't reveal (or I don't think I can). I was asked by a very successful writer that I admire greatly to beta read one of his books. I'm positively giddy over it and intimidated at the same time. 

So, it looks like my summer is going to be pretty epic. How about you?