I Now Pronounce You Husband and Husband

If you follow me on Twitter (and if you don't, why wouldn't you?), you can probably guess my politics with little or no effort. As with many of us, I'm slightly more complex than being identified as a Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative. I identify myself as being a socially liberal, fiscally moderate centrist Democrat. Now, some out there would call me wishy-washy and I'm okay with that. Extremes scare me to death and I like to apply a degree of logic and personal experience to every thought I have, so even though I identify myself as a Democrat, I will gladly cross party lines when need be and have voted Republican on numerous occasions. I tell you this because I'm going to be pseudo-political for a blog post and that is not the intent of this blog. The intend it to be about my writing, not about what I believe, but I wanted to reflect on something I noticed in my writing, directly related to something going on in the country today.

A few weeks ago, President Obama (of whom I am a staunch supporter of, no matter the heat that I will often be given for it) came out in favor of gay marriage. I was remarkably happy. I have long supported gay marriage and believe gay and lesbian couples have every right to be as miserable as the rest of us married folk. (Enter laugh track here.) My purpose here is not to debate this. If you don't agree with me, good for you, move along. We can agree to disagree. I want to talk about writing, not debate ignorance...I mean your personal beliefs.

I've always wanted to write a GLBT character in one of my stories but I haven't. I'm not sure why. I don't want to feel like I'm forcing it. Then I wonder (and get intimidated by) how I am going to treat it. Is it positive? Is it negative? For a straight, married white male, it's somewhat daunting. (John Scalzi just wrote a terrific blog post about being a Single White Male that I'm recommending to just about everyone. It really is like playing a video game at the EASY setting.) How do I approach this without sounding like I'm trying to force it or being heavy handed.

Presently I'm reading Cinda Williams Chima's brilliant Seven Realms series and loving it. So many similarities to what I am trying to do in my writing and yet completely unique. Remember me blogging about fun, well this series is fun and I am green with envy over it. (I won't link to past blog posts, but I think you get my point.) In the second book, Cinda introduces a gay relationship. It's mentioned almost in passing without being heavy handed and it was so brilliantly done, I was, for a moment, insanely jealous. It was a lesbian relationship and considered part of the culture. They were called "moonspinners." There was mention of a religious nation not liking it, but other than that it was presented in a perfectly normal and acceptable manner.Then again, there are aspects of the world that Cinda's built that suggest many of the nations in her world have a healthy respect for women that shows in the story. And I loved it.

I think the TV show GLEE has done a nice job of doing this. (Don't get me started on how GLEE has insulted the HELL out of teachers...that's another post!) They've created TWO different cultures: McKinley High and Glee Club, where the characters can exist in different levels of comfort and ease. In the Glee Club, the characters can be themselves and comfortable, to some extent. In the school, there is an inherent hostility towards anyone that is "different." I have my issues with the show, but the Karofsky episode earlier this season was powerful display of the effects that this pressure has on students.

I had wanted to do something like it for my JAIMAN setting, but closer to another brilliant example of how it can be done well in the genres and that was the television show CAPRICA, where there was polygamy and multiple family units. Gay marriage was acceptable and there were no closets to hide in. It was an aspect of the show I always liked and would have loved to see what they would have done with it had they been given more time.

In fantasy, we can stretch ourselves a little and take issues that affect us today in and out of our work, often explaining it with a simple handwave. It's obviously harder for those writers that write in the real world. The closet continues and too many are forced into it. I just have to figure out how I want to handle it. Do I closet a character because it might make a better conflict OR do I create a more equitable setting where such behavior isn't treated as deviance and more in line with my beliefs?

Heavy thoughts, huh?

Let The Past Be The Past.

It was absolutely gorgeous here in the Cuse Friday night. Mid-70s, sunny, not much humidity....just one of those great spring days that make you wish school ended in early May as opposed to June. After dinner, the family and I sat down on the back deck. Now, I live in the city. Granted Syracuse isn't NY, Chicago or anything like that, but I do want to clarify that I actually live in the city....not the Syracuse area. I have a small house and a small yard, but I have a very nice back deck that faces the middle school that is practically my backyard. We don't use the deck as much as we should, but last night, we decided to sit on the deck. I brought my Kindle out on the deck and sat watching my daughter riding her bike under my wife's supervision. It was very Norman Rockwell. (Well except for the Kindle maybe!)

My wife rummaged through a garbage bag in the garage that was from my car, filled with stuff that wasn't all garbage, but wasn't important enough that I missed it. In the bag was one of my coaching hats. Every year from my second year teaching, I was an assistant coach for the school where I work, so I had a couple of hats kicking around. (My favorite, a tan hat with orange "N" on it, was chewed by my dog and ruined.) My wife threw it up to me on the deck and I put it on. She laughed and said, "Now, there's the John I knew."

It got me thinking. I used to wear hats all the time. It was my trademark, so to speak. I used to have a pretty impressive collection of hats. But those days are gone. I don't wear hats much anymore. I don't like them anymore. But it did get me thinking about the "old" vs. "new" me.

Old Me

This is my "Dirty" Johnny phase. I couldn't tell you exactly when this was, but it was some time in the mid-90s. I dreamed of being a writer and thought that I would be a writer just because I thought I was going to be a writer. I didn't know nearly as much as I know now about the craft and the business. I look happy in this picture, mostly because I was immature and carefree but underneath I was a seething, angry mess. I would tell anyone that listened that I was going to be on the NY Times Bestsellers list by the time I was 26 and that I would write these meaningful literary books about 20-somethings while writing my big, sprawling epics on the side for fun. I was delusional to say the least. Can't say I blame no one from believing in me at the time. This also happens to be one of my favorite pictures of me, I think it's actually the closest to representing my personality, though I'll be this one is close to what I really am:

Angry, probably glowering at a relative thinking they were funny. Still the old me: feeling entitled. I wanted to be a writer...why did no one recognize my greatness? Oh, yeah, cause I was more in love with the idea of being a writer than the act of being a writer. I was too busy spending time reading books about writing and not writing. Not studying the craft by practice. Not reading and studying what other writers did. Instead, I relied on "The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction" and books like that.

New Me

Slightly more together. Nice tan. A little less hair, not that you can tell because I'm wearing a hat in all my other pictures. I look content. Life is good. Outside distractions are fewer. I'm reading the works of my chosen genre. Studying them for my "how tos." I'm concentrating on writing now. Just writing. And that is making me a better writer. How can I tell?

My writing is pretty good. No, really. My friend (and ALPHA beta reader) Neil pointed out that I had "matured" as a writer in the time that he's known me. We've never met face to face. Never talked over the phone. (There's a blog post about "internet" friends coming at some point.) But he's read almost EVERY word of writing that I've ever written. And without his input, I don't think I'd be where I am. I'm gushing. But, back to my point.


Last summer, I took a couple of characters from a trunk novel I had written about 10 years ago and took the characters back to their teenaged years. In the trunk novel, they were in their early 20s. I thought what if I could write these characters as teens in a YA tone. And I wrote it. It was a project that took a long time to get moving after several starts and stops over the course of a year. Last summer (June, July & August) I wrote 90,000 words of the new draft, then put it aside. I hadn't looked at it since the end of August.

After discussing "what's next" with my agent, I settled on rewriting that book before banging out another summer project. This evening I poured over the draft. And damn, it's good. I think it's darn good. Needs a good polishing, that's for sure, but the story itself is solid. The Old Me wouldn't have had this success. The Old Me would still be talking about being a writer, not actually writing.

One more picture and funny story for you all:

John Popper-esque right?

A buddy of mine at school mentioned me to his class. When working through a question in response to a reading passage one of the answers was: "All writers live interesting lives." My buddy then says to the class when they agree that the statement isn't true: "Look at Zeleznik. Comes to work every day on time, goes home at the end of the day, plays with his kid, makes dinner and eats with his family every night, puts the kid to bed, writes late at night and goes to bed....BORING. Nothing interesting."

No, my friend, much more interesting.

Rambling About Writing, The Perfect And The Underrated

Finished draft one (actually two, but don't worry about that) of book two: Spring's Tempest. I'm very happy about it and I am delving into a very quick rewrite of the draft to submit to my agent in a few weeks. I think I've gotten better as a writer and this book shows it. I have some ideas popping on what's next. I'm going to take a stab at finishing my YA scifi that I was working on last fall, then maybe take a rewriting pass on Sisters of Khoda, do some outlining for book three of the Seasons series (which is going to be shamefully long) and book two of the unnamed series that Khoda was part of then plan and write a really kick ass YA idea I have that is so good I don't want to talk about it publicly. Seriously. Going to be a busy few months for the Z-man.

But that's not the real reason I wanted to blog tonight, I wanted to blog about something else. Two ideas about things that I've been thinking about recently. The idea of perfection and the idea of being underrated. Let me explain.

I'm a movie buff. The older, the better. I love talking about movies and debating merit and worth with people about movies, in particular how a story is told in the course of a movie. I have two lists that I love debating with people and it's a list that often confuses people. One is the list of "best" movies while the other is what I call the most "perfect" movies. Let me explain about the latter because I think the former makes sense. PERFECT movies are flawless at what they do. They understand the story they are trying to tell and execute it in a manner that is just without flaw. My 10 most perfect movies in my opinion are:

• The Godfather
• The Godfather, Part Two
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Beauty and the Beast
• The Hangover
• Ocean's 11 (2001)
• GoodFellas
• Back To The Future
• Se7en
• Casablanca

It's a tough list and it will be different for each of us. Feel free to debate in the comments and remember these aren't the "best" movies, they are the most "perfect."

Now the other thing I want to discuss is the idea behind underrated. Now, when we look at fantasy in film, Lord of the Rings set the bar pretty darn high. And with the terrific production of "Game of Thrones," the bar is set really, really high. I think because of that, some pretty damn good fantasy movies have been overlooked because of it.

I was really excited about the movie "Your Highness," because it sounded as if it harkened back to the cheesy 80s fantasies that I cut my teeth on. It didn't, but I really, really liked it. I actually thought if they'd taken it a little more seriously and cut out some of the stoner jokes it would have been a pretty darn impressive story. I discovered some amazing parallels in that movie to my own writing. (No, seriously.) Wastrel hero. Father-son relationship issues. Relationships between men. Betrayals. Search for true love. Ancient prophecies. I really enjoyed it. But it made me think, what other fantasies of the last few years have been "underrated" because of LOTR? I contend "Your Highness" is one of them. So is "How To Train Your Dragon." I really enjoyed the "Clash of the Titans" remake and I still think that the TV show "Avatar: The Last Airbender" doesn't get the credit it deserves. Any thing in your genre of choice that you think was underrated? Same thing in comments.

(I'm going to write a longer post on "Your Highness" a little later on. That's how much I loved the movie....and want to write the sequel.)

(I have to go watch Gladiator now.)

You Just got Kicked In the ****!

We all have those moments in a book that we are really enjoying. You know, where you think the protagonist has done what they set out to do or you just settle into really, really liking a character and getting used to their voice when....



You all know the feeling I'm talking about. My fellow BWBers know EXACTLY what I'm talking about because the High Priest of this is George RR Martin. I mean: Ned Stark's fate, Jaime's hand, the Red Freakin' Wedding, the end of AFFC. The man mastered the art of kicking his readers squarely in the junk...and we love him for it.

Suzanne Collins proved to be another master of this literary technique. I was sick to my stomach at the end of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire left me so emotionally scarred that it's been almost 2 years since I read the book and I still can't read Mockingjay, I just don't know if I can handle it. Seriously.

I write this because I think that I wrote my "kicked in the ****" scene last night and I was so jarred by it, so to speak, that I actually couldn't move on to the next chapter because I needed to recollect my thoughts. Seriously.

Now, I know mine isn't the steel toe to the soft parts that the above mentioned examples are, it's more of a catching the corner of the lab table in biology class, glancing blow kind of a thing, but it still has a degree of impact in the story. It's the moment in the story when it feels like the stakes have changed, usually for the worse. There is even a part of me that thinks my betas will read the section and think that I'm overestimating the gravity of the scene, but it really feels like I've done something I've never done before in my writing.

Last night I hit the point in the book where suddenly the risk has become very real. I don't know if I've ever written anything like this and it made me squirm a little. Not in a bad way, but a way that made me very, very uncomfortable. All of a sudden, my little book about kids dealing with the sins of their parents switched from being indirect to direct. They were now involved. And that changes a lot about the story itself.

The next chapters are going to move much faster. It's not going to take me a shorter time to write them, but they are going to be in a constant state of movement and action. The stakes have been raised now and my characters are going to have to do things that they might not have done earlier in the book. And I don't know if that was my intent for them, but it's a good thing that's what they decided to do.

As anxious as I'm painting myself in this, I'm excited too. It means I'm taking risks as a writer. (A motif in my life for the last seven months, by the way.) It means I'm growing as a writer.

I start the second chapter of this section, the beginning of a cycle of, as one of my betas called it, PB&J sections rotating around the three main characters. (Oooh, maybe a return of the trope of the week and talking about the number 3????) Sprinkle in a mad princess (should I have said SPOILER alert) and a new threat and Spring's Tempest will be done!

Victory is mine!

Green With Envy

It's March. For some it means going in like a lion and out like a lamb. For some it's time to start thinking about Spring. For others, it is time to think about St. Patrick's Day (making an obviously offensive Irish joke would be to easy so I'll say the following) and drinking Shamrock shakes. While others it means college basketball becomes the center of the universe. For me, March is a combination of the latter two with one other thing: it's the doldrums.

For those of you that don't understand what I mean, let me explain in an old fashioned SAT analogy: March:Teaching as August:Baseball.

March is the longest period of time between breaks for us in the educational world and if not for Good Friday and a screw up by the NYS department of Regents, it would've been even longer. It's the time when you tackle something long and time consuming that usually involves the students working independently.

March is also going to have to be a HUGE month for me as a writer. HUGE. And while I started off gangbusters, I haven't written a word in three days. THREE DAYS! Considering the roll I was on, that's a lifetime. Part of the hold up is my impending review observation that has consumed a massive amount of time. The other is something completely different that has me thinking if I'm beginning to doubt myself. Not in that fatalistic, staring up at the heavens as the dog is doing her business in the morning before school thinking "what the F**K was I thinking becoming a teacher?" kind of doubt. Well, not exactly, but close. I'm in the midst of reading two books that are messing with me a bit.

The first is one that I am just starting, Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon. I'm only about 30 pages in and I am really impressed. It's a great story and one that I almost feel like I could've written. And I mean that as a compliment. It's brilliant and fun (see prior post) so far and I'm jealous of it.

Myke Cole's Control Point is the other one. I'm just finishing it up and insanely jealous of what the book. His ability to write action and fight scenes has me angry at my own relative ineptness at writing such scenes. His world building is brilliant and his inside knowledge of military life isn't heavy handed.

Last time I felt like this? When I read Arthur Slade's The Hunchback Assignments. That was a book I should've written and I will always be jealous of him for writing it before me!

I consider these guys contemporaries and I hope to sit alongside them on panels at cons in the future. For now, I am grumbling and growling about how awesome these guys are and how good their books are. And it makes me wonder if this is the reason why I've been in a bit of a rut the last few days. Maybe I'm doubting my own ability. Maybe not.

Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi May Not Crave These Things But I'm No Jedi

It's Winter Break. That lovely time of year where there is no school that dates back to the 70s oil crisis when schools were given a week off to alleviate some of the heating costs in the northern part of the country. Winter break is writing time for me and I'm hacking away like crazy at Spring's Tempest. I think I've got a handle on things and I really think I can have this beast in some kind of decent shape by April. It's not going to be easy, but I know I can do it. And I figure it's time to return to the blog.

Winter Break is also one of those magical times you remember as a child because there were loads of adventures and excitement that often took place during that week. (Spring Break is another beast altogether!) I have fond memories of Winter Break. Getting in all kinds of exciting adventures (see what I did there?) hanging out with friends. So much of my high school days revolved around skiing during that time of my life, I always associate Winter Break with it. Because of my physical condition (bum hip and back), I haven't skied in close to 20 years and miss it terribly.

Life changes, we all know that, and instead of skiing, I'm hanging out with my little girl (almost 4) and my niece (4 1/2). We watched the movie "Up" this afternoon and, when I wasn't weeping or laughing, it got me thinking about the idea of the adventure story. Now, I seriously think that "Up" may be the best adventure movie I've seen since "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Raiders is an old movie. 31 years old, truth be told. And you want to know what...it holds up. I recently did a lesson plan on suspense in writing and showed the opening 5 minutes of "Raiders." I had two classes full of inner city HS freshmen mesmerized by it and BEGGING to watch the rest of the movie, which we eventually did and they were just as mesmerized by it the second time. It fascinated me on many levels as I tried figuring out why a 30 year old movie with no CGI in it appealed to them on such a level.

What is it that makes a movie like "Up" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark" appeal to me? What is the appeal of "adventure?"

There's plenty of things to list, I'm sure. There needs to be excitement. There needs to be urgency. There almost certainly needs to be a McGuffin. There also needs to be some stakes. Without the stakes, there isn't much that adds any tension that is so important in the adventure story. But there was one thing that both of said movies had that I think is sorely missing in a lot of adventure stories now a days...fun. Really. We've become so consumed, especially in YA lit, with addressing "issues" in our works that the fun of being a young person is completely overlooked. The fun of adventure is often sacrificed for some misbegotten message or theme the author is trying to cram in our cram holes.

YA isn't the only place this is happening. My first literary love, fantasy, is falling victim to this. The pursuit of "grittiness" and "realism" has sacrificed the sense of fun in the genre.

Fun doesn't mean you can't be serious. Fun doesn't mean you have to write something humorous. though there might be more of that in your story if you do. Fun has become like the word Romantic in a lot of ways. You absolutely can be serious when you write something is "fun" but you can

I want people to call my books "fun" when they are done reading them. I think Winter's Discord, while playing with some pretty serious themes at times, is a fun book. I think Sisters of Khoda is a book rooted in the concept of a "fun" fantasy. I think my YA scifi I was working on clearly embraced the concept of fun.

Where have I seen this recently? Well, I think Arthur Slade's Hunchback books do a hell of a job. They are fun books even though there is a clear sense of danger in all of them. Scott Westerfield's Leviathan books are the same things. Obviously, the above mentioned Up and the timeless Raiders are terrific examples. One other example I can think of is my friend Mike Winchell's book that I had the honor of reading. It had all the benchmarks of a good adventure story and was most excellent. It made a flight to Orlando a lot less boring.

Think of the adventures of your youth. Of your adolescence. Of you early 20s. They were fun on some level, right? Especially when there was law enforcement involved...okay, maybe you didn't have the same kind of fun I had when I was growing up.

Okay, back to writing.

Busy Busy Busy

It's hard to believe I haven't posted since my big announcement, but with said announcement comes the hard work of doing what needs to be done with the submission process and writing the second book. It's strange how things have changed now that I'm another step closer to being a "professional writer" and I'm not just doing this as a "hobby" anymore. I got off to a stumbling start over Christmas break. I'm married to an Italian, which means the 24th to the 26th are nonstop food days. And they were great. I even managed to hammer out 1200 words on the 26th using Google Docs on my phone. I'm all business.

I'm just going to have to really buckle down in the next few months. I've got a lot of plates spinning. I'm a HS English teacher too. It's been an already insane year that has been compounded by a few things that have been thrown on my plate this month. I'm going to be working with an education professor colleague from Syracuse University that I've worked with the last few years in a professional development manner directly in my classroom. We'll be co-teaching and working hand in hand at improving writing for urban students. It's exciting and daunting. She's a pretty impressive lady. It just means my planning has to be stellar. The bonus being she and I will be planning together and it's already going really, really well. On top of that, we're going to be working with the social studies teacher on my team (we team teach Freshman) at integrating and rolling out the new "Common Core" that we're switching to. It's SUPER daunting considering some things that I won't talk about publicly. That alone means I'm going to be busy. Add on to the fact that I am planning not one but two major surgeries this year (I will blog about them in the near future) and I'm slowly integrating working out back into my schedule.

And I've promised my agent I am going to try and write a very big book in 90 days! I wrote up my writing plan and think I have outlined and planned enough that if I keep myself to task, I could get in a sick amount of words (750k).

And I want to keep blogging (Trope of the Week and add some more features.)

And I want to fire up a sports blog.

And I have never been more excited about my life.

Christmas Comes Early To The Zeleznik Compound

I'm not going to beat around the bush...I have an agent! That's right, rub the eyes and check your glasses. I am now a fully represented author. So who is the lucky agent? First, we celebrate:




Okay, now that it's out of our system...my new agent is:

Bob Mecoy

To say I am giddy is an understatement. It's all very exciting.

Now, I won't bore you too much with the story. It's really quite simple. It was a Hail Mary pass. No, really. I had shelved Winter's Discord and was moving on from it, leaving it out where it was still out. I was perusing the internet and saw something about a new book coming out in January called Seven Princes that had similar concepts, themes, etc. as Winter. I researched the author, John R. Fultz and noticed that his agent was Bob. Poking around, I discovered that Bob was someone that I hadn't queried, so I shot him an email. That was late September. The next day Bob wanted to see my first three chapters. A few hours later, the whole book. After some back and forth with Bob, he offered to rep me yesterday!

Now starts the hard part: working towards publishing, getting my ducks in a row so Bob can get me a deal. It's daunting and exciting and I can't wait to begin! The next adventure begins. December is a good month.

The Trope of the Week: Loads and Loads of Characters

The very first trope of the week. Walk around, breathe in that new blog feature smell. Like the floors? We spare no expense in providing for your comfort in this new blog feature. My team has thought of everything, so enjoy.

Trope of the Week #1: "Loads and Loads of Characters"

One of my all time favorite tropes. It is also the easiest to figure out because it is what it is. Peruse the page for as long as you like.

For the very small handful of folks out in the world that have read my work, be it from the old BWB Writer's Group reading The Falling Dark to my present slew of betas that took a crack at Winter's Discord, you KNOW how much I LOVE this trope.

Now being a fan of epic fantasy doesn't imply the importance of loving this trope, it necessitates it. I can recall a writing professor once saying that I came from the "Cecil B. DeMille school of storytelling" with a "cast of thousands" and I could not disagree. Martin, Jordan, Erikson, Sanderson, etc. all use this trope. But it's not the only place. Comic book fan? X-Men? Justice League? JSA? The Avengers? Name your poison and there you have it. Television? Battlestar Galactica, Lost, The Sopranos, Oz, your Star Trek of choice, Scrubs, The Muppets, The Simpsons, Family Guy...would you like me to make this Loads and Loads of Loads and Loads of Characters? It's a tried and true trope of modern fiction and done well all the time. So to quote one of my favorites from the above list: "All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again."

As I stated earlier, I've always thought in terms of big casts and epic stories (shocker). I try to think about where is comes from. Why do I think in big terms? Well, obviously my love of mythology and Star Wars has a lot to do with it (talk about loads and loads of characters, mythology is RIFE with them). But there are two things I think that clearly influenced my use of this trope (beside my love of epic fantasy): soap operas and GI Joe. No, really.

I would stay up and watch my mom's shows at night with her. Dallas and Dynasty spring to mind. Lots and lots of characters in those shows (and I defy you, besides setting, to tell me the difference between Dallas and Westeros). Plus, during the summer I would, more than often, I'd watch my mom's daytime soap operas with her. (Days of Our Lives for the curious.) Again, lots of characters. I always found it enjoyable and entertaining. And in terms of story, I think the same way.

Do you remember GI Joe? I'm talking the 3 3/4" Joes. Perhaps the greatest toy ever and where I expanded my story telling chops by miles. I came up with the stories and the special missions for our GI Joes and I assure you I probably came up with better stuff than the writers of the movie. Again, lots and lots of characters. (And I was good, I could come up with whole story arcs concerning the mine sweeper character...no seriously.)

It only made sense that I was attracted to books with massive casts. And it's no wonder I write stories with big casts. I admire people that can write intimate stories. My friend Mike Winchell wrote a wonderful MG story that only has a small handful of characters. I can't do it. I think entirely too big. Even my short stories wind up with too many characters.

Looking at a very rudimentary character list I have for Winter's Discord there are about 150 named characters on that list and there's another list of participants in a significant tourney in the story that contains 96 characters. And I KNOW there are more. That's about 250 characters. It's a number I'm comfortable with and each of those characters have a role to play in the grand scheme of things. I intend to have a character list in my book (either a la George RR Martin-esque family lists or family trees or both) just to help folks follow along.

Sisters of Khoda doesn't have as many characters (I think, I haven't tried to count them), but it has a lot. I have no list for that book and not sure if I am going to have one. But then again the story is less epic and more adventure, so it makes some degree of sense.

I don't have a strong closer for this new feature. It's bound to get better, but here's what I have in mind:

So, I'll have my lists of characters in my book for my readers to fumble and fawn over, trying to make sense of it all in context of the story, what are you going to have?

Enjoy.

Contemporaries

Publishing is a funny, strange and weird business that is a mystery to anyone outside of it. I always think of the time, when mentioning that I'd finished writing my book, my mother asked me why I was bothering rewriting it. I should have an editor do it. Poor, naive mom. Most people in my life have no understanding of the business of publishing. They think it's simple. Hell, I THOUGHT it was simple in the salad days of my youth.

I can remember being 21, slinging soda bottles and bags of chips on the shelves of the grocery store I worked at telling anyone who would listen that I was going to be on the NY Times Bestseller list by 26 with my brilliant literary fiction novels and write my epic fantasies on the side for fun. Naturally, my brilliant literary fiction novels were thinly veiled semi-biographical stories of my life while my epic fantasies were merely quest-based thinly veiled semi-biographical stories about my friends and I growing up in a fantasy world.

Part of my problem was that the internet was in it's infancy and I was a neophyte. I had no connection with the writing world beyond what I read in the writing books at Barnes and Noble (oh, what wasted money those were). I had no one else that aspired to write as I did. Most people tolerated my carrying on and on. Most people still do. (That's another blog entry for another time.) Even as I prodded and poked around the Internet and found friends and companions and kindred spirits, I was still entirely too full of myself. But I was starting to get a feel for where I came from as a writer and found others that were even more like me.

In this day and age of Twitter and Facebook and blogs, it's easy to find mates like that. Thanksgiving weekend, in the turkey-and-stuffing-and-pumpkin-pie induced malaise, I began to think about my contemporaries. The men and women that I share a common bond in experience when it comes to writing. Many are well-known, published and successful and yet I consider them contemporaries. What does that mean?

I am part of Generation X. I was born in 1973. My formative years straddled the ever-popular 80s and 90s, but I consider myself a "child" of the 90s. My love of fantasy came less from Tolkein and more from Dragonlance. There was no "young adult" category when I was younger as there is now. There as no "middle grade." The library was split into three parts: reference, nonfiction and fiction. That's the list.

There's lots of ways to organize varying groups of contemporaries and I'm sure that each of our lists would be very different if we were to push ourselves to decide which authors were contemporaries to another, but I wonder, who are my contemporaries? Who would I be most associated with when the day comes that my book is out in the public and I wither in the bright lights of my shining fame?

So, who do I count among my contemporaries?

Well, first and foremost, my rabid fandom around George RR Martin makes me hope that I am deemed a good enough writer to be called a pretender to his throne of greatness. (Yes, lofty and egotistical!) There are other legends I hope I am associated with: Tamora Pierce, Bruce Coville, Neil Gaiman and John Flanagan come to mind.

But realistically? First there is Mike Winchell. We're Warriors (our HS mascot) but only met via the internet. He writes primarily MG, I write fantasy with some YA. But he has been a friend, sounding board and adviser in the last year and change.

Who else? I'll make a list:

Peadar O Guilin
Blake "More Cowbell" Charlton
Myke Cole
Peter V. Brett
Jon Sprunk
Sam Sykes
Arthur Slade
Kristin Cashore
(I'm sure there are more. The lack of women on this list bothers me on some level.)

Who would you consider your contemporaries? Why?

Keep Up The Pace

As many of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NANOWRIMO. To some, it's a pretty big deal. To others, not so much. I get hot and cold when it comes to NANO and have thrown my hat into the ring several times, never "winning." But from NANO came both Winter's Discord and Sisters of Khoda, so I guess that's a good thing. There is also a pile of bones that were poorly thought out novel ideas in the scrap heap that never even close to the required 50k to "win" NANO. I don't even think I signed up last November. I decided that this year I would participate again. The reason? Well, partially the fact that September and October were so busy at school, I didn't make nearly as much progress on the latest writing project as I would've liked, so I decided that November would be a good sprint to get a good chunk of what I'm calling The Point Guard and the Space Princess done. (YA scifi alien invasion) I wanted to blog a bit about NANO, but I know there are people that look at NANO as a silly endeavor. Then I was over at my good buddy Mike Winchell's blog reading about some of his writing habits and I thought why don't I talk about my writing pace. First, go read his blog...I'll wait.

I'm blown away that Mike can write 45k in 3 weeks! No, really I am. I wish that I had that drive, focus and fortitude to commit to that. I don't. I am the poster boy for adult ADD. No really, oooh look, I'll be right back.

Anyway, the most I've ever written in one month is 46k. This past summer I wrote about 41k this last August. The most I've ever written in one year is 200k. I don't think any of those numbers are bad, but I think of all the time I've wasted.

Now, I will confess that I am a complete Twitter whore. I love Twitter mostly because it's one of the few places I can socialize with other writers (and sports fans and pop culture junkies). In addition, I teach high school at an inner city school and I have taught three "preps" every year that I've taught, sometimes four, meaning I have to prepare for four completely different classes. It can be exhausting. This year has been worse because I am teaching all Freshman in 3 different courses, including a literacy program that I am still wrapping my brain around. It has taken so much energy to even be adequate in teaching the class. Combine that with the five years of football coaching I did and an active, precocious three and a half year old, it's a miracle I still can write at all. But I've still found time and energy to write. Not as much as like, but still write. I sacrifice things like sleep, but I figure I'll have time to sleep later. So, now that I've whined about why I don't write, let me talk about actual writing.

I'm a streaky writer. I go through long stretches where I write a lot. I also go through long stretches where I DON'T write. Not anything coherent anyway. Those times are getting to be less and less because that time has become so valuable to me with all that is going on. But when I write, I WRITE! I think my 90k summer was pretty good. I'm still convinced one of these summers I will meet my goal of writing 250k from June to the end of August.

Anyway, how do I write. Well, it all starts in an old fashioned composition notebook. No really, I'm not joking. Two summer ago, I participated in a writing institute for rising freshman through Syracuse University and we kept writer's notebooks. I adopted it into my writing. So here's the way I write.

I do a "writing plan" every few weeks based on what I've been doing and what I want to do, this is what my most recent writing plan looks like:


This gives me a general gauge of where I want to be as far as my writing goes, including suggested word counts and tentative titles. Things obviously change as time goes on.

When I focus on a particular project I do something called a "puke sheet." It's a technique that I am so enamored with that I modified my novel puke sheet into an essay puke sheet for my students. Essentially, a puke sheet is 1-2 pages of ideas, characters, random scenes, themes, symbols, world building, etc that I need to know for a book. Named so because it's like puking all those things on a sheet of paper to be cleaned up later. Here's the puke sheet for "Down the Line" project #5: "Epic Christmas." I wanted to actually use that book for NANO this year but Point Guard has taken precedent for now. That project can wait. Essentially, "Epic Christmas" is a Christmas story similar to the movie "The Santa Clause" but applying the tropes of epic fantasy to the story. (Lost heirs, fighting over a throne, etc.) (Ignore the purple crayon...my daughter got to that page, it was in a different notebook and she decided to color!)

From the puke sheet, I outline the story. Outlines are usually the chapter, the POV of the chapter and anything from one sentence to a short paragraph. I hold the right to deviate from my outline any time that happens, as did with Sisters of Khoda this summer, where I plotted the novel out to be about 80k, yet it turned into a 94k novel! Anyway, here's the most recent outline I did for the sequel to Winter's Discord, Spring's Tempest.






Then, I write. Now, I'm not going to insert a picture of what that looks like, you know that already.

Now, editing and rewriting are another blog post altogether. So, now, I have a NANO project to work on. Do you have any writing routines you follow?

WOW Books

As a writer, English teacher and bibliophile, I love talking about books. Some books excite me more than others. Obviously if I hear someone even whisper the name George R.R. Martin, I butt into said conversation in a heartbeat. The TV show had even more people talking about it, which would send me into a Matt Foley-esque tirade about the awesomeness of beheadings, infanticide and something called (SPOILER ALERT) the Red Wedding. There was a creepy moment earlier this school year when talking about what happened (allegedly) to Prince Aegon during the Sack of King’s Landing with a fan of the TV show with an ear to ear grin that made one of my colleagues look at me very, very differently. While GRRM and “A Song of Ice and Fire” have had a major influence in my life and my writing, there are other books that blew me away and made me say “WOW!”

A book that makes you say “WOW” is special. It not only blows your mind away, but it causes a physical reaction. A reaction that can be as subtle as having to put the book down, to hurling the book across the room out of frustration, anger or shock, to feeling as if someone has just hit you in the face with one of those cartoon sized mallets. Now, I’m not going to carry on and on about “A Song of Ice and Fire,” I’ll do enough of that over the course of my career/this blog as time goes on. For now, I want to talk about some recent books that have completely blown me away.

In no particular order:

1. “Ship Breaker” Paolo Bacigalupi

From the opening pages of this book, I was hooked on the story and the further I read, the more I wanted to read. Nailer and his friends lived in a scary, alarming, almost hopeless but all too real feeling world that I was completely drawn into. Every moment of that book had my heart racing and my eyes twirling as I tried to keep up with the story and absorb everything that was happening to Nailer. Really a remarkable and amazing book that is easily among my top 10.

2. “The Hunger Games”/ “Catching Fire” Suzanne Collins

Now, I loved the Gregor books. Thought they were brilliantly fun and exciting (something I think is lacking in YA fantasy right now….but that’s another blog entry). I was hesitant to read “The Hunger Games” because of my disdain for 1^st person POV (that’s yet another blog entry), but I got a copy of it with my SFBC membership, so I picked it up one day and started reading it. And read. And read. I was drawn in and couldn’t stop reading. It was such an amazing story. I bought “Catching Fire” and put it on the TBR pile, choosing it for last year’s vacation. I read it on the red eye home from Vegas. The whole thing. At the end, I was sick. I was not ready for the ending and felt as if I’d been punched in the face. I stared at the people next to me on the plane who had no idea why I was gaping. The book has left such a scar on me, I still haven’t read “Mockingjay.” I’m not emotionally ready for it.

3. “The Lies of Locke Lamora” Scott Lynch

Scheming priests of a scheming god in a eldritch, alien city. Nice. You’ll notice a certain love that I have for world building (yet ANOTHER blog entry) and there hasn’t been a world that wowed me the way Camorr did. Lynch’s storytelling, the use of flashbacks intermixed with what they characters were going through, is one of my favorite’s I’ve seen in a long time. And while Locke is the main character of the story, it gave me one of my most favorite characters in a long time: Jean Tannen. I’m a big guy. I like big guy characters, what can I say.

4. “The Hunchback Assignments” Arthur Slade

The steampunk adventures of a teenaged, hunchbacked, shapeshifting spy in Victorian England. Why didn’t I think of that? Really? I found this book by accident and hunted local bookstores for it. I found it at my now deceased Borders and LOVED it. Such a simple concept, one that I feel I could come up with, and executed perfectly. All the hangups of being a teenager with the lack of realization of just how badass he really is, Modo is a character I can sympathize with…not just because of my own crooked spine!

5. “Aurelia” Anne Osterlund

Pretty sure I’m not the target audience for this book, but since “Winter’s Discord” and my “Seasons of Destiny” books have a lot to do with courtly intrigue and I’m aiming for a YA audience, I thought I’d give it a try. It was perfect for those purposes. The character Robert helped mold a character I really liked but was becoming less important to the plot into something that was very crucial to the plot.

I’ve included links on all of them and encourage you to try them out. They are books that have really helped me as a writer and books I think that are just AWESOME!

What are some of your “WOW” books? I’d love to hear about them.

My Dance With Dragons

So, it is well known that I am an unabashed George RR Martin fan/sycophant/apologist and I will be until it is known that Samwell Tarly is the Prince Who Was Promised and he rules the Seven Kingdoms atop the Iron Throne with Danaerys at his side as his queen along with his seven little princelings because his seed is that strong. (This is merely my own theory and can be debunked by a thousand other members over at Ran’s board!) Because of George, I am the writer I am today…well partially, it’s not his fault I am yet undiscovered as a talent. This last summer was a very exciting one for me and many other fans of the classic series, as we were allowed to return to the world of Westeros and catch up on some fan favorites (Dany, Jon Snow and Tyrion most notably), while having some supreme questions answered and getting perhaps my most favorite POV character in the entire series: Barristan Selmy. Now some complained it was dragged out and it took too long for anything to happen, but I disagree completely and the book jolted me into a realization about my own writing, Winter’s Discord and the other books of Seasons of Destiny especially, that I needed to address immediately. Namely, back story.

Series, especially fantasy, need back story. Think about it. Can you name any fantasy series that doesn’t have a complex and deep back story? Tolkein, Brooks, Eddings, Martin, Jordan, etc. All of them have intense and layered back stories involved in them and they are completely necessary.

Now, the perils of writing a series are pretty self-evident. But that seems to be what publishers are looking for and from a business perspective that makes sense. Stand alones make money one time; series can make money multiple times over. So most of us that choose to write in the speculative area realize that we very much need to write series in order to entice publishers (and agents) to our work and we write series. But we have to write that first book and almost frame it as if it is a stand alone (a paradox of the publishing industry). Now, Jon Sprunk had a great article about the difficulty of working on a series and I was faced with that recently when an agent made a subtle request for an outline of the series.

I don’t like to be unprepared, but the only outline I had was a very vague outline of “Parts” of the following three books with the POV characters who had something to say in that section in my writer’s notebook. Actually, they were literally cut from the loose leaf paper they had been written on and PASTED into the notebook. The outline for book 2 was missing. (Damn my organizational skills) So now I’m piecing it together bit by bit, but it’s a painstaking process. Why? It’s a complex story with a lot of back story necessary for me to know in order to write what happens next. Now, I told you this story to talk about back story and A Dance With Dragons.

Dance is loaded with back story. Important back story that is necessary for what happens in the last third of the novel to make sense. (I’m not going to spoiler anything, so put the “NO SPOILERS” signs away!) Reading it inspired me to actually plot out what happens BEFORE Winter’s Discord in a sort of narrative outline of a prequel trilogy. (How’s that for being arrogant, I’m planning the prequel before I finish planning the series I am trying to sell!) But it was a practical endeavor because, unlike George, I cannot keep everything in my head. It is impossible. I forget where I put my car keys and wallet more often than I should ever admit in a public forum, how am I going to remember the significant events of something like Robert’s Rebellion or the War of the Ninepenny Kings? So after I finished Sisters of Khoda, I set about doing what I was calling a “macroplan” for the entire series. I was going to plot out the “prequels” (complete with titles and tentatively titled The Prince’s Folly) and then transition into Seasons of Destiny. Then school started and the overwhelming of life began.

I’ve been peeking at what I wrote already and doing some rudimentary outlining of the next book of Seasons, Spring’s Tempest, but I’m still working at it. The odd thing about Spring is that I wrote it once already. Really. But it’s a completely different book now and very little of what is in that draft is even part of what’s going on in this book. The interesting thing is that there are parts of Spring Draft 1 that may actually work for book 3. It’s crazy, but some tweaking and a lot of that book might already be written. I’m going to try and hit some of it tonight. It’s another big book and very different than the first version of it I wrote 4 years ago. So for the second time, George RR Martin has moved me forward in my writing. Currahee!

Greetings and Salutations

Welcome, friends old and new. Some may know me as John Zeleznik, some may know me as Ebenstone and others still will know me by the Chooch or Pepperoni or a hundred other silly handles I’ve gone buy but you all know me one way or another, either in real life or via the electronic Intraweb. Anyway, this here is my writing website. My intent is for this blog to stay in the realm of my writing. Sure there may be an occasional comment about my work as an English teacher, something going on in my personal life or the occasional post where I get political, but for the most part I intend to use this medium as a place to talk about my writing. I’ll talk about everything from inspiration to process.

So, who am I?

Well, I am a father, a husband and a high school English teacher from Syracuse, NY. Oh, I am also a writer. Kind of like how Henry Hill always knew he wanted to be a gangster, I knew I wanted to be a writer. As I sit here thinking about writing and my history, I tried to think back to my childhood and all of my reading habits.

I know that I was an obsessive reader of nonfiction picture books about everything from nature to the military. But the first fiction I can honestly remember influencing me were Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Glass Elevator. To this day, they are still two of my favorites. They are probably two of the things that pushed me towards speculative fiction. Roald Dahl is a genius and the work he does is amazing. And reading more and more about him, the more I realize that he was an early inspiration to me as a writer.

It was that and a love of certain independent film called “Star Wars” that my first attempts at writing and storytelling began. I created the adventures for our action figures (or sometimes ourselves), continuing the story of Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie. Those same skills served the purpose of creating special missions for our GI Joes growing up, always following what the file cards said to the letter. It was my earliest lessons at characterization and canon.

The first of the books that were “top of the head” influences on me as a writer had to be The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Shocker!) I don’t think I need to go into a long speech about this. I’ve read them numerous times in my life…the first time as a sixth grader…and they truly are the great granddaddy to all the fantasy writing that is being done today.

In 7th grade I discovered a series that I’m sure many out there would agree probably had more to do with their love of fantasy than LOTR…The Dragonlance Trilogy. A classic that I reread numerous times in my early and mid-teens, which alongside The Icewind Dale Trilogy stand as beacons of late 80s fantasy adventure goodness. While trying to reread them recently I felt that they were too “gamey” for me. That doesn’t mean I still don’t love them, because I do. I think when we look back on “tie-in” literature; it’ll be compared to the pulp stories of the 20s, 30s and 40s!

My first fumblings at the written word were poorly veiled pastiches and imitations of these early books. I remember a planned ten book epic about a group of heroes questing for seven tablets to defeat a dark lord. I think there was a half-elf ranger as a hero for that one. I know there was one idea that involved my friends and I with our neighborhood adventures acting as the basis of a heroic quest. I’m almost kind of glad that one has gone away, buried in a landfill somewhere or incinerated into oblivion.

In high school and college I discovered “literature” and immersed myself into some pieces while violently resisting some. And in college I discovered the works of William Shakespeare and I’ve been hooked ever since.

I dropped out of college (the Dark Times) and was kind of listless in my reading. Then I discovered, based on a recommendation in the old Barnes and Nobles science fiction/ fantasy booklets they released every two months, a series called The Deathstalker Series, a rollicking space opera loaded with starships, swordsmen, disruptor rays, vicious AIs, rebellious clones and looming darkness at the edges of space. I own the second and third books of the latest series, but haven’t gotten to them yet. I loved the originals.

It wasn’t until I graduated from Oswego State that all things changed. It was a brutally cold afternoon on my last day on campus (December 2000) at the school before I graduated. I had some money in my pocket from selling textbooks, so I was going to get some pizza at Cam’s NY Style Pizzeria and decided I wanted to read something, so I went to The River’s End Bookstore a few doors down. I picked out a thicj mass market paperback with a long haired lad riding a horse with a massive castle in the background, surrounded by snow and trees. The book? A Game of Thrones. And that day my life changed. I ripped through the available books, devouring them with gusto. A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords became part of my personal canon and inspired my to finish my first novel. While not as great, but still very good, A Feast For Crows is necessary.

As I dove back into writing epic fantasy, in 2003 I was sent an offer for a free half of a new book called The Briar King by Greg Keyes and I was hooked. The funny thing is for all my “inspiration” because of ASOIAF, my first novel “sounds” more like Keyes than Martin. The entire Kingdoms of Bone and Thorn are all on my recommended list, even if the series fizzles at the end instead of rising to the occasion.

At this point, I’ll admit that GRRM spoiled me and I became very snobbish about what I read…that and I decided to go back to school and become a teacher. This meant the classics and now that I’m teaching, I’ve been introduced to a whole new view of books and the classics.

Now I haven’t abandoned my love for epic fantasy, I’m just very picky now. Too many favorites to pick out now, but if you look over at my Good Reads page (where you can friend me if you like), you can get a taste for what I like.

For now, I am a unagented author, focusing on fantasy, mostly young adult. At present, I have one book out on submission, Winter’s Discord. Winter began life as a “break” from what I thought was going to be my opus (don’t we all think that about our first complete novel) trunk novel. It turned into much more. It is the first book in a four book series called The Seasons of Destiny and the first piece I ever shopped. Presently, it is semi-trunked, though under submission with several agents and editors. I pitch it as “A Game of Thrones meets 90210.”

The summer of 2011, I finished a YA version of my trunked novel called The Sisters of Khoda. I’m very happy with it, but it needs a rewrite. I pitch it as a “boy” Graceling. (You will notice a motif in some posts about my passion to write more “boy-centered” books.)

I was working on a new project with the questionable title of The Point Guard and the Space Princess, a YA scifi book. I’ve pushed it back to November for NANOWRIMO and I think I’m going to work on some editing, planning and rewriting for the month of October.

So, welcome and enjoy the ride.