Wow, Patrick Rothfuss is a dick...

Ok, this is REALLY funny.

So, you know how I've been writing book reviews in my spare time for fun? Yeah, so I submitted the page I was posting on them to google.

Aparently Patrick Rothfuss, the writer of one of the books I reviewed was surfing around to see what people thought of his newest book and came across my review. He was so offended by it that he actually submitted a complaint to google (the ones hosting my site) that I had infringed upon his copyrighted material by reviewing it and they took down my review site. He then wrote me an incredibly nasty e-mail about it. I'll spare the details, but aparently the dude doesn't do well with criticism AT ALL. The really funny thing about it is that the e-mail was actually better written than his god-awful book was.

I've submitted an appeal to Google over this and I am certain that my site will be restored, because reviews of books are protected under the same copyright laws that protect the books themselves. I'm not infringing upon copyrights, I'm telling about a book I read and didn't like very much. Just because I didn't like it, and had some very bad things to say about it doesn't mean I'm breaking copyright laws, and Im sure google will agree with me on that once they've reviewed the case, so Patrick Rothfuss can suck it, and his next book better not suck or I'll post another awul review.

btw, somehow I'm now following my own blog and I can't figure out how that happened, or how to undo it hahaha.

Ok, this time I'm REALLY done, I promise

well, my agent has gotten back to me on my recent batch edits on Spires of Infinity, and we both decided together that there were a few more small changes that needed to be made, especially Gabriel's conveniant deus ex machina escape from the Children of the Chosen. So now I've pretty much removed all use or mention of magic except for Kari, whose use of it I've changed somewhat to better reflect the differences between Humans and Heretics. There are also a few more changes I've made here and there. In all I added about 5000 words in this draft to explain a few things a bit better, add a bit more humor here and there, and make for a bit more realistic personalities for some of the characters, mostly Sam, because reading through this time I felt her personality was a tad bit over the top of where I wanted it to be. And this time my Agent promises that He's done asking for changes and once he's proofread the final, final, final, FINAL draft he'll start pimpin it out to publishers.

Anyway, if you feel the great urge to read the final final final final draft i've uploaded it all to my website here.

hmmm...

Gee... It only took them 5 days to hook my internet up at the new apartment...

Man, what did I do with my life before the internet?

Doooooooooom aaaaaand gloooooooom

So there i was, all ready to move. I have literally everything packed away and ready to go. I was planning to spend the whole day moving crap over. I'm making this post from my phone at a carls jr because my computer, my dishes, and my food are packed away. The apartment management seemed not to realize that when they told me i could move in today that i would show up first thing in the morning to do so. The apartment will not be ready until 5 pm. Meanwhile, i took today off work to move, but not tomorrow, the cable guy sent me an email saying he'd be here at 3:30, my power gets shut off this evening, and with everything packed away the only thing i have to do today is play with my phone and the battery is at50% with my charger packed away. I could have been almost done by 5!!!

does anyone happen to have a basket full of bunnies i could punch?

Anyway i have to get everything moved today or pay an extra day of rent on my current apartment, which completely sucks because it was their mistake, and i could really use some help from anyone that is able. Pizza and drinks are on me.

AVALAAAAAAAAANCHE!!!!!

The packing continues, the mountains of junk rise, I found a hermit living in my closet, and I think my brother might be buried alive.


Yes, those banana chairs are mating, where did you think little banana chairs come from?








And just because they're freakin' amusing...


totoro totoro, totoro totoro... I knew I couldn't trust that smile.


This is the most epic think i've seen since Cowboys and Aliens.

moving suuuuucks

To give you an idea of how much anime and books I own here are the boxes i have packed of JUST anime and books (more books than anime) click the top picture to see the whole thing, my blog kinda cut off half of it.

Book Review: A Dance with Dragons

I've finished and posted my book review of A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin.

Enjoy =)

BTLH 2.0 Prologue

So I've finished up the new prologue for Beyond the Lost Horizon 2.0 and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

This chapter is a very good example of what I'm doing with this story as a whole. It is generally the same as the original version, but at the same time it is completely different.

Looking back, I think i relied a little too heavily on the prologue of the original being a dream sequence, and I kept pointing out that it was a dream while it was happening which completely kills any suspense at all. I decided that with this version it would just be a straight up flashback.

The premise for this new version of the story is that there are 3 powers in the world, rather than the two from the original. The first is the Black Tower, a group of mercenary sorcerers. Then there's the Crusade, a new religious order with its own standing army, sorcerers, and millions of orphaned children that they took in and taught the ways of their new god after the world almost ended. And the Church of the Blessed Radiance, run by the Seven, servants of the Blessed Radiance, Aidyn, a god that teaches that all sins and pain can be washed away through something called the Eternal Chain, which will erase everything and return it to peaceful nothingness as the only way men can be freed of their sins and the pains of life. All three of these orders have prophecies that the Eternal Chain will be broken by an evil being, and he must be killed before the Promised Day or the salvation of mankind from their sins will never be possible.

The Seven are a bit of a redo on the Covenant from the original story and rather than showing up in book 2 they're going to play a far more prominant role in the story from the beginning.

Basically, what makes this story different from other stories following hte same achetype of a young man discovering himself to be the heir to some grand and noble destiny and going on to save the world is that he's actually kind of the bad guy. My protagonist is actually the antagonist. He's going to destroy the only means of salvation that these people have from their god. This is more a story about the bad guy overcoming the chosen one rather than the other way around, which I think makes for a far more interesting story. What if the Dark Lord wins, and the one chosen to defeat him dies? That's the big change that i'm making in this story.

Anyway, you can read and compare. The whole world stuck in a time loop and grinding slowly toward oblivion at Cain's command, Cain controlling the Gate, and all of that stuff that I would have written into the third and final book of hte original trilogy is still going to be remaining in this story to keep with continuity in other stories i've written, but a whole lot of other things are going to change.

Anyway, enjoy =)

Work on this project will be slow because I'm still working out a few details of the plot and brainstorming for ideas. I've got a general outline done, but not a detailed one, so until I've got that worked out i'm going to be going pretty slow.

Beyond Beyond the Lost Horizon

So, you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything but book reviews over the last few weeks, and I've got another one that I'm going to post tomorrow or saturday on A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin that I'm still putting some finishing touches on.

There are several reasons for this.

First and foremost is that I'm moving next thursday and I've been packing things and cleaning up, and figuring new and inventive ways to steal tubs from work unnoticed to move my junk over in rather than using boxes. When it comes to cleaning my apartment I am rather lazy sometimes, and I don't exactly do the best job of it, so there is lots that needs cleaning before I move out.

The next reason is that I've been working a bit more than usual the last couple of weeks due to one of hte other carriers being out for a knee replacement, and it's been freakin HOT lately. The heat just saps your will to do anything productive away.

And then I've been having some second thoughts about the project that I'm currently working on that I needed to deal with. The Path is a sequel to Spires of Infinity and it can, in no way, be sold as a stand alone if my agent is unable to sell Spires. The other project I had in my bag of tricks is the beginning of a very long series and I don't really want to try and sell that until I've made a bit of a name for myself. There are other ideas, of course, but they're not as well developed and ready to go at the moment.

That led me to start thinking on another story I could be writing right now, something new that, if Spires of Infinity fails to sell, I can put up as my next work to try and sell, something that stands alone, and is not overly long. And, being overworked and dead tired from the heat, I couldn't really think of anything.

For about a year now I've been having some thoughts on Beyond the Lost Horizon, and why my agent couldn't sell it. Most often the reply he got from publishers were that it was too generic, and it really kinda is. It's predictable, and follows the most overused story archetype of all time. The world was really good, and the characters were excellent, but the plot just wasn't on the same level. They deserved a better story.

So I started to think of what changes I could make to the story to make it less generic and more original, taking these characters, and this world, and doing something with them that hasn't ever been done before. Unfortunately I couldn't think of any way to do that without doing almost a complete rewrite of the entire story, or without changing the characters far beyond recognition.

When my agent was in town to go over my edits for Spires of Infinity with me, this was one of the things we talked about. What could I do to make a generic story like this more original, and we both came to the conclusion that if it was going to be done, I'd have to do quite a bit of work rewriting and overhauling the plot, so I decided to set that aside for now and focus on The Path. However, I've been thinking very hard lately on a sort of new retelling of Beyond the Lost Horizon, a much better story to tell. And I think I've finally come up with a much better and far more original version of Beyond the Lost Horizon to write.

Anyway, I started outlining BTLH 2.0 and it's really starting to come together. There will be some things that are the same, and some things that are different. The characters will change a bit, most notably Brand, but they'll still be recognizable as the same people. The basic plot structure won't get messed with too much, but at the same time, it will be almost a completely different story. But how can the plot structure stay the same and the story be completely different you ask? Well, the characters will meet up at about the same time in the plot, most of the big events will remain, and they'll be at the same places at the same times, but their reasons for going there, and what's happening in the world will be much different. Their personal struggles, and the changes in their characters and motivations will make the story take a different course even within the same basic outline. The ending will be completely different, and at the same time, it will remain the same. I'm still using that same tired old story archetype to some small extent, however, I'm putting a new spin on it that NO ONE is going to see coming.

Anyway, that is why I've put The Path on hold, because I want to have a book deal in the works before I actually start writing a sequel, and I've found a more intriguing and challenging project to work on, fixing Beyond the Lost Horizon. I think that all of the work i've done on Exile and Spires of Infinity, and various side projects has helped to develope my writing skills as well. I don't just have a better story idea, I'm a better writer now than I was when I wrote the original Beyond the Lost Horizon. Reading back through the final draft of BTLH now in preparation, I think it's a miracle i ever attracted an agent at all in the first place. It's not exactly horribly written, but it's not exactly well written either. I've had a lot of practice between now and then, almost a million words worth of manuscripts of practice actually, and hopefully i can craft something great out of what I have here. But yeah, don't expect much until I've gotten myself settled into my new apartment. I'll probably post a prologue sometime in the next week or so.