New book review for Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card.
Enjoy =)
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Another Splitplane Saga chapter up for download
Sooooo, I started work on Splitplane Saga, a story that I really, really, really, really want to write, about a year ago, and posted a sample chapter on my website as a sort of preview for it. I have not continued work on it for two reasons. It is LONG. And I do mean Looooooooong. And I am currently an unpublished writer. I don't want to go to a publisher with the first book and tell them it's the first of five to seven books, possibly more. I'd get laughed all the way back home for that. And the second reason is that I don't think I'm a good enough writer at the current time to tell a story of the scope and complexity of Splitplane Saga.
However, as I am incredibly excited about this story, and literally thinking about it ALL the time, I really can't stop myself from writing a bit on it here and there, and so, after about a year of putting a little tidbit in here and there, i've got another completed chapter of it posted on my website and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.
However, as I am incredibly excited about this story, and literally thinking about it ALL the time, I really can't stop myself from writing a bit on it here and there, and so, after about a year of putting a little tidbit in here and there, i've got another completed chapter of it posted on my website and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Book Review: Wise Man's Fear
Well, that review did not take so long as I thought it would to write.
I've posted my Review of Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.
Enjoy.
I've posted my Review of Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.
Enjoy.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Book Reviews
Reading has been one of my favorite passtimes since I was given a little book called Redwall by Brian Jacques for my 8th birthday. I used to spend around 2 hrs a day reading before I got sucked into college, and work, and found my love for writing. These days I don't have as much time for reading and I have to pick and choose the books that I read rather than grabbing anything and everything. I've overcome some of my lack of free time to read by listening to audiobooks at work, but I still don't get as much "reading" done that way as I used to because i read in my head MUCH faster than the actors reading the books aloud.
Anyway, I've found myself relying heavily on book reviews to choose the books that I read. There are, of course, certain writers and series that I follow, but when choosing new things I don't really have the time or patience anymore to just grab things off the shelf and go with them anymore.
So I thought I'd do something new with my website and free time. As I may have mentioned before I have some kinda severe ADD. It's extremely hard for me to concentrate on one thing for more than an hour or so at a time, and i usually flip between different projects frequently during any given sitting. At the moment I have a bit of a problem. I'm only working on one project, and having nothing else to work on that I can switch to when i get frustrated or bored is actually making my progress on that one project slower, believe it or not. I figured that if i'm not working on something else, I might as well start a section on my website for book reviews.
AS i rely on book reviews so much to pick out what I read, I figured I might as well start writing some of my own to break up the monotony of working on a single project. Starting next week I hope to review one book per week, and post the reviews on my site. I realize that I'm something of a nobody and my opinion doesn't really matter much to most people in the world, but it's more something for me to do when I can't focus on what I'm doing. It's just something fun for me to do, giving praise or critisism of other writers who have made it in the profession i hope to someday make my way into. Who knows, maybe someone, somewhere, googling, will think that my opinion actually matters.
So, i've been working on a format for how my reviews will go, and I've come up with something like this:
1.) Introduce the book and the author, and give any interesting details on the history of either if any.
2.) Give a spoiler free synopsis.
3.) Point out the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
4.) give any closing comments/thoughts and whether I would recomend it to read or not.
These will all be written reviews rather than video reviews as seems pretty popular on the internet these days because of one simple thing. I am not an actor, and I am not exactly the most articulate person on earth either. I will be working on making the new addition to my site as well as my first review and hope to have them up sometime next week. I'll post here when I do get them up and running.
What book will I review first? Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. Why? Because I think reviewing it will be a lot of fun, because it is both a very good, and a very bad book in the same package.
Anyway, I've found myself relying heavily on book reviews to choose the books that I read. There are, of course, certain writers and series that I follow, but when choosing new things I don't really have the time or patience anymore to just grab things off the shelf and go with them anymore.
So I thought I'd do something new with my website and free time. As I may have mentioned before I have some kinda severe ADD. It's extremely hard for me to concentrate on one thing for more than an hour or so at a time, and i usually flip between different projects frequently during any given sitting. At the moment I have a bit of a problem. I'm only working on one project, and having nothing else to work on that I can switch to when i get frustrated or bored is actually making my progress on that one project slower, believe it or not. I figured that if i'm not working on something else, I might as well start a section on my website for book reviews.
AS i rely on book reviews so much to pick out what I read, I figured I might as well start writing some of my own to break up the monotony of working on a single project. Starting next week I hope to review one book per week, and post the reviews on my site. I realize that I'm something of a nobody and my opinion doesn't really matter much to most people in the world, but it's more something for me to do when I can't focus on what I'm doing. It's just something fun for me to do, giving praise or critisism of other writers who have made it in the profession i hope to someday make my way into. Who knows, maybe someone, somewhere, googling, will think that my opinion actually matters.
So, i've been working on a format for how my reviews will go, and I've come up with something like this:
1.) Introduce the book and the author, and give any interesting details on the history of either if any.
2.) Give a spoiler free synopsis.
3.) Point out the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
4.) give any closing comments/thoughts and whether I would recomend it to read or not.
These will all be written reviews rather than video reviews as seems pretty popular on the internet these days because of one simple thing. I am not an actor, and I am not exactly the most articulate person on earth either. I will be working on making the new addition to my site as well as my first review and hope to have them up sometime next week. I'll post here when I do get them up and running.
What book will I review first? Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. Why? Because I think reviewing it will be a lot of fun, because it is both a very good, and a very bad book in the same package.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
The Path Chapter 8
I've finished chapter 8 of the first draft of The Path and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.
Well, when i got home from work yesterday there was a note from the apartment management taped to the door of my retarded neighbor basically saying that they've recieved numerous complaints from other residents, as well as several notifications from teh police of being sent out because of noise disturbances and one more would result in eviction. Since then, it's been blessedly quiet, and i've been able to concentrate on writing instead of on how much I wish someone would dump my neighbor into a wood chipper.
Anyway, this chapter begins where we left off, with Sam confronting the insane AI Roddy. It ties this storyline up with a nice neat bow. There are some clues here to a MAJOR plot twist that will be coming a few chapters from the end, but I'm not gonna say what they are until then. Stark also makes an appearance to really get Sam thinking on the question that has haunted her ever since Ethos.
I also made some changes to the end of hte previous chapter, mostly having to do with how the fight starts. I removed the bit where Roddy ofers to turn off the transmission if she beats him, because it was retarded and contrived.
One thing I've found is that I have a limit to how many main characters i can have in any given scene without one or two of them fading into teh background. That limit is 4. But now I've got 7 characters together, and in the next storyline with these characters that is going to become 8. My solution to this is to have them fall into situations where they are required to split up. This keeps the scenes from being bogged down by too many main characters being present, and makes it easier for me to keep track of people's personalities and how they would all react to any given thing. Most of the storylines with these characters in this book are going to have them being split up like this one. If you look at Spires of Infinity, every time I got more than 4 of the main characters together in the same place, they split up almost immediately. Putting main characters into a scene is kind of like juggling. The more characters you put in, the more complicated it gets, and the harder it is to keep things moving.
Well, when i got home from work yesterday there was a note from the apartment management taped to the door of my retarded neighbor basically saying that they've recieved numerous complaints from other residents, as well as several notifications from teh police of being sent out because of noise disturbances and one more would result in eviction. Since then, it's been blessedly quiet, and i've been able to concentrate on writing instead of on how much I wish someone would dump my neighbor into a wood chipper.
Anyway, this chapter begins where we left off, with Sam confronting the insane AI Roddy. It ties this storyline up with a nice neat bow. There are some clues here to a MAJOR plot twist that will be coming a few chapters from the end, but I'm not gonna say what they are until then. Stark also makes an appearance to really get Sam thinking on the question that has haunted her ever since Ethos.
I also made some changes to the end of hte previous chapter, mostly having to do with how the fight starts. I removed the bit where Roddy ofers to turn off the transmission if she beats him, because it was retarded and contrived.
One thing I've found is that I have a limit to how many main characters i can have in any given scene without one or two of them fading into teh background. That limit is 4. But now I've got 7 characters together, and in the next storyline with these characters that is going to become 8. My solution to this is to have them fall into situations where they are required to split up. This keeps the scenes from being bogged down by too many main characters being present, and makes it easier for me to keep track of people's personalities and how they would all react to any given thing. Most of the storylines with these characters in this book are going to have them being split up like this one. If you look at Spires of Infinity, every time I got more than 4 of the main characters together in the same place, they split up almost immediately. Putting main characters into a scene is kind of like juggling. The more characters you put in, the more complicated it gets, and the harder it is to keep things moving.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Online Reviewers
The other night Richard and I were talking about online movie reviewers and i mentioned a bunch he had never heard of, sooooo, if you'd like to check em out here's some links. These guys pretty much find the absolute worst movies video games and TV shows and do extremely funny reviews on them. These are all video reviews that go streaming off the internet, you'll probably need quicktime and/or flash installed on your computer to watch them.
The Spoony Experiment
This guy does reviews on video games and 80s sci-fi and fantasy movies. I recomend his final fantasy 8 and final fantasy 10 reviews.
Red Letter Media
This one is mostly Star Wars and Star Trek movie reviews, with a couple others. Definitely check out his ones on the Star Wars prequels.
The Nostalgia Critic
This guy does reviews on movie and TV shows that are more than 10 years old. His catch phrase is "I remember it so you don't have to". He's likes to brag that he's seen more of the worst movies ever made than anyone else on the planet, and he wants to share his pain. Most of his reviews are pretty hilarious, the older ones are at the end of the list with the newer ones on the top. He has a few running gags that, while usually funny with no context, are much more entertaining if you've seen the review they started in, so if you feel the great urge, start from teh beginning, otherwise, just picking and choosing the reviews you wanna see is cool too.
Bad Movie Beatdown
This guy goes after movies that were supposed to be big and flopped, or that a lot of people like and he can't figure out why. I recomend his pirates of the carribean review.
Disclaimer: All of these reviewers do use some rather foul language, sometimes it is bleeped out, but most times it is not. If you're offended by that, you may not have much fun watching their reviews.
The Spoony Experiment
This guy does reviews on video games and 80s sci-fi and fantasy movies. I recomend his final fantasy 8 and final fantasy 10 reviews.
Red Letter Media
This one is mostly Star Wars and Star Trek movie reviews, with a couple others. Definitely check out his ones on the Star Wars prequels.
The Nostalgia Critic
This guy does reviews on movie and TV shows that are more than 10 years old. His catch phrase is "I remember it so you don't have to". He's likes to brag that he's seen more of the worst movies ever made than anyone else on the planet, and he wants to share his pain. Most of his reviews are pretty hilarious, the older ones are at the end of the list with the newer ones on the top. He has a few running gags that, while usually funny with no context, are much more entertaining if you've seen the review they started in, so if you feel the great urge, start from teh beginning, otherwise, just picking and choosing the reviews you wanna see is cool too.
Bad Movie Beatdown
This guy goes after movies that were supposed to be big and flopped, or that a lot of people like and he can't figure out why. I recomend his pirates of the carribean review.
Disclaimer: All of these reviewers do use some rather foul language, sometimes it is bleeped out, but most times it is not. If you're offended by that, you may not have much fun watching their reviews.
Friday, July 1, 2011
noise. Noise! NOISE!
I feel like the freakin grinch. I'm sick of all the noise, noise, noise coming from my neighbor's apartment. Despite having the police called on him not once but TWICE now, this retarded little punk has still not gotten the message.
His excuse "It's the middle of the day. I can't listen to music in the middle of the day?"
He might as well be saying, "It's the middle of the day. I don't have to respect other people in the middle of the day?"
Seriously, when your music is so freaking loud that I can hear it through a wall, WITH headphones on, you don't think that's even a LITTLE BIT excessive? ARGH!!! I hate inconsiderate punk kids that think the world revolves around them!!! he smokes too, which stinks up my apartment! He's been here a little over a week and already he's managed to make it to the top of the list of people I think the world would be better off without.
I only hope that the police get sick of coming out and make the apartment management evict the retarded little prick, I don't know how much longer I can take this BS. I'm getting ZERO work on The Path done because all I can do all day long is grind my teeth at the incessant bass beat pounding through my walls.
His excuse "It's the middle of the day. I can't listen to music in the middle of the day?"
He might as well be saying, "It's the middle of the day. I don't have to respect other people in the middle of the day?"
Seriously, when your music is so freaking loud that I can hear it through a wall, WITH headphones on, you don't think that's even a LITTLE BIT excessive? ARGH!!! I hate inconsiderate punk kids that think the world revolves around them!!! he smokes too, which stinks up my apartment! He's been here a little over a week and already he's managed to make it to the top of the list of people I think the world would be better off without.
I only hope that the police get sick of coming out and make the apartment management evict the retarded little prick, I don't know how much longer I can take this BS. I'm getting ZERO work on The Path done because all I can do all day long is grind my teeth at the incessant bass beat pounding through my walls.
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