“Hello. My name is Anubis. I like long walks on the beach, carrying departed souls into the underworld, and the cinema of Mr. Woody Allen.”
- Anubis’ Pantheon.com profile video

In a world where gods attend charity events and can be found on an online match site, Phil and Teri decide they’d better get a god if they want to improve their lives. When they decide on Luka/Lucky, raccoon god of fortune and prosperity, he expects to crash on their couch and things go downhill fast.

Similarly, what I thought of as a good premise didn’t turn out how I expected either. The style wasn’t my cup of tea. Some parts seemed more fitting for a movie than a book, like the image of Lucky pushing his sunglasses down to the end of his nose and grinning mischievously. I could clearly see it at the end of a cheesy trailer.

It has its moments. Most of these were not plot-related. Any event that was seemed so unrealistic I was thrown right out of the novel. For instance, mercenaries exchanging stupid arguments with their captives and each other instead of doing their job.

Characters who began as interesting, like goddess of tragedy and heartbreak Syph, quickly devolved into the equivalent of a mulish two-year-old. By the end of the book, there was an entire cast of metaphorical two-year-olds.

However, I did like how it doesn’t focus on Western gods (especially the ever popular Greek and Norse). Granted, except for Quetzalcoatl I had no idea who they were, but their appearance was satisfying nevertheless.

My guess? It wasn’t my style of humor. Others might have better luck.

My Rating (out of five stars)
★★

I can see the pros and cons of both, so I’ve never been one to cause an uproar over e-readers and their destruction of life as we know it. It didn’t make sense. People say publishing is dying, but that doesn’t seem right either.
        Too true, Belkar.

And then in my first grad class on Monday, I realized why.

My professor talked about publishing as a tension between a cultural and business industry. As we followed the book through its long history, the pendulum was always swinging between the two, and it was possible to see certain eras as extremes of one or the other.

In the last few decades, publishing has been enjoying a business-focused model. But digitalization is pushing us back toward a culturally-focused one. We’re adapting new attitudes toward information and media and entertainment.

These business-savvy publishers are scrambling for a foothold to keep money in the industry, but they’re forgetting to simultaneously adapt their practices. So, as have many newspapers across the country, they go out of business.

The birth of new technology is driving the industry in completely new directions. And that’s why people are freaking out.

But this isn’t the end of civilization. It’s just the next step.

Technology has long driven the publishing industry. The invention of paper, the printing press, computers, all of these have revolutionized the industry. I’m sure illuminating monks feared for the end of civilization when Gutenberg invented the printing press, but civilization got over it.

I’m sure civilization can manage yet again.

It’s a very important part of a character for my Shadows, Echoes, and Reflections book. You can learn more about this story in a few months, when I start gearing up for NaNoWriMo ’10.

Minstrel Song

Between the harvest moon and withered field
The blackbird sits upon the hawthorn tree.
From passing gracious kin he is concealed,
But when I stop he does not hide from me.

Oh sing once more your haunting melody
Of whispers, rustlings, and your tail of woe
Which borrows thorns from off the tree. The key
To flight is neither drop nor fall below,

Yet watch the ground for shadows of the crow.
He’ll gladly steal your life, your wing, your home;
Your song the one defense against this foe –
Now you have earned the right to freely roam.

          Take heart, small bird, against the pulls of earth –
          It shall not always rob you of your worth.

First, discover what exactly your weaknesses are. If you have no idea, ask another writer to look over some of your work and see if they can spot them.

Second, figure out how to improve. Read blogs or books, talk with other writers, etc. Do what you have to so you know where to start.

Third, practice. I find it works best to go by scene or chapter, and focus on improving one weakness at a time.

For me, it’s description. So every time I have to describe a character or location, I slow down and make sure to write in a way that will help the reader see what I’m envisioning.

How do you deal with your weaknesses?

And for those of you wanting something less exciting and more moving, check out Chihiro’s Waltz (also beautiful in piano version):

At the beginning of a story, anything and everything can happen. Time travel, the apocalypse, start of school, you name it.

The end of a story is a bit more restrictive. You have to wrap up loose ends and write an ending that makes sense.

One of my fiction writing professors likes to say, “Conclusions should be inevitable, but surprising.” If that sounds like an easy thing to write, more power to you.

The Narrator could go ten different ways at this point. I’m not sure which one is both inevitable and surprising. Hopefully my critique group can help point me in the right direction if they don’t like Option B (Option A being the end from the November draft).

Too many novels end disappointingly. And not all of them are obvious cop outs like “it was all a dream” or “the bad guy redeems himself and the world rejoices forever.” I don’t want The Narrator to be one of them.

Do you have trouble writing endings to your novels? How do you deal with the difficulties?

Goal: Reach the story’s climax (final Narrator vs. Gang battle) by the end of August.

The first Harry Potter RPG campaign was a success! There are still a few kinks to work out, like the logistics of combat, but overall, a positive experience.

We had two each of Gryffindor, Slytherin, and Ravenclaw, and one Hufflepuff, first years all. The story was they were serving detention with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest when they ran across a unicorn whose foal had been stolen. So off the ickle firsties went, trying to rescue it.

My favorite part, aside from watching them figure out the riddles I set for them, was the Nightmare Grass (stolen shamelessly from Pamela Dean’s Secret Country). Anyone who steps in the grass faces their worst nightmare, whether it be snakes, the death of a loved one….or butterflies. (That was a fun one. We had the boy running away from a snake and the girl running away from butterflies running in a giant circle.) Some of our players didn’t take the Boggart section of their character sheet seriously, so we also had people chased by chickens or falling into banana pits.

Now I’m trying to think of a longer campaign for second years. I have an underwater campaign planned, but I need to wait for the characters to learn a certain charm that will let them breathe underwater…that would be a big problem otherwise.

If you’ve read a fantasy story, and I mean any, chances are you’ve run into The Group – a splattering of main characters who team up to defeat evil. Authors can pick how many characters to have in The Group based on the story’s needs, but in my experience, some group numbers are more prevalent than others.

5. The lone hero.
The favorite of old tales, but the lone hero model has gone out of style. Even Frodo had good ol’ Sam to depend on. Stories today like to emphasize the need for friendship, rather than the power of one individual.

4. Dynamic duos.
Also not very popular, since it can be a bit flat character development-wise. An example would be, as mentioned above, Frodo and Sam as they trek toward Mordor.

3. Adventurers, party of five.
Used more in sword and sorcery novels, where quests reign supreme. Each character in The Group fills a vital role in adventuring: fighter, mage, rogue, priest, girl. Yes. “Girl” is usually the fifth role in a Five Man Band.

2. The symbolism of four.
Used in fantasy when you want each character to represent a balanced set, usually the classic elements. Think of Aang (air), Katara (water), Sokka (non-bending, fire is the enemy here), and Toph (earth) from Avatar: The Last Airbender, or Sandry (non-element), Daja (fire), Tris (air and water), and Briar (earth) from Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic books.

And the most common grouping?

1. The power of three.
Harry Potter‘s Harry, Ron, and Hermione are a [new] classic example. Three main characters provides a good dynamic, and has a lot of room to play around with conflict.