There Is A Slight Flaw In My Character...

My apologies for not posting more often on this blog, but I've been kept fairly busy with my job and my NaNoWriMo writing. I definitely plan on writing my thoughts about Captain Vorpatril's Alliance as soon as I get the chance to sit down and read it, but I'm still working my way through two non-fiction books I picked up at the library. On a side note, The Thank You Economy, by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk, was fairly good about social media marketing and customer engagement, if you're interested in that kind of thing.  The dude knows his wine too.

I would post more, but as the title says, there is a slight flaw in my character.

Which brings me to the actual, short subject of this blog post, a book that is criminally under-appreciated and an amazing read. That book is Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart. It's a fantastic novel of an Ancient China that never was, starring a kind-hearted and over-muscled villager who becomes the sidekick of a venerable, roguish detective in a quest to find a cure for the village's poisoned children. It's fantastic.

I first encountered the book due to John Rateliff's Classics of Fantasy series, which I'm going to admit had some real stinkers in the list. Bridge of Birds is a winner though. I even tracked down one of the sequels to the work, Eight Skilled Gentlemen, which was sadly not as good.

Read Bridge of Birds.

Writing a 50K

This post is about NaNoWriMo, or the National Novel Writing Month. You've probably heard of it. I love Nanowrimo. It's fun and exciting to commit yourself to writing the first draft of a book in just one month. Nanowrimo is in fact one of the reasons that November is my favorite month of the year (others: my birthday, first snowfall). And this month my friend Tabor is writing his own novel for November, so I have someone to compete against. The best part of any competition, though, is winning it. :)

Another reason I like Nano is because I think it shows that people are creative. Inherently creative. Maybe people suck at the craft of it, about writing down their ideas and transforming them into cohesive plots, but they have ideas. And that's fun. I don't think you'll find many uncreative children, but somewhere people learn to suppress their creative spark. To hell with that.

There is one thing I don't quite get about NaNoWriMo. The community. I go to the NaNoWriMo website to put in my word count, of course, and I like getting free goodies at the end of the month...but I don't get the community that surrounds it. Especially since they're always asking for donations. What exactly are your costs here, other than running a high traffic website (a problem that would seem to have an obvious solution)?

Now I'm sure that the people are great, nice people. People who like books and stories. People who aren't afraid to say "Fuck it, I'm writing a book," and then proceed to do just that. But between the forum posts, community meet ups, and write-a-thons, I'm not all that surprised that most people fail to finish their book. I think people are more interested in talking about their book and writing than actually sitting down and slamming your face against the keyboard until something comes out.

Sadly, I'm a little behind right now, for various reasons. The book I've chosen to write is called City of the Damned, a kind-of sequel to my fantasy novel No More Kings. Well, it has some of the same characters, anyway, although both the main characters are new. Competing against me is Tabor's The King's Fool, which I would describe as a Game of Thrones-esque power struggle from the perspective of the cunning court jester.

Time to get back to work.