Friday, November 04, 2005

Bakker Review & NaNoWriMo

I’ve posted my review of R. Scott Bakker’s The Thousandfold Thought. My god was this a great book, I really need to re-read the entire trilogy at some point in the not-too-distant future. This book, and whole series, was extremely compelling and will cast a long shadow for many years in the Epic Fantasy genre.

NaNoWriMo is underway and as of last night, I've got about 2200 of the 50K words we are all all working towards. However, when I attempted to continue my W.I.P. last night, the file on my floppy would not open. I usually save the file of whatever I'm writing on the hard drive as well. Unfortunately the version on the hard drive was missing a decent portion of what I’d written the day before, Wednesday. As things turned out, last night in attempting to re-write the portoin that went missing, my protagonist, Larry, developed a better relationship with his friend’s wife. In my fervor to replace what was lost, the story became stronger. That my friends, is turning a bad situation into a good one, and something I’ve seen/heard other writers do with scenes they mysteriously lost.

This past week Mrs. Blog o’ Stuff and I had our house vinyl sided, and the contractor did an absolutely fantastic job. I’d provide a link, but he doesn’t have a Web site and I don’t think it likely anybody else reading my blog actually lives in New Jersey and needs work done on their house. It almost like having a new house, and we couldn't be happier. The neighbor two doors down was so impressed with the craftsmanship of their work that she called them Wednesday to set up an appointment for an appraisal to get work done on her house.

I’m wishing I could have gone out to Madison, Wisconsin for this year’s World Fantasy Convention, a bunch of my pals from SFFWorld and Frameshift are there right now mingling. Oh bother, perhaps I can make it in two years when it is in Binghmaton, which I can get to by car.

Sadly, Keith Parkinson passed away earlier in the week. I always liked his artwork, particularly his covers to Terry Brooks’ Shannara books. The quality of Parkinson’s art was superior to the words inside the book, however. Parkinson’s wonderful art was also the primary basis for the Everquest game. RIP.

Lastly, speaking of Terry Brooks, there is an “Interesting” discussion about Terry Brooks and the Fantasy genre at Nightshade books, of all places (via The Slush God)

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