I discovered a couple of interesting writing-related sites over the holidays.
During a Thanksgiving trip to Ohio, I read Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris. Besides recommending it as an engaging fantasy novel and excellent first novel, I’d point folks to Brandon’s web site for an interesting exercise in writing and publishing. Sanderson has posted multiple drafts of Warbreaker, the sequel to Elantris, for free on his site. He includes a comparison (using the Microsoft Word version comparison tool) between the original and the final version. This is interesting in two ways:
- His publisher let him put out the raw form free on-line prior to releasing the book, which assumes that readers will want a final, bound copy.
- It provides a window into Sanderson’s writing process. Just as in any other trade, one can learn from how others work, I’m always interested in how other writers structure their work, what early drafts look like, and how things change. I hope to spend more time with these documents (and I plan to buy the final book when published).
A friend connected me to Richard Perkin’s Blog. Richard is another aspiring author who has written several novels. He’s been engaged in tracking down an agent for his first novel and has an very informative post about finding an agent. I’m following his progress with fingers crossed.
Things are going to be busy at work this month with lots of travel coming up, but hopefully I can keep to an update schedule and get some revisions done on the short stories I did for the work shop. I’d like to start sending them out in the new year. In the next few weeks, I also hope to post something on my writing plans for 2010 (and beyond).
October 1, 2009
Monster in the Mountains
Today marks a very important day for me with the publication of my story, “Monster in the Mountains” in the webzine Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.
“Monster” is my second professional sale but the first one to see “print.” I wrote “Monster” in a single weekend, and revised it with the able assistance of two regular readers (my brother, Dan, and our friend, Aaron) both of whom deserve my thanks. The title came from some notes on possible titles that were provided by Aaron.
Since it was written specifically for Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, I’m doubly-excited that it was accepted and published. I am grateful for the help of David Farney, one of the fine editors at HFQ. He was stern enough to show me where my story could become better and stronger than I had imagined and kind enough to brace me for the shock of seeing an editor’s mark-ups on my prose for the first time. I hope that I have the opportunity to work with him again.
People regularly ask writers where their ideas come from. As a fan of DVD commentaries and “Making of…” features, I thought it might be fun to share the origins of ”Monster in the Mountains” and a little bit of my own creative process, especially as the story is the product of three different events or ideas over the course of nearly 10 years.
About 10 years ago, while in graduate school, I read Sir Gowther, a fifteenth-century poem about a monstrous child, sired by the devil, who surrendered to his inhuman nature, repented, served his pennance, found redemption through bravery, got the girl, and became human and heroic. The story struck me at the time as a perfect candidate to be retold as a fantasy tale. I even spent some time taking notes and trying to plot out a novel, but life and various projects got in the way, and so I never saw it through.
In one of my many meanderings on the web, I discovered the Arts, Grace & Guts Oracle, a tool designed to create sessions for the In a Wicked Age roleplaying game. I thought it would make a good engine for generating pulp fantasy style short story ideas (and I still do). One round generated the idea for an innkeeper on a lonely mountain road who murdered his guests while possessed by a spirit from a nearby tomb. I could never find a satisfactory protagonist or resolution for the story, so it settled in the back of my brain where these things usually sit and wait for their moment.
This particular moment came when I read on Lair of the Evil DM (an excellent, if somewhat Maxim Magazine-like, source for pulp and classic sword & sorcery news and information), that a new web publication, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, was starting up. They were looking to publish stories like the old sword & sorcery fiction, or as they put it: “an older age of storytelling — an age when a story well told enthralled audiences” with stories “deliver action, reaction, and repercussion — and rarely divulge the thought processes that guide a character.” I’d always wanted to try my hand at something directly in the mold of Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, Andrew Offut, and (to a lesser degree) Michael Moorcock.
I thought about what ideas I had that would be suitably pulpy and yet interesting enough, and that’s when I realized that Gowther would make an excellent protagonist for my possessed innkeeper story, as his own troubled past and inhuman nature would provide the perfect complement to the evil spirit and the troubled innkeeper. A couple hours of note-taking later, and the innkeeper had become a farmer, the theme of human vs. monster had solidified, and “Monster in the Mountains” was born.
If you’re here, it’s probably because you read “Monster.” I hope you enjoyed it, and feel free to provide comments and feedback on this post and on the story.
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