From Financial Analyst to Fantasy Author – One Man's Journey
GUESS WHAT PEOPLE?
My dear friend and sister in ALL CAP NO PUNCT Julie Hutchings had a book come out on Friday.
You bought it already didn’t you?
DIDN’T YOU?
Well Julie was kind enough to stop by the bloggy and do an little interview with yours truly. My questions are not so great, but her answers are as amazing as she is. SO READ ON BE AMAZED!
A special treat for everyone on the blog today – we’ve got an interview with the inimitable Emmie Mears , to celebrate the release of her debut novel which come out FREAKING TOMORROW!
So read onwards my friends, and enjoy my five scintillating questions for Emmie and her beyond wonderful responses!
I told myself at the beginning of the year I would do more posts on this blog about the journey from starting my first novel OF FATES CONVERGED to (god willing) getting it published, but I don’t think I’ve really kept that promise. Actually the most effort I’ve put into this space since the beginning of the year is the SPN vs Buffy posts, which have been pretty great, but are not in the spirit what I had originally started this blog for. And I still haven’t even finished those, as I’m up to S9 of SPN.
And they have gotten more hits that anything else I’ve posted though, so…
But I digress.
So where are we at right now with the books and the publishing and all that?
Well folks, it’s been a while since we’ve done one of these. There was a little (re: massive) boo-boo on my behalf where I lost like a months worth of edits to FATES, so my blogging and TV watching was put on hiatus while I tried to redo what I lost. But that’s a blog for another day.
As Shauna embarks on the final season of Buffy, we’ll be doing a recap of Seasons 3-5 of Supernatural, which to me was one gigantic story arc spread out over three years. I’ve read Season 5 was actually supposed to be the end of the show, and if so, I think they would have ended on a perfect note.
And I would have won this stupid bet too.
OH WELL.
This time around we’re going to do at little tour of my highlights of these seasons. And don’t worry my friends, there will be many many gifs along the way. Oh so many gifs.
GIGANTOR SPOILERS AHOY!
(more…)
In case you haven’t seen me post about this on Twitter, I’ve been writing a series of comic reviews for my dear friend Emmie Mears ‘ on her awesome brainbeast . Each and every week I review the books that came out featuring some of the greatest female characters and creators in the industry.
This week I write about the latest adventure of WONDER WOMAN as she battles against her evil sibling the First Born, HARLEY QUINN’s own special brand of domestic terrorism and I write way too many paragraphs in praise of the new MS MARVEL and her creators. So if you guys like what you’ve seen here, please drop on by and give it a read (and give Emmie some much deserves traffic to boot!)
A couple of posts ago, I discussed writing my second novel, THE LUMINOSITY OF BLACK and the need to return to the first one, OF FATES CONVERGED, for more edits. This includes a complete rewrite of the first chapter.
Not something I was really happy to have to do again, but as my fellow writers know, it’s imperative that the opening few pages of your novel catch the reader immediately. This is especially so for the writer trying to query a novel for the first time. Nailing down the opening for FATES has been the most challenging thing I’ve dealt with in my extremely short writing career.
The Telegraph just released a list of some of the greatest opening line in literature. There’s a ton of great ones in there, but may favorite has to be from Stephen King’s THE GUNSLINGER . This line (and novel) blew me away when I first read it back in junior high and was one of the true drivers me wanting to become a writer later in life. Reading The Dark Tower, especially the first four books, was when I was first like ‘damn I real want to make something like this.’ So what is that great first line from THE GUNSLINGER?
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
So simply, but so perfect. The line does the job that it’s supposed to – it sets up the action forthcoming and hooks the reader with an interesting premise. Who is this man in black and why is the gunslinger chasing him across the desert?
Boom. There it is. Perfect.
Now I’m not saying I’m going to be able to craft an opening line or chapter of FATES thats ‘s great as the ones mentioned above, but I’ve will need to find one that’s engaging to the reader and gives them an attachment to the main character, Alexia Anarita right from the get-go. So I thought for this post, maybe it would interesting to take a trip down memory lane and see how FATES’ opener has evolved and where I’m at with it now.
(more…)
*Checks to see when I posted Part One of this series.*
Two weeks ago, huh? That’s not bad, I finished Season 2 much faster than Season 1. Let’s see what Twitter has to say about this.
*Opens TweetDeck*
Poor
@Brian_OConor518
(cc:
@KayMcFarland
@EmmieMears
)
— Shauna Granger (@dyingechoes)
That’s fine, I didn’t expect to get caught up to Shauna, but…
@Brian_OConor518
@dyingechoes
@KayMcFarland
@EmmieMears
*cough* I’m on S5 *cough* — Jessica Negrón (@loladeee)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Well I’m still proud of myself for watching this season much faster than the last one. And reason is not that I had more free time, but that Season 2 was much better, in my option, than Season 1.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!
Way back when I wrote a asking what I should do about writing my second novel. Would I continue the story of Alexia and company and craft the second volume of the FATES saga, or would I start a whole new story, in case FATES never saw the light of published day? This was coming off of a trip to , where I came to realize that FATES was not quite ready for prime time yet.
From the response to that post I got, the general consensus was to go with the new story. Far be it from me to question the wisdom of you, dear readers, so that’s exactly what I did. It was hard to step away from the story I had spent the previous three years writing, but I knew it needed to be done. And I really didn’t completely walk away from FATES, I spent a couple of months editing it again in the fall, trying to get it into a more publishable condition. In fact, I’m just about to go back to the grim task of editing FATES one last time before querying again. Please allow Jon Snow and Ygritte to express my joy as I prepare to descend into the Edit Cave once again:
Yeah, not really looking forward to it, but one must do what one must do.
In case you didn’t know my good friend Shauna Granger and I are currently embroiled in a two person TV Watching Hunger Games – an epic battle of genre show supremacy to see if I can finish the entirely of Suprnatural before she finishes Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Whoever wins gets to pick whether our Magetech troupe plays the Buffy or Supernatural RPG later on this year.
High stakes here folks!
I just finished the first season of Supernatural yesterday and I feeling very proud of myself. So decided to tweet about it, like I do all of my great great accomplishments. I was feeling a lot like this:
But then Shauna unloaded this haymaker on me in response:
@Brian_OConor518
@KayMcFarland
@EmmieMears
S3 E10.
— Shauna Granger (@dyingechoes)
And all at once I was like this:
Okay, so she’s Katniss and I’m one of the nameless kids that gets killed in the Cornucopia on the first day. Whatevs. I’m cool with that. I’m a leisurely guy and I like to do stuff at a leisurely pace. Yeah, leisurely, that’s the ticket!
*Ahem*
Soooooo, about that Supernatural Season One….
Spoiler warning too, I guess…
The writer’s life can be a lonely one.
One full of solidarity that’s often just yourself and your words.
Not that it’s a completely terrible thing, quiet alone time can often be a writer’s greatest ally. But what I do find is that I don’t get to talk “the craft” very often in my day to day life. My day job is nothing related to writing, so there’s not really any opportunity to talk about my stories, my processes, the difficulties or or the triumphs I’m experiencing on a regular basis. Most of my talking about writing is done with my writer pals on Twitter – whom I love dearly, and don’t know where I would be in this crazy writerly world without.
It’s interesting though, every now and again I’ll unexpectedly meet someone in everyday life who is part of the greater community of authors. It’s always a pleasant surprise and awesome because there’s a certain sparkle you can see in someone’s eyes when you say to them – “Oh really? I’m a writer too!” There is a kinship there, even with a relative stranger, once you realize the two of you have both been through many of the same experiences trying to make it in the industry. You know you’ve both spent those long hours staring at the that blinking cursor, wondering if all the time you’ve spent writing this book, all the words you’ve poured out onto these pages, was really worth it, all the while still knowing deep down inside that of course it was. You know it was because you know there are others like you out there feeling the same way and now you’ve just met one of them!
Well that’s happened to me twice in the last couple of weeks, and both have been wonderful and affirming experiences.