Thanksgiving Promotion! Evermore: Call of the Nocturne will be free on Thursday, October 4th!

As part of the KDP Select program on Amazon, I am given five days in the next three months where I can promote the Kindle Edition ofEvermore: Call of the Nocturne by giving it away for free. I am proud to announce that the first promotional day will be Thursday, October 4th. Get a free copy of Evermore: Call of the Nocturne to pass the time this long weekend. Whether you're relaxing on the porch watching the leaves fall or inside waiting for the turkey to cook, there's never been a better time to read an e-book, especially if it's free.The promotion will start on Thursday at midnight Pacific Standard Time and will end at midnight on Friday, again on Pacific Standard Time. You can find Evermore: Call of the Nocturne Kindle Edition on the Kindle Store.

Evermore: Call of the Nocturne is now available for Kindle!

Whew. I am pleased to say that Kindle Edition of Evermore: Call of the Nocturne is now available on the Kindle Store.Although I wasn't able to add in the italics in time, the manuscript looks great. I had to make a slight change to the price though. My original plan was to offer the book for $1.99 but I decided to try out the KDP Select Program and take the 70% royalty. With this option, however, the minimum price for an e-book is $2.99. That said, I do get to pick five days over the next three months where I can make my book free so keep your eyes peeled here for special promotions. Until then, it's all up to you. Only you can do the final and most important step: buying my book.Please buy my book. :) Pleaaaaasssseeeee.All you need to do is to click here. This will take you to Evermore: Call of the Nocturne's Kindle page where you can purchase it and send it to the device of your choice. Thanks again. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

Evermore: Call of the Nocturne Kindle Edition Release Date

I am happy to announce that typesetting of the Kindle Edition is complete and that I'm ready to finally release the Evermore: Call of the Nocturne to the Kindle Store on Wednesday, September 19th. It took some time to fix all of the little bugs resulting from the conversion process, forcing me to use my rusted HTML skills, but it's finally ready to go. The only thing I couldn't fix was a strange bug with the Kindle Fire that ignores the #start bookmark in the file. Instead, Kindle Fire will start the e-book halfway through the acknowledgements section rather than at the beginning of the prologue. After its release, I'll keep researching ways to remedy this bug but for the most part it's relatively minor. Everything else works just fine.Next steps will include getting the Lulu print edition ready, although it has run into some technical difficulties, and then setting up the official book launch.I hope you enjoy the book. If you want to let me know what you think, please drop me a line in the comment section below.

Ottawa Independent Writers' Meet and Greet

Today, I attended a meet and greet with the Ottawa Independent Writers Associated at the Collected Works Bookstore in the Ottawa neighbourhood of Hintonburg. In short, I had a wonderful time. It was great to talk to a bunch of authors who were passionate about their craft and excited to hear what everyone else was up to. I also got some great advice on how to host my book launch. Since it will be my first, I'm looking for as much advice as possible and the Ottawa Independent Writers certainly accommodated me.There were some very interesting stories and non-fiction works on offer at the reading including a book about Welsh Zombies (Alice ♥ Welsh Zombies by Victoria Dunn), project management (Realities of Project Management by Allen Price), fantasy novels, mystery novels. There was literally something for everyone.I was also impressed by the bookstore, Collected Works. The minute I entered the store, I was met by a large display of local authors. Their commitment to local authors is quite commendable. The store was well-decorated, well-light and staffed by some very friendly staff. I'll have to inquire into the details of holding a book launch there. I would prefer a location closer to Centretown and where we could serve alcohol :), but I was still impressed by the location. Stay tuned.

Progression of Evermore Cover Art - Update

For those of you who have been following the progression of the cover art for Evermore: Call of the Nocturne, you'll be happy to know that Kevin Bae has been hard at work on developing the illustrations with my feedback. I have great sympathy for Kevin for he's had to endure me changing my mind so many times. Thanks to his patience, the cover art has really come a long way and looks more and more impressive by the day. If you remember from the previous post, Kevin had arrived at the general design of the front cover following a great deal of back and forth.

The first one is Kevin's first attempt at the back cover. In short, I was pretty happy with it. The white dress is consistent with the themes and symbolism present in the manuscript and is a nice contrast with the violent front cover as you will see later. Kevin later put it aside to focus on getting the front cover right. Once that was done, he will return to finish the back cover. All in all, it looks really cool. I can wait to see more of this now that we've establish the basic fundamentals of the front cover.The next image is Kevin's first major attempt at the front cover. If you compare it to the previous front cover, you'll see that a lot has changed. Blue has moved from a profile posture to a more angled and dramatic pose. Her hair is more maniac and she appears to be gripping her duster overcoat. While I understand what Kevin was doing, I didn't really like this image. There was something in the previous image, the sense of Blue glaring at the audience that I loved and that is missing here. I was a little worried to tell Kevin to go back to an older design because I knew how hard he had worked on it. However, I knew how much better the final product would look. Thankfully Kevin quickly made some adjustments and returned the image to the previous framing. It is quite extraordinary how quickly he works.The next image returns to the posture of the earlier drafts and adds a lot more details. This is just spectacular. Blue is glaring at the audience with her visage divided by two different colours: a raging red and a sickly green. The hair is distinctive yet still wild and the scar comes through very clearly. You can also see a hint of the duster overcoat which is a nice touch. The facial expression says it all. Blue glares at the audience with joyful malevolence, a characteristic that is pretty close to her actual character in the novel.I told Kevin that this was exactly what I was looking for. Earlier, we had discussed how her face could disintegrate into polygons to symbolize her losing her mind to the virtual world of Evermore. I was really excited to see how the concept would look in practice.Kevin went to work and produced the next draft. As you can see, he's add the "polygon wave" that connects the front and back covers. The image is really strong and you can see that the left side of Blue's face is disappearing into the "polygon wave". It's a neat effect but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I was looking to her face fall apart into polygons, not to gently transition into a waveform. I also noted that her mouth had a little bit too much grin to it. It reminded me somewhat of the Joker and I realized that it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Blue is a violent sociopath who rarely smiles. She would glare at the audience but never sneer or adopt a psychopath grin. She's more a violent force of nature. She gets pleasure from violence as it makes her feel more alive but it never rises into joy. I let Kevin know my thoughts and included some photos from the Internet to visually demonstrated the polygon disintegration effect that I was going for. Kevin promptly sent me three images: all iterations of the same theme.        As you can see, the curl in Blue's lip has been toned down, giving her the searing rage look that I was going for. In each of the three images, the polygon disintegration of Blue's face has been implemented but each in a different way. The first has the face disintegrating into large polygons that merge into the blue "polygon wave". The second is the same but with the addition of much smaller fragments. The third removes the blue "polygon wave" grid, leaving just the polygon splinters.Kevin preferred the first image as he thought the second was too busy. I found the third to missing that synthetic effect that the blue "polygon wave" suggests. Its presence is a reminder that Blue is connected to a virtual space and that the disintegration of her face suggests that she is losing her mind to the virtual world. So the third is out.I took the weekend to decide between the first and second image. Ultimately, I found that I preferred the second image. Like Kevin said, it is "busy", but it is also chaotic. It seems more violent and dangerous than the neater first image. It made me think that Blue had been shot by a shotgun. The violence of the image fits in well with the character while also suggesting that her violent approach to life will be her undoing. "Live by the sword, die by the sword", so to speak. It is also very eye-catching, an necessary trait when most people will decide to buy your book based on the cover art (especially in an Amazon e-book world). In short, I simply found the second image more intriguing and an excellent fit for the story.So there you have it. After many months of work by poor Kevin, the front cover is ready to go. Now he'll return to work on the back cover and integrate it into the final version of the front cover. This project, though expensive and time-consuming, is really starting to pay dividends. Thanks to Kevin Bae, Evermore: Call of the Nocturne will have a provocative, eye-catching cover that fits in well with the themes and elements of the story. The next stop will be to take the cover art illustrations and get them to Jordan Knoll to design the final cover. I'll get back to you when I have the final versions. 

A Game of Thrones Book Review

After hearing so much about the Game of Thrones television show and the numerous media (such as Skyrim) that cite it as a reference, I decided to finally tackle the massive A Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin. After plowing my way through the first book in the series, A Game of Thrones, it is pretty clear that I am hooked on the series. By what really struck me was the similarities between it and the recent book I reviewed, Spook Country by William Gibson.Even though they both use multiple perspectives to tell their stories, I found that my enjoyment of the two books was completely different. Spook Country left me flat while A Game of Thrones drew me in and seduced me into reading further. But why were they so different? What did George R.R. Martin do right that William Gibson did wrong. Because of this conundrum, I decided to do a comparison of the two books rather than a straight-forward review of A Game of Thrones. I hope that by doing so, we might identify some of the general storytelling fundamentals in play.Let's start with their one major similarity: multiple perspectives.Multiple perspectivesBoth A Game of Thrones and Spook Country tell their stories through a third person limited narrative. In short, the narrative focuses on the perspective of a single character, but does not take the voice of this character. The reader is limited to the viewpoint of a single character but the text is written in the third person. This is a fairly standard narrative style, especially in mysteries, as the reader is limited to the knowledge of the protagonist, and thus must follow him or her as they unravel the plot, enhancing the tension. However, what makes both A Game of Thrones and Spook Country so unique in this narrative structure is that the story follows a different character in each chapter. To use the example of A Game of Thrones, the story may follow the perspective of Tyrion Lannister in one chapter and Eddard Stark in the next. Spook Country limits this perspective to three characters while A Game of Thrones changes to whichever character strikes Martin's fancy. The end result is quite different. Whereas Spook Country is relatively dull with stilted, uninteresting characters (with the possible exception of Tito), A Game of Thrones sucks you into the characters lives and involves you intensely with the life and death struggles. Does this mean that the characters of A Game of Thrones are more or distinctively. No, not really. I don't think its the characters themselves that make them so compelling. It's how Martin sets up their stories, creating a sense of ....... AnticipationLet's take a look at some of the characters in A Game of Thrones. WARNING: This section does contain stories.Bran StarkFormerly a strong climber, Bran is crippled when he thrown off a tower by Jaime Lannister for spotting him cavorting with his sister, and Queen, Cersei Lannister. Now a paraplegic, Bran try to find a way to make himself useful to a world that worships men of war. To get around, Bran gets around by riding on the back of Hordor, a slow-witted half-giant. Will he ride Hodor into battle and turn the tide?Tyrion LannisterA dwarf disrespected by everyone, especially his own snooty family, Tyrion gets by on his wits while holding fast to a personal code of honour that far exceeds those of the rest of his family. Will he overcome society's prejudices to find the glory and victory he so rightly deserves?Daenerys TargaryenAlong with her brother, the only two surviving offspring of the former King of the Seven Kingdoms. Daenerys sacrifices greatly for survival, including being married of by her brother, losing her husband and daughter, and her place in Dothraki society. Isolated and alone, she takes her three dragon (which have extinct for centuries) eggs into a pyre and watches as they hatch and bond to her as their mother. Will she lead her dragon children into an assault on the Seven Kingdoms to retake Iron Throne?Eddard StarkReluctantly taking on the responsibility of the King's Hand, Eddard must unravel the mysteries of the attack on his son Bran and the death of the former Hand, Jon Arryn. Will he unravel the mystery or will he fall in the game of thrones.Jon SnowThe bastard son of Eddard Stark, Jon Snow volunteers to serve on the wall to find some place of honour in a world that has none for bastards. Amongst his rag-tag group of ruffians, will he overcome his station to protect the Seven Kingdoms from the unknown threats to the north?Arya StarkA tomboy, Arya is more interested in learning to fight with a sword than the courtly manners of her sister Sansa.  Reluctantly, her failure allows her to be trained by a cunning, yet eccentric sword master. Will she one day grow up to command respect as a warrior, not just as a prospective bride?As you can see in each of the cases, I am filling in the story far off into the future while Martin is still introducing me to them. By setting up most of the characters as weak, unloved, ignored or disrespected, he is giving me an opportunity to fill in the story with how I want things to turn out. We all love underdog characters. We want to see them overcome their challenges and find the respect of their peers because we face these same sorts of struggles day in and day. George R.R. Martin fills A Game of Thrones with underdogs and that is why I have to keep reading. I have to find out what happens to them.In Spook Country, we have a former rock star, a drug addict and a superhuman parkour specialist. They're unique but they're not really underdogs. They don't feel overwhelmed or at risk in the world in which they find themselves. Even at the end when Hollis is captures, the tension is immediately diffused by the secret underworld character asking her to be a witness to their operations. There is simply little sense of danger and even less sense of overcoming the odds.SympathyAnother way in which Martin uses the multiple perspectives well is building sympathy for characters who later perish. When you are in close promixity  in someone's shoes, you feel greater sense of loss when they are gone. It's the reasons that we mourn for family and friends but not for complete strangers. We can react with horror and sadness but its far more abstract then when it's someone you know personally. In the case of A Game of Thrones, we are introduced to a couple of characters who later perish. Walking in their faces, we gain a measure of sympathy for them that makes their later deaths, seen from another character's perspective, that much more powerful. It also makes the world feel like a far more dangerous place. In Spook Country, nobody dies. It brings me to my final point when comparing the two novels.Raising the StakesIn A Game of Thrones, the stakes are huge and growing with each passing chapter. People die, the land is plagued by war and atrocities, and new threats can be sensed over the horizon, across the war and beyond the sea. In Martin's opening book, characters are fighting for their future, Kings are fighting for kingdoms, and humanity in general is fighting for its survival. The growing sense of threat and danger ramp up the tension, pulling us forward and deeper into the book anxious to see what happens next. In the case of Spook Country, danger is muted. Nobody really seems in trouble. Nobody is killed and threats go unfilled. Even the central mystery falls flat, rather than the MacGuffan threatening humanity or even an individual, it comes off instead as post-modern joke. It may be clever or interesting but as a storytelling device, it falls flat. In A Game of Thrones, stakes are simpler, more menacing and easier to feel. The story greater benefits as a result.In short, A Game of Thrones is an excellent fantasy novel that I can't recommend highly enough. It will grab you and never let you go. I hope that by comparing it to Spook Country I've been able to show why it's so effective and how it can serve as a template for aspiring authors. I'm well into the second book of the series, A Clash of Kings, and it's still going strong.

Spook Country Book Review

Among other activities, one of the great things about my recent vacation was the opportunity to sit down on a summer afternoon and catch up on one of the many e-books that I had bought but never finished. Spook Country was one of those novels. I had bought it about a year and made a valiant attempt to read it, but I lost interest in its constantly changing perspectives and gave up.Have finally read it a year later, which necessitated re-reading the earlier chapters, I am finally ready to render a verdict:Skip it.William Gibson is an excellent writer. His work preceded and predicted many of the elements of the information age. He has this unique ability to look into the future and see where we as a species are going. Spook Country is no different. We are introduced to concepts such as augmented reality, which is only now coming to effect in the real world, five years after the publication of Gibson's novel.That said, the look into the now present is not enough to save the story from its own lack of momentum. For the most part, the story is a mystery that when revealed is a little anti-climatic. There's a lot of build-up but not a strong climax, rather a petering out.Gibson uses a unique tactic of switching the narrative voice between several characters but it fails here because none of the characters are really that interesting. The most interesting character is Tito due to his religious beliefs that combine spirituality and physicality in a way that I've never seen before. But the perspective switching doesn't really build momentum in the story as you don't really get too interested in what happens to these people. For a better example of how to use multiple perspectives, I would recommend A Game of Thrones. I'm only 25% through the novel, but I can't wait to see what happens to at least five or six of its characters. But I'll save that for another review.Even though this is a negative review, I can't help but point an amazing sequence in the middle of book. Tito is tasked to meet with one of his associates while expecting to be chased down by the authorities. His goal is to make sure that the authorities capture a usb stick without capturing him. Over a sequence of several chapters, we watch Tito and one of his adversaries prepare for this confrontation. It is nothing short of exhilarating. The preparations build a real sense of excitement and bring momentum to the story. When the confrontation carries itself out, you know what the plan so it's easy to get caught up in the chase. The whole sequence works really well and is a fine example of how to build up to an action set piece.Even though that sequence was amazing, Gibson is not able to maintain the momentum. The story slows down until we are left with a very quiet anti-climax and a rather un-satisfying conclusion to each of the character's individual story arcs.In short, I wouldn't recommend it. Instead you should read Neuromancer. It's a little difficult to read and understand but you'll be surprised by the words that Gibson creates (in the early 80's) that we still use today.