fiction

[D&B Vol. 01] Episode 7

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Grounded. Commander of the mighty Imperial armies. And they’d grounded her. Byrne flopped back on the soft pink doona and glared at the constellations on her bedroom ceiling. It wasn’t fair, she’d only…Byrne blinked and tried to remember what it was she’d done to earn the ferocious scowl on her dad’s face and her stepmum’s … Read more

[D&B Vol. 1] Episode 006

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Tellamoth’s face darkened. ‘That’s not my name.’ ‘Do I look like I care?’ ‘You should.’ ‘Why?’ He said nothing, but anger worked his face, pulling the dark lines of his brows together and compressing his lips. The spell holding Byrne in place cracked a little more. She sneered. ‘Demon lord got your tongue?’ He snarled, … Read more

[D&B Vol. 01] Episode 005

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The demon blood had stiffened on her battle tights. It flaked away in small patches, covering the cell’s wooden bench in spots of darkness every time she shifted. Her thighs hurt from laying on the hard surface, her hips and shoulders too, all those soft points objecting to a night spent in close contact with … Read more

[D&B Vol. 1] Episode 004

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‘Sword Uthor!’ She barely heard Della yelling behind her, deliberately shut her ears to the power of her friend’s voice, to the command in the name she’d left behind when she’d stuck a knife in her own heart and launched herself into new life. Not again. Not again. Not again. The chant matched the pound … Read more

[D&B Vol 01.] Episode 003

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Another lifetime. Another war they couldn’t win because her sister and Empress fell for the same pretty face. Suun had kept Nova alive long enough for the paramedics to find them. The woman and her partner had both had the calm, stoic expressions of those who had seen it all, but Byrne had recognised the … Read more

Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet and Scrivener

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A screenshot of my novel 'Crash' plotted with a beat sheet and Scrivener.
I love the beat sheet’s word count per beat.

About the same time I revisted the BS2, Jami Gold posted an excellent article about using beat sheets with Scrivener. What I liked most about the article was the idea of using the target word count for individual chapters and scenes to lay out the beats.

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to word counts, I find big numbers like 100k pretty intimidating. One of the beauties of the beat sheet is that it breaks down these numbers into manageable chunks. For a 100k-word novel, however, some of those chunks are still 25k words, so I took the idea one step further, with Scrivener. 

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Teaser Tuesday: The Towers of the Sunset

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Can you see how the pieces fit together? Not just the visible ones, like the towers of the sunset, but those unseen, like the heart of a man or the soul of a wizard.

The cover of The Towers of the Sunset by L.E. Modesitt Jnr.
A good book, although the lack of a blurb is confusing.

What’s awesome about it

  • The langauge is beautiful (as you can see above)
  • The worldbuilding and the use of the word ‘masculine’.

What’s not-so-awesome

  • There’s no blurb! At least on my copy. This makes it very hard to place the book in context to the first, The Magic of Recluce
  • The last half of the book is kinda boring
  • Magera is a twit.

Would I buy the sequel? I already did, in fact, not only did get the sequel, The Magic Engineer, I splurged on its sequels as well, The Order War and The Death of Chaos. I just haven’t read them yet. 

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Katana by Cole Gibsen

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I’m pretty sure you’re not meant to hold a sword like that.

Katana is the second book from American author Cole Gibsen. It blends martial arts with the supernatural in a story reminiscent of films such as The House of Flying Daggers and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, except without the teary ending.

The story follows Raleigh, your average teenage skater-chick (not that I’ve ever known any), as she discovers that she’s a reincarnated samurai with supernatural powers.

What I liked and didn’t like

I’m often disappointed with martial arts books and Katana is no exception. I’m not sure what it is I’m looking for in such a novel, but so far I haven’t found it. It may stem from my own involvement with karate, which I’ve been studying for a few years now, or it may be something else entirely.

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