When I first read Brightly Burning by Mercedes Lackey, I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did. Being used to her trilogies for years, it felt odd to contemplate reading a standalone. Even her book By the Sword was more of a continuation of previous books and a bridge between two trilogies…
As happens sometimes with even our favorite authors, my initial impressions of the Owl trilogy weren’t the best. I loved that Mercedes Lackey showed us an unfamiliar area of Valdemar than previously explored in it, but some characters rubbed me the wrong way. All right. The main character annoyed the hell out of me in…
Sometimes, the most interesting characters are the ones who aren’t “heroic” characters yet who save the world, anyway. Set a character like that into a world literally dissolving into chaos, and anything is possible. The Mage Storms trilogy takes several of those characters and gives them a nearly impossible task: work together to save the…
Even in fantasy, having a non-human main character is unusual. There are plenty of great examples, but it’s far from the norm. Even rarer still is the non-human main character a mythological creature like a gryphon. Having established gryphons as sentient characters in the Mage Winds trilogy, Lackey and her husband Larry Dixon bring the…
This week I’ve been much more distracted with reading than writing. I tend to start losing steam at chapter four, which is right where I’m at with this project. I’m about 5,000 words behind tonight with barely over 13,000. That’s still a big accomplishment, but I would like to catch back up. I’ve become obsessed…
This month will be pretty busy with National Novel Writing Month, so I figured I'll make my weekly blog posts mostly updates on my progress with that. My project for NaNo this year is a paranormal romance set in Anchorage, Alaska. I lived there for three years while stationed at Elmendorf, Air Force Base, and…
As the first traditional high fantasy quest books Mercedes Lackey introduced me to, the Mage Winds trilogy did not disappoint in the slightest. This was actually my first exposure to high fantasy quests. I know many people of all ages begin their high fantasy journey with the likes of J. R. R. Tolkien, but somehow…
This year will be my eighth year taking part in National Novel Writing Month, referred to as NaNoWriMo or NaNo by participants. For those who’ve never heard of it before, NaNoWriMo is a global personal challenge for writers. The goal? Write 50,000 words in one month. For some, that may sound very easy. For others,…
I am one of those people who are entirely susceptible to nostalgia and fan service. I admit this with no shame whatsoever. By the time I reached By the Sword, Lackey’s first standalone book in the world of Velgarth, I was so hooked that it could have been about anything. She and her world had…
Over the years, I’ve experienced what many refer to as writer’s block. However, I don’t think that name is entirely appropriate to the feeling. Instead, it’s more of a malaise. I simply don’t want to write what I know I “have” to write. So, I don’t write, not a single word. I’ll avoid emails, text…