Since Amazon moves pretty quickly, if you live in the US or the UK, you can order the paperback of Empire’s Daughter from Amazon:
Canada? Not so quickly. I’ll let you know when it can be ordered from Amazon.ca….or when you can order it in Canada directly from me.
A week or so ago, I was researching battles to find one I could model a battle in Empire’s Hostage on. Battle strategy and action are NOT my strong point! After entering the keywords I wanted into Google, I was led to a website on medieval warfare, which had a wonderful detailed description of the Battle of Stamford Bridge. It was perfect.
So, I emailed the site’s contact for permission to adapt the description, explaining how I wanted to use it. He emailed me back, telling me that those articles were written by someone else, who held the copyright – but was kind enough to start an email conversation with that writer and me. Today I heard back from the author, who gave me permission….and then, having checked out Empire’s Daughter on Amazon, bought the book!
I don’t know any of these people from Adam, and they had no reason to even respond to me, except that they are kind and polite people. The sort the world needs more of. I’ll pass that kindness on in some way, if I can….and I have to say, it made my day.
Sometimes the writing process is a complete mystery. I’m about a third of the way through the first draft of Empire’s Hostage, the sequel to Empire’s Daughter (which will be released in paperback soon, but that’s another post for another day). Lena, the protagonist, is hostage to a truce between the Empire and the lands to the north, and is feeling confused, frustrated, constrained…and also suffering a little bit of what we would call today culture shock. Looking to find a way to both condense a bit of relevant ‘history’ into something not boring to the reader, and to further delineate the differences between the Empire and Linrathe, the land north of the Wall, my brain suddenly produced – in about thirty easy minutes – a song which effectively did both. Sung by the party with which she is travelling, it fit perfectly into the chapter. But where did that come from?
What has your writer’s mind produced out of seemingly nowhere?
This past Tuesday, I had the honour of reading at the ChiSeries here in Guelph. Some background; the ChiSeries (The Chiaroscuro Reading Series) is a national Canadian reading series put on in a number of cities, promoting genre writing. I was reading along with two award winning and/or major award nominee writers of science fiction and fantasy: A.M. Dellamonica and Kelly Robson.
It is a little intimidating for an indie writer to be reading alongside two established names in genre fiction…and it’s even more so to be reading last. But it seemed to go ok….the applause for my reading (I read an abridged version of my short story In an Absent Dream, currently published in my e-chapbook Spinnings), was hearty and I think genuine, and Kelly had some kind words for me. It’s allergy season, so I was concerned my voice wouldn’t hold out, but it did, although I think it was a bit scratchy by the end.
Family members and writing group members came along to support me, which was truly appreciated. I’d also got the proof version of the paperback of Empire’s Daughter that day, so I brought it along, mostly for reactions to the cover (positive, I’m happy to say!) I’ll be posting the cover soon, once I have an actual launch date. I’m still working on finding all the errors and correcting the proof.
And I’m actually (and unusually) getting paid – an honorarium – for the reading, thanks to various levels of government that support the ChiSeries. My (and yours, if you’re Canadian) tax dollars, supporting genre writers. How very nice.
For a delightful and amusing quick read, Danielle E. Shipley’s newest book, The Ballad of 
Allyn-a-Dale, will be hard to beat if you – as I do – enjoy suspending disbelief and going along for the ride. The founding conceit of the story – that Faerie has turned the isle of Avalon into a space where the great heroes of British mythology: Arthur, Merlin, Robin Hood and his band – are unaffected by time and mortality, and that this protected place is further hidden in the 21st century by disguising it as a medieval/renaissance fair – had me hooked from the start.
Allyn-a-Dale, a wandering minstrel of royal blood, falls – literally – into Avalon, blown in from another world by the influence of the Winds. Quickly taken up by Marion and the rest of the merry men, Allyn finds a place in the fair, only to find that he is caught up in a quest to recover the stolen scabbard of Excalibur, the magic item that provides the protection to Avalon.
Shipley writes with a deft and light hand, her characters recognizable as their mythical counterparts but thoroughly of the modern world, if somewhat confused by it. Will Scarlet has the most page time and is the most thoroughly developed character, (and character he is) but others are well represented. This is less true of Arthur and Guinevere, but they are peripheral to the story.
This is not a complex or deep story. The conflicts and solutions are fairly simple, but that suits the light-heartedness of the novel; Shipley is not investigating deep truths and personal angst here, she’s writing a fun tale. It’s the first in a series, and I look forward to the next book. A good summer read on the deck, and one that is suitable for middle-grades to adult. Four stars.
The sign on my study door:
Writers….here’s the link
https://okrwa.com/contests/international-digital-awards/
to what I am told is an under-subscribed contest for e-books/print on demand books.
Deadline is June 30th…so don’t delay!
The disruption to my writing life from the move has settled down, and the opportunities are emerging. My new city has a vibrant and supportive writers’ community, as I’ve said before; yesterday I went to my first ‘Genre Writers Group’ meeting in a downtown coffee shop. This is a brand new group, so it seems I made my move at a good time!
Six of us met at this first meeting, self-published and traditionally published, experienced and newbies and in-betweeners. We talked about plotting and planning vs free-flow writing; we talked about sales, and mostly we talked about publicity and marketing, exchanging ideas and opportunities. As a result of this, I sent an email yesterday afternoon and have been accepted to read at the next Chi Reading Series here. Put on by Chizine Publications, the Chiaroscuro Reading Series takes place in a number of Canadian cities every few months and focuses on fantasy, science fiction, and horror. I’m not sure what I’m reading yet – it will depend on the time given – but it’s a chance to network with other genre writers and to reach a larger audience. I’ll keep you posted!
I’m back to the Writing Room, the Monday morning quiet-space-and-coffee meeting, after an absence of six months. I made it back just in time to read at our spring open-mic night last week. I chose to read from Empire’s Hostage, which has been on the back burner as well for the last half-year, figuring it would give me the prod to get back into it. Which it did, and perhaps all the better for the hiatus – and perhaps too for the reactions and emotions stemming from the Brexit vote, which in some ways reflect the themes of the book: what is independence? Does a country stand better on its own, or as part of a larger unity? Where do concepts of love of country, love of leaders, duty, stand when allegiances shift?
In a different mode, I’m also writing a monthly birding column for our neighbourhood newsletter, and have been ‘coerced’ (not really) into the production team, which means I am learning desktop publishing software in my spare time. It’s a very different type of writing and editing, but it’s all writing.
I should get a review out in another week or so, and hope then to be back into a rhythm on those. I’ve started investigating paperback production for my books, and I’m looking into some creative writing courses, either at the university or at the local college, in the autumn. For the next two days, I’m giving my niece, who is heading off to university in Halifax in September to study journalism (another writer in the family!) a mini-vacation, exploring this city and environs, riding bikes, eating ice cream, hiking the river trails.
Somehow I think the boxes still languishing in the basement may never be unpacked…when will I have the time?
At last. It’s been a long dry period without work on Empire’s Hostage; I lacked the concentrated time not just to actually write, but to think about where the story is going. The creative process and managing the logistics of moving just weren’t compatible for me. I managed a few blog entries, on Two Simple Lives and All the Birds of My Life, but nothing fictional.
But we’re moved in – we’ve been here ten days now: all the important boxes are unpacked, and my office and laptop are set up. I have time for long walks or bike rides, time to think, and today I started writing again. It feels unbelievably good, like welcoming back an old friend into your life, or, after a long absence, coming home.
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Five teen-aged boys from an idyllic small American town venture into a forbidden forest, and are touched by a mysterious power that enhances their senses. With these heightened sensibilities, they become crime fighters, almost superheroes, at night, battling the destructive forces tearing their neighboring town apart.
The premise of The Urban Boys has potential as a young-adult story-line (I would say especially for a graphic novel) but in author K.N. Smith’s handling of the tale, the potential is not realized. There are several reasons for this: flowery prose inappropriate for the genre and the target audience; convoluted world-building containing far too much detail about issues not feeding the plot, and unrealistic familial relationships.
The author’s bio states she is a ‘passionate advocate of childhood literacy’, and The Urban Boys reads as if the intent was to provide moral messages and/or guidance embedded in an adventure story, aimed, I would guess, at early-teen boys. The characters and their families represent a fairly diverse section of middle America, with students from several races and various family dynamics as the protagonists, providing a range of characters for young male readers to identify with. Action sequences (including an overly detailed football game) punctuate the plot at frequent intervals. But the overwritten prose and the convoluted plot development would, in my experience (twenty-five years of teaching focused on students with behavioral and learning disabilities) make The Urban Boys inaccessible to many of the putative audience.
I found the family relationships in The Urban Boys unrealistic. Although set up to be a cross-section of families: a single divorced mother; a father raising two boys after the death of his alcoholic wife; a twenty-something sister looking after her younger brother after the loss of their mother to breast cancer, there were few real conflicts and too much easy understanding to be representative of what really happens in families. This underestimates the ability of young readers to recognize when a story reflects real life – and even in a young-adult fantasy, the core of the story should be recognizable to readers, regardless of the presence of magic in the world.
If good intentions made a good novel, then The Urban Boys would rate at least four stars. But they don’t, and the best I can give it is two.
The author provided me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
marianlthorpe.com 
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