Sunday, October 9, 2011

The Writing Progress...

Things have been busy, from the kickoff to Keeneland's Fall Racing Meet where I'm part of the broadcast team, to a visit to Maysville Kentucky to do the keynote speech to the kickoff event for the READ ON! program

The kickoff event was fantastic. Dr. Shires and everyone from the Kentucky Gateway Museum made me feel right at home, and I managed to get to the podium without tripping too! LOL I gave a speech on the literary strengths and merit of the fantasy genre, and the talk appeared to go over pretty well from some of the comments I got afterwards. Great program too! Over 1,000 copies of Ursula K. LeGuin's first Earthsea novel will be distributed in the program to students, as the theme of this year's program is fantasy.

Just found out that I will have a reading slot at the Kentucky Book Fair (held in Frankfort KY) on November 12th, at 2pm. They only have 12 reading slots, so I was really stoked to get the word that I had one.

Writing has been going well. Been working hard on polishing the third Fires in Eden novel. Really concentrating on the arrangement of the threads,to try to set a nice pace to the book. The placement of the threads make a big difference in terms of the overall flow. With some of the cliffhanger action transpiring in this one, I'm having a lot of fun with determining what point of view will follow another.

Readers will be exploring quite a bit more of Midragard and Avanor, and the prime city of Avanor, Avalos, including the Unifier's great mountain citadel. Quite a bit advances in the plot, and several things from Dream of Legends are tied up nicely, regarding the Battle on the Plains of Athelney and the invasion going on in the Five Realms.

There are some really powerful moments in this one, in terms of the series, shown from the perspectives of both sides in the conflict. Expect quite a bit of action, some new territory, and some further development of the main characters.


Also in regards to the Fires in Eden series, we are getting close to the announcement of an exciting new short story series, which will involve eBooks and eventual single author collections...readers of the Fires in Eden series, and those of the Rising Dawn Saga, are in for some new adventures!

2 comments:

Hunter F. Goss said...

Glad your talk on the fantasy genre went well. Not sure how often you speak on the subject, but this article from the Wall Street Journal might be interesting (if you haven’t already seen it):

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/07/25/lev-grossman-on-why-fantasy-isnt-just-for-children/

Even though I don’t write it (or haven’t yet), I like having Fantasy in my mix of things to read for all sorts of reasons. But Grossman makes some interesting points about the merits of the genre.

sgzimmer said...

Hey Hunter,

I hadn't read that article but am definitely going to do so, as I'm always working to make every point I can about the fantasy genre. All too often Fantasy and its cousins in Sci Fi, Horror, etc. are regarded as the ugly ducklings of the literary world (and I've never understood why, to be honest)

Great to hear that you always keep Fantasy in the mix! :) thanks for the link to the article!

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