Yesterday, I had one the best Christmases in my whole life, and it had nothing to do with the gifts I received. Actually, what I got was mostly very practical stuff, primarily designed for Christmas projects we have yet to complete, and a "new" owner's manual for my 29-year-old car.
A while back, Natasha, bless her heart, came up with the idea that we should organize a way to feed the homeless on Christmas day. We all thought it was a great idea, so we went to our club and presented the idea to them. They all liked the idea, too, and we began the effort. I put out the word around our local area, my wife collected food donations and made a lot of purchases with some donated money, and we went down to the Walk of Honor in downtown Santa Ana where a fair number of Orange County's homeless "live."
We managed to feed at least a hundred people, with drinks, turkey rollers, crackers, snacks and three large pumpkin pies, plus chicken-pasta dishes, hummus and some organic food that another couple (who happen to be in the organic food industry) brought in response to the word I'd sent out. It was incredible. We met so many nice people over the hour and a half or so that we were there, and there were other donors who came in their own trucks and SUVs with more food than even we could have imagined. I don't know how to describe how I felt being able to do this for others who are less well off than me, and I may be getting closer than I ever imagined to being in their place.
After we cleaned up and took home the materials we had left (no food - all gone :-), we put together some more gifts and went out to party with some dear friends in San Bernardino County, where they had an amazing spread of food laid out for their party. Of course, I stuffed myself, and we all had a grand time with people we had never met before but with whom we all shared a number of common interests. Natasha started playing piano, and our host's brother turned out to be quite an accompanist as well - he played piano while Natasha's angelic voice treated us all to a wonderful concert. Alex pitched in with some guitar play and we all sang several non-Christmas songs, to the pleasure and delight of all.
Several of the other guests were surprised that my kids would like songs by the Beatles, CCR, Don McLean and other, more classic rock and roll music, but considering their parents, that's not too big of a stretch. I am constantly amazed at how wide a range of music they like. I love the Moody Blues, but then I stopped listening to them for a number of years, not terribly impressed with their later music. Then, Natasha happened upon my CDs, fell in love with them and re-introduced me to their later good music and some earlier works I'd never considered all that great on my own.
The bottom line is that we had a truly special, very blessed Christmas, and I wanted to share that with you. It has nothing to do with writing or my books, per se, but so what?
I wish you all a happy and prosperous remainder of this holiday season and on into and through the next year. May divine blessings infuse your life with more good than you know how to handle, and may you learn how to handle that good with grace.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Online TV for Entertainment?
October 10? Wow - that's quite a while since I last posted anything here.
It's been a kind of doldrums month, and I hit a blank spot with writing, so I thought I'd comment on something else - the wondrous treasure trove that online TV provides.
Hm, was that sarcastic enough?
I first discovered the wonders of online TV a few months ago when I was pointed at a really neat site called blinkx.com. This site has thousands of TV shows available for online viewing - sort of. What it really has is links to other sites that actually store the shows and then allow you to play them back with varying levels of commercials, subtitles, etc.
I found it useful when I wanted to see all of the Moonlight episodes that I recently discovered I had missed. Actually, I missed the whole show - it only lasted one season, but it was pretty good and better written than I expected. So I dove in at my son's urging, only to discover some interesting and highly relevant details:
Of the three storage providers, I could not access one of them at all (and, unfortunately, I also forgot their name - sorry).
A really nice one with good resolution and a nice playback interface is megavideo.com. The only problem, as it were, is that they really are a subscription service, so you can only watch up to 74 minutes of video at a time. That's enough for about 1 1/2 hours of a TV show (because there are no commercials - thank you), but not enough for a whole movie. Also, you have to get past the commercial at the beginning to watch a show, but that's fairly easy to do.
Another decent one with reasonably good playback features but a reduced video size (and generally horrible quality resolution, though it is watchable) is tudou.com. This is a Chinese web site (surprise), and the videos are filled with Chinese subtitles, which can get really annoying when they obscure a big chunk of the bottom of the screen. They have short commercials once in a while, at the start of a show, which are loud but, fortunately for those of us who do not speak or read Chinese, in Chinese. Also, they tend to be short. Tudou also has a minor irritating feature in that a lot of their shows are split in half, and not all of them load the next segment automatically. This can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.
Then I started exploring some more. A show that I found I liked a little back when it started out was Eureka, from the SF channel (SciFi, now SyFy). I finally got hooked into watching the reruns of the third season last spring, and the new one over the summer. Through blinkx, I was able to catch up on the whole show - eventually. There were problems with the links, and not all of the shows were available all the time, but the worst part was that some of the links were to the wrong shows. IIRC, the first season got messed up about half way through and all the Tudou links are actually for the previous week's show. This is why there's a mystery "Episode 14" with no name at the end of the season - it's really episode 13, but since Tudou is off by a week, they had to do something, I suppose.
There are other significant drawbacks to online TV. Not all of some of the older shows are available online. This is annoying when I wanted to watch, say, JAG - the ninth and tenth seasons are not online at all (the 9th season was just released on DVD by Paramount, and the 10th is still waiting out there somewhere), and a lot of the shows are missing.
JAG is actually not a bad show if you're a huge fan of the US military, or if you can get past their heavy rah-rah approach (being ex-Navy, I know that the presentations are both distorted and inaccurate, but not in a way that interferes with the stories), and a lot of the plots are quite interesting.
I started watching JAG because I got hooked on NCIS watching the reruns every night on USA (on a real TV, but fake broadcasts - it's cable-only). I like the way the characters are developed and interact, and they've managed to cut back some on the gore last season (finally). When I wanted to find out the name of particular guest actor on the show, I looked it up in the IMDB and found out it was a spin-off of JAG. (USA also runs JAG reruns, and I happened to catch part of one of the two-parter that started NCIS as a separate show.) First I watched the pre-pilot of NCIS-on-JAG, then I thought I'd check out the rest of the show. Not too bad.
One of the other storage sites is called fanpop.com, which appears to be a defective interface to tudou.com - I can't get it to load the videos. Ever.
The other major online TV provider I've looked at is hulu.com ("an evil plot to destroy your mind - enjoy!").
For recent shows, like the latest episodes of Bones and NCIS that I missed on the original broadcast, they're pretty good. There are times when the loading is too slow to be watchable - it stops every second or so, mid-word and all, and that gets old really fast. On the other hand, I can't get Fox's "special, high-speed streaming" player to work on my machines at all. From hulu, I have no trouble watching the Fox shows.
However, there are also older shows that are still available on hulu.com that I like, when I can get at them. One of these is Highlander (the series starring Adrian Paul, not the movies). More than half the time, the videos are stubborn to load and don't. About half the time, after they've loaded, they freeze and drop the link, so I have to go back and reload and reposition. And occasionally I get a message saying that the video is not available, which is a lie - it usually means I have to clear my cookies, cache and other local linked data and start over again.
If that's the evil plot to destroy my mind, I'm not worried. It's more irritating than anything else, and it happens so much I don't watch as many in a row as I used to. OMG, I'm breaking my addiction to TV, physical and online!
All of this makes me wonder something: Since the US economy has deteriorated to the point where the vast majority of the jobs that are still available are service jobs (think waiters, busboys and infotainment) and most of what we're producing is just entertainment, occasionally disguised poorly as opinionated propaganda - excuse me, "news" - are these entertainment services anything more than just a way to keep us home, entertained and mindless?
I have to wonder and worry about that - I write, and I'd like people to read. My writing may not be classic or even particularly entertaining, but let's face it: Dr. Seuss is more challenge to our brains than ANYTHING on TV, broadcast, cable or online.
Tell me what you think!
It's been a kind of doldrums month, and I hit a blank spot with writing, so I thought I'd comment on something else - the wondrous treasure trove that online TV provides.
Hm, was that sarcastic enough?
I first discovered the wonders of online TV a few months ago when I was pointed at a really neat site called blinkx.com. This site has thousands of TV shows available for online viewing - sort of. What it really has is links to other sites that actually store the shows and then allow you to play them back with varying levels of commercials, subtitles, etc.
I found it useful when I wanted to see all of the Moonlight episodes that I recently discovered I had missed. Actually, I missed the whole show - it only lasted one season, but it was pretty good and better written than I expected. So I dove in at my son's urging, only to discover some interesting and highly relevant details:
Of the three storage providers, I could not access one of them at all (and, unfortunately, I also forgot their name - sorry).
A really nice one with good resolution and a nice playback interface is megavideo.com. The only problem, as it were, is that they really are a subscription service, so you can only watch up to 74 minutes of video at a time. That's enough for about 1 1/2 hours of a TV show (because there are no commercials - thank you), but not enough for a whole movie. Also, you have to get past the commercial at the beginning to watch a show, but that's fairly easy to do.
Another decent one with reasonably good playback features but a reduced video size (and generally horrible quality resolution, though it is watchable) is tudou.com. This is a Chinese web site (surprise), and the videos are filled with Chinese subtitles, which can get really annoying when they obscure a big chunk of the bottom of the screen. They have short commercials once in a while, at the start of a show, which are loud but, fortunately for those of us who do not speak or read Chinese, in Chinese. Also, they tend to be short. Tudou also has a minor irritating feature in that a lot of their shows are split in half, and not all of them load the next segment automatically. This can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.
Then I started exploring some more. A show that I found I liked a little back when it started out was Eureka, from the SF channel (SciFi, now SyFy). I finally got hooked into watching the reruns of the third season last spring, and the new one over the summer. Through blinkx, I was able to catch up on the whole show - eventually. There were problems with the links, and not all of the shows were available all the time, but the worst part was that some of the links were to the wrong shows. IIRC, the first season got messed up about half way through and all the Tudou links are actually for the previous week's show. This is why there's a mystery "Episode 14" with no name at the end of the season - it's really episode 13, but since Tudou is off by a week, they had to do something, I suppose.
There are other significant drawbacks to online TV. Not all of some of the older shows are available online. This is annoying when I wanted to watch, say, JAG - the ninth and tenth seasons are not online at all (the 9th season was just released on DVD by Paramount, and the 10th is still waiting out there somewhere), and a lot of the shows are missing.
JAG is actually not a bad show if you're a huge fan of the US military, or if you can get past their heavy rah-rah approach (being ex-Navy, I know that the presentations are both distorted and inaccurate, but not in a way that interferes with the stories), and a lot of the plots are quite interesting.
I started watching JAG because I got hooked on NCIS watching the reruns every night on USA (on a real TV, but fake broadcasts - it's cable-only). I like the way the characters are developed and interact, and they've managed to cut back some on the gore last season (finally). When I wanted to find out the name of particular guest actor on the show, I looked it up in the IMDB and found out it was a spin-off of JAG. (USA also runs JAG reruns, and I happened to catch part of one of the two-parter that started NCIS as a separate show.) First I watched the pre-pilot of NCIS-on-JAG, then I thought I'd check out the rest of the show. Not too bad.
One of the other storage sites is called fanpop.com, which appears to be a defective interface to tudou.com - I can't get it to load the videos. Ever.
The other major online TV provider I've looked at is hulu.com ("an evil plot to destroy your mind - enjoy!").
For recent shows, like the latest episodes of Bones and NCIS that I missed on the original broadcast, they're pretty good. There are times when the loading is too slow to be watchable - it stops every second or so, mid-word and all, and that gets old really fast. On the other hand, I can't get Fox's "special, high-speed streaming" player to work on my machines at all. From hulu, I have no trouble watching the Fox shows.
However, there are also older shows that are still available on hulu.com that I like, when I can get at them. One of these is Highlander (the series starring Adrian Paul, not the movies). More than half the time, the videos are stubborn to load and don't. About half the time, after they've loaded, they freeze and drop the link, so I have to go back and reload and reposition. And occasionally I get a message saying that the video is not available, which is a lie - it usually means I have to clear my cookies, cache and other local linked data and start over again.
If that's the evil plot to destroy my mind, I'm not worried. It's more irritating than anything else, and it happens so much I don't watch as many in a row as I used to. OMG, I'm breaking my addiction to TV, physical and online!
All of this makes me wonder something: Since the US economy has deteriorated to the point where the vast majority of the jobs that are still available are service jobs (think waiters, busboys and infotainment) and most of what we're producing is just entertainment, occasionally disguised poorly as opinionated propaganda - excuse me, "news" - are these entertainment services anything more than just a way to keep us home, entertained and mindless?
I have to wonder and worry about that - I write, and I'd like people to read. My writing may not be classic or even particularly entertaining, but let's face it: Dr. Seuss is more challenge to our brains than ANYTHING on TV, broadcast, cable or online.
Tell me what you think!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
When is a collection of books not a series?
This issue has been bugging me for months, maybe even years - what makes a group of related books a series?
You might wonder why I would care, unless you've read my books (hint :-).
I have a group of books that I call, collectively, Zentek Ascendant. There are five books in this group and they are all related to the same subject, take place in the same world, involve the same characters (except the ones who die and don't come back - yes, that happens), and so on.
However, a lot of readers, not just in the fantasy genre, don't like series, especially not when they run on and on and on. I won't mention any books here by name, but there are gobs of them that fall into this category. Think of Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony, Robert E. Howard, C.S. Lewis, Frank Herbert, Terry Brooks and others.
Personally, I tend to like reading book series because they feel comfortable if you can get past the first one because the background of the series is already familiar. There's nothing wrong with writing a series of books that use this to their advantage, provided, of course, that they are well-written. I happen to like all of the authors I noted above, some more than others and not all because of their series books.
On the other hand, I also want my books to appeal even to those who don't like series, and that's where it gets a little tricky. Let's take a look.
The classic in high fantasy fiction that still (and properly, in my not-so-humble opinion) dominates the entire genre remians Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The question is, is LOTR a series or not? I say it is not, it is, rather, a set. To paraphrase, it is a single story in three volumes, each containing two "books." The Hobbit and LOTR, if considered as separate works, which they are, is a series, but LOTR on its own is a set - the story in each book is incomplete without the others.
Contrast this to, say, the Dune series by Frank Herbert and now his son, too. Clearly, these are individual stories, none of which is so dependent on its predecessors or successors for its content that you couldn't just pick any of them up and read a complete story. Whether you like it or not I wouldn't presume to say. You can even contrast LOTR by itself (a set) to the whole of the Tolkien collection, which would include the Hobbit, the Silmarillion and others I have not read, that are more in the nature of a series. You can better understand the whole history of Middle Earth by reading them all, but it is sufficient just to read LOTR or the Hobbit by themselves.
Without putting myself in that illustrious collection of writers I named above (yet), I have chosen to call the Zentek Ascendant collection of five books a set, not a series. It is a single, contiguous story that takes up all five books. Although I have made (and continue to make) an effort to make each one viable as a work on its own, at the present time of edits, only Return (book I) and Minx (book II), in their most recent revisions, which are not yet available for direct sale, are set up that way.
Return was always set up that way - I wrote it as a stand-alone story from the beginning. I didn't even know I would ever be writing any more of the story until it was done and I had slogged through it several times (and believe me, back then, it was slogging). After a few (dozen) edits, I began to itch for more, and I decided to continue the story and make the rest of it less structured in how I wrote it, and it carried me through the whole set. Now, with the assistance of a few groups of reviewers of my writing, I am also going through Festival (book III), with at least the partial intent of "fixing" Chapter 1 so that a reader does not necessarily have to read Return and Minx to enjoy it.
Am I shooting myself in the foot here?
I hope not. I just want to make it easier for readers to get one and want them all. I know that this will be much harder for me to do with Metamorphoses (IV) or, especially, Reckoning (V) because the story is a romance in addition to all the adventure and swords and sorcery and other stuff, and there is a suspense element built in as well - who did this to whom and why and how pervasive is this insidious plot? The reader might not appreciate the love story or the whole plot if they just start with Metamorphoses, for example.
My recommendation?
Get the whole set. I promise that it will be worth the read, unless you really hate high fantasy adventure romance epics. Heck, you might even like it anyway!
Let me know what you think....
You might wonder why I would care, unless you've read my books (hint :-).
I have a group of books that I call, collectively, Zentek Ascendant. There are five books in this group and they are all related to the same subject, take place in the same world, involve the same characters (except the ones who die and don't come back - yes, that happens), and so on.
However, a lot of readers, not just in the fantasy genre, don't like series, especially not when they run on and on and on. I won't mention any books here by name, but there are gobs of them that fall into this category. Think of Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony, Robert E. Howard, C.S. Lewis, Frank Herbert, Terry Brooks and others.
Personally, I tend to like reading book series because they feel comfortable if you can get past the first one because the background of the series is already familiar. There's nothing wrong with writing a series of books that use this to their advantage, provided, of course, that they are well-written. I happen to like all of the authors I noted above, some more than others and not all because of their series books.
On the other hand, I also want my books to appeal even to those who don't like series, and that's where it gets a little tricky. Let's take a look.
The classic in high fantasy fiction that still (and properly, in my not-so-humble opinion) dominates the entire genre remians Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The question is, is LOTR a series or not? I say it is not, it is, rather, a set. To paraphrase, it is a single story in three volumes, each containing two "books." The Hobbit and LOTR, if considered as separate works, which they are, is a series, but LOTR on its own is a set - the story in each book is incomplete without the others.
Contrast this to, say, the Dune series by Frank Herbert and now his son, too. Clearly, these are individual stories, none of which is so dependent on its predecessors or successors for its content that you couldn't just pick any of them up and read a complete story. Whether you like it or not I wouldn't presume to say. You can even contrast LOTR by itself (a set) to the whole of the Tolkien collection, which would include the Hobbit, the Silmarillion and others I have not read, that are more in the nature of a series. You can better understand the whole history of Middle Earth by reading them all, but it is sufficient just to read LOTR or the Hobbit by themselves.
Without putting myself in that illustrious collection of writers I named above (yet), I have chosen to call the Zentek Ascendant collection of five books a set, not a series. It is a single, contiguous story that takes up all five books. Although I have made (and continue to make) an effort to make each one viable as a work on its own, at the present time of edits, only Return (book I) and Minx (book II), in their most recent revisions, which are not yet available for direct sale, are set up that way.
Return was always set up that way - I wrote it as a stand-alone story from the beginning. I didn't even know I would ever be writing any more of the story until it was done and I had slogged through it several times (and believe me, back then, it was slogging). After a few (dozen) edits, I began to itch for more, and I decided to continue the story and make the rest of it less structured in how I wrote it, and it carried me through the whole set. Now, with the assistance of a few groups of reviewers of my writing, I am also going through Festival (book III), with at least the partial intent of "fixing" Chapter 1 so that a reader does not necessarily have to read Return and Minx to enjoy it.
Am I shooting myself in the foot here?
I hope not. I just want to make it easier for readers to get one and want them all. I know that this will be much harder for me to do with Metamorphoses (IV) or, especially, Reckoning (V) because the story is a romance in addition to all the adventure and swords and sorcery and other stuff, and there is a suspense element built in as well - who did this to whom and why and how pervasive is this insidious plot? The reader might not appreciate the love story or the whole plot if they just start with Metamorphoses, for example.
My recommendation?
Get the whole set. I promise that it will be worth the read, unless you really hate high fantasy adventure romance epics. Heck, you might even like it anyway!
Let me know what you think....
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Zentek Ascendant complete (old news)
As some of you have probably noticed already, mainly because this is such a late announcement, the Zentek Ascendant story is complete. All five ebooks are now available.
So why am I calling it a story instead of a series? See below, about two paragraphs.
I've also posted an offer on the home page - buy the print edition of book I, Return and email me a proof of purchase, and I'll give you all five ebooks F*R*E*E. That's currently around a $15 value, if you consider ebooks as having value.
I've also modified my home page rather dramatically. Take a look and see what you think, and tell me. The opening page has lots of links to click through to the main site (which is called page 2, now), but it will automatically redirect there after about 20 seconds. I've been told I should get rid of that front page - what do you think?
As for why the "story" vs. "series" distinction? To me, this is all one, long story that just doesn't fit well into a single book. It's not a series any more than the Lord of the Rings is a series - it's just one story that fits better into three volumes, five in my case.
For example, the Dune series is just that - a series of single volume stories that are part of a larger universe but aren't all the same, single story about the same people. The Xanth series by Piers Anthony is also a series, along similar categorical lines.
On the other hand, the Belgariad by David Eddings is more like a single, long story in five books. In some respects, mine is a lot like that, only the "coming of age" aspect in my books is quite different from Eddings'.
Take a look, see what you think, and tell me, please! Comments welcome.
So why am I calling it a story instead of a series? See below, about two paragraphs.
I've also posted an offer on the home page - buy the print edition of book I, Return and email me a proof of purchase, and I'll give you all five ebooks F*R*E*E. That's currently around a $15 value, if you consider ebooks as having value.
I've also modified my home page rather dramatically. Take a look and see what you think, and tell me. The opening page has lots of links to click through to the main site (which is called page 2, now), but it will automatically redirect there after about 20 seconds. I've been told I should get rid of that front page - what do you think?
As for why the "story" vs. "series" distinction? To me, this is all one, long story that just doesn't fit well into a single book. It's not a series any more than the Lord of the Rings is a series - it's just one story that fits better into three volumes, five in my case.
For example, the Dune series is just that - a series of single volume stories that are part of a larger universe but aren't all the same, single story about the same people. The Xanth series by Piers Anthony is also a series, along similar categorical lines.
On the other hand, the Belgariad by David Eddings is more like a single, long story in five books. In some respects, mine is a lot like that, only the "coming of age" aspect in my books is quite different from Eddings'.
Take a look, see what you think, and tell me, please! Comments welcome.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
"Metamorphoses," Latest Editions Released
After weeks of slaving over the keyboard,...
Wait a second! You don't really want to hear about that, do you?
It's been a while since I posted anything here, so I figured I'm way overdue. You've been so patient, waiting for me to get my head out of, er, the dark, and I've been so, ah, busy. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Okay, enough fooling around. For now.
Metamorphoses, Zentek Ascendant, Book IV is now available in ebook format at my website. It took me a while, but I think the wait will be worthwhile because it's better than ever, and it brings you closer to the conclusion with some great new insights, revelations and a soaring romantic edge that - never mind, just read it! :-)
I also released the latest and greatest editions of Minx and Festival, improving their flow and style to be more consistent, more fun, more absorbing, more - I could go on all day; wouldn't you rather just get them and decide for yourself? I slashed the prices a while back because, although I still think they're worth lots more, I'd rather have readers than high prices or a whopping big income from them. I'd love to have a whopping big income - who wouldn't - but I realize that these are ebooks, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails, and I can't see driving potential readers away with "real book" prices for the files.
I have another idea: if you like what you see, buy the print edition of Return, whose print title is Zentek Ascendant, Book I: Return (don't ask, please), and I'll give you all five ebooks for free, including Reckoning as soon as it becomes available. The print editions, both soft and hard cover, are available directly from Xlibris.com, or on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others. As far as I can tell, B&N (barnesandnoble.com) has it for the lowest price so far, so get it there.
Comments? Questions? Nasty remarks? Feel free to post on the blog, or email me directly at zentektales@gmail.com. I love getting feedback of all kinds, and I have the leather skin to prove it!
Wait a second! You don't really want to hear about that, do you?
It's been a while since I posted anything here, so I figured I'm way overdue. You've been so patient, waiting for me to get my head out of, er, the dark, and I've been so, ah, busy. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Okay, enough fooling around. For now.
Metamorphoses, Zentek Ascendant, Book IV is now available in ebook format at my website. It took me a while, but I think the wait will be worthwhile because it's better than ever, and it brings you closer to the conclusion with some great new insights, revelations and a soaring romantic edge that - never mind, just read it! :-)
I also released the latest and greatest editions of Minx and Festival, improving their flow and style to be more consistent, more fun, more absorbing, more - I could go on all day; wouldn't you rather just get them and decide for yourself? I slashed the prices a while back because, although I still think they're worth lots more, I'd rather have readers than high prices or a whopping big income from them. I'd love to have a whopping big income - who wouldn't - but I realize that these are ebooks, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails, and I can't see driving potential readers away with "real book" prices for the files.
I have another idea: if you like what you see, buy the print edition of Return, whose print title is Zentek Ascendant, Book I: Return (don't ask, please), and I'll give you all five ebooks for free, including Reckoning as soon as it becomes available. The print editions, both soft and hard cover, are available directly from Xlibris.com, or on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others. As far as I can tell, B&N (barnesandnoble.com) has it for the lowest price so far, so get it there.
Comments? Questions? Nasty remarks? Feel free to post on the blog, or email me directly at zentektales@gmail.com. I love getting feedback of all kinds, and I have the leather skin to prove it!
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Now available for less!
Before you read any further, this is not a come-on for some massive, super-discount program that will save you gobs and gobs of money. That is, unless you buy a whole lot of my books.... :-)
I did a little survey a while back and discovered that a lot of other fantasy ebooks are selling for significantly less than I was asking for mine. I began to think about that and wondered - what was I thinking?
I was thinking that I worked hard on these books, they represent a lot of effort on my part, I deserve compensation, blah, blah, blah. All of that is true, more or less, (except the blah, blah, blah part). Then I started thinking, is that what I really want?
The answer to that is no.
Okay, so yes, I do want a lot of money, who doesn't? Even the ultra-rich (always) want more.
But that's not the point.
What I really want is a lot of readers who are willing to buy my work because they like it and they're willing to pay a little bit to get it. After all, these are ebooks, not something you can just hold in your hand and pick up and put down, like a "real" book (unless you have an ebook reader that handles encrypted PDFs and looks sort of like a book...). That means you can either read it on a computer, which can be somewhat simple if you have a netbook and really good eyesight, or you can print it out and carry around a sheaf of paper that is too thick to staple together with a normal stapler, even if you print it 2-up, back to back, or even smaller.
I can't sit at a computer long enough to read a whole book any more, even when I'm not editing it. (I used to be able to, but that's a long story, not for here.) My book won't generate any more income for you, unlike others priced at $20 and up that might, if you're diligent, lucky, a good salesperson, etc., etc.
So, I blew the prices down to a genuinely reasonable low that probably will never get any lower because, well, they are worth that much. I won't quote the prices here, but you can get at them easily on my home page, http://zentektales.com.
What do you think? Let me know - post a comment, send an email, or buy a book! :-)
By the way, I promise I will have Metamorphoses out this month, along with new editions of Minx and Festival, and Reckoning will be out next month. They really are almost done - just one more quick (ha ha ha!) clean-up editing pass.
Tell you what - if you buy now, or any time for that matter, when a new edition of any of my ebooks becomes available, I will email you a free update, unless you tell me not to do that. Is that better?
Before I forget, Return is now available on Amazon and other on-line retailers. If you search on Amazon for "Zentek Ascendant," you'll find it. If not, google for ISBNs 978-1-4415-3593-1 (paperback) or 978-1-4415-3594-8 (hardback) and be aware - I can't change those prices, directly. Check my web page - I'll be putting together a discount offer as soon as the whole set is out in ebooks.
Thanks for reading!
I did a little survey a while back and discovered that a lot of other fantasy ebooks are selling for significantly less than I was asking for mine. I began to think about that and wondered - what was I thinking?
I was thinking that I worked hard on these books, they represent a lot of effort on my part, I deserve compensation, blah, blah, blah. All of that is true, more or less, (except the blah, blah, blah part). Then I started thinking, is that what I really want?
The answer to that is no.
Okay, so yes, I do want a lot of money, who doesn't? Even the ultra-rich (always) want more.
But that's not the point.
What I really want is a lot of readers who are willing to buy my work because they like it and they're willing to pay a little bit to get it. After all, these are ebooks, not something you can just hold in your hand and pick up and put down, like a "real" book (unless you have an ebook reader that handles encrypted PDFs and looks sort of like a book...). That means you can either read it on a computer, which can be somewhat simple if you have a netbook and really good eyesight, or you can print it out and carry around a sheaf of paper that is too thick to staple together with a normal stapler, even if you print it 2-up, back to back, or even smaller.
I can't sit at a computer long enough to read a whole book any more, even when I'm not editing it. (I used to be able to, but that's a long story, not for here.) My book won't generate any more income for you, unlike others priced at $20 and up that might, if you're diligent, lucky, a good salesperson, etc., etc.
So, I blew the prices down to a genuinely reasonable low that probably will never get any lower because, well, they are worth that much. I won't quote the prices here, but you can get at them easily on my home page, http://zentektales.com.
What do you think? Let me know - post a comment, send an email, or buy a book! :-)
By the way, I promise I will have Metamorphoses out this month, along with new editions of Minx and Festival, and Reckoning will be out next month. They really are almost done - just one more quick (ha ha ha!) clean-up editing pass.
Tell you what - if you buy now, or any time for that matter, when a new edition of any of my ebooks becomes available, I will email you a free update, unless you tell me not to do that. Is that better?
Before I forget, Return is now available on Amazon and other on-line retailers. If you search on Amazon for "Zentek Ascendant," you'll find it. If not, google for ISBNs 978-1-4415-3593-1 (paperback) or 978-1-4415-3594-8 (hardback) and be aware - I can't change those prices, directly. Check my web page - I'll be putting together a discount offer as soon as the whole set is out in ebooks.
Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Just a quickie - news flash!
A couple of things:
1. Ignore my last posting - DO BUY THE EBOOKS!
2. But wait for my next posting - I've finished all five of the series, but I'm in the process of re-editing. Should be done in a week or so, and there will be all new, lower prices, and a new cover for Return.
So rush right out and - er - come back in a week or so! (Ha ha ha!)
I'll send out notices when they're all done.
BTW, let me know what you think - comments are possible, so don't be shy....
1. Ignore my last posting - DO BUY THE EBOOKS!
2. But wait for my next posting - I've finished all five of the series, but I'm in the process of re-editing. Should be done in a week or so, and there will be all new, lower prices, and a new cover for Return.
So rush right out and - er - come back in a week or so! (Ha ha ha!)
I'll send out notices when they're all done.
BTW, let me know what you think - comments are possible, so don't be shy....
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
DON'T BUY THIS EBOOK!
What? Has he gone crazy? You may well be wondering....
I figure I've already told you why you should buy my story, so let me play devil's advocate for a few lines here and try to talk you into buying by showing you why someone else should not. (Did I lose you? Stick around, it will become clear enough.)
1. You don't really like fantasy adventure stories.
Good enough for me - what are you doing here anyway?
Oh, heck, I can't give up that easily. Have you ever read a fantasy adventure story? A classic myth? A fairy tale? If you have and you didn't hate it, give Return a shot. Ebooks are not that expensive, and you can read them on your computer, your laptop, your netbook, your ebook reader, or you can do it the hard way: print it out and read the hard copy. (Okay, that pun was not intended, but it's there, I'm not deleting it!) Now, if you have an inkjet printer, this could take some time. Even my laser printer takes a while to print the whole book. "But it's 232 pages!" you protest. Yes, it is. It's also a PDF, so you can print it out in multiple pages per sheet, though I wouldn't recommend anything smaller that 2 pages side by side unless you also have high quality magnifying lenses....
2. You don't like ebooks.
It's available in print, too. Come and visit and follow the link! I should warn you, though, it's a lot more than the ebook (I have no control over the publisher's price). If you want to wait another month or two, it will be available from Amazon.com, probably at a discount. I'll announce that here and elsewhere when it is (big time!). If you don't mind a wait, I'll be collecting orders for discounted sales in a few days - visit the web site and check occasionally.
3. You don't like game-based books.
Frankly, I don't blame you. In the more usual case, you're entering a fantasy world created by one or more other people, then reading someone else's filtered view of that world. It's like reading a story that takes place in Middle Earth, not written by J.R.R. Tolkien, or a Narnia story written by someone other than C.S. Lewis. Sometimes this works, but....
Fear NOT! This is different. I wrote the game, and only about a dozen people have ever played it! Not only that, it isn't published, so the only point of view you are stuck with is mine. In fact, the game has little to no impact on the story - you don't need to know anything about the game to enjoy the book. I could just as easily have written the story without the game, it just so happened I wrote the game first.
4. You don't like series stories.
Me either. "Oh, right! You always write things you don't like!" you say. Let me ask you this - do you think that The Lord of the Rings is a series story?
The Zentek Ascendant series is really one, long story broken into five reasonably sized, conveniently separated volumes, and you don't even need to read all five (although it is best as a whole). You could buy Return and stop there. You could start with Minx and stop there. I'll admit that the last three really do depend on each of their predecessors, more than the first two, but, if you don't mind starting or landing in the middle of a long story, they're all good on their own. In my (not so) humble opinion, of course!
5. "So, you think you're as good as Tolkien, or Lewis?"
You tell me - buy the book, or the whole story (all five books), and tell me. I wouldn't undertake such a comparison - I've been told that my writing is good, but that's from a fairly small, pretty friendly and sympathetic select non-group of readers, and a lot of it is NOT about these books at all. I could tell you that my books are the best you'll ever read, and they might be, but I have no illusions on that score. Again, you tell me. Please. :-)
6. Why should you feed my ego?
Not one good reason comes to mind. I didn't write the books to get an ego boost. I wrote them because I couldn't NOT write them. There was a story inside me, bursting to get out, and I had to write it down. I enjoyed it so much, I wanted others (like you) to have the same experience, or better. For all I know, your imagination will take your experience of the book way beyond where it took me.
You could also hate it - not all fantasy is for everyone, and I may just not be your cup of fantasy-tea. The nice thing about books is that, if you don't like one, you can pass it on to someone else (maybe with a little compensation for your initial expense in buying it). You might not like it, but you have a friend or two who might.
So, to sum up, don't buy this book.
Really.
Buy the whole story! Share it with your friends!
Most important of all, enjoy yourself.
I figure I've already told you why you should buy my story, so let me play devil's advocate for a few lines here and try to talk you into buying by showing you why someone else should not. (Did I lose you? Stick around, it will become clear enough.)
1. You don't really like fantasy adventure stories.
Good enough for me - what are you doing here anyway?
Oh, heck, I can't give up that easily. Have you ever read a fantasy adventure story? A classic myth? A fairy tale? If you have and you didn't hate it, give Return a shot. Ebooks are not that expensive, and you can read them on your computer, your laptop, your netbook, your ebook reader, or you can do it the hard way: print it out and read the hard copy. (Okay, that pun was not intended, but it's there, I'm not deleting it!) Now, if you have an inkjet printer, this could take some time. Even my laser printer takes a while to print the whole book. "But it's 232 pages!" you protest. Yes, it is. It's also a PDF, so you can print it out in multiple pages per sheet, though I wouldn't recommend anything smaller that 2 pages side by side unless you also have high quality magnifying lenses....
2. You don't like ebooks.
It's available in print, too. Come and visit and follow the link! I should warn you, though, it's a lot more than the ebook (I have no control over the publisher's price). If you want to wait another month or two, it will be available from Amazon.com, probably at a discount. I'll announce that here and elsewhere when it is (big time!). If you don't mind a wait, I'll be collecting orders for discounted sales in a few days - visit the web site and check occasionally.
3. You don't like game-based books.
Frankly, I don't blame you. In the more usual case, you're entering a fantasy world created by one or more other people, then reading someone else's filtered view of that world. It's like reading a story that takes place in Middle Earth, not written by J.R.R. Tolkien, or a Narnia story written by someone other than C.S. Lewis. Sometimes this works, but....
Fear NOT! This is different. I wrote the game, and only about a dozen people have ever played it! Not only that, it isn't published, so the only point of view you are stuck with is mine. In fact, the game has little to no impact on the story - you don't need to know anything about the game to enjoy the book. I could just as easily have written the story without the game, it just so happened I wrote the game first.
4. You don't like series stories.
Me either. "Oh, right! You always write things you don't like!" you say. Let me ask you this - do you think that The Lord of the Rings is a series story?
The Zentek Ascendant series is really one, long story broken into five reasonably sized, conveniently separated volumes, and you don't even need to read all five (although it is best as a whole). You could buy Return and stop there. You could start with Minx and stop there. I'll admit that the last three really do depend on each of their predecessors, more than the first two, but, if you don't mind starting or landing in the middle of a long story, they're all good on their own. In my (not so) humble opinion, of course!
5. "So, you think you're as good as Tolkien, or Lewis?"
You tell me - buy the book, or the whole story (all five books), and tell me. I wouldn't undertake such a comparison - I've been told that my writing is good, but that's from a fairly small, pretty friendly and sympathetic select non-group of readers, and a lot of it is NOT about these books at all. I could tell you that my books are the best you'll ever read, and they might be, but I have no illusions on that score. Again, you tell me. Please. :-)
6. Why should you feed my ego?
Not one good reason comes to mind. I didn't write the books to get an ego boost. I wrote them because I couldn't NOT write them. There was a story inside me, bursting to get out, and I had to write it down. I enjoyed it so much, I wanted others (like you) to have the same experience, or better. For all I know, your imagination will take your experience of the book way beyond where it took me.
You could also hate it - not all fantasy is for everyone, and I may just not be your cup of fantasy-tea. The nice thing about books is that, if you don't like one, you can pass it on to someone else (maybe with a little compensation for your initial expense in buying it). You might not like it, but you have a friend or two who might.
So, to sum up, don't buy this book.
Really.
Buy the whole story! Share it with your friends!
Most important of all, enjoy yourself.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
What's so great about this series?
That's a presumptuous question. How can I tell you why my own work is so great that you just have to put everything else down, get it, read it, enjoy it, and spread the word?
Heh, heh - I just did! :-)
Seriously, I looked over an article yesterday that talks about what's wrong with modern fantasy epics - mostly series, game based, badly written, old plots, flat characters and so on. For what it's worth, these are not particularly specific to fantasy epics at all - pretty much anything that has been written can have these flaws. They do tend to be more pronounced in fantasy epics because, in these, you're entering a different world, one that is fairly close to the author's heart and most likely quite personal, even if it takes place here and now on Earth.
Little things like consistency of the world, the scenes depicted therein, how complete the world creation is or was, can make a novel more or less worth reading depending on their quality. If the world is internally inconsistent, or there are holes in the presentation, these can hurt worse than just bad writing. If the author is just spinning a tale to make some money, or for any other surface reason that is not related to a deep commitment to a good story on a world that is as real to them as they want it to be to you, the reader, it won't fly.
One of the most sensitive of these sore spots is old plots. Even the greatest works of fantasy literature use or reuse old plots, some older and more used than others. J.R.R. Tolkien used themes from mythological bases and older works of fantasy, in addition to the very real experience he had just completed, having lived through the most horrendous event of his day, World War II, in creating the Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis used one of the older and more popular themes in western civilization for the background of the Narnia series - Christianity. The successful writers in fantasy epics find new ways to tell old stories, mixing them in different ways with new approaches, etc., etc.
You already knew all that, right?
What I've been beating around here is my own work (surprise!). My primary work so far is a five book series, collectively entitled Zentek Ascendant. If you've been reading any of this, you already know that this is a game-based series of books. Uh, oh, that's two of the potential pitfalls of a good fantasy epic. I'll get to the others shortly.
The world I used for my backdrop was from a game I wrote. That's just how it happened. My original intent in creating the game was to play a really good game that had some new features in it I hadn't seen in other games, and eight or nine other people helped me play-test it for almost seven years. Then I had this crazy idea that if I wrote a book based on the game, I might have better marketing luck with the game. (That has nothing to do with marketing - don't try this yourself!) The advantage that this created for me was a consistent world with "natural laws" I could follow when creating a story about it. The game is not published, or even available in any form right now, except these books. As much as I like it, I like the books far, far better.
I've also found that series can get really tired after a while. I've burned out on several of them myself, mainly because I became accustomed to the author's style and didn't see enough in the continuing (never-ending?) stories that was of value to me. There were a few that I stopped reading because the stories went off in directions I didn't like.
So, why on Earth would I write my own? Am I nuts? Maybe. Originally, I just wanted to write a story that followed a game-driven adventure, and it was awful - really, truly awful. It was hard to read, hard to follow, stiff, contrived and so on. I wouldn't even consider trying to sell that - thing - now. It was so bad that I had to try another story, one that would be easier to read, even for me. I started writing something else - a continuation of the first book, but from an entirely different perspective. This time, I was just going to tell a story, from my head onto paper (okay, into a computer), and see where that took me. Six books later, I had a monster on my hands. I wanted a trilogy and instead wound up with seven books of widely varying lengths and content. I've reorganized, edited and re-shaped it several times, and the pentology it now comprises is the best way to read it.
In case you're worried about book 1, you can rest assured that I have edited it for years, probably close to a hundred times. When I read it, I enjoy it - I think it reads well, is interesting enough and paced to keep your attention all the way to the end, even though there is more ahead. It has none of the original flaws any more, and editing it for publication was more fun than I expected. (Yes, it's available in print.)
What does all that mean? I have one story to offer, it just takes five books to tell properly and completely. Is it well-written? Of course! How can you ask? However, I can't judge my own work from a sufficiently impartial objective to say. I can tell you that I've read it through dozens of times, and I enjoy it all the way through. When I go back and look at one of the books and say to myself, "Ugh - another edit? Why do I do this?" that feeling goes away within a page or two, and after that it's hard to stop and make a change.
Are there old plots? Almost certainly, though I made no conscious effort to include any. I've read enough mythology, fantasy, fairy tales and science fiction that some of this comes out in my writing. That said, this work is all original, both in the themes and the way the characters handle them, with enough connected subplots to keep the story grounded in (a fantasy) reality. Life is not just one simple story that fits together end-to-end. Are the characters flat? Not to me - they are quite real, and they are not based on any other characters in any other stories. (Okay, there are a number of conventional inter-character relationships that have been used before, but all in new ways. Trust me! :-)
Zentek Ascendant means "zentek on the rise," which does kind of encapsulate the main thrust of the story. I also thought it was a catchy name. The five books are Return, Minx, Festival (which are all available as ebooks), Metamorphoses (which should be finished this month, I hope) and Reckoning (which is awaiting a final proof-read once Metamorphoses is done). Take a look and see how much you like them. Return is priced low so you won't be out too much money even if you hate it, and you won't.
Enjoy!
Heh, heh - I just did! :-)
Seriously, I looked over an article yesterday that talks about what's wrong with modern fantasy epics - mostly series, game based, badly written, old plots, flat characters and so on. For what it's worth, these are not particularly specific to fantasy epics at all - pretty much anything that has been written can have these flaws. They do tend to be more pronounced in fantasy epics because, in these, you're entering a different world, one that is fairly close to the author's heart and most likely quite personal, even if it takes place here and now on Earth.
Little things like consistency of the world, the scenes depicted therein, how complete the world creation is or was, can make a novel more or less worth reading depending on their quality. If the world is internally inconsistent, or there are holes in the presentation, these can hurt worse than just bad writing. If the author is just spinning a tale to make some money, or for any other surface reason that is not related to a deep commitment to a good story on a world that is as real to them as they want it to be to you, the reader, it won't fly.
One of the most sensitive of these sore spots is old plots. Even the greatest works of fantasy literature use or reuse old plots, some older and more used than others. J.R.R. Tolkien used themes from mythological bases and older works of fantasy, in addition to the very real experience he had just completed, having lived through the most horrendous event of his day, World War II, in creating the Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis used one of the older and more popular themes in western civilization for the background of the Narnia series - Christianity. The successful writers in fantasy epics find new ways to tell old stories, mixing them in different ways with new approaches, etc., etc.
You already knew all that, right?
What I've been beating around here is my own work (surprise!). My primary work so far is a five book series, collectively entitled Zentek Ascendant. If you've been reading any of this, you already know that this is a game-based series of books. Uh, oh, that's two of the potential pitfalls of a good fantasy epic. I'll get to the others shortly.
The world I used for my backdrop was from a game I wrote. That's just how it happened. My original intent in creating the game was to play a really good game that had some new features in it I hadn't seen in other games, and eight or nine other people helped me play-test it for almost seven years. Then I had this crazy idea that if I wrote a book based on the game, I might have better marketing luck with the game. (That has nothing to do with marketing - don't try this yourself!) The advantage that this created for me was a consistent world with "natural laws" I could follow when creating a story about it. The game is not published, or even available in any form right now, except these books. As much as I like it, I like the books far, far better.
I've also found that series can get really tired after a while. I've burned out on several of them myself, mainly because I became accustomed to the author's style and didn't see enough in the continuing (never-ending?) stories that was of value to me. There were a few that I stopped reading because the stories went off in directions I didn't like.
So, why on Earth would I write my own? Am I nuts? Maybe. Originally, I just wanted to write a story that followed a game-driven adventure, and it was awful - really, truly awful. It was hard to read, hard to follow, stiff, contrived and so on. I wouldn't even consider trying to sell that - thing - now. It was so bad that I had to try another story, one that would be easier to read, even for me. I started writing something else - a continuation of the first book, but from an entirely different perspective. This time, I was just going to tell a story, from my head onto paper (okay, into a computer), and see where that took me. Six books later, I had a monster on my hands. I wanted a trilogy and instead wound up with seven books of widely varying lengths and content. I've reorganized, edited and re-shaped it several times, and the pentology it now comprises is the best way to read it.
In case you're worried about book 1, you can rest assured that I have edited it for years, probably close to a hundred times. When I read it, I enjoy it - I think it reads well, is interesting enough and paced to keep your attention all the way to the end, even though there is more ahead. It has none of the original flaws any more, and editing it for publication was more fun than I expected. (Yes, it's available in print.)
What does all that mean? I have one story to offer, it just takes five books to tell properly and completely. Is it well-written? Of course! How can you ask? However, I can't judge my own work from a sufficiently impartial objective to say. I can tell you that I've read it through dozens of times, and I enjoy it all the way through. When I go back and look at one of the books and say to myself, "Ugh - another edit? Why do I do this?" that feeling goes away within a page or two, and after that it's hard to stop and make a change.
Are there old plots? Almost certainly, though I made no conscious effort to include any. I've read enough mythology, fantasy, fairy tales and science fiction that some of this comes out in my writing. That said, this work is all original, both in the themes and the way the characters handle them, with enough connected subplots to keep the story grounded in (a fantasy) reality. Life is not just one simple story that fits together end-to-end. Are the characters flat? Not to me - they are quite real, and they are not based on any other characters in any other stories. (Okay, there are a number of conventional inter-character relationships that have been used before, but all in new ways. Trust me! :-)
Zentek Ascendant means "zentek on the rise," which does kind of encapsulate the main thrust of the story. I also thought it was a catchy name. The five books are Return, Minx, Festival (which are all available as ebooks), Metamorphoses (which should be finished this month, I hope) and Reckoning (which is awaiting a final proof-read once Metamorphoses is done). Take a look and see how much you like them. Return is priced low so you won't be out too much money even if you hate it, and you won't.
Enjoy!
Friday, June 26, 2009
What is a zentek?
So what is a zentek?
A long time ago, near the dawn of the fantasy role-playing game era, there were essentially three kinds of characters - warriors or some variant thereof, religious spell-casters and secular spell-casters. In EPT, they were warriors, priest and magic-users. Being a big fan of "Ill Met In Lankhmar" by the great Fritz Leiber, I also rather liked the idea of a thief character class. D&D picked that one up a long time ago, so even though I used thieves as one of the primary classes, I wanted something new, something I had not seen in any game I'd researched. I liked the ideas of spell-casters whose extraordinary capabilities came from divine worship (priests) or from incantations, with or without some kind of "power word," or magicians.
However, I also wanted to see a rare but occasional type of character whose abilities, or powers, came from within, who had fairly clearly defined abilities that still had flexibility, and whose beginnings were modest, but built up through experience (and survival) to become quite powerful in the advanced stages. They also had to have some kind of behavioral constraints, if for no other reason than that with enormous power comes enormous responsibility. These characters would be loosely based on a mix of mutants (a la the comic-world's X-men and Inhumans), martial arts practitioners (along the lines of Shao Lin priests), zen monks and the insatiably curious who devote their lives to the study of how the universe works.
Thus was born the zentek - a "warrior of the spirit," one who takes life as it comes, who prefers to avoid violence even though they are quite capable of delivering it, who preserves nature but has the curiosity and drive to explore and develop as much as possible along the way.
The official description from the (unpublished) game rules, slightly paraphrased, is this:
The Zentek Order acknowledges the fundamental harmony of all things, and they study skill disciplines which center around their development as human beings interacting with and, ultimately, controlling forces of the physical and transphysical universe. Zenteks use neither weapons nor armor, they have no guild language like other [guilds], and they are philosophically opposed to combat under almost any circumstances, although they can be very good at it. Zenteks do not feel themselves to be in competition with anyone for anything, thus making them generally friendlier than sorcerers to other [characters]. However, they are just as much unique individuals as any other characters, and personalities will vary (as they should). Zenteks must have exceptional intelligence, extremely high life force, with all other character attributes above average. The potential zentek must apply at a Zentek Sanctuary (their meditation and education centers, which are usually easy to locate, since the Order is always looking for new members and such are somewhat scarce) to be admitted. The novice must then spend four years at that center learning the first three of the Zentek Order disciplines. Learning the first discipline normally requires two whole years of study, but it results in an immediate increase in self-awareness and control, thus raising the zentek's life force.
Zenteks study sixteen clearly defined disciplines, a cross between straight skills and spell-like powers, that range from self-awareness and control at the beginning to amazing energy powers towards the mastery end of the spectrum, with certain absolute restrictions that keep them viable as characters of interest. This may seem to be limited, but the ways in which these disciplines can be applied can be as creative as the players or, in this case, the author.
It's not always easy for zenteks, and it shouldn't be. Otherwise, zenteks would dominate the game, or the world, and become boring really fast. So, they cannot use weapons or armor of any kind. They are sworn not to initiate or provoke any kind of violence, though they may defend themselves in any way they feel necessary to survive. Above all, they may never harm natural animals - those which have no innate, rational, "human" intelligence (as if humans actually had any), and are both alive and unaltered by any kind of magic, even if the zentek's life is at stake.
In game terms, they are rare, and a tricky combination of player imagination and referee discrimination. For characters in a book, they may be completely unnecessary. Of course, in the Zentek Tales, they are the author's delight.
I like to think of them as sonnet-characters - there is a specific form into which they must fit, but within that form, they are unlimited.
A long time ago, near the dawn of the fantasy role-playing game era, there were essentially three kinds of characters - warriors or some variant thereof, religious spell-casters and secular spell-casters. In EPT, they were warriors, priest and magic-users. Being a big fan of "Ill Met In Lankhmar" by the great Fritz Leiber, I also rather liked the idea of a thief character class. D&D picked that one up a long time ago, so even though I used thieves as one of the primary classes, I wanted something new, something I had not seen in any game I'd researched. I liked the ideas of spell-casters whose extraordinary capabilities came from divine worship (priests) or from incantations, with or without some kind of "power word," or magicians.
However, I also wanted to see a rare but occasional type of character whose abilities, or powers, came from within, who had fairly clearly defined abilities that still had flexibility, and whose beginnings were modest, but built up through experience (and survival) to become quite powerful in the advanced stages. They also had to have some kind of behavioral constraints, if for no other reason than that with enormous power comes enormous responsibility. These characters would be loosely based on a mix of mutants (a la the comic-world's X-men and Inhumans), martial arts practitioners (along the lines of Shao Lin priests), zen monks and the insatiably curious who devote their lives to the study of how the universe works.
Thus was born the zentek - a "warrior of the spirit," one who takes life as it comes, who prefers to avoid violence even though they are quite capable of delivering it, who preserves nature but has the curiosity and drive to explore and develop as much as possible along the way.
The official description from the (unpublished) game rules, slightly paraphrased, is this:
The Zentek Order acknowledges the fundamental harmony of all things, and they study skill disciplines which center around their development as human beings interacting with and, ultimately, controlling forces of the physical and transphysical universe. Zenteks use neither weapons nor armor, they have no guild language like other [guilds], and they are philosophically opposed to combat under almost any circumstances, although they can be very good at it. Zenteks do not feel themselves to be in competition with anyone for anything, thus making them generally friendlier than sorcerers to other [characters]. However, they are just as much unique individuals as any other characters, and personalities will vary (as they should). Zenteks must have exceptional intelligence, extremely high life force, with all other character attributes above average. The potential zentek must apply at a Zentek Sanctuary (their meditation and education centers, which are usually easy to locate, since the Order is always looking for new members and such are somewhat scarce) to be admitted. The novice must then spend four years at that center learning the first three of the Zentek Order disciplines. Learning the first discipline normally requires two whole years of study, but it results in an immediate increase in self-awareness and control, thus raising the zentek's life force.
Zenteks study sixteen clearly defined disciplines, a cross between straight skills and spell-like powers, that range from self-awareness and control at the beginning to amazing energy powers towards the mastery end of the spectrum, with certain absolute restrictions that keep them viable as characters of interest. This may seem to be limited, but the ways in which these disciplines can be applied can be as creative as the players or, in this case, the author.
It's not always easy for zenteks, and it shouldn't be. Otherwise, zenteks would dominate the game, or the world, and become boring really fast. So, they cannot use weapons or armor of any kind. They are sworn not to initiate or provoke any kind of violence, though they may defend themselves in any way they feel necessary to survive. Above all, they may never harm natural animals - those which have no innate, rational, "human" intelligence (as if humans actually had any), and are both alive and unaltered by any kind of magic, even if the zentek's life is at stake.
In game terms, they are rare, and a tricky combination of player imagination and referee discrimination. For characters in a book, they may be completely unnecessary. Of course, in the Zentek Tales, they are the author's delight.
I like to think of them as sonnet-characters - there is a specific form into which they must fit, but within that form, they are unlimited.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
What are Zentek Tales?
You may be wondering, what is a "zentek tale" and why should you care? Actually, you're probably also wondering, what is a zentek anyway?
The easiest part of the above multi-part question is the caring part - because it's fantasy-adventure material!
In order to explain this properly, a little history is in order. I promise to keep this short.
Back in 1977, I was in the Navy, on a ship that had just steamed up to San Francisco for a 2-3 year stint in drydock. As a navigation specialist, I can assure you that being in drydock is like being bored out of your skull - what kind of navigation does one need to do when the ship isn't even in the water?
(Answer: none - we do grunt work, like sandblasting the hull, and boatloads of paperwork!)
My best friend at that time came to invite me to this really neat thing going on down in one of the other crewmen's room - a game unlike anything else I'd ever heard of. It was called "The Empire of the Petal Throne," and he said it was a lot like D&D. (I wasn't really up on most of this sort of thing, but I knew roughly what that meant.)
To keep this short, let's just say that, as a long-time fan and avid reader of fantasy fiction, I was completely captivated. I took this game home (which, by the way, saved my sanity, or at least I think it did) and continued to play and referee (act as the dungeonmaster) the game, convincing my fiancee and some college buddies to join me as well. (We even once did a 24-hour scenario involving 100 player-characters - crazy, eh?) When I graduated and got my first job as a software developer, I found other allies in our quest for adventure, and some new games.
For a while, I toyed with the idea of taking some of the concepts I found in several of the games and combining them into EPT, but the more I worked on this, the more it became clear that I was doing what I saw as "other people's work." So, I invented my own fantasy role-playing game, containing elements of many of the games I'd seen, read and played, but with a heavy content of as much original material as I could dream up.
A large portion of that original material was devoted to the invention of the zentek character type, and upon this the idea of the Zentek Tales is based.
Okay, you say to yourself, got that much. Now, what is a zentek? A zentek is what I called the spirit-warrior character type in the game, but they are neither spirits nor warriors.
It's late and this is getting kind of long, so I'll explain that in my next post!
The easiest part of the above multi-part question is the caring part - because it's fantasy-adventure material!
In order to explain this properly, a little history is in order. I promise to keep this short.
Back in 1977, I was in the Navy, on a ship that had just steamed up to San Francisco for a 2-3 year stint in drydock. As a navigation specialist, I can assure you that being in drydock is like being bored out of your skull - what kind of navigation does one need to do when the ship isn't even in the water?
(Answer: none - we do grunt work, like sandblasting the hull, and boatloads of paperwork!)
My best friend at that time came to invite me to this really neat thing going on down in one of the other crewmen's room - a game unlike anything else I'd ever heard of. It was called "The Empire of the Petal Throne," and he said it was a lot like D&D. (I wasn't really up on most of this sort of thing, but I knew roughly what that meant.)
To keep this short, let's just say that, as a long-time fan and avid reader of fantasy fiction, I was completely captivated. I took this game home (which, by the way, saved my sanity, or at least I think it did) and continued to play and referee (act as the dungeonmaster) the game, convincing my fiancee and some college buddies to join me as well. (We even once did a 24-hour scenario involving 100 player-characters - crazy, eh?) When I graduated and got my first job as a software developer, I found other allies in our quest for adventure, and some new games.
For a while, I toyed with the idea of taking some of the concepts I found in several of the games and combining them into EPT, but the more I worked on this, the more it became clear that I was doing what I saw as "other people's work." So, I invented my own fantasy role-playing game, containing elements of many of the games I'd seen, read and played, but with a heavy content of as much original material as I could dream up.
A large portion of that original material was devoted to the invention of the zentek character type, and upon this the idea of the Zentek Tales is based.
Okay, you say to yourself, got that much. Now, what is a zentek? A zentek is what I called the spirit-warrior character type in the game, but they are neither spirits nor warriors.
It's late and this is getting kind of long, so I'll explain that in my next post!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Web page caught up to reality - sort of...
My web page is now caught up to the most current state of ebookage (including prices, print editions, updated previews, etc.). Come on over and take a look.
Recommendations for other really good books welcome, too.
Recommendations for other really good books welcome, too.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Editing can be fun, too
Editing can be fun, in addition to improving the content of one's writing. I have found a number of places where little improvements popped up at me as I was going through my list of words to check. Of course, as I went, the list also began to grow. Initially, I found three words that I saw "too frequently" (to my eyes) that I thought might need to be altered in the content of each of the five books in my series. That list quickly grew to seventeen, and now stands at more than double that, with some grouped into categories. Many of these are fairly simple, consistency checks, to make sure I use the same style for all references to a particular character's name or title.
Some of them are kind of abstract, and the list just keeps getting longer. It now fills almost a whole page in what I think of as my deep background file, which contains my references on what should (or should have) happened when, changes I've made, back stories that aren't in the books, and the like. It could be viewed as a kind of outline file, but it was constructed mostly in reverse - after the stories were already written.
What does this mean? Delays in making the works available. I'm beginning to understand why Ms. Rowling took SO BLOODY LONG to come out with Deathly Hallows - getting it right doesn't come overnight.
Some of them are kind of abstract, and the list just keeps getting longer. It now fills almost a whole page in what I think of as my deep background file, which contains my references on what should (or should have) happened when, changes I've made, back stories that aren't in the books, and the like. It could be viewed as a kind of outline file, but it was constructed mostly in reverse - after the stories were already written.
What does this mean? Delays in making the works available. I'm beginning to understand why Ms. Rowling took SO BLOODY LONG to come out with Deathly Hallows - getting it right doesn't come overnight.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Now available in PRINT!
The really big news for the day is that the first book in the Zentek Ascendant fantasy-adventure epic series, Return, is now available in print - hardback and paperback.
Take a look! More information at http://zentektales.com, including previews of the first four books and ebooks of the first three. (Books 4 and 5 are still "in production....")
Take a look! More information at http://zentektales.com, including previews of the first four books and ebooks of the first three. (Books 4 and 5 are still "in production....")
Jumping in with both feet
Now available in print - Zentek Ascendant, Book I: Return
Zentek Ascendant, Book I: Return is the new, exciting swords-and-sorcery fantasy epic from new author Mark A. Richter.
"So captivating, I had to force myself to put it down, just to get anything else done." - Alex H.
Return's challenging adventures take place in a harsh, medieval world, a primitive throwback from a highly advanced civilization that totally collapsed millennia ago. Nature has regained control, and lack of technology has forced mankind and its non-human allies to depend on cooperation rather than coercion. People develop their abilities depending on their guild membership and its support. Some become great knights, clever thieves, or powerful sorcerers, while others struggle just to survive their lives of impoverished peasantry or miserable serfdom.
Christophane Lord, a zentek "spirit-warrior", is the duke of a small province in the chilly northeast corner of Idlewild. Darnak Sparre, a huge knight in the famous Kalsharia Cavalry, and Chris's best friend, serves their prince as Chris's bodyguard. An exquisite but ragged novice thief named Minx plays a small part at first, but watch closely as this insouciant, ferocious beauty makes her clandestine, provocative way into the heart of the tale.
The story begins in the vast southwestern Idlewild desert, where Chris and Darnak narrowly escape the first in a mysterious series of vicious assassination attempts. On their weary way home from an extended diplomatic assignment, they chance upon some hardy friends who join them along their journey, in spite, or maybe because, of the hazards they face. Besought by multiple obstacles of different terrains, rural inns and urban intrigue, they make their precarious course across the treacherous wilds over the many miles, overcoming diverse, often lethal challenges to their lives and skills along the way.
"Chris made it a point never to ignore his intuition discipline.
"He felt that small cringe in his mind warn of danger, imminent death ahead, as he and Darnak rode down the desert road. He reined in his horse. Hard.
"The horse reared, emitted a strange, weak snort and crashed to the ground. Chris leaped clear and tumbled to the cobbled road, his cloak flapping out around him, like a large, two-toned bird, sandy hued on top, dark blue-gray underneath. On his way down, for a fraction of a moment, he took in a glance of the fletching of an arrow that had pierced his horse's chest, not too far from where his own vulnerable midsection would have been. The zentek awareness he had honed for years paid off as his intuition saved his life. Again...."
Complete with a full color map of the entire western land mass of Wilderness, Return also includes a sneak preview of Book II: Minx.
Join Chris, Darnak and Minx in the first installment of the greatest adventure of their lifetimes....
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