My Best Books of 2018 List

I didn't read a lot of books this year, but the ones I did read were excellent. Many of them are series and I'm looking forward for more to come from those authors. And here we go...

I actually haven't finished this one yet. I'm half way done and won't manage to finish by midnight. That's OK. I've read enough to know that it's one of the best books I've read this year. Great world building, cool characters, and... assassins.

Again, great world building, great characters, and this one has mech armor! Don't get me wrong, it is a pseudo-medieval world, but it includes clockwork technology that you wouldn't find in the Middle Ages. My only complaint is that the book was too short!

Christian Cameron is one of my all-time favorite authors. He writes historical fiction under his own name and fantasy as Miles Cameron. He has an incredible talent to paint a vivid world that really captures your imagination. I love his medieval historical fiction series that starts with The Ill-Made Knight and continues with the latest book, Sword of Justice. If you like your fiction set in ancient Greece, I highly recommend Killer of Men. It is one of my favorite books. Fall of Dragons is the final book in the EPIC Traitor Son series. Cold Iron is a fantastic start to an entirely new fantasy series.

Mark Lawrence puts the grim in grimdark. I read the entire Broken Empire series this year. I'll be honest - I almost didn't get through the first few chapters of the first book. It was really grim. The protagonist was really unlikable. I stuck with it and was richly rewarded. There's a reason why the protagonist is so dark. The more you read the more you get pulled into the character's backstory and the more you want to find out what's to come.

Wow! Loved this book. It's like reading the best Dungeons and Dragons adventure you can imagine. The world building, like that in the rest of the books I've listed is great. Unlike the others, Kings of the Wyld doesn't take itself too seriously. This is a very funny, action-packed book. Despite the humor it has its serious, tender, and even tear-jerking moments.

This, and its sequel, Arm of the Sphinx, were my favorite books of 2018. Terrific, unique setting combined with an unusual protagonist, Senlin Ascends was a refreshing surprise. It isn't epic my usual epic fantasy. It has a steampunk/Gulliver's Travels feel that made it a really unique read. I can't recommend it enough!

What I'm really excited about is the fact that all of the above authors have more books for me to read. Well... almost. I have to wait a month for Bancroft's The Hod King and I've read everything that Cameron has published. The good thing about Cameron is that he's a prolific author - which means I won't have to wait long for something of his to appear.

I hope you all have a wonderful 2019! Happy New Year!

Another One Done

The Rough Draft of The Emerald Gate is done!

Well, it's been done for a week, but I'm just getting around to blogging about it.

In fact I'm about 50% done the first run through on its way to becoming the First Draft.  It looks like this book will require two rounds of edits and a trip through the grammar checker/spell checker before its fit to be called a First Draft. Let's say another week....

How did I get here? Let me show you...

The rough draft took 97 days to write. This was a record for me. I started as soon as I sent The Dromost Gate off to my critique partner and just didn't stop. I wrote every single day and averaged 1,532 words per day.

Is that a lot of words per day? Well... it depends. With a full time job and a busy kid it is. If I was a full time author I'd hope to double that number (at least). For someone writing on evenings, weekends, and days off, it's a pretty good number.

Right now The Emerald Gate weighs in at 148,650 words. This makes it the second longest book in the series. The Dromost Gate (First Draft) is a hefty 204,000, but will lose some weight in editing.

What's next? 1) Get Book 4 back from my critique partner and start working on the Second Draft. 2) Put Book 5 into the hands of my critique partner.

When will you see a book? September? Maybe? That's what I'm hoping for.

I'm super pleased with how well the writing went with The Emerald Gate. It has me very excited for my future writing projects -- of which I have many!

Emerald Gate Progress Report

What's this? A progress report on Book Five before Book Four has been published?

That's right. That's exactly what you're getting.

With each of my previous novels I've waited until after the novel has been published before starting the next novel. With Eternal Knight I was waiting for the massive success of my international bestselling novel to motivate me to write a second novel. After all, I'd put years of effort into a first novel. Why would I write a second if the first wasn't a huge success?

I didn't know much about publishing back then. Especially indie publishing. I didn't know that having a hugely successful first novel was about as likely as getting hit by lightning AND an meteorite on the same day.

Well, I sort of knew it. I was still hoping it would happen to me. The huge success part. Not the lightning and meteor.

The path to success is writing good books and following them with more good books. And you need to do this as quickly as possible. Indie readers don't want to wait around for a next book. They want it YESTERDAY.

It has taken a little while for this to sink in. However, I think I have the message now.

I finished writing The Dromost Gate forty-two days ago. I'm forty-two days into writing The Emerald Gate. Forty-two of the most productive days I've ever had as a writer.

I've once again gone back to my practice of keeping a spreadsheet of my writing. I find it highly motivational. The "start" and "end" numbers are my daily word count for The Emerald Gate. As of today I'm 63,481 words into a planned 120,000 word novel. Just yesterday I passed the halfway mark and my critique partner is still reading the first draft of The Dromost Gate. 

It is very likely I'll have finished writing the rough draft of The Emerald Gate before The Dromost Gate is published. I think this is very exciting. It means The Emerald Gate will be published just months after the previous novel. 

What will I do the day after I've finished the rough draft of The Emerald Gate? I'll start writing my next series. That will have to wait for another blog post. 

Three Book Reviews

The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble’s Braids

By Michael McClung

4.5/5 stars

This was a super entertaining fast-paced novel. Part fantasy, part murder mystery, the entire novel is set in a single city. I found Amra to be a great protagonist – she’s a thief with a code. A cat burglar rather than a killer, she still very good in a fight. There are demons, magic, and a very cool wizard sidekick as well. I thought the writing was very good. It never bogged down and moved along at a nice clip. I will say that the first half of the novel was stronger than the second half. The first half the novel blew me away. Still, it was an excellent read and I highly recommend it. I think fans of The Lies of Locke Lamora would really enjoy this novel.

Prince of Thorns

By Mark Lawrence

5/5 stars

I’d never read a Mark Lawrence novel before and thought I’d give this one a shot. I was very confused when I started the book. I thought it was supposed to be about a prince trying to recover his throne. However as I read the first chapter it seemed to be about a murderer and rapist. I thought that maybe I was getting a chapter from the antagonist’s point of view. Then I started chapter two and it was the same POV from the same villain. I stopped reading part way through chapter two when the protagonist described a rape he’d participated in. I thought to myself that there was no way I was going to read 300 pages about this @#$#  @#$%$.

If it had been an unknown author, I probably would have stopped at that point. However, Lawrence as a terrific reputation as an author, he’s hugely supportive of other authors, and I’d just spent money on a book and was ticked off that I’d only read a chapter and a half. So I kept reading.

And it kept getting better. And better. And better. As it turns out there a reason why the protagonist is a murdering @#$#%.

The writing is excellent. The story is engrossing. The world building is intriguing. Lawrence writes terrific action scenes to top it off.

Be forewarned, the book is very grim and very dark. If you can get past that, I think you’ll love the novel.

Senlin Ascends

By Josiah Bancroft

5/5 stars

Wonderful. Start to finish a terrific book.

A steampunk fantasy set in an unknown era, the novel follows bookish Thomas Senlin as he attempts to locate his missing wife in the Tower of Babel. Each level of the tower is its own unique world that poses new challenges to the completely ill prepared Senlin.

Senlin Ascends is a super-unique, super-creative work of fiction. I loved the characters, the writing, and the world. Buy it. It’s fantastic.