Friday, November 30, 2012

A comment from a reader...


This is a comment I felt the need to share:


I'm in the United States Navy and while I love being a sailor, going underway is always hard. When your work day is done and you go down to your rack alot of the time its hard to sleep just for how much you miss home and your family. I talked to my dad about this and he told me that when he was in he would read and it would give him for just a couple of hours a place where you weren't sad or lonely. Reading gives you a chance to take a vacation any time you want inside yourself. Saying all of this i found the last elf about two weeks ago and could not put it down, now im on to the archer and i just wanted to say thank you and tell you how much i appreciate your work. its a quiet place to lose my self and thats worth way more than the price for the books.

V/r,
CTMSN Spence USN


(The original post and my response can be found here. click here )

Thursday, November 1, 2012

A confession

Wow. I am really bad at this blog every day stuff. Sorry.

So, the confession? I put myself in the trilogy. I admit it. 

In The Lord of Lightning, the Archer discovers an Old Man fishing by himself on the wasted shores of Lake Ettonne. That's me. 

I'm probably younger than you pictured the Old Man. I mean, I pictured him in his late sixties. I'm in my earlier fifties, and I look nothing like the literary physical description of the Old Man.

But, that voice, those words, that's me speaking directly to you.

Every writer uses pieces of himself, and those he knows, to create characters. Plus, a writer who's been at it a while develops a 'voice'. However, that 'voice' is not always the writer's actual, unvarnished way of speaking, thoughts, idioms, or philosophy.

The Old Man is unadulterated me. That is what I had to say without the trappings and filigree of fiction. It is also the central theme of the trilogy. Read the Old Man's words again, you'll see what I mean.

cheers,

Kurt