Oh HUSH!

Just look at that cover. Then, feel free to judge the book.

Artist Gerard Miley captured this one perfectly. HUSH is, at it core, a story about a woman with a magical hammer fighting her way across a frozen landscape to confront the eponymous primal dragon of cold.

Hush is a damn big dragon. She's so large that one chapter of this novel is set inside her mouth. Infidel, Stagger, and Sorrow have to fight a shapeshifting ghost with, an ogre champion, three ogre priestesses, a human judge and his bodyguard and a dozen burly sailors on the battleground of Hush's tongue. And there's still room for three boats. Hush is big, I tell you, big!

If you've read Greatshadow, you know who Infidel and Stagger are. But you're probably wondering who Sorrow is. Sorrow is a young witch who gains power over the material world by hammering nails into her skull. For instance, she has an iron nail in her temple that gives her the power to mold iron as if it were clay. Her powers are rather formidable, though she spends half the novel wearing an iron brace on her limbs because her hobby hasn't exactly been good for her health.

To assist her in physical tasks, Sorrow builds a wooden golem, then crafts a soulcatcher to go out and hunt for a ghost she can use to animate it. Stagger happens to be the nearest ghost who has failed to move on from the material plane. So, after spending 90% of Greatshadow as a disembodied spirit, Stagger spends 90% of this novel back inside a body, albeit a wooden one, with an oak barrel for a chest, roots for fingers, and a coconut for a head. His soul essentially serves as a battery to bring the golem to life, and, like any battery, the more Sorrow uses him, the weaker he gets. And, it's not like he gets to use his new body for anything he wants to do. He can only move if Sorrow commands him to.

Adding to his frustrations, Sorrow is a passenger on the same boat that carries Infidel to the frozen north. So, Stagger spends much of the book within a few dozen feet of the woman he loves, forbidden to so much as wave at her, unable even to call out her name as his coconut skull lacks a tongue.

Will Stagger ever get to speak with Infidel? Can Infidel survive her quest now that she's lost her strength and invulnerability? Will Hush succeed in her plot to murder Glorious, the primal dragon of the sun, plunging the world into eternal winter?

You don't have to wait any longer to find out! HUSH hits bookstores today! Run out right now and buy a copy. Then skip work today and read it, so you can join me on my first ever Goodreads discussion thread, where I'm talking about all the books of the Dragon Apocalypse, even books I haven't written yet! Here's the link. After you buy your copy, if you want a second copy to give to your best friend in the whole world but don't have the extra dough to shell out in these rough economic times, then as long as you're at Goodreads, why not sign up for the HUSH giveaway there? Twelve copies are available to residents of the US, Canada, and the UK. If you want to try to win one, enter here.

Good luck! Don't be shy about Amazon reader reviews and enthusiastic tweets!

All Around the Web

Whew! A busy couple of weeks! In addition to attending Balticon and ConCarolina's, I've been furiously pounding the keys on Witchbreaker. It's finally turning into a real novel! I made a few bad choices with character personalities on the first draft that left me with an important protagonist almost completely devoid of charm. I spent a lot of the first draft just keeping him off stage so I wouldn't have to write about him. This time around, I've tried an unusual approach for a James Maxey character: I've made him an actual nice person, motivated by a desire to live up to a code of knighthood. What the...? How did he slip into the book? Luckily, he does have a dark secret, a big one. And he does get to fight a dragon buck naked in his first scene. So maybe he's not such an unusual character for me after all.

But, Witchbreaker is still half a year away from bookstores. The book I should be talking about is Hush, hitting stores this month, June 26! I'll be launching the book with a trio of appearances. June 26, I'll be in Cary at the Barnes and Noble along with Lisa Shearin, Kelly Gay, Tony Daniels, Mark van Name, and David Drake, as part of their annual speculative fiction panel. The fact that's the day by book hits bookstores is a felicitous bit of timing! Later that same week, at Hillsborough's Last Friday street festival, I'll have a table in front of Purple Crow books from roughly 6-9. Then, on July 10, I'll be at the Barnes and Noble in Greensboro.

Hush had its first review yesterday, by Nick Sharps at Elitist Book Reviews who describes the book as "the most original and colorful fantasy world I have encountered in recent memory." Alas, he didn't like it quite as much as he liked Greatshadow, though he says he's looking forward to Witchbreaker. He notes that the supporting cast, mainly the Romer family, felt a bit underdeveloped. In retrospect, I agree. I introduced some characters in Hush solely for the purpose of having them on stage in Witchbreaker, where their stories become more central to the plot. Hopefully as the series unfolds their more leisurely character arcs will become increasingly interesting.

Also yesterday, I'm part of a pair of blog posts at lucreid.com discussing the art of writing 10,000 words a day. Not to spoil the articles, but the answer is pretty simple. If you want to write 10k words a day, and you can write 1000 words an hour, you have to be willing to put butt in chair for 10 hours and type like a maniac. This is why I hardly ever manage the feat, though I did crank out 16k words from Tuesday through Thursday this week. There really are no shortcuts.

Finally, I've got some air time at the latest The Future and You podcast from Stephen Euin Cobb as he interviews guests from last weekend's ConCarolinas. Listen here!

There is No Wheel FREE on Amazon

Today through Tuesday, my short story collection There is No Wheel is available FREE as an ebook via Amazon. If you've already read my novels and are looking for some more James Maxey fiction to carry you through until the June 26 release of Hush, now's your chance! It's free on Kindle (which basically means it's free on any device with an internet connection) by clicking here.

Balticon and ConCarolinas

It's been a busy spring, so I haven't gone to many cons lately. But, my long con drought is about to end in a couple of days, as I head to Baltimore for Balticon. It's my first time at this con, so I'm excited about meeting new people and spending at least a little time playing tourist in the city. I really want to pig out on blue crabs while I'm in town! If you're at the Con and want to join in a seafood quest, look me up.

Then, the following week, I'm off to ConCarolinas in Charlotte! CC consistently has some of the best programming of any con I attend, so I look forward to immersing myself in geekiness. Last year I was part of a conversation in a hall in which the merits of the various World of Warcraft podcasts were discussed. It's hard to get much geekier than that, but I'll try.

Finally, I've not posted much about the Dragon Apocalypse series in a while. Sorry! I moved recently, and between dealing with buying the house, renovating it, and moving in, not to mention writing the first draft of the third book of the series, Witchbreaker, I fear blogging has fallen into a low priority. But, Hush hits bookstores June 26, so starting next month I'll hopefully be carving out a bit more time to talk about the books. Whatever you're expecting the follow up to Greatshadow to be, I have a hunch that Hush will prove to be a surprise. Unless you're expecting a book with lots of action, humor, drama, and romance with an eclectic cast headed by a superpowered woman who enjoys punching dragons in the nose. 'Cause that's totally the book I wrote. Sorry for the spoilers.

Four Categories of Stories

The other day, I was talking to someone about the types of books I wrote and I jokingly said my books were about interesting people doing interesting things. As if one would waste time writing about uninteresting people doing uninteresting things. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, actually, if you change the word 'uninteresting' to 'ordinary,' that second formula is also a perfectly valid approach to literature. One of my favorite books of all time, Winesburg, Ohio, is very much about ordinary people doing ordinary things. The same is true of the novel Things Fall Apart. While it's about an unfamiliar culture to most American's, most of the book documents a very average member of that culture immersed in an typical life.

This line of thought led me to envision the chart at the end of this essay. This is definitely evidence I've sat through too many corporate presentations! Still, I thought it might be useful for other writers. Basically, most stories are going to fit in four broad boxes. You can write about ordinary people doing ordinary things. You can write about ordinary people swept up in exceptional circumstances. (I've put 1984 and Grapes of Wrath in this category. In both cases, average people are faced with challenges most readers would consider extraordinary.) You can also write about extraordinary people doing exceptional things. I've placed Harry Potter and Ender's Game in this category. These are stories about characters who possess abilities beyond those of ordinary people, swept up in grand events where the fates of thousands of people are on the line. My own writing tends to fall into this box.

Finally, one could also write about extraordinary people doing mundane things. Watchmen has plenty of world-shaking action, but I put it in this category because so many of the memorable scenes involve superhuman characters doing ordinary things like eating, attending funerals, and sleeping together. Yeah, it's impressive when Dr. Manhattan teleports to Mars, but that sort of stuff happened all the time in comic books. On the other hand, there's a scene where Rorshach is eating beans directly from a can as he talks with another character. You've never seen Batman doing this. My novel Nobody Gets the Girl taps into this formula for some chapters, like when Nobody and the Thrill go to a shopping mall and eat in a food court. But, I wracked my brain trying to think of a book that stayed completely in this box and couldn't. On the other hand, it's a favorite formula for television sit coms. The Munsters is one extreme, but shows like Big Bang Theory also belong in this box, where genius physicists are seen eating at cheesecake factory, shopping for comic books, and doing laundry.

One huge flaw in trying to make the argument that all stories fall into one of these four categories is, of course, that different parts of different books fall into different areas. A book can meander through all four squares. And, it's hard to say what an "ordinary" character or an "average" life is. I've put 1984 in the category of being about an ordinary man in exceptional events, but one could argue that, from the perspective of the novel, the events were mundane, every day life, and that he was exceptional enough to try to rebel and change his world.

So, perhaps the grid is utter bullshit. But, I took ten minutes to draw it, and half an hour to write to this essat, so it would be a shame not to post it now:

Feel free to dispute! Or, if you can think of novels that fit in the exceptional characters/ordinary events box, let me know.

Songs for Greatshadow

Rasputina has a song called "Am I the Infidel?" that always makes me think of my Greatshadow protagonist, Infidel. So, this has got me thinking about other songs that mesh with my characters from that book. If you want to put together an really eclectic playlist, here are a few songs that are appropriate for my various characters:

Infidel: Am I the Infidel? by Rasputina.
"Am I the infidel?
I thought it was supposed
to be someone else
but now I see it's me.
I am my own worst enemy."

Stagger: California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade by the Decemberists
Two songs blended together as the last track of Castaways and Cutouts, the appropriate passage actually falls in the musical bridge between the songs. As the chords stretch from the end of one song to the beginning of another, there is a very soft whisper that you can only hear at high volume. If you listen hard, it's a woman talking about savior ghosts who wander battlefields warning soldiers of hidden dangers. Her final line is, "If I were such a ghost, I would stand so close, you could feel my breath on your cheek." This single line is the heart of Stagger's character.

Zetetic the Deceiver: The Obvious Child by Paul Simon
Perhaps a slender connection, but the lyrics contain these lines:
"Some people say a lie is just a lie
But I say why
Why deny the obvious child?
Why deny the obvious child?"

Appropriate since Zetetic believes all of reality is a lie, and his lies are just as real and obviously true as anyone elses.

No-Face: Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

Since No-Face has no visible mouth, his dialogue consists of indecipherable lines like, "Mub guh buh nub." He would have made a terrific grunge singer.

Judicious Merchant: Don't Fence Me In by Cole Porter

This song has been covered by a hundred artists, but I like the David Byrne version with the drum troop. Grandpa Merchant's distain for civilization is well summed up in the lines:
"I want to gaze at the moon until I lose my senses
I can't look at hovels and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me in."

Lord Tower: I'll be Watching You by the Police
"Oh can't you see you belong to me?" sums up nicely his obsessive, possessive attitude toward love.

Aurora: Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice.
Sorry. It's so obvious I hate to include it on the list. But, what the hell.

Father Ver, the Truthspeaker: You or Your Memory by the Mountain Goats
"Down here in the dark I could see the real truth about me
as clear as day.
Lord if I make it through tonight
then I will mend my ways
and walk a straight path
till the end of my days."

I'm sure there are even more appropriate songs out there. And, of course, there are still plent of characters I haven't gotten to yet, most notably Greatshadow himself. Suggestions are welcome!

Review Round-Up; Witchbreaker v1 stumbles to an end

I told myself I'd finish the first draft of Witchbreaker by the end of February. And, as of now, I'm done with the first draft. I'm still a few chapters shy of the real end of the book, but I don't see any real bonus to pushing forward. The fact is, the first draft of this book had problems that go way back to the first two or three chapters. I started at the wrong place, with the wrong focus, and took almost eight chapters before I made any attempt at getting a spark of interest going between my male and female leads. Then, for the rest of the book, while I had some neat fight scenes and cool plot twists, my two lead characters struggled to find anything to say to one another. Complete character misfire. Sometimes, this is cool. I'll have an idea in mind of what I want the characters to do, but then the characters will push back and I wind up taking the story in a different direction. But in this draft, my male lead character never really told me where he'd like to go. He was just a dud.

So, I'm back to the drawing board for the second draft. With a few possible exceptions, I'm probably tossing all that I've written so far and working each new chapter from scratch. I had a very good conversation the other night with an old friend of mine named James Rice where I was describing the female lead, Sorrow, and was telling him the key elements of her personality, and I suddenly had a revelation about how her most traumatic childhood experience would inform her opinions on what sort of man she could feel attraction to. Somehow, I'd written over 17 chapters without glomming onto this vital aspect of her psyche. Now that I've gotten this handle on her, I'm busy re-imagining the male lead, Slate, to turn him into exactly the sort of man she thinks she should hate. Plot wise, I've had a "duh" moment of when to introduce Slate to make him an actual co-driver of the story, instead of just a hanger on who suddenly starts making demands in the second half of the book.

I take comfort in one of my "rules" of writing: To write a good book, you must first write a bad book. The bad version of Witchbreaker is behind me. Onward to the good version!

Meanwhile, the first book in the Dragon Apocalypse series, Greatshadow, continues to pile up enthusiastic reviews.

First, from Sina at Cry Baby Reviews: From the very first page, this was a joy to read. There were enough typical fantasy elements to satisfy me, and lots of original new ideas and creatures. I LOVED the world building. James Maxey did a brilliant job at creating a whole new world that was vivid in my mind and really fleshed out. He tells you more about the world and characters gradually throughout the book. No page long info dumps that made me want to fall asleep here!

Then, from Superior Realities: “Greatshadow” is a thoroughly unusual book, and while it may not be perfect, it’s still one of the most unique and entertaining reads I’ve had in recent memory. Overall rating: 9.2/10 Do yourself a favour and read it.

Jared at the awesomely named site Pornokitsch writes: This isn't your bog-standard intro quest: Greatshadow is a skip-to-the-back-of-the-book epic-level adventure. That's the large part of Greatshadow's fun. Infidel and her squabbling comrades are essential superheroes, ones that have gone largely unchallenged. Mr. Maxey not only comes up with ways of vincing the invincible and overpowering the omnipotent, he does so in a well-composed, organic way.

From Falcata Times: It had all the elements I wanted, solid fight sequences, heroes of epic proportions and of course a plotline that doesn’t let up from the start to the end. All that and more was present within and when you add solid prose alongside characters you care about, its really a tale that’s hard to put down.

Lastly, at the Ebon Shores blog, David McDonald writes: Greatshadow is a very ambitious book that aims high and, for the most part, gets there.

So far, so good! Reviews like these are a large part of the reason I'm tossing aside so much of Witchbreaker, v1. Honestly, the first draft wasn't all that bad. But after Greatshadow and Hush, I can't turn in a manuscript that's merely good. As the last review said, I've got to aim high if I want to get there.