1300 words, a weird map, and a couple of nice twists.

Comments

4 responses to “1300 words, a weird map, and a couple of nice twists.”

1. 

   Mike Lucas

   April 20, 2021

   Oh wow! I’m sure you mentioned it before but I didn’t remember that you were actually *born* in Ohio, only that you spent some formative years there later. That’s so cool.

   I’ll have to give Terry Pratchett another try. I tried him when I was younger but it was sort of “too much humor for my fantasy” and silly me, I hadn’t considered that maybe my tastes could have changed in 25 years.

   Especially since I adored Good Omens! (Neil Gaiman’s probably my favorite writer, but I know Terry played a huge part in that too.)

   Reply
   1. 

      Phoenix

      April 21, 2021

      As a massive Pratchett fan in my youth, I highly recommend giving him another go. Terry’s work also changed over the years. So if you think you might not be gripped by his earlier works, do jump into some of the later books.

      The wonderful thing about his writing is that you can pretty much just pick a book that sounds interesting and dive in – they all connect but also stand on their own just as well.

      There’s still the humour that makes the Discworld the place it is, but over time he let the sharp bite that was always there out into the writing a little more. The City Watch novels are especially good for that.

      Reply
      1. 

         Holly

         April 21, 2021

         He did a fine, fine job on working social commentary and real world events into stories that take place on a flat planet that’s floating through space on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle.

         Reply
   2. 

      Holly

      April 21, 2021

      Oh wow! I’m sure you mentioned it before but I didn’t remember that you were actually *born* in Ohio, only that you spent some formative years there later. That’s so cool.

      I was born here, and lived here for most of my life through age nineteen. Those years were interrupted by one year in Alaska, one year in Costa Rica, and about six months in Guatemala that would have been a multi-year stay had it not been for the earthquake. (The civil war going on around us wasn’t enough to get my parents to get my brother, sister and me out of there, but the earthquake did the trick.)

      On Terry Pratchett. I’m reading the Discworld books in series order. I’m all the way to Going Postal, and sadly, don’t have that many more books left.

      I was and am a huge Terry Pratchett fan — and his first few novels weren’t great. He was very young when writing the early books, and it shows, but his work got progressively better with each novel, and about five books in, he hit the top of his game and stayed there. He regularly makes me laugh out loud or catches me off guard and makes me cry — and while this series-order read-through is both for pleasure and as homework, I’m having a hard time remembering the work part.

      His series is very different from the series that I’m writing, in that I’m writing the first five books from a single viewpoint, while all of the Discworld novels are multiple POV. But like Pratchett, I write funny bits in with the scary bits, the suspense, and the bits about what it means to be human in a big damn universe.

      And like him, I try to keep my fiction relevant to real human beings living in the real world. So the “homework” aspect remains valid.

      I loved Good Omens too.

      Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.