Will Weisser's Blog

Another blog review, and a great one too…I appreciate all reviews but the ones with excellent quotes I can mine are my favorite!

https://thefantasyinn.wordpress.com/2018/05/03/ankaran-immersion/

Thank you so much to Hiu for checking out the book. The Fantasy Inn is a newer blog, but with a team of readers as dedicated as theirs I think they’ll be making waves in the Fantasy fan scene soon, and in the years ahead as well.

Another blog review is out, this one from The Weatherwax Report, a very prolific and well-respected blogger (recipient of three Stabby awards this year alone).

https://weatherwaxreport.blog/2018/03/23/ankaran-immersion-by-will-weisser/

Please check out what she’s been doing lately, because frankly a lot of it is amazing. Whether it’s reviewing over 100 SPFBO novels (with ranked spreadsheet) or hosting a colossal giveaway of Discword books, she goes above and beyond what a typical review blog consists of, which I suppose is how all those awards find their way over to her. Thank you so much Esme, for everything!

This is a really exciting one for me. Not only is the Tome and Tankard the first publication to review ANKARAN IMMERSION, but the book got on the right side of Wol from the very beginning and didn’t let up:

What a great start to 2018! Ankaran Immersion is a Cyberpunk adventure set in an intriguing post-Apocalyptic future. The world is partially covered in The Strand – living metal inhabited by seemingly malevolent AIs who are frequently at war with humans and one another. The Strand is a great concept and I have difficulty doing it justice here, but its ability to set traps, shape-shift into giant monsters roaming the land, etc. is thoroughly explored and makes for interesting reading. I found myself very much reminded of Horizon: Zero Dawn (and occasionally The Matrix) throughout the novel, and if you enjoyed the story of that game then this is definitely one for you.

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The world and its characters are well thought out – the world building takes the interesting approach of hinting at what’s going on and letting you fill in the blanks. I think Hunter in particular is extremely well developed, with his autism handled sensitively and sympathetically. Each of the main characters goes through a significant arc and ends up with a rather different outlook than they had at the beginning of the novel. Most importantly, it’s a lot of fun to read – filled with clues and easter eggs, I had a great time figuring out Weisser’s hints at how things worked.

To add a bit of fun, Wol’s blog celebrates the notion of settling down with a good book and a good drink (a particularly inviting notion this January, if I do say so). To this end, she invents a custom cocktail for each book she reviews, and the one she came up with for ANKARAN IMMERSION both sounds delicious and is a really funny tease at a certain section of the novel (if you read it you’ll know why). I can’t wait to try it myself, once I make it to the liquor store for a few supplies…and check out her other reviews for some great recipes.

Read the entire review here (including a great summary of the premise for those who like a little more detail than the blurb provides), and learn how to make the cocktail, “Evie’s Bad Trip,” here.

P.S.

It’s been almost eighteen months since Dragon Moon Press acquired ANKARAN IMMERSION and the publishing process began. Since then, I’ve felt that there was something special about this one—that through some strange alchemy of hard work and happenstance this book was going to touch people more deeply than anything I’ve written before. But let’s face it: There’s a limit to how convincing I can be when I talk about how great my own work is. That’s why it’s so gratifying to see others slowly discovering for themselves what I’ve known for so long about Evie, Hunter, and Ono’s story. My deepest gratitude goes to Wol for being the first to help spread the word about it. I don’t expect her to be the last 

Unlimited Book Reviews is a book review blog run by author Catherine Griffin which reviews SF&F available free on Kindle Unlimited for Amazon Prime members. You can see her review of AETHERIA’S DAEMON here. Reviews are really helpful for authors, so thank you Catherine for reading and reviewing my book, and please check out her own books if you get the chance.

I’m overwhelmingly delighted to announce the release of Ankaran Immersion, my debut science fiction novel from Dragon Moon Press. You can get it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and many other places.

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More can and will be said about where this journey into writing has taken me thus far, how I feel now and what lies ahead both for this book and others. For now though I’d just like to thank everyone for supporting me thus far, and I hope you all enjoy the book (you should, it’s pretty awesome).

I’m pleased to announce that Guardbridge Books has published Tales of the Sunrise Lands: Anthology of Fantasy Japan, with one of my stories (“The Three”) included:

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Every story in the anthology takes place in a fantasy version of historical Japan. Mine is about a (magical) calligrapher, a warrior monk, and a wandering musician who band together to save a village from a belligerent daimyo. Think of it as a samurai tale in the vein of “Yojimbo” or “Lone Wolf and Cub,” but with a fantasy twist. I haven’t read the others yet, but from the names and descriptions on display I’m expecting some really excellent work.

The book can be purchased on Amazon or directly from Guardbridge (UK only).

Go check it out!

Hey! Just a quick update on writing related stuff for 2017.

The biggest news is that ANKARAN IMMERSION is officially in production. I received first pass edits and have been going through the suggestions as well as doing a little tightening of my own while I have the chance. I’m sure when all is said and done I’ll be sick of reading this book, but for now I remain amazed at how well it came together and at the moment I’m super excited to share it with everyone.

Meanwhile, AETHERIA’S DAEMON is out and going strong, and I’d like to thank everyone again for their support in getting it launched. One small bit of news is that it’s entered in the SPFBO, which is a contest run by award-winning fantasy author Mark Lawrence. Given the amount of competition my odds of winning anything are rather slim, but it’s still fun to follow along either on Mark’s site or using the #spfbo hashtag on Twitter, and I’m sure in the end some really awesome books will come to more public attention as they have in previous years.

New(er) work: I completed an outline for a new science fiction novel, with the working title of (big reveal alert) BOUNDARY CONDITION. The book will be similar to ANKARAN IMMERSION in some ways. They’re both science fiction and they’re both a manageable length (~85k words, though obviously I don’t know the exact length of BOUNDARY CONDITION yet). But there are differences: the main characters in BOUNDARY CONDITION are older, the world is utopian and not post-apocalyptic, and a good portion of it takes place in space, which makes it easier to slot into the “classic” sci-fi mode, whereas ANKARAN IMMERSION is much more influenced by anime and the like. It’ll be great!

Hope everyone has a nice summer (or winter for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere and/or Westeros) planned. More news as it comes later.

I’m very pleased to announce the release of my second full-length novel, AETHERIA’S DAEMON, an epic fantasy of 155,000 words.

First up, the goods. Here’s the cover:

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The book takes place in the world of Aetheria, where a thought can conjure any object into existence—temporarily, at least—and humans are ageless. New people appear seemingly at random, and no one knows exactly why, nor do they much care. Until…

Meli, a practitioner of the arts of plant and animal creation, has a dream in which she is holding a baby, something no one in Aetheria has heard of before. Drawn by a powerful urge to find the truth behind her vision, she recruits Ariden, an unsociable vagabond and legendary fighter, and Karis, an aged airship engineer with the appearance of a teen girl, to help her make a perilous journey across the ocean.

What follows thereafter is an epic adventure through a world of immortals, ancient gods, giant monsters, murderous plants, gladiatorial pankration, airship battles, and general drama/mayhem.

If that sounds like something you might enjoy, head over to the book page for links to purchase or download a sample.

Secondly, my usual gentle reminder: adding books to your shelves on Goodreads, rating them and especially leaving reviews on Amazon is immensely helpful for me (and every other author).

Finally, please note that this book should not be confused with ANKARAN IMMERSION, which is coming out later this year from Dragon Moon Press. Much more will be forthcoming on that, so watch for more news later this year.

Now, go read my book!

The second of what is shaping to be an annual Star Wars movie release under the new Disney regime is in the wild, and from what I’ve seen the fan and critical consensus is mostly positive. Well, I saw the movie Friday morning, and while I didn’t think it was terrible by any means, I do have some comments on what are (to me) some obvious failings.

First, the good: Rogue One is not your typical Star Wars film in terms of tone, which after seven main-line movies feels like a welcome change of pace. Others have said this film emphasizes the “Wars” part of the title more than any of its predecessors, and I certainly agree. For once, the stormtroopers actually seem menacing, marching out in tight formation and mustering on the field of battle like the Wehrmacht they’re patterned after. I liked the shaky-cam footage. I liked that the film was willing to kill all its protagonists at the end. Finally, in terms of its skeleton this movie is a pretty solid action blockbuster, with some genuinely awesome action set-pieces.

That said, there are a number of head-scratchingly dumb decisions on display here. The one that sticks out in my mind is…yes, you guessed it…Tarkin. The viewer goes through an interesting relationship with Tarkin in this movie. At first, you see the back of his head, and think oh there’s yet another throwback cameo, neat. Then he turns around, and instantly you see how ridiculous he looks. Well, you think, this is pretty ghastly and unconvincing, but I guess they felt they could pull this effect off for the one line he’s going to speak in this scene and then they’ll pull him off and hope we forget about this by the end of the movie.

Then he keeps talking. And talking. Then he comes back for another scene. And another.

Sorry, but I don’t get it. This has nothing to do with my feelings vis a vis CGI. If you can use CGI to build a double for a deceased actor, and you have the requisite permission, etc. then have at it. But clearly ILM has thrown everything they had at the problem, and anyone can see within a millisecond that they came up well short of creating anything that isn’t plain distracting. So why do it? If you feel like having another actor take Cushing’s place wouldn’t suffice (which I’m fine with), why write Tarkin into the movie at all, never mind as a full-fledged driver of the plot, unlike the younger rendition of Leia?

And while I thought the Leia effect was mostly saved by its brevity, her presence in this movie does bring up another bothersome issue: information that, while it may not count as “contradicting” canon, forces us to re-interpret the canonical films in ways that are seemingly nonsensical or unsatisfying.

A prime example of this is when Bail Organa takes his leave of the rebel base and states (implicitly) that his next move will be to send for Obi-Wan Kenobi to help, and that he is going to send his (adopted) daughter Leia to deliver the message. This throwaway line (seriously, it seems to add nothing to Rogue One whatsoever) means we are now forced to see the opening to A New Hope in a totally new light; it turns out Leia was already on her way to see Obi-Wan before her ship was attacked, for reasons (mostly) unrelated to delivering the Death Star plans. Why she would be present at the battle at Scarif base when she’s supposed to be headed to Tattooine already is a mystery, as is why she wouldn’t, I don’t know, change ships sometime between when she left the captured rebel flagship and when she was taken prisoner. I mean, now that Vader has seen that ship (or at least the same model) fleeing with the stolen plans aboard, doesn’t that make your whole “Diplomatic mission to Alderaan” line seem a wee bit silly?

Furthermore, it’s been a while since I’ve re-watched ANH, but doesn’t it seem like the rebels should be a bit more aware of the Death Star than they are in that movie, considering that by that time it’s already shown up at the site of a major battle and started fucking shit up (OK fine, they haven’t seen it blow up a whole planet yet, but put two and two together)? Like, when Leia is composing her message to Obi-Wan, why not say, “Oh and by the way the Empire has a giant spherical battlestation, keep an eye out for that”? And further furthermore, what does Bail Organa want from Obi-Wan in the first place? To come out of retirement and lightsaber some troopers on the beach? The whole thing was just better off left alone.

Among the negative opinions on this movie, one I’ve heard a few times is that it feels like a generic action film with a myriad sprinkling of Star Wars fan service thrown on top. The thing is, I don’t see anything intrinsically wrong with that–except that where Rogue One falls flat, it’s usually due to some reference to another movie in the franchise which could just as easily have been left out. There’s too much going on here with Tarkin, Vader (OK, yes, the final scene was cool, but Vader is not an interesting villain in the context of this movie alone), and especially the Death Star itself begging for screen time. And this is all layered on a movie which is so heavily stuffed that it can’t resolve its more mundane errors: the male lead feels redundant and uncompelling, too much time is spent on Forest Whitaker’s character for little payoff, Tarkin destroys Scarif for seemingly no reason, the pilot who was supposed to have lost his mind seems totally lucid, etc.

But what prompted me more than any of the above to write this post wasn’t in Rogue One at all, it was another film entirely. This afternoon I went with my wife and kids to see another Disney movie, Moana. Wow. An incredible movie, possibly Disney Animation’s best ever. And while going into full depth on the reasons why will have to wait, the thing that struck me most in comparison to Rogue One was its simplicity. In terms of characters we’re supposed to care about, we have two: Moana and Maui. Two! Not…however many there were in Rogue One. Two characters, ninety minutes, plenty of time to work out a complete arc for them both. Result: the audience cares, the audience goes home happy. It’s not that complicated! Literally!

Now, I’m not saying that the number of characters in a film is necessarily indicative of its complexity, and certainly not of its quality, but all of this does serve as a good reminder to us all (well especially to me) that when it comes to fiction, less is almost always more. You may want to add every cool idea and weird character and awesome setpiece you can think of, but if you’re starving your principle characters of oxygen, all you’re doing is suffocating your work.

Will the new Lucasfilm pick up on this, too? Well, we can Hope…

Hello! Since I have a habit of burying the lede, I’ll just come right out and say it: I’ve signed a contract with Dragon Moon Press to publish my next novel.

Of course I’m overjoyed at this development. Some of the reasons should be obvious: lots of time invested (years!), big milestone, excited by the opportunity for people to see my work, and so on. But I’m also jazzed to be working with Dragon Moon in particular. They’ve in business as a small press since 1993, which by itself is fairly astonishing. Their covers look fantastic. And most importantly, though every Author is different, from the discussions we’ve had I feel they’re a great fit for me and my current goals.

As for the book itself, you can read a bit about the plot and the process of writing it in my post-mortem here. And if you want more…well, you’ll have to wait. This process will in all likelihood not be speedy, but I’m happy to document what I can along the way for those who are interested (I mean, it would interest me, so there must be someone else out there). There will be plenty of time later to get into more detailed marketing stuff, title, cover reveal, sample and so on. For now, I’m simply giving a heads up that good things are on the way. And in the meantime, I have more writing to do….