Robert Priest's Blog: Blogging not logging - Posts Tagged "fantasy"

I couldn't find my blog last time I was here. But this time it was easy. Maybe the results of too much time on the computer not seeing the trees for the forest. The paper sword is now officially released in paperback and I love the look of the book. I've already read in one of the reviews here how someone purchased the book because they liked the cover. That's just what I wanted.

I've just sent in the edits round one to my editor at Dundurn. So I am about 2 thirds of the way through book 3 first draft, fielding edits for book 2, and promoting book 1. A good thing about it is that reviewing the earlier texts keeps me attuned to the the details of the story. Book 3 Takes Place 5 years after the other 2 books and it revolves around missing pieces—whether physical pieces that are missing from people's bodies or psychological pieces or magical pieces, pieces of a talisman or peace itself.

also my son Daniel just got married and we had a big wedding party yesterday. So life is full and joyous. I've seen the cover for book 2 and it's going to be just as good-looking as book 1.

Just finished the final edits for book 2 of the spell cross series, second kiss. Typically I love the editing process. It's easy for an author to get attached to particularly flowery formulations even when they are slightly over-the-top. A good editor can point these out and clear the way for a straight narrative line. There were one or 2 very musical phrases that were hard to let go like “still finding their places in the ancient algorithms of the thaumaturgy." but it's done now and the book is better for it. I particularly like the second book. I love the ending. Now having taken a few days off I'm back at book 3. I've got about 40,000 words of first draft and now I have to put the pieces together and see what else needs to be written. Plus do a lot of tidying up and editing and melding of text. But so far I am continuing to enjoy this, though those procrastinated hours that lead up to finally doing some writing are no fun at all. Well, except when my chosen means of diverting myself is to write a poem. It has also led to tidying my room, my house, exercising. You can find an entry about book 2, second kiss in the new Dundurn catalog https://bnccatalist.ca/ViewTitle.aspx...

I've done a good solid assembly of chapter 1 of missing piece. I'm leaving it a little loose because first chapters so often wind up having to be changed to accommodate certain details that come later unexpectedly. And now I'm about halfway through the same process for chapter 2. The worst part of all this I think is probably the part before the writing begins. the elastic of potential procrastination. One flops about in an open-ended limbo a little bit like a worm caught on the hook of the necessity of writing—given the time frame involved when the book is due. Squirm squirm. No offense actual worms on books. I don't want to trivialize your agony.

I am a secular person but there's a certain amount of very local faith involved in writing this novel. Faith that I can get through all of the challenges that arise and constantly seem poised to completely undo all the work that's been done so far. I like that faith. It's not extreme. It's reasonable. So in that sense you could say I'm a writer of faith.

Of course it's all afloat in great doubtfulness. Chiefly doubting that on any particular day the act of writing will actually begin. Whether one will face the enormous amount of work that has to be done and the fact that one can only do a little bit of it at a time Sheesh. Imagine how poor Homer must've felt.

And so, standing up
blogging not logging, leaving no stumps, no ruined environments, having procrastinated indefinitely on the whole ending of the world project, not to mention getting down to work on my novel, i bid thee adieu

What I like about fantasy

fantasy or books with magic in them were always my first choice whenever I went to the bookmobile I attended in Scarborough. Then as a grown-up I was taken with the magic realism of Marquez and Julio Cortazar and Salman Rushdie. And poetry. And I think they all have much in common. The sense of escaping causality in the material sense getting into the poesis. A realm where the word is power. Poems and spells. A world where one could overcome vast forces with a word. Now science makes some of the wilder dreams of the poesis attainable. Flight. We dream it. We hold the vision hard and insist on it and our senses through science attain it. Same thing with telepathy. Same thing with healing and immortality. How many spells before mutations of the spells broke down into equations. All of which started with a vision of the world not the way it is or was-a magical vision. but as the lingo streams through the logos it selects more and more for the more exact language of numbers. we wind up in a world much more made of mathematical formulations than magical spells or the geist legends of poetry to which our organisms are attuned. We are not made for an exact world. nor an understandable world nor a predictable world. We are made for a fantastical world.

Once again I've come to Goodreads to blog, signed in and been unable to find the link that takes me to this page where I'm writing now. New blog post. Weird. If anybody's reading this (and I don't think anybody is but that's okay for now) please drop me a line and tell me the easy way to get to my own blog. For now I just go to Google and put in "blogging not logging" get to it that way.

The good news is that I've upgraded my Dragon Dictate software and acquired my buddy, Al Booth's old iMac which has so much more power so that not only do I have a new program but much more processing capability so that it runs very smoothly all of its very necessary editing functions and spelling functions easily attainable. Since I've been a public speaker all my life and I'm fairly comfortable speaking out loud and have used some version of voice to text for at least 15 years I've grown pretty comfortable with this process and I love it.

So I've been working on Missing Piece book 3 of my spell crossed series and I'm managing to be pretty delighted with how it's going. I probably said in previous posts that I've become a writer of "faith" my faith being that I will maintain high enough imagination to make virtues out of my narrative challenges. Faith that things will continue to unfold within the very general parentheses of the plot line I have. Also I'm behaving myself in terms of not going off on huge poetic tangents. Trying to keep a lot of it action and dialogue oriented. I sent a proto-version of Chapter 1 to Dundurn in the hopes that because it's only 4 pages they may be able to put it in at the end of Book 2, Second Kiss. All of this is helped by the fact that I have this new toy that's dictated all of what you've just read without a single mistake so far. Though I did have to capitalize a few things. Later — RP

Book 1 in my Spell Crossed fantasy series, The Paper Sword, is an iBooks summer reads selection! you can get an eCopy for a mere $3.99. Just go to the iTunes store, go to books, go to summer reads and it's in the young adult category. So economical and perfect reading for fantasy lovers. and then you won't have to wait very long for second kiss because it's right there for $8.99.

I finally finished the whole trilogy! Yes, the Spell Crossed trilogy is complete. Book 2, Second Kiss and book 3 Missing Piece are now out and available. It's been a long haul, having worked on them for the past 15 years. Personally, it means I've followed through on a childhood commitment to write the kind of books I was reading them. Fantasy. I learned a lot along the way and a new appreciation of the novelist's craft. I'm tempted now more than I used to be to write a novel for adults. But I need to catch my breath if I'm going to do that. Meanwhile I am very close to finishing The Wolf is Back, a follow-up to Rose Rose, a book of poems for children and young adults. I confess to being very excited by it. All of this means that I'm going to have more time to attend to matters here in Goodreads so I hope some of you will encourage me by reading this blog and feeding back.