226

(23 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Getting close to the end of R2. As I mentioned in my latest review, I really have no idea where the story is going. It's been mostly action-oriented chapters in various settings that don't connect well for me. I'm not sure how much of this is part of the genre and involves stuff I should already know as background.

To me it's a lot like a new TV show so far, with many apparently unrelated episodes, generally set in the same universe and involving some of the same characters, but you don't really know where anything is going for a season or two because the writers/showrunners often themselves don't know. The importance of non-main characters is also not knowable for a time until they reappear, if ever.

Yep, R2 is definitely the weakest of the five, mostly because the entire thing is an extended introduction to her initial state. In a normal story, you'd expect the intro to the character's home then the adventure to the first mission. In some ways, I've gone backwards. The unpredictability doesn't do me any favours.

Fionneche, in particular, is a huge problem because her story arcs fizzle in R3. So she teases the eye by seeming important but ultimately is not. This was an unintentional consequence of the MC being a stronger presence than she looked in the outline. I foresee demoting Fionneche to "5th business" next draft.

I read the content summaries of all four R books so far and reread the one for L. Nowhere is there a real summary of what the story (as a whole) is about. The third post in this thread is as close as you've come to a description, which is most noteworthy for saying your not following a formula. Since you're going to have to write a real blurb eventually, why not take a crack at it and drop it into the content summary of book one?

I checked the posts you mention, and can see the lack of clarity. Project R is a fallen angel story.

a blurb might wrote:

They took everything. My friends, my memories, my wings-- even my mother. But I have come to fight back. From the raw streets of one of Earth's toughest cities, I shall rise to vanquish evil. The only question is: once the dust settles will I have a home to return to?

227

(23 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Hah, book signings would be hard, given the assumption I'm a woman. But even if I did any, I still haven't done one to explain the weird new sales

228

(23 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Weird uptick in kindle sales in the past 4 weeks. I haven't released anything new since August, so it's not like I can say it's anything I did. Maybe the economy finally waking up from Covid?

229

(23 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

You aren't the only one thinking there should be blue in her outfit... the only problem is I haven't been able to make it work against a primarily green background. Also the specific scene in the story portrayed on the cover, she's wearing black and white (I'm a big fan of that energy rush when the cover-scene unfolds in the story).

I think someone also suggested Blue lettering

230

(23 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Hmmm going back to the well for another shot for J3nna cover. Third time's the charm?

Whenever you get into a spiral of complexity, just come stare at this
https://images.ctfassets.net/22n7d68fswlw/AKmUAUNelUcSeuqOEEi6/626269c53fb85b7fcb77517387e0f297/ETsidebyside.jpg

This all sounds rather tangly... why not just forge ahead with the violence and simply don't draw attention to it?

I suspect the market you're after is already nervous about the guns. They probably asked Spielberg to edit the guns in ET into walkie-talkies because though the guns weren't fired, the mere presence of them on the screen was too much.

233

(20 replies, posted in Close friends)

So she is not presented as a fighter/hitter so you have some work to do to build her up to throwing a punch

it was clear that both had crushes on J

Wanted to clarify, I wasn't suggesting building on the crush - that part is evident. I was suggesting to build how she decided she needed to resort to violence. That part blindsided me.

234

(23 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Urban Fantasy

235

(23 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Slugging my way through [A r c h a n g e l s K i s s] since that writer not only a best seller, but widely accepted as a leader of the pack in UF/Angel series.

Now, this is a Book II and best seller writers tend to know where their bread is buttered, so I walked in knowing ahead of time I was going to get the same formula as the other... but the plot has been surprisingly thin. I'm about 200 pages in, and it's all burning gazes and dour faces. I checked goodreads -- always good for fun. Sure enough people are like "This entire book is sex and dismembered limbs"

I'd go one step further and add "...and angry people". So much anger in there... like the head of the vampire pack was turned against his will,  so he has a pretty decent reason to be dour. But the six minor characters who work with him are all taciturn grumblers fond of steely gazes and stony silences. And these are the good guys. The villains are also angry mofos with chips on their shoulders, and I can only imagine when they're not on camera, they're eating stones or sleeping on thumbtacks.

There's a lesson for me in there somewhere because I also have a lot of angry characters. Looks like Patty's getting a promotion to a more prominent role

I toured the site. Looks cool

Workable and different enough

Ah, but I didn't mean healing -- only illness. You'd haveto work hard to make it not look like an illness

My line of thinking is his illness will drown among the other illnesses that have been healed (minus the notable blindness). My writing temptation would be to go some completely different route such as de Rosa has insistent debt collectors and his miracle/intercession is the debt collectors are suddenly nice. Or maybe a beam of light shoots through them à la Temple of Doom

Can you just bump it to a different church?

Coming in cold, no idea of the plot or the players (except recognizing the final one) it seemed kinda one-sided, but I'll buy it

242

(23 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Hah so I finally figured out why everyone's weirded out at my male character named "Sara Mindus". I was a little puzzled by this confusion but was prepared to roll with it an choose a new name, until a reviewer clarified that Mindus looks like a last name. Sara's a prefix not unlike "ibn" lol

I had no idea people were reading it as "sarah" or similar. Holy tunnel vision!

Luckily I renamed Heaven to paradise so I can get away with caps. I just need a name for Hell

The Church regularly purges certain offices (just to be unpredictable and to clean house). All the key positions are given to cardinals, who are usually old men with a very limited remaining lifespan.

Q: What happened to the purged guys? Assuming my plant was kicked out along with the others (I mean my one-in-100 good plant who hasn't given himself away) does he get transplanted into another office where I can apply his abilities?

If the A-C wants a near-perpetual lock on the key dioceses

Q: Does he need one? It sounds like as long as he can get two cardinals, he has control. Two cardinals gets him enough sway to keep fresh talent coming up the roster. Assuming he has the pope's ear much of the time through them. Should only be so long before he gains insight into the task force meant to find him. Yikes!

There's only so long he can stay in power before people realize he's not purely human due to the fact that he doesn't die of old age

Q: This is to assume he can't acquire fake ID and "rotate lifespans". Or are you saying there's a public figure he's riding on?

I was curious about the 370 years... but wasn't prepared to crawl down that rabbit-hole until I understood how the context works. Eg if there was a special date you were working backwards to.

I figure that's enough time to pretty much own every cardinal if you're an immortal. You do have a limitation that the plants become bold over time and make mistakes, but through 4 centuries, I bet you get that 1 in 100 who's too crafty to fall that way. After I got some of those guys, I'd grant them immortality - I'd only need about 3 in the whole organization.

My evil plan would be:
a) Keep making stupid minions whose sole job is to get caught so I can monitor how good the church is getting at finding me
b) I'd introduce translation errors in some of the popular bibles such as NIV. I'd sow confusion by painting the devil's number as 665 and 667... I'd make sure dead sea scroll show up and split the faithful over verbiage
c) I would NOT try to get my evil guy into the seat of the pope. I would work hard to break in a good pope who I hold on a leash (Think Wellington Yueh). This is the best guy cause he can pass any radars, right? Everyone trusts him. Once he's in place, he doesn't need to last long... 8 months should do. I'll find sneaky ways to break the succession so the next guy they choose is also tainted. Give me 370 years, I bet I could do it.

I think 1876 would have been good. Hit the cardinals I don't control with the plague right before a big vote... sneak my suk-doctor-pope in. Then off him and replace him with my real guy. Then use my real guy to find and destroy some of the idiots working for me who I don't like, thereby validating he can root out agents of the beast.

"90 years": That's only ten popes or so. Might be harder for my evil plan to get a guy in the key spot in this time. I'd have done it during WWI then use the 1918 H1N1 to ratify guy #2.

"25 Years": Virtually impossible

You can see the pattern in all these ideas. Sneak someone in, and tilt the scales. Then feed him to the machine and back off. Wait till everyone dies off and pull the trigger.

Question: How relevant is the time scale? What are the shortest and longest time you've looked at?

Edit: Not to suggest your sharp-eyed monk can't spot the discrepancy... but the wording is key

Note that your time period is generally considered the "birth" of modern statistical analysis. Though the Greeks as far back as Aristotle understood a "midrange" or a "mean", things like averages, medians, or modes would not be possible on large data sets (unless you had a decent abacus!).

A casual google suggests median pops into existence around 1599
http://jse.amstat.org/v11n1/bakker.html
and you can see how theoretical it is from Example 4:

...obtain the arithmetic mean or mid-range can be justified if certain assumptions are defensible, i.e., that the underlying distribution is at least approximately symmetrical ...

Hard to believe the show only ran 3 seasons. Feels like 10

249

(23 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

@Rachel: I did some digging into the gender issue.

So scholars generally say angels are androgynous. I dug into why they say so, and it seems to boil down to the bible using a male pronoun, so no one's really too sure if gender really applies to them.

In other words, we don't believe there are female angels simply because the bible never mentions any. I find this assumption rather fascinating to be sure.

Of, so since I have created my own gender problem, I have been careful throughout both Project L and Project R to never cal them "men" and "women" which would be human terns created long after angels existed. For the record, I'm unconcerned with achieving biblical accuracy, but I wonder if scholars have penned themselves into a logical quagmire where if a female angel one day showed up, they may have to ask her to cease to exist.

As a healthy recipient of the too many exclamation marks, I wish to note that my characters tend to run into/out-of burning buildings, explosions, and crashing vehicles more than most.Certainly your current story factors in, and definitely Galaxy Tales.

There's only so sedately you can yell Fire! or Watch out for that car!