Sorry about the sudden dearth of blog posts. The dry spell is a combination of family health problems (nothing too serious, just frustrating), a looming deadline and my seeming inability to figure out the right ending for this book (plotted ending looked great on paper, but now that I'm in it, many problems have appeared and solving those problems is proving very frustrating), plus a simple lack of anything really to say.
SO, since I hate an empty blog, I'm opening up the floor to you lovely people. If you have any questions about Eli, writing, publishing, or which dessert is the BEST dessert (flan, hands down) I will answer it. (FUN FACT: the first time I wrote the sentence above, I wrote "which desert is the BEST desert?" and the answer to that is the Taklamakan Desert in Western China. Come on! Its name means "you go in, but you don't come out" and it has sand dunes the size of mountains.)
Anyway, is this a lazy way to get out of thinking up my own blog subjects? Absolutely! Do I feel shame? NONE! So ask away, and if you'd like to see me answering some other questions, please check out my (seven page!) NaNoWriMo thread.
Answers go up this week and next week if I overflow. As always, thanks for reading!
- R
SO, since I hate an empty blog, I'm opening up the floor to you lovely people. If you have any questions about Eli, writing, publishing, or which dessert is the BEST dessert (flan, hands down) I will answer it. (FUN FACT: the first time I wrote the sentence above, I wrote "which desert is the BEST desert?" and the answer to that is the Taklamakan Desert in Western China. Come on! Its name means "you go in, but you don't come out" and it has sand dunes the size of mountains.)
Anyway, is this a lazy way to get out of thinking up my own blog subjects? Absolutely! Do I feel shame? NONE! So ask away, and if you'd like to see me answering some other questions, please check out my (seven page!) NaNoWriMo thread.
Answers go up this week and next week if I overflow. As always, thanks for reading!
- R
16 comments:
What kind of genre fiction do you like to read for pleasure, Rachel? What is your favorite book you read this year? What sort of non fiction inspires you and your writing? Can you divorce the art of analyzing the craft when you read a book?
Did you write Eli as a morally grey character on purpose or did he just more or less present that way? Miranda seems to be the only.character that really balances out Eli's grey morals. Do you think the story would have been really different if their morals were reversed?
(Sorry for any mistakes! I've been ill.)
When you wrote the Eli Monpress books, did you have all the interweaving threads that would pull together in book five identified at the very beginning? I just finished it (and ADORED it...and am working on my review!!), and am stunned and amazed and in awe of your genius at how you wove in these little elements throughout the whole series rather on-the-sly like, and then at the end they all came together in jaw-dropping brilliance.
So I wanted to know if some of them kind of poked their heads out in the last book and waved their arms and said, "Hey, don't forget about me!" or if you knew all along that they were important. :D
I think you said you were planning to write about antagonists. I'm interested in reading what you have to say about that.
Why do authors make their blogs hard to read by putting white text on a black background? I know that sounds facetious, but it seriously is a question that I'd love the answer to. I get why designers do it -- hey, it looks cool -- but it impairs readability dramatically, making it harder for every person with astigmatism (50% of the population!) to read the words. It seems like such a strange choice for the people who should care about the words first. I write this as someone who is seriously considering changing a title because I can't find a capital "C" that I like, so it's not like I don't understand putting design first. I just don't get why so many writers do it.
Hi Rachel!
I was one of those wrimos who constantly posted on the NaNoWriMo forum. I've come to bother you, yet again :P
Almost done with book 3 of Eli. Did you know that some of this big world building stuff was going to come together the way that they do when The Spirit Thief was still in the works? I started reading Spirit Thief before the 4th and 5th came out, and I can see how awesomely epic The Spirit Eater acts on it's own within a trilogy. Im excited to see where 4 and 5 go from here!
How many rewrites does it take for you to reach the point where the story really starts to cinch together, and the writing doesnt feel like gobbledygook? I'm on a second rewrite, and after moving around time, things are working quite nicely.
Thanks for doing this!
1) Now that your finished? Is there anything you would change about an Eli book? Put in, take out. Give a character more page time?
2) If you were to or have written a dragon story. What kind of dragon would it be? Friendly, neutral, hostile. Color? Scaled or unscaled? Fire breather or somthing else?
3) I asked you about Warcraft once but I'm curious what other universe you'd like to write in?
What's you're favorite scene from the Eli series? Why?
If you ever switched to realistic fiction, what would you write about?
What's next for Nico? Where does her relationship with Josef go from here?
Here's one a bit off the wall: How did you manage to keep your Eli-verse characters from cursing?
My WIP is intended to be in the lighter-hearted vein, like Eli (or actually like Salvatore's early Drizzt novels). However, I find some of my characters are, um, pottymouths.
Wouldn't be a problem if I were writing dark fantasy, but I'm aiming for something my soon-to-be 10 year old can read without Dad giving him the thumbs-up on using profanity. How did Eli and company wind up being PG-rated?
Rachel, I'm curious about your thoughts on villains (a subject that fascinates me). Some of my favorite characters in film/literature are villains/anti-heroes (Loki, Gollum, and Snape come to mind) and I've always thought there were two (or more) types of villains (the sympathetic and the truly evil) -- what is some writing advice/general thoughts for creating a great villain? (How did you think about yours)
Are there any fun facts about any of the main characters that didn't make it into the books?
Hey, I sent you a message about this too, but just to get it on the thread: anything you're willing to tell us about Eli's sexuality? Or is it a trade secret?
I'm with OathBreaker wanting to know if you plan on writing a book with dragons. They're my favorite fantasy element, and I think you could make them appropriately sardonic and full of themselves.
While I personally suspect Eli's sexuality is "money" more than anything else and am perfectly happy leaving it there, I would be really curious to find out who the gay characters besides Giuseppe, Alber and the Empress (unless she was bisexual) were, if you're willing to say!
Post a Comment