It’s a great story. Give it a read. You’ll be glad you did.

My suggestion to you? Watch it without the sound the first time through. My sound happened to be muted on my laptop when I watched it first. Not realizing this, I thought it was like a silent film. It works incredibly well this way. When you’ve run through it once like that, then turn the sound up and you’ll find that it’s still brilliant.

Good luck to them all…

You know what would be really cool, though? If someone told me they'd written like 4,000 words today. Ever read Cherie Priest's blog? She writes like 18,000 words per freaking day. What's up with that? Does she have a pod of imps chained to a bunch of old Mac laptops in her basement? It wouldn't be so bad if she wrote crappy books. But she doesn't. She writes cool books. Really cool books.

Sigh.

So, yeah, someone please tell me they wrote like three times as much as I did in the past few days. That would be wonderful.

With Straits, I'm shooting for more of a flavor of the Empire that stands to the west of the Grand Duchy. They're loosely based on the Ottoman Empire, and they're a major player in this book, so I wanted to get them in to the title right away. On the island of Galahesh are, well, straits. They come into play quite a bit in the story, but I also wanted to again, make it a harbinger of the danger that lies ahead, which helps me to shape the story.

I'm about 48k into the book so far. I'm shooting for 20k per month so that I can finish around the February timeframe and then begin immediately edits for my May due date next year. It's a little aggressive because of the size of the books I'm writing (roughly 180k or so each), but it's doable. I usually get in about 1k per writing session, and I write most nights, so I think I'll be able to do 20k a month without much trouble.

Coming April 2011 

Among inhospitable and unforgiving seas stands Khalakovo, a mountainous archipelago of seven islands, its prominent eyrie stretching a thousand feet into the sky. Serviced by windships bearing goods and dignitaries, Khalakovo's eyrie stands at the crossroads of world trade. But all is not well in Khalakovo. Conflict has erupted between the ruling Landed, the indigenous Aramahn, and the fanatical Maharrhat, and a wasting disease has grown rampant over the past decade. Now, Khalakovo is to play host to the Nine Dukes, a meeting which will weigh heavily upon Khalakovo's future. 

When an elemental spirit attacks an incoming windship, murdering the Grand Duke and his retinue, Prince Nikandr, heir to the scepter of Khalakovo, is tasked with finding the child prodigy believed to be behind the summoning. However, Nikandr discovers that the boy is an autistic savant who may hold the key to lifting the blight that has been sweeping the islands. Can the Dukes, thirsty for revenge, be held at bay? Can Khalakovo be saved? The elusive answer drifts upon the Winds of Khalakovo… 

Trade Paperback – 978-1-59780-218-5 
500 Pages – $14.99 

I have no idea if I'll be involved in any of the decision making. I'm perfectly fine if I'm not. Night Shade and Mr. Scholes certainly know what they're doing. But I'd also be perfectly happy to help if I can. If there are character's in the finished piece (which is not a given), I have a lot of pictures I've dug up while researching the costumes, etc. If it's purely a landscape shot, there are several places in the world that would match up well with Tom's strengths. The eyrie is one such. It's a massive cliff face where there are dozens of stone perches on which the windships of the Grand Duchy can berth.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Well, all in all I would have to say I liked it and would generally recommend it to people. But was I crazy about it? No. I'd have to put it squarely in the B- category.

::spoiler alert::

::spoiler alert::

The good?

The special effects of course. Even though they were pretty spectacular, I often couldn't tell reality from effect. The exception, looking back, was the floaty scenes in the hotel. Cool thought, and they did a good job for something that's very difficult to pull off in a believable way, but it still felt setty and wirey to me. Very non-null grav. But I loved the landscape scenes, especially bending Paris in half and the coastal destruction.

The only standout in the acting category was Marion Cotillard. She didn't have a ton of screen time, but when she was on the screen, she shined. She really played the part of the lovelorn wife very well. Just the right mix of anguish and desire and batshit crazy. Ellen Page did a nice job as well, though I think she was handcuffed by the script.

The core idea itself was well thought out and well executed for the most part. It kept me thinking and even though there were a lot of parallels with The Matrix, I often caught myself thinking beyond the movie into "what ifs". What would *I* do in that situation? What would *I* build?

The culmination of the movie, with all four levels headed toward one final conclusion was handled about as well as it could be handled. It got long at the end. I think Nolan overplayed his hand a bit, but it handled nicely, with all four levels adding tension to the story.

The action was quite good. I thought they mixed the slo-mo with normal-time sequences to good effect. And it was pretty complex action, especially when it came to the 3- and 4-level immersions at the end. This is clearly Nolan's strong suit: mixing complicated action in a tense but palatable way for the viewer.

I'm not really sure where to put this. I'm sort of half and half about the very ending, where we're supposed to wonder whether or not the world Leonardo made it to was real or not. I fully admit that Nolan had to do it. They had talked too much about the creeping doubt Leonardo and his wife experienced not to do it. But still, I felt the manipulation, and that I didn't quite like.

The not so good?

The initial frame scene was handled in a pretty ham-fisted way. I would actually have preferred it if he were finishing up a completely different, unrelated job, and then Watanabe approaches him afterward. Telegraphing the fact that Watanabe was going to be in limbo for fifty years really sapped the tension and the emotion for me at the end. Had we simply thought that they were gone, not knowing if they would ever return, and then Leonardo finds and saves him at the end, I would have been much more on the edge of my seat with respect to how the movie would end.

The exposition. I really, really didn't like the way the elements of inception were discussed. It could have been much more organic, much more natural than the way it was presented to the viewer. The "limbo" and "kick" scenes stick out, but there were a lot of things just like them where they put the movie on hold for a minute or so while they told you about an element of the story.

The acting. I've come to like Leonardo a lot, and really many of actors in the movie, but the script did not allow them much freedom, and Nolan has to shoulder some of the blame here. They all felt wooden at certain points, especially (and sadly) Ken Watanabe and Leonardo and Ellen Page. The worst of the bunch was Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I know he's been a stage actor for a while after his stint on Third Rock from the Sun, and it showed. He was either overacting or emotionless. Surely this second option was at Nolan's direction, and probably necessary given the other option was too much expression, something that's necessary on a Broadway stage. Tom Beringer also gets a big thumbs-down.

A special rasberry has to go out to makeup. Ken Watanabe looked horrible as an old man. They couldn't have borrowed the technology from Benjamin Button?

Here's the lowdown:

• Thurs 9am – Plotting in Reverse - Craft the end at the beginning! Work your story backward! Simply decide how you want your tale to conclude, and we’ll help you figure out how to get there from page one.
• Thurs 10am – Plotstorming from Character - In some cases the plot of a book drives the characters. However, characters that instead drive the plot can make for a more compelling story. In this hour, we focus on how to grow your plot from your main characters.
• Thurs 1pm – Creating Conflict - Make war, not peace! Ruffle the feathers of your characters. Stir the pot of emotions. Add a fistfight or two. Craft a clever and entertaining argument among your heroes. Not all conflict has to be bloody or increase the body count, but it does have to keep the reader turning the pages. Our panelists discuss the art of adding a dash of conflict to your pages.
• Thurs 3pm – Pick My Brain (no zombies, please)
• Thurs 9pm – International Get Your Editor Drunk Night (don't ask)
• Fri 9am – The Protagonist - We’ll teach you how to turn an ordinary hero into an extraordinary one. Spend an hour focusing solely on your main character, a good guy who doesn’t necessarily have to wear a white hat. We’ll tackle the villain in a later panel.
• Fri 10am – The Antagonist - Mold a truly remarkable villain, a character memorable to your readers, devoid of clichés, and one who can go toe-to-toe with your protagonist. For one hour, no heroes are allowed.
• Fri Noon – Reading with Tim Waggoner, with special guests Paul Genesse and Kelly Swails, who will be assisting in my reading of The Winds of Khalakovo
• Fri 1pm – Signing at Author's Alley