Luna Dark coming

The third and final book in the Luna Cycle is coming. I've finished the draft, and my editor Amanda is working on it. The book is epic so it may be a while. I kept trying to cut stuff out, but I just couldn't find too many shorter ways of conveying the themes.

If you read books 1 and 2, you will know that I basically skip over the summer. However, for book 3, Celeste goes to summer school (or the summer session at least). While the summer is broken into 4 parts, it's basically the same length as a regular part.

I still haven't decided on the exact quote to open the book. The obvious is Thucydides line on the three motivations of human life. Could also go with something by another old dead Greek guy -- Aristotle, Sophocles, Homer. The usual. We'll see. I went with Abe Lincoln last time even though Oppenheimer was a more classic.

Yeah. I should probably go unusual. Nothing typical is insightful.

What makes me continue or stop reading a book

At what point do you decide to continue reading a book or to stop and move on to the next one?

I’ve heard people say they will give a book 50 pages or a chapter to convince them to continue reading.  I give a book about a page or two. Sometimes I will extend that if there is a prologue. But, you might say, that’s not enough time to know if you will like the book.

True. But it is enough time for me to know if I will like the author’s writing. As I have gotten older, that has become the most important thing in my deciding to continue reading a book. Writing style, at least in popular fiction and most literature, does not change over the course of a book. The voice of the author (or the narrator if it is first person) is what keeps me reading.

Obviously, I am not completely a stylist. I value character, theme, and plot as much as most people. It’s just that storytelling is an art. For me, the way a story is told is almost more important than the story itself. History shows this. The stories that last are the ones well told.

Let’s look at some examples.

            Catch-22: I laughed so hard reading the first pages that I didn’t care if the plot confused me later on or I didn’t connect to the characters. The writing was so fun I read it to the end.

            No Country for Old Men: Couldn’t stand the sparse narration. Just didn’t work here with this story. Now, for some reason, it works in The Road. The lack of quotation marks has the same effect.

            American Pastoral: Big important book. Big pretentious writing.

The oddities:

            The Anita Blake series: I wanted to like this series, but it was so overwritten that I couldn’t enjoy it. I don’t need that much description, especially when it is pointless. However, it took me a bit longer than normal to realize it was like this.

            Atonement: Similar to No Country in that I’m not sure what is going on. Somehow I finished it. Considering the story, that might have been part of the idea. Not that I could figure that out from the writing. McEwen’s On Chesil Beach is better. The short elegance works better to that story.

It’s ironic in some ways that I feel the opposite about movies. Within limited exceptions the style of a movie will not dictate whether I will watch it or not. The two main exceptions: A Tony Scott (RIP) heavily edited stylized kind of movie and a visually transporting spectacle (Avatar, Gravity). The former I can’t watch no matter the quality of the story and characters. The latter I will watch despite the lacking story and character.

But that is a thought for another day.

"Luna Waning: Book 2 of the Luna Cycle" is here

Just posted it over the weekend to smashwords. You can find it here
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/421554

It is available for pre-sale now and will be released at midnight on March 30th.

I was torn on the opening quote, but I decided to go with Lincoln over Oppenheimer. The latter's quote, "I am become Death, destoryer of worlds," would have been a more authorly thing. The Lincoln quote speaks more to the characters and their situation. As a general rule, it's best to serve your characters first rather than yourself.

Luna Waning Cover

The Luna Waning: Book 2 of the Luna Cycle cover is here.

There were a couple options of what to do with the scroll and how to position it. In the end, I decided that this way was the best combo of scroll, blood and moon. It helps that it matches the first book.