I'm taking LibraryThing's 50 Book Reading Challenge for 2010. This is my 10th read of the 50.

Blood Engines is the first of the Marla Mason urban fantasy novels by author Tim Pratt. While urban fantasy isn't my usual thing, I'd previously read The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl and liked it, though what got me to try Blood Engines was the fact that Pratt is serializing a new Mason novel called Broken Mirrors. I wanted to support that effort, but since I wasn't familiar with the main character or her exploits I thought I'd start with the first book and see how I liked it.

While I can't say I didn't enjoy the book, there were parts I could have done without, and what really bothered me the most is that for all Mason's purported and often spoken of ability to kick butt, she never really does.

Blood Engines begins in San Francisco (Pratt makes his home in Oakland, just on the other side of the bay; I grew up in the Bay Area, so I'm more than a little familiar with the lay of the land) where Marla Mason has come in search of a Cornerstone, an ancient magical device whose power is to enhance and make permanent the effects of any spell. Mason hopes to work some magic to defeat a rival back in her own city of Felport. A wrench is thrown into her plans when the contact she'd come to connect with, and who also knew the location of the Cornerstone, is murdered. Feeling obligated to seek out the murderer, and because that path also intersects with her own immediate goal, Mason sets out to bring the perpetrator to her sort of justice.

Pratt is a deft storyteller. The writing is crisp and doesn't waste the reader's time with loads of info dumps. There are, however, parts that go off on tangents. The worst of them is a long scene where Mason is looking for her first lead concerning the Cornerstone's whereabouts which leads her into the den of a "pornomancer", a sorcerer whose power stems from the sexual energy around him. What ensues is an elaborate, drawn out orgy scene the like of which I'd never been invited to while living in San Francisco. ;-)

That aside, I had a similar issue with this book that I had with The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl: the main character simply doesn't do enough. Pratt goes to great length to tell us how much of a bad ass Mason is, yet we never see that reflected in the unfolding story. There is plenty of magic, though it is not always cast by Mason. In fact, little of it is. In the final scene, while Mason has set up the pieces to confront one another, she doesn't take part in it herself.

I'm on the fence if I'll pick up the next book in the series. I may give it a try. You'll know if it gets added to my reading list and subsequently reviewed.

I was driving home last night contemplating my schedule, where and how I spend my time, and, most importantly, where it all goes. That got me thinking… while I know how and where I spend my time in a general sense, I was curious as to how much time in any given week I devote to the major items in my life. Who knows? Maybe by analyzing this I might be able to make some adjustments and improve my overall time management.

For me, major items include:

1. Work (my primary, day-time job)
2. Going to/from work (4 days/week since I usually work at home at least 1 day/week)
3. Exercise (cycling, running, weight-lifting; this goes up in the warmer months as I'm out on the bike more)
4. Writing (my current novel, short stories, this blog)
5. Reading (books, blogs, etc.)
6. Breaks (TV watching, playing with the dogs, hanging out with my wife; everyone needs some down time)
7. Outside work (mowing the lawn, etc.; less now but more as it gets warmer)
8. Personal Technical Projects (various side projects I work on to stay up on programming and technology)
9. Sleep (almost forgot this one…)

I'm not going to include some things, like listening to podcasts, which I do all the time but which I always do whilst engaged in something else. Which brings up another point: I don't consider the time I spend driving to and from work as wasted because I'm always listening to podcasts or sometimes audio fiction. I'm a fanatic about maximizing every minute.

Given the above items, here's how much time I spend on each per week (my first attempt at this I was 5 hours short; since I'm not working off a super-accurate log here, I just spread those hours out to get to 168):

Work	45	27%
Commuting	8	5%
Exercise	8	5%
Writing	16	10%
Reading	18	11%
Breaks	10	6%
Outside work	6	4%
Technical Projects	8	5%
Sleep	49	29%
TOTAL	168	100%

And, in pie chart format:

Some of these items are immovable: work, sleep (I only get 7 hours/night as it is), commuting. Others could be changed, such as exercise or reading (sometimes I think I spend too much reading blogs). Breaks… I'd have to take a closer look at what I do in those 14 hours. Writing and Technical Projects… if anything, I want to spend more time, not less, in those areas.

Of course, this is a somewhat rough idea where I spend my time as some of the figures are pure estimates. If I wanted to really perform a close analysis I should probably carry a small notepad around with me for a week and write down each activity and time spent on it. Maybe I'll do that at some point, but for now I just wanted to get a general sense where all the time is going.

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One of the things I often do as I'm reading a novel or short story is keep track of words whose definitions I do not know or that I find interesting. Either way, these interesting words are ones I feel might be of use in my own writing. That, and it's good to expand one's vocabulary every once in a while.

Read my review of The Outstretched Shadow.

Even though I didn't complete The Outstretched Shadow, I still found a few interesting words.

vulpine: resembling or characteristic of a fox

convocation: a group gathered in response to a summons

vintner: someone who makes or sells wine

sennight: the space of seven nights and days; a week

finial: a relatively small, ornamental, terminal feature at the top of a gable, pinnacle, etc.; an ornamental termination to the top of a piece of furniture, or of one part of such a piece

ostentatious: intended to attract notice and impress others

plinth: a square block, especially of stone, on which a column or a statue stands

perfidious: tending to betray; especially having a treacherous character as attributed to the Carthaginians by the Romans

piquant: engagingly stimulating or provocative; having an agreeably pungent taste

slatternly: slovenly, untidy

epistle: a formal or elegant letter

tureen: large deep serving dish with a cover; for serving soups and stews

roached: hair combed up from the forehead or temples in a roll or high curve

double-milled: twice milled or fulled, as cloth, to make it finer

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As previously mentioned, now that I own an eReader and thus a viable way to read eBooks without having to print them, I plan to read and review each of the previously featured Tor.com giveaways. This is the fourth of those reviews.

Also, I'm taking LibraryThing's 50 Book Reading Challenge for 2010. This is my 9th read of the 50.

The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory is book one of The Obsidian Trilogy. It is followed by To Light a Candle and When Darkness Falls.

This first book in the trilogy starts out very promising. Unfortunately, the initial plot which I found quite riveting begins to slow and finally fall flat for me as I gave up reading about halfway through.

Kellen Tavadon, son of the most powerful mage in the Golden City, wants more out of life than the controlled, sanitized life given to him by his father and the other ruling mages of the City. He finds more than he bargained for when he happens upon the three books of Wild Magic.

Wild Magic differs from the traditional magic performed by the City's mages in that it is easier, requires less preparation, is in some ways more powerful, but ultimately was banned long ago by the mages of the Golden City because it exacts a price that is sometimes too high to pay. Kellen soon learns there is even more to it than that when he is discovered practicing this forbidden magic and banished from the City and its utopian way of life. This is all well and fine with Kellen. Others have been expelled from the city and, he imagines, gone on to lead a new, independent existence free from the stifling rules of the mages. He comes to find out, though, that of those previously banished, none still live, for the mages set an Outlaw Hunt in pursuit of him: a pack of stone golem hounds whose only purpose is to kill those expelled from the City.

This is a great premise and the story does well up until the point where Kellen settles into a life free from his father's influence. He begins to delve further into Wild Magic, albeit slowly, and discovers there is an entire world of fascinating people living outside the borders of the City. The problem is that the story settles far too much into the mundane. Meeting new neighbors, attending fairs, chopping wood, observing Kellen's sister, who is a healer, going about her daily routine. In a way, I found the manner in which Kellen settles in with his sister to be a bit… unwholesome; I think the sister character's part would have been better served as a non-blood relation.

I read some reviews on the second book in the series, To Light A Candle. Those reviews claim the second book picks up the pace. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to the end of this one, so I won't be getting to see that for myself.

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Tim Pratt, whose book The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl I reviewed some time ago, posed this question on his blog:

Should I Write the Next Marla Mason Novel?

Marla Mason is Pratt's urban sorcerer character who has appeared in four traditionally published novels to date: Blood Engines, Poison Sleep, Dead Reign, and Spell Games. Also, Marla Mason is the main character in Bone Shop, a prequel to the other novels which Pratt serialized and gave away for free (donations accepted, of course) on his web site.

When Pratt originally posed that question on his blog and Twitter, I scoffed. Stephen King had tried it and failed. Tim and I engaged in a brief conversation where he pointed out the difference in scale (King has to make a whole lot more for it to be worth his time) and the fact that King tried it a decade ago. We both agreed that a lot of things can change in 10 years. Our conversation closed with the following comments from Tim:

Turns out his publisher is not interested in any more Marla Mason novels. Pratt has a great affinity for the character, though, and so on the heels of Bone Shop, Pratt's first serialized Marla Mason novel, he's doing it again, this time with Broken Mirrors.

Broken Mirrors will appear online one chapter at a time and run for "20-25 weeks". The first chapter will go up March 8.

While you can download the chapters for free, donations are, of course, accepted. In exchange for your contribution, Pratt has a tiered reward system. The more you donate, the more you get (beyond the author's undying appreciation, of course).

While I had read the before-mentioned The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, I had no experience with his Marla Mason novels prior to reading about his plans for Broken Mirrors. Intrigued by the serialization idea, I went out and bought the first Mason novel, Blood Engines (actually, I bought it through my Kindle, so I didn't really go anywhere). So far, so good, and I'm looking forward to watching Broken Mirrors unfold.

You can subscribe to the upcoming chapters via the RSS feed on the Broken Mirrors web site.

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Below you'll find a short (but growing) list of short fiction I make available for free. There's no commitment to do anything but read. However, if you enjoyed a story (or even if you didn't) and would like to let me know, please leave a comment either below or click-through to each of the stories and leave a comment there. You can read in HTML, MOBI/Kindle, or PDF format.

 

Fine Wine

In which an assassin makes a deal.

"Fine Wine" is a short piece I wrote in about an hour, with several edits following that initial brain dump. It started with a single sentence that just popped into my head: "Abelard ate a lot. That was why, after I'd slashed my knife across his belly..."

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I'm supporting Kindle writers by selecting for review one eBook from Amazon's Kindle store each month. This is the first of those selections.

Also, I'm taking LibraryThing's 50 Book Reading Challenge for 2010. This is my 8th read of the 50.

Eleganta: A novel of Fairykind by Denny Swartzlander is my February and first Kindle Pick of the Month. In a way, this is an experiment. First time writers publishing in the Kindle store either (1) couldn't get their novel published by a traditional publisher or (2) didn't submit to a traditional publisher. Either way, the traditional publishing route, which some people feel is pretty important to boosting quality, has been circumvented.

Full disclosure: My first fantasy novel was not picked up by a publisher, so I decided to put it out on my site, the Kindle store, and other online venues.

So, the experiment is to see if self-published eBooks meet the same quality standard as traditional books.

Eleganta left me undecided.

The titular character, a garden fairy, has just given birth to a baby, an occurrence not seen in over a decade. It is quickly decided that the baby must be brought to the fairy queen for protection, for an invading army of trolls—and one troll general in particular—is hell-bent on capturing her. Seems that the trolls grow sick and die when ingesting the current crop of fairies, so they're consumed (no pun intended) with creating a line of fairies not toxic to them. For reasons which remain unclear to me, Eleganta's baby is the key to this source.

So begins a journey for Eleganta, her daughter, and a warrior fairy charged with protecting them that should by all accounts be one charged with suspense and danger. There's plenty of danger (though I never really felt anyone was going to suffer from it) but little suspense. Eleganta and company go from one destination to another, sometimes quickly, sometimes stopping to frolic in the forest, so to speak, all the while chased by a pair of monstrous hound-like creatures. That in itself is a problem: the trolls want the baby alive, so why send a couple of creatures who will probably do nothing less than eat it if they ever capture it?

Another point of contention I couldn't get past: fairies fly, yet their villages are walled. Perhaps this is because they've been fighting the army of trolls for some time, so they've simply built their defenses up. But, still, I had imagined a different sort of lifestyle for fairy-kind, one that did not mirror our own so much.

In terms of writing, Eleganta varies from above average to below average. Character descriptions sometimes are info dumps, with too much, too soon and descriptions that are too detailed. I prefer to find out the nuances of a character as the story unfolds rather than having information thrown at me straight off. There are parts of Eleganta that are on par with anything you'd read elsewhere. Unfortunately, there are also other sections I felt could have used a bit more polish.

The storyline is good enough, though pacing was not the best and the characters are all-too-familiar or just flat. There was no one character I really connected with nor any characters I genuinely wanted to see succeed.

Perhaps the most telling sign of all: I couldn't finish Eleganta. I made it halfway. Knowing when to stop reading isn't always easy. In this case, I was having a hard time getting enthused about picking up my Kindle and diving into the story. If that isn't a sign tell me what to do, I don't know what is.

While Eleganta racked up nine five star reviews on Amazon, I didn't feel it quite met that level. I plan to give it three stars when I post my review there shortly.

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