Audio and Books

1/15/2016

I wrote my first scenes for Of Killers and Kings today, and I'm planning on a release this summer. More imminently, I'm working on two things: the Crimson Vault audiobook (which should be available for sale in March or April), and a new story for the site.

While I'm starting OKAK (oh-cack?), I wanted to work on something extra, something to play with in my spare time. As I fleshed it out, I realized that it should be a story I updated here, on the site, a couple of times a week. I'm thinking now it will be original and set in an original world, because that's what's most fun for me, but I can't rule out the possibility of the occasional TGT or Elder Empire short story.

Whatever floats my boat.

Meanwhile, I'm mostly reading web novels and re-reading some of the fantasy classics. How about you? What have you been up to? Read anything good lately?

You're looking fantastic, by the way. That shirt really brings out your eyes. Have you lost weight?

-Will

42 Comments

Curt

1/15/2016 07:06:33 pm

Actually I've probably gained weight D:

If you have the time and have not seen it, you should watch Steins Gate. It's amazing.

I'm woefully under-read myself these days, hoping some new things come out soon. That's why it's always awesome when your books come out, especially with how quickly you work on them. :D

Will link

1/15/2016 07:52:19 pm

Lol thanks, Curt! I'm actually a huge fan of Stein's Gate, and it's one of the few stories that makes me want to write about time travel.

I won't, though. Time travel is the worst.

Chris

2/15/2016 07:16:28 am

Game you finished narrating the crimson vault? We listen to fantasy books on the road. House of blades was awesome. Still waiting for crimson vault. Maybe laziness? : )

Andrew

1/15/2016 07:49:05 pm

I've started the Stormlight Archive recently, and I'm still cursing Sanderson for stealing the next week or so from me while I compulsively read as much as possible.

Will link

1/15/2016 07:52:45 pm

What a series. The books are so long, and my only complaint is that there aren't more of them.

Andrew

1/15/2016 07:56:32 pm

Oh dear god, not more of them! I still need to have some semblance of a life!

Brian

1/15/2016 09:17:50 pm

I'm reading the Sword of Shadows series by J V Jones. It's not great but good enough to keep me going. It's made me realize the value in different locales and cultures in fantasy novels. The scenery is really, really monotonous in the series (so much snow...) so while the story is compelling it bogs down a lot.

patrick foster

1/16/2016 08:11:46 am

Just finished the newest CHANGE novel from SM Stirling, The Desert and the Blade. Decent—

Will link

1/17/2016 06:39:41 pm

I need to read something else by SM Stirling, because I can't stand the Change books. Can't stand them. I've tried several times, and I can't ever get past Book 1.

Glad you enjoyed it, though!

Neil

1/16/2016 06:07:31 pm

I just finished The Traveler's Gate Chronicles and the short stories. I *really* enjoyed the books, especially the last two, and am sadly all out of Will Wight now :-(

What are your favorite classics that you're re-reading?

Will link

1/17/2016 06:42:06 pm

Thanks for giving me a shot, Neil!

"Classic" might be too strong a word, because this particular book isn't that old, but I'm re-reading The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley right now. The third book is coming out in a couple of months, and I was trying to wait a little to re-read the first two...but I couldn't wait any longer.

I'm also reading a bunch of Chinese web novels on www.wuxiaworld.com. They tend to be kind of rushed and same-y, but they do scratch that magic-fighting itch. Coiling Dragon and Against the Gods, in particular.

Ken

1/16/2016 07:50:27 pm

Liking that idea Will. As long as we get Baldesar Kerns origin story somewhere I'll be happy, because how could it not be awesome. Ive started reading David Dalglishs new series, because the "dances with" spinoff wasn't too bad. Underwhelmed so far... Oh and if you get time give Larry Corria's "Son of the Black Sword" a try. Surprised by how good it was. Anyway, back to enjoying the NZ summer. Lake time.

Pat

1/17/2016 02:51:17 am

I'm on a superhero (and villain) binge. I've recently finished Dire: Born and I can't wait for book 2. Reminded me of wildbow's Worm webnovel but not as depressing.

What webnovels have you been reading lately?

Will link

1/17/2016 06:45:56 pm

Never heard of Dire: Born, but any comparison to Worm is high praise. Even though I feel like the last six (or so) volumes of Worm were very stretched, the story as a whole was unbelievably engaging and creative. It was a huge inspiration to me, even though I only read it for the first time last year.

Lots of Chinese ones, and I've fallen behind on several of the Japanese titles I was following. Off the top of my head:

Douluo Dalu
Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?
Coiling Dragon
Against the Gods
Tales of Demons and Gods
Peerless Martial God

I'm probably forgetting some, but they're all more or less the exact same story, so they tend to overlap. They have their faults, but they're tons of fun if you go in with the right attitude.

Pat

1/17/2016 07:20:50 pm

If you haven't read it yet add Long Live Summons to that list of Chinese webnovels. It doesn't take itself too seriously and has several comedic moments that I feel make it much more palatable than the usual fare much like Tales of Demons and Gods.

Will link

1/27/2016 10:05:58 am

I'm starting to read Long Live Summons, and so far the translation is bothering me, but the text is refreshing. It's nice to see an actual sense of humor alongside some level of genre awareness.

Most people just write the same story over and over.

Jeremiah

1/18/2016 09:58:22 am

I just read All You Need Is Kill which is what edge of tomorrow was loosely based on. It has some language but is an excellent read. It's enough different that it's like they are two different stories from the same universe

Will link

1/20/2016 11:12:46 am

I loved All You Need Is Kill, even though it has the worst English title of all time. I also loved Edge of Tomorrow. They both had a great concept, well-executed in very different ways.

Madeline

1/20/2016 09:50:30 am

Amazon has decided I've read so many fantasy books that all it has left to recommend to me are stupid fantasy romance novels.

Poorly written ones, at that.

So I'm composing scathing reviews for the worst offenders. Why do these authors seem unable to write a book that doesn't fall into the same old "'strong' female heroine falls in love with a male character and then is suddenly dependent on him" plot?

Will link

1/20/2016 11:31:00 am

As you might imagine, Madeline, I have some opinions about that.

First of all, the reason why authors tend to fall into the same standard plots is because they work. They're solid structurally, and they tell a story that you KNOW people want to read. Readers, as a whole, like to know what they're getting into when they buy a book.

So for the most part, writers use tried-and-true plot structure because it often ends up MORE satisfying for the reader than if they didn't. Let's say you're cooking spaghetti sauce. Sure, you could experiment and figure out your own favorite way to cook spaghetti sauce, but there are ten thousand recipes online...and they're likely to be better. In fact, after you put hundreds of hours into perfecting your own recipe, it's highly likely to resemble one of those online recipes anyway.

That's a somewhat heavy-handed analogy used to illustrate a simple concept: the basic plots are most common because they work.

ALL THAT SAID, I have no idea how writers do it. How do you enjoy writing something that's SO similar to everything you've read a million times?

Taking the story structure is one thing, but writing the EXACT SAME BOOK is another. There's one particular fantasy author whose name I don't want to slander (because from everything I've heard they seem nice), but their first book is literally--point for point--just Robert Jordan's Eye of the World. In absurdly obvious ways, like matching subplots and character nicknames and a climactic showdown that takes place around a pool of pure magic.

I don't even care about copyright or intellectual property or whatever, I'm concerned with one point: isn't that INCREDIBLY BORING to write? I mean, you have to know what you're doing. You didn't accidentally end up with Eye of the World. But how could you possibly stay inspired and enthusiastic enough to finish an entire book when you've already read it?

Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara is another example, though I have a lot of sympathy for him as he wrote it when he was 23 and it's his first book ever. It's exactly Fellowship of the Ring, from nine heroes setting out to the wizard dying in a chasm and being reborn with extra power. And of course, the Shannara series starting with Elfstones is brilliant, so no disrespect meant to Mr. Brooks.

That's how I feel about those romance novels.

It's like the Twilight rip-offs, or all those dystopian YA novels after Hunger Games. I don't care that you're capitalizing on ideas from effective stories (that's just smart), but why are there NO ideas of yours in the book? Why is there NOTHING original for me to latch onto and enjoy? How could you possibly focus long enough to finish writing a book like that?

I don't know.

TL;DR - I understand similarity between books in the same genre, but the fact that many books are CLONES still baffles me.

Pat

1/20/2016 06:41:38 pm

Ah Amazon. Their classifications & suggestions are doing horribly for fantasy. Especially for the superhero genre (werewolf & vampire romance = superhero?)

I've taken to reddit and goodreads to find books that I should check out, but that "Recommended for You" amazon has is horrible. Did you know that if you mark a book as "Not Interested" it will also exclude other books that you may be interested? Annoying.

Will link

1/27/2016 10:04:48 am

I did not know that, but honestly I've found a lot of good books through the "Recommended For You" feature. Granted, I'll read virtually anything with magic in it.

Will link

1/20/2016 11:53:50 am

Not that I haven't said way too much already, but here's more! Regarding that one romance plot, in particular (AKA Romance Plot #1), I can speculate about why it's so popular.

Speculate only. As you may have noticed, I avoid writing romance because I doubt my capacity to write it convincingly. A good romance subplot elevates a story, and a bad one is all you remember.

I SUSPECT it has to do with authors attempting to cater to the reader's fantasy, and not in the way you might think.

So, you're a new author. You want to write a romance novel, and you've read a million of them. You have a basic idea of your plot and setting, and you're sitting down to come up with a character.

Well, when you imagine these cool/romantic/sexy/intriguing scenes in your head, who do you picture as the main character? It's you, right?

And so often, it's you as you WANT to be. Makes sense; this is your fantasy, after all. Nothing wrong with that. You're imagining yourself as clever, attractive, resourceful, smooth, etc.

So when people (especially new writers) write the stories, they very often default to this Mary Sue version of themselves. Just because that's who they picture first. Even when they know they have to give their characters flaws, they often stick to flaws that aren't REALLY flaws: they're a little shy, or they care too much, or they're sarcastic to cover up their true feelings.

Anyway, so you start with this character who's boring, but hey...at least she's competent. She's skilled at her job, she's witty, she gets the job done.

So, in a romance novel, now she has to end up with a guy.

Well...why?

From a plot perspective, she's perfect already. She has all the skills she needs to solve the mystery, pay the bills, uncover the dark secret of her family, whatever. The guy character has to add something to the equation, and so often the heroine has no faults to cover for.

So OUT OF THE BLUE the heroine suddenly needs help. And lo and behold, the burly-but-sensitive lumberjack next door is the only one that can help her out of her unsolvable dilemma.

Twenty pages ago, she would have solved this problem herself. Now, she's totally dependent on a man because otherwise there would be no plot reason for the man to show up AT ALL. He has to have an excuse to be there, which is often solving some problem, but that requires the heroine to suddenly become incapable of solving it herself. Just so the author can write a dude in there.

This very much applies to every genre, by the way. I'm only picking on romance because you brought it up. Every writer falls into one or more of these pitfalls to some degree, and each genre has its own version of these conventions: why does the hero's girlfriend get kidnapped?

Because otherwise he would have stayed on his farm.

Why is it his girlfriend and not his little brother?

Because otherwise there would be no room for romance, and books don't get published without romance.

Why isn't it ever a female protagonist rescuing her boyfriend from a tower?

I don't know. Write that.

And, of course, the problem with all these conventions is that they tend to weaken women for the sake of easy writing. Having a protagonist whose entire personality is Strong Woman Protagonist does not help create a realistic portrayal of women in fiction. It's actually worse in some ways, because she's boring.

TL;DR - I talk too much. I blame you, Madeline.

Madeline

1/20/2016 05:28:13 pm

That's okay. Reading your posts is better than reading fail books that Amazon failed to mention were romance books and implied they were just fantasy books with a female protagonist before I bought them.

Harlequin

1/21/2016 03:01:26 pm

I haven't really been reading anything new that was memorable since October.
Mostly waiting on "Please don't tell my Parents i've got henchman" by Richard Roberts. It'll be out January or February at some point. I've also heard good things about Dire:Born, and have read Amazon's sample, I will probably buy it at some point. On Richard Roberts blog, http://www.frankensteinbeck.blogspot.com he actually posted an email from the author of Dire:Born.

Other than that, I've been rereading books I've had for awhile. Lucas Thorn's "Nysta Revenge of the Elf" for one. He created a gritty fantasy world with deadly badass elves.

Another novel I'd recommend off the top of my head would be "VN: The First Machine Dynasty". The first novel was great, the second was decent...

And I'm reading chinese web novels, mostly using google translate, so I can't really think of the titles off the top of my head. Most of them are pretty legible, it depends on the website formating...I guess it makes me feel dyslexic trying to make sense of it though. Haha :)

Will link

1/27/2016 10:14:28 am

Dire:Born seems cool, so I might check it out on Kindle Unlimited. The reviews for Nysta kind of scare me.

I'm not going to lie: I've tried Google translating novels in the past. Some of them work surprisingly well!

Emily

1/25/2016 11:14:39 pm

Most memorable recent book: The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Any description I try won't do it justice (also bonus al a previous discussion she's an imperfect strong female character with no man romance figure to save the day, although that's not what makes it such an amazing book).

Will link

1/27/2016 10:23:09 am

Wow, based on its cover and description it looks very intriguing. And the reviews all compare it to Katherine Addison's Goblin Emperor, which I enjoyed, so that's a plus.

I'm a little worried about the people who say it preaches too much. I don't mind a story with a moral, but I can't stand it when I feel like a book is preaching at me (PTSD from the Sword of Truth series, no doubt).

What did you think? Was it too preachy? Only a little preachy? The reviewers are crazy?

Emily

1/29/2016 11:52:49 pm

I didn't find it preachy at all! The oppressive regime is against lgbt stuff so maybe the reviewers found that inclusion preachy? I thought it was a well integrated part of the story, more setting than preaching.

By the way I totally agree that sword of truth started driving me crazy.

Also thank you for this blog post--it's helped me find more books to read

Will link

1/30/2016 11:03:14 am

I know, me too! I grabbed like five books off of this thread.

I need to just ask this question every few weeks.

James Johnson

1/27/2016 09:32:29 am

I have been reading Free the Darkness (King's Dark Tidings Book 1). it has some subtle(or not so) humor that reminds me of what you used in TGT. I have been getting into LitRPG, Survival quest by Vasily Mahanenko is good, if you can wait for the others to get translated to english

Will link

1/27/2016 10:26:36 am

I'm getting Free the Darkness on Kindle Unlimited right now. It sold me pretty much immediately, so thanks!

Is LitRPG the name of that genre that Korean and Japanese writers seem so fond of? Where it's either someone in a video game or someone reincarnated into a world that works like a video game?

Because I LOVE the ones where it's a real world that just so happens to work like a game, but the ones where they're trapped in a killer MMO...meh. I can never shake the "but it's just a game, it's not real" feeling.

James

1/27/2016 10:36:46 am

It's the trapped in an mmo type, it's not for everyone. It's probably hard to bring yourself into a fictional world inside another fictional world. lol so many layers.

Nathan

1/27/2016 09:56:37 am

Hey Will -- any chance you can keep your readers apprised of your sales numbers for your various series? It is very difficult to track down reliable numbers from self-published folks, and it really helps to inform people re: what is possible for strong self-published fantasy works. I recall you commented when you hit a certain sales mark with Traveler's Gate, and continuing to do so periodically would be a service for the fantasy writer community in general. Thanks for reading!

Will link

1/27/2016 10:31:36 am

Honestly, I stopped posting the numbers because I was hitting milestones too often. I didn't want to flood people every time I made a sale.

To me, sales are only cool because of what they indicate: that people liked the book. I try to share honest numbers, because I found the same thing you did. It's very hard to find reliable numbers.

And that's because everyone's experience varies. I've sold a lot more books than most people, but that isn't typical.

As of now, I've sold about...175,000 units? I haven't checked in a few days, but it's somewhere around that ballpark. I'm selling roughly 70-80 total books a day, though that number tends to spike after a release and then slowly decline over time until my next book comes out.

As long as I keep making enough money to live on, which I certainly am, I'm a happy clam.

Johanne

1/27/2016 03:08:32 pm

Hihi, never actually post on blogs but this is my second time on yours will! You kindly put me in the direction of Locke lamora for which I am waiting on a new release for noooo! Seem to have a list of them at the moment! So thought I would pass on my latest reads while you have went further east than me to china I am into Russian folk lore at the mo I have just finished reading Sergei lukyankenko (might be spelt wrong). I am not typically into books with vampires bt this one I thoroughly enjoyed! You may have already read it or, another out of the box one was john twelve hawks traveller series I liked mix of magic, conspiracy and technology :)

Will link

1/30/2016 11:21:59 am

If he's the guy who wrote the Night Watch books, then yes! I enjoyed those. And the movies were surprisingly faithful adaptations, so that was a nice surprise.

I've never heard of John Twelve Hawks, but the website is beautiful.

Nathan

2/9/2016 08:45:36 am

You're awesome, thanks for the update. Incredibly helpful, I wish other writers realized how useful it is for folks to hear first-hand accounts of their sales experience.

Alpacagod

1/27/2016 06:53:28 pm

In regards to Chinese webnovels, try reading ISSTH(I Shall Seal The Heavens), it starts out ok but only starts to REALLY pick up after the 1st book. Your books are great by the way, read all of them.

Will link

1/30/2016 11:19:56 am

That's funny; I tried ISSTH, and I loved the first half of Book 1, but I hated the second half enough that I barely read any of Book 2 before giving up.

Chris

2/15/2016 07:21:46 am

It invaluable would be good to listen to your second and third books of travelers gate on audible. You actually did a great job on the dust one... for an author that only had the super power to speak to jelly fish.

NAY

12/22/2016 07:29:06 am

LitRPG also includes going into a world that works like a tabletop RPG, there is a FB dedicated to it https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup/ - Will should check it out, good networking with other authors like Aleron Kong. Also, LOVE Crucible, pls keep it up, i am a big fan of ISSTH as well - it took over my life until i had downloaded and read all the epubs on asianovel.com. Agree it really picks up in later books. Like it doesn't have harem - soooo many wuxia/xianxia novels end up with harems and it is often just so unbelievable and actually detrimental to the flow of the story. Oh, and i recommend Drew Hayes, all his stuffs are awesomesauce.

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