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My surprise date with Amber Benson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Pat Rothfuss, and Terry Brooks

My surprise date with Amber Benson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Pat Rothfuss, and Terry Brooks

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So yesterday afternoon I got a phone call. It was from the Madison, WI area and I was like: I don’t know anyone in Madison. So I let it go to voicemail.

A few minutes later, I get a private message on FaceBook…

Cool surprise number 1: It was Pat Rothfuss. He’s like: give me a buzz. So I do (realizing that the missed phone call was probably from him). Pat answers and says there’s been a bit of a mix-up and he’s sorry for the short notice, but would I like to be on his new Geek & Sundry show, The Story Board.

What follows is a dramatic presentation of the two seconds that followed that question:

Me to anyone watching at that moment: O.o

Me in my head: Hell yeah, I’ll be on your show.

Me on the phone: I’d be delighted.

So we exchange all the details. I knew about his new show. A few weeks ago, I’d watched part of Episode 1 with urban fantasists Diana Rowland, Emma Bull, and Jim Butcher. And back then, I was all like: man it’d be cool to be on a show like that.

Little did I know…

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Chris Braak Reviews The Winds of Khalakovo

Chris Braak Reviews The Winds of Khalakovo

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windsofkhalakovoThe Winds of Khalakovo
Bradley P. Beaulieu
Nightshade Books (Trade Paperback $14.99, 312pp)
Reivewed by Chris Braak

It’s a little daunting, when you pick up Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo. Before the story even starts there are three pages of maps, and a list of characters that’s extensive, and full of names that enjoy that horrifically Chekhovian similarity – the kind that makes you wonder how you’re ever going to tell any of these people apart. The setting of this fantasy novel diverges from the traditional, Medieval-Central-European analog, and instead is something more like a 17th-century Russia, filled with costumes and vocabulary that are likely to be quite alien to a regular fantasy reader.

But the allure of fantasy is the appeal of the strange, and once the apprehension has passed, The Winds of Khalakovo reveals itself to be something quite extraordinary.

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Read an excerpt from Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Straits of Galahesh

Read an excerpt from Bradley P. Beaulieu’s The Straits of Galahesh

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galahesh-cover-v2-medWith the release of The Straits of Galahesh imminent (it hits shelves April 3rd), I’m grateful to John O’Neil and Howard Andrew Jones for having me by to share an excerpt. The Straits of Galahesh is the second book in my epic fantasy trilogy, The Lays of Anuskaya. The story picks up five years after the close of the first book, The Winds of Khalakovo. (And by the way, if you don’t already have a copy of WINDS, it’s available for FREE in the US from the Amazon Kindle Store until the end of the month.)

Here’s the cover blurb for STRAITS:

West of the Grand Duchy of Anuskaya lies the Empire of Yrstanla, the Motherland. The Empire has lived at peace with Anuskaya for generations, but with political turmoil brewing and the wasting disease still rampant, opportunists from the mainland have begun to set their sights on the Grand Duchy, seeking to expand their empire.

Five years have passed since Prince Nikandr, heir to the scepter of Khalakovo, was tasked with finding Nasim, the child prodigy behind a deadly summoning that led to a grand clash between the armies of man and elder elemental spirits. Today, that boy has grown into a young man driven to understand his past – and the darkness from which Nikandr awakened him. Nikandr’s lover, Atiana, has become a Matra, casting her spirit forth to explore, influence, and protect the Grand Duchy. But when the Al-Aqim, long thought lost to the past, return to the islands and threaten to bring about indaraqiram – a change that means certain destruction for both the Landed and the Landless – bitter enemies must become allies and stand against their horrific plans.

Can the Grand Duchy be saved? The answer lies hidden within the Straits of Galahesh…

I also wanted to let the readers of Black Gate know that I’m holding a giveaway to help promote The Straits of Galahesh. Everyone is welcome to come by and enter. I’m giving away a Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet (winner’s choice), a Kindle Touch or Nook Simple Touch (winner’s choice), a rare ARC of The Straits of Galahesh, and ten SETS of the first two books in both physical and electronic form. The details, including how to enter, can be found here.

One last item of note, if you enjoy the excerpt below, you can download the first eleven chapters from my website.

So, without further ado, here’s the prologue from The Straits of Galahesh.

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Finding the Balance: Workshopping

Finding the Balance: Workshopping

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galahesh-cover-v2-medOver the past year, and as I prepare for the release of my second book, The Straits of Galahesh, I’ve been interviewed a number of times. I’m often asked about the process of writing and how I cut my teeth as a writer. I went fairly “workshop heavy,” and I thought this would make for an interesting discussion for those who are just getting into writing.

I started workshopping not with a local group (I was traveling too much for that), but with an online community—Critters, to be specific. After a few months with Critters I moved on to the Online Writing Workshop, which worked very well for me for years. In terms of instructor-led workshops, I’ve been to Viable Paradise, Writers of the Future, Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp, and Clarion. I took a bit of a break after Clarion, but then attended Starry Heaven I and II in Flagstaff, AZ, a peer-to-peer workshop run by S.K. Castle that was modeled off of Charlie Finlay’s Blue Heaven. I enjoyed those so much I started Wellspring, another Blue Heaven offspring. I ran the first last summer in Lake Geneva, WI, and I’m running the second this coming summer, just before WorldCon in Chicago.

If it wasn’t obvious from that list, I strongly recommend workshopping. If you come with the right attitude and the right expectations, it will take your writing much farther than you could have brought it on your own. The greatest strength of workshopping, in my opinion, is the wealth of knowledge that others will bring to the table, things your own set of experiences and knowledge haven’t led you to.

Strangely, when you workshop you’ll find that you’ll gain insight from what other writers find in your work, but you’ll soon learn that you get as much benefit or more from critiquing work that others have also critiqued. You won’t be working with your own material, where you will inevitably have blind spots. You’ll be working as a first reader, as will the other writers, and it’s in comparing how well (or not) you found issues in the writing that you’ll learn. And so, pay close attention to what others have said about work you’ve also critiqued. See what you missed and then start taking notes. Identify your blind spots and then create stories that expose those weaknesses. Actively work to strengthen those muscles, and soon you’ll find them becoming strengths, or at least not liabilities. What I said about experimenting earlier? This is why you experiment. To become stronger in your craft with targeted exercises.

In these early days, enter with an open mind and an open heart. Learn from the other writers. Try not to get defensive. Absorb. And for the love of all that is good, experiment. You may want to write a particular type of fiction—for me it was epic fantasy—by try other things on for size. It will only help you as you progress.

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