The Stone Traveler: Book Review

The Stone Traveler by Kathi Oram Peterson, is an LDS YA time-travel adventure. It begins a few years from now, drops back almost two thousand years, and returns to the future.

Lost yet?

Good.

Kathi is guiding a travelogue through the realms visited by Stone Traveler on her blog HERE.

I'm kind of excited, I think my place is the first glimpse of the wicked city of Jacobugath, you'll get on the tour.

A reward for following her on the entire blog journey, visiting and commenting on all the stops are weekly prizes-and a grand prize of a kindle. Fear not, you can play catch up on the previous sites and you have until the 30th.

Comment like you read my review too.

So my review.
We follow two main characters- Sabirah, a young woman from millennia ago and Tag Quincy, a teen from the not too distant future. Tag has probably about two thirds of the book, but most of the time they are together you see different views on one situation. Tag usually being the fish out of water in a fantastical ancient-american landscape.
Behind the time-travel adventure arc lies the familial issues that each one must face. I like that the way Kathi has her characters act and react-it felt real, no matter when you are from.
It's good because I don't believe people as individuals have really changed, society and customs sure, but we all feel love and loss the same way.
And with the characters dealing with loss AND overcoming it, I think makes this is a great book to be both entertained and think about.
I suspected the answers to Tag's problems a little early on, but that won't take away from the book at all for anyone.
I did think it started a little slow with Tag and I didn't really like him at first-being more interested in Sabirah-but that only helped for Tag's character growth.
I would have liked to have seen a little more with the villains-but I'm just that type of guy.
I'm sure this is a book my kids will enjoy when they are a little older.

Zouche Jaguar God of Jacobugath

Revision and Frazetta

I have a number of stories waiting to be sent out to various prospective markets-some have been previously rejected and some of have only been read by a handful of people-either way, before I send them out I am going to give them another once over or two. Do what I can to make them shine brighter, sharpen the sword blades a bit and let the crimson steam a little hotter.
I don't want to get hung up rewriting everything but let some amount of revision light that fire that inspired the piece in the first place.

Here is a snippet of what David Farland had to say in relation to re-imaginings.

Dave Farland wrote, - "Yet very often, we need to be able to re-imagine a scene. Many professionals may do this on a regular basis. A few years ago, I was at a function in Los Angeles, admiring some of Frank Frazetta’s paintings. I was impressed by the detail and the use of color, and I mentioned to Frank, “You know, these are much better than I remember them from the sixties and seventies.” I pointed out the use of colored washes and lacquers that added depth to the paintings, reinventing the color scheme, and some of the details, and said, “You know, I don’t remember this. Was all of this color lost in the printing process, or have you been working on this?” He smiled, grateful that I had noticed, and said, “Oh, yes, every year or two I’ll think of some way to improve these, and I’ll take out the paints and work on them. I’ll bet that I’ve put months—maybe even a couple of years—into this painting since I did the original.”

It didn’t matter that the paintings had already sold thousands of prints, or that he’d won awards for them. Frank just kept working toward perfection.

I liked his attitude. It makes me want to tear apart an old story and figure out how to make it new."

Here are a couple examples-just in case someone didn't know what a fan of Frazetta I am.



















If you aren't already, I would highly recommend signing up for Dave Farland's Kick in the Pants Newsletter.
Quote used by permission.

Star Trek TIK TOK

Just to clear the palette.

Big Book Signing Saturday

ON
September 11th, 2010
12:00 - 4:00 pm
Eborn Books
Provo Towne Center, Upper Level, just outside Dillard's

I will be signing books with friends and fellow authors - Tristi Pinkston and Daron D. Fraley.
There will also be some sweets and prize drawings on the hour.








Tristi's mysteries.
Daron's Novel, which I gave a back cover endorsement to.

Books Read Lately

Nail Your Novel, by Roz Morris
This is a must for writers. Roz hates wasting energy. This is a fantastic battle plan for assisting a novelist, gleaned from years of experience. Virtually any situation you may find yourself in is covered, so that you can get the most of your writing time.
She tackles all the aspects and distractions, beginning with - Why people start novels and don't finish, shaping and focusing your inspiration, getting through your first draft, What to do before you rewrite--This was the section that especially spoke to me right now.
The Beat Sheet Game, this is about checking all the story mechanics and guiding you to ask critical questions for the sake of having the most powerful and resonant scenes possible. All in all it helps write a better novel.
Then there is the rewriting section, that guides revision and finally sending your novel out to seek its fortune.
The tips contained are not geared for any genre or style per-se, it's all about technique, craft and confidence.

People of the Jaguar, by Nicholas J. Saunders
How about that? I could not find an image online for the cover and I was too lazy to scan one-so I have one of the pics contained within that itself establishes what the focus is about.
Subtitled, the Living Spirit of Ancient America, this is a historical anthropological look at how ancient Americans viewed that top-notch predator, the jaguar and how it affected their belief structure. While I have read more comprehensive books on the Maya and Aztec, this one focus's on the great cat. The pic I have posted shows a beast with manlike attributes, eating a human heart.
The sorcery and mysticism involved with these legends are rivers of inspiration for a fiction writer.

Taming the Sasquatch, by Lee Nelson
A very brisk read. Nelson opens with what is the end and we are along for the ride in what really happened at the top of the Dam on Deer Creek reservoir, I have to laugh because the scene in the book is somewhere I am personally very familiar with in Utah, and then, get this, where the Sasquatch comes from (in Montana) is another place I am very familiar with, having camped where the Sasquatch lives many times. I sure never noticed one, but it made everything in the book very easy to picture.
It was enjoyable but at the same time nearly everything was just too convenient, I would have liked a tad more suspension of disbelief-and this is coming from a guy that as Fox Mulder says, "I want to believe."

Batman: Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul, by Grant Morrison and Paul Dini
I gotta say I love the character of Batman, one of my absolute favorite comic characters (along with Wolverine) and I love other Batman graphics that these guys have worked on DETECTIVE for one, but something about this one wasn't quite right. I was excited for the concept-one of Batman's best villains coming back from the grave but the execution here was a little weak. Things jumped around and were never clear to the audience and not in a good way either. Flashbacks gave snippets of information about things we have no way of knowing enough about to care. A new character was introduced that didn't make a lick of sense in the first place, one of those guys where we are supposed to accept he has always been there-you just never noticed him before? Come on.
So it wasn't bad, but it wasn't nearly as good as the other Bat books I have read the last few years.

Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks
I have put off reading Brooks for years because I wasn't interested in someone aping Tolkien-at least that's what I always heard he did. I had to laugh over how much Lin Carter* raged against Brooks in The Years Best Fantasy 4, the collection that came out the same year as the Silmarillion and Conan of Aquilonia.
So while I own a copy of SoS (my library is vast...vast) I haven't really wanted to pick it up.
Then I was working with some friends a couple days, who wanted to listen to an audiobook-that's cool, I love audiobooks. What do they have? Sword of Shannara.
SO
I have listened to at least 6 or 7 hours of Brooks and I'm done. Everything was as I suspected a twist on Tolkien, every single concept. Oh and can the guy Al-Anon (Alcoholics Anonymous?) do anything without it being labeled "mockingly"?
I kinda hoped it would be better than I expected, but NO. My friends assured me that the books later in the sprawling series are better, but I don't have the time.

* Thanks Lagomorph Rex

Find Your Inner Norris

Kinda reminds me of Rex Kwan Do.

Interviewed by Linda Weaver Clarke

I get interviewed by author Linda Weaver Clarke on her blog here today. And there is an autographed book giveaway involved, so if you are so inclined...