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 Farthing.

bourgeois: a member of the middle class

coppiced: a dense growth of bushes

drugget: a rug made of a coarse fabric having a cotton warp and a wool filling

histrionic: characteristic of acting or a stage performance; often affected ("Histrionic gestures")

invigilating: to keep watch; to keep watch over students at an examination.

neologism: the act of inventing a word or phrase

parvenu: a person who has suddenly risen to a higher economic status but has not gained social acceptance of others in that class

portico: a porch or entrance to a building consisting of a covered and often columned area

prosaically: in a matter-of-fact manner

putative: commonly thought or deemed; supposed; reputed; as, the putative father of a child.

spinney: a copse that shelters game

vicar: a Roman Catholic priest who acts for another higher-ranking clergyman

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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 featured Tor.com giveaways. This is the fifth of those reviews.

Also, I'm taking LibraryThing's 50 Book Reading Challenge for 2010. This is my 12th read of the 50.

Farthing by Jo Walton is a little bit of a different read for me. I went into it not knowing anything about it; I never even bothered to read the summary. Turns out Farthing is alternate history, which as a rule I usually don't read, but it's also a murder mystery with strong political overtones. The events that unfold in Farthing continue eight years later in Ha'pennyand conclude with Half a Crown.

So what's Farthing about?

It's alternate history and takes place in the 1940's. In this version of history, the United States never enters the war against Nazi Germany (there's no mention of the Japanese, so I guess the reader is left to assume that the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor never happened). As a result, England is left to fend alone against Hitler. But Hitler isn't interested in England. Turns out he's more interested in making peace with the British so he can turn the fullness of his attention on Russia. This is what happens. The story begins at a country estate where the orchestrator of this peace accord, Sir James Thirkie, is found in his room, murdered. What follows is a Scotland Yard investigation led by Inspector Carmichael where everyone—servant and noble alike—is considered a suspect.

Farthing garnered a lot of excellent reviews on Amazon. It's written well and has a style that is easy to read while holding the reader's attention, but ultimately I just didn't find enough going on here. The pacing is rather slow at times, with lots of tea and lunches and not enough intrigue or suspense for my taste. What Farthing really amounts to is a peek into a sort of Marvel Comics What If? scenario where Nazi Germany's influence (in particular their bias against Jews and homosexuals) begins to influence seemingly benign countries like England where such hatred becomes a convenient excuse for certain parties to impose their will upon their nations. It's a scary possibility, but scary only inasmuch as one thinks alternate history is scary. It didn't happen, so I, for one, am not particular scared.

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How long would it take to write a novel if you wrote 1,000 words/day? 500? 100? How about three sentences per day? How long would that take?

I'm going to figure out some answers here. I'll start with the basic assumption that the length of a complete novel is 100,000 words. At 250 words/page, that's a 400 page book.

Let's see how long it would take to complete the first draft, sans edits, given varying rates of words put down on paper per day. I'll assume a completely arbitrary 20 words per sentence and, from that, 12.5 sentences/page (250 words/page divided by 20 words/sentence).

	Words to Paper/Day	How Long in Days	How Long in Years
1 word	1	100,000.00	273.97
5 words	5	20,000.00	54.79
20 words/1 sentence	20	5,000.00	13.70
2 sentences	40	2,500.00	6.85
3 sentences	60	1,666.67	4.57
5 sentences	100	1,000.00	2.74
10 sentences	200	500.00	1.37
1 page/12.5 sentences/250 words	250	400.00	1.10
2 pages	500	200.00	0.55
3 pages	750	133.33	0.37
4 pages	1000	100.00	0.27
5 pages	1250	80.00	0.22
10 pages	2500	40.00	0.11
20 pages	5000	20.00	0.05
40 pages	10000	10.00	0.03
50 pages	12500	8.00	0.02

Starting at the ridiculous and ending with, well, the ridiculous again, you can see that were you to only write 1 word/day it would take 100,000 days or 274 years to finish a novel length manuscript. Something a little more realistic—3 sentences/day, of which I've heard of writers doing—and you're at 4.5 years. If you strive for the more often recommended 1,000 words/day, it will take you .27 years or just over 3 months. Pause for a second and think about that. My first reaction was: What?! Why has it taken me so long then to finish this bleep'in novel? That just can't be right…

But it is.

If you can write 1,000 words per day, you'll have a 100,000 words in 100 days. A complete first draft, in other words.

It sounds easy. So why isn't it? The reasons are legion: life gets in the way, we procrastinate, we edit/rewrite before we should, the writing itself leads us down dead-ends from which we have to back ourselves out. Anyone's who's ever attempted to write a novel, whether you failed or not, knows about these things. It takes a lot of discipline to keep pushing forward, especially when you know what you just wrote is crap and is going to need some serious re-writing.

But therein lies the gist of it: you have to keep moving forward if you want to reach the end. It sounds simple. If only it really were.

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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 Alchemist's Pursuit.

altruistic: showing unselfish concern for the welfare of others

aquiline: curved down like an eagle's beak

ascetic: practices self denial as spiritual discipline

avaricious: immoderately desirous of acquiring e.g. wealth

condottiere: A military adventurer of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who sold his services, and those of his followers, to any party in any contest.

connivance: tacit approval of someone's wrongdoing

damask: a fabric of linen or cotton or silk or wool with a reversible pattern woven into it

demimonde: a class of woman not considered respectable because of indiscreet or promiscuous behavior

dyspepsia: a disorder of digestive function characterized by discomfort or heartburn or nausea

ephemeris: an annual publication containing astronomical tables that give the positions of the celestial bodies throughout the year

escritoire: a desk used for writing

fatuity: a ludicrous folly

gematria: a cabbalistic system of interpretation of the Scriptures by substituting for a particular word another word whose letters give the same numerical sum

harridan: a scolding (even vicious) old woman

hematemesis: vomiting blood

insouciant: marked by blithe unconcern

isopsephy: the Greek word for the practice of adding up the number values of the letters in a word to form a single number

licentious: lacking moral discipline; especially sexually unrestrained

malmsey: sweet Madeira wine

miniver: trimming on ceremonial robes consisting of white or light gray fur

miter: a liturgical headdress worn by bishops on formal occasions

niggardly: petty in giving or spending

patriciate: The patrician class; the aristocracy; also, the office of patriarch.

perfidy: betrayal of a trust

plinth: an architectural support or base (as for a column or statue)

sausage stands: I know what a sausage stand is, but thought it interesting that Renaissance Venice had them (or at least Duncan's rendition did).

scuttle: container for coal; shaped to permit pouring the coal onto the fire

sortilege: The act or practice of drawing lots; divination by drawing lots.

succinct: briefly giving the gist of something

tonsure: the shaved crown of a monk's or priest's head

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Other books in Duncan's Venetian fantasy/mystery series:

1. The Alchemist's Apprentice
2. The Alchemist's Code
3. The Alchemist's Pursuit

I'm taking LibraryThing's 50 Book Reading Challenge for 2010. This is my 11th read of the 50.

The Alchemist's Pursuit by Dave Duncan is the third of his tales involving Nostradamus and his resourceful and daring apprentice, Alfeo Zeno. This time the Maestro is called upon by Violetta, courtesan and friend to Alfeo, who informs the pair that a dear friend of hers has been murdered. An impossible case—the woman was killed weeks ago, there are no witnesses, and the body spent considerable time in the water—turns into something much larger as the murders of other courtesans come to light and soon intersect with the guilty party in an eight year old patricide long thought solved.

So begins the latest installment in Duncan's Venetian fantasy/mystery series. While the story follows the basic path set in the previous two novels, with Nostradamus being called on to solve an unsolvable crime and Alfeo, our narrator as always, charged with the elder Maestro's legwork, in this novel Alfeo begins to mature as a character, a worker of magic, in society, and even in politics. Descended from nobility, Alfeo's name is written in the Golden Book, though the family fortune long dried up and so he employs himself as an apprentice and assistant to Nostradamus.

Trained in the "dark arts", it is a fine line master and apprentice walk, for Venice is a Christian city, and so witchcraft is outlawed and punishable by death. Yet the magic in Duncan's Alchemist novels is very subtle. In The Alchemist's Pursuit, besides for the usual divinations for which Nostradamus is famous, much of it culminates in the presence of a cat which assists Alfeo at times, though Alfeo suspects he may have attracted the attention of a demon who is helping him only to gain his confidence. It is a sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous unfolding in which we finally learn the true purpose of this feline spirit.

As for the murders themselves, we soon learn that not one but three courtesans have been slain. A divination by Nostradamus shows that they are only the beginning, and so Alfeo must track down witnesses, avoid the law which has expressly prohibited Alfeo from investigating the crimes, and protect the woman he loves, Violetta, before she becomes the next victim.

All in all, this is yet another gripping tale set in the (mostly) historically accurate Venice of yesteryear from Dave Duncan. Duncan's style is top-notch and his prose worthy of study (not in the literary sense so much, but more in the 'this is how modern fantasy tales should be written' sense). While I've had limited exposure to Duncan up to this point, it's books like The Alchemist's Pursuit that make me want to seek out other novels by the author. Also, I hope this is not the last we've seen of Alfeo and his irritable master. With such a marvelous setting and intriguing characters, I think Duncan has many more tales to tell in this world.

[ Purchase The Alchemist's Pursuit from Amazon.com ] 

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It's been a long while since I've posted anything that only focused on my writing progress. For a while there, I had committed to posting every week. I was using this as a way to hold myself accountable for getting some writing in on a regular basis. The reason I stopped was exactly what I worried about from the start: just doing the weekly posts became a chore unto itself. No reason I can't make a post every once in a while, though, and so here we go.

I'm still working on my second novel. Most of it is done, but I need to go back and smooth out some rough edges and consolidate the ending as I think it's too long right now. I actually set it aside for a little bit about a month ago while I shift gears to some shorter work. From that effort, I posted Fine Wine, a short story about an assassin who makes a deal, in my short fiction section. From that story emerged another, longer tale, about the same assassin who is hired for a particularly unusual job. It's called Killing the Dead, and is out to Realms of Fantasy right now. If that doesn't work, there are other top level magazines (top level being defined as those that have the highest pay rates) it will go to next and then to the lower paying markets and then possibly to the free markets. Worst case, I'll post it here.

There's something satisfying about working on a piece that is small and finite. Novels take a long time to write, with little or no reward waiting at the end. Short stories have the potential to bring satisfaction much quicker and with greater frequency. So, I'm exploring those markets now with the intention of getting a credit or two.

It's a little known fact that I do actually have one publishing credit to my name. It was so long ago I sometimes forget about it myself. I was about twenty (I'm 39 now), it was the first piece I'd ever submitted, and I made a very small amount of money off it. I actually still have the check; I never cashed it. The story itself is bad, bad, bad. I have a hard time even looking at it now, but there are few writers who don't look back on their early work and shudder.

So, that's it. I have another idea brewing for my "assassin with no name" character, as well as some initial background information that may leak little by little into each subsequent tale I spin about him. I'm having fun writing about him, especially with the shorter form; it has none of the "drudgery" of the longer one.

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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 Blood Engines.

consigliere: An adviser or counselor, especially to a capo or leader of an organized crime syndicate.

self-aggrandizement: an act undertaken to increase your own power and influence or to draw attention to your own importance

sarong: a loose skirt consisting of brightly colored fabric wrapped around the body; worn by both women and men in the South Pacific

diurnal: having a daily cycle or occurring every day; belonging to or active during the day

pagoda: a tall religious building in Asia with many levels, each of which has a curved roof 

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