Tina

Oh wow Stephanie

That's cool Jen

BehrItAll

Jen, very cool!

Tina, yeah

BehrItAll

Last week I was at New York Comic Con and went to this panel:

Pierce Brown. He discussed his Red Rising series, and the upcoming book Dark Age, with Peter V. Brett, bestselling author of the Demon Cycle.



This wasn't just for people with NYCC badges. Those without badges had the opportunity to get tickets to it for $40. They got some swag with it: a pre-order of Dark Age, a Red Rising tote, pins, and one of Peter's books.

The full panel was posted by Penguin Random House on youtube.



Just a warning, there are spoilers below for the Red Rising series.

I'll just sum up my favorite parts:


-Pierce talked about the difference between writing one POV and multiple POVs. Matching the interior arcs, the exterior arcs, the themes, and the climax of the story. An LOL moment was when he said - it sounds weird - but if all 3 or 4 of the POVs climax at the same time, it is a busy book.

-Peter and Pierce talked about their differences in writing. Peter writes 200 page outlines. Pierce doesn't outline but he did once and it was 40 pages. When he looked back on it and compared it to the finished product only 3 characters' names were the same. He gets irritated by characters and then kills them off.

-Random House was nice enough to compile a list of his characters, what page they were introduced on, and a list of Red Rising made up terms.
To me this sounds like the start of an Red Rising encyclopedia for the fans to buy. Hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

- Pierce has legal pads in his garage and leaves notes all around his house to never been seen again. If it's an important idea it will stick. He likes to plan his day on paper, leave it and then go free form. He doesn't want to get obsessed with the list.

- A part I really loved was when Peter asked if Eo would be proud. I totally agree with Pierce's answer that she would be part of the Vox Populi.

-Another great discussion was about how Lyria has no agency. She is used by the people around her. Her journey is realizing this and lifting herself up. By the end if she didn't have a conscience she would have made a different choice.

- There are some fun discussions about working with their translators, the cover art in different countries, and the fandom... A man who dressed as Darrow for Howler fest had lost an eye and had one made with a laser light in it. Pierce was so amazed he was poking the man's laser glass eye. LOL

-There will be an announcement soon for the TV series.

-Pierce jokingly told the studio that in his contract there is a clause that he is playing Darrow. Which is funny because when my sister reads the books she pictures Pierce as Darrow.

-Audiobooks!! Pierce had less time with the new book to find narrators. There was some thought that Tim Gerard Reynolds would do all four characters, but then all the POVs sounded the same and an Irishman being a 16 year old girl is creepy.

Although he listened to samples of their work, an author never knows how they will interpret the character. Pierce felt that he portrayed Lyria as pissed off, but then she sounded breathy and whiny on the audiobook.
I only read Iron Gold so far and she sounded very angry to me. I will listen to the audiobook before Dark Age is released, but have heard others complain about her voice.

Peter sits in on a session when his books are recorded. He'll discuss the character with the narrator and go over the pronunciations of words.

Stay to the Lights

Thanks great!

BehrItAll

Thanks!

On Saturday at New York Comic Con I went to the panel I'll Take Dementors for $500, Obi-Wan: A Fan Game Show with (left to right) Marc Thompson, Delilah S. Dawson, Sylvain Neuve, Ryan North, and Chuck Wendig.



Here is the gist: While Marc was dressed as Obi-Wan, he didn't do his voice the whole time. The game was played like Jeopardy! and the categories were The Dark Side; Expecto Patronum; Winter Is Coming; Fierce Females; I Can Be Your Hero, Baby; and Nerd-Tastic.

It was really fun to watch. My favorite categories were The Dark Side and Expecto Patronum. For some reason they weren't picking Winter Is Coming until nearly the end. If none of the players knew the answer the audience would shout it out and the first one to buzz in got to answer it. In the end Delilah's team won.

There was a short Q&A afterwards. The part that interested me most was when Marc Thompson was talking about the process of recording an audiobook. He'll get the book and make notes, and also record some new voices on his phone to refer to. As he gets more into the recording process he will be so used to doing the new voices he won't need to refer to his voice memo.

Marc doesn't talk to the authors because he has a director and doesn't want to go over the director's head by saying, "Well, the author said this."

He was complemented on how great he sounds but Marc gave the credit to the editors who piece it together when he makes mistakes, as well as the music and sound effects they add when it's a Star Wars novel.

As for the voice of Thrawn, I guess he did a different voice for the anniversary edition of the Thrawn Trilogy, because that was before Rebels. I still have to listen to it. But for the two most recent books he really captured the his voice from the animated series.

I can't remember this other question or full answer now, but Chuck said that Palpatine's first name "Sheev" is like "Steve" in AGFFA. That made me laugh.

After the panel there was a signing with the authors right outside the room, which was super convenient. We didn't have to run and push our way to another part of the Javits.

This time I brought From a Certain Point of View with me. I told each author how I plan to slowly collect every author's signature until I am old.

First Chuck Wendig signed. He wrote "We Don't Serve Their Kind Here", which is about Wuher, the bar tender at the cantina. He is very much the grump he appears to be in the movie, and his hate for droids is not just economical, it's personal.

When I said that Chuck agreed and said that is probably what they were thinking back then, that droids can't buy any drinks so they are not allowed in, but in light of the Prequels and the there was something to delve deeper into.

Delilah S. Dawson wrote "The Secrets of Long Snoot", about Garindan ezz Zavor, the snitch who tells the stormtroopers which direction the droids headed. But we find out what his motivations are. This story's character building was well done.

I told her how I still want to read Kill The Farm Boy. She suggested I listen to it on audiobook. I responded that I am more into audiobooks now and have been listening to Deathly Hallows, and that I loved that category. She said she felt she knew the most about that one.

Marc Thomson signed both FaCPOV and Thrawn: Alliances. I asked him more about the recording process and was amazed how fast the turn over is. He gets the book about a week or two before he goes in to record. They record the whole book in about 3-4 days, from about 10am-6pm. This is about a month before the release of the book so there is time to edit it. These days with computers it all happens really fast.

Signatures: Delilah is above the title, Marc is to the left. Chuck is below the title and above Pierce Brown's. I decided to keep this book not personalized so that it doesn't say my name 40-something times.

BehrItAll

On Saturday at NYCC I went to a signing for Pierce Brown at the Del Rey Booth. The only thing I had for him to sign were the Red Rising comic books. I gave a couple of issues to my sister, because like me she already has all his books signed already.

When we spoke to him I asked if there would be more comic books and he said there would be, continuing the story of the beginning of the Sons of Ares.

He asked me if I liked the art, and being honest I said I didn't. I explained that it was too sketchy and storyboard like and I prefer cleaner lines.

I think Pierce appreciated my honesty and said he would like to feature different artists for different comic book series. That I would like.

Then we said we can't wait until Dark Age and the next book tour.

Her are 2 of the 6 issues that he signed.

Stay to the Lights

Those are pretty covers.

LilMouse

And now that you're getting the other Red Rising edition, you can have Pierce sign it the next time we meet him, since we said to him we have most of our books, posters etc already signed and we had to find something for him to sign this time.

BehrItAll

I like the bottom one best, but really am not a fan of the artwork.

Victoria, I thought you ordered the signed edition as my gift?

LilMouse

Did I? I forgot all about it being signed.

BehrItAll

We'll find out when it comes in the mail next week.

LilMouse

I hope all the people we went to signings for at NYCC 2018, like Pierce and Katherine Arden, come back for NYCC 2019.

BehrItAll

On Sunday at NYCC the first panel of the day was Family-Friendly Fantasy: Keeping it PG in the Age of Grimdark & Game of Thrones.

Colleen Lindsay was the moderator and Katherine Arden, Emily R. King, and Elle Katherine White were speakers.



Katherine Arden wrote the Winternight Trilogy. Emily R. King wrote The Hundredth Queen Series. Elle Katherine White wrote the Heartstone Series.

Something all their books have in common is that the protagonists are female. The panel kicked off with a conversation about how female protagonists are described on the book jackets, reviews, etc. The Buzz Words are: Strong female, independent, femme fatal. "Strong" and "independent" aren't used to describe male characters. It's tiresome.

It also seems that a woman can only be strong or independent if she has a sword or a gun. She doesn't need to wield a weapon to be strong, nor does it mean she cannot be vulnerable sometimes. Every strong character should also be flawed.

What these Buzz Words really means that the female character(s) are not a damsels in distress, or stereotypes, or a cardboard cut outs.

It really got me thinking about the reviews I write. From now on I will be aware of how I describe the female characters because they made an excellent point.

Another theme throughout these authors' books is that the women are confined by a patriarchy.

In the Winternight Trilogy that takes place in Medieval Russia females are prominent in folklore but aristocratic women were confined in towers. The main character, Vasilisa, is given a choice to either marry or go to a convent. She does neither.

Emily R. King, who described her series as The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games says she wrote her series as a way for her to have an adventure. She has four children and when she is at home folding laundry she thinks about her stories to break out of normal everyday life.

Elle Katherine White described her series as Pride and Prejudice meets dragons. Her character Eliza doesn't want to marry but has little choice. Slowly over the course of the first book she does fall in love and she only marries when she is an equal to the man she falls for.

Usually sex and romance are not written as separate things for women. Katherine remembers learning that attraction and romance were the same thing, but that is not true.

It is usually the norm that marriage ends the story. That's it - "happily ever after." Very few stories begin with the marriage and tell the tales of the relationship afterwards: the romance, the struggles, the compromises. The only novel that deals with marriage that the panelists could think of off the top of their heads was Outlander.

If a woman puts romance in a science fiction/fantasy story then it gets categorized as a romance. Emily said she knows a man who will absolutely not read any sci-fi/fantasy book written by a woman. Which goes to show how completely closed minded the masses can be.

The author Robin Hobb was brought up. She has an ambiguous name and men bought her books and loved them. When they showed up to a signing were confused to see a female writer. Which made me laugh. To see the looks on their faces...

A great topic that was discussed was what content to allow your kids to read and I thought their advice was smart. Don't shelter or coddle kids. It is better if they learn about harsh topics from their parents rather than from friends or TV. Use the story as a tool to talk about different topics with them. Talk about the stories, answer their questions, but most of the time if they don't understand something it will go over their heads.

Katherine used to read her grandma's romance novels and thought they were adventure stories. The sex scenes went over her head. Which made me think of how when my sister and I were children we had no idea there was an abortion subplot in Dirty Dancing. We just liked the music and the dancing.

YA is a relatively new genre. Katherine recalled that she went from reading Goosebumps to Pet Cemetery. Now there is a genre in between.

There were some really great questions from the audience.

One was about how to incorporate contemporary curse words or made up curse words in a fantasy novel. Because if it is a fantasy realm then does a contemporary curse word take you out of the world?

If it is a contemporary curse word make sure to establish early on that it is part of the character's vocabulary. (This made me think of Daughters of the Storm. The world it exists in is made up, but the eldest daughter uses the F-word a lot. So it worked.)

If it's a made up word, (e.g. Mudblood, Frak) then it's the reactions that others have toward the word that establish it as bad language.

There was a question, I can't remember the exact wording, but it had to do with being careful about what to write because how it might trigger the reader who may have had a traumatic experience.

Their answers were perfect. Set the tone from the beginning. Set up the stakes so the readers know the danger and show the consequences of the violence, whether it is from something sexual or from war.

Someone, somewhere will be triggered by something. Spiders, clowns, etc. So set the tone in the beginning so the reader knows if they can handle it or not.

For example, Harry Potter starts off pretty dark. He's an orphan, abused by his aunt and uncle and sleeping in a cupboard. By the time you get to Deathly Hallows, you know it will be much darker.

Which leads to another question about how J.K. Rowling didn't mention Dumbledore was gay until after all the books were published. So how can a writer include more diverse characters?

It shouldn't just be about checking off a box to fill a quota. Nor should their race, religion, or sexual orientation be their only characteristic. They should have many other good and bad qualities. It should feel organic and the best way to do that is to talk to people in real life so as to write diverse characters as real people.


After the panel there was a signing. I bought Katherine Arden's book Small Spaces and had the ARC of The Winter of the Witch for her to sign.

When my sister and I went up we talked about the Buzz words to describe female characters. Katherine said she also has a drinking game with common words used in YA titles. I can't remember all the ones she said, but "smoke" was one of them.

Now I cannot remember how this topic came up during the panel but it was something I had to bring up again when talking to Katherine face to face because she hit the nail on the head for me.

In the last book of The Hunger Games, Mockingjay, Katniss loses her agency. She was moving her story forward in the first two, and then in the third things were happening around her and she didn't have much involvement. Katherine wanted Katniss to take charge of the rebellion, not just follow along. Maybe it was done on purpose because of the trauma Katniss had been through.

Katherine said it felt wrong to criticize other people's work but that the risk Suzanne Collins took didn't work out for some.

I personally feel that Mockingjay is weakest and I have always said the end was rushed. But I could never really figure out why I felt that way until Katherine said it was because Katniss had no agency.

Katherine joked that she shouldn't talk because maybe we won't like The Winter of the Witch.

She also signed a poster that combines all the covers of the Winternight Trilogy. It is so pretty. She designed the cover for the last book. For the first, The Bear and the Nightingale, she just asked that they change the sky from day to night to make it more ominous.

Small Spaces will be a series of four books, for all four seasons. She said this after I said that Small Spaces is a good read for Halloween.

LilMouse

I really enjoyed the Family-Friendly Fantasy: Keeping it PG in the Age of Grimdark & Game of Thrones panel. It was my favorite, and Katherine Arden made great points about how female characters are described. I don't like how female characters who don't wield swords or who like wearing dresses are somehow less than.

BehrItAll

It was really engaging and thought provoking.