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A random writing thought

OLD News

One of the big divides among novelists, in terms of procedure, is outlining. Some of us are hardcore outliners (that would be); others prefer just to make it up as they go.

I suddenly find myself curious as to whether there’s any (rough) correlation between preferred style and manuscript length. For instance, do outliners tend to write shorter novels than non-outliners? (I’d guess that we do, on a very general level, but that’s just my gut speaking. I have no real evidence to that effect, other than the fact that two people known for their really long books–George Martin and Stephen King–have both stated that they do not outline. And of course there are going to be major exceptions; I’m wondering about tendencies, not hard-and-fast rules.)

I don’t really have the energy to write up a statistically viable survey about it, and of course it has no actual bearing on anything other than pure curiosity, but I do wonder.

Ari’s Easiest Contest Ever!

OLD News

Okay, folks, it’s contest time once again! And this time… Ooh, this time I’m making it really easy on you. Whether you’re a fan of my work or have never read a word I’ve written, you have no excuse* for not entering.

*Unless you don’t want to read anything of mine, of course, in which case, you shouldn’t bother. But then why are you reading these contest rules in the first place? 😛

How to Enter

Step 1: Go to my Contact Page.

Step 2: Change the subject line to "Ari’s Easiest Contest Ever".

Step 3: Using that form, send me an e-mail. In the e-mail, you should tell me why you think I should send you a free book.

That’s it. No, really.

Your reasons can be as short or as long as you want. They can be serious or they can be funny. They can be true or they can be false. They can be logical or they can be nonsense. Have fun, be creative (or not, if you don’t want to), and go nuts.

The only thing they cannot be is threatening. No entries threatening harm to yourself, to me, or to anyone else will be accepted. No matter how obvious it is that you’re joking, I’m not prepared to deal with that.

But everything else is fair game. 🙂

Choosing the Winners

I’ll be choosing four (4) winners of this contest. Two will be chosen at random from all entries. The other two will be picked based on which of the reasons/explanations I like best. So even if you just say something like, "Send me a book because I want one," you probably won’t win for favorite explanation, but you could still very well win from the random draw.

I expect to let the contest run for about a month, give or take.

What You Can Win

Three of the winners will receive one signed book each. One of the four winners (chosen from the four at random) will receive two.

If you win, you can choose your prize(s) from the following list. Now, I have limited numbers of some of these books, so I cannot guarantee everyone their first choice. But I’ll be asking people to rank their first three choices, and I can pretty much guarantee that the winners will at least receive one of their top choices.

Prize Options:

The Goblin Corps (trade paperback novel)

The Conqueror’s Shadow (hardcover novel or mass-market paperback novel, winner’s choice)

The Warlord’s Legacy (hardcover novel or mass-market paperback novel, winner’s choice; but be aware that, if you choose the paperback, your prize cannot ship until December)

Agents of Artifice (mass-market paperback novel)

Neverwinter Campaign Setting (a Dungeons & Dragons game supplement, on which I was one of three primary authors)

Thief’s Covenant (hardcover young adult novel; note that if you select this prize, you’ll have to wait until early 2012 for your book to ship)

Important Notes!!!

If you are a family member, a friend of mine in real life, an employee of Random House, Pyr Books, or Wizards of the Coast, or the winner of one of my prior contests, then I’m afraid you’re ineligible. Sorry, guys.

You must send your entry via the contact page, as linked above. Entries received by any other means will be disqualified.

Only one entry per person, please.

And that’s it. Get to it, folks! 😀

To everyone else who uses WordPress…

OLD News

Has the spam gotten really, really bad lately, or is it just me?

Seriously, it’s like WP has turned off their spam filter. I used to get maybe one spam message slipping through the cracks every few weeks.

But for the past week or so, it’s been averaging several per day that I have to go in and manually delete.

This happening to anyone else?

A random thought, looking back

OLD News

Been thinking a lot about my RPG writing recently.

Obviously, for the past year or two (and, unless things go wrong, for the foreseeable future *knock on wood*) my focus has been on fiction. I haven’t abandoned RPG writing, and I’d still happily delve into any project that really excited me, but it’s not my priority as it once was.

In particular, I was thinking about adventures (or "modules," as we old fogies knew ’em). It’s funny, adventures are, in many ways, the meat of RPG writing, but I never found them as enjoyable as some other kinds of work. I’m not saying I hated working on them, but I prefer (for instance) campaign setting work and monster design.

That said, I’m pretty happy with most of the adventure work I did. (And a good thing, too, since my first three or four D20 projects were adventures of one sort of another.) And I realized, recently, that perhaps my favorite adventure I ever worked on is, oddly enough, one of the ones that I think got the least publicity.

The Doom of Listonshire came out from Necromancer Games (easily one of the best of the D20 companies), but it came out through a newer, smaller distribution channel than most of their stuff. And honestly, it kind of got lost in the shuffle. (It also got printed in crappier quality than was intended.) Not that I’m saying it was guaranteed to be a modern classic or anything, but I think it would’ve had a better opportunity to make a splash in other circumstances.

But it remains my favorite. It’s not flawless by any means; there are entire swathes I’d redesign if writing it today. But I think it’s got the best combination of story, setting, and just general "old-school feel" (which I think is important for many adventures) of all my stuff. It’s definitely the most obviously inspired by 1E materials; it was heavily influenced by both Keep on the Borderlands and Destiny of Kings.

No real point to this, other than ruminating. But if I could only pick three adventures to be known for, this one would definitely make the list.