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I just picked up Soon I Will Be Invincible by first-time author Austin Grossman. If you’ve been to a bookstore lately, you may have seen a bright blue book with a pink, winged helmet on the cover. Looking at it, of course, just screams tacky. One look inside, however, and you’ll be hooked. At least I was.

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Take a quasi-Chinese culture and a quasi-Mayan culture, mix in a few gods and frog people, give them all a couple of ships, have them all utter words which no human mouth were ever meant to pronounce, and finally throw them all in a post-apocalyptic magic-ridden wasteland (you know, just for kicks). Stir the ingredients in the mind of a fantasy author, then let them until they rise to about 450,000 words (or 1800 mass-market-sized pages). This is the recipe for The Age of Discovery series by Michael A. Stackpole, and it serves three books. Since only two of these have been released, this series review will only really be two thirds of a review. Still, given the author’s style (and the manner in which I have approached the subject at had) it should be enough for you to get a taste of mostly delicious, yet at times somewhat bland literary treat.

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While I’ve tried — in vain — I haven’t been able to get one of these out (to my own disdain). Again, the glut of ideas currently swishing around my brain is like water around a drain: round and round it goes, and not in vain if I take this opportunity to sha… daing.

Alright, so that didn’t work out as planned. If it had been planned. I really should start reading more modern poetry. (Although by now you may already be aware of how I feel about poetry.)

Anyway, so here it is: another episode of Le Linkage, and this one’s about all the wonderful stuff making its way into my RSS reader as of late. Some of it is thought provoking, some just fun to read, but most, I’m sure you’ll side with me, won’t make your eyeballs bleed. (There now, that’s better, though not by much.)

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I’m a writer and I want to write. This I know through and through, balls to bones.

Like most other writers I have a desire to write a book. Perhaps it’s the thrill of seeing my name in the spine of a cover which will one day grace the bookshelves of many. Maybe it’s the excitement of possibly meeting people I don’t know, but have read my stuff anyway (this doesn’t happen very often now, by the way). Perhaps it’s the narcissistic exuberance of being famous, or the misguided belief that a best seller will solve all of my financial difficulties and place my name in history’s pages. (I, of course, write this with a jealous and curious glance northeast, toward the home of a certain J. K. Rowling.)

Whatever. The point is that I’m writing one now — my first novel, that is — and the deeper I get into the process, the more obvious my limitations become. This is why I need a plan to help me overcome my weaknesses. I need to study modern writers and their novels.

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Last week I did something I don’t remember having done for at least two years: I didn’t post anything on this site, at least nothing of consequence. If you’re wondering how it felt, don’t. The reason I took the hiatus was because I’ve been so swamped with matters of life, work, and money (learning, not financial trouble) that little energy has been left for blogging. This is why, for your entertainment and education, I’ll go over a few of the things I’ve been thinking about this week. (Believe it or not, this will actually be a useful post, so read on.)

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