It’s feedback like this sir, that keeps me writing.

Tell you friends! Word of mouth is the only promotion I got!

I know I’ll have arrived when someone (besides me) starts a thread about the book on RPGnet. Though I think that may take a second book

Book two is about 30% done! But the outline is almost finished at which point the other 70% will just take a few weeks. Stay tuned!

Decided to add the the flood of praise here rather than where I commented before. Keep it nice and tidy, you know?

Well, I gave you 4 stars on Amazon and you can read my review there, but I thought I’d give you more insight here, writer to writer, as it were.

I only gave it 4 stars, by the way, because of the editing. Had I only caught a few, maybe five or less errors, I wouldn’t have noticed or cared. I think a careful read-through or two would clear up the vast majority of them.

That said, what a read! Wow! I loved it! It’s a real page turner, and I think your build up at the end showed a real mastery of pacing. Everything builds and builds and then the fight is a crescendo worth waiting for. Very nice!

I think your characters are well-developed. Even Sir Nudd, who doesn’t (really) speak a line, felt like a flesh and blood person. I recently read a non-fictional book about homicide detectives, and every character felt as real as the people from real life I read about. Truly excellent job, here. The dialog was spot-on as well. I love good dialog. There’s real music to the way people speak to each other that writers can catch if they’re talented, and you have that talent.

As I said on Amazon, my highest compliment to you, sir: please write more so I can read it!

I liked the story well enough to go buy it, but I don’t buy kindle books. The background on the Celestials and Elementals is something that I’d like more of since I am particularly taken by neat worldbuilding. I agree with the above comment about the lack of a clear idea of what was actually a threat to Heden. Starfall was interesting and I did like that he had no real idea of it was really capable of doing. I’d like maps and prefer having them with a setting; even if just for wondering about all of the places that never make it into a story.

Lots of people complain about the language in the first chapter, but I’m sticking to my guns. My Significant Other works in a real, actual jail and hers was the first opinion I sought. From her point of view, it’s ridiculously tame. From many readers’ point of view, it’s distractingly profane. From my point of view, it’s just right!

The second book is well on its way! I post excerpts of it on the book’s Facebook page every once in a while.

Thing I liked: the fact that we are dropped into Heden’s life sorta in the middle; he has all the relationships and issues out of that past that people mention and obviously shape his character, but aren’t explained to the reader. This never devolves into “the noodle incident”, and all of the things out of the past seem to be human interaction things that we don’t expect to be different, even in a fantasy world.

Next, one of the things I didn’t like so much. Your ability to express danger to Heden didn’t seem to work so well. For example, when the minstrel threatens him with the sword at his neck, it it physically a threat against his life, or not? I thought is was an actual threat, but not a real one because the minstrel wouldn’t actually kill Heden. But then, later when he goes to rescue the girl, we find out that an assassin stabbing him in the kidneys with a poisoned blade is a pretty good fight opener against him, but not a fight ender. So the fact that the minstrels blade was at his neck probably wasn’t an actual threat after all. And when they fight the elven siege engine, he seems to be threatened by it’s attacks, but then seems to get knocked off a flying carpet that’s maybe a hundred feet in the air and going maybe 30 miles an hour, and he just walks away from it. I didn’t get the particular impression that the saint had to preform some extraordinary miracle to save his life. So if he was tough enough to walk away from that, why wasn’t he tough enough to stand up to some punishment from the siege engine? I mean, if ratcatchers can really be that tough, then we can get into things like literally stabbing someone just to get their attention. It’s not like stabbing them would be an actual threat or anything.

Next, it’s never entirely clear what Heden can and can’t do. Of course, through most of the book, his problems are largely social ones, so exactly how many orcs he can brawl down at once is not really relevant. But later in the book, he gets in fights, and the number of orcs he can brawl at once does become relevant; but we’re still not sure what he can do.

So, considering all that, I think the book might actually be improved if the fight scenes were given even less pages. Because they become so central later on, we are actually interested in how many orcs Heden can brawl down at once. Before we got the on screen fights, we knew that he couldn’t take on an army of orcs, and that was all we really needed to know about his abilities in a fight. All his other problems couldn’t be solved by fighting, so it didn’t mater.
Of course, when we have the shared world of an RPG, and everyone is familiar with the rules, then everyone has a reasonable idea of what’s threatening and what isn’t. But since the reader doesn’t know what set of rules you are using.

Tell your friends! Promotion like that is the only promotion I got!

I lost internet for a month or so and one of the things I did was finally finish reading Priest, which I’d already downloaded.

Way to write a book specifically for me. Apparently having my own own personal author is pretty nice.

I had a unique experience with Priest. I didn’t fully understand what was going on. I loved it. I hear a lot about books that ‘reward re-reading.’ No, Priest is a book that rewards re-reading.

I’m still not quite sure why the knights couldn’t be explicit. I haven’t actually performed my re-reading yet, so I don’t know if this is my mistake or yours, but I thought you might appreciate being informed. (I just sort of sense there’s a good reason, but can’t put a finger on it.)