Inspirational Advice and Perspective from Kevin Hearne

I read through Hearne's interview with ThriveWire.com (thrivewire.com/stories/heir-to-the-jedi-author-kevin-hearne-recounts-his-long-journey-to-success) and found a few nuggets of widsom and inspiration. Kevin Hearne is the author of a series of urban fantasy novel, The Iron Druid Chronicles.

• 6 years to write his first novel, while working day jobs, but it was never published
• The next novel took 3 years to write

“I wrote better and faster the next time, because once you complete a novel you know what it takes to do it again. There’s a confidence there that didn’t exist before,” he says. “It’s not a profession of instant success. Authors who are perceived as instant successes often work a very long time before getting to the market.”

After an unsuccessful round of query letters, he revised and edits and finally got an agent. His first novel, Hounded, was finally published after 19 years of work!

Lots of good stuff in Kevin's words. There's a lot of hard work before that success, so don't give up. Keep at it and you'll get there. It's about developing that confidence and the writing skills.

Yes, I suck at updating this blog

While I certainly didn't keep up with my blog writing goals, I did meet my February reading goals with Sandman Slim and Butcher's Blood Rites. 

Sandman Slim was a very modern take on the urban fantasy genre. The protagonist was more of an anti-hero than your traditional occult detective. The author chose to omit chapter breaks in the story which was detrimental in terms of trying to stop at the next chapter, but at the same time it was instrumental in keeping me reading. I don't think I'd attempt that, but for this book it worked. I liked the Sandman Slim's character, but felt the book lost its uniqueness when we discovered a greater paranormal organization being run by the government. It seemed a bit manufactured to generate conflict as Slim wasn't exactly a team player. While I enjoyed the book, I'm not rushing to pick up the next volume.

Dresden Files book #6, Blood Rites was a fun read and had some great character moments, although I felt it was really two stories pushed together into one. The middle story didn't really seem to have any connections with the main story. Perhaps that's because his usual formula of having two distinct stories that suddenly have connections might be getting a bit overused, or perhaps he wanted to try something different. However, the main story was solid, but the middle one seemed slapped in there and was a bit forced. Overall though the ramifications of the events in this book made me put aside my other books and read volume #7.