This... is... Frankenmuth!

This is a bit of an odd post for me. I'd never considered blogging on the road before. But I'm laying in bed at the Best Western in Saginaw Michigan and they have wireless Internet and I have an Asus EEE so why not.

Well that didn't work. I wrote the above sentence and fell asleep. LOL!

Anyway Frankenmuth was a lot of fun. I hadn't been there in a good 7-8 years and my kids had never been. We ate WAAAAYY too much chicken at Zhenders and thought about buying a cuckoo clock. Turns out my Grandmother had an old cuckoo clock that she gifted us with when we left. It's not as fancy as the ones in Frankenmuth but it's a family hand me down. Now to get some weights for it and get it running again.

On a side note if you decide to visit Frankenmuth let me strongly urge you to stay somewhere other then the Best Western in Saginaw. The AC was broken which made the room really warm the whole time we were there and outside it was only 55'ish. I'd hate to see it in the summer. The indoor pool was the only nice part of the hotel and it was only nice in the morning as by early evening it was full of rowdy teenagers and half drunk party-goers. It was cheap though and lived up to the you get what you pay for rule of life.

Now for some Frankenmuth details. Zhenders.... ahhhhh I could write a short novel on the joy that is their chicken dinner but I shall try to limit myself a bit here. Zhenders is well over one hundred years old now and is the largest independent restaurant in the US. They have ten dining halls and serve over ONE MILLION meals in a year. That doesn't seem like much compared to say McDonalds but you have to remember this is entirely scratch cooked amazingly tasty food. Nothing is precooked or reheated. The family style chicken dinner costs $18.95 and I highly recommend you go with it if you will only eat one meal here. I've never had anything else but I only get up there every few years. If I lived closer I'm sure I'd branch out into their other dishes as they look delicious as well. The family dinner starts with home-made (get used to seeing that word here a lot) liver pate and cheese spread served with real french bread. Coleslaw, Cottage cheese, Chicken Noodle soup round out the appetizers. Oh and did I mention they're all home-made? Good. Just to note I hate Coleslaw and I ate the coleslaw here. It's that good. The main course is their famous deep fried chicken with home-made (there's that word again) mashed potatoes, dressing (stuffing), cranberry relish, noodles with a butter and cracker topping, and some more awesome bread. Finished off with a small bowl of ice cream. We went for lunch and let me tell you I needed the walk afterwards. Expect to wait in a line to get in. We were there on an off weekend and waited about 5-10 minutes for lunch but if you try to go on a busy holiday weekend like mother's day don't be surprised at a 2+ hour wait for dinner.

Just a minute or two drive South of Frankenmuth you will reach Bronner's Christmas Wonderland. You'll find signs for Bronner's as far South as Key West. (Head North on I-75 1500 miles or so and it's on the right.) We only spent an hour or two here but if you like Christmas stuff then you will easily spend a day here. My only regret of the trip is we were too wiped out in the evening to drive back down and look at all the lights here. Acres of Christmas lights, bulbs, trees, and decorations await in one of if not the largest Christmas store in the world. Cool place.

Well I didn't accomplish any real writing on the trip but I'm hoping to be back at it shortly. If you read two posts ago the Writing Excuses guys are working on magic systems again and after listening I think I'm OK on Light Magic but I need to really think about my other magic abilities. I think my main control on it will be its relative scarcity. Magic runs in family lines and can come and go along the generational lines.

Magic of Light

First Rule:  Light can intimidate and scare humans but it will not directly hurt them.  In most cases it will in fact heal them.

Second Rule: Light will hurt and kill demons.

Mechanics:

Those gifted with the Light usually realize it much later then those in other schools of magic.  Many are in their mid to late twenties before recognizing the talent.  A few recognize it as early as thirteen but that is highly uncommon.

The Light is "visible" as a bright shining beam that starts behind them somewhere and disappears ahead of them.  It is non directional.  Whatever direction the user is facing that is the direction the beam appears to them.  It is only "visible as the beam when the practitioner has their eyes closed and is deeply focused.  Prayer is often used to clear the mind of thought and to bring on the focus needed to observe the beam.  While in this state questions and thoughts may receive hints as to the correct course of action to take.

When in combat many of the Silver Knights will become bathed in a shining suit of armor that helps protect them from demonic blows.  Again it does not stop blows from humans and does not help greatly against a demon wielding a weapon as it does not stop weaponry.  Their swords will also often be bathed in the light which greatly aids them in their fights against the demonic hordes.

Less common abilities include shooting balls of light at demonic foes and summoning a hammer made of the Light itself.  This hammer is unusual in that it is a real physical object and as such it will harm both human and demonic enemies.  But harm given to a human usually results in great pain to the wielder as well as the Light reacts harshly to being used in such a way.

The Light can also be used to heal wounds and cure diseases as such Silver Knights are usually treated with the utmost respect.

Amongst the rarest of Light magic is the ability to purify and create food and water.  Only a handful of Knights have had this ability.  Rolard has it to a lesser extent in that he is able to use the Light to copy and existing food stuff.  Usually a bland travelers biscuit but there have been reports of Knights in the past who could create entire banquets from nothing.

Drawbacks:

For the most part Light magic is benign and causes little suffering directly to its wielder.  But on occasion wielders will receive unwelcome visions of potential futures.  Unfortunately, in almost all cases these visions come too late to avert the fate they show.  But not always, so the Knights always pay heed when one of their number has a vision.

Writing Excuses

If you're doing any writing you owe it to yourself to grab the Writing Excuses Podcast. 15 minutes long because you're in a hurry and they're not that smart. This is an excellent series brought to you by three wonderful authors. The authors of the series are Brandon Sanderson author of Mistborn, (Yes he's the guy finishing Robert Jordan's Magnum Opus The Wheel of Time) Howard Taylor of Schlock Mercenary fame, (If you're not reading it get out of here and go check it out) and Dan Wells a horror novelist. Sadly I have not read any of Dan's work but from hearing this podcast I soon will. They cover in fifteen minute nuggets, topics ranging from how to get published to how magic systems work. At the time of this entry their latest podcast on Magic will soon spark a series of new articles here. All three are brilliant speakers and the podcast never feel tired. As an aside I also try to listen to Webcomics Weekly but their hour long format and less organized presentation makes it fun but not as informative in my opinion.

The latest discussion on magic in Writing Excuses has really gotten me thinking about how I want magic to work in DuskHaven. My main characters all use magic and at this point it's been fairly nebulous. I have rules but nothing firmly defined. I plan to rectify that tonight. Well I'll start on it tonight. I plan to stick to the six major schools of magic that I defined earlier. Light and Earth are currently the two systems that need the most definition with Fire coming in a close third.

From listening the Writing Excuses group and thinking about what I read they're spot on as to why main characters need rules if they use magic. Without rules readers are left confused as to what abilities the characters have and lack the sense of suspense as they expect magic to solve every issue.

If Rolard was not my main character I might leave things more ill-defined but I can't imagine doing the story from another perspective right now. Although the notion of an Everyman or perhaps an Everywoman is intriguing....

Now I'm rambling and I hate seeing that in other blogs. So to wrap up for today a well defined magic system for your main characters good, rambling in blogs bad.

How to plot

I've been struggling with plotting lately as all my previous work has been done braindump style during Nano frenzies.  Now that I'm actually trying to plot out a full story I'm getting stuck on the details.  So I've done some web searching and I think I'll be going this route. How to plot a novel this article is by Simon Haynes author of the Hal Spacejock series and creator of the amazing ywriter software.  I've been using Freemind for plotting but now I intend to get serious about it.  I like the idea of putting all your setting items on one side and plotting on the other.  Simon has a sample freemind file on his site that's a nice template for getting started.  Grab the file from his plot page.  After some plotting is done it should be easier to move into ywriter.  In the past I usually have one monolithic file with everything in it which makes revising a pain in the butt.  But with the scene based ywriter it's easy to move whole sections around.  I intend to write DuskHaven entirely in ywriter so we'll see how that goes as well.  I'll report back on it occasionally as I make progress.

 

Not a lot of other news right now.  I cleaned my house this weekend which always helps to clear the mind and I actually remembered to grab my notebook and jot down notes on new story ideas that came to mind.  Whether they go anywhere or not who knows but at least I'm starting to write them down which is of course step one.