Sadly Neglected Forever

Between 2009 and 2018, I was on a mad tear, writing books and short stories like a man with nothing better to do. I churned out a whole bunch of novels, some of which were published by indie publishers and others self-published. I put out seventeen novels in total, but only a few of them received any real marketing or attention.

How many copies of my books did people ultimately acquire? When factoring in Amazon and other online booksellers, indie bookstores, school libraries, personal sales, and social media giveaways, ultimately slightly less than 10,000 copies. However, most of those were from just a handful of my books, namely: Mary of the Aether, Children of the Mechanism, Shadows of Tockland, The Vale of Ghosts, and Garden of Dust and Thorns. 

In retrospect, I wrote too many books. I should have written fewer books and put more of my effort toward marketing them. 

Anyway, in 2017, I began a ghostwriting career, which has proved lucrative and took all of my focus off my own novels. Over the last few years, I've done a lot of writing for other people, including some pseudonymous fiction writing for a UK publisher. Ironically, some of the novels I've written under a pen name have sold very well, much better than my own books.

In recent months, I've begun digging up my own novels, when I can find the time, and trying to reread them with an eye toward making something meaningful out of them. Most of them are just sitting in various online stores, making very sporadic sales. I don't know if there's anything I can do with them at this point, really, and I certainly don't need the sales. Ghostwriting pays the bills.

If I had to pick just a few to focus renewed energy on, I think I would go with the following:

And if I had a lot of free time, I might give some time, consideration, additional editing, and attention to:

So, what do you think, Dear Reader? Have you read any of these novels, and are there any that I should stop sadly neglecting forever? 

One Million Beautiful Quotes (and Giveaway)

I love reading individual, isolated quotes from novels, especially when it's a good, strange, or thought-provoking quote that piques my interest. I like to try to imagine how it fits into the overall story. I guess that's why I keep doing these quote posts from my novels. Maybe nobody finds it as interesting at me.

Anyway, I've done enough of these that I thought it might be interesting to collate them all into one mega-post.  Also, click on the pictures for more info about the books.

GIVEAWAY: I've got a few paperback copies of my books to give away. Respond with your favorite quote from this list, and I'll put you in the drawing. You can respond on the blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. If you'd prefer a Kindle copy instead of paperback, let me know. Books will be given away in a couple of weeks (4/15/17).

Mary of the Aether Series

"I don’t want a boring old world where all anyone ever does is grow up and work some awful job for no money and spend Friday evenings watching high school football games and recalling the so-called glory days until they die."

"Nobody really believes in anything. My parents don’t believe in anything. They just breathe and eat and work."

"I don’t want sympathy. Sympathy only makes me mad."

"Maybe if I practice a lot, if I order my thoughts, I can learn to imagine better things. Maybe in time I could imagine anything. What if nothing is impossible?"

"The world just got a whole lot more dangerous tonight. Maybe it always was dangerous, but I didn’t know it."

"I know who I want to be. I want to help and heal, and I won’t let you or anyone else try to change me. I saw what I can become, I saw it, right there by the side of the road."

"I don’t care if anyone likes me, as long as I’m not embarrassed ever again by my own feelings or my own behavior."

“I never want an explanation for any of this. Never. I don’t know what you did. I don’t care what you did. The whole world has gone crazy, and I don’t want to know anything."

"I’ve been selfish. I see that now. I wanted a happy little life, but I was entrusted with this power by people who loved me. I’ve wasted so much time whining when I should have been learning."

"The world will burn out like a torch, but the light will shine brightly, and I will rise like the brightest ember into the stars at the end."

"The world is sliding into oblivion, devoured by shadow, and you are its last light."

Shadows of Tockland

"Destiny, I want to lick your face for all your perfect ways.”

"Mark my words, the ever-night is coming, and when it does, you'll be glad you've got some wild nutters at your side."

"Destiny has a funny way of making things irrelevant. Superior numbers, for example.”

"Far away, far away, blessed one. The ever-night is coming. It is coming forever."

"Tonight is a night you’ll wish you had a gun.”

"Sometimes, rubes don’t think they got their money’s worth, and they try to take it out of us in blood."

"Look, we’re committed to destiny now. From this point on, whatever happens, happens. That’s how destiny works."

Children of the Mechanism

"Open doors are the best thing in the whole world. An open door means you can leave something bad and maybe find something good."

"If you hold on, we will live. If you let go, we will go down, down, down. Do you understand how important it is for you to hold on?"

"I was born climbing the Mechanism. Nobody ever told me why.”

"Where I come from, the higher you go on the Mechanism, the more dangerous it gets. The circles get smaller, and the fall is farther. The world is like that, isn’t it? The higher we go, the stranger, the smaller, the uglier, the more dangerous."

"I walked forever down a hundred different places and saw all kinds of different lights and Watchers with hands, and then I came to the end."

"The world got worse and worse the more she understood about it."

Garden of Dust and Thorns

"The very thing that you took for granted will be your salvation. Never forget it."

"You’ve lived in the shadow of this Garden all your life. And you had no idea what was here. None of you did, not even the caretakers. This will be to our everlasting shame. While we lived outside the wall in the dirt, we had everything we could ever need in here.”

"Persistence is not a virtue. It is a defect."

“Stand on your island, in the shadow of your sacred tree, and watch me defile this ground. And weep, if you will, knowing that your thief-lord’s reign is at an end.”

"It’s a very strange thing to be deceived. A very strange thing."

The Archaust Saga (The Vale of Ghosts)

"Why is it every decision I make seems right one second before I make it and then completely wrong and ridiculous one second after I’ve made it?"

"You crossed the relic wall. The ghosts can see you now, and they will—they will drag you down into the vale, sooner or later. They do not give up."

"As time passes, everything we ever knew or saw or heard, every person we ever touched or loved, they all drop away, leaving us with nothing but the vague and choking need to escape."

"Are we smarter than the generations that came before us? How can we expect to fix a problem that they could not?"

"Our worst mistakes can become the catalyst for our greatest accomplishments, if we are willing to make it so."

“There’s not a worse person in the world than someone who will abandon a friend or family member in their last days.”

 

Dreams in the Void

"Your comfortable life is paid for with the taxes of hard working villagers, so that one day, you might provide just leadership for them.”

"Until a few weeks ago, I thought the world was normal. Then it all came crashing down, and I learned everyone is sick—depraved and sick."

"It’s a miserable thing to be helpful—to be needed, to be essential—and someone can’t see it."

"There is a heaviness in me now, like something coiled around my intestines. I hope to make it go away. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I don’t want to be the person I have become."

"Sit and ponder, boy. Dream of killing kings."

"And so it comes down to a simple question, young Dekembri. Are we the righteous, or are we the wicked?"

“A storm is coming to sweep away everything. Find a secret place, bury yourselves inside and wait it out. Wait it out.”

Fading Man

"You cannot bury sickness under the ground and expect it to stay there. It will make itself known eventually. It will climb up out of its hole and demand to be seen."

"Nature or fate or destiny has selected us for suffering, and we are to endure it, accept it, take and gorge ourselves on misery like the dutiful sub-creatures that we are."

My Trouble with Genres

So I tend to write things that are not easily categorized into specific genres. I meld elements of fantasy and science fiction, various sub-genres, with my own peculiarities. It's possible that this has sometimes served as a hindrance to my success since publishers prefer easy categories. In fact, one of my better novels (Shadows of Tockland) was once rejected by a major publisher for not having enough science in the science fiction. Just take a look at how the various genres factor into my novels.

Shadows of Tockland

Post-apocalyptic science fiction with very little actual science. It also deals quite a bit with the history of clowning. It's also got zombies, in a manner of speaking. Hard to categorize.

Garden of Dust and Thorns

Technically, it's a fantasy novel because it involves magic, but it has almost none of the trappings of the fantasy genre. It's also got some elements that smack of science fiction.

The Vale of Ghosts

The biggest mishmash of genres I've ever written. At times, it almost feels like a young adult novel, with its young, alienated female protagonist and her various misadventures, but it's clearly not written for a young audience. It involves magic, so that makes it a fantasy novel. I sometimes classify it as paranormal, because it involves, in a way, the spirits of dead people, but it's not an easy fit with your typical paranormal novel. There are numerous elements of horror throughout, but it also has a few science fiction concepts.

You see what I'm talking about. The same goes for most of the novels I've written. Even when I do limit myself to a specific genre, I tend to avoid the trappings of that genre. Maybe it's been a hindrance at times, but I can't help myself.

Context Free Quotes

So I've been attempting to do a Quote of the Day on Twitter. Basically, I find one interesting or unusual quote from one of my many novels and post it each day. I thought it might be interesting to see what those quotes look like stripped of their context and source. Without knowing anything else, what do these quotes make you think of?

"One dumb act made in ignorance is all it takes to ruin your life forever."

"Look, we’re committed to destiny now. From this point on, whatever happens, happens. That’s how destiny works."

"The world got worse and worse the more she understood about it."

"It’s a very strange thing to be deceived. A very strange thing."

"I thought the world was normal. Then it all came crashing down, and I learned everyone is depraved and sick."

"The world is sliding into oblivion, devoured by shadow, and you are its last light."

"Our worst mistakes can become the catalyst for our greatest accomplishments, if we are willing to make it so."

"Are we smarter than the generations that came before us? How can we expect to fix a problem that they could not?"

"I walked forever down a hundred different places and saw all kinds of different lights and Watchers with hands, and then I came to the end."

"As she became a part of every single living thing, she realized that every single thing was, in some strange way, reaching out to her, crying to her for purpose, for life, for breath."

"Nature or fate or destiny has selected us for suffering, and we are to endure it, accept it, take and gorge ourselves on misery like the dutiful sub-creatures that we are."

"Nobody really believes in anything. My parents don’t believe in anything. They just breathe and eat and work."

"Tonight is a night you’ll wish you had a gun.”

"My father used to talk about water dreams when I was a little girl, but he said they were rare, and when you had one, it meant someone close to you was going to die."

“This is not death. What new thing is this moving through my body?”

“A storm is coming to sweep away everything. Find a secret place, bury yourselves inside and wait it out. Wait it out.”

"As time passes, everything we ever knew or saw or heard, every person we ever touched or loved, they all drop away, leaving us with nothing but the vague and choking need to escape."

Which of these quotes stands on its own?

To follow the Quote of the Day, head over to my Twitter account: https://twitter.com/jeffaaronmiller

The Meaning of Monologues

Let's talk about character monologues. In any story of significant length, there will be moments in which characters pause in the middle of the action in order to present a lengthy discourse, aka wall of text, to the reader. What possible reason could a writer have in unloading a paragraph of uninterrupted speech? Often it's a way to disguise exposition or to present back story. Other times, it's a moment to simply state the theme of the story in a way that won't take readers out of the scene.

We all do it. Even in an action-packed story, a character will pause at some point to speak at length about thematically significant things. Can I give you a few examples from my own books?

How about the time Aiden Tennant speaks in massive blocks of text about his life and his hopes and dreams? Mary responds now and again in order to break it up into digestible pieces, but it's basically Aiden downloading all of the thematic elements related to his character, in paragraphs such as the following (which proceeds after his confession about loving comic books and fantasy novels):

“So here’s the thing,” he said. “It’s gonna sound really weird, but the truth is I want all of that stuff to be real. Maybe it isn’t, but I want to believe in it, all of it. Nobody really believes in anything. My parents don’t believe in anything. They just breathe and eat and work. People like Kristen Grossman don’t believe in anything. Most of the people in Chesset go to church on Sunday and hear all of these wild, weird stories, but I don’t think they really believe a word of it. Some guy raised a staff and parted the ocean in two?” Aiden raised both hands over his head and waved them around, miming the old story and drawing more laughs from Kristen and the twins. He did not seem to notice them. “They don’t really believe that happened. They wouldn’t even want to live in a world where that kind of stuff was possible. They all want bland, they like bland. Not me. I don’t want a boring old world where all anyone ever does is grow up and work some awful job for no money and spend Friday evenings watching high school football games and recalling the so-called glory days until they die. They can keep that kind of life. Even if there aren’t any real aliens or wizards or magic or whatever, I want to read about them and pretend. It’s better than nothing.”

Or how about the time in The Vale of Ghosts when the mayor speaks for eight hundred minutes during a public meeting? What a perfect opportunity to clarify the nature of the conflict that will drive the rest of the novel. Here is the second paragraph out of six in which the mayor speaks:

“None of us can stand here and pretend we do not know,” the mayor continued. “What unfolded here two days ago is no mystery. Haven’t our ancestors passed down to us a thousand warnings about the vale beneath the ridge? The east, the west, and the south are closed to us. Only the land to the north is open. And not only did they warn us, but they left the ten relics of the prophet to protect us. Those who came before did all they could to keep us safe. Only deliberate disobedience, only mischief and defiance, bring trouble here.”

Then there's that time in Shadows of Tockland when David Morr gets a little speech from the ringleader of the circus about the nature of clowning and the different types of clowns, but really it's all foreshadowing the character conflicts that are to come. This long discourse is split up into reasonable chunks by David's brief responses, but otherwise it's just a huge thematic presentation of the novel itself:

“Onstage, whiteface clown is the boss. He’s the smart one, the bully, orders around the others. In our troupe, Cakey is the whiteface....whiteface clown is at the top. At the bottom, you’ve got the auguste,” Telly said. “The auguste clown is typically the dimwit character, the goofball, the idiot. Whiteface likes to slap him around, harass and threaten him, maybe toss a pie in his face. Karl is our auguste clown. He plays a character called Touches. Onstage, Touches takes a lot of crap from Cakey. That’s how it goes.” 

“Karl is pretty huge,” David said. “He doesn’t have to take crap from anyone, I wouldn’t think.”

“Onstage and offstage, kid,” Telly said, waving him off. “I told you, don’t get confused. Now, in between the auguste and the whiteface, you’ve got the contra-auguste. Contra-auguste is typically trying to win the whiteface clown’s approval, caught in the middle, you might say. Annabelle is our contra-auguste, performing as Bubbles.” 

“Got it.” 

“As for me, I’m the ringmaster,” Telly said. “The ringmaster’s job is to keep the other clowns bouncing off each other. A manipulator but never a victim. That’s me. And that ends lesson one. Now, did you write all of that down?”

Or how about that one time in Garden of Dust and Thorns where the protagonist screams the central theme of the entire book at another character for an extended length of time?

“You wanted to see the Garden in ashes, you’ll get your wish,” she said. “Revel in the death of the world, Sindaya. Revel in it. I tried to tell you. I pleaded with you, with you and with the others, pleaded with you to look around you, look at what you are destroying, and you would not hear it. Celebrate as your Lord of Dust and Sand and Misery eats into the Garden, celebrate and laugh as you pierce the bodies of innocent people who did nothing to offend you, whose only sin was living in the shadow of the wall. Wretches and pigs, all of you. Vile monsters!”

And that, folks, is what a nice monologue is all about. It's a chance for a character to just spell it all out without it feeling like a wall of dull exposition. Done right, readers won't even think outside of the character. They'll just be swept up in the scene.

To be fair, it doesn't always take a long paragraph to pull this off. It can happen in a sentence or two, such as the time in Dreams in the Void where the villain reveals the theme and plot in one short little statement:

“You’re…you’re already becoming like me,” he said. “Everyone is. There is only one mind now…only…”

Right to the point. Thank you, monologues.

Creepy Places with Strange Odors and Slimy Walls

Okay, confession time. World building is not my strength. You know what I mean by world building? The term refers to the author's process of constructing or fleshing out the overall structure (political, geographical, cultural) of their imaginary world. It's a big deal particularly for science fiction and fantasy writers. Good world building gives readers a strong sense of a believable imaginary world outside the confines of the immediate plot.

I don't enjoy it so much. It probably shows. My devotion tends to be toward characters and events, mood and tone, but I do very much enjoy creating memorable settings. These, of course, can contribute to world building, but in fact, they operate much like the setting of a play or a scene in a movie. They place the readers in a distinct location and give them a stage on which to locate the characters and keep track of the action.

Boy, do I love to create a memorable setting, something that readers can feel and smell, something that gives a distinct impression, something they will remember. I don't know how good I am at it, but I enjoy it. So with that in mind, let's look at some of my favorite settings from some of my novels. These are places I loved to create, places that were vivid in my imagination. If you've read the books, which of these stick out in your memory?


Children of the Mechanism - Grong Room

One might say that this whole novel is set in a memorable place. It's a vast, dark, grungy factory full of slimy refuse holes with dented robots roaming about. It's labyrinthine and smells bad, and it's full of danger. But, one place in particular that I enjoyed writing about was the Grong Room. This is the place where a character named Kuo lives and works. It is a vast, high-ceilinged place with a rubbery floor on which a hideous, huge flesh-creature rests. The Grong is a headless, limbless, living bio-mass of some kind that absorbs a nutrient-rich "meat paste" which workers spend all day slopping under its massive skin folds. Doesn't that sound fun? It's hideous, odorous, dark, and disgusting.

Mary of the Aether - Chesset

Chesset is a small, fictional town set in rural Arkansas that has a lot of qualities that I have experienced in real places. If you know the area of Northwest Arkansas, you will see pieces of Mountainburg, West Fork, Winslow, and Chester. The only two businesses in town, at least initially, are a small convenience store and one of those ubiquitous soft-serve ice cream parlors that small towns love. Everything revolves around these two places, until a big gas station sets up shop just off the highway. Chesset feels like a real place to me. It is very much like towns where I have actually lived.

Garden of Dust and Thorns - The Garden

The garden in this novel is the last green place in a world that has otherwise transformed into one vast, dusty desert. Since it was created to preserve plant and animal species, it is a unique sort of place where things from many different kinds of environments and climates all exist side by side. Baobab trees next to stately aspen, bison grazing with camels, and a magical power somehow allows all of these things to thrive together. If such a place existed, it would be quite a thing to see. Every kind of fruit, every color of flower, it's all there. A massive wall of thorny vines surrounds it and keeps out the dust. The tragedy of the story is that the people who live outside the garden take it for granted. Some never go inside. They are content to live in their sad little town on the other side of the wall.

The Vale of Ghosts - The Archaust Chamber

This place appears in the first two books of The Archaust Saga. Actually, it appears in the second volume, Army of the Inner Eye, quite a bit more. It is partly a natural cavern and partly a constructed chamber. Primary access is through a hole in the roof, which drops into a deep, muddy pool. But the real heart of the Archaust chamber is behind an ancient door, where a narrow passageway leads into a secret room. It's dim, dark, oppressive, and hopefully super creepy. And it is here that our curious protagonist first comes face to face with the real evil that threatens the kingdom.

Teth of the City - The City

A sprawling futuristic city, full of massive metal buildings, countless balconies, winding streets, sleek vehicles, and thousands of neat little workstations and living quarters for all the people. That's the setting of my next novel. A place for every person, and a person for every place. That's the motto. But if you look a little closer, you will find seedy places, rundown and desolate locations, street dwellers, and mysterious entrances into underground corridors. It's overrun, busy, noisy, and a bright red sun burns through the constant haze in the sky overhead.

Anyway, those are just a few examples of some of the memorable settings I've enjoyed writing about over the years. I love to create a vivid sense of place, where readers can practically feel the grime and smell the odors. Hopefully, I have occasionally managed it.

Alarming Readers with Chapter Titles

I've said before that I'm unusually fond of chapter titles. They provide the author with a great opportunity to entice, or possibly alarm, readers, so that they want to continue reading. A good chapter title gives a vague but distinct notion about what is to come, maybe hinting at danger, maybe presenting a riddle to be solved along the way. With each novel I write, there is usually one particular chapter title that really stands out. Let me share some examples and explain what I mean.


Teth of the City

Chapter Title: The Sweet Embrace of a Thousand Monsters

This book doesn't have cover art yet. In fact, I'm not even done with revisions, but I like this chapter title. It refers to a crack that a character makes earlier in the story, which is meant as an exaggeration of the possible dangers they are about to face. But suddenly, readers turn the page and see the chapter title! *cue creepy music*


The Vale of Ghosts
The Archaust Saga Book One

Chapter Title: Morning Breaks All Things

At a certain point in the story, the characters have put together a somewhat ill-planned strategy for dealing with the difficult situation that is troubling them (am I being vague enough?). Anyway, it's late at night, and they are enacting this plan. Suddenly, readers turn the page and come to this chapter title. It does not bode well. It hints that things might not go the way the characters intend. It whispers at potential soul-shattering catastrophe.

Army of the Inner Eye
The Archaust Saga Book Two

Chapter Title: The Unprotected Heart

In the previous novel (mildest spoiler alert), a powerful being tells our protagonist that he can protect her body, but he cannot protect her heart. It is clear in the context of the story that this is a reference to possible grief and anguish from the hero's friends and family being put in mortal danger. Well, along comes book number two, and suddenly one of the early chapters bears this title, hinting that perhaps the warning from the previous book will suddenly become a terrible reality. *cue anxious hand-wringing*

Garden of Dust and Thorns

Chapter Title: Everything Dies

Here's a fun little fantasy novel I wrote once upon a time, where two great supernatural beings wage war over the last green garden in a world turned to dust. It features a brutal war between soldiers and a forest full of animals. Good times. Anyway, at a certain point in the story, the two sides are coming together to draw up battle lines, promising a vicious fight. There's no telling how it will turn out, but things don't look good. Readers turn the page and see the next chapter title. Hearts sink.

See, that's why I love a good chapter title. Oh, the little mind games you can play with a good chapter title. Tweaking expectations, building tension, casting doubt. It's a lot of fun. Of course, every chapter title can't be a gem, but when you can make them crackle, it's a nice feeling.

(by the way, click the book covers for links to the various books)

The Beautiful First Appearances of Fabulous Villains

What makes a good villain? I suppose some people like an antagonist who is just pure evil, who does hideous and despicable things and wields great power. Others prefer a villain whose motives are understandable, who might even be somewhat sympathetic, one whose fall into evil makes sense. That sort of villain typically becomes more of a tragic figure than an incarnation of wickedness.

A villain's first entrance into the story is always significant and, if done right, can make for a memorable moment. That initial glimpse creates an impression that colors the rest of the story for the reader, I believe. Think of Darth Vader striding through the smoky door of the rebel ship in the opening scene of Star Wars: A New Hope. It's a bold and mysterious first appearance (made less impactful now, perhaps, that we've seen the little kid version of pre-Vader shouting "Yippeee!").

Anyway, to that end, here are some excerpts from my novels with the first appearance of the main antagonists. There is no particular deep purpose here in isolating these bits of text except for my own curiosity about how these first appearances feel, what sort of immediate impression they make. So without further ado, let's begin.

Mary of the Aether

Leonard Watt

His first appearance is the opening paragraph of the novel, though readers do not get his name until quite a bit later. I like to think it's a pretty memorable opening.

The lunatic in the long, gray cloak dashed out of the forest and ran right up onto the front yard, waving his arms in front of him like a child playing tag. He skirted the porch, paused, turned a complete circle and fell onto his hands and knees. A hood obscured most of his face, but Mary could see the tip of a pointy chin covered in whiskers. She sat at the living room window, leaning against the sill and resting her forehead against the cold glass, transfixed by the sight. The crazy man crawled through the high, un-mowed grass, his face close to the ground, shifting back and forth like a bloodhound chasing a scent. He stopped at the driveway, lifted his head and appeared to sniff at the air. Then he scooped up a handful of gravel and sifted it through his fingers.

Mary of Shadows

Gavin

Gavin, the primary troublemaker for much of Mary of Shadows, also appears in the opening chapter, interrupting Mary's birthday party in the park with some disturbing behavior. Here is his first actual appearance:

A figure stumbled out of the line of trees, hunched over, a man clutching his face. He wandered into the park, past the swing set and monkey bars, past wide-eyed children and a pair of corgi dogs on leashes who couldn’t decide whether to bark or whimper. The man’s eyes were covered, but he stumbled right toward the picnic table, as if seeing it in his mind....a trail of blood seeped out from under the man’s right hand and ran down his cheek. He had on a pale blue, button-up dress shirt, but the tail was un-tucked, and the breast pocket was torn and hung down like a bit of rent skin.

Mary of Starlight

Ronald Holt

Some of the same evil characters recur in this third volume of the series, but about halfway through, we do meet a significant new villain in the strange Ronald Holt. Here is his first appearance in this book:

“I surely hate getting bad news. I surely do. Anybody would.”

At first, Aiden thought it was Perry who had spoken and started to brush him off again, but then he realized the voice had come from his left side. A gruff voice, low and coarse. He turned and saw a man walking along beside him, ten yards away, keeping pace as he picked his way around the trees. Aiden had seen the man before, and he had expected to see him again but not so soon, not so suddenly. The man had a long white beard, black around his mouth, unkempt at the edges. It hung down to his chest. He wore a ragged fedora hat pulled low over his eyes and a long brown trench coat.

“It’s about the magical girl, I suppose,” the man said. “All of the bad news is about her these days, isn’t it?”

Children of the Mechanism

Watcher

There isn't really a single villain in Children of the Mechanism. Well, I suppose the factory itself counts as the primary antagonist, but the cruel Watcher robots serve as the primary source of danger for the main characters. Here is their first description in the early pages of the novel:

The Watcher entered the Sleeping Room through the archway, returning from whatever strange errand it had been about, and stopped in a corner near the Refuse Hole. A boy relieving himself finished quickly and dashed away. The Watcher had a shiny, cylindrical body, fat wheels for feet, a flat, circular head with dead eyes, but it was the arms that the boys paid special attention to, long segmented arms made of polished metal rods with cloth bulbs for hands. Those were the killing hands, and they were ever poised, ready to strike.

“One minute until work,” the Watcher said. “One minute.”

Dreams in the Void

Lord-General Durehen Tallek

His first appearance happens in the first chapter, even though his real purpose is not made clear to the protagonist until a few chapters later. But here is that first appearance:

Six men passed, and then one appeared, riding alone, who seemed greater than the others. He wore the same sort of armor, polished to a mirror shine, but massive silver wings curled out on either side of his helm above the cheek plates, and he had a double visor, the first raised all the way up, the second lifted halfway, revealing a set of dark eyes beneath a heavy brow. A man and not an empty suit. His long cloak was fringed in gold cloth, and he had drawn it around himself, clutching a fold of it in his gloved left hand.

Garden of Dust and Thorns

Magesh

The first real appearance of Magesh happens after the protagonist is captured and brought into a courtyard with some of her people. After waiting for a while in anxious silence, Magesh appears:

After some time, there arose a strange jingling sound from outside the courtyard, as if many chains were being shaken. She heard soldiers chanting that same word, the one that sounded like death, but in hushed voices. Finally, a pair of soldiers entered the courtyard, bearing a padded bench stolen from someone’s house. They set it in the open space at the center of the courtyard, then took up positions on either side of it. 

A man entered, markedly different from the others. He had no hood, only a long gray cape fringed in silver brocade. On his head was a kind of crown made of woven strips of leather, alternating red and black. His face, unlike the others, was uncovered, a hard face, features chiseled out of stone, framed by short curls of graying hair. He crossed the courtyard in four long strides, as the prisoners along the walls murmured and groaned, turned in one swift motion and sat down on the bench. He had a small curved sword sheathed at his side, but he drew it now and laid the blade across his thigh. 

“Bring him,” he said, after a moment. Dark eyes beneath bushy eyebrows, a sharp nose, flaring nostrils, thin lips, deep creases at the corners of his mouth and along his forehead.

Vale of Ghosts

Vyshe

Now, this situation is somewhat unique in that the true villain of this whole fantasy series doesn't appear until fairly late in the first book. Prior to that moment, the protagonist has no idea what she's dealing with. In fact, when he first appears, she mistakes him for a statue:

And sitting on the bench was some bent-backed old statue, gray and mottled skin like polished marble. Someone had draped it in a filthy robe that was falling apart. It was the figure of a man with well-defined muscles, its face hidden in its hands.

But then it reveals itself to be a living thing:

Suddenly, the statue moved. First, it shuddered, as if waking. Then it sat up. She saw an angular face, delicately carved. The lips parted to reveal rows of pale teeth, and the eyelids opened to reveal hollow spaces where eyes should have been. But when the statue turned toward them, she realized the hollow spaces were not empty. Tiny specks of light flashed deep inside, pinprick lights like distant stars.

And, of course, from that point on, things get markedly worse for all involved.


There are many more--General Mattock from Shadows of Tockland. Devourers from the Mary of the Aether series. Sindaya from Garden of Dust and Thorns. The Master from Children of the Mechanism--along with a few that I can't name because they are revealed during major plot twists.

So what do you think? What makes a memorable antagonist? What makes a memorable first appearance for a story's villain?

The Most Compelling Words in the History of Time

Let's play the Opening Paragraph game, folks. It's very simple. I post the opening paragraphs to my various novels, and you decide which one is most compelling and which opening paragraph most makes you want to read the rest of the novel. Sound fun? No? Oh, well, let's play anyway.

Children of the Mechanism 

First came the screaming, the sound of some monstrous thing crying out from the darkness. Then came the babbling, a boy wordlessly pleading for help, and one sound melted into the other. Bik fled from it, fighting his way out of the dream, but the noise chased him, turning at the end into the blare of the morning alarm. Finally, he opened his eyes in the dim, red light and heard it echoing off the metal walls, a singular note, high and harsh.

The Vale of Ghosts

Ann heard screams through the window, though the shutters had been pulled and latched and a pillow shoved into the space behind it. A tortured scream, the scratchy warbling howl of a monster. She was crouched in the dirt beneath the windowsill, jabbing a crooked stick into the ground between her feet and trying to appear like she wasn’t listening, like she hadn’t a care in the world. A ladybug landed on her knee, and she offered it the end of the stick. It climbed onto the stick, and she held it up into the air until it flew away.

Shadows of Tockland

David spotted him first, the old man with the scabs on his head lurching out of his seat on the front row, clapping his big, gnarled hands as he shuffled toward the stage. Bubbles the Clown was the current performer, a petite woman in a loose, silvery costume. She had a bamboo pole balanced on her open palm, a large ceramic plate spinning on top of it. The tent was filled to overflowing, but the attention of most people was drawn upward to the wobbling plate. Consequently, the old man got all the way to the stage without anyone hindering him. He gave one last clap, did a little stutter step on his bare feet, and lunged at Bubbles, snagging one of her billowing pant legs.

Garden of Dust and Thorns 

The shapes of men materialized out of the dust clouds, bodies wreathed in loose cloth of black and gray. Hoods and veils hid their faces, but they moved with purpose, marching in ranks. Though the distance was great, Adhi saw the glint of polished blades, of long silver spears and curved scimitars, catching the heavy rays of the lowering sun as it sank below the ridge in the west. She counted over three dozen men, but there were more of them behind the wall of dust. She saw a hint of movement, as of dozens more, gathering in the open land between the dunes.

 

Dreams in the Void

A man in a tattered leather jerkin and pale blue doublet writhed in the shadowy space between the rocks, clawing at his clothes. Jeren spotted him from the cliff’s edge as he braced himself against a skeletal tree. The highway ran a twisting course through a steep ravine, winding its way toward the snow-capped peaks in the west. Tumbled rocks lined the road here and there, piled up in some places to create makeshift walls, safe places to camp when the harsh winds howled down from the mountains. It was in one of these places that the man lay, kicking at the rocks and thrashing. 

Mary of the Aether

The lunatic in the long, gray cloak dashed out of the forest and ran right up onto the front yard, waving his arms in front of him like a child playing tag. He skirted the porch, paused, turned a complete circle and fell onto his hands and knees. A hood obscured most of his face, but Mary could see the tip of a pointy chin covered in whiskers. She sat at the living room window, leaning against the sill and resting her forehead against the cold glass, transfixed by the sight. The crazy man crawled through the high, un-mowed grass, his face close to the ground, shifting back and forth like a bloodhound chasing a scent. He stopped at the driveway, lifted his head and appeared to sniff at the air. Then he scooped up a handful of gravel and sifted it through his fingers.

Okay, folks, that's a whole passel of opening paragraphs just for you. Which one, based on the paragraph alone, makes you want to read the rest of the book?

Latest Developments

Various and sundry interesting things are happening in the world of Jeffrey Aaron Miller novels, so let me dive right in. First of all, some of my books are getting new covers and new editions.

Garden of Dust and Thorns is now available as both a Kindle book and in a lovely trade paperback edition. Along with the paperback edition, there is a new cover. Compare and contrast the two, if you will. Which one do you like better?

Old Cover

New Cover

Then there's the new cover for Children of the Mechanism. First, I should explain the recent changes to that book. I got the rights to Children of the Mechanism back from the original publisher. This has given me the opportunity to do some revisions to the story. Nothing major but there were a couple of things I really wanted to change. At the same time, I lost the rights to the original cover art, so I won't reproduce it here. Instead, I cobbled together a new cover, and here it is.

Of course, I already mentioned Dreams in the Void in my previous blog post, so you can scroll down and check that out if you want. In the meantime, I recently published a new novel, which is available for Kindle and in trade paperback. Here it is:

It's the first book in an epic new fantasy series, and I'm already hard at work on book two. More on that one later, so keep checking back, friends. Oh, and feel free to click on any of the covers above to get to the right page for purchase. Thanks!

Actual Paper for Actual People

So sometimes you just want to hold actual pieces of paper in your hand when you read instead of flipping and flopping imaginary pages on a Kindle device. To that end, I am releasing trade paperback versions of all of my novels that are currently "ebook only."

This includes Shadows of Tockland, my post-apocalyptic science fiction novel with clowns and circus people and plague-ridden zombies and tyrannical overlords. In fact, a nice 5x8" paperback version of that one is already available right HERE.

  
Then there's Garden of Dust and Thorns, which is a fantasy novel with animals fighting armed soldiers and all sorts of crazy things going on. You can get the paperback to that one HERE.

Deep Water will be next. I'm merging the two volumes of the Deep Water duology into one volume. So Bloodstone and A Whisper in the Void will get combined into a massive 6x9" paperback of 500 pages called Deep Water Dreaming. Look for that one very soon. I have to do some major formatting and such first, but it's coming.

Eventually, the same thing will happen to every ebook I've ever written or will write, so brace yourselves. Actual paper for actual people, just like it was for hundreds of years.

Book Quote Time Is Here Again

The quotes game is one of my favorite things to do on the blog, and I think it might be time to do it again. I pick one significant quote from each of my novels, both released and unreleased, and then you, the dear reader, decide which quote is your favorite. Sound fun? Okay, let's get to it.

"Maybe if I practice a lot, if I order my thoughts, I can learn to imagine better things. Maybe in time I could imagine anything. What if nothing is impossible?" --Mary of the Aether 

 

"The world just got a whole lot more dangerous tonight. Maybe it always was dangerous, but I didn’t know it." --Mary of Shadows 

"I know who I want to be. I want to help and heal, and I won’t let you or anyone else try to change me. I saw what I can become, I saw it, right there by the side of the road." --Mary of Starlight

"I don’t care if anyone likes me, as long as I’m not embarrassed ever again by my own feelings or my own behavior." --Mary of Cosmos 

"Destiny, I want to lick your face for all your perfect ways.” --Shadows of Tockland

"Open doors are the best thing in the whole world. An open door means you can leave something bad and maybe find something good." --Children of the Mechanism 

"You cannot bury sickness under the ground and expect it to stay there. It will make itself known eventually. It will climb up out of its hole and demand to be seen." --Fading Man 

"Your comfortable life is paid for with the taxes of hard working villagers, so that one day, you might provide just leadership for them.” --Bloodstone, Deep Water: Book One

"Until a few weeks ago, I thought the world was normal. Then it all came crashing down, and I learned everyone is sick—depraved and sick." --A Whisper in the Void, Deep Water: Book Two

"The very thing that you took for granted will be your salvation. Never forget it." --Garden of Dust and Thorns

"Why is it every decision I make seems right one second before I make it and then completely wrong and ridiculous one second after I’ve made it." --The Vale of Ghosts

There you go. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I have not attributed the quotes to their various characters, but they each give you a sense of some important thematic element of each novel. Pick your favorite.