Celebration Day!

I got good news today. I think my work-in-progress novel The Immortality Game (a sci-fi thriller) may just have been the fastest ever reviewed by the Harper Collins editor. My book 'made the desk' (which means making it to the top 5 overall at the end of the month) just ten days ago and I received the review today. Most reviews that I have seen have taken months.

I don't believe Harper Collins has published any of the books that they have reviewed from Authonomy. The review of my book was very good, and they have asked me to submit the full manuscript to them for their board of readers to check out. Sadly, this is an incomplete book, so I hope they are willing to be patient while I finish it!

Anyone wishing to read the approximately 3/4 complete novel can do so HERE.

My favorite line from their review:  This has very strong potential and I would certainly recommend it to the authonomy editorial board for consideration for publication.

Dived vs Dove

I've been reading the First Law series by Joe Abercrombie, and some of his Britishisms really throw me off, such as his use of the word 'whinge' in place of 'whine', but especially his common reference to 'fruits' in place of what Americans would more often call 'balls'.

He also used 'dived' when all my life I've heard people use 'dove'. I felt the need to look it up, and it turns out that 'dived' is the traditional correct way to use the past tense of 'to dive', but from about two centuries ago in the US the word 'dove' began to supersede 'dived' and has now become the standard. So, since I always recommend taking jabs at our lovely British friends, I will stick with 'dove', thank you!

Small Progress

Sorry I haven't been blogging. I have been concentrating on a busy work schedule and haven't done much else since playing in a chess tournament in March. I like to post when I feel I have something interesting or entertaining to say, and I haven't felt much of that recently.

The only new thing that has happened is that my work in progress The Immortality Game was voted into the top 5 of all books on Authonomy and so wins a review by an editor at Harper Collins. This could be good or bad depending on which editor gets it, as some reviews lately have been rather shoddy while others have been truly helpful. I can only hope I'll get one of the helpful ones!

Excerpt from my Work in Progress

I'm currently working on a sci-fi thriller, so the excerpt below might seem a bit out of place. All I can say is that it will make perfect sense once you can read the actual book!

******

The wizard Xax peeked out from behind the boulder at the cave entrance.  The dark hole was at the back of a small rock-strewn ravine in a wall of crumbling limestone.  He glanced over at his three hirelings.

“You’re sure that’s it?” he whispered.

The slender red-haired woman with all the knives nodded and leaned close to him.  “It's as they said it would be.  It must be it.”

Xax stared back at the cave mouth.  “ Doesn't look so bad.”

There was an odd stench here, something Xax couldn't place.  Little grew other than some patches of brown grass.

No one in the nearby hamlets could say exactly what sort of creature made this its lair.  Some said a dragon, which was absurd given how small the entrance was.  Others said it was a huge snake, or perhaps some large spiders.  The only thing they all agreed on was that no one who had entered the hole had ever returned.

Xax hadn't come here for whatever beast might inhabit the lair.  A priest of Pelius had told him that a member of their sect had carried a knucklebone of St. Cletus into the lair.  They wanted it back, and they were willing to pay a lot of gold if he would retrieve it.  And I need that gold if I’m ever to find my sister again, he thought.

He caught the eye of the huge bald-headed fellow with the crisscrossing scars on his face and the rusty mace.  “What do you say, Surly?  Lead the way?”

Surly scowled and grunted, which was about as articulate as the man got.  He slid around the edge of the boulder and stalked toward the lair entrance.

The red-haired woman, Telia, readied a pair of throwing knives and followed.

The last of Xax's companions, a nearly blind old man with a rusty voulge, grinned and said, “Go on, sorcerer.  I've got your back.”

What good a blind man would do, Xax had no idea, but the sparsely populated nearby villages had offered few henchmen for hire.  “With a blade like that and bad eyes, Lovash, I’d much rather have you in front of me.”

Lovash's grin widened.  “Don’t hurt to try.”  He hopped up and crept after Telia.

Xax tightened his grip on his staff and peered over the top of the boulder.  Telia was lighting a torch, while Surly stood across from her at the entrance, ready to hand her a second torch once she got the first lit.  Lovash poked the blade of his voulge into the blackness of the cave entrance, then grinned back at Xax and waved him forward.

Xax breathed deeply three times before scurrying out from behind the boulder.  He imagined the dead eyes of a vast scaly snake bursting forth from the darkness to plunge long fangs into his side.  He panicked, stumbled, and fell directly into the hole.

Gravel bit into his arms as Xax desperately tried to stop his slide.  He couldn't see in the darkness.  He twisted to his side and crashed into hard stone.  With a groan, he blindly tried to assess the damage.  His hands and arms burned from deep scrapes, and his hip bone was bruised.  He had no idea where his staff was.

Then there was light, and scuffing sounds as the three hirelings entered the cave.  Xax groaned again and looked up at Surly as the bald man drew near, a flickering torch held high.

“You all right, old man?” said Telia as she crept in next to Surly.  “ Didn't realize you were that eager to get inside.”

“You see it?” Xax said, unable to keep the fear from his voice.  “Anything moving?”

“Only Lovash,” Telia replied.  “I don’t see...oh, hellfire!”

Surly moaned.

“What?” said Xax.  “What is it?”

“Pick him up, Surly,” Telia said, her voice shaking.  “ We've gotta get outta here now.”

“I can’t see nothing,” Lovash said.  “What do you see?”

Surly stuck the torch in Lovash's hand and reached down to yank Xax up by the clasp of his cloak.

Xax was too frightened to care about the rough handling.  The pillar of stone that had halted his fall was not a stalagmite as he had thought.  It was a statue of an armored man, perfect in every detail.  He looked past the man and saw that they were in a large cavern.  Dozens of such statues filled the room, some holding their hands up in fright, others gripping stone weapons.  Xax turned his wide eyes to Telia and saw his own horror reflected in the flickering light in her eyes.

“Surly,” she screamed.

Xax whirled to see the huge bald warrior frozen in place, his eyes blank and his mouth gaping.  Like a pebble dropped into a pool of water, a ripple spread from Surly’s eyes, flesh turning to stone with the slightest of crackling sounds.

Telia yelled, “Run!” and scrambled up the gravelly slope toward the light of the entrance.

“What is it?” cried Lovash, dropping the torch and swinging his voulge in a sweep until it clanged against one of the stone statues.

Xax had trouble catching his breath.  “Basilisk,” he whispered.  He tried crawling after Telia, but was yanked back by Surly’s stone hand, still gripping his cloak.

Lovash dropped the voulge and rushed after Telia.

“Ah, gods!”  Xax finally found his voice.  “Come back, Lovash.  I’m stuck!”

The old man ignored him and vanished into the sunlight pouring through the entrance.

Xax heard Telia's voice shout something and the sound of running before all was silent save for the crackling of the two abandoned torches lying on the floor.  He saw his staff lying near his feet and reached for it, but Surly’s arm held him up.

Xax froze as a slight scraping sound reached his ears.  Scales slithering over stone?

He redoubled his efforts to reach his staff, but his fingers came up inches short.  Blood pattered onto the stone floor from the scrapes on his hands.  He grasped for the clasp, but it was buried in Surly’s stone fist.  In desperation he thrust himself up and let himself fall, hoping his cloak would tear.

A hissing sound came from somewhere just behind, much too close.  Xax wedged a foot up against Surly and pushed with all his strength, but the cloak didn't give.

********

Sorry to leave you with a cliffhanger, but the direction the story takes from this point in my WIP doesn't fit with this particular post, so I decided to cut it off there. Hopefully some of you might read the actual book someday, once I get it finished.

Reading A Dance With Dragons

I'm about halfway through reading A Dance With Dragons, the latest book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. I've said it before, but Martin is the greatest living fantasy author, at least for my taste. Don't get me wrong, I love many others, from Ursula Le Guin to Patrick Rothfuss and more, but Martin fits my taste almost perfectly.


I'm lucky, too, that I was able to find a mass-market paperback version of the book in English, since that isn't scheduled to come out until October. (Since I move a lot, I refuse to buy bulky, heavy hardcovers) Lots of people have complained about both this book and A Feast for Crows, but I have to say, I love them nearly as much as the earlier books. The writing grips me just as strongly and sweeps me away into a world that fits my sense of adventure perfectly.

I do have some minor quibbles, though not about how slowly Martin produces his books--as far as I'm concerned, he should take the time he needs in order to get them right. My main quibble is that Daenerys Targaryen is simply too passive, naive, and almost stupid in her chapters. I know she is very young still, but she has been through so much that she should have grown up a bit and gained some wisdom...or at least be able to listen to some of the wisdom of people like Ser Barristan Selmy. Instead she sits around moaning and doing almost nothing except stupid things like agreeing to marry someone very wrong for her. I haven't yet read far enough to see how badly that turns out, but I don't have to in order to know that it will turn badly very quickly, and she should have known it would. Her naivete regarding the slave trade and slave cities is just astounding--you can't make such sweeping changes without shaking up the world and turning almost everyone against you.

The last thing I wanted to mention was that I saw a riddle that Martin threw in to one of Dany's chapters, and it made me guess that the two dragon riders other than Dany will most likely be Tyrion and the 'Frog' prince of Dorne who has just arrived in her city at the point where I am reading. Of course, it could be another Dornish person or another Lannister, but that seems doubtful. Anyone else think this when reading the book?

Next Die Hard Scene

I don't think my scenes are 'big' enough to be considered spoilers, but just in case, if you haven't seen the film yet and don't want to know anything about it, don't read on.

Again due to the non-disclosure agreement, I had to wait all this time to talk about what happened. So, today I am writing about filming of Die Hard 5 on August 6 of last year. The scene was near the end of the movie, when John McClane (Bruce Willis) and his son are arriving in New York from Moscow. I play one of the five CIA agents waiting near the vehicles to escort them to Langley. When the scene wrapped (it was a long day, starting at 9:30 a.m.; I didn't arrive back home until 10 p.m.), I also got to drive one of the vehicles around the airport while they filmed it, though they told us they weren't sure that scene would be used or not.

The best part for me, though, was getting to work with the actress who played McClane's daughter, Mary Elizabeth Winstead. I've thought she was awesome ever since seeing her as the lead actress in Scott Pilgrim vs the World. She has been in a number of other movies I've seen, such as the new version of The Thing, Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino, and Final Destination 3.

If you see the movie, most of the CIA guys are in combat gear with automatic rifles. I'm the one in the dark suit. Hopefully I can find a way to do some screen captures and post them.

Die Hard 5

This post was written way back, on June 4 of last year, but I couldn't post it until the movie came out. So I will be writing about 'today' but it is actually about June 4. I don't think my scenes are 'big' enough to be considered spoilers, but just in case, if you haven't seen the film yet and don't want to know anything about it, don't read on. It's too bad that the reviews are pretty bad for the movie itself, but I'll still go see it, of course.

Edit to add: It looks like this scene didn't make the movie, according to some friends who saw it. Maybe it will be in Deleted Scenes when the DVD comes out.

*******
Today was awesome. Better than I ever expected. I was told to dress up as elegantly as I could, so I wore a nice suit. I like another of my suits better, but I went with the one my wife liked best, because I know that wives are always right!

I had to be at the base camp by 5 am, which meant getting up at 4. I'm not a morning person, but this is exciting stuff, so I was fine. It didn't look like a scene I would get a chance to stand out in, because there were what looked to be two hundred extras there, all decked out in their finest.

We were told about the day's shoot, filming behind the Kempinsi Hotel in downtown Budapest. It was meant to be a high-end shopping street in Moscow. Only two buildings on the street had their signs changed into Cyrillic characters, one a bar and the other a gun shop. Don't ask me why a high-end shopping street in Moscow would have a bar and a gun shop on it. I lived there for four years and I don't think such a thing exists unless things have changed a lot since I left!

The street where it was filmed

In the scene, Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney (McClane's son), and another actor are walking down the street, past the bar, and into the gun shop. A choreographer began placing extras in various places and telling them what to do during the scene. This mainly involved simply walking along the street. Many of the extras were placed in positions where they would almost certainly not even get on film.

I got lucky, since Mike Papac, the guy who has done the weapons for all the Die Hard movies, was there dealing with the gun shop. I had met Mike a number of times and even spent quite a bit of time talking with him, as mentioned in this post. He was gracious enough to introduce me to an assistant director, who in turn introduced me to the director. They decided to put me in a place where I would be pretty much guaranteed to show up in the film, standing right by the door of the bar that the guys walk by on their way to the gun shop. So, I'm in a light-gray suit and am holding a briefcase.

I ended up working right near Bruce Willis for almost three hours. We're told not to speak with the actors, so I didn't, even though he met my eyes a few times and looked down-to-earth enough to have talked, but I'm not one to get myself kicked off a set. When they tore apart the set one time in order to rearrange the cameras for another angle, he hung out about four feet from me--he even sang a bit once. I sure wanted someone to take a picture of me with him, but that wasn't going to happen, of course. Anyway, we did around eight or nine takes in all with the real actors (more takes with their stand-ins) over about four hours, and they even paid us. You can't beat that.

I hope I will be able to pick myself out in the film, even if it is just for a second or so! Tomorrow I'll post about the last scene I worked on in the film, and include a photo taken on the set.