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Bran Hambric

The Grave Of Emry Hambric [Music]

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I know that most of you have not read The Farfield Curse in its entirety yet (as it’s not out until 2009), and even those who have read parts probably do not know well enough about the characters to actually care who Emry Hambric is. I won’t attempt to explain it because I’d really have to write the whole book out for it to be understood, but hopefully my new song will help you imagine the feeling at the end of the first book:

[audio:http://kalebnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/bran-hambric-the-farfield-curse-the-grave-of-emry-hambric-end-score.mp3|rightbg=0x5b5ea4]

The ending is a mixture of hope and a little sadness, a happy ending but tinged a little, and in a way I feel this song echoes how the first book concludes.

If you like my music or my other songs, I have two that you can download for free on a hidden page at BranHambric.com. I’ll have more news on the book soundtrack closer to the release in late 2009.

There is some about Emry in the prologue of the book (and a song for the Prologue as well, on the Music page) so I can also email preview chapters of The Farfield Curse if you want to get a better feel of who she is. Email me and I’ll try to get previews out as quick as I can.

This song is a first draft so opinions are welcome!

[note: email subscribers must visit the site to hear audio]

Symptoms of Editingosis

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Alas, I think I have fallen prey to the dreaded condition of Editingosis. In the Guide to Authorly Conditions, Editingosis is defined as

[…] temporary affliction which plagues writers, usually in the second half of the year, in which the afflicted suffers from bouts of forgetfulness, untidiness, unkempt appearance and frequent whining […] This is caused by editing taking so much brain power, there is simply not enough left for trivial matters such as Housework, Entertainment, Sunlight or Getting Out Of The Apartment.

It isn’t only me who’s out and about doing edits: loads of other writers are celebrating Revisions Season with me. I woke up this morning, after a wonderful didn’t-end-until-2-AM-but-I-got-2500-bloody-words-cut day of editing yesterday, only to find that many of my usual duties have gone undone.

To my utter shock and surprise, not only were my dishes crying out for my attention, but some absent-minded person had left more mess all over the bed.

The problem with Editingosis is that things really aren’t as bad as the condition makes you believe, and I quite possibly could get outside, see that glowing golden ball of gas, and dart back inside, and still make my deadline. I think by spending so much time revising, I’m violating my own editor’s commands:

Me: Yes, yes! Summertime! I’ll edit all day, every day!

Editor: Good. But make sure you get outside and have some fun this summer too.

Me (singing): All day, every day! All day, every day!

Editor: Great. One of THOSE authors…

All things are going very well. Just yesterday, in fact, I managed to cut about 2,500 words of plot meandering in one sitting. That is a lot of meandering, and has no place in a finished novel, so I’m actually very happy these word cuts are forcing me to be creative with the limbs of this book I chop off, armed only with a pen and two keyboards (yes, I have two keyboards).

My family was particularly disgusted after my previous post, in which I said a certain loverly (and wickedly unpleasant) character was taken out. You have to remember that they have seen this book in every stage, from the first draft when I was 14 all the way to now. They pretty much know all the characters who were in and are now out, and all the histories and backstories from each draft. So, to oblige them, I have decided to at least make a mention of the character I killed, just to keep her out of the Prison of Removed Characters until the next book. And after the book is out, I’ll take one of my commenter’s suggestion and post the deleted scene on here.

Somebody emailed and asked if I could show my writing notebook. I actually have a bunch of different writing notebooks and printouts and notes, and at the moment a few of them are sitting in a General State of Disorder on my side desk:

You can’t really read much of it but that’s they way it’s sitting on my desk right now. The big notebook to the right is an enormous, 11×14 inch drawing pad I use for plotting scenes out and working out notes (on that page in particular, I’m working out some gnome business). Then, on the left, I have two smaller notebooks. The corner of the printout is (by pure coincidence) partially covering an important piece of information (he he).

I have this melody playing in my head right now that I will probably be recording very soon into a new song. When I say that, it could be weeks before it is finished, but that melody is the beginning. Also, I have two very important interviews coming up: one with me, and one with someone else.

Me Versus Impending Deadlines

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Yoiks, it’s been over a week since I have posted an update, and loads of stuff has been happening. To start off, I just landed an interview with a very famous author, who happens to own the number 1 spot on the New York Times, and has owned it for nearly a year. I asked half of my questions about the books and the other half about tips for writers. So, look forward to some really cool answers given by my mysterious interview shortly.

In other news, many of you probably know me by now as The TwilightGuy, thanks to Stephenie Meyer and her glorious millions of fans and readers (I think my Official Fan ID Number is #4,546,768– I got in on it late). Well, after three months of painstakingly slow reading, with my TwilightGuy.com commentary on each chapter, I’ve finished the first book in the series, and I’m now moving on to the sequel, New Moon, as evidenced in the following photos:

My professional portrait photographer, who only appears to be a broken lamp-pole converted into a tripod and a self-timing camera, posed a nearby gnome with my newly-purchased book:

Gnome Loves New Moon

The TwilightGuy website has been an enormous success so far, thanks to all the loyal readers and everyone who gave me a chance when I was just starting out. It’s passed 750,000 hits in just 3 short months, with emails in the hundreds and comments in the thousands. And to think the day I bought the site, I thought I was wasting my time.

As for me, I have a new alibi for becoming an increasingly-invisible blogger over here. My new excuse is that I have a deadline for my revisions that is impending. If you don’t know what impending means, think of a steam train rapidly approaching around the bend, while your car is stuck between the crossing guards (people who have read my book snicker here).

Impending

In the above example, the train is impending. My deadline is approaching in a similar fashion, except instead of being brought with steam and locomotion, my deadline is surrounded by the awful, wretched, pounding, abysmal, never-ending beat of the music from the apartment nearby (see, Trolls). Word from someone else on campus is that our resident trolls converted a car stereo into a home sound system. My poor head. Their poor eardrums.

Between beats of their bass box, I have managed to get a lot of revisions done either here or at the cafe. And it is in that I have a confession to make. I, unfortunately, was forced to axe a character.

Oh the woe: this character who was formerly in a scene and now is not. What makes it worse, though, is that I chopped her entire scene clean out. So not only is the character gone, but her car as well- and her sister garbed in purple furs, her sister’s car, and Sewey’s sandwich, and Ben’s sandwich, and Trolan’s sandwich, and the dust bunny Sewey found under the chair and threw at Trolan. All of it is gone, like a bunch of ghosts who will now wander somewhere in the space-time continuum, that were there one second and now suddenly are not. None of you have any clue at all who she is, or rather who she was: but from now until eternity I will be haunted by her ghost when I read the place where she formerly was: Fool! You dare to remove me from the story? Have you no mercy? Feel my wrath!

Luckily, she was an unpleasant character. And, my consolation is that she actually does appear in the second book (if I don’t axe her from that as well), which makes it not like turning her into a ghost, but more like tossing her into jail for a short amount of time: right next to the dozens of other characters I’ve edited from the story over the years. Sometimes, everyone simply does not fit. Chop chop! No character is safe when my editing axe is sharp.

You should be hearing from me again soon, when I get that interview finished. I’m really excited about it.

Pizza, Revisions and Trolls

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There are many very important stages in getting a book published, and one of them is known as Editing.

Since this is my first book I’m very new to all of this, and thus parts of it are slightly painful as my body adjusts to 2AM nights, all meals comprised of microwave or delivery foods, sheer lack of outside communication besides instant messenger, and headaches from screen-staring that no amount of Tylenol will drive out. My alarm clock is set to noon, or not at all.

I’m certain that not all writers out there subject themselves to these torturous routines (if my editor knew he’d probably remind me calmly that my deadline is NOT next week or anything). Still. I’m new, and if I gain twenty pounds, earn blue circles under my eyes, and never eat another delivery pizza again, this book will be finished before deadline and it will bloody well be edited to perfection.

Speaking of delivery pizza, heard of the Domino’s Gotham City Pizza? It’s a large with crust-to-crust cloaking in pepperoni. It was on sale. I thought it would be good.

Pizza

Um…yeah. I discovered something: you can have too much pepperoni. Just warning you. Next time I’m sticking with the regular: Brooklyn with a rational amount of pepperoni. Safer that way.

Anywho, what bothers me the most as I write is the fact that due to living in a college apartment, there is a certain house of trolls a few apartments over who thinks it is their duty to their fellow humans to play their music at the highest, bass-iest volume possible. It is so bloody loud it is rattling my keyboard. It angers me much. This is how writers get reputations for being violent.

Music Trolls

I would not be bothered if this was just a party or even a multi-day celebration. But it seems that these particular morons absolutely must run the stereo from six in the evening to two in the morning, the hours in which I do my best writing (note: the future source of circles under my eyes) and even sometimes from two to past daylight (the hours in which I do my best staring-at-the-ceiling-trying-to-sleep).

In the times I can ignore their racket, I’m working hard on the edits, getting the big stuff worked out and all the word-count cuts. Thankfully my other writer friends have been through this and know how to console me. I think I nearly made one of my friends faint when I told her how much we were aiming to cut from the book. See, the number of words I’m trying to cut happens to be nearly the length of her entire novel (!).

Sometimes in the revising process, there comes a point where certain scenes must be added and others taken out (the removed scenes I’ll hopefully get to post on the website eventually). I did have a particularly wonderful revelation of a new scene which is turning into one of my favorites in the book. It involves the same setting as what has been in the scene for years, but now suddenly, Bran notices a secret door across the room. A secret door is a very, very useful device when writing. In fact, you can pretty much just throw a secret door in anywhere and it works. Example:

Pamela Pinkersnort was delivering one of those abysmal Gotham City pizzas to somebody’s apartment. She knocked on the door. It was hard to hear herself knocking, because of the horrid rock music coming from an apartment nearby, which obviously housed moronic trolls.

“Psst!” a voice came. “Over here.”

Pamela turned, and saw a secret door.

Pretty much immediately, Pamela’s gonna wonder how the secret door got there, why it’s a secret, what’s behind it, and if the person there will tip nicely or be a scrooge.

Great. As I wrote that last paragraph, the music trolls just turned it up even louder. Thanks, I surely needed that.

TNT

Sheesh.

On a side note, my publishers have a news blog. This I did not know, until this week. So someday in the next-yearsy-future I might get to see my name on it 😀

Five Things

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Starting Monday, I hit the notebooks, staying at the local Pub That Is Not A Pub from morning until near closing time, editing and revising The Farfield Curse. I managed to walk in and get my usual, favorite spot that is one table away from the corner, so that I don’t appear to be hiding in the shadows, my laptop cable will reach the building’s only plug, The Writer Is Workingand I can still occasionally get a glimpse of the sun (which is very quickly becoming a faraway memory: the sun? What sun? Where? Surely you jest). I’m almost beginning to feel like an old, reclusive witch <—-

Things have thankfully been going smoothly. I am doing things in an order, first working on a bit of cutting in the length department, so it’s easier later when I need to add certain things that were missing. This is where the writing of the book turns into a labor of love: editing those words is really, really hard, but entirely worth it for the end result.

I have a goal of cutting a certain number of pages. To do this, I must take a fine-toothed comb to every line, trying to cut any odd words and condensing paragraphs in order to save one or two lines. One or two lines do add up. So far, just by combing the first 120 pages, I was able to cut 20 out in the first few days. It was all vicious (and slightly wicked) glee search-and-destroying those superfluous words. I spent almost an hour trying to condense two lines out of one chapter, so that I could cut the last page of it, which only had two puny lines dangling there.

The best part is that it’s like trimming back a big ugly tree into an Edward Scissorhands-esque plant sculpture. By the time we’re through, this book will be loads ahead of where we started out.

While taking a much-needed break, I decided to answer a question put to me recently: what will you do if you become a really famous author? It sounds thrilling, odd, scary and wonderful at the same time. So, I decided to make a video in response, which includes Lemony Snicket’s head, a phone call to J.K.Rowling, the Electric Light Orchestra, my bookshelf and more. Also, sunburn.



Hope you like it 😀

Contracts, Advances and a Stack of Paper

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There is something special in a writer’s first advance check. Many of you probably have an idea what that is: when a publisher makes a deal with an author, they lay down what is called an advance. This is money paid in advance to the author, in the hopes that his or her book will earn it back; following publication, the royalties an author earns off book sales slowly repays it. The original concept of an advance was probably so the author of old, being intrinsically penniless, might at least avert starvation long enough to finish the book.

Though I signed the contract a while back, and sent it in, there is such a long process on the publisher’s end that it usually takes a few months to get it back with their signature, as well as the on-signing advance. By getting those back in the mail, all has been signed and sealed, and now all that’s left is to prepare the book for publication! Some photos:

Me, signing the back of my first advance check. The Unwritten Manual of Authorly Proceedings & Conduct dictates (Section 2, Article C) that an author should always use a unique pen to sign their checks and contracts, as here seen in the pen-made-of-awesome my agent gave me:

Signing the first advance

While I was writing, I read dozens of writer blogs, and I always wanted to know what exactly a full manuscript looked like, before all the edits. Never finding one, I told myself I’d put one up for anyone else out there like me (by the time I’m through editing, picture about 2/3 this size):

The Manuscript

There is one line in this book deal that represents 6 years of work, a box of notes, a dozen notebooks, two drawers in a filing cabinet, and countless days and nights spent with characters and ideas. That line is this:

AGREEMENT made by and between Kaleb Nation…hereinafter referred to as “author”

Contract and advance

The signed contract, with the check hiding in the back.

Editorial Letters

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Today was the day I received my first Editorial Letter for Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse, and I realize that since loads of the people who read this site are writers as well, some of you might find this interesting.

An Editorial Letter is the first professional edits that an author receives from their publisher for the manuscript. Its purpose is to take my writing and make it the best it possibly can. Authors have a tendency to love their own work and ignore its apparent flaws (we have to love it, otherwise there’d be no point in writing it). Editors, however, have trained eyes for how to make things better, and work their hardest to make newbie writers like me sound professional. It is of great importance, as demonstrated by the below illustration:

An Author’s First Edits

This editorial letter is the first step in getting the book ready to be published. Editorial letters do not go into punctuation or spelling mistakes (which happens later with a copyeditor) but rather overall plot and concepts and larger parts of the book which need tightening up.

I shan’t show you my editorial letter, but this might be what part of someone else’s could look like:

– Sherman P should know that Granny’s Magic Box will destroy the universe 100 pages earlier than you have it. Otherwise, he would have tossed it down Mrs. Lovett’s Corpse Chute.

– There is a certain monkey in every chapter until chapter 23, when he unexpectedly jumps off Mount Slowmore. I am curious as to the point of wasting words on him if he does nothing.

– Change Edlardo Chullens’s name to something more palatable. Like…Edward something.

– There is already a famous frog named Kermit. He will always be more famous than your frog named Kermit. Change his name. Or turn him into a mutant turtle.

– Chapters 13-17 become slow when Protagonist tells the Long Saga of Grandmother’s Achy Breaky Bones.  Fix that, unless this is intended as an intermission time. I realize some people might enjoy taking naps through books here and there. If intentional, good idea.

– Your major villain happens to share my name.  I’m hoping this is a recurring typo.

(all snarkiness courtesy of me and bearing no resemblance to my editor’s own polite notes)

The changes are more so a broad overview of tiny tweaks to be made to make it better.

Mine are thankfully very merciful, well-directed, and I can already imagine the wonders they will work. I have heard horror stories from other authors who received 3-ring binders filled with post-its, blue ink, Sharpie markings, and chocolate to alleviate the murderous rage subsequently directed towards their editor. I got the impression that the aforementioned 3-ring-binder was immediately tossed into here:

Mount Doom

Mount Doom

I, on the other hand, have been looking forward with great anticipation to get to these edits.  It is not every day, obviously, that a professional spends enormous amounts of time to make Your Book the best it can. Which makes editing this a labor of love 😀 . I shall keep you all updated on future progress.

Signing The Book Deal [Video]

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And thus I affix my signature to the publishing contract. Since my family is back home and couldn’t be there for perhaps one of the biggest moments of my life, I got it all on film.

This video is a five-minute short about the idea, writing the book, and signing the deal. I go back to the original black journal from that fateful night when I first had the idea, then to my filing cabinets and boxes of papers and drafts which make up the five years of writing it, and while filming I even inadvertently discovered my first writing notebook ever, from when I was 10 years old. This is a bit of my own tale as well as that of The Farfield Curse.

The Day Has Come: Bran Hambric Will Be Published

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So the news is out and it’s my turn to make the announcement I’ve been dreaming of for years. I just got word that my debut novel, BRAN HAMBRIC: THE FARFIELD CURSE, is to be published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky.

The First Idea - 3/3/03

That picture is from my journal in 2003, when I was 14: the very night I had the idea that would become this book. I had no clue.

It is impossible to explain to someone who doesn’t write books how amazing it feels to receive the call you have been anticipating for most of your life. That call came last Thursday, March 6, when I was in Rhetoric class and my phone started to buzz. I picked it up and saw my agent’s name on the caller ID, and it was at that moment I knew I was really, finally, going to be an author. I barely finished the last five minutes of class, dashing out and across campus, playing his voicemail nine times on the way. I made it into the building for the next class and called him back, and he had a deal.

Of course afterwards I couldn’t shut up about it. I did have a wonderful excuse for being ten minutes late to my next class, and after everyone started clapping I just barely made it through my speech (my assignment was to talk about web design) and I can’t honestly remember one word I said. People next to me at my next class somehow overheard my whispered phone call to my mom and started congratulating me as well. And when I got home, my roommate and I ordered pizza to celebrate.

Writing the Book - 3/18/03

There are so many stories behind the writing of this book and it would be impossible to tell them all: back when I used to punch drafts out on a monochrome Palm Pilot while watching my baby brother taking a nap; when I had the revelation of a The Whole Food’s bag on which, for lack of paper, I worked out Shamblescharacter’s backstory and had to write it out on a Whole Food’s grocery bag; when I talked to the security guard at that publishing house who told me that he hoped he’d get to guard my books one day. This is truly just the beginning of what will be the culmination of dreams I have held since before I can remember. I never could have possibly imagined five years ago when I had the first idea that anything like this could have come about: never in a million years would I have thought that one day, the words I wrote through all of my teenage years would one day fall into the hands of people who would enter into my world: this strange world I made and thought was so crazy and yet just had to write about because I loved it so much.

I can’t begin to imagine what my life will be like in another year when it’s out, or another three years or six. To actually step foot on what has been your lifetime ambition is mind-altering, and once you’re there you’ve got to set a whole new list of goals. More than anything, I wanted a radio show and to be an author. It looks as if I’ve gotten both.

I do not know exactly how much I can say here until I have the official press release from my publishers, but I do know that the book is currently set for a late 2009 or early 2010 release. Sourcebooks Jabberwocky is one of the nation’s largest independent publishers with many bestselling titles under their belt and sales upwards of $50 million. They are very innovative in their approach at publishing and I have complete confidence that they will be a wonderful home for my series.

We’ve got a long road ahead of us to make this happen: this is just the beginning, the first book, the start of it all. Things can only get better!

The Third Day of the Third Month

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On this night exactly 5 years ago, when the date was 3/3/03, at 9:55 PM, I was in bed staring at the ceiling, and suddenly had an idea: a boy and a banker, sitting on a rooftop, waiting for a burglar to come.

Click to see a clearer image:

And so it began