Tales Of Wizardry - Authors...

Sarafaie, Magic: Okay. Let's start. First of all, can you tell us a bit about who you are in and off of wattpad?

Charles, Featured Author: Off 카지노후기 I'm a recently licensed Paralegal, which is kind of like a lawyer but without the money or the prestige. It also comes with it an obligation to make it clear I'm not a lawyer. I'm not, you see. I don't practice law, I provide legal services. There's a great joke that would go here that I'm also legally barred from making, and it's just killing me.

On 카지노후기 I'm a complete geriatric, owing to the fact that I'm in my very early 30s, and the resident curmudgeon. I'm not as conflict averse as the majority of the users here so I end up being "that guy" a lot. I don't want to be "that guy" but it's unequivocally true that I am he. When some dark truth needs to be stated, and nobody wants to take the heat of doing so, I am the thankless martyr who takes it upon himself to explain to the 11-year-old that, no, in fact, zombies aren't science fiction. This, along with humility, are two of my greatest attributes.

Most of what I write could be loosely categorized as sci-fi/comedy, but I think I can encompass the totality of my output with the description "high premise adventures with  dialogue and ironic narration." There's some kung-fu in there as well; my wuxia influences have a tendency to creep into the strangest places.

I used to do really savage critiques for people looking for someone to completely tear their work into shreds. I use the past tense here but technically I still do, it's just nobody has asked me in a long time. When I say savage I mean it. Barbaric, even. I also literally add insult to injury by making fun of common errors. The people who want this kind of feedback tend to be very appreciative but I think the average 카지노후기 user would probably explode into a fine pink mist if exposed to one. At least I hope they would. I don't want to think I'm losing my touch.

Sarafaie, Magic: Oh my God. You're funny xD I never got an answer as honest as you. You aren't so secretive or whatsoever. You don't afraid to reveal who you really are. For that alone, I'm very much appreciated it. ^^

Coming back to your 온라인카지노게임. Is there any moment when you write City of Sinister Angels, you feel like you're not gonna publish it for one or two reasons? If there's, can you tell us what is it? And why you're not publishing it?

Charles, Featured Author: I wouldn't publish a 온라인카지노게임 if I didn't think it lived up to the standard of quality I try to set for myself, but that hasn't happened yet with City of Sinister Angles. With this particular anthology I tend to just indulge myself anyway. I write the stories for myself, not an audience, so the only thing that would hold me back would be if I didn't think the 온라인카지노게임 was any good.

I do have dozens of text files full of half-written fragments of Thule stories, but hypothetically I'm going to finish those someday or incorporate the good parts into new stories so I don't know if that counts as "not publishing".

Sarafaie, Magic: Wow.. I agree with you.. Even my writing guru Stephen King always emphasize that we must writing for ourselves before anyone else.. ^^

Then, I will correct myself.. not publishing yet.. ^^

Another one, can you tell us how did you come out with such an eye catching title?

Charles, Featured Author: I'm glad you liked the title; a non-trivial number of people assume it's a typo, and that the real title is City of Sinister Angels.

I was trying to evoke a sort of Lovecraftian vibe with the title.

Specifically in Dreams of the Witch House the main character stays in a room that has "peculiar angles" that imply shapes outside the boundaries of space and time. I always really liked that idea and that was the 온라인카지노게임 that was bouncing around my head when I was trying to think of a "Lovecraftian" title. From that train of thought I came up with "sinister angles", which has the double meaning that I felt made it particularly appropriate for this anthology's blend of darkness and comedy.

Sarafaie, Magic: Your answer just made me think, is there any one or two or more magical term(s) that you used from particular references in City of Sinister Angels? Or all magical terms just came out from your own imagination?

Charles, Featured Author: Oh, City of Sinister Angles is dripping with references.

In The War of Succession, when Viktor assembles the pile of evil books, a few are books from the Cthulhu Mythos (there's Lovecraft again). Specifically the Dhol Chants and I think some others.

I'm pretty sure I stole the idea of calling Mana "Puissance" from China Mieville. It's too perfect. Anyone who hasn't heard of him is now obligated to buy Perdido Street Station because you can't deprive yourself of joy.

The Black Lotus flower, which shows up fairly often, is a reference to the Conan stories. My version is very different but the name and the idea of it being a magical drug is all from Robert E Howard.

Most of the magical language, however, is born from my own pretentiousness and a lifetime of playing Pen and Paper RPGs. I know every synonym for "magic".

There's actually a non-trivial RPG influence on the anthology.

Sarafaie, Magic: Wow. First of all, thanks so much for sharing this information with us.. I believe this will be helpful for those Magical Fans out there.. ^^

Is there any secret you're hiding inside City of Sinister Angels that only few people will know? And if there is one or two, would you like to share it with us?

Charles, Featured Author: It's not so much a secret as something that I simply haven't had the reason to go into but I could explain a little more about the magic system in City of Sinister Angles.

Puissance is accumulated slowly over the course of a lifetime through ritual and conduct, and is very difficult to acquire in large amounts. How powerful a magician's magic is is a direct result of how much Puissance they have. Because Puissance is also expended when a spell is cast this means every time someone uses magic they become less powerful overall. So the idea with magic is to be as subtle as possible, use as little magic as possible because every time you use it you're a little bit weaker.

Demeter from the Painted Dog is actually one of the most powerful magic users in the setting because of her natural talent for absurdly fast Puissance accumulation, she just uses it as quickly as she generates it because of her various pathologies.

This is heavily influenced by wuxia novels and how they handle qi. It doesn't resemble qi so much anymore but that was my starting point. High-end martial artists use the same kind of energy.

Sarafaie, Magic: Read your answer got me thinking, What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer?

Charles, Featured Author: Good question, because I'm actually the brother of LaurenDMSmith, a very popular fantasy writer on here. She hasn't been as active lately as she used to be because she got a book deal through her work on 카지노후기 and is currently working on her third novel for her publisher. Quick plug: everyone reading this should go buy Lauren's first book Emperor's Arrow, not only because you'll like it but because the better books from 카지노후기der's sell the more publishers are going to come here looking to sign people. Think of it like investing in your future.

Lauren helped edit a lot of my early work, but between her book deal and new baby she has bigger fish to fry at the moment. We talk about writing a fair amount and have attempted collaborations before. Actually the entire reason the 온라인카지노게임 collection Starship Armstrong exists was because at the time it was NaNoWriMo and Lauren and I were developing a sci-fi universe together.

When user Ziggylong was writing King of the Woods, or Trivial Pursuit (which is fantastic and people should read) we were co-editing each-other's work and talked a lot about writing. Of all the not-me, not-dead-writers people in the world ziggy has had the largest influence on the development of City of Sinister Angles.

My roommate is on here too, RobertHills . He doesn't have a great deal of work on this site but he's an excellent writer who I run my ideas past quite often. He's usually aware of whatever half-formed thoughts I have that are going to be turned into a 온라인카지노게임 before that happens. Rob and I have written tons together, including a Theater of the Absurd play, a comedy anthology about a small town (work in progress), and we've been in sketch troupes together and written countless sketches. Rob is one of the most talented people I know, and I know a lot of talented people (see sister, above).

I kind of lost touch with a lot of people on here when I went back to school, since I didn't have time to write or pester people on this site. I've only just recently started trying to get back into my groove.

Sarafaie, Magic: When you are in your writing mode, do you try to be more original or to deliver to readers what they want?

Charles, Featured Author: Neither of those things is particularly high on my priorities list. Originality is overrated in my opinion. Everyone nowadays wants to be original before they want to be good. Cliches become cliches because they work. The most valuable kind of originality comes from finding your own artistic voice more than making a deliberate effort to be original.

While I do have an audience in mind for everything I write I basically write what I want to read and my target audiences are always just me wearing different hats.

With City of Sinister Angles I'm more worried about it being punchy. The stories are structured like a comedy, even the really horror-driven ones, you can only go so many beats before you need a tension break. This can be a joke or it can be some other point of interest like body horror but there needs to be a certain regularity of punchlines. I leads to my prose being more spartan than I'd like and so then I'm also trying to compensate for that.

So I would say worrying about comedic flow and being completely up my own ass with the language would be my two top priorities in writing mode. Neither originality nor pleasing readers ranks very high.

Sarafaie, Magic: What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters?

Charles, Featured Author: That's an interesting question. My instinct was to immediately say "I don't base characters on real people" but that wouldn't have been accurate. A lot of the stories in City of Sinister Angles are parallels of historical events which I suppose makes some of the characters analogues of historical figures.

In that case I owe them nothing. If you're incompetent enough to do something that gets adapted into a Thule 온라인카지노게임 then you deserve the scorn of posterity.

My background is in comedy, and comedy is all about transgressing. It wouldn't even occur to me that I might have obligations to people I might base my work on. I don't see outsiders as getting to have any say on how or what an artist creates.

Sarafaie, Magic: The Second last question is.. as you probably know that magic profile is new to wattpad community.. Would you like to give us one or two inputs to make magic better even more?

Charles, Featured Author: I think it would be neat to do what the Sci Fi community has done and have a 카지노후기-based fantasy literary magazine. You could publish every two months or so and include short stories, reviews, articles, and all kinds of material drawn from the community. This gives writers a chance to attract an audience, helps keeps people engaged with the magic profile, and helps spur people to create more content. It also has a proven track record.

This is a bit of a long shot, but you wanted two ideas so here's my second: there are a lot of published authors who maintain a 카지노후기 profile as a way of engaging with fans. It could be neat to contact some of them and see if they'd be willing to donate their time to something cool, like judging a short 온라인카지노게임 contest (maybe even flash fiction to make it easy on them) or maybe just writing a writing prompt or the first paragraph for a 온라인카지노게임 in one of those contests where everyone has the same starting paragraph. All they can say is no, and maybe someone will think it's a way for them to build their own audience. All it takes is one writer to be excited by the idea or bored enough to try anything and suddenly you've got a celebrity guest judge.

Sarafaie, Magic: Whoa.. thanks so much.. That's a a very good idea you have there.. ^^

Anyway, for the last and probably the most random one..

You've been given an elephant, but you can't give it away nor you can sell it nor get the elephant back to the owner. What would you do with that elephant you have?

Charles, Featured Author: The answer to that question depends on whether ghosts are real, so the first thing I would do would be to definitively prove that one way or the other.

If ghosts are real then the course ahead is obvious: the elephant and I would become a professional ghost-hunting team. I would be the grumpy skeptic and the elephant the wide-eyed true believer.

If ghosts aren't real then I would electrocute the elephant to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current.

Sarafaie, Magic: Haha.. xD and that's wrap! Thanks so much for sharing your time with us.. we've so much fun talking to you.. And take care.. ^^

Charles, Featured Author: You too. Thanks for talking with me.