Winners and Good Advice for Writers from a Composer

Congratulations to Josh Ennis and William Ward for their victory in names out of hats!

They have their choice of prize, and will receive what they prefer best!

William's Winning Review was one of the two reviews for Death Mask and Eulogy, reposted to Barnes and Noble:

Josh Ennis' winning review was for LAST DRAGON:

Josh Ennis' Victorious Review

Thanks to everyone who posted a review!

Remember, as readers, that reviewing books on Amazon and GoodReads and LibraryThing is one of the two things you can do to help the world make more of the books you like. Buying books you like, and telling other people about them to encourage them buying books, is the way to make sure the world produces more of the kind of books you love! Doing a favor for an author is also doing a favor for your future reading habits!

In other news, I came across this interview of a famous conductor, Sir Colin Davis, and it seems to accurately depict my own, personal theory of writing, pretty closely. 

[quote]

"The less ego you have, the more influence you have as a conductor. And the result is that you can concentrate on the only things that really matter: the music and the people who are playing it. You are of no account whatever. But if you can help people to feel free to play as well as they can, that's as good as it gets."

[/quote]

Replace "the music" with "the words" and "the people who are playing it" with "the characters who are living it", and you get a pretty good insight into the writing process of novels, in particular. Novels don't really have the room or structure to be as clever as short stories can get sometimes, because clever ideas rarely extend successfully to any great length. At length, it's all about characters, and their cleverness or failure to cleave.

(I made up a new usage of "cleave" as a verb of "clever". I think it works, as sharp wit is a dividing thing.)