Beth Alvarez - Author of Epic Fantasy

  • Stars

    Stars have always played an important part in my relationship with my husband.
    When we first began courting, he was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, putting a 14 to 15 hour time difference between us, depending on whether or not Daylight Savings was being observed here in the United States.

    He first asked me to be his on July 7th, during the celebration of Tanabata. The story resonated with us, since we were divided by an ocean, and so Tanabata took a special place in  my heart.
    When he came to visit me for the first time, we spent a night watching a meteor shower next to a lake, out in the country, where there were no streetlights to dim the view. Having grown up in the country, I was used to seeing the stars like that, infinite pinpricks of light, as far as the eye can see, nestled in a sky that’s inky-blue instead of black. Living in the city, I often miss the stars.
     

    A month before we married, I presented my husband with the gift of a star. I’d named a star for each of us through the International Star Registry, located near Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo. There was a reason for that, as lions are another thing that carry symbolism for us, but that’s another story for another day.

    The stars fit well with my love of the night sky and my husband’s interest in space. Unsurprisingly, our three-month-old daughter seems to share a love of stars. Shortly after she was born, we received a gift from our neighbors, a firefly nightlight that projects the stars and a crescent moon onto the ceiling and walls. Needless to say, she loves it, and hearing her gasp in delight when we turn it on at bedtime always warms my heart. We lay together as a family, pointing out constellations to her and sharing our stories about the stars, hoping her interest in them will continue to grow alongside her.

    As far as fiction goes, there’s usually not a lot of attention directed to the sky, unless you’re reading science fiction. I’ve never understood the lack of developed astronomy in fantasy books, something I’ve greatly enjoyed writing into my stories. I’m presented with the option of creating a whole new world, after all, and painting an interesting picture of the night sky is as important to me as depictions of the world’s topography.

    If you were given the chance to create a sky of your own, what might you make it look like?

  • Friday Photo Break, vol. 6

    When I was a child, pink was my favorite color. Then when I was older, about 10 or so, I no longer liked it at all. I spent many years hating pink, but that changed suddenly when I was about 19. I don’t know what precipitated the change, but I find myself drawn to all sorts of pink things now. Not hot pink, but soft pastels, like this flower. This color inspired me to plant pink hyacinths in my front garden, and while nothing else in the garden grows, the hyacinths come up every year without fail.
    I can’t say I like to wear pink, but my daughter is in pink almost every day. I’m afraid I’m doing the same thing to her that my parents did to me. By the time she’s 10, she’ll likely be burned out on pink, too.

  • Creative Spaces

    Recently, I took  my first trip down the terrible rabbit hole that is Pinterest. It’s interesting to see all the little nooks and spaces that people create in their houses. I was showing some pretty pictures to a friend, and she asked what my ideal household space to write in would be like. I don’t know, maybe something like this?

    Anybody want to buy that house for me, by the way? It’s only three and a half million dollars.

    In all seriousness, though, I like two options for writing spaces. Which one I would prefer is depends on what time of day it is. During the day, I need someplace with windows, someplace to let the sunshine in. I get gloomy if I don’t get enough sunlight, and gloominess is the mortal enemy of productivity.

    During the night, though, I like something a little more cozy. Somewhere quiet and warm. A window is nice, but not necessary. Until the baby was born, I did most of my writing curled up on the bed with a lamp on for soft light.
    Really, curling up in a reading nook with my laptop would be perfect. My bedroom in one of my favorite houses I ever lived in had a window seat, which would have been perfect for writing. I hadn’t started on my dream of writing professionally when I lived there, though, being that I was all of about 12. It wouldn’t have worked very well, anyway, as I did all of my writing at the time on a huge and clunky DOS-based computer. I can only hope I’ll have a space like that again in the future.

    What about you? What’s your ideal writing space like?

  • Friday Photo Break, vol. 5

    I mentioned before that my older brother was married in the Chinese garden. Here’s a peek at what it looks like – It’s truly a beautiful place. I was fortunate that they allowed me into the garden to take this picture, during my springtime visit. The garden was closed for maintenance and no one was allowed in, but I was an art student in college and they allowed me in for a private tour of the garden on that basis.

  • Mood Music

    As I get older, I find I now have a hard time writing in silence. Sometimes I write to the sound of my husband’s video games in the background, but more often, I put something on to listen to while I work.  What that might be varies, depending on what I’m writing at the time, but each project tends to develop its own soundtrack. Once I find the songs and artists that work best for what I’m doing, I tend to stick with those. Here’s a peek at a couple of my favorites, with links to the media on YouTube so you can listen to them, yourself.

    E.S. Posthumus
    I first discovered E.S. by stumbling across a website belonging to a girl who really believed she was a vampire. There was an MP3 playing on the page, and I fell in love with it immediately! The problem was, the song was embedded in the page with no visible media player, so I had no idea what it was called.

    Naturally, I did what any sane person would do, and spent the next two hours digging in her website’s source code to find the MP3, then scoured the internet for matches to it in filesize and length.
    The song, by the way, was Antissa.

    I shared the song with some guy in Japan that I had a really huge crush on at the time, and he agreed that it was excellent. Later on, he sent me the first CD, Unearthed, as a gift. Since then, throughout the course of our marriage, he’s given me both of their other albums, Cartographer and Makara.
    I don’t know if I could pick a single favorite song, but the song Selisona Pi has become sort of the unofficial theme song of the book I’m currently writing.

    Karsh Kale
    My husband introduced me to Karsh Kale (Pronounced Kursh Kah-lay) when he was stationed in Okinawa. I don’t like all of his work, the two albums my husband has being my favorites. Regardless, Karsh Kale introduced me to a broader spectrum of music with a Hindu influence, which I find to be excellent for writing.
    My favorite piece is Break of Dawn.

    Supreme Beings of Leisure
    We found this group through Pandora, one of my favorite internet things of all time. SBL is one of few things that has lyrics that I can stand to listen to while writing – Usually, I find the words to be distracting. SBL’s work is considered to be electronic “trip-hop” music, which was something I’d never heard of until running across them.
    I listened to their album 11i almost exclusively while writing Death of the Sun, particularly the song Angelhead, which I will always associate with that book.

    What’s your favorite mood music for writing?

  • Friday Photo Break, vol. 4

    Fourth installment already!
    We’ll start March off with a splash of color. Today’s photo is from my first trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens, in the spring of 2008. It’s hard to believe it’s already been that long! This is the flower of the unusual-looking Indonesian wax ginger plant.
    I took a lot of pictures there, can’t you tell?

  • Three Book Covers That Make Me Frown

    Sometimes when I see the cover of a book, I can’t help but stare at it and wonder what the artist was thinking.
    I’ve seen a ton of boggling covers, but I figured I’d just point out a few that garnered laughs in the past few weeks, which means we’ll be looking at books in my own personal library.

    So, in no particular order…

    A Crown of Swords
    Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great book. But have you ever run across the Tumblr blog Escher Girls?
    Look at the picture. Then try to stand like that. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

    Legs behind you, fists extended for no discernible reason, head turned to look over your sagging shoulder, turning at the waist, backside protruding.

    Can you do it? My husband tried his best to mimic the pose, but as soon as he got close, it was ridiculously uncomfortable. Why are fantasy book covers plagued by bad anatomy?

    Owlsight
    The artist doing this one has a better understanding of anatomy, but I don’t think they did a very good job conveying just how big the “unusually large” owls were supposed to be.

    From the understanding the book gives me, that’s supposed to be how big his bond-bird actually is. Yeah, they’re described as large, but not THAT large! There’s a line in the book about how the bond-birds have to ride on a separate horse because they’re heavy and the bird’s owner’s shoulders get tired. But I’m pretty sure that thing could carry the horse away.

    Throw in some garish, clashing colors across the front and back of the cover, and we’ve got a real winner. 

    The White Dragon
    This one kinda makes me feel bad, because I really love this book and I’m even generally a fan of Michael Whelan’s artwork! But Ruth is supposed to be a white dragon, not a white, giant, winged naked mole rat.

    Generally speaking, the Pern book covers are great. But somehow, Whelan slipped out of his consistency with the other covers when he was doing this one, and this is the result: A big critter that looks something like what I’d expect if, at any time during his Modern Life, Rocko had done drugs.

    And never mind what Jaxom looks like. He was still a boy when Ruth Impressed on him, he’s be a teenager during this book. Not a linebacker.

    The good news is, all of these books are great and the cover certainly won’t detract from your reading experience. And even better is that newer books have much more sleek, stylish and attractive covers.

    But if there’s anything you take away from this, let it be that regardless of what it looks like on the outside, the inside may surprise you. After all, even bad books can have great covers.

  • Friday Photo Break, vol. 3

     There were few flowers growing during this trip to the botanical garden, not a lot blooms in September. This was one of them. In the background, you can see the pagoda in the Chinese garden, which is where my older brother and my sister-in-law were married. It was a small and informal ceremony, but it was lovely.

  • Book Review: City of Blaze (The Fireblade Array #1)

    I’m a sucker for fantasy stories. Kings and castles, swords and sorcery, I’m there! Despite being a popular genre, though, I have a hard time finding books that really catch my interest. I don’t mind buying books, but only after they’ve proven themselves to me. I’m a big fan of the library for that reason. There’s a ton of books I’ve pulled off library shelves thinking they’d be right up my alley, only to read a quarter or so and decide the story was simply pitiful.

    City of Blaze was a pleasant surprise in that it met a lot of my requirements. For one, it was free. I never expect a lot out of free ebooks, but this one was put together very well.

    It’s a fairly traditional fantasy tale, following a prince who is also a powerful mage, chronicling his encounters with a woman destined to fulfill prophecy.

    The intro to the story is certainly a hook, establishing a sense of urgency and even confusion. It was together enough for a reader to know what was going on, but was out of left field and kept me wondering what had happened in those first few pages just enough to keep me going.

    There’s also the matter of editing, which few ebooks are subjected to at all. This one has had a bang-up job done with it. I didn’t see any typos or misspellings. No formatting errors, either, though it occasionally did only display a paragraph at a time on my Nook Simple Touch, leaving a lot of white space.

    The ending is strong, but a real cliffhanger, so don’t expect a lot of closure without continuing into the later books in the series.

    Despite the stereotypes and clichés present in its overall story, it was certainly an enjoyable read that put some nice spins on traditional fantasy elements.

  • Friday Photo Break, vol. 2

    Today’s picture is another shot from the Missouri Botanical Gardens, taken after my brother’s wedding. I have no idea what these flowers are, but I really liked them. I took a lot of pictures of them. They were pretty, but didn’t smell like anything. Whatever they are, they were inside the Climatron dome, so they’re apparently tropical.

    Do you know what they are?