Category Archives: Uncategorized

Whither Will wills- Find the Author Loose in the ARW

Uncategorized

I’ll post and update this sheet periodically so folks can hit the link and find me outside the cozy confines of my house, doing some kind of writerly-business.

 

Library Talks

Had a terrific time at the Bear Library Author Day (April 9th) where I premiered my thoughts on Writer’s Block. I may redo that one later in the year, but for now here’s the evolving schedule

Never Mind Your Voice…Find THEIRS!

Understanding PoV to Power Immersion

Hockessin Library, May 21st ~ 11 AM

writer talkMost authors have an instinctive understanding of “where they are” in the story. It’s deeply felt, they can see the movie already in their mind. Great! But does the reader see what you’re pointing to? The various choices of character Point of View (3rd, 2nd and 1st person) are crucial to the impact your story will have. Does it vary by genre? By gender? How can we analyze which voice-choice is best for our tale? Using examples from his own work, discussion, and free-write time, Will helps you to see the power of choosing the right voice. Which decisions have you already made?

Now Hear This:

Audiobooks Make Joyful Noise

Appoquinimink Library, July 23rd

They’re getting new digs in Middletown and it includes a recording studio! How fabulous is that, I can’t wait to check out the facility and then map alterations to my preso.

Even the bravest writer tends to shrink from the challenge of making an audiobook, but itwriter talk would be a mistake to ignore this fast-growing niche of NEW customers. Will covers the options from hiring a narrator to DIY, and walks you through how to record your own voice (yes, YOURS!) to edit and produce audio files. Will has narrated dozens of his own works as well as those of other authors. You have choices, exercise them!

Hook ‘Em from the Start

The Many Uses of Your Tale’s First Line

Appoquinimink Library, August 20th

writer talkWe’ve all got a great story to tell. But it’s hard to realize that readers won’t wait forever for it to start! In this writer talk, Will reveals the many objectives that can be accomplished in the very first words of a story. Examine and discuss what some of the great fiction authors of all time have done in Sentence One. List the kinds of impact you can have; give yourself credit for the powerful ways you can set the stage. This talk is great for authors who have finished a draft or are close to it, as they consider which edits and polishing their tale still requires. Laugh and gasp at the efforts of other authors–including Will himself– and start to put those lessons to work immediately.

Reading It:

That OTHER Thing You Can Do with a Book

Appoquinimink Library, August 20th

Sounds absurd on its surface, doesn’t it? Your own writing beckons, who has TIME to readwriter talk anything else! But your love of reading–those tales you’ve been eating up since your childhood–that’s what drew you to the writing desk now. Trying to JUST write your book is like driving a car on fumes. Will looks at famous tales from yesteryear, found in his blog series Classics You’ve Never Read, to reveal the remarkable features and tactics that past masters devised (and you can carry on). The many benefits of reading for a writer will stand out, and you’ll carry away freedom from the guilt of continuing to read.

Future 2022 Talks TBD

Book Fairs

The Smyrna Opera House Fair in March was a very good time: sales were quiet, but great to see people again and some exceptionally good networking. I’m determined to get back out there this year.
All venues are tentative at this point, my schedule is too uncertain. It’s my employment situation; library gigs pay, but these fairs are a cost. But I hope to be at the following (websites included).

Dover Comic Con 2022

June 18th
I’m probably 50-50 at best to attend the premiere event I’ve ever known. The family might be traveling that weekend, so I can’t say. But it IS good to know that this year, the hottest day of summer will suddenly shift back to June from August or July. These folks could have the fair at Michaelmas if they wanted to accelerate global warming…
UPDATE: This won’t happen in 2022, to my great regret. The people at DCC are fabulous, even offered to talk about a panel which would have been a dream. But the family travel plans would make it too near a thing. But you should still go!

Ocean City Comic Con

December 10th 
I’ve never been able to attend but I hear terrific things about this one. They’ll post information close to the date, but it’s always been in December. And Genna usually has a concert or rehearsal… this year, we’ll see!
UPDATE: So this year, we saw. Ocean City kindly informs that they are booked two years in advance. Wow! Maybe I should shift my sights to just trying to attend this year, and then in 2023 when Genna’s at her Doctoral program, the chance will emerge at last.

In 2018: Going Long, Working Backwards

Alleged Real World, Chronicler- Will Hahn, Classics You've Never Read, Genre-Fantasy, Uncategorized, Writer's Journey, , , , , , , ,

{this space left blank to allow time to roll your eyes at another New Year’s Resolution post}

 

{All good? We continue}

National politics aside, I think it was a very good year. Pessimists, you’re excused from reading the rest of this. I’m becoming a bit less tolerant of you anyway… but at my day-job I showed some progress (some, let’s not get carried away) highlighted by issuing more documents at the head of a small team of co-workers (an activity we refer to as “herding cats”, a slight exaggeration) and by a return trip to South Africa (about which enough could never be said).

With the family, it was twelve more months of enjoying Genna’s progress as a musician on both flute and voice, while my lovely wife “gave as good as she got” in her fight for full health. I still have not written about the incredible trip to Germany we were gifted by a woman who has to rank as the best friend I hadn’t yet met last July. This is not the blog post in which you will be reading about that.

Oh yes, and I completed my fantasy series Shards of Light, getting the third installment out by Independence Day and shipping the finale earlier this month, publishing ASAP. That final book was a pretty big psychological moment for me, wrapping up the threads of an adventure that first saw the world back in 2011 and has been burning in my mind far, far longer than that.

It’s been a year for  long trips and tales.
Come 2018, I start new ones.

Going Long

First in other people’s business, I plan to issue reviews of four long-ago epics, supposedly big influences on LoTR and predating Tolkien’s work. Two are done and dusted as of today, and this is part of what I mean by Going Long. I believe it’s rare for anyone to immerse in such huge stories anymore, which augurs grimly for my own ambitions as an author! Shards of Light was my first effort to bypass that problem, with four serialized tales under the single saga. The first two installments are “bite-sized” to any epic author or reader. But by the time I’m through with you, the story is longer than any other single cover I’ve put out. Try the first one, see if you like where it’s going. Just remember, it’s really going somewhere.

I’ll put my reviews of The Worm Ouroboros and The Well at the World’s End here on the site soon as I can wrap my head around what’s just happened to my soul (each around 300 pages). I’ll try to list arguments why you as a writer or reader would want to do the same (while admitting the reasons you could give it a miss instead). These are both important books in ways I did not expect, but I’m still untangling how much of what I think is personal as opposed to provable.

Working Backwards

And then I’ll dive back into writing, again Going Long with a sequel to The Plane of Dreams, called The Test of Fire. Like so many of my tales, it’s always been “there” back at least to the 1990s, but this particular portion of the canon was the one most recently “triggered” by events in the Alleged Real World, in 2008. This is the adventure that got the whole chronicling thing started: so once you’ve read it, you’ll have a good idea who to blame if that’s your preference.

Test of Fire won’t be overlong by itself, probably about the same as Plane of Dreams (114k words). But it’s actually third in the series, and here’s where I’m Working Backwards because the tale I tackle after this will be the first! Yes, there was a time before the heroes of Plane of Dreams came into Wanlock, the story of how they gained the fabulous wealth and momentary fame they brought into the start of that epic, and I’m going to tell it. Eventually. So far, the only thing I know for sure about the story is that it will have to be titled The Blank of Blank. But for fans of Qerlak Barleybane, Galethiel and anyone who missed hearing more of a certain three young adventurers, plus a pair of new fun-to-hate bad guys, good news in 2018. You’ll have a tale that takes these heroes, if not to the end of the story, at least further into time than I have ever clearly seen before.

After that, we go back to the beginning and tell that story, by which time I’ll need a word to describe the mirror-image of deja vu (when you read about the first time stuff happens yet it still seems familiar somehow). But that’s for another day. Who am I kidding- year.