Epic Plains

I have been meaning to do a post for a while.  Jeff over at Fantasy Book News & Reviews had a good post discussing and responding to some comments on his reading preferences.  A lot of the responding originates from this post on a different site.

The key part of the discussion I picked up on is whether the gender of an author determines whether or not I read a book.  Apparently a few folks did “Best of” lists that didn’t include female authors or something along those lines.  I am going to have to agree with Jess on this one – the gender of an author has nothing to do with whether or not I will read a book.

The post goes on to discuss some of the comments in the one article criticizing Jeff’s reading habits.  The thing that most bothered me about the post and the comments is that by somehow reading more male authors than female makes you sexist, limits your horizons, or other such stuff at that.  One commentor actually seemed to have a level head though.

The key part of what Aiden said was this:

It bothers me that Jeff even has to think consider whether he’s ‘sexist’, because of the gender of the authors he enjoys.

Bottom-line, I don’t think people should worry about the authors race/number of fingers/gender, and just read books they enjoy. Just because all the books on my ‘Favourites of ’09′ list are written by white males doesn’t mean I chose them for that reason, it just means that those white males wrote the best books I read this year.

Jeff somewhat agreed with this for his own reasons, though he did say he tends to purposely select male protagonists.  You know what – that’s fine.  I read what I like, he reads what he likes, and we both post about it.  People tend to enjoy the best what they can identify with.  The whole discussion seems a bit silly to me.  Who cares if someone is “limiting” their choices or not?

All that being said, I would be annoyed if the same was said about me.  True this site is fairly new and to date I have reviewed and written about all male authors, though one does approach things from a female protagonist reviews.  Most of my favorite authors are males, but there are quite a few female authors I read.  My own novel I am writing does have a male protagonist, but certainly contains inspiration from Katherine Kurtz more than anyone else.

To be honest though, I don’t pay that much attention to the gender of an author.  I see a book title, description, or blurb that interests me, I read the back (description) and if I like it flag it on my “To-Read” list on Goodreads.  Seeing as I subscribe to quite a few Review sites, sign up for book contests, and now am starting to get PR releases (and hopefully ARC’s soon) I get flooded with possibilities.  I really don’t even pay attention to whether or not the name is male or female, etc.   I tend to look at the cover and read the description before even really seeing who the book is by.

This post got a little longer than expected and I hope the topic is beat to death.  The only change I anticipate making here on Epic Plains is to review books whether or not I actually like them.  Seeing as my “To-Read” list is rarely less than 50 books, I end up being pretty selective in what I purchase, so generally only buy books I know I am going to like.  However, I do have a ARC and contest book coming in, so consider those randoms that while in my genre I may or may not like.

Any thoughts?

I did a general post on Olorinpc.com about my goals for the new year.  Here on EP, I wanted to expand a little bit about my writing goals for the new year.  I have actually managed to lay out for myself pretty well what I want to accomplish this year with my writing.  By setting goals, it gives me a mark to aim for and a reason to keep pressing on.

One of the reasons I started this site was to help myself focus on writing in general.  Participating in NaNoWriMo this year really helped me bring that into perspective.  I discovered that I wanted to keep writing – and go further with it.  Hence the “2010 Progress Meter” I now have on the site.  I did a rough cut guess and came up with a figure of how much writing I want to accomplish in the next year: 255,000 words.  That is like doing NaNoWriMo 5 times.  Sounds crazy, but breaks down to around 700 words a day.

How the heck am I going to accomplish that???  Well to be honest, I might not.  Yet if I get anywhere close, I will be much further than I am today.  This is a totally new approach to writing for me, so I have no idea how reasonable my goals are.  However, before November I also had no idea it was possible for me to write 50,000 words in a single month.

Here is how I have broken it down:

1)  Novel writing: Finish editing my first novel, bringing up the wordcount by 30,000 to a total of 80,000.  Write my second novel and lay out a third.  (Possibly writing the third during NaNoWriMo 2010.)

2) Short Stories: I plan on writing a few of these.  Most trade publications call a short story something in the 5,000-10,000 word range.

3) Blogging: I bounce back and forth from writing a lot, to not writing much at all for months in a time.  I think I have figured out why that is.  That will be expanded on below.

To expand on #3, that is why I started Epic Plains.  If I am ever going to get my novel finished (and hopefully find an agent to get published) I need to get serious about writing.  To provide some separation for readers, and myself, I decided to have a site just for my writing endeavors.  Also with blogging, I pretty much annually get back on the horse, post a lot, then get burned out.  I have tried to structure it better, but tend to have to short of a time frame.  This year I am going to be approaching it more like a writing project – planning far longer in advance.  I am currently working on 50 posts between this blog and Olorinpc.com for publication between Jan. 1, 2010 and the end of February.  The concept being if I am working at least 1 month ahead then I shouldn’t get as rushed and behind as I have in the past.  Plus, this also gives me a platform to publicize my work.  (Hopefully being able to promote publications that have published my work beyond my own websites.)

We will see how well it works.  I also don’t want to let blogging take over and get me behind on the writing projects.  So it should be interesting to find a balance between all of those projects, work, home, and the fire department.  Even so, I am excited.  My writing projects are going better than I expected and hope to start sending out my first short story in a month or two, finishing edit 1 of my novel by the end of January, and kick off my scheduled posts during this time as well.

It is going to be an exciting next year!

This is the first test post as I get the portal set up.  In the meantime, please visit my primary site:  Olorinpc.com

Epic Plains™ is a registered trade name in the State of North Dakota.

Site and description coming soon!