Left4Dead release Date!!!

Left4Dead-November 19th-www.l4d.com

It comes out next flippin' month!!!11

Unfortunately I seem to have lost communication with Mr. Savage

I will post the Dialogue, but it is not complete, along with my review.

My Review
I love this book, Mr. Savage took the young out of young adult, in a good way, Harry Potter never did it for me because no matter how serious they got, they always felt kiddy to me.
Not so with these, I like the use of low level profanity(Friggin, Stupid, ) to convey anger without
A. Making people say random stuff all the time(Gooswidgets!!, that hurt!!) or B. Really Cursing.
It makes the story believable without ruining the younger reader's minds.
The Magic is a new spin, I've seen magic made into a language, an art, an everyday ability, but this is the first time I can remember seeing Magic portrayed as Asking the elements to do your bidding, It makes the style fresh as you learn along with the characters how it works, rather than going " I get, it why doesn't he?"
The non-humans in the book are hilarious, yet still subdued, meaning they contribute without taking over the focus of the story.Talking Trees, Flying Lizards(Excuse Me, Skytes), Ice Dragons(Oops,Pinnois).
And the Elementals, Emotionless, Selfish, and unable to see how it could be otherwise.
I am one who has a hard time suspending disbelief even in Sci-fi and Fantasy, so I was shocked when the majority of the book held tight against common logic, with the only breaks being common ones, such as the" I'm in a different Dimension and everyone speaks English?"
But this is a quandary that has never been satisfactorily answered ANYWHERE, so I applaud Mr. Savage as he, rather than making some lame story up for how it happens(Magic does it, even though one of the main characters cannot do magic) he simply move the story fast enough that you don't even think about it.
The Battles are well written, the heros aren't always tougher than the enemy and rarely outnumber them, so it is always a battle to escape, a new twist for fantasy.
Also, neither of the Protagonists is a master Swordsman, a barbarian, a thief, a wizard, royalty, or any elf/dwarf/troll, creature you can think of, it again makes everything new and interesting.

The Bad Guys range from Evil Wizards to Summoners, Giant Flying raisers of the dead.
Most are huge, all are scary, also the leader of the Dark Circle(bad guys) is not expressly named and defined by having killed his own henchman for failure in the beginning, unlike many other books.

If recommend this to anyone who likes a good read, and wants something that hasn't been done before.

Q&A

Yo, Josh(Camo Kid)here with one of my new favorite Authors,

Mr. J. Scott Savage We are here to discuss his book, Farworld:Waterkeep

To make it interesting, we are going to be doing so while playing a 

Couple rounds of Call of Duty in a bombed out building in Russia (Yeah, 

Right)

I'll Highlight my own words in Purple and I assume Aqua Blue works for you?

Excellent, Aqua Blue is a good color for me. I think that means I'm a

Summer, right? Let me settle into my surround sound recliner

and turn on my Voice activated controller. Okay. I'm ready to

play and answer questions.

By The Way, any particular scenario we're playing?

Yes Actually I just finished setting up a 1v1 snipers

match on Overgrown, which is an abandoned farm.

So in regards to the book, I was wondering

if as a writer, you come up with names randomly,

or do you look for a specific “feel”?

By the way, I hope you liked the Claymore.

But, yes, I do try to go for a name that gives a certain feel. I actually did a mix in this

book. Some of the names, like Unmaker and Mimic pretty much sound like what they are. Other

names like Ishkabiddle and Thrathkin S’Bae are strictly done by feel. For people’s names,

I try to make sure they sound like they could have come from the same culture so I wouldn’t

have a fisherman named Ploghiti with a wife names Liz. I also try to limit the number of

unpronounceable names—no Vvxxyr. Even my stranger ones like Terra ne Staric and Pinnois

are names you can sound out. Occasionally I’ll struggle with getting a name that fits.

For example my wife actually came up with Kyja. But others like Riph Raph, just come as

I’m writing. Oh and that glint of metal you see in the distance is not an R700.   

I never got anywhere with it, but I once tried a Short story, and I quit before

an hour, because I couldn’t ever feel comfortable with any name I made, does that

go away? Or do your own names always sound wrong to you?

One of the biggest problems beginning writers run into is the perfection rut. You are so focused on getting everything just right the first time out of the gate, that you never make it to the finish line. What you have to realize is that you are going to end up rewriting the story many times before it’s ready to finally be offered to the public. So give yourself the freedom to write “good enough” on the first pass. You can make it great in future edits. I’ve had names that I changed down the road for many reasons. For example the hunter that Kyja and Marcus meet in the Unmakers caverns had a name that I discovered was only one letter off from the protagonist in Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris novel. It was really kind of weird because I hadn’t even read it yet. What are the odds of two Utah fantasy authors coming up with the names Raoden and Raodan? If you really can’t come up with a name you like at first, just call her girl b or child x until you come up with a name later.

That makes sense, I’ll remember that. How long did it take to write this book, from sitting down to write CH1, and writing the last word on the first “draft”?

Normally it takes me anywhere from six months and up to write a book. But this one just seemed to flow. I wrote the first 5,000 words in one night and finished the first draft in under three months. Lots of rewrites though.

Ah, I figured the editing process to be long, but I wondered about the basic writing time. When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

When I was about eleven or twelve, I used to go fishing with a bunch of my younger cousins. We were kind of a rowdy bunch and ended up getting restless when the fish weren’t biting. One day one of my cousins asked me to tell them a story. Out of the blue I invented the adventures of Captain Weenie and The Little Purple Man. They still remember those stories fondly today. So I guess I always knew I liked telling stories, but it wasn’t until I sold my first book about seven years ago that I even conceived of the possibility of writing for a living, or even being paid to write. Looking back, I wish I had started earlier than I did. But I’m glad it all worked out this way. I might be a better writer for having taken my time. Who knows?

Would you ever like to see one of your books made into a film or game?

I’d love it. I intentionally try not to imagine my books being made into a movie or game when I’m writing them. It’s such a different medium that you can ruin what makes a book the most powerful in order to add a cool movie scene. But once it’s done, you think about how cool it would be to see your story come alive in a movie or game.

Yeah, I hate when the movie almost mocks the book, by being labeled as the same and then not really like it.

I found that most of the names in this book were pronounced for you so you knew how to say them, was this intentional? I always hate mispronouncing a name because it is fictional and follows made up grammar.

 . I don’t like to do a ton of unpronounceable names. It’s annoying for the reader and

I always wonder if the word is pronounced Shay, for example, why spell it zzaegh? I mean,

can’t we assume the author translated it into English anyway? As a reader I just skip over

names that are hard to pronounce. I made an exception with the Thrathkin S’Bae because I

wanted them to really feel different.

 I Found that You not only made names simple and humanly pronounceable, but you also had a

character say it in a phonetic fashion, at some point in the story, so you could get it quickly,

this is one of my favorite things about this series, you never feel like you are not smart enough.

Books like Lord of the Rings tend to make you feel that way.

 Yeah, I know what you mean. I love the fantasy in fantasy stories, but

Sometimes they get so bogged down in the minutia that you find yourself

Losing interest or skimming. I hope that the series will have depth without

Losing the fun of the story.

Exactly, and it is easy to fall into that, because simply describing the room a person is in, can be hard when 3/4s of it is not like anything you've ever seen, hence it ALL needs description.

What is the greatest limitation to writing fantasy, as opposed to another Genre?

I think it’s just what you were talking about. When I write a mystery I can assume that the

reader knows all about the world I’m writing in. They know what a gun is, what a medical examiner is,

what a DNA test is. So I can focus on the story. But with fantasy I have to describe a new world without

making it obvious to the reader. When do I describe something and when do I let the reader figure it out from context?

That’s why you typically have a character come to the world from somewhere else. Then the reader can discover the

new world along with them. But, for example when Kyja is hearing jokes from the farm animals, she already knows

all about that, so the reader will have to pick some things up from context.





Here is where I lost contact, If I get more I will post it.