It's 7 PM and it's at least 10 degrees hotter in the dining room than it is outside. The dining room, now full of the brain cell-eating tang of very, very strong markers and a cup long emptied of ice water. Louis is ready to start hallucinating. He feels it's the next step after the... Continue Reading →
Fantasy NYC: Lev Grossman signing at Borders at Columbus Circle
From the start, Lev Grossman, the author of The Magicians was disarmingly awkward. Well, not from the start. He eased into it, if such a thing is even possible. But still, it was disarming. I'd spent the previous night absorbing the first 100 pages of Grossman's first fantasy novel and feeling dwarfed by it's prose.... Continue Reading →
Games for Writers: Silent Hill 2
When I got serious enough about my writing career that I started feeling guilty for spending a bunch of my time playing video games, I started to rationalize my pass time by calling it research. Example: "Yeah... I can play Final Fantasy XII today because, hey, maybe it'll give me some inspiration." Not the worst... Continue Reading →
The Editing Process
Around when his eyes start to sting and his head begins to throb, Louis realizes he misses the writing process and very much prefers it to the editing process. Fondly, he remembers that the former was like this: -Louis sits down at his computer and rereads the pages he wrote the previous day (or the... Continue Reading →
Character Design: Why Bother?
I was sitting in class at City College once, not taking notes - drawing instead. One of my peers looked over and asked what I was doing. I turned my book so she could see a sketch of one of my favorite main characters. It wasn't enough for her. "Who's that?" I told her and... Continue Reading →
The War is Almost Over
Just finished hand editing the first draft of Exiles. A week of power typing and I start submitting. But that also means that by at latest Wednesday, I'll be posting the first chapter of War of Exiles here! Awesome! Also, phew!
Where to Start?
I'm embarrassed to tell you exactly what hooked me into writing fantasy. Embarrassed because, in retrospect, it's shameful. Most writers will tell you immediately that they were turned by Tolkien, or someone very similar. While I feel such a start has it's disadvantages, it's definitely based in literature. And that's good. Because I got my... Continue Reading →
Starting a War
A Different Experience From the beginning, my approach to story telling has been grounded in a desire to give readers something fresh. But I realized early on that different experiences go further for making stories fantastic than different worlds do; a novel set in a world full of dwarves, elves, and orcs gains strength from... Continue Reading →
Phew.
A long while later, a good bit of the site is done. A bit of Photography is up. Miscellaneous and Sci-Fi writing samples are up as well. Much more writing and Ink Abstracts coming soon!
110%
I thought I'd start the day with a Word Press blog. And man, what a day it's been, sitting at the computer, cycling through page after page of 110% confusion. It'll take some time, but I'm going to get a site for my writing career up and running or my name isn't Louis Santiago. Which... Continue Reading →
Inktrap 