Books and Banter: B. Y. Yan ~ guest post and his novel Eye of the North Wind

TITLE: Eye of the North Wind

RELEASE DATE: May 15, 2016

AUTHOR: B.Y. Yan

PAGE COUNT: 425

ISBN: 978-0995051614

IMPRINT: Chimera

BOOK PAGE: http://ravenswoodpublishing.com/bookpages/eyeofthenorthwind.html

KEYWORDS: kings, gods, fantasy, epic adventure, action, mad max, medieval

CATEGORIES: Epic Fantasy/Adventure

ONE LINER: A cripple protects his king in secret on a scrapping journey through wastelands in search of a missing army and the wealth of Dead Gods.

SYNOPSIS:

Deep in the dunes a crippled son has come on the advice of his renowned father to earn into the illustrious Hundreds of the Wasteland King, before being robbed by an unhappy misunderstanding. But where a door closes a literal window of opportunity opens, and he soon finds himself accompanying his master in search of a missing army.

 The young monarch, however, knows nothing of his presence or contributions. And for the sake of his pride he must never learn he has a secret protector—even when contending with the indomitable courage of harlots, laying claim to the wealth of Creatures of Calamity, or facing down the wrath of Dead Gods.   That is, unless the Greatest Standard Bearer to ever stand at the king's side chooses to come clean to uphold his promise at the cost of everything he has achieved in a world of scrap, fire, and iron.

Guest Post - On the Writing Process:

Hours a day, without fail; the general consensus is it takes 10,000 hours to become proficient in any skill. I don’t know if that is true, but I have planned for many times that number for the rest of my life. I’ve never had trouble picking up a pen (or in this Age, sitting down in front of a keyboard and a screen), and words and worlds have always been willing friends. There were always stories to read, and even at a very young age there were stories which stuck in the head and refused to go away. Picking apart the details of each tale, where it inspired the most emotions, where it strayed into territory of disinterest and boredom, where it captured imagination and let go again, soon led me to apply these same criteria to my own work, and those began early, never letting up since.

Anytime, in general, that words gets put to paper (and kept there, for we writers are nothing if not a frugal bunch, and capable of springing between emotions on a whim) are good times for writing. The hours themselves tend not to matter so much, and you take every second you can get with the Muse. I’ve learned long ago she does not work on appointment, and have given up since on trying to schedule one. Sometimes the words don’t even stick, and at the end of the day you end up where you were at the beginning. This has happened all too many times for me to become bothered by it now. There are also the good days when everything typed is gold, and the story hurries along like a bullet from a smoking gun, flying straight and true to its target. Savor those days always.

My own writing environment is mundane at best. If I had to describe it, I would, without hesitation, call it Spartan. I write often on a couch, with my keyboard in my lap and the screen from my laptop mirrored on the TV in front of me. I take up the living room, and nobody can watch shows, but in my eyes it might as well be bare walls and a chisel digging into tablets of stone for all I care, or come to imagine once the hours have gone by whistling and unnoticed. There are no other distractions. Or if there are, they fly over my head. I listen only to whatever music is playing is playing in the imaginary world that I am travelling through, by musicians I have conjured from nothing. It is, arguably, the best feeling in the world.

Hours every day, wherever they can be clawed from the clutches and deep recesses of other responsibilities too important (or crucial) to ignore; such is the way before enlightenment and relief arrive, usually in terms of circumstances (and the stars) lining up in just the right way to make this into something resembling a living. By that point, I’d imagine, I will have everything in the world to speak of odd rituals and strange hours to abide by in order to achieve success—being measured, of course, in terms of having put a story to paper that was well told, and worth at least a second look. Until then, I’ll keep scratching the hours, with my own Standard to bear.

AUTHOR BIO:

B.Y. Yan is a Chinese-Canadian author who has spent most of his time with education learning everything that is necessary to become a writer. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario but spends most of his time travelling between two opposite points on the globe on business to Beijing with his wife Jeane, sometimes accompanied by a giant orange tabby cat. In his spare time he has maintained the same great love since childhood for stories told through every medium imaginable.

AUTHOR LINKS:

https://twitter.com/B_Y_Yan
https://www.facebook.com/binyan.yan.33

BUY LINKS: