Welcome to the website for Giant Armors, a world of giant clockwork robots and the kids who pilot them.
| Stories | The tales of the Giant Armors and their pilots |
| Timeline | A history of major events in the Giant Armors story |
| Gallery | Awesome artwork by David White |
| Blog | Learn what's new |
| Forums | Talk with other fans |
Much as I enjoyed writing and posting Armor, I’ve run into a snag:
I can’t write the next book.
Oh, I’ve written several drafts of it, but nothing worth releasing. I don’t have a cohesive story. I don’t have a good book.
So. This website will remain here, as it stands, but I don’t intend to update it until and unless I re-work Giant Armors. Which means there will be no further updates for quite a while. Even if I come up with a better story and such, it’ll take many months to write the new version.
Feel free to look around the site, and drop me a line if you enjoy what you find. May you find joy and excitement.
Some changes on the site. I’m pulling all the main website content into the blog, and I think I’m going to simply put everything here. So you can read all of Book 0, Armor, using the links to the right.
I’m also planning to add a slew of notes about the world of the Giant Armors, within The Codex.
I feel rather emotional about uploading the final chapter of Armor. I feel elation. Relief. Sadness that I didn’t do so sooner.
I want Armor to be read by as many people as possible. I want folks to enjoy it. I want it to live.
And now, it’s finally all out here on the web. Finally.
The ending feels a little rushed to me now. But that’s okay; I didn’t want to dwell on good-byes and long explanations. An ending should have punch, and leave the reader a little breathless.
And so, now, on to the next novel. On to the main story. If I can.
This chapter felt risky.
A lot of fantasy adventure stories avoid the subject of main characters getting hurt. Oh, folks might get cuts or bruises, and characters are often put in great danger. But injury is either minimal or ignored.
But in this chapter, Adam’s hurt. Badly hurt. Nearly dead.
Why did I do this to him? Because this illustrates danger. This is what happens in war. I felt it would be false to put these characters in grave danger, and have them escape with a few minor bumps every time.
This chapter’s also risky in that Tom finally speaks up against Brask. This is weird from two perspectives. Adult readers seem to wonder why Tom didn’t do this earlier. I suspect that kids will be surprised that he speaks up this strongly.
Adults forget that kids have very little power in their lives. Kids can complain, but ultimately they have to do what grown-ups tell them to do. And here, Tom totally puts his foot down. It honestly felt a bit unnatural to me, though it had to happen for the story to work.
At least, I hope it works. Do you think I went too far here?
This was meant to be the first major battle of the book. Tom’s gone out in his Armor before, of course, but this is the first battle in which the Trych completely overwhelm him.
There are three big pitfalls to watch out for when writing about action: describing too much (every little detail), not describing enough (resulting in muddied action where you don’t know who’s doing what), and walking the line so carefully in the middle that the action becomes drab and boring. Worse, sometimes you have to increase detail in one area, and back off on detail in another.
As a result, I tend to re-write action sequences the most.
But this sequence I’m happy with. It’s tense, and a lot happens. Which is good for just about any scene.
We’ve hit an interesting point in the novel.
Things are getting bad. Adam’s badly hurt, and Tom’s tired of passively accepting Brask’s direction. So Tom decides to do a little direction of his own.
When I’ve shown this book to adults, some of them express surprise that the kids are so passive, that they don’t do much. I secretly think that a lot of adults have forgotten what it’s really like to be a kid; your entire life is structured and controlled by others. Other people decide when you wake up, what you do, and where you go. It’s all (ideally) for your own good, but even so kids are constantly under adults’ control. Kids may whine and complain, but they go along with the vast majority of whatever adults tell them to do.
It takes a lot for a kid to really stand up to an adult. Beyond just “I don’t wanna.” Most kid rebellion is at most passive, dragging one’s feet.
I hope all my readers–adult and otherwise–understand this about the characters in this novel. These kids are used to taking orders. Standing up to Brask is a huge step for Tom. It’s part of growing up, of determining when something is wrong, finding the right time to act, then screwing up one’s courage and going for it.