Author: Patrick

George R.R. Martin is not Kind to Hands: Hand and Arm Injuries in Game of Thrones

    Patrick

In Game of Thrones and the rest of the Song of Ice and Fire series we know that he is not kind to those that hold the title of King’s Hand, for sure. But I’m talking about actual hand injuries and arm injuries. Have you ever noticed how many injuries to those extremities are inflicted upon characters?

For some reason, I have. And for some further unknown reason, I have decided to make a list. And here they are, in no particular order: SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

  • Jon Snow burns his hand on a lantern when fighting a white walker.
  • Caitlin Stark cuts her hands on a knife while defending herself from Bran’s assassin.
  • Theon Greyjoy has his finger flayed by a Bolton.
  • Sandor “the Dog” Clegene gets his arm burnt white fighting Beric Dondarrian.
  • Great John Umber gets his fingers bit off by Grey Wind.
  • Davos had parts of his fingers cut off by Stannis.
  • Jaime Lannister gets his hand cut off by Vargo Hoat.
  • Qhorin Halfhand, you guessed it, has half a hand due to a Wildling axe.
  • Victarion Greyjoy injures his hand in a duel. Then has a weird mage set it on fire to heal it.
  • Ghost finds a lone hand in the woods, leading the Night’s Watch to a two corpses.
  • Arya gets her hands scratched up pretty good while trying to catch cats.
  • Urrigon Greyjoy lost half a handplaying The Finger Dance, the axe game of the Iron Islands. (Countless hands and fingers have been lost by people playing that game…)
  • Lady Hornwood chews off her own fingers because her dear husband, Ramsey Bolton, locked her in a tower with no food.
  • Marillion the singer  confesses to killing Lysa Arryn, and as punishment gets a few fingers cut off.
  • Narbo, a theif in Braavos, gets stabbed in the hand a prostitute, losing the use of three of his fingers. Poor guy can’t pickpocket anymore!
  • Tanselle had her finger broken by Prince Aerion in The Hedge Knight.
  • Way back when, some guy named Silver Denys tried to tame the wild dragon Sheepstealer, and got his arm bit off in the process.
  • Lancel Lannister obtains an arm injury in the Battle of Blackwater Bay. It turns him religious.
  • Nymeria bites Little Shit Joffrey’s arm, hopefully inflicting great pain.

 

There are probably many more! Maybe some day I’ll create a comprehensive list. It will be the most useless Game of Thrones list ever. If you would like to contribute any I missed, please leave your suggestions in the comments.

Also, I found an appropriate Q+A from Mr. Martin in this interview:

I have a question that’s been bothering me for six books now – what’s with hands? How come characters keep getting hand injuries?

GRRM: Well, actually hand injuries were very common in the Middle Ages. When you fight with swords and axes and do a lot of hand labour, you get a lot of hand injuries. In fact, even leaving out the swords and axes you get a lot of hand injuries. my father was a longshoreman, a stevedore, and I know they would always get hand injuries. They would wear protective gloves, but they would still get injuries. There are other touches of realism; my characters who fight in repeated battles in these books tend to get scars. They lose noses and ears and become disfigured, and that’s a consequence of those battles. That’s where the icon of the Scarred Warrior comes from. Every time you go into a fight you risk emerging a little less pretty than when you went in.

Zen Writing

    Patrick

Imagine writing a book a hundred years ago? Writing it long hand by candle light? Or on a primitive typewriter? Most of us think we are blessed to be writing with today’s technology. Computers, printers, spell-check, word processor auto-formatting. Scrivener, outlining and novel-building software. Email and submissions managers.

How could we possible write a novel or a story let alone edit it without all those tools? But I’ve found in my experience (as what I would call an Experienced Amateur writer), that all of those tools and features get in the way of actually writing.

Distractions are everywhere! Even things that seem productive are really just distractions. Now, this is all just my opinion, but I have found that my best and most productive time is when I am just writing on my computer and not thinking about anything else on the screen. If I misspell a word, I don’t want to see that red-squiggly line. It will interrupt the flow and make me want to fix it. But that can always be done later. After I’m done being creative.

It took me a while to figure that out, and I had to leverage some technology and software to get back to the spirit of what authors were doing hundreds of years ago. Mainly because I can’t write long-hand quickly.

Here are some things I found that are very useful for that productive time:

  • WriteMonkey – A simple full-screen text editor that lets you easily control the writing experience. If you have a Windows-based system, try it! I used it until I got my Chromebook.
  • Chromebook (I chose the Acer C720) – Cheap, easy to use. Starts in seconds. Isn’t full of distractions (Well, the internet is always a distraction, but see the point below). Basically, it’s a typing machine for me and nothing more.
  • I now use Google Docs full-screen with the menus hidden. Looks just like WriteMonkey did.
  • Windows Notepad – When all else fails, go with the classic. I use this one when I’m not on my own computer.
  • Turn off the internet if you have no self-control. Unplug the network cable, turn off the router, whatever you have to do to keep you mind on writing instead of browsing.
  • Find a location where you just write and do nothing else. No internet. No TV. Train yourself like Pavlov’s dog. When you sit in the chair or couch or bean bag or or wherever, your writing glands should start salivating.

After the writing is done, I go back to the distraction filled world of fully-featured software that helps me organize and polish my work.

My recommendation is to clearly separate your time actually writing from the time you spend doing all the other stuff. The latter has to get done, but it should never impede the former.

50 Ways to Be Killed By Zombies

    Patrick

My Choose Your Own Adventure -style Zombie book is now free and online!

50 Ways to Be Killed by Zombies: An Interactive Fiction Adventure through the Zombie Apocalypse

Do you ever wonder if you have what it takes to survive a zombie outbreak? Well, here’s your chance to find out. In the style of the classic Choose Your Own books from childhood comes an adult tale full of blood, guts, zombies, and lots of choices.

Can your survive? The odds are against you. There are 52 endings to this story. In 50 of them you will die. Those are tough odds, and only those most adapted to apocalyptic survival will make it through.

Please enjoy the book. I think it’s a lot of fun. Especially for zombie-movie fans who should enjoy all the references.

I’m also trying something new. This book is not illustrated, but I intend to change that.

Interested in submitting artwork?

This website has an open submission policy. If you would like to contribute art relating to one of the scenes in this book just email Proleary1 [AT] gmail.com

Include:

“ART SUBMISSION:” and the title of the chapter as the email subject
Your image in an accessible format (JPG, BMP, PSD, etc)
A short bio and a link to your website if available
The image will appear on the site under the appropriate chapter, and link to your website. Your name and bio will also be listed as an illustrator on the contributors page.

No payment will be provided for your piece. Your image will not be sold or used in any other way other than what is listed above.

This is just a great way to get some exposure for your art and have some fun at the same time.

New Fiction in Flash Me! The Sinthology

    Patrick

flashmecover

Presenting–the latest anthology project from Solarcide. A flash fiction adventure of sinful and decadent design. Flash Me! was about having a place to open your literary raincoat and show the world what you got. It rears its head again now in a new form. This anthology is a collision of decadence and shorter word-count fiction. Joining us on this project is the man who first birthed Flash Me! and the minister of exposing one’s self in word form. That would be Mr Chester Pane. The Sinthology features flash/micro fiction from twenty six different authors, wicked ones to the last.

I’m happy to be included as one of the 26 authors. I have read the whole book and I’m glad my story was chosen to be amongst such wicked good company.

My story, Warnings, breaks one of my main rules of writing. But that’s because it is based off of something that someone actually said to me. It was too weird not to write down and share.

Buy it here, read, share and let me know your thoughts!

What I Learned While Writing My Fourth Novel

    Patrick

This week I finished my 4th novel, Furnace Man. Now don’t jump up and cheer just yet. This one, like all of the others, is unpublishable.

I thought I had something going in the first few chapters but I quickly realized there were too many problems for this to be a workable idea. Still, I persisted, because I was learning so much by going through the process.

So now that the draft is complete and safely in my “trunk”, I can forget about it. But I won’t forget all of the valuable things I learned. Here are a few:

The protagonist should be active.

The one in my book spends the first 75% of it just letting events happen to him and not reacting in a manner different than he normally would have have his whole life. Although the situations might be interesting, his lack of action was getting old.

Backstory needs to have action.

There was a lot of history that my reader was discovering as he went on. But that history didn’t really have much going on. Their were a few big events, but I was saving them for the climax. Other than those, there just wasn’t enough to sustain interest (even my interest!)

Never even think about using a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

When I first conceived of this idea, many years ago, one of the characters was the dreaded MPDG. I wanted to change that while writing but the character never worked. Her roots were tainted by that horrible cliche.

If the reader spends the whole book in a person’s head, that person better be interesting.

My narrator was a two-trick pony and those two tricks weren’t enough to sustain interest while I went around setting up all the salient story points for the climax.

Do not outline the whole book!

At least for me. It may work for some people but I don’t like knowing what is going to happen too far ahead in my stories. Finding things out while writing is what pleases me.

When inspiration strikes, just go with it.

There were sections of this book that really worked and those were the scenes or that I had not thought of before hand. At points while writing an idea came to me and I wrote freely. Remember, if it doesn’t fit in the story, you can always cut it later. But if it makes you happy to write it, don’t stop yourself.

And finally… Things need to happen.

That sounds obvious, but what you think of as “things happening” before you write might not amount to much of anything when you are writing. I ran into this problem a lot. I think it has to do with my previous bullet point. Things I assumed would take up a whole chapter really didn’t need to, but I only found that out while writing.

A lot of work went into learning some simple truths. But that’s life, right? A series of lessons with answers that hindsight tells you were obvious the whole time.