Up and Coming: The Black Prism by Brent Weeks

I'm gonna be treating this blog post more like a confessional than a vent for the hype I'm feeling over this book. I have an odd relationship with Brent Weeks. Not that he really knows me, but he kinda does. Kinda. Not really.

2008 was a nasty year for me. College wasn't going too great, all my friends were moving away, and the novel that I had worked on for just under a year didn't strike the fancy of any of the agents I sent it to (and to be completely honest/serious, I don't blame them). I was feeling down in the dumps and looking for something to get my mind right with the cosmos.

So, as I'm walking the aisles of Borders' sci-fi/fantasy section, what do I behold but a bright, white book with the picture of an assassin on the cover. It was The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks and it caught my eye immediately (which was a big win for Orbit Publishing at the time) and I ended up buying it after circling around that aisle like a vulture for a while.

Long story short: Read the book and loved it. There were things about it that I really didn't like, but that's usually the case for most things that I read. Plus I'm overly critical, so there's that. But what's important here is that I finished the book! Not only that, but I was anticipating the release of the second book which happened to be a couple weeks later (which was another point for Orbit).

After reading the second book, Shadow's Edge, I knew there was something special about this series. I'm still not sure what that something was or why it captivated me so damn much, but I just couldn't get enough about those books. And, again, I would only have to wait a month for a sequel, thanks to Orbit.

Sometime between reading the second book and the month-long wait for Beyond the Shadows, I typed up an email to Brent Weeks and sent it to him, not really thinking that he'd ever reply. My question pertained to how he specifically developed his style and how his readers' opinion might shape that. I asked him that because that was what I was trying to do at the time; in my writing, I was caught somewhere between complete emulation and a haphazard writing style that I couldn't get right in my mind.

To my outright surprise, he responded with a very long, very friendly letter that really gave me a thing or two to think about. Here's a bit of it:

The way to find your fingerprint is to write. A lot. You WILL say things your own way, because you will always have your own way of expressing yourself. And you will eventually figure out ways that suit you better than others. Your toolbox will expand, so just as you are capable of speaking formally to a police officer who pulls you over, and colloquially to one of your friends who's irritating you, so too will you be able to match style with substance in your writing.

It was like GOD himself sent me a letter from the goddamn North Pole. It's not because he had useful advice (he did), and it's not because he wrote a detailed response when he didn't have to (he did), it was because for that moment there was one degree of separation between myself and someone who had broken into the industry by, essentially, being himself. It was like I could take one step to the left and I would be at that magical place I had always wanted to invade.

We had one more exchange in which he basically said he'd read the ARC of my book if I ever got that far down the line, and that was all it took. He had created a monster, and not the good kind that you want watching your back. I turned on him. Why? To this day, I'm really not completely sure. I became obsessed with fine-tuning my writing style: so much so, that I became the biggest critic I knew at the time - and by critic, I mean asshole.

I started to hate his books. Not because they were bad, but because they were now growing in popularity in fantasy circles and I couldn't understand why. There were so many things wrong with those books. Why are they so needlessly graphic? Who are these random peeps over here? Why does everyone and their mother have a sidestory? How come everyone says "fuck" so fucking much? I couldn't stop myself!

Every debut novel has problems. Even Patrick Rothfuss with his gift unto mankind, The Name of the Wind, had some major feking problems. I enjoyed The Night Angel Trilogy waaaay more than Kvothe's big book o' almost, yet I didn't get peeved at that one (even though I think I have the right to). I was just unreasonably mad at Weeks' trilogy for being good, and I would raise hell with my friends trying to figure out why they liked it.

Obviously, I've made peace with all of that, and I realize that I had needed something to hate after several more tragedies intersected in my life by the end of that year, and Brent Weeks' books became that something, which I'm pretty ashamed of. But if there's one good thing that came out of all that, it was that I've been able to look at books with a more critical eye, which has helped my writing to no end.

So, I owe Brent Weeks a lot, just as I owe Matthew Stover and Drew Karpyshyn a lot. They all cared enough to pass along some advice or encouragement, and to a struggling author there is no greater gift in the world.

TL;DR - Brent Weeks is a class act, I am an asshole, and you should totally buy his new novel The Black Prism, which hits stores on August 25th, because it'll likely be awesome.

The Night Angel Trilogy
(The Way of Shadows, Shadow's Edge, Beyond the Shadows)
Amazon.com|Amazon.co.uk|The Book Depository

The Black Prism
August 25th, 2010
Amazon.com|Amazon.co.uk|The Book Depository