"I packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour nine a.m."
- Elton John and Bernie Taupin
In a strange way I never thought this moment would come. Intellectually, yes, when I agreed to take on this 26 Week Blog Challenge some five-odd months ago, I knew that July 29th would be my final post. There was even a point in time where I was planning posts well in advance. I knew, for instance, that for R I would want to cover "Red Adept" and for F I would talk about "Fat Zombie" and so forth. But Z? Z seemed like a cipher.
Z is a cipher. Not quite the cipher that X is. X is the great unknown, the variable. The X-Factor. The X-Files. But Z is similarly odd. Stationed at the end of the alphabet, rarely used (except, like its pluckier, cruciform brother, in algebra) Z is kind of a strange animal. It's not useless. Z is a distinctive sound, unlike, say, its bastard cousin C who serves literally no purpose. All the heavy lifting that C does could be done by S and K, without the added confusion of having to guess which it is. So, in a way, C is a liability to the alphabet rather than an asset.
Not so with Z. Z is distinct, albeit, rarely used. Maybe that's for the best.
Sigh...
I suppose I'm getting off track. Not that there really is a track for blogposts. Sometimes you want them to be short and concise. Sometimes you want them to be endless and rambling. That's part of their beauty and their mystique, I suppose. Sometimes I click on a link and get hit with a one-two punch. Other times I get slowly drawn in to a lengthy, morphia-laden argument. Other times I don't get drawn in and give up after a paragraph or two.
But this post is supposed to be about endings. Zero hour. Launch day. It's a beginning and an ending. The 26 Week Blog Challenge is at an end. I am, as far as I can tell, the only survivor. I have been for quite some time now. By rights, I suppose I could have just thrown in the towel once I was the last participant left and claimed my "prize" (which I assume to be a Highlander-style super-Quickening.) But I really liked having this challenge to keep me on track for my blogging this year, as I've talked about ad nauseum in the past.
Now it's kind of like there will be a hole in my schedule. What am I supposed to do on Wednesdays from now on? I mean, sure, it's nice that if I feel like throwing in a laughing chicken meme or something, I don't have to worry about cranking out 500 words on the meaning of humor. But on the other hand, I'll have no structure. Structure is constricting but it's also freeing in a way. I never had to worry about, "What post will I do on Wednesday?" I just had to worry about "What will I write about for the challenge this week?"
Sigh...
I suppose I'm getting maudlin. That's the way I get at the conclusion to things. Thanks for sticking with me for these past 26 weeks, everybody. We'll be back next week of course, but with something...different. And as for me, I'm off back to Hobbiton. Take care!
Showing posts with label 26 Week Blog Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 26 Week Blog Challenge. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
"Y" is for "Yes, I Almost Just Blew It"
You ever almost blow it?
You ever make it 24/26 of the way into something and then almost completely drop the ball?
I got nothing for you today. I got nothing, so I'm going to see if I can blather on about nothing for 500 words. If that's the kind of thing you come to my blog for, then God have mercy on your soul. If it's not, then I suggest you check out this video of a tuba player trolling the Klan.
Wasn't that great? I'm about 95% certain you checked out the video whether you kept reading or not. So, yeah. I got a good laugh out of that today. I almost couldn't stop laughing even when they kept doing it over and over again.
Yeah. So. Here's the deal.
I don't know how much I've ever actually sat down and talked about this challenge. Seven months ago (!) our good friend Tonia Brown proposed the 26-Week Blog Challenge. I'm pretty sure I had already declared 2015 the Year of Interviewing Dangerously. At that point I realized that bringing both on board would be a great opportunity to keep myself on track for blogging this year.
The first year I blogged, I posted every day.
Let me repeat that:
Every.
Day.
Seven days a week. Now, at that point (2009) I was still "burning" manuscripts, which some of my newer followers may not even remember. Every author has "trunked" manuscripts, that is to say, manuscripts which should never see the light of day or are in some other way unpublishable, and end up in the trunk at the foot of their beds. (Well, you know, back in the days when manuscripts were physical things instead of files on their computers.)
So I was posting a few of my trunked manuscripts, and since I had so much material to work with, I had no issue posting daily. I could even throw in multimedia days and a few other things, you know, like a regular blogger, and add a little bread to my meatloaf that way.
By 2011 things had fallen off. 2011 was my worst year for blogging, just as 2009 was my best year. And really I think the best schedule for blogging is three times a week.
So now in 2015 I'm trying to make it stick. We've got a bunch of upcoming releases this year, so those will make for ready-made posts. And even though the 26-Week Blog Challenge is coming to an end, I still intend to keep up posting on Wednesdays.
But I almost didn't today. I almost dropped the ball. It's nearly 10:30 at night. And my normal blogging schedule is for noon. I've just been stressed as hell this week. But I'm doing it. I'm struggling through. I'm going to get there.
You know who I really admire, though? I admire you. For somehow getting through this. You made it. I think we're almost up to 500 words. That was one of the limitations of the 26 Week Blog Challenge limitations. I don't think I mentioned that. But hooray! You made it through with me. There. We did it. A few sentences ago. Now get off of my lawn. One more to go.
You ever make it 24/26 of the way into something and then almost completely drop the ball?
I got nothing for you today. I got nothing, so I'm going to see if I can blather on about nothing for 500 words. If that's the kind of thing you come to my blog for, then God have mercy on your soul. If it's not, then I suggest you check out this video of a tuba player trolling the Klan.
Wasn't that great? I'm about 95% certain you checked out the video whether you kept reading or not. So, yeah. I got a good laugh out of that today. I almost couldn't stop laughing even when they kept doing it over and over again.
Yeah. So. Here's the deal.
I don't know how much I've ever actually sat down and talked about this challenge. Seven months ago (!) our good friend Tonia Brown proposed the 26-Week Blog Challenge. I'm pretty sure I had already declared 2015 the Year of Interviewing Dangerously. At that point I realized that bringing both on board would be a great opportunity to keep myself on track for blogging this year.
The first year I blogged, I posted every day.
Let me repeat that:
Every.
Day.
Seven days a week. Now, at that point (2009) I was still "burning" manuscripts, which some of my newer followers may not even remember. Every author has "trunked" manuscripts, that is to say, manuscripts which should never see the light of day or are in some other way unpublishable, and end up in the trunk at the foot of their beds. (Well, you know, back in the days when manuscripts were physical things instead of files on their computers.)
So I was posting a few of my trunked manuscripts, and since I had so much material to work with, I had no issue posting daily. I could even throw in multimedia days and a few other things, you know, like a regular blogger, and add a little bread to my meatloaf that way.
By 2011 things had fallen off. 2011 was my worst year for blogging, just as 2009 was my best year. And really I think the best schedule for blogging is three times a week.
So now in 2015 I'm trying to make it stick. We've got a bunch of upcoming releases this year, so those will make for ready-made posts. And even though the 26-Week Blog Challenge is coming to an end, I still intend to keep up posting on Wednesdays.
But I almost didn't today. I almost dropped the ball. It's nearly 10:30 at night. And my normal blogging schedule is for noon. I've just been stressed as hell this week. But I'm doing it. I'm struggling through. I'm going to get there.
You know who I really admire, though? I admire you. For somehow getting through this. You made it. I think we're almost up to 500 words. That was one of the limitations of the 26 Week Blog Challenge limitations. I don't think I mentioned that. But hooray! You made it through with me. There. We did it. A few sentences ago. Now get off of my lawn. One more to go.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
"X" is for "X-Chromosome"
I don't speak to my mother.
It's been about four years since we last spoke. There are times I feel bad about our estrangement in a philosophical sense, but I wouldn't say I've ever felt bad because of it. My stated purpose (to myself) was to cut the poison out of my life.
I don't speak about this. Not in public. Rarely in private. I've alluded to it to some of my closer friends. My wife and my sister know the real story. Aside from that, it's generally too painful to even delve into. And it's not acceptable in society at large for a son to have issues with his mother.
I don't particularly feel like talking about it now. But I read this sloppy, sophomoric article.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. A lot of opinions are just shit. And this is a shitty, shitty opinion piece.
If you haven't got the time or inclination to read it, I'll summarize it here:
Baby Boomers are awesome.
Our (as in, my) generation is a cantankerous gang of vainglorious narcissists.
If a child cuts off a parent, it's because the child is wrong, not the parent.
If you think I'm exaggerating...well, then read the fucking article. I'm really not.
I am not trained or even particularly well-read in psychology. Nor am I really qualified to give anyone advice unless their goal is to be a thirty-something civil servant with middling life skills. But I can assure you of this:
If both of your adult children, independently, have cut you off, you are the problem.
I haven't noticed my generation to be particularly narcissistic. If anything, I'd say we're hyper-aware of the power nostalgia holds over us, something I don't think our parents' generation has ever gotten over. (There's a whole boatload of Baby Boomers who seem to get furious at the suggestion that teenagers don't know all about the '60s. But ask them about modern pop culture and they'll say it's all shit.) But this is more just my snark defense than anything else. Painting millions of people with the same brush is a largely masturbatory exercise.
I'd rather just paint Elizabeth Vagnoni, the author of this article, with a brush. I have a whole lot of feelings about her. But I won't. I suspect her pain is genuine. Hell, I suspect her bafflement is genuine. No one likes to look at their own behavior and find fault. No one especially wants to look at eighteen years of childrearing and find fault.
But the fault is hers. If you're reading this, Elizabeth, I'd recommend you conduct what they call a "fearless moral inventory" in AA (which, incidentally, is usually followed by making amends.) And I don't bring up AA to accuse you of alcoholism, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if that was involved in your troubles somehow.
The greatest hurdle I usually find in addressing this issue is that it is one of the last great taboos. You don't even realize it's a taboo until you find yourself estranged from your mother. But mothers are sacred. Mothers are beloved. Mothers are saints and perfect and gave up everything for you, including their bodies, and you ought to get down on your hands and knees and kiss the ground that they walk on, as far as society is concerned.
And I've known mothers, plenty of mothers, hell, most mothers who deserved all of that treatment and more. I could rattle off a few now, but you don't know any of them. Just think of your own mother. She's probably pretty goddamned great.
Some of us, though, not so much. And society is not very accepting of the idea that a mother can be bad. So unaccepting, in fact, is society of that very concept, that Elizabeth Vagnoni is totally unable to even comprehend that she might have done something wrong. Surely, it was the narcissism of the younger generation which caused two grown adults to sever ties with her, and not anything she may have done.
Nope. Not so. There's such a thing as a bad mother. And I don't just mean a sneering, mustache-twirling villain like Cersei Lannister. They can be just as scary as Cersei Lannister when you're in their absolute power. Most mothers hold that absolute power over their children with aplomb, and dignity, and love, and affection.
But not all.
It's been about four years since we last spoke. There are times I feel bad about our estrangement in a philosophical sense, but I wouldn't say I've ever felt bad because of it. My stated purpose (to myself) was to cut the poison out of my life.
I don't speak about this. Not in public. Rarely in private. I've alluded to it to some of my closer friends. My wife and my sister know the real story. Aside from that, it's generally too painful to even delve into. And it's not acceptable in society at large for a son to have issues with his mother.
I don't particularly feel like talking about it now. But I read this sloppy, sophomoric article.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. A lot of opinions are just shit. And this is a shitty, shitty opinion piece.
If you haven't got the time or inclination to read it, I'll summarize it here:
Baby Boomers are awesome.
Our (as in, my) generation is a cantankerous gang of vainglorious narcissists.
If a child cuts off a parent, it's because the child is wrong, not the parent.
If you think I'm exaggerating...well, then read the fucking article. I'm really not.
I am not trained or even particularly well-read in psychology. Nor am I really qualified to give anyone advice unless their goal is to be a thirty-something civil servant with middling life skills. But I can assure you of this:
If both of your adult children, independently, have cut you off, you are the problem.
I haven't noticed my generation to be particularly narcissistic. If anything, I'd say we're hyper-aware of the power nostalgia holds over us, something I don't think our parents' generation has ever gotten over. (There's a whole boatload of Baby Boomers who seem to get furious at the suggestion that teenagers don't know all about the '60s. But ask them about modern pop culture and they'll say it's all shit.) But this is more just my snark defense than anything else. Painting millions of people with the same brush is a largely masturbatory exercise.
I'd rather just paint Elizabeth Vagnoni, the author of this article, with a brush. I have a whole lot of feelings about her. But I won't. I suspect her pain is genuine. Hell, I suspect her bafflement is genuine. No one likes to look at their own behavior and find fault. No one especially wants to look at eighteen years of childrearing and find fault.
But the fault is hers. If you're reading this, Elizabeth, I'd recommend you conduct what they call a "fearless moral inventory" in AA (which, incidentally, is usually followed by making amends.) And I don't bring up AA to accuse you of alcoholism, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if that was involved in your troubles somehow.
The greatest hurdle I usually find in addressing this issue is that it is one of the last great taboos. You don't even realize it's a taboo until you find yourself estranged from your mother. But mothers are sacred. Mothers are beloved. Mothers are saints and perfect and gave up everything for you, including their bodies, and you ought to get down on your hands and knees and kiss the ground that they walk on, as far as society is concerned.
And I've known mothers, plenty of mothers, hell, most mothers who deserved all of that treatment and more. I could rattle off a few now, but you don't know any of them. Just think of your own mother. She's probably pretty goddamned great.
Some of us, though, not so much. And society is not very accepting of the idea that a mother can be bad. So unaccepting, in fact, is society of that very concept, that Elizabeth Vagnoni is totally unable to even comprehend that she might have done something wrong. Surely, it was the narcissism of the younger generation which caused two grown adults to sever ties with her, and not anything she may have done.
Nope. Not so. There's such a thing as a bad mother. And I don't just mean a sneering, mustache-twirling villain like Cersei Lannister. They can be just as scary as Cersei Lannister when you're in their absolute power. Most mothers hold that absolute power over their children with aplomb, and dignity, and love, and affection.
But not all.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
"W" is for "WYTCHFIRE"
I'll bet you thought after last month's post you were done with hearing from Professor Fancypants, eh? Well, you thought wrong. Dead wrong. It just so happens that I've come into possession of a series of...well, let's just call them "answers"...to some rather arcane...well, let's just call them "questions"...well, on second thought, let's just get right to it.
Michael Meyerhofer grew up in Iowa where he learned to cope with the unbridled excitement of the Midwest by reading books and not getting his hopes up. Probably due to his father’s influence, he developed a fondness for Star Trek, weight lifting, and collecting medieval weapons. He is also addicted to caffeine and the History Channel.
His fourth poetry book, WHAT TO DO IF YOU'RE BURIED ALIVE, was recently published by Split Lip Press. He also serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. His poetry and prose have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Brevity, Ploughshares, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Rattle, and many other journals. He and his fiancee currently live in Fresno, California, in a little house beside a very large cactus.
1.) Tell us a little bit about your series, especially the first book, WYTCHFIRE.
WYTCHFIRE is the story of Rowen Locke, a former orphan-turned-sellsword who gets caught in the middle of a sprawling conflict fueled by age-old prejudices (what one reader described as a thousand-year cyst about to burst), and his desperate, fallible attempts to both gain and maintain honor in a world where behaving honorably usually gets you killed. Anyway, WYTCHFIRE is Book I in the DRAGONKIN TRILOGY. KNIGHTSWRATH, the sequel, came out a few weeks ago. I've also completed a rough draft of the conclusion, tentatively titled THE WAR OF THE LOTUS.
2.) How would you describe these books, in terms of genre/subgenre?
The first book, WYTCHFIRE, is probably halfway between epic fantasy and dark fantasy. The sequel, KNIGHTSWRATH, gets significantly darker (spoiler: there's a guy contemplating whether or not to carve out his newborn son's eyes, and that's just in the prologue!). The series does have one central protagonist, but there's also a big cast of characters and a lot of interrelated conflicts. Regular fantasy fans should feel right at home, though I hope they'll also appreciate the twists I've put on some of the "traditional" ideas, like magic and honor.
3.) What inspired you to write this series?
I've always loved fantasy--dark fantasy, in particular. Also, I was born with birth defects that made me the target of a lot of bullying and teasing when I was younger, so as a child, I felt something of a kinship with people who were different, who were disliked or even hated simply based on the lottery of their birth. Eventually, this formed the basis for the discrimination that underlies the story and various conflicts of the DRAGONKIN TRILOGY.
4.) Who are some writers who have influenced your writing style?
Yikes, too many to count! Some of my biggest influences, though, were George R. R. Martin (of course), Katherine Kurtz, Raymond Feist, Richard Knaak, Lloyd Alexander, Terry Brooks, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson, Robert E. Howard, and J.R.R. Tolkien (another "of course"). I've also been influenced by a lot of writers outside the fantasy/horror genres, including Ernest Hemingway, Shirley Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O'Connor, Walt Whitman, and J.D. Salinger, along with contemporary poets like Dorianne Laux, George Bilgere, Allison Joseph, Yusef Komunyakaa, Billy Collins, and Tony Hoagland.
5.) On a related note, can you discuss one author who had a big, early impact on you?
Sure! One of my favorites for many years now has been Richard Knaak. I first discovered his work when I was plowing through nearly all the books in the Dragonlance series, and I came upon his book, THE LEGEND OF HUMA. I was wary because Huma is a big, historical figure in the DRAGONLANCE books, and I was worried that actually nailing down his story in a prequel would dispel some of the mystery. Instead, it was quite the opposite. Knaak’s writing conveyed both action and emotional nuance, and I loved his portrayal of Huma as fallible and struggling. After THE LEGEND OF HUMA, I sought out pretty much everything else he’d written, and was especially a fan of the unique world and textured characters created in his DRAGONREALM books. As a side note, I’d already written WYTCHFIRE by then but was very surprised to find that Knaak also has a character named Shade (though aside from the name, the characters are completely different).
6.) What’s one thing that distinguishes your book from other fantasy books?
I’ve always liked complex plots with lots of characters (wait… is that two things?). So, while my books do have a central protagonist, you also get to see the story through different sets of eyes. I find that’s a good way to establish moral ambiguity, which is really just a fancy way of writing a story that kind of gets under your skin (but hopefully, in a good way).
7.) Tell us a little more about the conflict in your series.
The primary conflict in the DRAGONKIN TRILOGY centers around the Shel'ai, those born with the “gift” of magic. The Shel'ai serve as echoes of a dark past in which sorcerers (who gained both power and madness by draining the life-force of dragons) ruled with an iron fist. As a result, Shel'ai are almost always viewed with hatred and paranoia. Most are killed at birth, and those who survive still face a lifetime of running from mobs. However, many of the Shel'ai are far from blameless, as they've been using increasingly more brutal and desperate means to defend themselves, creating a schism in the ranks.
8.) What's the most challenging part of writing this book?
I tend to focus a lot on character development, to the point where I get almost absurdly invested in what happens to them. At the same time, especially in my stories, necessity and realism demand that awful things happen to these characters on a regular basis. I'm also a perfectionist when it comes to plot lines and dialog. Long story short, this series has given me a lot of sleepless nights.
9.) I read that you’re a history buff. Did you base any of your characters on historical figures? What about the world-building?
Ha, yes and yes! I'm kind of an amateur historian (emphasis on the amateur part) and I'm fascinated by Greek and Roman history, plus the pre-Civil War era of the United States--the good and awful elements, both. Also, I know it's a bit cliché to say this but when I was young, I spent a great deal of time studying the Holocaust, reading various memoirs and testimonials (particularly those of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi). I guess all that went into the mental cauldron... as did stacks and stacks of X-Men comics.
Rowen Locke has achieved his dream of becoming a Knight of the Crane, and he now bears Knightswrath, the legendary sword of Fâyu Jinn. But the land remains torn, and though Rowen suffers doubts, he would see it healed. His knightly order is not what it seems, though, and allies remain thin. When Rowen and his friends seek an alliance with the forest-dwelling Sylvs, a tangle of events results in a midnight duel that teaches Rowen a dangerous lesson and leaves him with a new companion of uncertain loyalties.
The sadistic Dhargots still threaten the kingdoms, but another menace lurks in the shadows, playing a game none can see. As Rowen struggles to prove his worth—to his allies and to himself—chaos raises its hand to strike. A price must be paid, and not even the wielder of Knightswrath will remain untouched.
About Michael Meyerhofer:
His fourth poetry book, WHAT TO DO IF YOU'RE BURIED ALIVE, was recently published by Split Lip Press. He also serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. His poetry and prose have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Brevity, Ploughshares, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Rattle, and many other journals. He and his fiancee currently live in Fresno, California, in a little house beside a very large cactus.
Interview:
1.) Tell us a little bit about your series, especially the first book, WYTCHFIRE.
WYTCHFIRE is the story of Rowen Locke, a former orphan-turned-sellsword who gets caught in the middle of a sprawling conflict fueled by age-old prejudices (what one reader described as a thousand-year cyst about to burst), and his desperate, fallible attempts to both gain and maintain honor in a world where behaving honorably usually gets you killed. Anyway, WYTCHFIRE is Book I in the DRAGONKIN TRILOGY. KNIGHTSWRATH, the sequel, came out a few weeks ago. I've also completed a rough draft of the conclusion, tentatively titled THE WAR OF THE LOTUS.
2.) How would you describe these books, in terms of genre/subgenre?
The first book, WYTCHFIRE, is probably halfway between epic fantasy and dark fantasy. The sequel, KNIGHTSWRATH, gets significantly darker (spoiler: there's a guy contemplating whether or not to carve out his newborn son's eyes, and that's just in the prologue!). The series does have one central protagonist, but there's also a big cast of characters and a lot of interrelated conflicts. Regular fantasy fans should feel right at home, though I hope they'll also appreciate the twists I've put on some of the "traditional" ideas, like magic and honor.
3.) What inspired you to write this series?
I've always loved fantasy--dark fantasy, in particular. Also, I was born with birth defects that made me the target of a lot of bullying and teasing when I was younger, so as a child, I felt something of a kinship with people who were different, who were disliked or even hated simply based on the lottery of their birth. Eventually, this formed the basis for the discrimination that underlies the story and various conflicts of the DRAGONKIN TRILOGY.
4.) Who are some writers who have influenced your writing style?
Yikes, too many to count! Some of my biggest influences, though, were George R. R. Martin (of course), Katherine Kurtz, Raymond Feist, Richard Knaak, Lloyd Alexander, Terry Brooks, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson, Robert E. Howard, and J.R.R. Tolkien (another "of course"). I've also been influenced by a lot of writers outside the fantasy/horror genres, including Ernest Hemingway, Shirley Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O'Connor, Walt Whitman, and J.D. Salinger, along with contemporary poets like Dorianne Laux, George Bilgere, Allison Joseph, Yusef Komunyakaa, Billy Collins, and Tony Hoagland.
5.) On a related note, can you discuss one author who had a big, early impact on you?
Sure! One of my favorites for many years now has been Richard Knaak. I first discovered his work when I was plowing through nearly all the books in the Dragonlance series, and I came upon his book, THE LEGEND OF HUMA. I was wary because Huma is a big, historical figure in the DRAGONLANCE books, and I was worried that actually nailing down his story in a prequel would dispel some of the mystery. Instead, it was quite the opposite. Knaak’s writing conveyed both action and emotional nuance, and I loved his portrayal of Huma as fallible and struggling. After THE LEGEND OF HUMA, I sought out pretty much everything else he’d written, and was especially a fan of the unique world and textured characters created in his DRAGONREALM books. As a side note, I’d already written WYTCHFIRE by then but was very surprised to find that Knaak also has a character named Shade (though aside from the name, the characters are completely different).
6.) What’s one thing that distinguishes your book from other fantasy books?
I’ve always liked complex plots with lots of characters (wait… is that two things?). So, while my books do have a central protagonist, you also get to see the story through different sets of eyes. I find that’s a good way to establish moral ambiguity, which is really just a fancy way of writing a story that kind of gets under your skin (but hopefully, in a good way).
7.) Tell us a little more about the conflict in your series.
The primary conflict in the DRAGONKIN TRILOGY centers around the Shel'ai, those born with the “gift” of magic. The Shel'ai serve as echoes of a dark past in which sorcerers (who gained both power and madness by draining the life-force of dragons) ruled with an iron fist. As a result, Shel'ai are almost always viewed with hatred and paranoia. Most are killed at birth, and those who survive still face a lifetime of running from mobs. However, many of the Shel'ai are far from blameless, as they've been using increasingly more brutal and desperate means to defend themselves, creating a schism in the ranks.
8.) What's the most challenging part of writing this book?
I tend to focus a lot on character development, to the point where I get almost absurdly invested in what happens to them. At the same time, especially in my stories, necessity and realism demand that awful things happen to these characters on a regular basis. I'm also a perfectionist when it comes to plot lines and dialog. Long story short, this series has given me a lot of sleepless nights.
9.) I read that you’re a history buff. Did you base any of your characters on historical figures? What about the world-building?
Ha, yes and yes! I'm kind of an amateur historian (emphasis on the amateur part) and I'm fascinated by Greek and Roman history, plus the pre-Civil War era of the United States--the good and awful elements, both. Also, I know it's a bit cliché to say this but when I was young, I spent a great deal of time studying the Holocaust, reading various memoirs and testimonials (particularly those of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi). I guess all that went into the mental cauldron... as did stacks and stacks of X-Men comics.
About KNIGHTSWRATH:
Rowen Locke has achieved his dream of becoming a Knight of the Crane, and he now bears Knightswrath, the legendary sword of Fâyu Jinn. But the land remains torn, and though Rowen suffers doubts, he would see it healed. His knightly order is not what it seems, though, and allies remain thin. When Rowen and his friends seek an alliance with the forest-dwelling Sylvs, a tangle of events results in a midnight duel that teaches Rowen a dangerous lesson and leaves him with a new companion of uncertain loyalties.
The sadistic Dhargots still threaten the kingdoms, but another menace lurks in the shadows, playing a game none can see. As Rowen struggles to prove his worth—to his allies and to himself—chaos raises its hand to strike. A price must be paid, and not even the wielder of Knightswrath will remain untouched.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
"V" is for "Vendetta"
Every morning, I thank my lucky stars for E.L. James.
I wake up, greet the sun, do a modified downward facing dog, and whisper, "Thank you. Thank you, Imaginary Sky Man, for each and every shade of grey."
You would think, in the wake of the release of GREY, and the rather ill-advised #AskELJames debacle, that the Ayatollah of Publishing had declared a fatwah against her. That Don Pinguino, representing the Big 5 Families, had ordered a vendetta. The vitriol! My God, the vitriol!
Is this level of contempt strictly necessary, especially from the authorial community? I often hear authors, especially from marginalized genres like horror, science fiction, and erotica, complain that we need to be supporting each other, not tearing one another down. Why is E.L. James the exception? Because she had the audacity to be successful?
Hell, I'm not going to front. I've poked fun at her work right here on this blog from time to time. But I'm also well aware I wouldn't exist as an independent artist if it wasn't for her. Any author published in the last five years - especially any author first published in the last five years - owes her a great debt.
So let me say a couple of things up front:
1.) I've never read a word, beyond a few excerpts on a Buzzfeed article making fun of it, of Ms. James's work.
2.) Based on what little I've read - and on the opinions of people I trust who have read her work - James's prose is terrible, possibly even laughable.
I'm being 100% up front about both of these issues so you don't think I'm missing some important point when I move on here. So let's move on, and then we'll circle back around to these points.
Setting aside the fact that authors ought to support authors as a general rule, because we're all in this boat together, let's look at this from a purely selfish perspective. The publishing industry is a bit arcane, but you're probably familiar with the way profit margins work at, say, an Italian bistro.
Things like steak and seafood don't have much profit margin because they're expensive, and there's a limit to how much you can mark it up without driving away your customers. Pasta has a great profit margin because it's cheap, and people will pay quite a bit for it. And soda has an astronomical profit margin because it costs a few cents a gallon and you can charge a few dollars a glass for it.
The whole reason a restaurant can sell prime cuts of meat for $20 is because customers are willing to buy sugar water for $3.99. One thing underwrites the other. And let me make this metaphor crystal-fucking-clear: E.L. James is underwriting hundreds, if not thousands of lesser-known authors.
You could say the same thing about Stephen King, or James Patterson, or J.K. Rowling, or, hell, James Frey or Dan Brown. It's pretty simple when you think about it. A superstar author has a mega-smash hit and exceeds all expectations, and brings in millions of dollars on a single book. Now the publishing company has millions of dollars in its reserve. It can afford to take chances on those weird, artsy little projects which the editors may have been on the fence about.
Every author published by Penguin Random House was directly underwritten by E.L. James. I might equivocate and say that a few authors who were going to pay out their advances anyway might not owe her quite so much, but the solvency of the entire company still rests on just a few superstar authors, including James.
And that's not the end of the story. Publishing is a complicated ecosystem. A pebble tossed in one bay has ripples through the whole ocean. So consider the fact that several millions of people who were not normally part of the book-buying public logged onto Amazon (or their favorite online book retailer) or walked into their favorite bookstore and grabbed a copy of one of the GREY books.
A change like that has affected the publishing industry as a whole. Entire new audiences have been opened up to the idea of buying books. Why shit on E.L. James for that? Authors who write erotica or romance have probably benefited most from the new customers which E.L. James brought into the fold, but honestly, getting more people to buy books is a good thing for the whole industry.
And, yes, again, the same could be said for King or Rowling or Myers or whoever. I'm not saying E.L. James is unique, but I feel hypocritical singing the praises of superstars I respect, without at least acknowledging the impact of one I don't.
One major impact James has had is in making self-publishing a legitimate career move. Sure, Amanda Hocking and Hugh Howey helped to pioneer that market, but E.L. James was the first superstar smash breakout success that made the publishers start coming down from their howdahs and start offering deals to self-pubbed authors. And even the ones who rejected the deals from the big boys still aspire to James-level success. Self-pubbing is a path in large part thanks to E.L. James's work in dynamiting her way through that labyrinth.
So one last point. I haven't been published by Penguin Random and I don't write love stories (that you know of, anyway) and I've never self-published. But I still owe a debt of gratitude to E.L. James, along with Stephanie Myers, Dan Brown, and all those other awful superstar writers.
There's a reason agents and publishers even still unsolicited queries. It's because HARRY POTTER came from the slush. TWILIGHT came from the slush. DIVERGENT came from the slush. FIFTY SHADES OF GREY didn't even come from the slush, it came from the fan-fic world, which was supposed to be the slush of the slush of the slush, and into the self-pubbing world, which was supposed to be the slush of the slush.
(If I just disappeared up my own asshole with that last sentence, just think of farm teams and AAA in baseball. One feeds the other feeds the other feeds the pros.)
Every huge, record-shattering literary phenomenon of the last twenty years or so has come over the transom from a relative unknown. I don't doubt that agents and publishers are ripping their hair out daily about that fact, but it doesn't change the way only literary outsiders seem capable of blowing up. And that's the whole reason every once in a blue moon they'll take a gamble on someone like me.
Now back to those two original points:
1.) I have no room to judge because I've never read E.L. James. Well, truth be told, that's probably not going to change. But you know what? There are a lot of people who think I'm terrible. I had a reader tell me to my face in public - I'm not making this up - that zombies are stupid garbage and nobody should like them. Horror authors get disrespected for their craft sight unseen all the time. I can't speak to whether James's content is dangerous, insulting, encouraging abuse, or any of the other charges that have been leveled at it. I also know I don't care. I don't believe in censorship. Have you read PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT or TROPIC OF CANCER? Once the bans on their pornographic content were lifted they started being considered classics. As long as I can go to a library and pick up a copy of MEIN KAMPF and children can see a book by Rush Limbaugh in the kiddie section of the bookstore, I'm pretty sure we're just going to have to table the whole moral panic of books having dangerous content. People will just have to be responsible about exposing themselves to the unmitigated terror of new (and quite possibly bad) ideas.
2.) E.L. James's prose is objectively terrible. Yes, and I'm about 99 44/100% certain that the prose isn't the big selling points on these books. I'm pretty sure they tap into some element of the zeitgeist, some hidden vein of desire which is near-universal and had never quite been tapped before. There are different kinds of genius, and even if you don't respect E.L. James for the aesthetic quality of her work, you'd damn well better step back and recognize her ability to write something popular, and her marketing savvy in getting people to read it. If you think The Beatles blew up because of their lyrics, go back and listen to "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" sometime.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
I wake up, greet the sun, do a modified downward facing dog, and whisper, "Thank you. Thank you, Imaginary Sky Man, for each and every shade of grey."
You would think, in the wake of the release of GREY, and the rather ill-advised #AskELJames debacle, that the Ayatollah of Publishing had declared a fatwah against her. That Don Pinguino, representing the Big 5 Families, had ordered a vendetta. The vitriol! My God, the vitriol!
Is this level of contempt strictly necessary, especially from the authorial community? I often hear authors, especially from marginalized genres like horror, science fiction, and erotica, complain that we need to be supporting each other, not tearing one another down. Why is E.L. James the exception? Because she had the audacity to be successful?
Hell, I'm not going to front. I've poked fun at her work right here on this blog from time to time. But I'm also well aware I wouldn't exist as an independent artist if it wasn't for her. Any author published in the last five years - especially any author first published in the last five years - owes her a great debt.
So let me say a couple of things up front:
1.) I've never read a word, beyond a few excerpts on a Buzzfeed article making fun of it, of Ms. James's work.
2.) Based on what little I've read - and on the opinions of people I trust who have read her work - James's prose is terrible, possibly even laughable.
I'm being 100% up front about both of these issues so you don't think I'm missing some important point when I move on here. So let's move on, and then we'll circle back around to these points.
Setting aside the fact that authors ought to support authors as a general rule, because we're all in this boat together, let's look at this from a purely selfish perspective. The publishing industry is a bit arcane, but you're probably familiar with the way profit margins work at, say, an Italian bistro.
Things like steak and seafood don't have much profit margin because they're expensive, and there's a limit to how much you can mark it up without driving away your customers. Pasta has a great profit margin because it's cheap, and people will pay quite a bit for it. And soda has an astronomical profit margin because it costs a few cents a gallon and you can charge a few dollars a glass for it.
The whole reason a restaurant can sell prime cuts of meat for $20 is because customers are willing to buy sugar water for $3.99. One thing underwrites the other. And let me make this metaphor crystal-fucking-clear: E.L. James is underwriting hundreds, if not thousands of lesser-known authors.
You could say the same thing about Stephen King, or James Patterson, or J.K. Rowling, or, hell, James Frey or Dan Brown. It's pretty simple when you think about it. A superstar author has a mega-smash hit and exceeds all expectations, and brings in millions of dollars on a single book. Now the publishing company has millions of dollars in its reserve. It can afford to take chances on those weird, artsy little projects which the editors may have been on the fence about.
Every author published by Penguin Random House was directly underwritten by E.L. James. I might equivocate and say that a few authors who were going to pay out their advances anyway might not owe her quite so much, but the solvency of the entire company still rests on just a few superstar authors, including James.
And that's not the end of the story. Publishing is a complicated ecosystem. A pebble tossed in one bay has ripples through the whole ocean. So consider the fact that several millions of people who were not normally part of the book-buying public logged onto Amazon (or their favorite online book retailer) or walked into their favorite bookstore and grabbed a copy of one of the GREY books.
A change like that has affected the publishing industry as a whole. Entire new audiences have been opened up to the idea of buying books. Why shit on E.L. James for that? Authors who write erotica or romance have probably benefited most from the new customers which E.L. James brought into the fold, but honestly, getting more people to buy books is a good thing for the whole industry.
And, yes, again, the same could be said for King or Rowling or Myers or whoever. I'm not saying E.L. James is unique, but I feel hypocritical singing the praises of superstars I respect, without at least acknowledging the impact of one I don't.
One major impact James has had is in making self-publishing a legitimate career move. Sure, Amanda Hocking and Hugh Howey helped to pioneer that market, but E.L. James was the first superstar smash breakout success that made the publishers start coming down from their howdahs and start offering deals to self-pubbed authors. And even the ones who rejected the deals from the big boys still aspire to James-level success. Self-pubbing is a path in large part thanks to E.L. James's work in dynamiting her way through that labyrinth.
So one last point. I haven't been published by Penguin Random and I don't write love stories (that you know of, anyway) and I've never self-published. But I still owe a debt of gratitude to E.L. James, along with Stephanie Myers, Dan Brown, and all those other awful superstar writers.
There's a reason agents and publishers even still unsolicited queries. It's because HARRY POTTER came from the slush. TWILIGHT came from the slush. DIVERGENT came from the slush. FIFTY SHADES OF GREY didn't even come from the slush, it came from the fan-fic world, which was supposed to be the slush of the slush of the slush, and into the self-pubbing world, which was supposed to be the slush of the slush.
(If I just disappeared up my own asshole with that last sentence, just think of farm teams and AAA in baseball. One feeds the other feeds the other feeds the pros.)
Every huge, record-shattering literary phenomenon of the last twenty years or so has come over the transom from a relative unknown. I don't doubt that agents and publishers are ripping their hair out daily about that fact, but it doesn't change the way only literary outsiders seem capable of blowing up. And that's the whole reason every once in a blue moon they'll take a gamble on someone like me.
Now back to those two original points:
1.) I have no room to judge because I've never read E.L. James. Well, truth be told, that's probably not going to change. But you know what? There are a lot of people who think I'm terrible. I had a reader tell me to my face in public - I'm not making this up - that zombies are stupid garbage and nobody should like them. Horror authors get disrespected for their craft sight unseen all the time. I can't speak to whether James's content is dangerous, insulting, encouraging abuse, or any of the other charges that have been leveled at it. I also know I don't care. I don't believe in censorship. Have you read PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT or TROPIC OF CANCER? Once the bans on their pornographic content were lifted they started being considered classics. As long as I can go to a library and pick up a copy of MEIN KAMPF and children can see a book by Rush Limbaugh in the kiddie section of the bookstore, I'm pretty sure we're just going to have to table the whole moral panic of books having dangerous content. People will just have to be responsible about exposing themselves to the unmitigated terror of new (and quite possibly bad) ideas.
2.) E.L. James's prose is objectively terrible. Yes, and I'm about 99 44/100% certain that the prose isn't the big selling points on these books. I'm pretty sure they tap into some element of the zeitgeist, some hidden vein of desire which is near-universal and had never quite been tapped before. There are different kinds of genius, and even if you don't respect E.L. James for the aesthetic quality of her work, you'd damn well better step back and recognize her ability to write something popular, and her marketing savvy in getting people to read it. If you think The Beatles blew up because of their lyrics, go back and listen to "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" sometime.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
"U" is for "Ultron"
This post isn't really about Ultron. Except maybe that he's a jerk and some of the people I will be talking about will be jerks? I dunno. It just seemed like a good thing to name a post.
The actual subject of this post is "Unmentionable." As in, unmentionable words. If you've been anywhere near a device or another human being in the last week, you'll have heard that the president - our sitting president of these United States, Barack Obama - used the N-word on Marc Maron's podcast.
Much hay has been made in the media and the social media about this event. Actually, "event" seems like too strong of a word. Occurrence, maybe? Happenstance? Anyway, people are riled up about it. It's got us talking about censorship and race relations in this country, so that's a good thing.
I've been thinking lately about this need to bowdlerize words, and what that really represents. When I was a kid, I remember referring to the F-word and the S-word, and feeling very on the fence about whether "crap" and "pussy" were swears, and whether I could get in trouble for saying them. At my age, and after a four-year stint in the army, there is literally no traditional curse word which holds any kind of taboo for me.
The words that I consider truly offensive, that even as a writer I deploy with great sparseness and only after long deliberation, are a handful of ethnic and misogynistic slurs. Perhaps it makes me a coward, but, yes, even in the context of this blog post about unmentionable words, I won't be deploying the actual N-word or C-word, or a slur against Jewish people which begins with a "K."
I've had characters say these words. BRAINEATER JONES was set in the 1930s, and after reading a lot of the literature of the time, I realized that it was dishonest to pretend like white people in that era were concerned with sparing feelings. These words which we consider the height of taboo today were tossed around with a casualness that beggars the imagination. And, perhaps even more interesting, the silly words which we're allowed to say on basic cable were things you didn't say in mixed company in the '30s.
It's a tightrope walk for me as an author to know that I'm writing for the sensibilities of a modern audience and yet trying to stay true to a period, or perhaps a character. It's kind of a cliché that villains are the only ones who can kick puppies, smoke, and use slurs (consider Dennis Hopper in "Land of the Dead") but often that's true. Because how can I make a bigot sympathetic to a modern audience? Certainly, it's possible. Dirty Harry - well, admittedly that was in the 70's - but he springs to mind.
It's just kind of a tough sell. It's a lot easier to extricate bigoted elements from a hero or anti-hero altogether rather than deal with all that baggage. No one (for the most part) likes to consider themselves racist or sexist, so when you throw that element in, an audience almost immediately refuses to sympathize.
So what's the big deal? These are just words, after all. Well, yes, but words have power. 2 billion-odd people around the world live their lives by the words of a five thousand year old book still today. And there are any number of sentences that will raise your hackles, send you into a fury, or please you almost orgasmically for the rest of the day. And then there are individual words so potent in their use and so deeply entrenched in historical usage, that the word alone terrifies people.
These are the words we bowdlerize. When "fuck" no longer meant anything to me, I stopped calling it "the F-word." But there are soccer moms and infants running around saying "darn" and "pee-pee" because those are the words which have power over them. I suppose we ought not to judge people with different sensibilities - after all, as I mentioned last week, there are people who find the word "moist" repulsive for no real compelling reason.
I think perhaps what unites the words we bowdlerize are that they can be used as weapons. If someone said "Fuck you" to me when I was twelve (or even in certain circumstances today) it would probably really rile me up. Curse words are like generic weapons: a bullet or a knife tossed in your general direction. The slurs that cause real pain, the N-word, the C-word, and so forth, are like a laser-guided missile that can only harm one particular kind of person. And every time we deploy it we harm all of that kind of person, not just the individual it's directed against.
Calling someone an "asshole" is like saying "You're worthy of insult because of your actions, whoever you are." Calling someone an N-word is like saying, "You're worthy of insult because of who you are, regardless of your actions." And what's the proper response to that? An asshole can stop acting like an asshole. A POC or a woman can never stop being what they are, no matter how they act.
I might be disappearing up my own asshole at this point. These are thorny, complicated issues and I don't even really know what I'm trying to prove or to who. Maybe we could have a (civil, please!) discussion in the comments. Let me know what you think!
The actual subject of this post is "Unmentionable." As in, unmentionable words. If you've been anywhere near a device or another human being in the last week, you'll have heard that the president - our sitting president of these United States, Barack Obama - used the N-word on Marc Maron's podcast.
Much hay has been made in the media and the social media about this event. Actually, "event" seems like too strong of a word. Occurrence, maybe? Happenstance? Anyway, people are riled up about it. It's got us talking about censorship and race relations in this country, so that's a good thing.
I've been thinking lately about this need to bowdlerize words, and what that really represents. When I was a kid, I remember referring to the F-word and the S-word, and feeling very on the fence about whether "crap" and "pussy" were swears, and whether I could get in trouble for saying them. At my age, and after a four-year stint in the army, there is literally no traditional curse word which holds any kind of taboo for me.
The words that I consider truly offensive, that even as a writer I deploy with great sparseness and only after long deliberation, are a handful of ethnic and misogynistic slurs. Perhaps it makes me a coward, but, yes, even in the context of this blog post about unmentionable words, I won't be deploying the actual N-word or C-word, or a slur against Jewish people which begins with a "K."
I've had characters say these words. BRAINEATER JONES was set in the 1930s, and after reading a lot of the literature of the time, I realized that it was dishonest to pretend like white people in that era were concerned with sparing feelings. These words which we consider the height of taboo today were tossed around with a casualness that beggars the imagination. And, perhaps even more interesting, the silly words which we're allowed to say on basic cable were things you didn't say in mixed company in the '30s.
It's a tightrope walk for me as an author to know that I'm writing for the sensibilities of a modern audience and yet trying to stay true to a period, or perhaps a character. It's kind of a cliché that villains are the only ones who can kick puppies, smoke, and use slurs (consider Dennis Hopper in "Land of the Dead") but often that's true. Because how can I make a bigot sympathetic to a modern audience? Certainly, it's possible. Dirty Harry - well, admittedly that was in the 70's - but he springs to mind.
It's just kind of a tough sell. It's a lot easier to extricate bigoted elements from a hero or anti-hero altogether rather than deal with all that baggage. No one (for the most part) likes to consider themselves racist or sexist, so when you throw that element in, an audience almost immediately refuses to sympathize.
So what's the big deal? These are just words, after all. Well, yes, but words have power. 2 billion-odd people around the world live their lives by the words of a five thousand year old book still today. And there are any number of sentences that will raise your hackles, send you into a fury, or please you almost orgasmically for the rest of the day. And then there are individual words so potent in their use and so deeply entrenched in historical usage, that the word alone terrifies people.
These are the words we bowdlerize. When "fuck" no longer meant anything to me, I stopped calling it "the F-word." But there are soccer moms and infants running around saying "darn" and "pee-pee" because those are the words which have power over them. I suppose we ought not to judge people with different sensibilities - after all, as I mentioned last week, there are people who find the word "moist" repulsive for no real compelling reason.
I think perhaps what unites the words we bowdlerize are that they can be used as weapons. If someone said "Fuck you" to me when I was twelve (or even in certain circumstances today) it would probably really rile me up. Curse words are like generic weapons: a bullet or a knife tossed in your general direction. The slurs that cause real pain, the N-word, the C-word, and so forth, are like a laser-guided missile that can only harm one particular kind of person. And every time we deploy it we harm all of that kind of person, not just the individual it's directed against.
Calling someone an "asshole" is like saying "You're worthy of insult because of your actions, whoever you are." Calling someone an N-word is like saying, "You're worthy of insult because of who you are, regardless of your actions." And what's the proper response to that? An asshole can stop acting like an asshole. A POC or a woman can never stop being what they are, no matter how they act.
I might be disappearing up my own asshole at this point. These are thorny, complicated issues and I don't even really know what I'm trying to prove or to who. Maybe we could have a (civil, please!) discussion in the comments. Let me know what you think!
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
"T" is for "Tyranny"
To me, there is no more repulsive experience than touching newspaper. I know this is a little odd. I know millions upon millions of people, across the centuries, have enjoyed nothing better than the feel of a crisp Sunday paper in their hands. Lord knows I've read about it often enough.
The tactile feel of that strangely thin, almost gray paper is repellent to me. The smell, the touch, the sloughing off of newsprint is grotesque and malodorous. It doesn't come up very often anymore, as we've switched away from printed media, but I still have to fetch and immediately dispose of the pennysaver from our mailbox each week, which I do clenching it between two envelopes and holding it away from my body.
I have a distinct recollection of a near panic attack when very young and reading about Sherlock Holmes, hanging out in a train car, surrounding himself with dozens and dozens of newspapers. That was Doyle's way of showing us that Holmes was well-read, and kept abreast of all of the kind of Victorian minutia that he would seem to pull out of his ass at the end of every story. For me it sounded quite a bit like a personal hell.
I also remember a near physical revulsion watching an episode of "The X-Files" when carny geek The Conundrum began to make a papier-maché cocoon out of newspapers by licking them. The very idea that I might someday find myself in London and order fish and chips and have to actually...eat...off that repulsive material is enough to give me a shudder.
But here's the thing: I don't pretend this is universal. I'm well aware this is a personal, albeit odd peccadillo. I don't feel bad about it, because I know people who are equally disgusted by mushrooms, which I relish, or the word "moist" which I feel quite frankly completely neutral about, or, as was made famous by an episode of "The Three Stooges," some people will go into a fighting rage after hearing the song "Pop Goes the Weasel."
We all have and understand that other people have these, well, "preferences" isn't the right word, and I already used "peccadillos," so let's just say, proclivities, when it comes to food, music, and a whole variety of other little ordinary, everyday things. What I don't understand, or, frankly, just find exasperating, is that no one seems to project this understanding onto language.
If I had one wish for the literary community, it's that more writers and editors were linguists. We often call ourselves "linguists" in the sense that we use language, but I wish the study of language, actual linguistics, were more widespread in the community. I say this because I often find myself embroiled in debates that are completely devoid of the context that this greater understanding would provide.
As a metaphor, imagine you were trying to advocate for, say, parliamentary government. And you engage in a conversation with someone who literally can't understand anything outside of the Democrat/Republican dichotomy of American politics. You'd be trying to explain to someone who wants to debate about Social Security that there are, in fact, other methods of governance beyond our own. This is how I often feel when we get locked into debates about comma placement and spelling and that sort of thing.
French is an interesting counterpoint to English. France has a department of their government called the Académie française which dictates what is immutably correct in the French language. English has no such academy, which while it allows some flexibility even in our formal writing, means that we will forever be plagued by silly appeals to a non-existent authority.
I've often debated on this very blog things like the double spaced sentence and the Oxford comma, things which I feel strongly about. For that matter, I've pointed out how exhausting I find people who want to tell me to pronounce "sherbet" as "sher-bay" instead of "sherbert" or who argue that "ain't" or "irregardless" aren't words. If we limited ourselves to this kind of prescriptivist nonsense, we'd barely be able to communicate. Imagine having to justify yourself every time you used "LOL" or "selfie" in a sentence.
And I don't say this to be ridiculous. I say this to point out an important truth. Language is organic, and ever-changing. People are fond of saying that "gay" technically means happy...but no one uses it that way anymore. Not in close to a century. What point are you attempting to prove by making that argument? That you can't change with the times? That you're incapable of communicating with your fellow English-speakers?
The purpose of language is ease of communications. I have no issue with, say, a publishing house insisting that I use their house style. Where I take issue is when they insist that their house style is in some metaphysical way "correct." There is no "correct" English. We have rules that we generally adhere to in various situations, but overall the point is to communicate our ideas to other people. I wouldn't use 7334speak in a wedding invitation, and I wouldn't use the Chicago Manual of Style to compose a text.
I often think that ee cummings eschewed punctuation and Cormac McCarthy eschewed dialogue rules to prove a point about the futility of descriptivist tyranny over language. No one McCarthy or cummings dense or unreadable because they ignored the rules. Which is not to say that we should blanketly ignore rules, because, of course, a general set of rules allows for (say it with me now) ease of communication. I'm writing now in my blog style, which is different from my novel style, which is different from my work style, which is different from my speaking style, which is different from my texting style...and being aware of that, due to just my limited grounding in linguistics, means that I'm not walking around all the time talking about what's "right."
There is no universal "right" because there is no academy in English. There's just a variety of (often contradictory) style guides and an even greater variety of publishing house styles and a near infinite variety of personal styles. The only time you can truly be "wrong" in English is when you fail to communicate your point. Know what'm sayin'?
The tactile feel of that strangely thin, almost gray paper is repellent to me. The smell, the touch, the sloughing off of newsprint is grotesque and malodorous. It doesn't come up very often anymore, as we've switched away from printed media, but I still have to fetch and immediately dispose of the pennysaver from our mailbox each week, which I do clenching it between two envelopes and holding it away from my body.
I have a distinct recollection of a near panic attack when very young and reading about Sherlock Holmes, hanging out in a train car, surrounding himself with dozens and dozens of newspapers. That was Doyle's way of showing us that Holmes was well-read, and kept abreast of all of the kind of Victorian minutia that he would seem to pull out of his ass at the end of every story. For me it sounded quite a bit like a personal hell.
I also remember a near physical revulsion watching an episode of "The X-Files" when carny geek The Conundrum began to make a papier-maché cocoon out of newspapers by licking them. The very idea that I might someday find myself in London and order fish and chips and have to actually...eat...off that repulsive material is enough to give me a shudder.
But here's the thing: I don't pretend this is universal. I'm well aware this is a personal, albeit odd peccadillo. I don't feel bad about it, because I know people who are equally disgusted by mushrooms, which I relish, or the word "moist" which I feel quite frankly completely neutral about, or, as was made famous by an episode of "The Three Stooges," some people will go into a fighting rage after hearing the song "Pop Goes the Weasel."
We all have and understand that other people have these, well, "preferences" isn't the right word, and I already used "peccadillos," so let's just say, proclivities, when it comes to food, music, and a whole variety of other little ordinary, everyday things. What I don't understand, or, frankly, just find exasperating, is that no one seems to project this understanding onto language.
If I had one wish for the literary community, it's that more writers and editors were linguists. We often call ourselves "linguists" in the sense that we use language, but I wish the study of language, actual linguistics, were more widespread in the community. I say this because I often find myself embroiled in debates that are completely devoid of the context that this greater understanding would provide.
As a metaphor, imagine you were trying to advocate for, say, parliamentary government. And you engage in a conversation with someone who literally can't understand anything outside of the Democrat/Republican dichotomy of American politics. You'd be trying to explain to someone who wants to debate about Social Security that there are, in fact, other methods of governance beyond our own. This is how I often feel when we get locked into debates about comma placement and spelling and that sort of thing.
French is an interesting counterpoint to English. France has a department of their government called the Académie française which dictates what is immutably correct in the French language. English has no such academy, which while it allows some flexibility even in our formal writing, means that we will forever be plagued by silly appeals to a non-existent authority.
I've often debated on this very blog things like the double spaced sentence and the Oxford comma, things which I feel strongly about. For that matter, I've pointed out how exhausting I find people who want to tell me to pronounce "sherbet" as "sher-bay" instead of "sherbert" or who argue that "ain't" or "irregardless" aren't words. If we limited ourselves to this kind of prescriptivist nonsense, we'd barely be able to communicate. Imagine having to justify yourself every time you used "LOL" or "selfie" in a sentence.
And I don't say this to be ridiculous. I say this to point out an important truth. Language is organic, and ever-changing. People are fond of saying that "gay" technically means happy...but no one uses it that way anymore. Not in close to a century. What point are you attempting to prove by making that argument? That you can't change with the times? That you're incapable of communicating with your fellow English-speakers?
The purpose of language is ease of communications. I have no issue with, say, a publishing house insisting that I use their house style. Where I take issue is when they insist that their house style is in some metaphysical way "correct." There is no "correct" English. We have rules that we generally adhere to in various situations, but overall the point is to communicate our ideas to other people. I wouldn't use 7334speak in a wedding invitation, and I wouldn't use the Chicago Manual of Style to compose a text.
I often think that ee cummings eschewed punctuation and Cormac McCarthy eschewed dialogue rules to prove a point about the futility of descriptivist tyranny over language. No one McCarthy or cummings dense or unreadable because they ignored the rules. Which is not to say that we should blanketly ignore rules, because, of course, a general set of rules allows for (say it with me now) ease of communication. I'm writing now in my blog style, which is different from my novel style, which is different from my work style, which is different from my speaking style, which is different from my texting style...and being aware of that, due to just my limited grounding in linguistics, means that I'm not walking around all the time talking about what's "right."
There is no universal "right" because there is no academy in English. There's just a variety of (often contradictory) style guides and an even greater variety of publishing house styles and a near infinite variety of personal styles. The only time you can truly be "wrong" in English is when you fail to communicate your point. Know what'm sayin'?
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
"S" is for "Severed"
It just so happens that I work with two publishers at present, and by some quirk of fate the company names follow one another in the alphabet. So last week I wrote about my debut company, Red Adept Publishing, and this week I get to write about my sophomore and tertiary company, Severed Press.
Fortunately for me, both of these companies have been extremely good to me. RAP is a general-purpose, multi-genre company, but Severed is, for my money, the finest small publisher of horror in the world. All of my work can be described as "horror," though I wouldn't argue with "dark science fiction" for BILLY or "urban fantasy" or even "bizarro" (as dubbed by Brian Keene) for BRAINEATER. Overall, though, I'm comfortable with "horror" and my knowledge of the genre is pretty fair to middling, so I have no problem weighing in here.
There are quite a number of extremely high quality small horror publishers out there. Samhain, Sinister Grin, Ragnarok, DarkFuse, Evil Jester, and Deadite spring to mind. (There are a lot more - I don't mean to snub anyone.) But for my money, Severed Press is the finest out there, certainly the finest publisher of zombie horror, and probably the finest of horror overall. You need look no further than their stable of authors - titans of the genre like Wrath James White, David Bernstein, Jake Bible, and Tim Curran, not to mention some friends of mine like Ian McClellan, H.E. Goodhue, Suzanne Robb, Phillip Tomasso...the list goes on and on. (Again, not to snub anyone. If you're that person I didn't mention, just know that it means I value you the most of all.)
So how did a shit-hot outfit like this get involved with a shit-for-brains like me? Well, the story is like something out of a fairy tale. A fairy tale full of mutilations and horror...so, I guess, just an ordinary fairy tale.
Anyway, it was September of 2013. BRAINEATER had been picked up by RAP and was scheduled to come out in October. An old mentor of mine in the army had once given me the advice "don't rest on your laurels" and it's stuck with me like few other pearls of wisdom ever have. So I realized that with a book coming out, the only awful thing I could do was to not be ready to get another book out there. At the time I still was (and to be frank, I still am) reaching for that brass ring of an agent and a Big 5 deal, and a 7-figure advance. I think most of us will never give up on that dream until we get it, or we start getting the same kind of money out of self-pubbing or small pubbing.
So I began querying my masterpiece THE GHOUL ARCHIPELAGO to every agent in NYC. I have to admit, there was a noticeable difference in interest this time around when I could include "my first novel will be forthcoming" in my query letters - it shows you're not just some schlub. Almost as compelling to me as the thought of a Big 5 deal was a deal with one of the top-tier horror presses, so on Sunday, September 15, I submitted to Severed Press.
Now, Severed is located in Hobart, Tasmania. I believe I sent my query letter in the middle of the night, EST time. And I received a reply in the middle of the night (my time) Monday saying, "send us the full manuscript." That was spookily fast, and bear in mind that I'd submitted to Severed before and been rejected. That was probably the first time I realized that other people might feel as excited about TGA as I did.
I had no higher hopes of TGA being picked up by Severed than I did that it would be picked up by some rock star agent like Janet Reid or Jenny Bent, both of whom, I believe, don't represent horror, so that was a terrible metaphor, but fuck you, this is my blog, I do what I want. So imagine my surprise when I went out that Thursday to a bar for my birthday...and just after midnight my phone dinged.
Now, this was back in the heady days of 2013 before your Meghan Trainors and your iPhone 6s, so receiving an email wasn't necessarily in real time. But it had happened! Severed had picked up my magnum opus, and they had done it just a few minuted before midnight, my time, so it had been on my birthday. Best birthday present I ever received, and I had to buy a round for all my friends to celebrate. Or maybe one of them bought me the round. I can't really remember. It was my birthday and I was drunk as shit.
Working with Severed has been stupendous. They're an honest company, with a great contract, and, like I already said, their reputation is second-to-none. One last quick story to tell you what working with them is like. When I went back to Severed with BILLY AND THE CLONEASAURUS, Severed forgot to send me my three gratis author copies. No big deal. I wrote to them and mentioned that I needed ten for an upcoming convention, and would pay my usual author rate.
(By the way - this is just an aside - but for those of you who are always asking me for free autographed books - yeah, I have to pay for those. So, yeah, okay, Dad, let me just give you some free shit.)
You would have thought Severed realized they had kicked my wife in the throat. They were so apologetic, and - get this - they said they would not only get out the three courtesy copies they owed me tout suite, but they would also give me the ten books I needed for the convention!
!!!
So, basically they went out of pocket around $100 because of an honest mistake. That basically sealed the deal for me. After that, I began singing Severed's praises every chance I get. These aren't just honest people, they're decent people, and they care about keeping their authors happy. And I get to work with them. :D
Fortunately for me, both of these companies have been extremely good to me. RAP is a general-purpose, multi-genre company, but Severed is, for my money, the finest small publisher of horror in the world. All of my work can be described as "horror," though I wouldn't argue with "dark science fiction" for BILLY or "urban fantasy" or even "bizarro" (as dubbed by Brian Keene) for BRAINEATER. Overall, though, I'm comfortable with "horror" and my knowledge of the genre is pretty fair to middling, so I have no problem weighing in here.
There are quite a number of extremely high quality small horror publishers out there. Samhain, Sinister Grin, Ragnarok, DarkFuse, Evil Jester, and Deadite spring to mind. (There are a lot more - I don't mean to snub anyone.) But for my money, Severed Press is the finest out there, certainly the finest publisher of zombie horror, and probably the finest of horror overall. You need look no further than their stable of authors - titans of the genre like Wrath James White, David Bernstein, Jake Bible, and Tim Curran, not to mention some friends of mine like Ian McClellan, H.E. Goodhue, Suzanne Robb, Phillip Tomasso...the list goes on and on. (Again, not to snub anyone. If you're that person I didn't mention, just know that it means I value you the most of all.)
 |
| It took me, like, a year to figure out that this was a bisected (or...severed) fountain pen nub. |
Anyway, it was September of 2013. BRAINEATER had been picked up by RAP and was scheduled to come out in October. An old mentor of mine in the army had once given me the advice "don't rest on your laurels" and it's stuck with me like few other pearls of wisdom ever have. So I realized that with a book coming out, the only awful thing I could do was to not be ready to get another book out there. At the time I still was (and to be frank, I still am) reaching for that brass ring of an agent and a Big 5 deal, and a 7-figure advance. I think most of us will never give up on that dream until we get it, or we start getting the same kind of money out of self-pubbing or small pubbing.
So I began querying my masterpiece THE GHOUL ARCHIPELAGO to every agent in NYC. I have to admit, there was a noticeable difference in interest this time around when I could include "my first novel will be forthcoming" in my query letters - it shows you're not just some schlub. Almost as compelling to me as the thought of a Big 5 deal was a deal with one of the top-tier horror presses, so on Sunday, September 15, I submitted to Severed Press.
Now, Severed is located in Hobart, Tasmania. I believe I sent my query letter in the middle of the night, EST time. And I received a reply in the middle of the night (my time) Monday saying, "send us the full manuscript." That was spookily fast, and bear in mind that I'd submitted to Severed before and been rejected. That was probably the first time I realized that other people might feel as excited about TGA as I did.
I had no higher hopes of TGA being picked up by Severed than I did that it would be picked up by some rock star agent like Janet Reid or Jenny Bent, both of whom, I believe, don't represent horror, so that was a terrible metaphor, but fuck you, this is my blog, I do what I want. So imagine my surprise when I went out that Thursday to a bar for my birthday...and just after midnight my phone dinged.
Now, this was back in the heady days of 2013 before your Meghan Trainors and your iPhone 6s, so receiving an email wasn't necessarily in real time. But it had happened! Severed had picked up my magnum opus, and they had done it just a few minuted before midnight, my time, so it had been on my birthday. Best birthday present I ever received, and I had to buy a round for all my friends to celebrate. Or maybe one of them bought me the round. I can't really remember. It was my birthday and I was drunk as shit.
Working with Severed has been stupendous. They're an honest company, with a great contract, and, like I already said, their reputation is second-to-none. One last quick story to tell you what working with them is like. When I went back to Severed with BILLY AND THE CLONEASAURUS, Severed forgot to send me my three gratis author copies. No big deal. I wrote to them and mentioned that I needed ten for an upcoming convention, and would pay my usual author rate.
(By the way - this is just an aside - but for those of you who are always asking me for free autographed books - yeah, I have to pay for those. So, yeah, okay, Dad, let me just give you some free shit.)
You would have thought Severed realized they had kicked my wife in the throat. They were so apologetic, and - get this - they said they would not only get out the three courtesy copies they owed me tout suite, but they would also give me the ten books I needed for the convention!
!!!
So, basically they went out of pocket around $100 because of an honest mistake. That basically sealed the deal for me. After that, I began singing Severed's praises every chance I get. These aren't just honest people, they're decent people, and they care about keeping their authors happy. And I get to work with them. :D
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
"R" is for "Red"
I'm a pretty heavy-ass drinker. (In fact, I'm drinking right now.) If you thought all the wacky drunkennness of BRAINEATER JONES was some kind of wish fulfillment, rest assured, that's pretty much my life, sans all the having a biological necessity for drinking. Pretty much every time Jones was taking a drink in the book I was also reaching for a drink.
No surprise, then, that on Saturday nights I really like to tie one on. No normal weekday drinking for me! Saturday is when I can really get sloshed, sit down, and watch DVDs until the wee hours of the morning. Because fuck it, Sunday will attend to itself.
But what if I told you that one time Sunday did not, in fact, attend to itself?
I remember the day distinctly. It was January...9, I think?...2013. I guess I don't remember the date that specifically. But I do remember the morning well! I rarely get phone calls just as a general rule. And I can't even think of how many times I've gotten a phone call on a Sunday morning before noon. In fact, this may have been the first time now that I think about it.
I fumbled for my phone.
"Hello?"
My mouth felt like paper.
"Hello is this Stephen?"
"Yes..."
"This is Lynn from Red Adept Publishing."
"Okay..."
I didn't understand what was going on. But I knew how hungover I was. I had to try to get some water into my mouth from the bathroom sink while I was talking to this person.
"I'm calling because we've accepted your manuscript."
Well, now isn't that a better reason for a Sunday morning call than anything else? I hoped I didn't sound like a complete lush, but I was rather a lot happier for the rest of the day. My first novel was going to be published. I guess it's a moment you never forget. I wish I hadn't been hungover for it, but I guess that's appropriate for the birth of BRAINEATER.
Red Adept has turned out to be a boon in my life. If there's one thing I've learned - if there's one thing I wish I could impart on younger writers, much as I despise writing advice - authors are a tribe. You don't really get a pass to join the tribe just by becoming published. But once you are you can start reaching out. It's amazing what kind of doors the ability to say, "Here's my book" will open for you.
Red Adept came with a tribe pre-baked in. Lynn, the owner, the same lady who made that call to me that fateful Sunday morning, insisted upon it. We all had to join the RAP Authors FB group. I'd never been in a writing group before. For one thing the whole idea stinks of desperation to me: unpublished authors jerking one another off in a circle and getting jealous if one of them makes it. To be quite honest I had never sought one out, even with the advent of the internet or advice to the contrary. Writing was never really a team sport to me.
The RAP group changed my mind. Well, maybe it was a bit different from my preconceived notion of a writers group, because we had all been accepted for publication. But having a safe space to interact with other authors, where you don't have to bore the piss out of ordinary bystanders because (repeat it with me now) WRITECRAFT IS BORING was actually quite nice. And we dug into marketing schemes and things like planning to do cons together. And now I've met members of my tribe IRL and some still just online, but anyway I've started cheering them on.
And I learned another important truth about this business, one which had perhaps never occurred to me before, which is that this isn't a competition. Writing isn't a zero sum game and no reader buys just one book. When one of the members of the tribe has success, the whole tribe is elevated as a result. One person's success improves the image of the group, and by interacting with one another you become part of a group of successful people, and that (hopefully) leads to success yourself. I've had so many doors open to me because of the authors I met through RAP that I couldn't even really begin to adequately list them here.
Well, that went off a bit from what, if anything, I initially meant to say, but there you have it. "R" is for "Red Adept," my first publisher, home to my best mates and peers in the business. Ten years from now I wonder where we'll be. Some of us will be long done with the whole writing thing, a fluke or a life goal long since given up on. Others of us, I have no doubt, will be unicorns, living off our work. I hope I'm not still in the trenches, but I imagine I will be. Will some of us be dead? Have movies made of our work? Go quite mad? Have t-shirts with our faces on them? Time will tell, I suppose.
No surprise, then, that on Saturday nights I really like to tie one on. No normal weekday drinking for me! Saturday is when I can really get sloshed, sit down, and watch DVDs until the wee hours of the morning. Because fuck it, Sunday will attend to itself.
But what if I told you that one time Sunday did not, in fact, attend to itself?
I remember the day distinctly. It was January...9, I think?...2013. I guess I don't remember the date that specifically. But I do remember the morning well! I rarely get phone calls just as a general rule. And I can't even think of how many times I've gotten a phone call on a Sunday morning before noon. In fact, this may have been the first time now that I think about it.
I fumbled for my phone.
"Hello?"
My mouth felt like paper.
"Hello is this Stephen?"
"Yes..."
"This is Lynn from Red Adept Publishing."
"Okay..."
I didn't understand what was going on. But I knew how hungover I was. I had to try to get some water into my mouth from the bathroom sink while I was talking to this person.
"I'm calling because we've accepted your manuscript."
Well, now isn't that a better reason for a Sunday morning call than anything else? I hoped I didn't sound like a complete lush, but I was rather a lot happier for the rest of the day. My first novel was going to be published. I guess it's a moment you never forget. I wish I hadn't been hungover for it, but I guess that's appropriate for the birth of BRAINEATER.
Red Adept has turned out to be a boon in my life. If there's one thing I've learned - if there's one thing I wish I could impart on younger writers, much as I despise writing advice - authors are a tribe. You don't really get a pass to join the tribe just by becoming published. But once you are you can start reaching out. It's amazing what kind of doors the ability to say, "Here's my book" will open for you.
Red Adept came with a tribe pre-baked in. Lynn, the owner, the same lady who made that call to me that fateful Sunday morning, insisted upon it. We all had to join the RAP Authors FB group. I'd never been in a writing group before. For one thing the whole idea stinks of desperation to me: unpublished authors jerking one another off in a circle and getting jealous if one of them makes it. To be quite honest I had never sought one out, even with the advent of the internet or advice to the contrary. Writing was never really a team sport to me.
The RAP group changed my mind. Well, maybe it was a bit different from my preconceived notion of a writers group, because we had all been accepted for publication. But having a safe space to interact with other authors, where you don't have to bore the piss out of ordinary bystanders because (repeat it with me now) WRITECRAFT IS BORING was actually quite nice. And we dug into marketing schemes and things like planning to do cons together. And now I've met members of my tribe IRL and some still just online, but anyway I've started cheering them on.
And I learned another important truth about this business, one which had perhaps never occurred to me before, which is that this isn't a competition. Writing isn't a zero sum game and no reader buys just one book. When one of the members of the tribe has success, the whole tribe is elevated as a result. One person's success improves the image of the group, and by interacting with one another you become part of a group of successful people, and that (hopefully) leads to success yourself. I've had so many doors open to me because of the authors I met through RAP that I couldn't even really begin to adequately list them here.
Well, that went off a bit from what, if anything, I initially meant to say, but there you have it. "R" is for "Red Adept," my first publisher, home to my best mates and peers in the business. Ten years from now I wonder where we'll be. Some of us will be long done with the whole writing thing, a fluke or a life goal long since given up on. Others of us, I have no doubt, will be unicorns, living off our work. I hope I'm not still in the trenches, but I imagine I will be. Will some of us be dead? Have movies made of our work? Go quite mad? Have t-shirts with our faces on them? Time will tell, I suppose.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
"Q" is for "Quit It"
Let's just admit it: authors are annoying. Hell, I'm probably annoying you right now. (It's like I'm psychic or something, right?)
Which is not to say authors are not also sometimes criminally malfeasant. That also happens, as I outlined here at some length. But I don't want to get into the truly dark and tragic side of this industry with this post (and trust, me, there is some dark, dark shit out there.) This is just some shit that authors need to knock the fuck off.
Posting Excerpts from their Work-In-Progress
Seriously, who is this for? Listen, this is coming from a person who has felt the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, and the creamy middles of manuscript composition: nobody cares. I get it, I get it, you found the mot juste, you just crafted a paragraph that would make Hemingway and Faulkner silently weep in envy. But outside of the context of the other 100,000-odd words of that novel you're putting together, your perfect little jewel of an excerpt is about as interesting as a two second clip from "The Godfather." If your middle initials aren't "R.R." and people aren't waiting on pins and needles for your long-overdue sequel, this is just masturbation.
Equivalent annoying real person behavior: Posting a photo of your breakfast on Instagram.
Defending the Importance of Grammar Rules
Here's another one that's coming from a place of love. Look, I'm a journeyman at this craft, too. I have strong opinions about the Oxford comma, double-spacing sentences, and the proper time to use a semicolon*. I've even engaged in debates over the same, both on this blog and in (check out this adjective here, it's gonna be a good one) appropriate venues. But that meme you posted about how the world is absolutely going to hell because someone used a grocers' apostrophe once? Yeah, nobody cares. You know what the people who saw that sign advertising "cantaloupe's" did? They managed to get through their day, exactly as cantaloupe-free or cantaloupe-filled as they desired. Lives have very rarely been lost due to grammatical errors (the Battle of Balaclava being a notable exception) and communication will continue in spite of your grave misgiving about textspeak.
Equivalent annoying real person behavior: That insurance salesman at a party who just can't stop talking about how fascinating insurance regulations are.
*never; well, mostly never
Posting Listicles on Their Blogs
It's like, yeah, we get it, you read Cracked once. Golf clap for you, trailblazer.
Equivalent annoying real person behavior: Pretending you saw a movie you only really read stuff online about.
Which is not to say authors are not also sometimes criminally malfeasant. That also happens, as I outlined here at some length. But I don't want to get into the truly dark and tragic side of this industry with this post (and trust, me, there is some dark, dark shit out there.) This is just some shit that authors need to knock the fuck off.
Posting Excerpts from their Work-In-Progress
Seriously, who is this for? Listen, this is coming from a person who has felt the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, and the creamy middles of manuscript composition: nobody cares. I get it, I get it, you found the mot juste, you just crafted a paragraph that would make Hemingway and Faulkner silently weep in envy. But outside of the context of the other 100,000-odd words of that novel you're putting together, your perfect little jewel of an excerpt is about as interesting as a two second clip from "The Godfather." If your middle initials aren't "R.R." and people aren't waiting on pins and needles for your long-overdue sequel, this is just masturbation.
Equivalent annoying real person behavior: Posting a photo of your breakfast on Instagram.
Defending the Importance of Grammar Rules
Here's another one that's coming from a place of love. Look, I'm a journeyman at this craft, too. I have strong opinions about the Oxford comma, double-spacing sentences, and the proper time to use a semicolon*. I've even engaged in debates over the same, both on this blog and in (check out this adjective here, it's gonna be a good one) appropriate venues. But that meme you posted about how the world is absolutely going to hell because someone used a grocers' apostrophe once? Yeah, nobody cares. You know what the people who saw that sign advertising "cantaloupe's" did? They managed to get through their day, exactly as cantaloupe-free or cantaloupe-filled as they desired. Lives have very rarely been lost due to grammatical errors (the Battle of Balaclava being a notable exception) and communication will continue in spite of your grave misgiving about textspeak.
Equivalent annoying real person behavior: That insurance salesman at a party who just can't stop talking about how fascinating insurance regulations are.
*never; well, mostly never
Posting Listicles on Their Blogs
It's like, yeah, we get it, you read Cracked once. Golf clap for you, trailblazer.
Equivalent annoying real person behavior: Pretending you saw a movie you only really read stuff online about.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
"P" is for "Primetime"
Have you had a few days? Have you had time to let it settle down? If not to understand it, at least to accept it? Maybe you've given it a rewatch to see if it's better with expectations lowered down to reality?
Television characters occupy a unique spot in the pantheon of our subconscious. All fictional characters occupy a strange place, in that they're not real, and yet they raise emotions in us, they make us care about events that never took place and people who never existed. They allow us to project ourselves into strange situations, and unlike real people we can never disappoint them.
Television, though, is a unique medium. A character in a movie is someone we may idealize, but ultimately they'll never be more than a few hundred lines, a few hours of running time, and though their feats may be great, worldchanging even, their scope is limited. A television show, though, comes to us every week, for most of the year, and sometimes for a great many years.
In the sense that I have a "relationship" - one-sided though it may be, and ethereal though it may be - with Homer Simpson, I have had that relationship with him for twice as long as I've been married to my wife. Homer has been a part of my life - albeit, only for a half hour once a week - since I was seven. I've watched The Simpsons through every era of my life, when I was in joy, when I was in pain, and watched them go through their joys and pains. I feel like Homer is my friend.
But he's not. He never can be. He doesn't exist. As much as I can sympathize and empathize with him, he'll never be able to return the favor. We'll never have a conversation, he'll never offer me advice, except obliquely in his conversations with others. (In the case of Homer, of course, that's probably not such a bad thing...) I'll never be able to offer him comfort or even to buy him a beer.
I think what separates television as a medium from film and writing, if I were to boil it down to a word, is anticipation. Yes, there's anticipation in waiting for a movie to come out, but once it's out it's out, and you can own it and watch it any time. A novel you can anticipate the ending of the story, but the only limitation is how fast you can read.
With TV, though, I have to wait seven days, to the dot, to find out what happens next. Sometimes longer. Sometimes two weeks when there's a holiday, sometimes months when there's a cliffhanger season finale. In the micro sense, there's the anticipation of a three- or six-act story broken up by minutes of commercial. A masterful television show uses commercial breaks to raise the stakes and raise anticipation so that you're dying to know what happens next. And then, in the macro sense, it makes you want to tune in next week. And then, in the even more macro sense, it makes you want to tune in next season.
Television is about anticipation. Yes, I've only shared 90 actual hours with Don Draper and crew. But I've done it over the past seven years. And how much of that time have I spent dying to know what happens next? That setup means that television characters live in your consciousness for much longer than any other character. A movie character is there for two hours. A novel character might be there for longer. But a television character can begin to feel like an old friend. As I mentioned above, I've had "relationships" with TV characters that have lasted longer than friendships.
You know what a background app is in your phone or your computer? It's something that's constantly running, even if you don't notice it or think about it, like, say, anti-virus. A good television show is like a background app. No, you're not constantly consciously considering it, but it's always there in your subconscious, simmering.
This week we said goodbye to an old friend. Since this post has gone on a bit longer than I thought it would, I think I'll wait until Friday to get into the trials and tribulations of the Sterling-Cooper crew. And just like that, I leave you in desperate antici...
Television characters occupy a unique spot in the pantheon of our subconscious. All fictional characters occupy a strange place, in that they're not real, and yet they raise emotions in us, they make us care about events that never took place and people who never existed. They allow us to project ourselves into strange situations, and unlike real people we can never disappoint them.
Television, though, is a unique medium. A character in a movie is someone we may idealize, but ultimately they'll never be more than a few hundred lines, a few hours of running time, and though their feats may be great, worldchanging even, their scope is limited. A television show, though, comes to us every week, for most of the year, and sometimes for a great many years.
In the sense that I have a "relationship" - one-sided though it may be, and ethereal though it may be - with Homer Simpson, I have had that relationship with him for twice as long as I've been married to my wife. Homer has been a part of my life - albeit, only for a half hour once a week - since I was seven. I've watched The Simpsons through every era of my life, when I was in joy, when I was in pain, and watched them go through their joys and pains. I feel like Homer is my friend.
But he's not. He never can be. He doesn't exist. As much as I can sympathize and empathize with him, he'll never be able to return the favor. We'll never have a conversation, he'll never offer me advice, except obliquely in his conversations with others. (In the case of Homer, of course, that's probably not such a bad thing...) I'll never be able to offer him comfort or even to buy him a beer.
I think what separates television as a medium from film and writing, if I were to boil it down to a word, is anticipation. Yes, there's anticipation in waiting for a movie to come out, but once it's out it's out, and you can own it and watch it any time. A novel you can anticipate the ending of the story, but the only limitation is how fast you can read.
With TV, though, I have to wait seven days, to the dot, to find out what happens next. Sometimes longer. Sometimes two weeks when there's a holiday, sometimes months when there's a cliffhanger season finale. In the micro sense, there's the anticipation of a three- or six-act story broken up by minutes of commercial. A masterful television show uses commercial breaks to raise the stakes and raise anticipation so that you're dying to know what happens next. And then, in the macro sense, it makes you want to tune in next week. And then, in the even more macro sense, it makes you want to tune in next season.
Television is about anticipation. Yes, I've only shared 90 actual hours with Don Draper and crew. But I've done it over the past seven years. And how much of that time have I spent dying to know what happens next? That setup means that television characters live in your consciousness for much longer than any other character. A movie character is there for two hours. A novel character might be there for longer. But a television character can begin to feel like an old friend. As I mentioned above, I've had "relationships" with TV characters that have lasted longer than friendships.
You know what a background app is in your phone or your computer? It's something that's constantly running, even if you don't notice it or think about it, like, say, anti-virus. A good television show is like a background app. No, you're not constantly consciously considering it, but it's always there in your subconscious, simmering.
This week we said goodbye to an old friend. Since this post has gone on a bit longer than I thought it would, I think I'll wait until Friday to get into the trials and tribulations of the Sterling-Cooper crew. And just like that, I leave you in desperate antici...
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
"O" is for "Origins"
Here's something that might be interesting. I don't know. It might and it mightn't. But AT HELL'S GATES is a collaborative, all-volunteer enterprise, and so sometimes I find myself doing weird random chores for the good of the series. I actually wrote the back cover copy for the second volume, ORIGINS OF EVIL, which is probably something that you don't normally wonder about. ("Gee, I wonder who wrote this...")
Back cover copy is sometimes called a "blurb" (which it's not) and sometimes a "synopsis" (which it's also not) so for simplicity's sake I always just call it "back cover copy" or "jacket copy." (In case you're wondering, in the literary world a "blurb" is the attaboy quote from another author usually stamped on the front of a book, and a "synopsis" is a minimum of one page complete summary of the book, including all spoilers and the ending, used for editorial and purchasing purposes.)
So I thought it might be interesting to look at my thoughts about writing the jacket copy for AHGII. The text is in green and annotated with my thoughts in white. Enjoy! Or don't. I don't really give a shit.
Welcome back to Hell’s Gates! I originally wrote "Welcome back to AT HELL'S GATES" which Shana, the curator, rightly changed. I meant welcome back to the series, but in the final version it's less of a grammatical nightmare. The palpable sense of dread may seem familiar, but this time things are a bit…different. Fresher. Newer. As though just recently born… This was my attempt to be tantalizing.
See that squealing baby over there? He could grow up to be a lifesaving doctor (or perhaps the antichrist.) What about that scientist burning the midnight oil? He could be working on a bug zapper (or a doomsday device.) Did you catch that comet out of the corner of your eye? It might bring good luck (or an apocalyptic plague.) I decided with this paragraph to establish a pattern and repeat it three times, three supposedly being the perfect number for examples. The first one was just a generic idea that I had, and the other two were specific examples from the book. The comet was my story (hey, self-promotion is one of the few benefits of being assigned to write the jacket copy) and the bug zapper was from our big fish, Mark Tufo. Actually, this entire volume's theme, which I also created, was reverse engineered so that we could include Tufo's piece. All the other authors were then invited to follow the theme.
Yes, every darkness has a source, every monster has a birthplace, and every evil has an origin. Threes again. In the second volume of the #1 Bestselling AT HELL’S GATES series, twenty-three of the finest dark fiction authors working today will force you to witness the ORIGINS OF EVIL. I was very excited when the first volume got a #1 button from Amazon UK because I knew we'd be able to promote ourselves as "#1 Bestselling" forever. Each unique tale of terror traces an unspeakable horror back to its very beginning.
All proceeds from this horror anthology series go to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, a charity benefiting military veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury. The authors and editors of this series are pleased to donate their time and effort to a truly worthy cause. I either lifted this paragraph wholesale or altered it slightly from the jacket copy of the first volume, which was written by the inimitable S.G. Lee. It was important to me in the jacket copy to balance the horror content with the charitable intent, because I assume those attract two slightly different audiences, although obviously there's an overlap or we wouldn't be doing this.
So sit back, relax, support a fine charity, and enjoy twenty-three tales of dawning calamity from some of horror fiction’s leading lights. This is sometimes called an "elevator pitch" - in other words, if you only had an elevator ride to sell your product to someone, what would you say? In one sentence, I tried to capture all the beats that went before: charity, horror, origins, great authors. Bam.
Well hopefully this was a little bit illuminating about how an author (or, me, anyway) goes about writing jacket copy. And make sure to check out this volume and the whole series. If I haven't sold you on it by now, I've failed at my appointed task. :)
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
"N" is for "Not"
Let me pose a question:
A Question
What's the difference between Daniel Tosh telling a rape joke and Louis C.K. telling a joke about white privilege?
Pretty loaded stuff for a Wednesday morning, huh? I'll get to the answer in a minute, but to give you some time to ponder that, let me tell you a story.
A Story
We got to discussing the part which everyone loves, or at least, which stands out, of my first novel, which is the brothel scene. Basically my hero, an intelligent zombie, goes to an undead whorehouse, where they have mix-and-match body parts. I asked what she thought of that scene. Her response?
"Honestly, I worried you have a bunch of dismembered bodies in your basement."
I don't really remember how I responded at the time. I probably laughed it off, not knowing or not thinking any better.
An Answer
Okay, remember that question I posed at the beginning? Obviously, this is just an answer, not the answer. But if you ask me, Tosh telling a rape joke is insulting because Tosh is a callous hack who cares more about shock value than anything approaching artistic integrity. Artistically speaking, he's the kid on the playground with such low self esteem he eats worms for nickels.
Now, Louie on the other hand, is a diligent craftsman who has spent decades establishing his credentials as a thoughtful, intelligent comedian. His show has dealt responsibly with issues such as rape, racism, homophobia, bullying, drug abuse...basically any substantive issue of the day he has dealt with substantively, if not hilariously.
The difference, in a word (well, two words in Latin) is bona fides.
A Saying
There's an old saying, made most famous, of course, by Star Trek VI: "Only Nixon could go to China." Essentially, Nixon had made a career as an anti-communist. He had established his bona fides as early as his high school yearbook, where he was voted "Least Likely to be a Communist."
So when Nixon met with Mao Tse-Tung to attempt to normalize relations, no one could accuse him of kowtowing to the communists. (This was during the Cold War, and this sort of thing was all Very Important Business, apparently.)
This sort of thing is apparently still pertinent today. There are people who question the president's intentions when he's negotiating with Iran because they don't trust his bona fides. Or when an important senator talks about being inclusive even though he's made a career of excluding people, it rings false. It happens all over. What you say, what you promise, what you do, is all at least partially colored by who you are. Which can lead to tribalism, but it can also just lead to considering the source.
In fact, that reminds me of a second old saying:
A Second Saying
"When you've established a reputation for waking up early you can sleep until noon."
The Moral of the Story
The lady who I had talked to had a boss. And it turns out her boss had a policy, unbeknownst to me (and, to be fair, quite possibly unbeknownst to the offender - I have to assume she wasn't being malicious) that the artist is not the art, and you can't treat us that way.
Horror authors like me shouldn't be accused of being serial killers. Just like romance authors shouldn't be accused of being cheaters. And if there's a racist character in a book, it's entirely possible (in fact, pretty goddamned likely) that the author is shining a light on racism, not that he or she is racist.
Now, are there exceptions? Yes, of course. "The Birth of a Nation" was just a racist director directing a racist movie. Shit like that happens. Which brings us back around to bona fides.
A Rule of Thumb
I say, when in doubt, just remember that an artist is not the art. You need to judge both. But you need to judge both separately. I think Ayn Rand is an execrable human being, possibly the worst person who ever lived. (That can be a subject for another blog post if there's interest. Remind me in the comments if you care.) However, I can't say that her novels are bad because of it.
Then again there are great people who make shit art. There's an old Monty Python sketch about how Jesus may have been the Son of God, but he was a terrible, terrible carpenter. I think Bono does great charitable work, all over the world, for AIDS and water research and all kinds of things, but I deleted that godawful new U2 album from my iPhone as fast as my fingers could allow.
And a third example, perhaps the most perplexing of all. Orson Scott Card is a terrible, terrible person. And yet...ENDER'S GAME is a brilliant book. One of the greatest science fiction novels ever written. I'm torn, honestly torn, on how to consider any of Card's work. But the easiest way to do so is to separate the artist from the art, judge them each, and then decide what you can or can't live with.
A Second Question
Supposing you didn't like The Avengers: Age of Ultron, considered it sexist, maybe even misogynistic, but bearing in mind what you know about director Joss Whedon's bona fides...what is your final judgment on the matter? (Feel free to let me know in the comments below. Or in a storm of vitriol on Twitter. Whichever floats your boat.)
Now, Louie on the other hand, is a diligent craftsman who has spent decades establishing his credentials as a thoughtful, intelligent comedian. His show has dealt responsibly with issues such as rape, racism, homophobia, bullying, drug abuse...basically any substantive issue of the day he has dealt with substantively, if not hilariously.
The difference, in a word (well, two words in Latin) is bona fides.
A Saying
There's an old saying, made most famous, of course, by Star Trek VI: "Only Nixon could go to China." Essentially, Nixon had made a career as an anti-communist. He had established his bona fides as early as his high school yearbook, where he was voted "Least Likely to be a Communist."
So when Nixon met with Mao Tse-Tung to attempt to normalize relations, no one could accuse him of kowtowing to the communists. (This was during the Cold War, and this sort of thing was all Very Important Business, apparently.)
This sort of thing is apparently still pertinent today. There are people who question the president's intentions when he's negotiating with Iran because they don't trust his bona fides. Or when an important senator talks about being inclusive even though he's made a career of excluding people, it rings false. It happens all over. What you say, what you promise, what you do, is all at least partially colored by who you are. Which can lead to tribalism, but it can also just lead to considering the source.
In fact, that reminds me of a second old saying:
A Second Saying
"When you've established a reputation for waking up early you can sleep until noon."
The Moral of the Story
The lady who I had talked to had a boss. And it turns out her boss had a policy, unbeknownst to me (and, to be fair, quite possibly unbeknownst to the offender - I have to assume she wasn't being malicious) that the artist is not the art, and you can't treat us that way.
Horror authors like me shouldn't be accused of being serial killers. Just like romance authors shouldn't be accused of being cheaters. And if there's a racist character in a book, it's entirely possible (in fact, pretty goddamned likely) that the author is shining a light on racism, not that he or she is racist.
Now, are there exceptions? Yes, of course. "The Birth of a Nation" was just a racist director directing a racist movie. Shit like that happens. Which brings us back around to bona fides.
A Rule of Thumb
I say, when in doubt, just remember that an artist is not the art. You need to judge both. But you need to judge both separately. I think Ayn Rand is an execrable human being, possibly the worst person who ever lived. (That can be a subject for another blog post if there's interest. Remind me in the comments if you care.) However, I can't say that her novels are bad because of it.
Then again there are great people who make shit art. There's an old Monty Python sketch about how Jesus may have been the Son of God, but he was a terrible, terrible carpenter. I think Bono does great charitable work, all over the world, for AIDS and water research and all kinds of things, but I deleted that godawful new U2 album from my iPhone as fast as my fingers could allow.
And a third example, perhaps the most perplexing of all. Orson Scott Card is a terrible, terrible person. And yet...ENDER'S GAME is a brilliant book. One of the greatest science fiction novels ever written. I'm torn, honestly torn, on how to consider any of Card's work. But the easiest way to do so is to separate the artist from the art, judge them each, and then decide what you can or can't live with.
A Second Question
Supposing you didn't like The Avengers: Age of Ultron, considered it sexist, maybe even misogynistic, but bearing in mind what you know about director Joss Whedon's bona fides...what is your final judgment on the matter? (Feel free to let me know in the comments below. Or in a storm of vitriol on Twitter. Whichever floats your boat.)
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
"M" is for "Meaning"
I'm a big fan of "Easter eggs" which are references, especially meta-references, to a work of art hidden in another work of art. I'm immensely guilty of this. I think partially it's because my creative process is so chaotic that I'll have a tendency to say, "Oh, I should include that in my current work" when I see something on TV or in a movie or whatever.
BRAINEATER JONES, in particular is a patchwork of influences, and not just from horror and noir, though those are the primary ones. My tendency to lay Easter eggs is so extreme, in fact, that my publisher got worried I might be putting one over on them and might accidentally (or deliberately, depending on my level of malfeasance) stumble into lawsuit territory. So they asked me to make a list of every reference in the book. Trust me, if it hadn't been at someone else's behest I never would have combed through a book to do this, so good luck GHOUL and BILLY fans.
Anyway, I've never shared this file publicly, but at the suggestion of Brian Keene (who happens to be one of those Easter eggs - not to mention the only man to ever notice the "Unforgiven" one) I'm doing so now. There are well over 100 Easter eggs. So, without further ado, the secret meaning behind all those confusing lines in BRAINEATER JONES:
Character Names
Jones - drug culture slang for "craving"
William Hinzman - the name of the first actor to portray a modern zombie, "Night of the Living Dead"
Ernst Rothering - similar to Ernst Röhm, chief victim of the Night of the Long Knives. "Rothering" is German for "red herring." Rothering is also commonly called "the fat man" also what Sam Spade calls Gutman in THE MALTESE FALCON
a.k.a. Forday - i.e. "four day," that is, the fourth day, the day after Jesus rose
Gnaghi - the gravedigger from "Cemetery Man." Originally his name was Dampé, the gravedigger from "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time."
Baumer - probably a reference to Richie Tenenbaum's nickname from "The Royal Tenenbaums"
Ed and Joey - the grave robbers from "Return of the Living Dead 2"
Sailor Joe - a reference to Sailor Jerry, a famous tattooist and rum
Henk - a reference to another famous tattooist, Henk Schiffmacher
The Infected - a term for non-zombie zombies in "Resident Evil IV," "28 Days Later," et. al
Mighty Dull - reversal of "Dolemite," 1970s Blaxploitation character
Brigid - Brigid Shaugnessy, THE MALTESE FALCON
Kumaree Tong - a real-life Thai necromancy device, brought up in "Dead and Breakfast." Originally her name was Humma Kavula, Zaphod Beeblebrox's antagonist in the 2005 film version of "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
Skaron - reminiscent of Scarrans, primary antagonists in "Farscape," hinting that Skaron is a villain
Francoise - French for Franky, i.e. Frankenstein
Delamort - French for "of the dead." References Romero's films, and, by association, "Dellamorte Dellamore," the Italian title for "Cemetery Man"
Manny - I think this was the doorman in "The Single Guy"
Argento - Dario, the composer for "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) or his daughter Asia, star of "Land of the Dead"
Mr. Land and Mr. Day - i.e. Land of the Dead, Day of the Dead
Alcibé - latinization of Alcibiades
Place Names
Ganesh City - Ganesh is the Hindu god of wisdom and placing/removing obstacles, hence this refers to Jones's quest for his identity
Altstadt - German for "old city" the nice part of Düsseldorf specifically
Kelly Park - refers to Grace Kelly, i.e. "upscale"
Keene Ave - Brian Keene, author of THE RISING, et al.
Lionel Ave - Lionel is the main character in "Dead Alive"
Hallowed Grounds - the coffee shop in "Dawn of the Dead" (2004)
Rm 217 - this was the first room the National Guard guys cleared out in the Philadelphia slum, "Dawn of the Dead" (1978)
Three Rivers - Pittsburgh is sometimes called "The City of Three Rivers." Romero films and/or sets most of his movies there.
Buffalora Cemetery and "Resurrecturis" - refers to the cemetery and inscription from "Cemetery Man"
68th and Russo - "Night of the Living Dead" was released in 1968 and produced by John Russo
Hat Scratch Fever - play on the disease "cat scratch fever," basically, if a guy was sitting with his hat covering his crotch he'd be scratching it because of his erection at Mighty Dull's brothel
Port-au-Pauper - Little Haiti. The capital of Haiti is Port-au-Prince and plays on the story The Prince and the Pauper.
101 Gateway Lane - address of Nick Knight, a vampire detective, in "Forever Knight"
44 Bow Street, Apartment 3C - address and apartment of the main characters in "Mission Hill"
General
1 Nov
Dead narrator/hero facedown in a pool - alludes to "Sunset Boulevard"
Three sunken statues - alludes to THE SIRENS OF TITAN by Kurt Vonnegut
Inscription - entrance to the gates of Hell in Dante's INFERNO. Yes, this implies that Ganesh may be a Hell or Purgatory.
p. 3 - "dust in the wind" - Kansas song
p. 10 - "Clean. And well-lighted." Alludes to Hemingway's "Clean and Well-Lighted Place."
2 Nov
p. 18 "the 1-2-5" - the fictional police precinct from the U.S. version of "Life on Mars"
3 Nov
R51 - alphabet code for RE1, the original Resident Evil
4 Nov
p. 29 "they call me Braineater" - this is the first time (I think) Jones refers to himself by the name others call him and alludes to the same instance in "Samurai Jack," which I think may itself allude to “they call me Mr. Tibbs” in "In the Heat of the Night"
p. 33 “as a squid on Tuesday” - in Futurama Zoidberg says he’s “friskier than a squid on Tuesday” one episode for unclear reasons.
p. 37 - “Sonny Jim” - Klaus calls Ned this in "The Life Aquatic"
5 Nov
Grim Reaper - references perhaps our greatest national cultural treasure, "I Know What You Did Last Summer"
6 Nov
Liber Mortis - a fictional grimoire in the Warhammer world, source of all necromantic knowledge
Malleus Maleficarum - trans: "The Hammer of the Witches," a real-life instruction manual for Catholic Inquisitors
De Vermis Mysteriis - a fictional grimoire, originally a Bloch creation, arrogated by Lovecraft
Necronomicon - a fictional grimoire, originally a Lovecraft creation, now probably better known for its appearance in the "Evil Dead" series.
"Even a play about some guy wearing yellow." - "The King in Yellow," an imaginary madness-inducing play referenced in the horror collection THE KING IN YELLOW by Robert Chambers, later arrogated by Stephen King
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." - recurring Lovecraft quote, not generally used to reference the undead
9 Nov
p. 54 - “I’m the guy with the gun.” - Army of Darkness
10 Nov
"Bill or Billy or Bud" - Sheryl Crow, "All I Wanna Do"
17 Nov
p. 86 – "sometimes it’s nice to be abused" – paraphrase of quote from Fyodor Karamazov, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoevsky
18 Nov
p. 80 - "cryptkeeper" - "Tales From the Crypt"
p. 81 - boomstick - Ash calls his gun this in "Army of Darkness"
20 Nov
p. 90 - "Every living thing..." - references "Donnie Darko," "Every living thing dies alone."
p. 95 - Norma Rottencrotch - GySgt Hartman mentions this name to the recruits in "Full Metal Jacket"
21 Nov
p. 105 - "blind stinking sober" - Bender describes himself this way in one episode of "Futurama"
23 Nov
p. 108 - Fisher King - references the Arthurian legend of a sleeping king who wakes, i.e. undeath
p. 108 - "out, out, damn Fido" - "Macbeth" and the movie "Fido"
25 Nov
p. 121 - snicker-snack, et al. - "Jabberwocky"
The cakebox is vaguely a reference to "Se7en"
26 Nov
Yorick, goodnight sweet prince - "Hamlet"
29 Nov
p. 124 - "this isn't the Old West" - see next note
p. 127 - "So I came here to kill you, Rothering, for what you done" - William Munny says something similar in "Unforgiven." A lot of this chapter (rain, liquid courage) evokes the finale of that movie
30 Nov
p. 132 - a brain in a jar - a reference to the French film "The City of Lost Children" featuring a brain in a jar
1 Dec
p. 148 – “Call Me Lightning” is a Who single
BRAINEATER JONES, in particular is a patchwork of influences, and not just from horror and noir, though those are the primary ones. My tendency to lay Easter eggs is so extreme, in fact, that my publisher got worried I might be putting one over on them and might accidentally (or deliberately, depending on my level of malfeasance) stumble into lawsuit territory. So they asked me to make a list of every reference in the book. Trust me, if it hadn't been at someone else's behest I never would have combed through a book to do this, so good luck GHOUL and BILLY fans.
Anyway, I've never shared this file publicly, but at the suggestion of Brian Keene (who happens to be one of those Easter eggs - not to mention the only man to ever notice the "Unforgiven" one) I'm doing so now. There are well over 100 Easter eggs. So, without further ado, the secret meaning behind all those confusing lines in BRAINEATER JONES:
Character Names
Jones - drug culture slang for "craving"
William Hinzman - the name of the first actor to portray a modern zombie, "Night of the Living Dead"
Ernst Rothering - similar to Ernst Röhm, chief victim of the Night of the Long Knives. "Rothering" is German for "red herring." Rothering is also commonly called "the fat man" also what Sam Spade calls Gutman in THE MALTESE FALCON
Lazar/Russ - suggests Lazarus of the Biblical story, a man who rises from the dead
a.k.a. Bethany - Lazarus's hometowna.k.a. Forday - i.e. "four day," that is, the fourth day, the day after Jesus rose
Gnaghi - the gravedigger from "Cemetery Man." Originally his name was Dampé, the gravedigger from "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time."
Baumer - probably a reference to Richie Tenenbaum's nickname from "The Royal Tenenbaums"
Ed and Joey - the grave robbers from "Return of the Living Dead 2"
Sailor Joe - a reference to Sailor Jerry, a famous tattooist and rum
Henk - a reference to another famous tattooist, Henk Schiffmacher
The Infected - a term for non-zombie zombies in "Resident Evil IV," "28 Days Later," et. al
Mighty Dull - reversal of "Dolemite," 1970s Blaxploitation character
Brigid - Brigid Shaugnessy, THE MALTESE FALCON
Kumaree Tong - a real-life Thai necromancy device, brought up in "Dead and Breakfast." Originally her name was Humma Kavula, Zaphod Beeblebrox's antagonist in the 2005 film version of "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
Skaron - reminiscent of Scarrans, primary antagonists in "Farscape," hinting that Skaron is a villain
Francoise - French for Franky, i.e. Frankenstein
Delamort - French for "of the dead." References Romero's films, and, by association, "Dellamorte Dellamore," the Italian title for "Cemetery Man"
Manny - I think this was the doorman in "The Single Guy"
Argento - Dario, the composer for "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) or his daughter Asia, star of "Land of the Dead"
Mr. Land and Mr. Day - i.e. Land of the Dead, Day of the Dead
Alcibé - latinization of Alcibiades
Place Names
Ganesh City - Ganesh is the Hindu god of wisdom and placing/removing obstacles, hence this refers to Jones's quest for his identity
Altstadt - German for "old city" the nice part of Düsseldorf specifically
Kelly Park - refers to Grace Kelly, i.e. "upscale"
Keene Ave - Brian Keene, author of THE RISING, et al.
Lionel Ave - Lionel is the main character in "Dead Alive"
Hallowed Grounds - the coffee shop in "Dawn of the Dead" (2004)
Rm 217 - this was the first room the National Guard guys cleared out in the Philadelphia slum, "Dawn of the Dead" (1978)
Three Rivers - Pittsburgh is sometimes called "The City of Three Rivers." Romero films and/or sets most of his movies there.
Buffalora Cemetery and "Resurrecturis" - refers to the cemetery and inscription from "Cemetery Man"
68th and Russo - "Night of the Living Dead" was released in 1968 and produced by John Russo
Hat Scratch Fever - play on the disease "cat scratch fever," basically, if a guy was sitting with his hat covering his crotch he'd be scratching it because of his erection at Mighty Dull's brothel
Port-au-Pauper - Little Haiti. The capital of Haiti is Port-au-Prince and plays on the story The Prince and the Pauper.
101 Gateway Lane - address of Nick Knight, a vampire detective, in "Forever Knight"
44 Bow Street, Apartment 3C - address and apartment of the main characters in "Mission Hill"
General
1 Nov
Dead narrator/hero facedown in a pool - alludes to "Sunset Boulevard"
Three sunken statues - alludes to THE SIRENS OF TITAN by Kurt Vonnegut
Inscription - entrance to the gates of Hell in Dante's INFERNO. Yes, this implies that Ganesh may be a Hell or Purgatory.
p. 3 - "dust in the wind" - Kansas song
p. 10 - "Clean. And well-lighted." Alludes to Hemingway's "Clean and Well-Lighted Place."
2 Nov
p. 18 "the 1-2-5" - the fictional police precinct from the U.S. version of "Life on Mars"
3 Nov
R51 - alphabet code for RE1, the original Resident Evil
4 Nov
p. 29 "they call me Braineater" - this is the first time (I think) Jones refers to himself by the name others call him and alludes to the same instance in "Samurai Jack," which I think may itself allude to “they call me Mr. Tibbs” in "In the Heat of the Night"
p. 33 “as a squid on Tuesday” - in Futurama Zoidberg says he’s “friskier than a squid on Tuesday” one episode for unclear reasons.
p. 37 - “Sonny Jim” - Klaus calls Ned this in "The Life Aquatic"
5 Nov
Grim Reaper - references perhaps our greatest national cultural treasure, "I Know What You Did Last Summer"
6 Nov
Liber Mortis - a fictional grimoire in the Warhammer world, source of all necromantic knowledge
Malleus Maleficarum - trans: "The Hammer of the Witches," a real-life instruction manual for Catholic Inquisitors
De Vermis Mysteriis - a fictional grimoire, originally a Bloch creation, arrogated by Lovecraft
Necronomicon - a fictional grimoire, originally a Lovecraft creation, now probably better known for its appearance in the "Evil Dead" series.
"Even a play about some guy wearing yellow." - "The King in Yellow," an imaginary madness-inducing play referenced in the horror collection THE KING IN YELLOW by Robert Chambers, later arrogated by Stephen King
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." - recurring Lovecraft quote, not generally used to reference the undead
9 Nov
p. 54 - “I’m the guy with the gun.” - Army of Darkness
10 Nov
"Bill or Billy or Bud" - Sheryl Crow, "All I Wanna Do"
17 Nov
p. 86 – "sometimes it’s nice to be abused" – paraphrase of quote from Fyodor Karamazov, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoevsky
18 Nov
p. 80 - "cryptkeeper" - "Tales From the Crypt"
p. 81 - boomstick - Ash calls his gun this in "Army of Darkness"
20 Nov
p. 90 - "Every living thing..." - references "Donnie Darko," "Every living thing dies alone."
p. 95 - Norma Rottencrotch - GySgt Hartman mentions this name to the recruits in "Full Metal Jacket"
21 Nov
p. 105 - "blind stinking sober" - Bender describes himself this way in one episode of "Futurama"
23 Nov
p. 108 - Fisher King - references the Arthurian legend of a sleeping king who wakes, i.e. undeath
p. 108 - "out, out, damn Fido" - "Macbeth" and the movie "Fido"
25 Nov
p. 121 - snicker-snack, et al. - "Jabberwocky"
The cakebox is vaguely a reference to "Se7en"
26 Nov
Yorick, goodnight sweet prince - "Hamlet"
29 Nov
p. 124 - "this isn't the Old West" - see next note
p. 127 - "So I came here to kill you, Rothering, for what you done" - William Munny says something similar in "Unforgiven." A lot of this chapter (rain, liquid courage) evokes the finale of that movie
30 Nov
p. 132 - a brain in a jar - a reference to the French film "The City of Lost Children" featuring a brain in a jar
1 Dec
p. 148 – “Call Me Lightning” is a Who single
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
"L" is for "Luck"
There is a single question which underwrites (ha!) the aspirations of the entire writing community:
"Why is that person famous and I'm not?"
It's a question that's not entirely unkind and not entirely motivated by jealousy, with the caveat that, yes, sometimes authors are also capable of being unkind and jealous. (Go fig, right?) But I don't think it's unkind or unfair for me to state, rather categorically, that I'm a better author than Stephanie Meyer, E.L. James, or Dan Brown. I probably ought to feel bad for picking on the three people in my profession that seem to get picked on the most, but that's also the reason why I chose them. Each is incredibly rich, famous, and popular, and each is acknowledged rather broadly by the critical and popular community as being pretty bad at crafting prose.
Anyway, the point is, rather than spend a post arguing the relative merits of various authors, the purpose of this post is that merit is not necessarily the driving force toward success. An author, for example, might be a genius for marketing and only so-so in the actual storycrafting department. Or a story, however objectively poor, might capture the popular zeitgeist. Some people even just have the good fortune to be born into money, wealth, fame, power, or connections.
If Max Brooks were not Mel Brooks's son, would he have the same level of success he currently does? If Joe Hill were not Stephen King's son, would his success level be the same? Sure, we're talking about someone who has distanced himself from his father's name in the latter case, but that doesn't change the fact that Stephen King would know agents, publishers, industry professionals, and all of those connections would be available to a young Joe, even if he was trying to set out on his own.
In the case of Christopher Paolini, whose ERAGON is, by any understanding, a middling to poorish book on its own merits, his family was wealthy and willing to invest significantly in his success. We're probably more familiar in general with glitzier show biz types. Taylor Swift and Emma Stone had essentially Paolini's experience: parents who were willing to gamble everything on their children's success. It's also hard to deny that Charlie Sheen probably wouldn't be famous if his father hadn't been before him...or Angelina Jolie, or Kate Hudson, or Bridget Fonda, or any other famous person's child.
It's my personal belief that there is a certain baseline level of competence necessary for fame and success, but beyond that point your main indicator to actually achieve success is luck. So, yeah, if Ozzy Osbourne's son or Will Smith's son (sorry, kids) are just terrible, terrible actors, no amount of sticking them in front of the public eye is going to catapult them to success. But if they are relatively competent and capable of learning - and someone like Kate Hudson is certainly capable of acting to a reasonable standard - luck can send them the rest of the way to the top.
What does this mean for those of us who didn't win the genetic lottery? Well, lots of things can contribute to your luck. Meyer, James, and Brown weren't scions of a legacy of fame and fortune. Who knows which particular winds blew in to raise them from their baseline competence to world-crushing success? Stephanie Meyer was a Mormon who drew on a network of Mormon mothers to push out a novel that had been well-crafted to their particular cultural tastes, and caught on like wildfire. Which is not to diminish her hard work, which no doubt she did, but no doubt other people have worked harder and been less fortunate. (Hmm, perhaps the buffoons in one of our major political parties could learn something from that...not to turn this into a political post.)
And what it boils down to for me is the sneaking suspicion that Yo-Yo Ma is not the greatest cellist in the world, nor Stephen King the greatest author. Beyond a certain baseline of talent I suspect fortune leads us all to our various places in life, far more than we would even care to admit, though Tolstoy, himself a wealthy landowner, probably had a suspicion of that. No, I'm pretty sure the greatest cellist in the world is probably playing on a street corner somewhere, and the greatest author in the world probably has a stack of manuscripts in a drawer that have never been published. And we shall never know the names of either.
Luck is a bastard.
"Why is that person famous and I'm not?"
It's a question that's not entirely unkind and not entirely motivated by jealousy, with the caveat that, yes, sometimes authors are also capable of being unkind and jealous. (Go fig, right?) But I don't think it's unkind or unfair for me to state, rather categorically, that I'm a better author than Stephanie Meyer, E.L. James, or Dan Brown. I probably ought to feel bad for picking on the three people in my profession that seem to get picked on the most, but that's also the reason why I chose them. Each is incredibly rich, famous, and popular, and each is acknowledged rather broadly by the critical and popular community as being pretty bad at crafting prose.
Anyway, the point is, rather than spend a post arguing the relative merits of various authors, the purpose of this post is that merit is not necessarily the driving force toward success. An author, for example, might be a genius for marketing and only so-so in the actual storycrafting department. Or a story, however objectively poor, might capture the popular zeitgeist. Some people even just have the good fortune to be born into money, wealth, fame, power, or connections.
If Max Brooks were not Mel Brooks's son, would he have the same level of success he currently does? If Joe Hill were not Stephen King's son, would his success level be the same? Sure, we're talking about someone who has distanced himself from his father's name in the latter case, but that doesn't change the fact that Stephen King would know agents, publishers, industry professionals, and all of those connections would be available to a young Joe, even if he was trying to set out on his own.
In the case of Christopher Paolini, whose ERAGON is, by any understanding, a middling to poorish book on its own merits, his family was wealthy and willing to invest significantly in his success. We're probably more familiar in general with glitzier show biz types. Taylor Swift and Emma Stone had essentially Paolini's experience: parents who were willing to gamble everything on their children's success. It's also hard to deny that Charlie Sheen probably wouldn't be famous if his father hadn't been before him...or Angelina Jolie, or Kate Hudson, or Bridget Fonda, or any other famous person's child.
It's my personal belief that there is a certain baseline level of competence necessary for fame and success, but beyond that point your main indicator to actually achieve success is luck. So, yeah, if Ozzy Osbourne's son or Will Smith's son (sorry, kids) are just terrible, terrible actors, no amount of sticking them in front of the public eye is going to catapult them to success. But if they are relatively competent and capable of learning - and someone like Kate Hudson is certainly capable of acting to a reasonable standard - luck can send them the rest of the way to the top.
What does this mean for those of us who didn't win the genetic lottery? Well, lots of things can contribute to your luck. Meyer, James, and Brown weren't scions of a legacy of fame and fortune. Who knows which particular winds blew in to raise them from their baseline competence to world-crushing success? Stephanie Meyer was a Mormon who drew on a network of Mormon mothers to push out a novel that had been well-crafted to their particular cultural tastes, and caught on like wildfire. Which is not to diminish her hard work, which no doubt she did, but no doubt other people have worked harder and been less fortunate. (Hmm, perhaps the buffoons in one of our major political parties could learn something from that...not to turn this into a political post.)
And what it boils down to for me is the sneaking suspicion that Yo-Yo Ma is not the greatest cellist in the world, nor Stephen King the greatest author. Beyond a certain baseline of talent I suspect fortune leads us all to our various places in life, far more than we would even care to admit, though Tolstoy, himself a wealthy landowner, probably had a suspicion of that. No, I'm pretty sure the greatest cellist in the world is probably playing on a street corner somewhere, and the greatest author in the world probably has a stack of manuscripts in a drawer that have never been published. And we shall never know the names of either.
Luck is a bastard.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
"K" is for "Keys"
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| I remain impressed at the covers that can be achieved with ClipArt |
So, here’s the situation in America at the present moment. Girls and boys, while growing up, are both given to the same proclivities. They play in the mud, they do sports, they want to be scientists when they grow up. Then, at a certain point, societal pressures set in and suddenly there are “boy proclivities” and “girl proclivities” instead of just proclivities.
So, all of a sudden, at age eight, let’s say, a girl is told not to play in the mud. A boy is told not to play house. Suddenly youthful passions are put aside in the face of fitting in.
Gender roles are societal. In fact, “gender” is a wholly made up concept, in contrast to the sex of a child, which is innate and biological. I once had a biology professor who posed to us this question: “Why is pink feminine and blue masculine? Who chose those two colors and why?” Honestly, even (mumble, mumble) years out of college I’ve still never come up with a satisfactory answer. And you know why?
BECAUSE THEY’RE COMPLETELY ARBITRARY.
Pink and blue are completely pulled out of somebody’s ass. It could’ve just as easily been green and yellow. So we could argue all day about gender norms and their role in history and society (no, seriously, we could argue all day about it) but there is at least one that is literally dangerous to the short and long-term security and prosperity of our country. And that’s that math and science is “boy stuff.”
So back to my original premise. Two kids are growing up. Up to age seven or six or, you know, it doesn’t really matter because it’s not a real, quantifiable date, but anyway, they both love science. They admire architecture and engineering and they’re watching TV and they see the labcoats walking around solving crimes and they say, “I want that to be me when I grow up!”
Then they hit that imaginary mark and if it’s a boy, his parents buy him a chemistry set and his teachers encourage him and all that early, baseline stuff puts him on a path to be a world-class engineer. If it’s a girl, though, they get discouraged. They get told that girls should be studying poetry and cooking and should be planning on a liberal arts education. (Actually, the scary truth is they’re probably being encouraged to just be pretty and shut up and find a nice husband, but that’s a darker part of the whole story that I don’t even really want to get into.)
And so she would have to push through all those societal pressures if she wants to persevere and be a scientist anyway. But more likely she’ll be discouraged from such a path. It’s tough to defy such a headwind. And she’ll probably end up majoring in college in one of the more “feminine” subjects. And the proof is in the pudding. Our nation’s STEM (short for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) jobs are somewhere between 3:1 and 10:1 in male to female ratio.
Basically, the reason we have a STEM brain drain in this country is because we’re eliminating 50% of the potential workforce right off the bat. And STEM is what’s going to keep us competitive on the world stage into the 21st century. The keys to our prosperity in the 20th century were coal, steel, and manufacturing. Today they're computers, information, and technology.
Enter the BRAVE NEW GIRLS anthology, curated by Mary Fan and Paige Daniels. This charity anthology’s purpose is twofold. First, all proceeds are being donated to STEM scholarships for women. Second, the book itself features young women protagonists who are all mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. For instance, my story, “The Keys to the Stars” is about a teenage girl in the ‘50s who contacts an alien species thanks to her interests in math, code-breaking, and radio science.
Make sure to check it out when it drops this June! And support women in science!
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| Illustration courtesy of Adrian DeFuria |
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