Queen of Cinders Trilogy Complete

I'm pleased to announce that the long-simmering first drafts of the Queen of Cinders trilogy are now all complete.  Emphasis on first drafts!

As I come to grips with having such a big project reach such an important milestone, it occurred to me what a strange journey this has been.  I pre-planned this project pretty carefully, but wasn't too surprised that the plan was often off-track by the time it came to write the events themselves.  Characters mature as you write them, and deepen.  Their motivations become far more nuanced and the themes you didn't anticipate have come to dominate.

Another notable tendency is that the need to highlight and emphasize is very different while writing than it appears during planning.  The writing so so much brighter and detailed than the plan, that the need to bring certain traits forward falls away.  they've already emphasized themselves.  As a flipside to this, new connections you could never have planned have sprung up, becoming so fundamental that I would sometimes wonder how I was planning to write to book without the link between two characters, or a cause and another effect.

Similarly, I used a lot of what I call "event compression" in these books.  I would have the character ruminating on something that has just occurred "off camera" while they deal with events in their scene.  This inner world not only lets the character sort their thoughts out where we can hear them, but also allows me, the writer, to effectively write two scenes at once.  It also shows how hectic things are for the characters.  Before they fully process one event, the next is upon them.  This speeds the pace, and, during the climax, I stop doing this, making the endings feel all the more immediate.

So, I'm happy to be done, and move on to some well deserved polish.  I've already got a list of alterations for the second draft, but some of this was details I knew I was getting wrong, but didn't want to interrupt the flow to go and check.  I do have to make two major changes to this second draft, though, one to change how two characters relate to each other in the third book, and the other to adjust the timing of a key event in the second book.

Also, my note-keeping suffered a severe dislocation during this trilogy, and I need to change my system.  No more notes for each individual book, as this created real headaches for me to check on small details between the volumes.  There are a number of towns whose names appear as XXXX in the text, ready to be replaced once I get my notes all together.  And one major character has a mid-book change to their last name due to poor organization on my part,  Sorry!  Ah, live and learn!

A Good Question

My daughter AgentT and I were talking on the way home from her school.

"If you had to choose," she asked, "which would you pick?  Would you want everyone to like you, or have superpowers?"

My first instinct was to go with having people like me but I hesitated.  It was a much better question than it appeared at first glance.  Be an accepted member of the group, or stand apart but wield more power?  Was the gentle, continuous influence of friendship more or less powerful than the spectacular influence of superpowers?  I have to put The Watchmen on AgentT's reading list.  Even at seven, she's got the questions right.

I still don't have a clear answer for her.

I The Jury: Cinderella

The Charges: Unwanted corporate navel-gazing evoking a long-dead Golden Age, shot-by-shot remake, evidence of creative bankruptcy.

The Verdict: Not Guilty!

The Findings: This movie snuck up on me. Suddenly, there was this new version of Cinderella coming out, which was no surprise, lately. But another Cinderella by Disney? The company that made the definitive version decades ago? Why would Disney make another? Was it going to compete? Be a simple remake? A reboot? Does that even make sense? The idea that this version wouldn't be compared the the previous Disney version was ludicrous, so how does it compare?

Very well, actually.

The opening moments of the film are a somewhat strained, since everything is so very perfect, it's hard to relate to. But soon the tone settles down, and the characters begin to carry their own weight.

You heard that: this movie has characters. Actual fictional personages. It takes some doing, when dealing with a story everyone already knows, to establish the cast as anything other than placeholders and milestones in the plot. Not everyone gets this careful treatment (we'll get to that in a moment), but, in general, the main players are very well drawn.

Hats off, as always, to Cate Blanchett, whose turn as the Stepmother is truly great. She lets her beauty be part of how evil she is, and the story hints at more depth than her role usually receives. And the greater sophistication of the storyline lets her character do additional scheming, making her realistically selfish and manipulative, not simply mean, mean, mean for no reason. From her first introductory shot to the final image of her in defeat, Blanchett's looks are perfectly framed, allowing her acting abilities to carry a lot more power than I was expecting from this movie. The final shot of her on the staircase is so classically lit and saturated with color, it's almost unearthly how well the movie evokes film-making from another age, and Kate Blanchett is one of the few modern actors able to pull that off.

Lily James, too, puts in a surprising turn. Her look in this movie is strictly pretty, without trying for the supernatural perfection Snow White and the Huntsman tried (and, it must be stressed, failed (badly)) to imbue Kristen Stewart with. The writing, here, is also well tuned, allowing Ella to be kind without being so schmaltzy and saccharine you wish bad things upon her. The story is actually satisfying to watch because of the level-headed kindness of Ella, and the writing allows that to happen, and Kenneth Branaugh's direction allows James to just be a person. I was surprised by this, girding myself for a cinematic death-by-a-thousand-cuts of over-done niceties.

But all is not well in fairy-tale-land. The mice, thankfully sans clothes in this version (a change directors should apply to a great many future characters), are nestled just within the uncanny valley. They look real enough, and move about as you'd expect a mouse to do, and yet they are pretty distracting, as they are just too stage-directed, somehow.

And now for the bad news. The Fairy Godmother. Sigh.

Why must Hollywood insist on aging actors to look like super-old people? It never works. Hey, makeup artists: IT DOESN'T WORK. EVER.

Simply making young actors all spotty and wrinkly doesn't evoke age. It evokes layers of makeup. The Uncanny Valley has a whole village inhabited by actors trying to look older than their age through makeup. Are there no old actors? Oh, wait, we need someone who is comically super-old, for some reason. And an genuinely aged actor would demand more respect than the one minute the aged Godmother receives before transforming back into her true form, which is that of the slightly addled beauty that is Helena Bonham Carter.

Now, the sequence with the Godmother lends the story a needed dose of the whimsical, and she doesn't overstay her welcome, doing her duty and vanishing as quickly as she arrived. Once she's young and hot again, the Godmother moves the story along well, but I can't help but think that the feel was partly relief that the god-awful aging-makeup effects were over.

The character of the Prince is another minefield. I mean, having a male character be sensitive and good without coming off as entirely unbelievable and unlikable is not easy. Kit, as he's named here, somehow allows himself to be a nice guy and still be believably heterosexual. Wait, did I just write that? Yep. Huh.

As another strange aside, this movie also makes is seem as if adult humans often just weaken and die without visible cause, as the bodies hit the floor with alarming regularity. I count three people who keel over without obvious cause (one off screen, and allowed a sudden illness to waft them to a better place). I suppose it serves the purposes of the story, but it seems odd that a person can be talking one second and fade away the next. But that's the benefit of living in a fairy tale: death is as it should be. Either that, or the kingdom employs a standardized euthanasia program for the mildly ill.

In the end, this retelling of Cinderella makes use of the skills of the actors, the talents of the writers, and the intelligence of the audience, and that's worth a lot. It's a genuinely good movie that had a lot of tripwires to avoid, and does so while making it look easy. But it's also easy to see how badly it could have gone. This movie manages to avoid traumatizing a generation of children, damaging dozens of Hollywood careers, and embarrassing, annoying, and/or insulting and angering thousands of adults.

Now that's magic.

Welcome back, writing time!

After a five-month stint of doing cover paintings, I'm back in the writing saddle here in my new digs in Durham, England.  Yeah, that England!

After such a protracted lapse, I expected to have a few days of warming up before being able to drop back into the story.  I was pleasantly surprised when that didn't prove necessary.  So, if all goes well, I can get Book 3 of Queen of Cinders in the can by the end of the month.  Man, that would be great!  This trilogy wasn't supposed to take this long to write, but I'm pretty happy with it, being a first draft and all.

I'm more looking forward to doing a second draft of Book 1, actually, since it's been years since I wrote it, and I haven't read it since.  That's a long time to settle, for a first draft.  Wait, looking forward to editing?  Strange but true.

Maps of Fantasy worlds

This is a large-scale map of my fantasy setting, Malduan, the home of Gloren Avericci and Yr Neh.  When I was younger, I used to love the maps that were commonly in the front of many fantasy novels.  They allowed me to really stay grounded in the setting as the characters moved over the landscape.  When done well, and used well, maps can add a lot to a story by keeping the setting grounded (heh, I punned).  But there are potential downsides to having a map.

First, they can give the impression that the story you're about the read has a scope that needs a map.  Have you ever read a book, and then struggled to find where the heck on the map it takes place, only to discover that it all happens on the remote corner?  Why does this story need a map?  Far from impressing readers with the level of world-building, a map in this case sets up false expectations, and ends up doing more harm than good.

Secondly, they encourage some writers to name-drop far-off locations in the text, with the knowledge that the readers have a map, and perhaps with the expectation they will refer to it.  Again, this is doing the story a disservice.  Do we really want the reader to stop reading and consult a map?

Third, they give the impression that the reader needs to have a broad knowledge of the setting.  Usually, this involves a number of kingdoms and their relationship to each other.  If the story is on a geopolitical scale, maybe this will be helpful.  But in the real world, very, very few people can generate anything like an accurate map of even their own country and its immediate neighbors.  Having a map may give the characters hyper-accurate reckoning skills when thinking about the distances between places.  The writer may, even subconsciously, always use the proper distances between places, thinking that having the characters be wrong when they talk to each other (or plan for travel) will be seen as a mistake on their part.  In truth, people think about travel in terms of time, not distance.  People will usually say how far away the grocery store is in terms of travel times.  Places are five minutes away, not three miles.  So writing a story with a map means you have to think about travel times, not distances, and that's sometimes hard to remember.  Have you ever read a story where the characters casually mention the exact distance to a destination, but never the travel time they expect?  Yeah, me too, and that's just not the way it works, especially in a fantasy setting, where foot travel is usually the order of the day.

So, is it all downside, having a map?  Obviously not!

A good map in a fantasy story must do these things in order to be beneficial:

First, it must be clearly drawn.  Blurry rendering, tiny lettering, obscure fonts, or crowded landscapes all make your map a chore to peruse.

Second, the map must be relevant to the story.  It must have useful locations marked on it, which means it must be of a useful scale.  Giving a world map for a story that takes place in a single city might not be so useful.  The locations given can even include locations from the story itself that wouldn't be marked on most maps, such as an important ford in a river, a character's home, or the route taken in the text.

Third, maps need to relate some information that is not in the story, to put the events into context.  Sometimes, just knowing the characters are starting out on the west coast of a place, and travelling east, makes reading the story easier, but maps can help supply the reasoning for jogging to the south for a while (like mountains, or some other hazard).  I've read very popular books whose maps showed a basically empty landscape with just a few towns and other locations marked, and lo and behold, those were the places we visited in the story.  No other locations were marked, nor mentioned in the novel, making the landscape seem entirely empty save for those few places.  Without a map, this would not have been an issue.

Lastly, maps must be based in reality, even for fantasy worlds.  Generally, landscapes are shaped by different natural processes, and cities develop and grow in other ways.  Unless your landscape is entirely fantastical, and your cities completely artificial, you need to be aware of these patterns, so that your maps will read as being a real place.  Having coastlines and mountains and rivers all mashed together without reason, cities dotting the landscape in no particular place, these sorts of maps do a setting no good at all.  They falsify rather than reinforce.

I'll be talking more about how to create realistic fantasy maps in a later post, so stay tuned!

A soft spot for 2015

With the champagne corks mounded high on every side, I'd like to get my Goals post out of the way.  Posting it is, after all, my first goal of every year.

Given my dismal failure to meet goals in 2014 up to a point where I could cross them off my list so they could actually get counted, I'm going to do a lot more tracking of what the heck else I'm doing that isn't on-task.  So, to assist me, a sort of resolution:  300 hours of "me" time for 2016.  That includes reading, and anything else I do to chill out that doesn't involve family.  There's no limit on family time, of course.

So, kids, don't worry.  I'm still going to make dinner.

With that out of the way, the goals:

Production (New Stuff)

• Finish Book 3 of Queen of Cinders
• 4 Short Stories
• 10 paintings on commission.  These can be covers, or whatever.

Development

• Internal stuff for the Gallery Hunters Anthology, including maps, missing illustrations for the new stories, as well as formatting, a cover, and so on.
• A new draft of Firewatcher for sending out to agents.
• A new draft of the completed Queen of Cinders trilogy.  Normally I wait a year before doing new drafts of novels, but it's been more than enough for books 1 and 2, and by the time I get through them, I'll be mentally ready to edit book 3.
• Game apps:  I've listed this before, but now am going to try less collaboration with coders, since they're hard to keep on-task on small projects, and tend to wander off to newer shiny objects.

Marketing
12 short story sendouts.  Every time I meet with John O'Niel, I'm reminded of how little I'm sending out, recently.  I need to get off the pot, and get those stories rolling to publishers again.
Querying Firewatcher and, perhaps, Queen of Cinders, if I can get some beta eyes on it first.
Gallery Hunter trailer.  This is the real elephant in my marketing room, at the moment.  This is a massive project, but I still can't help but feel it's doable.
Blogging at least once a week.  Is this marketing?  I'm not sure where else to put social media efforts, and need to account for the time it takes, so I'm putting it here.

And that's the lot of it, and the estimated times for all of this is over a thousand hours!  Time to get cracking!

A firm handshake to 2014 as I show it the door

Well, here we are again.  The end of the year.  As usual, I want to review what I did, and what I thought I would do.  This is usually a painful process.

If I were to simply tally up my goals (10), and compare to my successes in meeting those goals (2), I would look like a loser.  So I'm not going to do that.

Instead, I'm going to justify my lack of progress on a case-by-case basis, on the theory that this will make me look better.  So far, I have no evidence this theory is correct, but here goes:

Novel Writing
Planned: 1  Achieved: 0
In fairness, I'm about three-fourths of the way through Book Three of Queen of Cinders, and I had a good reason to stop writing (see Painting, below).  But with two days to go in the year, I can't see myself pumping out 100 pages or so.  Given that, this goal was a big fat FAIL.  Still, I plan on whacking out the remainder fairly quickly next year (see my Goals post early next year for further pro-procrastination rhetoric).

Publishing
Planned:  1  Achieved:  0
Considering that the stories for the Gallery Hunters Anthology are all completed, this is a mysterious one.  I need to finish all of the stuff that is going to go around them however, such as maps, and illustrations.  That's all well and good, but time's ticking on these, as they were published fairly recently, and the iron is still hot.  I need to get cracking on getting the anthology out the door, and a lot of that is reconsidering the planned animated trailer.   But I'm stubborn about my projects, so this is unlikely to die (see below for more attempts at justifying my stubbornness).

Self Promotion
Planned: 1 Achieved: 0
This is the trailer I was referring to above.  My initial push to learn all the different software I'd need, and do concept work, was largely derailed, but I think I can do a better job of getting others on board, if I make a real go of it.  Next year, this will be a far larger priority for me.  Teamwork, that's the new key to getting this one done.  After all, there are specialists who do this stuff all the time, right?  Right!  Calling all specialists!

Agent Hunt
Achieved:  No
Literary Agents heard exactly nothing from me this year.  What can I say?  I hope to do better in 2015, but it's a lot of work, and was a lower priority.  I'm not too broken up about this one, but its an important step on a long road, so I should change my thinking, here.

Painting
Planned: 5 cover paintings  Achieved: 4
My Goals 2014 post said 6, but my planner only had 5 covers listed as goals, so I only fell one painting short.  Given my switch to new software (and my current reconsideration of that switch), this wasn't bad output.  I need to up my game, here, though, in 2015, and not allow myself to backslide.

Wrapup
The big story for 2014, though, was how few hours I actually put toward my goals.  Considering how hectic my year turned out to be, I shouldn't surprise me that I only put in about five hundred hours toward my plans.  A lot by some standards, given that this is all in addition to taking care pf the kiddoes and related things, but still, only about half of what I'd planned.

So, next year I'm going to be looking hard at where I'm spending my time when not working toward my goals, and not just when I am working toward them.  What the heck am I doing?  How to do this is a question I'm thinking about.  I don't want to turn into a neurotic freak, after all.  Unless it would make me more productive, in which case, bring on the neuroses!

Emergent Narratives: Why I Wait So Long To Edit, -or- My Toast Looks Like Jesus

Years ago, Matt, a friend of mine, and I would play lots of games, and in them we'd have adventures far beyond what was actually present in the rules. One game that stands out in my memory was The Arkham Horror, a game based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. In this game, the players became investigators in the small fictional town of Arkham, which was the focus for an transdimensional invasion by forces beyond human comprehension.

Still, being intrepid truth-seekers, we'd load up on shotguns and amulets and kick multi-dimensional ass across Arkham and various alternate realities. Matt and I would weave all sorts of imaginary elements into the gameplay, occasionally making less-than-ideal play decisions because we were more interested in narrative coherence.

Sooner or later, we'd reach a sort of nexus, and either forge on to victory, or enter a state of play we came to call Escape From Arkham. The wheels had truly come off, and, battered and half-crazed with what we'd seen, our characters would attempt to reach the train station and take the last train out as reality crumbled behind them.

The lesson, for me, was that it doesn't take very much for a story to emerge. The game was not structured in any narrative way. The phases of the tale were strictly in our heads, including the moment when we looked around, shrugged our imaginary shoulders, and grabbed our train tickets.

For me, this happens for almost every game I play. My daughter also sees things this way. When we play board games, she's always narrating the details of the story. She does this is more situation-driven games (like Survive!), but also for abstracts like checkers and chess. The elements of story are all there: character (the pieces), setting (the board), and conflict. Given these simple ingredients, story spontaneously arises.

As writers, we need to keep in mind how little a story actually takes to exist. Story, and narrative, are hardwired into us like all other pattern-finding capabilities of the brain. Perhaps the greatest impact is created by a story that holds back, allowing the readers to fill in the missing pieces. The readers become invested, literally stuck into the story, their mind a fundamental component of the tale.

But this cuts both ways, as writers are also enmeshed in the pattern, and can imagine they see things that simply are not present in the writing. That's why I wait a year to reread my novel manuscripts. Any sooner, and I see what I saw when I wrote the book, not what is there on the page. I want to see what a new reader sees, not simply review what I remember. Does this slow my output? Not really, since I just write more during this time. But even if it did, it's the only way I know of to escape the fabric of the narrative, and see it as cloth.

Because stories don't have an escape hatch, no matter how damaged their reality becomes.  Writers need to grab their amulets and get off that train.  But not too soon.  Never too soon.

Five Stars released!

A few weeks ago, now, the Five Stars anthology was released by Rampant Loon Press.  This is a collection of, yes, five stories that the editorial powers-that-be thought summed up the entire mission statement of Stupefying Stories, and thus need to be highlighted.

Oh, and looky here!  Is that First Impressions leading the charge to glory?

Yes.  Yes it is.  Woot!

Oh, and that's a handsome cover, too.  Classy, understated, and... my god, is that a loon?

Yes.  Yes it is.

Sports, games, and simulation: Quiddich Professional League enters Alpha testing

I'm still alpha-testing my new boardgame, Quiddich: Professional League, which is part of my game series based on the writings of J.K. Rowling.  Since this is part of a series, I felt it needed to keep at a complexity level close to the others.  This, as it turned out, was a naive hope.  Quiddich is just too nuanced, and needed more rules than I usually like to model it.

In the Harry Potter series, Quiddich is described in a number of places as being "very complex".  Given the rules, however, it seems, while multi-faceted, to be simply layers of simplicity stacked atop each other.  Given my love of designing abstract strategy games, this should have alerted me to the trouble ahead.

Known as emergent complexity, this is the idea that very complex results are often the result of a few simple rules systems interacting with each other.  Complex and numerous rules, on the other hand, usually have the habit of constraining complexity.  Using more and more rules to control the situation is the sign of weak design, in an abstract strategy game.  Go is the gold standard for simple rules and emergent complexity.

Rowling's statement about the complexity of Quiddich proves true.

For a game like this, basically a simulation of a physical sport, I needed to model the movements and actions of fourteen players in four different roles, as well as the attributes and actions of four different balls.  All moving in three dimensions, all at the same time.  Each turn.

Keep it simple, I told myself, over and over.  For instance, I wanted to keep it pure strategy by not using dice for action resolution.  But that left me with the problem of players selecting from numerous possible actions by calculating the success of each and choosing only successful options.  Talk about paralysis!  The game threatened to get bogged down before I ever tested it.  The solution:  ignorance.

Not knowing a predetermined outcome is as good as randomness, so I hid a lot of the information from the opponent on cubes.  You can see your information, but the other team cannot.  Now there was no way to know if you'd succeed or not until you declared your action.  You'd have to correctly predict your opponent's intentions, a gauge how much they wanted something to happen.

The 3D nature of flying players and balls I abstracted away, and I kept the field very few spaces, to force players into tight proximity.  But the complexity of modelling a sport dogged me.  Every element was modeled with the fewest rules I could manage and still perform its function.

Throwing a ball is a good example.  There are two main types of throw in the game of Quiddich: throws form one player to another (a Pass), and throws through the golden hoops that score your team ten points (a Shot on Goal).  It seems nit-picky, but it's essential to allow blocking and interceptions, as well as defending the rings by the Keeper.  Oh, and then there are penalty shots.  How do you manage strategy when there is only one shooter and one defender?  Both players automatically have highest priority, so how can it be made strategic?

Taken together, this network of simple parts transforms into something else entirely.  And that says nothing of the technical task of writing the rules to make this comprehensible to others.  As prose, the rules are about fifteen pages long.  Gak!  I'm hoping when I do a full-art version, they'll boil down a lot.

Modeling a sport has really brought home how complex the rules of the average sport are.  The reason sports are, from a game-designer's point of view, inelegant, is that there are just so many rules.  But dealing with the real world in real time means you have to institute all sorts of controls.  Even in the wizarding world, the game was sometimes hard to watch and understand without magical assistance, and I can only imagine how a Referee could do their job.

I wanted to allow basically every interaction that was shown in the book's Quiddich matches, and I believe I have done a good job of it, now that I've been alpha-testing for a week or so.  The four types of players are all very useful, and each of the four balls in the game works completely differently.  But, now that I have a working model of Quiddich, the true complexity of the shifting tactics has really come home for me.  I wonder if J.K. Rowling realized how well her imaginary sport actually plays out, because, if my game is any sort of good simulation, the sport of Quiddich is a hugely deep, and very impressive piece of game design.  I wonder what other games she might have designed, and just doesn't talk about much.

 But I can't wait to start beta-testing, as offloading half the work onto another brain would be such a relief!

The Downward Spiral

There comes a point in every story where the end begins.  The threads have all been woven or cut, and those remaining must be tied off.  For completed work, this is the final buildup toward the climax.  For short stories, this is the end of the initial setup.  Short stories begin poised to end.

I call this moment of no return the Downward Spiral.

There's simply no turning back.  And if you have all your ducks in a row, that's just fine.  You can ride the wave to the end.  But sometimes, maybe often times, the tug of the downward spiral brings a twinge of apprehension.  The rapidly approaching future is still unclear.  Sometimes just hazy, and sometimes fully obscured, a fog of half-formed approaches to getting what you need done, or, worse yet, not being certain what needs to be done at all.

I used to revel in this uncertainty, and perhaps I still do.  I love having to think on my feet, like the characters themselves.  But with some projects, this approach simply won't work.  Whether because you've jumped your outline or never had one, the vortex of the downward spiral might make you want to pause, and get your thoughts in order before you go on.  The larger the project, the more likely this sort of late-stage planning is necessary.

My current trilogy, Queen of Cinders, is a perfect example of this.

Book One was a textbook outlined project, that I followed relatively unchanged from beginning to end.  Book Two, however, derailed the outline I had prepared for it.  My expanded understanding of the characters, and the pacing that had developed, demanded events happen first at different times, and then in different ways, than I'd foreseen.  The ending was far more satisfactory than I'd pre-imagined it.

With this in mind, I began Book Three with an entirely different approach.  Rather than outline, I'd plan just a few scenes ahead.  This trilogy has many points of view, and I used a simple spreadsheet to give each character a column.  If I thought of things that needed to happen further into the future, I'd simply write it in a cell far down their column.  Sometimes I'd switch which character presented an event, based on whose take on the events I wanted to highlight.

All three of these books are in two parts each.  Now, part one of book three is coming rapidly to a close, and will be finished in a few days, leaving the final half of the final book.  Everything I want to do has to happen in an ever-shrinking future.  The ability to forward-cast interesting hooks, or events I wanted to include, is coming to a close.  A more structured outline suddenly needs to return.  Full circle?  Maybe.

This last book is going to be about four hundred pages, so I've got only two hundred pages to work with.  And that feeling of visiting a place for the last time will be growing as I write, as it sometimes does for me during the downward spiral.  Of course, as the author, I can do more drafts, and thus revisit places, but editing is different than creation.  Barring the sort of disastrous mishap that would require major rewriting, editing is a far cry from forming the initial draft.

So the downward spiral is a good thing, signalling that I'm nearly done in the process of completing a new manuscript.  The story is almost finished, rough edges and all.  But there's pressure there, to do what needs to be done in the story, and make it look easy while it happens.  It's a special time that makes many authors feel like slow-motion athletes, swimming an ever-tightening route, until the tale is told.

Identity Confusion

Today we've got guest musings from Dean C. Rich, the maestro of The Write Time blog.  Besides being the man who scored the most sought-after blog name, he also the author of Seven Silver Swords, a project he has been polishing to a mirror finish for some time now (nudge, nudge...).  Look upon his works, ye mighty, and feel just a wee bit inspired. 

Characters. Basic item for any story. Fundamental. There are many memorable characters throughout literature. 

Creating a character for a story isn’t always easy. Movies have all sorts of characters, just look at the closing credits: 1st cop. Lady with a purse. Guy with beard. 

Someone to take up space on film. Not hard. 

However, words on paper are precious. Crafting a character may seem easy on the surface. The author takes time to learn about what the character likes, dislikes, looks like, etc. Once the character is set loose in the story, they take on a life of their own. Very seldom does the character do what the author intends.

To create a character the author puts a little bit of themselves into the character. One must write about what one knows. 

To a point.

Conflict is the point of any story. Characters have conflicts. I know when I’ve written things I’ve had to do research, but my characters have done things I would never do. 

There are so many topics to write on, so many stories, and so many different conflicts. I’ve read some stories about serial killers. I know the writer isn’t a serial killer, but the character is. What the characters do in the story isn’t a part of the writer. Sometimes writers have to do difficult things to make the story work.

I know I’ve several characters I identify with, I’d like to be like that character. My character reflects what I want to be. Then there are the darker characters with flaws and issues that I have worked hard not to have. Yet I must reflect those items in the story.

One thing that works for my writing is to read my words aloud. Read the dialogue. Action; where I can – act it out. It becomes real. So when the characters are contrary to my personal character: Identity Confusion.

Like an actor who plays the dark parts, contrary to themselves, decompression is needed to return to their balance. 

When have you experienced Identity Confusion? How did you deal with it? Were you successful?

Recurring Themes

To get 2014 started in style, we have a guest post by the mighty Joyce Alton, the creator and overlord of the Yesternight's Voyage blog.  Go there, and marvel!


Aaron asked a couple of simple but poignant questions:
     Looking at your work as a whole, do you see any recurring themes or imagery?
     What does that suggest to you about yourself?

So I pulled up my story idea list, the finished, the half-completed, and the ones waiting to be done, approximately 150 altogether. What I think I liked best about this topic was the self-analysis it involved, because my best ideas have come from my subconscious while I sleep. And I wondered what my recurring themes were.  I had three pop out at me:

1 – Travel and how settings affect people. Common places and settings that really stretched my imagination. I’ve had an abiding love for geography and while I may not have traveled the world, I’ve sent other people places and done the research. I find cultures and languages fascinating. One thing that relaxes me and helps me brainstorm is to draw a map. I’m always considering how my setting will play into the plot or even the overall mood of what I’m writing.

Along with natural setting, architecture and engineering fascinate and inspire me. It’s easy for me to brainstorm places and I never have anyone ask me to work more on this aspect of my writing. Usually, I have to cull description. What does this say about me? Part of me wishes I could travel. I wish I had the time to learn several languages, learn first-hand about other cultures. I love being transported when I read a story and I want to do the same thing for others when I write.

2 – Overcoming personal handicaps, particularly ones characters put on themselves: inhibitions, moral or ethical crossroads, fears, grudges, perception, the ability to choose, action vs. inaction. I love a good internal conflict. I also believe that oftenest in life our enemy is ourselves. Reaching the point of recognizing when we have an issue, choosing to ignore it or change it, the consequences, the tests and mistakes, and hopefully the point of overcoming have contributed to every story I’ve written.

I tend to be a self-doubter, a perfectionist. I’m constantly analyzing myself, my motives, and stressing over my weaknesses. I admire people who overcome, whether it’s kicking a bad habit, someone who chooses the harder road because it’s the right way to go, or the person who develops restraint despite its unpopularity and the extra persecution others think they can then heap on that person. I think I have at least one person who’s good at restraint in each of my stories.

3 – This last one is the biggest recurring theme and I’m dividing it into three parts:

Human relationships:
a) Family. Family’s a big deal to me and the people I’m related to had the most powerful impact on my life. Whether those influences were positive or negative, they are the ones I remember best, the ones which helped to shape me as a person. Recognizing that, there is a theme of family in my stories. Whether it’s a large family dealing with their largeness, a broken family, someone finding or creating a new family, or someone running away from family—every story has this element in it.

b) The side kick. The person without superpowers or position. I’ve written many stories where my point of view character or even protagonist is in actuality the side kick to someone else. These characters are strengtheners; the ones who help the more powerful characters achieve their goals. In real life we tout the
superstars, the famous, the person who took an idea and made it work, the people who are most obvious. We usually overlook the many other people who made that fame, that idea, that opportunity happen or work out. We don’t read their stories, we don’t know their names, we don’t know of their inner struggles. I’m fascinated by these not so obvious heroes and heroines and I write about them.

c) Another must are the good quirky relationships involving someone who isn’t really classified as a people person. Call it an Anti-Popular Person Successful Relationship, I suppose. This one gets a bit more personal and I have the most experience with. They say to write what you know, and I know about these kinds of relationships. You know, the person you’ve never spoken to but partially admire, partially are afraid of or think you’ll loathe? The person who isn’t necessarily a loner, but they aren’t always the center of attention. The person with their own sense of humor and who looks at life differently than most people. It’s easier to go on avoiding that person or shunning them. But here’s the secret, if you connect with someone like that, you really connect. They aren’t here-and-then-gone-again friends. And they draw you into their ideas, their perspective, their world.

So thank you, Aaron, for this opportunity to analyze my writing and myself into the bargain. I definitely learned a few new things. I’d love to read about what other writers discover when they ask themselves the same questions. What are your recurring themes and what do they say about you?

Welcome, toddler 2014!

Wow, baby new year is already potty-trained, and I'm still reeling from New Year's Eve celebrations.  Well, this year is going to be a mixed bag of writing, editing, and publishing.  I've re-jiggered my goals for this year to be more in line with the amount of time I actually spend doing stuff in a year.  Somehow, I only work on my own stuff about 300 hours a year, which is only half the time I technically have.  But rest has to come from somewhere, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

That said, here's a goal list for this year:

Writing:
1 novel completed
This will be Queen of Cinders, Volume Three, and finish off the trilogy.

Publishing:
The Gallery Hunters, Volume III
This anthology will compile the stories of Gloren and Yr Neh published by Black Gate Magazine, as well as a number of new tales.  It will serve as a test-bed for self-publishing.  Airbags and sick bags in stock?
Check!

Self-Promotion
I'm working on a small animated short to go along with The Gallery Hunters release.  Yes, I love animation and cinematography.  And yes, it does take a long tine.

Agent Hunt
I can't give up the traditional route, now that things have changed so much since my last efforts at representation.  Since I used to do much the same thing in a different industry, I understand that getting an agent is far from the goal, but merely a first step.  that will help with the rejections involved with the process.  I've got enough work in the pipe to keep any success or failure of any one of them from being a game-ender.

Painting
6 Covers
I need to get cracking on marketing my art.  This is something I've avoided long enough.  But marketing isn't my thing, so I'm going to be groping, here.  But I've got a few projects already under way, so we'll see how this goes.

And that's it, mostly.  Pretty modest.  And modest is my middle name.

Queen of Cinders, Book Two Complete

Though overdue, I'm happy to announce that the second book in my current work-in-progress, Queen of Cinders, was finished in mid November, and I immediately launched into writing the third and final volume.  My plan is to finish the entire trilogy, and then do editing runs on all three books at once.

So, how did writing this second book (Widow) compare to writing the first (named, for those not in the know, Waif)?  This is a tough question.  Waif was written so quickly, and went so smoothly, that writing Widow came as something of a shock.  Repeatedly interrupted for painting commissions, it took a year an a half to write, as compared to the first book's twenty-seven days.  Even being longer, this book wasn't that much longer.

Also, I know that there are continuity errors written into it that I'll have to tackle when I do an editing run.  Having gaps of months between writing blocks made keeping certain things straight very difficult.  For example, I wrote the same dialogue twice, from different points of view.  Worse still, the characters took opposite sides of the argument in each of these two scenes.  Taken together, the exchanges make no sense.  Also, I'm not certain how well developed certain characters are, given their secondary but pivotal nature.  This is a common problem with first drafts, and rereading often makes this sort of balance issue easier to spot.  But for now, I'm just going to have to live with the uncertainty of it, and plow ahead writing book three.

Also, Widow jumped the tracks about half way through, flying free of my outline for it as the plots matured.  Strangely, this wasn't the reason for the continuity errors.  The story just outgrew the conception I'd had of it before beginning the series.  The characters are deeper, their motivations more nuanced, and the sharply defined actions and motivations I thought would be needed for clarity turned out not to be needed at all.  This is one reason that planning too far out isn't really a good use of time, for me.  I'd have to strangle a lot of the growth of the characters in order to service my planning, and keep the story in the lines.

And we've all read books that have that particular flavor, haven't we?

So, Book Two is done, and I'm happy with it, including the very different denouement than I'd planned.

Onward, to Book Three!

Spotlight's on You: A.G. Carpenter

This short story, highlighted in the very first Stupefying Stories Showcase feature, shows how to do SF right.  Man, this is creepy stuff.  Hats off to A.G. Carpenter for crafting this small gem.

For the Love of a Grenitschee

The cover story for the maiden voyage of Stupefying Stories in a print edition is Mark Keigley's For The Love Of A Grenitschee, and I was asked to do a cover painting for it.  The story itself is rather fun and straight forward, and I quickly had images come to mind for it.

One main problem with these, however, was that, in order to be true to the story, most of them would have to feature a bare-ass naked guy riding around on a huge desert beast.  This required a bit of compositional jujitsu for the concept drawings, and, in the end, I went with a simpler image that fit the story's tone, if not any particular moment from the tale.  The images from the story itself gave entirely the wrong impression, and came off, visually, like some sort of Fifty Shades of Conan kind of thing.  Not the image I thought would send magazines flying off the shelves!  Or would it?

Hmm.  Mark, if you read this, there's a new literary project just waiting for you!

Anyway, the main element, of course, was the titular grenitschee, a desert-dwelling animal on some planetary backwater.  Described in some detail, I tried my best to stay true to the narrative.  On the whole, however, I was free to do as I saw fit.

Many fantasy artists like the go for the grotesque with alien creatures, and the grenitschee, as described in the story, could have gone that way.  I toyed with that, in the concepts, but, in the end, I went with something a bit more emotionally engaging.  As odious as the animal is to be around, I wanted the viewer to feel something positive when they looked at her.  Her loving gaze toward the man, and his somewhat exasperated glance while half turned away, pretty much sums up the story's emotional framework.  She's sweet, in her way (assuming she doesn't reject you when you first meet and bite your head off like a huge desert nut), but grenitshee are obnoxious to be around.

I kept the rest of the scene almost barren, to fit the isolation the character experiences in his journey.  In the distance is the spaceport, and his clothes (presumable in the minutes before losing them) are obviously not designed for desert travel.  Though not described in the story (that I remember), I put him in something that looks suitably spacey but functional.

So, there it is.  Simple and direct, like the story itself.  Overall, I'm happy with how dusty and desolate it looks.  The only comforting element are all those long-lashed eyes.  Who wouldn't want to give that big girl a nice hug?

Just mind the kitten-sized parasites!

I the Jury: Oblivion

The Charges:  Derivative plot devices, Uneven pacing, Tom Cruise

The Verdict:  Guilty as charged, but released for good behavior after time served.

The Finding:  Science fiction works very well with small casts.  Usually, stories with very tight casting are good vehicles for intimate character studies, and SF gives this formula twists by the nature of the external problems the characters face.

Oblivion uses the small-cast formula to effectively set up a mystery.  Technician 42, a stoic man named Jack, shuttles about an abandoned Earth, repairing the drones that maintain security for a system of automated fusion reactors.  These reactors give power to the space station called the Tet (after its strange tetrahedral shape), used as a staging point for sending humanity to Titan.  These developments occurred after a ruinous war with an alien power, forcing humans to flee an occupied Earth, and technicians to guard against the attacks of forces of alien stragglers, called simply “Skavs”.

Jack lives with his controller, a woman named Victoria.  They have a simplified domestic existence together in an ergonomically perfect apartment suspended far off the ground to protect it from Skav attack.  But Jack feels dissatisfied, prodded by fragments of memories that have snuck past his mandatory memory wipe.  Together, these two form, as Victoria periodically assures Sally (their mission control contact aboard the Tet) an “effective team”.  This mantra is laden with overtones, suggesting some sort of social engineering at work, binding Jack and Victoria together beyond the requirements of reactor maintenance.

Warning:  Spoilers for Oblivion and Moon (2009) follow.

This is the sort of setup that SF handles very well, and Oblivion, with its clean tech and comfortable design, keeps the audience in line by giving us new information at a decent pace.  The fact that this information is discordant and contradictory makes the somewhat pedestrian action sequences involving the Skavs more interesting.  Strangely, the action sequences feel the most tacked on, and not really necessary.  They detract from what could have been gripping tension, and take time away from the storytelling..

But Oblivion will suffer among more dedicated fans of cinematic SF, as it offers little that hasn’t been seen before, and relatively recently.  The Skavs being humans doesn’t come as any sort of surprise, given that very little effort was taken to make the seem alien.  Tinted POV shots accompanied by strange audio-filtered sounds don’t go nearly far enough.  The fact that the Tet is the alien force, and Jack is serving it unwittingly, is only surprising if you are picking apart other mysteries.

After that revelation, the learning curve that goes along with the plot flattens out.  Jack’s discovery that he, along with Victoria is one of uncounted duplicates, each living parallel lives as technicians on an abandoned Earth, will only remind viewers of 2009’s Moon, another story of an isolated man servicing a high tech installation and discovering he’s a clone.

Oblivion’s resolution to the questions it sets up is more complete than Moon’s, and this will satisfy some, while leaving others to rage that the lack of laying out the logic of the alien’s motives.  For me, this is just fine.  An alien’s methods don’t need to make sense, and given the huge inefficiencies of human endeavors caused by our cultural mores, it’s all right if aliens are shown as having a similar cultural maintenance cost.

Where Oblivion shines is in the more subtle acting by Andrea Riseborough as Victoria and Melissa Leo as Sally.  Victoria’s character is subtle, and she fights her own doubts so that she can maintain an illusion of a perfect life with Jack, a man her original self pined after.  Her pain at the reappearance of Jack’s wife Julia is very convincing and touching.  It is the perfect counterpoint to the subtle menace of Sally.

Melissa Leo somehow walks the line between friendly and accomodating and menacing and distant, which is perfect for the avatar of the alien Tet.  As the friendly human face of the distant mission controller, Sally’s role is important, and not given enough time to grow.  Thus, when she needs to embody the alien revealed, her effectiveness is diminished, which is a shame.

One other aspect of Oblivion bothered me, and that is seeing the female lead of Julia, played by Olga Kurylenko, portrayed as so helpless while Jack kicks ass.  While it’s not really in her character, the contrast between Jack fighting and flying while Julia is helpless next to him bothered me.  Perhaps if Kurylenko weren’t so gorgeous it might come off less like the hero guarding his cheescake, but I was really hoping that she would do something materially important during the many crises she was present for.

One last element that struck me later was the huge apparent influence of Portal.  The flying drones looked suspiciously like that game’s turrets, if you were to give them high-tech suspensors and double their guns.  Maybe that’s just where good design leads us.  And maybe the physical Sally, with her single glowing eye and mechanical distance, wasn’t influenced by GlaDOS, but I would be surprised if someone on the design pipeline hadn’t played that awesomely influential game.

Not bad, but not a film for the ages, either.

This Page is Half Empty: The Five Horsemen of Literary Apocalypse

This was originally posted on the Black Gate Magazine site on Wednesday, May 18th, 2011.

Right now, as I type this -- and as you read it -- I’ve got a new manuscript half done.  For a writer, this is sort of like me saying that at this very moment I’m not wearing anything under all of my clothing.  Well, duh, these people are saying, while trying not to involuntarily imagine me naked.

For writers, there’s always the current project.

The process of forging the first draft is much like any other relationship between the mind and the will.  Romance, for instance.  There’s the initial flare of interest, the slower “getting to know you” stage, and a much longer “I know you, now” period.  These are all easy to navigate, because they are exciting and interesting.  They are effortless, and writers know the feeling of a WIP-crush.

But this infatuation period cannot last.  While in it, there’s always the potential that your feelings are mercurial, diaphanous dream-fluff that make no sense when you try to go deeper.  To your shock, you realize that perhaps your burning love isn’t the stuff of ages, but mere puppy love.  Your ardor has brought you no glamour, but instead made those around you somewhat uncomfortable, hoping, for your sake, that it will all end soon without you getting hurt too badly.

Am I just a puppy-lover? you find yourself asking.

For writers, our inner puppy lover is revealed by the number of abandoned projects we have stashed in drawers and on hard drives.  Inspiration flares, sputters, and dies, consigning yet another creative relationship to the dustbin.  Over and over this happens as we develop our ideas.  There’s always the hot young thing coming along in something revealing, with toned abs and mischievous eyes, and the partner you’re currently with suddenly seems...

Boring, really.  And with bad teeth, to boot.  It’s easy to tell yourself you weren’t really meant for each other.  But the new hottie idea, they’re the real deal.  You two were meant for each other, and this time, you’re going to make it work.  Really, this time things will be different.

The truth is, the creative process can be a lot like a romantic relationship.  But, unlike a two-person relationship, those between a creator and their creation stay intact when the creator moves on, assuming they’ve been fully consummated.   Indeed, success with one creative relationship makes your next one better when you leave the first behind.  In fact, you’re expected to move on to that supple new idea, just after you’ve completed the one you’ve got.

But there are those for whom finishing a story, or a novel, is a truly difficult task.  The introduction pounds itself out, page after page, and then, in the buildup stage of the relationship between creator and creation, there appears the first hint of a lull.  This is when the Hot Tramp makes her first appearance.

A Hot Tramp is an idea that just begs you for attention right now.  “I know you’ve got a real story you’re working on,” she’ll whisper.  “I’ll finish up real quick.  I promise.”

Writers who fall for the Let-Me-Go First allure of the Hot Tramp almost always lose their steam in their previous project, and find it very hard to get back into the groove.  The Hot Tramp interrupts a story before the meat is fully on the bone, and the foundational structure of the tale isn’t in place yet.  Recovering from a quickie with a Hot Tramp can be a painful experience generally worth avoiding.

This is relatively easy, however, as Tramps can be satisfied with a simple synopsis written in a notebook.  Their coy glances and suggestive outlines will be there waiting when you’ve got nothing else to get in your way.  Take the easy way out, and jot that Tramp out of your head.

At any time, however, another menace can come calling: the Beautiful Idealist.  They will invite you to their ivory tower in the clouds, where every word is chosen with excruciating care, and sentences, paragraphs and scenes blend together into a perfect mosaic of glittering gems.

Those who fall victim to the sway of the Beautiful Idealist will read previous paragraphs and chapters, over and over, tweaking them until moving on.  And then adjusting some more.  And polishing.  And soon they have an exquisitely crafted partial they can bury in their desk drawer.

To master yourself in the face of the Beautiful Idealist, quote George Lucas to yourself like a catechism: “If you revise while you write, you’ll never get past page four.”  Striving for an ideal first draft is, frankly, like passing up everyone who’s genuinely interested in you because they aren’t a supermodel.  This is the stuff of fantasy, not fantasy writing.

After a story has been going for a while, and you’ve got the setup complete, the third temptation tends to make an appearance.  This is the Clever Friend.  She’s witty.  She’s fun.  And she’s only looking for something Platonic.  Really.  You can spend a night with her and nothing’s going to happen because you’re just friends, right?

A week later, you look around and notice that your original idea is hard to recall, and the days spent developing a relationship with the Clever Friend aren’t going to amount to much after all.  Clever Friends are creative endeavors that are different enough to let you feel like you’re still in the groove, but also sap the excitement and interest you had in your manuscript.  They often lead nowhere because they are large-scale or long term, like learning Swahili, or building hang gliders by hand.

To defeat Clever Friends, leave a post-it for yourself somewhere for when you’re finished, as a reward for completing your current project.  Or make it a New Year’s resolution for next year.  But don’t act on it now, while on track with a story.

As you plow through the meat of your manuscript, as the buildup transitions into the resolution, the Staid House-husband comes calling.  This is your manuscript itself, sitting on the couch all day, watching the soaps while swilling cheap wine from a box.  Their once-lustrous hair has transitioned into a thicket of coarse body hair in unexpected places, and the cute love handles you used to wrap your arms around have become a full-on gut.  It’s hard to get the Staid House-husband to do what needs to be done, and you spend more and more time trying to get them to do what they should.  Your commitment to the manuscript suffers, inviting a new round of Interesting Friends and Hot Tramps to come calling.

The wall of indifference personified by the House-husband takes a real professional attitude to overcome.  This is where the working writer earns their robes.   The House-husband is often the classic incarnation of writer’s block, and it sometimes helps to think of him as a distorted point of view about your work in progress.  A change in your work habits can often get the House-husband to at least do the chores, however much he might grumble, allowing you to complete your first draft.  Daily wordcount goals, checklists of story events, and renewed outlining are all ways to whip the House-husband back into the athletic literary Adonis you remember.

These are the Four Horsemen of Literary Apocalypse.  But, just when you head into the home stretch, winding ever closer to the “Till Death Do Us Part” final scene and the completion of your relationship with this project, a fifth rider appears.

This is the Cabana Boy, and he doesn’t appear to everyone.  But his seductive allure promises a renewal of the excitement you felt for the manuscript when it was young and nubile.  The Cabana Boy hints that you can have that feeling forever by renewing your relationship time and again.  How does this happen?

By making your standalone novel a trilogy, or a ten-volume series.  But the Cabana Boy is not destructive because he, perhaps, gives you new ideas to continue the story in an additional volume.  No, he makes you hold back what you intended to give to your project: a final resolution.  The Cabana Boy is not just unfair to your project, but to your readers as well, offering up plot holes and loose threads in place of a final denouement.

Resisting the charms of the Cabana Boy requires determination, and a resolve to make your current project work in its intended form.  If you find a trilogy is the true format of your story, that’s one thing.  But if your entire story pointed toward a final resolution, and you hold back for just one more novel, it damages not just the trajectory of the story, but the trust of your readers.  And, as writers, our relationships with our stories are ultimately our relationships with our readers.

So stick it out, and complete that first draft, no matter which of the Five Horsemen tempt you to do otherwise.