Category Archives: Books

BOOK SIGNING CANCELED

BOOK SIGNING CANCELED

Due to the continuing Corona Crisis, not even a pandemic will stop my alliterations, the signing event for my first novel is now canceled.

With gatherings of 10 or more people highly discouraged the store, Mysterious Galaxy, has closed to foot and in-person traffic until at least April 1st. There are discussions of possibly rescheduling the event for later in the year but I am sure slots will be limited and I am not the only author impacted so a reschedule would be nice but I am not counting on it.

If you were planning to attend the event, or if independent bookstores are important to you, I suggest that you buy the book from Mysterious Galaxy anyway. They are taking orders and fulfilling them by mail. Bezos and Amazon will weather this storm with literally billions in cash but local businesses will not be so lucky.

Mysterious Galaxy is a critical factor in the existence of my novel Vulcan’s Forge. For ten years I have met there with my writing group and that has certainly leveled me up as a writer and their staff are always helpful, friendly, supportive, and knowledgeable. From Mysterious Galaxy and stores like them you get those personal recommendation that can lead you to a new favorite author, not something simply pushed by an algorithm.

Vulcan’s Forge is my first novel and I certainly hope it is not my last. Having your debut event canceled is tough but COVID-19 is tougher and we can weather this if we do the right things. So, I will be sad to not have that signing but I hope that instead people stay safe, healthy, and order the book online even if they can’t have my illegible scribbling defacing it.

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This Feels Wrong

This will be a quick post.

So, I am revising my military SF about an American serving in the European Union’s Star Forces set in a future in which America took a wrong turn in the early 21st century and became a second-rate power. Honest, I was cooking this idea back in the early 90s.

This is the manuscript that originally clocked in at 115 thousand words and on advice from an agency was trimmed to around 98 thousand.

As I review the original longer work, a version I had preferred, I find that I am really enjoying this book. It has been a few years since I have read it carefully, line by line, word by word, as once I send a project off to editors for consideration, I protect my sanity by moving on to the next project. So, this return to the origi9nal manuscript is a, pardon the pun, novel experience.

It feels wrong just how much I am enjoying this read. But this speaks to the truism I hold to in writing, write the book you want to read. There is your vision, there is voice, there is what makes it yours.

 

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Movies Better Than Their Books

It’s a sentiment accepted by many a bibliophile that the novel is always better than the film version, but I content such a broad and all-encompassing statement cannot be universally true. Here are a few examples of where I think the films version of the stories exceeded what the novel presented.

Jaws

The iconic terrifying film from Steven Spielberg sent a generation scrambling for the shore fearful of the water is based upon a novel by Peter Benchley. For the screenplay two major sub-plots were omitted, the affair between Chief Brody’s wife and the young expert Hooper and Amity’s Mayor’s debt to local organized crime that made the mayor fearful of closing the beaches and being unable to repay what he owed. Both sub-plots are melodramatic and easily the most forgettable aspects of the novel. While Hooper’s and Ellen’s affair makes both of these characters less sympathetic than the cinematic characters.

The Hunt for Red October

Tom Clancy’s first novel of a Soviet super-sub’s defection to the west produced a terrific film directed by John McTernan and gave us the best on-screen Jack Ryan with Alec Baldwin. The novel suffered from American Uber Alles with everything done by the U.S. Military being exemplary over the far less capable Soviet forces. Reducing this produced a tighter and more tense conflict.

The Prestige

Not as well-know or as beloved as many other films by Christopher Nolan The Prestige took the great liberties with its source material a prize-winning fantasy novel of the same name by Christopher Priest. The novel spans time between the modern day, 1995 for the publication date, and the later 1800 with the feud between the rival stage magicians, introducing concepts as far afield as ghost into its narrative. Nolan’s script simplified the scope, restricting to its time setting, but retaining the multiple points of view and non-linear narrative but most importantly his gave a better motivation for why the feus turned murderous. In the novel it spirals out from one character performing seances, a common practice for stage magician’s, and being exposed for his fraud by his rival, also a common activity for stage magicians of the period. Having an on-stage death for which one is responsible made for a more compelling and acceptable motivation for the feud’s terrible escalation.

 

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It Begins Again

Yesterday I moved beyond notes, character design, and outlines with actual prose written on my next novel. I will admit that I did not get as much written on day one of the novel as I had hoped but words are on the page and the project has at least a little momentum.

Sunday night for whatever reason turned out to be a poor sleep night. I awoke after about 3 and a half hours of sleep with a parched throat and after cool water to deal with that issue I spent the rest of the evening in a sleep/wake cycle that precluded any real rest. While I did get writing done on my lunch break at the day job, in the evening I was simply too exhausted for anything more strenuous than watching the final episode of season two of The Crown. There wasn’t enough Princess Anne in the season, she’s clearly become my new favorite character.

I would love to get my novel’s first draft completed by the end of May. That would mean about 20,000 words per month or about 5,000 words per week. That’s is a doable goal despite this halting start from yesterday.

I am also working out the design for a Newsletter that will come out monthly. In the final week of each month I plan to release an email newsletter with defined content to help promote myself as an author. I am also thinking about releasing, also on a monthly schedule, previously published short stories of mine in an audio format.

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The Good News Post

So, there are several bits of new news to share this chilly December morning.

First off: Because I have a minor surgery scheduled this week and then a week off from my day job for recovery that mean I will not be working any more overtime. The money is nice, and I love chipping in and helping out my team at Kaiser Permanente but it’s really nice to get back to a normal schedule that allows for writing.

Second, pivoting of the subject of writing, our favorite local bookstore Mysterious Galaxy is saved! They have new owners and a new location so the store will not have to shutter depriving San Diego book readers, un-employing its staff, or leaving its various book, gaming, and writing groups homeless. Truly this had made this season festive.

And HBO’s Watchmen reached the season one finale and for once I am not disappointed by a project associate with showrunner Damon Lindelof. Quite the contrary, this series was fantastic. Every element plays perfectly in tune with the themes that grounded this version of the story and all the major points and developments were well established. The characters both as written and as performed simply captivated and for those that are the older versions of ones from the sources material managed to be true to their natures while exploring logical and consistent change from the thirty years that had passed. While Angela Abar (Regina Hill) may have been the protagonist of the story Laurie Blake (Jean Smart) took home favorite character prize from this viewer. Where the original graphic novel Watchmen centered thematically on the Cold War and the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation with those ideas and terrors informing not just the plot but the look and feel of the story this Watchmen explored the lingering horror, hate, and trauma of racial injustice and bigotry. Starting off with the slaughter and destruction of ‘Black Wall Street’ in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1921 and ending with crisis from Tulsa that threatens the world, Watchmen 2019 explores justice and the thorny issues confusing that concept with its petty cousin vengeance. Best off the season did not end with a plot cliffhanger. While the final shots left a terribly large question unanswered it did not fail to resolve the essential conflict or theme of the series. If there is never a season two the show is still full resolved and satisfying. Thank you, Mr. Lindelof, I do so hate cliffhangers.

 

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I Have A Release Date

My debut novel, Vulcan’s Forge now has it official release date from Flame Tree Press, March 26th 2020. (That year, 2020 still feels to me like some distant far away future.) The novel will be available in Hardback, Paperback, and e-Book editions. There will also be an audio book but I am not sure of its release date.

Because there is a release date that means the novel is now available for pre-order. I have already confirmed that at both major on-line retailers, that is to say Amazon, and at my local specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy, so if you are interested you can buy the book now for it’s March release. (I am informed that pre-orders count more for success than off the shelf purchases.)

 

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More Thoughts on Noir

Recently I have been re-reading my SF/Noir novel Vulcan’s Forge  in anticipation of editor’s notes as we proceed towards our early 2020 publication date and, along with watching classic noirson streaming while reading some of the classic works in their original forms, I have been thinking about the nature of the genre and what really makes up this beloved form.

In previous posts I have discussed how one of the principal driving factor of noiris to me is how characters are consumed by their appetites and I still hold that this is an essential elements in noir  fiction, be it film or literature, but I am now thinking there is an additional element, beyond the stylized ones, that feels central to the genre and that is the conflict between the character and their culture.

In noir  fiction characters are often immoral and that immorality is judged against the larger culture that character comes from.  Murder, theft, and unsanctioned sexual activity are the hallmarks of noir  movies and from the classic period running through the 1940s and 1950s acting on these desires places a person firmly beyond the boundaries of ‘polite society.’ Even when the heroes of noir fiction aren’t murderous insurance salesmen but rather the hard-bitten border-line alcoholic private detective they still transgress far beyond anything accept my society at large. Sam Spade before being entangled in a hunt for the ‘black bird’ and temptation of great wealth it represents is betraying both his partner and societies morals by his affair with Archer’s wife. Time and time again the main characters in noir  reject society’s conformity, sometimes they do so with an internal code such as Spade or Jeff Bailey in Out of the Past  or in other instances they simply violate society’s rules out of greed and lust such as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity.

All of this prompts the idea, that I am sure is far from original with myself, that a close reading of noir, either in a film or prose piece, can also been seen as a commentary on the society surrounding those characters. This is doubly so when the noiris combine with another genre such as fantasy or science fiction where the society is likely to be as fictional as the protagonists leveling an additional responsibility on the creator to be detailed and thoughtful about their narrative and what it says about human nature both at the individual and societal levels.

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Nailing the Ending

For me endings are where the meaning and themes of the story come together into a synergistic whole. The point if the story, be it a film or prose, usually lies in how that tale concludes and this places an especially important weight on getting your endings correct.

Here I am not talking about how the plot resolves, but rather the character beat that wraps up the transformation, for good or for ill, that was the protagonist’s journey.

In 1987’s Robocop  the film originally ended with one final news break segment that let the audience know that Murphy’s partner, Lewis, not only survived the film but had not been transform into a cyborg as Murphy had but once the filmmakers watched the final confrontation and it’s final line ‘Murphy’ they knew that beat ended the movie, there was no story after he reclaimed his humanity.

2008’s Iron Man  went through a similar edit. The script ended with Tony Stark coming home and having his meeting with Nick Fury and the hint of further adventures to come with ‘the Avengers’ imitative. However just as with Robocop  the director found that his story had ended with the line ‘I am Iron Man.’ Unlike Robocop  Iron Mancarried the weight of teasing the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Nick Fury scene could not be discarded and the Marvel Post Credit Sequence tradition was born. Marvel did not invent this, before Iron Mancame along these were called buttons and the occasional film make tossed them in a treat for audiences that sat through the entire end credit sequence. (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearlhad on with the monkey Jack grabbing a curse coin.)

I know that when I was editing my novel that comes out next year I discovered that I had done a similar thing. From the start I had a particular line that I wanted to end the book on and yet as I edited I discovered my story ended half a page ahead of my beautiful sentence. I killed my darling and the book ends where it needs to, or at least how it looks to me.

It is reported that Avengers: Endgame has no post credit sequence because the movie acts as the thematic end for the current cycle of the MCU films. I will see Endgame  this Sunday morning, the traditional times that my sweetie-wife and I go together to the movies, and I hope hoping that not only do they give me a satisfying ending to the Infinity War saga but also to the unique 22 film experiment that is the birth of the MCU.

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Poison or Protect: or Doing Sex Scenes Correctly

As I have said before my blog is not a book review site. Because of the rather small community of editors and writers I do think it is a conflict of interest to pretend to be objective concerning an industry that I participate in. That means when I discuss a book it is because I liked it and I thought it delivered well on some aspect and such is the case with Poison or Protect a romantic novella set in the Parasol Protectorate setting by Gail Carriger. (Full disclosure Gail has been a friend for many years but that is not why I am here to praise her work with this piece.)

Poison or Protect  concerns a mountain of a man Gavin, a retired military man, a Scot, whose has been dispatched to protect a politician from a potential assassination who suddenly finds himself overwhelmingly attracted to Preshea a woman who has left such a trail of dead husbands in her wake that she has been dubbed ‘The Mourning Star’ and who may be the very assassin. Preshea has been sent to the country house by other political powers with additional agendas and finds herself off balanced by the impressive Scotsman. This is a lighthearted roman with serious emotional undertones and more than one Hard R rated sex scene. The humor fires on all cylinders with engaging and memorable characters but I want to focus on the sex scenes.

I am one of those writers that tends to close the discreetly on my character’s sexual adventures but that is not from prudishness but rather my philosophy about writing in general. A scene should do one or more things, further plot, reveal character, establish mood or perform world-building, and ideally a scene does several of these things at once and most sex scenes are usually just that, the characters having their fun. What Gail performs admirably in this novella is that not only do the sex scenes reveal essential character elements for both Gavin and Preshea, the exact nature of the sex, the advances and retreats all give us a much fuller understanding of the characters than any other scene could have hoped to achieve. Not only does her sex scenes reveal character it is very difficult to imagine a more elegant way to reveal these very aspect, making Gail’s sex scenes critical elements that are unable to be excised from the text without destroying the fabric of the tale. The sex scenes are not ‘fan service’ but rather the emotional heart of the story and a perfect example of how to craft character illuminative sequences.

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The Last Ringbearer – Final Thoughts

Yesterday I finished the massive apocryphal novel The Last Ringbearer  which retells the War of the Ring with the premise that everything you learned from The Lord of the Rings  is  the victor’s propaganda.

Man, I really enjoyed this book!

To the terror of many a Tolkien purist I enjoyed this book much more than I enjoyed The Lord of the Rings.While to book is not without it’s flaws, towards the middle the plot becomes quite tangled with a vast cast of characters working on wildly different agenda. In its themes, the love of reason and science over magi and superstition, it’s commitment to competence over heredity and lineage, and it’s steadfastness to the reality that wars make monsters of us all, this tale spoke to me and many of my core philosophies. Written by Kirill Eskov a Russian scientist who started with his dissatisfaction at Tolkien’s geography and geology he explored his own world building albeit via revisionist version of Tolkien’s grand construction. I found Eskov’s interpretation of the likely type of interaction between immortal Elves and mortal men much more ‘realistic’ than Tolkien’s smug and wise benefactors. It was quite amusing that in many ways the author painted the Elves, their methods, and their motives much like the Communists that rule the USSR.

Depending on how deeply beloved The Lord of the Rings  is to you will be the principal factor in how much you may enjoy this novel. There are those, and I an no way disparage these people, who adore tales of the ‘chosen ones’ like Aragorn who is who is destined to be out unquestioned ruler by right of birth, or who despise the reveal of Rey’s parentage in The Last Jedi  because she comes from no noble bloodline but I find such ideology    at odds with my passion for equality and that brings The Last Ringbearermuch more inline with my commitment that all persons can be great or greatly evil and that the heroes and villains lie within us all.

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