Category Archives: writing

This Writing Thing is Fun

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While I have not yet begun the words in a row prose writing that will create my American Folk horror novel, I have been hip-deep in character design and creation. This has been a blast.

Most of the novels I have written have been science-fiction set in quite distant futures. For each of those I did create characters documents, studies, and histories but there is something very different doing the same for characters that exist in the here and now. (Well, effectively the here and now. There are no supernatural entities and threats in the real world but aside from that the world of this next novel is our own world.)

That means as I create the backstory and history of the characters it’s important to know the world as it was when they were that age. Being in to 20s in the 1960s is very different than the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s.

While the historical context and its effect are fun to research and think about that hasn’t been the most enjoyable aspect of this part of the process. It’s the spontaneous evolution of the characters as I make the notes.

When I started this phase I knew some of the really big things that were going to be in various characters backstories as it compelled their natures and motivations. For me, something changes at the moment of actually making the notes in the various files. Writing the comments ignites new ideas, new aspects of the characters come to mind and insert themselves into the history. This ripples out to characters that they are associated with and changes them. The big boundary lines of what I originally envisioned act like guardrails, keeping the character enough on course that the novel will still work as intended, but now the characters can go faster, further, and higher into the storm I have created for them.

Man, I am having so much fun.

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StokerCon 2024

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StokerCon, is a premier Horror Convention where the Horror Writers Association hands out their award for excellence and achievements.

When I learned last year that 2024’s convention would be held here, San Diego California, I was stoked to attend.

Then in January of this year, after nearly 4 years of dodging the damned virus, COVID-19 caught up with me. Due to my vaccinations and boosters, it was a very mild case. It seemed hardly worth noticing.

And then the cough arrived.

No fever. No fluid in my lungs. No further infections just a deep, hard, and dry cough that refused treatment.

Weeks passed and nothing I or the doctors did stopped the coughing. If I remained silent, I did not cough but even a few sentences provoked attacks. I knew I could not attend a convention in this state. It would be fun for me or fair to the people around me who would have no way to be sure I wasn’t infected with something. I would be a walking source of anxiety, particularly for those with weakened immune systems.

Ironically the last two weeks the newest therapy seems to be working. The coughing was far less than it had been but not yet fully conquered. I elected that it would still be best for me and for others if I didn’t attend.

Instead, I ran my tabletop role playing game and discovered the limited of my recovery. A mere two and half hours into play the cough resurfaced and quite strongly. I ended the session earlier and with rest the cough subsided again but there is no doubt had I attempted to attend the convention it would have been provoked, so it turns out my decision to stay home had in the end been fully justified.

It breaks my heart that this turned out to be the right course of action. I had really wanted to hang out with fellow scribes, many much more talented than myself, but at heart I could not induced such anxiety in others.

From the reports I have read it appears that convention was a success, and I am thrilled for everyone who attended.

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Endings aren’t Always at the End

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In preparation of submitting it to small press publishers I have been revisiting my Seth Jackson military/adventure SF novel.

There have been no grand changes but rather her and there minor alterations to a few sentences for clarity. The most common change breaking a compound sentence into two.

That said there is a fairly sizable edit that is going to take place, the deletion of an entire chapter and all the references, so far just one, to the events of that chapter.

The book starts with a major battle between the European Stellar Union and its enemy the ASPs. The battle in my mind has the scale and importance to this war that the Battle of Midway had for the United States during the Second World War. It is the turning of the tide. To capture the scale and complexity of the battle I follow several viewpoint characters, not all survive the fight. It’s a big battle and takes up just over a quarter of the novel. Everything that follows which threatens to drum the main character out of the service is a consequence of that engagement.

However, I have discovered that a chapter that takes place effectively after the combat has ended and the enemy is retreating needs to go. The fighting has ended, the ‘good guys’ have won, all that is needed is a small denouement to wrap it up, but I went on for an entire chapter because I had a cool idea that sprang from a little know aspect of living in weightlessness. I justified it myself as an important character moment between two characters but really I just loved this odd little thing about urinating in space and how it can turn dangerous to one’s health.

You see the Battle of Sigma Draconis is its own little story with a beginning, middle, and end, and I flew right past the dramatic and satisfying ending when I should have stopped.

Stories are made of scenes and scene ending are just as vital as story endings.

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Artistic Responsibility

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Friday night I went out to the movies and watched the big screen adaptation of The Fall Guyand had a pretty good time with a summer popcorn movie.

Before the film there were of course 20 minutes of trailers, and one trailer really pissed me off.

Fly me to the Moon a romantic comedy set in the days before the moon landing between a PR hack (Scarlet Johannsson) and a flight Director (Channing Tatum) as the PR hack tries to boost public interest in the upcoming lunar landing.

I can ignore/forgive the historical inaccuracy about public interest. Leading up to the landing this nation went space happy and after the landings interest waned from the fickle public. However, in the trailer it is also shown that fear of a failed landing prompts the PR Hack to produce a faked landing on a sound stage. This is where my blood boiled.

I think it is grossly irresponsible of the production, which began in 2022, to depict the conspiracy theory that the moon landings were faked. Yes, I understand that this is a comedy, and should be viewed in that light but the world we live in is one riven with conspiracy theories. One should not inject into a culture already diseased with conspiracies about election and life-saving vaccines anything that supports, even as a jest, conspiratorial thinking. People are dying from the conspiracy that the COVID vaccines are dangerous this is not the time to buttress such thinking.

John Carpenter when he wrote and directed, They Live meant it as a satire of Reaganism and what he viewed as the culture of greed in encouraged. However, his simplistic world-building of a secret alien conspiracy controlling and directing the planet’s governments and culture were readily accepted and embraced by neo-Nazis who view the entire film as an allegory that buttressed their diseased antisemitism.

Director Greg Berlanti and screenwriter Rose Gilroy have failed to learn from this terrible lesson and stand to do damage to our nation and our world for the sake of a few cheap jokes.

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On Fictional Cursing

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Recently on the social media sites where writers congregate there has been a small discussion on the subject of invented curses. Should a writer just use the curses that everyone uses and is familiar with or invent new one for their fantasy and far-future settings.

Invented cursing like artificial slang is a very touchy thing to pull off. Those of us geeks old enough to remember the original run of Battlestar Galactica recall the programs invented curse words like ‘frak’ and ‘feldercarb.’ (I am not cure of the spelling of that last one.) Which were one-for-one replacements for ‘fuck’ and ‘bullshit.’

This ‘just replace it with an invented word’ style of fictional cursing misses the point and understanding of cursing. Cursing is transgressive.

Cursing is about violating the ‘good taste’ and decorum of your culture. It is shocking and emotionally powerful because it is breaking norms and rules. If all you do is change ‘fuck’ to ‘frak’ then in effect you are saying that this alien culture thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of years in our history is just the same as ours today. Possessing the same values the same taboos and therefore the same sense of what is proper and polite.

That’s just lazy.

Plus, it misses the chances the golden opportunity for the writer to show us something about the new culture without stopping for exposition.

A culture with a lot of religion on its history or its current make up will have curse derived from that sense of religion.  No culture that doesn’t have some belief in torturous punishment through damnation is going to have the curse ‘damn you.’ If a culture places no important on familial bloodlines and lineages, then they are not going to use ‘bastard’ as an insult.

Star Trek’s Vulcan are a fiction race that prides itself on total control of their emotional reaction to the point that they insist that they have no emotions. Displaying and suggesting a Vulcan has displayed emotion would be an insult and transgressive. While they are not given to angry outbursts, I could see a Vulcan character calmly looking upon an enemy and saying,’ I have no doubt that gives you,” then with a pause for emphasis ‘joy.’ A stinging insult and rebuke delivered with a flat affectation.

So, think about the cultures your create and then ponder deep on what they consider transgressive and there you will find you curses and insults.

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Pleasantly Surprised

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Last week I returned to a manuscript I hadn’t touched in something like three years. My plans are to prep it and send it out to small press publishers of SF novels.

Naturally, I had to review it to make sure that I had the correct file and that there weren’t any major glaring embarrassing errors lurking in the text.

While I am tweaking a sentence here and there, just a really light edit, overall, the text is reading just fine. In fact, I find myself pulled into a story that I already know quite well. Not only am I not unhappy with the work I am quite pleased with it.

This may all be self-delusion. The creator is often the worst judge of the creation but three chapters in and I really am very happy with my writing.

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After ‘The End’

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Sometimes when a film has finished the credits have scrolled into history my mind ponders the next sequence of event for the characters. I am not speaking of sequel stories and further adventures but rather the immediate fallout of the events that just transpired.

67 years ago this week a classic of American Cinema was released to theaters 12 Angry Men, the story of a jury originally deadlocked 11-1 in favor of a murder conviction that grapples with prejudice and racism as they search for justice and their own souls. *spoilers* bit by painful bit the jurors uncover doubt in the prosecutions seemingly open and shut case until after conquering their own biases they reach an acquittal. The story ends with the jurors going their own way on a rain-soaked street as sunlight returns to the world.

I adore this film. Masterful writing, acting, and filmmaking in a tightly confined location. I do also ponder what the newspaper the next day looked like. The case against the young defendant looked so absolute, so solid. No one writing about the case or reading about would have been treated to the deep discussions and debate over evidence that in the public eye had seemed so certain and incontrovertible. I have no doubt that there would have been excoriating opinion pieces about an idiot jury that let a killer walk free, opinion pieces that might have proved quite popular.

Another movie that sparked fascination in what transpired after the final reel is the Cohen Brothers’ neo-noir Blood Simple.

A tale of lust, greed, and murder Blood Simple is a salute to classic film noir but one that isn’t like its predecessors constrained by the ‘Production Code.’

In the film one of the protagonists takes what he assumes is a corpse to a field to bury it. The person isn’t dead but gets buried anyways. Horrific. However, it’s not the gruesome nature of the killing that really set my mind wondering but rather the ‘hiding’ of the body. When I said it was in a field you might have imagined an open stretch of unused land, perhaps in a secluded forest. Nope. This is a farmer’s freshly plowed but not yet planted productive land. It’s a striking visual, the parallel lines of the plow interrupted by the stark unique rectangle of a grave, but what happens the next morning? I imagine a tired farmer ambling to his field to begin the daily work and stopping shocked at the sight of a grave in the middle of his future corn field. This ‘hiding’ isn’t going to last twelve hours as it’s almost certain that the county Sheriff is going to be involved very quickly.

It’s this sort of pondering that prompted me to write an epilog to my horror novel. Perhaps, if it sells, the editor will ask me to cut the epilog but I knew that had I read or seen my own story I would have been wondering how, with so many dead people scattered about the town, did the protagonist not spend the rest of his days answering very difficult charges.

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The Soul Crushing Exercise of Querying

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Once you have a completed, edited, and polished manuscript the next step if you are not self-publishing is to find a publisher and or an agent. This is done by sending out letter asking them to review your work and possibly take you on as a client. Those letters are queries and for many people, me included, it is painful frustrating process.

First there is the search for the right sort of agent. You have to find one that represents the sort of writing you do. It’s a waste of everyone’s time to query an agent that specializes in historical romances with your far-flung space opera. You have to find agents that are open to queries. There are so many writers aspiring to a traditional publishing contract that the agents are overwhelmed by the flood of queries. Most only open are specific times and for limited durations.

Once you have gathered a list of potential agents you start sending out those queries, paying particular attention to each agents preference in how that query should be submitted. Do they want a synopsis, something many writers dread crafting. Do you they want sample pages? How many? 5, 10, a chapter or 3 chapters?

Following each agents guidelines you send off the query and wait.

A growing number of agents will let you know in their guidelines that if they are not interested that they simply will not respond. So, you will get absolutely nothing in reply. The vast majority utilize form rejection templates. You know that they are not interested but you can’t be sure of why. Was the writing not good enough? Do they have too many clients with similar stories? Did this story just not ignite a love for it? Did you just catch them on a bad day? You can’t know and you will never know, all you have is the form rejection with your name and the book’s title filled in.

If an agent actually likes the prospect of your book they may ask for the entire manuscript. When you submit that it is more waiting, more uncertainty and still the most likely outcome is another rejection.

With this exhausting and demoralizing process, it is easy to see why so many authors in this day and age prefer to self-publish. it is not a statement about quality but for those of use with talents in graphic design and numerous other skill that make for a good physical book the traditional publication path with tis soul-crushing machinery remains the path we must walk.

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Vernor Vinge, Rest In Peace

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I do not often post about the passing in notable people here. While there are artists of all arts that I enjoy, admire, and are fans of, I rarely feel any great emotional tug when they pass. Losing a parent at a young age can impress upon you with great force the truth that everyone dies.

I do want to make a note of the passing this week of SF author Vernor Vinge. He was a celebrated author, often credited with popularizing the concept of the technological singularity, the point where advancements in technology change humanity so completely that what exists on the other side is incomprehensible to those before the event. The reason I am making this post is not because of his talented writing, his impact on the field, or even his influence on the wider culture but because I had the good fortune to have met him on a few occasions.

I cannot say I knew him. Sharing a few panels at local SF conventions is not enough to truly know a person, but I was acquainted with Vernor.\

He was a kind man, a local celebrity who did not throw that weight around at conventions. Even away from the dim spotlight of small local conventions he remained a friendly and approachable person. Our paths crossed at San Diego’s airport once as he was flying out to an eclipse and my sweetie-wife and were departing for a convention. The time we shared before boarding our flights was pleasant and affable.

It is strange, perhaps, that such a kind and seeming decent man created one of the most chilling and evil cultures in literature. The Emergence from A Deepness in the Sky and their viral form of slavery frightened me in a manner rarely found from pages of text. The book and those villains were so compelling that I was unable to resist reading it on the bus home from work, despite the intense motion sickness reading on a moving vehicle provoked.

Vernor was talented, kind, and he will be missed.

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Time for the Next Novel

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Well, the query letter has been composed, the synopsis written and once they have survived the sweetie-wife’s sharp eye for error I will climb back into the query trenches and The Wolves of Wallace Point will begin seeking representation and a home.

The best thing to do once a writing project is done is move on to the next project. My next novel, also a horror, will combine the sentiments of a 70s disaster flick, large cast, dispersed storylines, not plot armor for anyone, with my favorite style of horror, the ghost story.

I have no working title for this piece, but I have discovered one important thing about it. I cannot write this one by the ‘pants,’ as I did with Wolves. It’s going to end up too intricate, with multiple points of view and interweaving narratives. There are authors who could writ that without an outline, but I am not one. So, for this next novel I return to my usual process and will begin with a 5-act structure outline, but in this case one that breaks down the five acts among the five plots.

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