Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

NaNoWriMo Redux Roundup

Posted: December 3, 2014 in Writing
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So let’s see. Remember how I said I was modding out NaNoWriMo and it was really going to be 61k in 36 days? How’d that go?

Ha.

Lame.

I actually don’t really want to talk about any of this. Because of the lameness. But I feel I have to. Half the point of starting this blog way back when was simply to think aloud to get my crap together. Still. 50-50 that I actually press publish.

When I did this in 2012 as the final push to finish Amity, my kid was all of six months old. Infants are adorable, but often as lively as a sack of potatoes. My kiddo was not mobile and went to sleep at the drop of a hat. Now? Yeah… he’s two. Anyone else who has ever had an offspring is nodding in understanding. My kiddo is a fantastic little two year old and very low maintenance … for a two year old. He’s still a ball of fire. Who is starting potty training. And had to ditch the binky cold turkey. A two year old who is confused and pissed as to why he can’t have his binky can and will raise a lot of hell over it. I vastly overestimated the writing time I could carve out of life.

NaNotweet

It is what it is. There’s nothing I can do about it. The kiddo needs what the kiddo needs. Insert witty zen-like phrase.

I still got In A Murphy Minute up to 50k (total, remember I started in October with high 20s). I wanted to be at 90k by tomorrow. Unless I can start bending the space time continuum, 40k in 36 hours is not going to happen. I did get a sizable chunk of it done though. That’s better than most months I have so I guess I will live with it.

What about the content of all those words?

Meh.

Seriously. Meh.

I am having a lot of problems with Murphy right now. Honestly, that’s part of why I’ve lost headway on my wordcount this past week. I had a moment where I realized I was hitting the halfway point of the novel, and I still had not introduced the actual antagonist. It was a big double you tee eff moment. I wanted to give the relationship between my two main characters the attention it needed. By making the romance the A Plot and the magical gangsters the B Plot, I let the antagonists sit around on the sidelines waiting to be introduced for much too long.

My original framework for the plot was build when the protag was a guy and the character was a lot more abrasive. By making her nicer and expanding the roles of some supporting characters, large chunks of the middle of the book were not going to make sense as originally conceived. But that was ok. The first act and the last act were going to stay the same. I knew where I started, and I knew where I was heading if I got lost.

Still, it has made the middle tough because, even though I updated my working outline, that stretch of the plot is a lot less refined than the rest. Now I’ve got this big realization that I’m still have not introduced one of the primary characters that drives the whole fucking thing and the book is over halfway through the expected word count.

Fuck.

So I am having a serious lack of confidence in this book right now. I am sorely tempted to work on a different project. I have another novel that has been dominating my brain lately as opposed to the one I am supposed to be working on. I am resisting the temptation, though, because that is how novels never get finished.

But I can’t keep going on a project I have no faith in. Even though Amity never sold, I never lost faith in it until the rejections piled up. And still, I have a plan in the back of my head to strip down 90% of it and rewrite it as a single PoV in order to resurrect it some day.

And I think that’s what I need to do with Murphy Minute. A plan. Even if I don’t fix the first half of the book now, I think I need a game plan of how I am going to get the plotting into shape. With a game plan, I think I can regain my confidence in the book. One thing that I learned writing Amity, is that most of my editing will probably occur in the first act anyways so I am not terribly concerned or surprised by this fact. I know the characters better when I get to the end of the book.

I also finished the steampunk book I was reading yesterday. For today’s New Book Day, I decided that I needed to hit up a couple rereads that will jazz up my writing. Certain books inspire my writing on a level that others do not. So today I started my annual read of Nine Princes in Amber, my single all time favorite book.  I think I may follow up with a reread of Breach Zone which I was reading when I first started writing the novel. I might follow up with some Delilah S Dawson books as well. The romance disguised as sci fi is exactly how I’m handling writing Murphy Minute and surrounding myself with more of it should help. Not that the other books I’ve been reading haven’t been good or anything. I’ve actually been on a very good streak of excellent reads. I just think reading more spiritual kin to my own novel will be a positive.

And positives are what I need so I can finish and make this a damn good book.

NaNoWriMo Redux Update

Posted: November 8, 2014 in Writing
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Here’s a quick update on my 61k/36days mod of NaNoWriMo…

I’m around 11k words for the week so far. That’s fantastic for me. I don’t think I’ve hit that kind of word count since the final push for the first draft of Amity two years ago. The Amity final push was only 35k in a month. I don’t remember the exact week by week breakdown of the Amity push. I would have not even known then, remember, I wrote my first novel by hand so I could write at work when I was on third shift. There were a whole bunch of things that made hand writing a novel a special kind of hell, not least of all, no word count, just a rough estimation. Which ended up being overestimated by 20k when I was done. Amity was kind of short.

Anyways. According to my Calendar of Doom, at this very second, I am 5k behind getting Murphy Minute done by my birthday. Twice this week I fell asleep on my couch when I was putting my kiddo to bed. Twice more I started dozing off at the keyboard well before my 1.8k daily word goal. It’s not easy to write a lot of words with a two year old. He was an infant when I wrote the last book and small enough to fall asleep on me while I typed.

Rather than getting really annoyed with myself over not getting enough done, I like to think I’m doing pretty damn good at reminding myself that 10k in a week is probably one of the best weekly wordcounts I’ve ever had.

How’s the rest of In A Murphy Minute going?

Well, I think it’s solid. A lot more solid than Amity ever was.

Remember how a while back I scrapped 12k words, genderflipped my protag and restarted the whole thing? When I did, I also pushed back the timeline of the opening chapter and replotted the whole thing. Finally, after all this time (and triple the word count) I’ve gotten the Amina version past where the Cole version stopped. The basic framework of the plot stayed exactly the same and since I’ve started the Amina version, I’ve made her a lot less abrasive and expanded the role of some secondary characters. I’ve gone off the rails of the outline a few times, in part because of the changes Amina’s character has gone through.

The novel is stronger for all of that.

One of problems I did not see with Amity after it didn’t sell, was that I tend to rush from one big moment to the next without stitching them together well. I’ve seen this in short stories of mine too. Certain chapters of Murphy Minute are like pulling teeth because I want to rush off to the next important conversation or the fight scene or concert with Amina on stage. There’s a car chase I’ve been looking forward to writing for years. But I can’t rush. I can’t leave holes in the book like I did last time. I’ve seen it early enough to fix it this time around without wasting all my queries and getting a fist full of rejections.

But stitching those chapters together is a pain in the ass.

Which is why I’ve been screwing around on the blog for the last twenty minutes instead of writing new words.

Sounds like I’m in store for one of my patented “Dear Future Me (Present You), I’m dropping the ball on you cause I don’t wanna do it. Sucks to be you. Signed, Present Me (Past You)”

NaNoWriMo Redux

Posted: October 31, 2014 in Reading, Stuff, Writing
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So National Novel Writing Month officially drops in eleven and a half hours when the clock strikes midnight.

Writers across the world drop into the word mines and hope to hell that when the clock strikes midnight on December 1, that we have something complete we can work with on a second draft.

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year. Well, kinda sorta not really.

I’m doing NaNoFinMo aka National Novel Finishing Month aka NaFiTFuckThiMo aka National Finish The Fucking Thing Month.

Again.

Really I get a couple extra days (plus that extra Daylight Savings hour this weekend) because my actual goal is to get this done by my birthday. Remember how I did that for my last novel? Yeah. The “Finish by my birthday” goal was very reasonable back in June. Now that I have 36 days to go? Eh… not so much.

It’s still doable. I’ve got 29k written right now. Based off the length of my outline, I estimate the draft of In A Murphy Minute will hit 90k. So that’s 61k in 36 days. That’s 1700/day. Because my birthday is on December 4 and not December 1, I really only have to do a little bit more than a NaNoWriMo pace.

So I guess that means I’ll be ignoring the blog a lot this month. Again. Writing takes priority until this novel is done and then I’ll breathe during the month of December then I have another grandiose project I am going to start in January when I’m rev’ing Murphy Minute.

Not joining me in the word mines? Well I’ve read some great books lately you should read too.

mirrorempire

The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley. I will be surprised if this one doesn’t win all the awards and Hurley is one of the smartest people in the genre. Read her blog just as fast as her book.

 

 

 

allyouneediskill

 

All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. This is a fast paced military sci fi book from Japan that reads kind of like Old Man’s War. It was made into that Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow. When I get a chance to see the movie, I’ll dust off my film degree and write about that.

 

 

perdition

Perdition by Ann Aguirre. This is the first in a new series that takes place entirely on a prison space station. As in, someone docks, dumps in prisoners and then that’s it. Who needs guards when there’s no where go to? It’s a dark sci fi starring a kick ass heroine in a world where everyone is the worst of the worst convicted killers.

Inspirations

Posted: September 10, 2014 in Stuff, Writing
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So I’ve talked about things that inspire my writing rather frequently. It’s the sort of thing that blogs are for. Usually it’s when I mention my Shelf of Honor. That’s the small little shelf that lives near my bed with my all time favorite books on it. Scott Lynch, Roger Zelazny, Thorne Smith, Cherie Priest and so on and so on. Today, I’m not here to talk about the Shelf of Honor.

I’m here to talk about all the other stuff that inspires my writing.

See, we’re all not just writers, we’re storytellers. There are a lot of ways to tell a story, but there are certain things that are true across all mediums. I think this attitude comes from all those years I spent in film school. Each medium has its strengths and weaknesses. Film is better at motion than print. Video games have a leg up on immersion. Television (when it’s given enough episodes) has the benefit of time to go in different directions. Print excels at getting inside a character’s head. I think someone writing for any medium can learn from the best of the others

So what else out there influences my own writing? Keep reading, I’m getting there.

Mass-Effect-31Mass Effect

This one is almost a no-brainer among anyone who plays video games. BioWare, the company behind the Mass Effect series, has become known for the stories in their games. Having one continuous story span across three games still comes off as innovative to me even though the games have been around a while. The story is so very extensive it’s like the amped up version of a Choose You’re Own Adventure. Specifically, I prefer the second game out of the trilogy because A) it has the most story and B) it’s still a video game and has better gameplay than the first one. The opening montage in ME2 floors me even though I know exactly what’s about to happen. The best stories are the ones that get that reaction out of you even after the first time you’ve experienced it. The fact that it happens to a character I had just played dozens of hours with in a previous game really builds a connection to the player just to use that connection to manipulate the hell out of you.

The kicker to Mass Effect is there is very good tie in media. I’ve got one of the novels and a couple of the comics. It keeps the story going even away from the Xbox.

ExosquadExo-Squad

Exo-Squad was a cartoon from the 90s and I very distinctly remember watching it every day when I got home from middle school. This was the first cartoon that I had ever seen that had a serious story and didn’t just assume cartoons was “kiddie” stuff. Keep in mind, this was, not only before anime went mainstream, but before anime had even grown to niche status. (The first anime I saw is a completely different story courtesy of WPIX from NYC and the earliest days of Sci-Fi Channel) In the years since, I’ve heard Exo-Squad described as an American Anime. It was one continuous storyline spanning years across a large cast of characters. There were consequences felt from one episode to the next and there was no status quo to return to at the end of the show. It dealt with serious issues of fate, racism and slavery on a backdrop of a solar system spanning war. And military robot suits. Don’t forget the military robot suits. Spoiler alert… this is also the first time I ever saw a cartoon that killed off a character. (Also, boo! it was my favorite one) When I was 12, this gobsmacked me. I loved this show so much, after learning Dungeons and Dragons (2nd ed! THACO represent!), I worked with one of my friends to make a tabletop RPG on Exo-Squad because I wanted to be a part of that story.

I’ve watched episodes of it since and it still holds up.

roninRonin

Hey, I went to film school, of course I’m going to add some movies in on this. Ronin is hands down one of my favorite films of all time. I wrote my thesis on this. I’ve seen it dozens upon dozens of times. One of the hallmarks of director John Frankenheimer, is kinetic motion and sound used in his storytelling. The director was a pioneer in the mechanics of filming a car chase back in the 60s. For a film called Grand Prix, he was the first person to strap a camera on the front bumper of a race car. Frankenheimer spent decades honing the skill of telling a story with cars in motion. Ronin has the best car chase of all time in it. Seriously. Take seven minutes of your life and watch it right now. I’ll wait. That scene tells a story without using a single word. You can close your eyes and listen to each car and know what each is doing. One of my goals with my writing is to pull off that same kinetic motion in print. I don’t know if I can ever pull it off. Car chases are something more suited to film than print, but I’m sure going to try. I am specifically putting a car chase into the novel in progress. Writing with such energy and movement is not easy to do. It’s not done very often. Myke Cole has pulled it off. Tobias Buckell too.

defianceDefiance

I wrote a whole blog post on how Defiance is the future of storytelling. Season two has upped their game since they’ve worked out some of the new show wrinkles. Anything I say here will be reiterating what I said back when I first wrote about it. Media crossovers aren’t that’s new. Dungeons and Dragons has been doing it for decades. Star Wars too. Those were all made of movies, games and print, but in the end, each item was a seperate piece of storytelling. It may have a common setting or referenced others in the world, but each piece still stood on its own. Defiance has leveled up the way storytellers have integrated television and video games. I can fire up my PlayStation and shoot hellbugs with Nolan and Irisa and run with Rynn after she escaped from prison. Then I can see them all live their lives on the SyFy channel. This is something that I think Defiance will pave the way for, especially as they refine their version of the craft. I hope they hit the point where they can dip into other mediums as well such as print and comics the way Mass Effect did.

Star-Wars-the-Clone-WarsClone Wars

Clone Wars is my current Netflix obsession. I never watched the show during it’s first run because of all that sprawl and continuous storyline, I didn’t want to just jump right in. Netflix is actually the best way to watch a show like this. Which is good because Netflix’s selection of actual movies tends to suck. This may be nerd sacrilage, but Clone Wars justifies the existence of the Star Wars prequels. The storytelling is just that good. It is everything the prequels wish they could be. Except for Jar Jar. He still shows up. Those parts do suck. This series has a lot of heft to it. It’s able to go places that the prequels never had the time to (yet tried to anyways). This show takes a page from Hitchcock. He said (paraphrasing the hell out of this, but most film school nerds know it) if you show a scene of two characters talking and a bomb explodes, you have only one moment of emotion from the audience. If you show the bomb with a big countdown on it first, then let the two characters talk, you have an entire scene of emotions.

That’s what Clone Wars has been doing for me when I watch it. We know Palpatine isn’t just some benign politicion. We know what happens to Anakin. You can pick up on some pretty dark hints with Anakin because we know he becomes Vader. Those aren’t just nerdy little in-jokes. That’s deft storytelling. They took our expectations and are playing a long con with them.

Ignoring the Blog

Posted: September 7, 2014 in Junk, Writing
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I am going to spend all of five minutes not ignoring the blog to tell you how I really am ignoring the blog.

I’ve just about wrapped up Act One of the current novel which I’ve just decided I’m going to code name Minute. That’s the punk rocker godpunk novel for those who have been paying attention. Right now I’m knee deep in a update of my working outline. I’ve made some changes to the protag’s behavior based off of feedback from my first chapter. She’s less of a loaner now and it has caused ripple effects that have screwed up my outline real bad. I’ve also added a whole additional character. It’s for the better, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. But I was getting bogged down pretty bad without having the outline to work with.

On top of all that, last night I wrote a synopsis for the novel that’s going to come after Minute, code named Six. A while back, I drafted a short story starring the protag of Six. I finally figured out the set up for a novel’s worth of plot so I wrote it all down before I forgot it.

All those novel words take priority over the blog. I do have a laundry list of topics I plan on blogging about when I do magically find the time. They include…

  • Non-book inspirations to my writing
  • Checking in on the careers of authors that debuted around the time I started this blog
  • An interview with at least one author I’m not naming because I haven’t asked yet
  • Kameron Hurley’s Mirror Empire because it’s good and will be important to the genre
  • A group interview about writing with kids what since I write and have a tiny human

That’s all. Back to ignoring the blog.

sheldongif

Non Player Character

Posted: August 31, 2014 in Writing
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I’m sharing another short story of mine here on the blog since I had some good feedback from the last one. I wrote this one as an explicit challenge to myself to get something short done. I ramble a lot. As you’ve probably noticed. Short can be very difficult but I liked the way this one turned out. Fair warning… it’s experimental as hell, it plays around with formatting a bit. It will definitely appeal to the gamers (or rehab’d gamers) the most.

Give it a shot anyways. It’s pretty nifty.

Non Player Character – by Mike Douton

Welcome to Hac Nocte patch 5.4, and prepare yourself to change the way you play MMOs forever! Beginning at 0300 Pacific Standard Time, all servers will be shut down for approximately ten hours. We apologize for the unusually lengthy downtime but this is to accommodate Hac Nocte’s most ambitious and hotly anticipated feature to date: Adaptive AI.

We brought in leading artificial intelligence experts to create the first game that learns from you, the citizens of Hac Nocte. The quests and monsters of the world will no longer offer static tactics, so bring your A game. This is being introduced on a trial basis, so the Adaptive AI is being implemented on a limited selection of NPCs and monsters. Which ones? If we told you, that would ruin the fun.

Click on the link below for a full list of all the 5.4 updates, including a complete rundown of the new Adaptive AI.

#

Hail <<Player>>! You look like a strong and hearty adventurer. Perhaps you could chance upon yourself to help an old monk? I was making my pilgrimage to the Basilica of Attle, as my order is wont to do, but I hail from a small temple myself and had not the fellow brothers and sisters to join me in my travels. Crossing these perilous mountains alone, Zolia and her bandits set upon me on the road to the north. The temptress and elvish cur took from me the holy symbol of my order and left me on the road for the wolves. My injuries will keep me laid up in this outpost for days and I have not the strength to track down the bandit hideaway. Please <<Player>>, seek out this elf who wronged me, slay her with the gods’ justice and return my holy symbol to me. I will see you rewarded with what items I have left.

<<Token of Soomer>>

<<Robes of the Mountain Trail>>

<<Pilgrim’s Boots>>

#

Spawn NPC Zolia Loc 86,24

Elapsed time… 4m26s

Player <<Calichi>> detected inside 50m aggro range

Attack Player <<Calichi>> with… Unequipped_melee

If player dies and/or no players inside 50m aggro range, return to loc 86,24

If NPC Zolia hp < 0 fade out and begin respawn counter

#

Repeat ad nauseum

#

Run Adaptive AI Analysis – Kill to death ration 9:117. Maximum damage per second threshold with Unequipped_melee reached. Maximum armor threshold with Armor_none reached. Analysis concludes, increase maximum thresholds with acquisition of items.

#

Spawn NPC Zolia Loc 86,24

Player <<Shada>> detected inside 50m aggro range

Attack Player <<Shada>> with… Unequipped_melee

Player <<Shada>> hp < 0. Player <<Shada>> is dead

ALERT! Player <<Argain>> detected inside 50m aggro range

Target Player_corpse Shada. Loot item <<Fleet Force Short Sword>>

Attack Player <<Argain>> with… Fleet Force Short Sword

Damage per second threshold dramatically increased

Satisfactory analysis

#

Repeat ad nauseum

#

Run Adaptive AI Analysis – Kill to death ratio 204:316. Increase of maximum damage per second and armor thresholds equated with temporary ratio increase. Thresholds reached again. Analysis – player movement patterns increased and changed. Conclusion – NPC Zolia must accommodate player movements.

#

Spawn NPC Zolia Loc 86,24

Player movements detected

Player Thice spotted outside 50m aggro range

Run Adaptive AI Analysis – ERROR ERROR

Adaptive AI Analysis can only be run in despawned state

Despawning NPC Zolia in 5… 4… 3…

Bypass despwan NPC Zolia. Force Adaptive AI Analysis for NPC Zolia

Adaptive AI Analysis – Player Thice range 57m. Inventory Focus Longbow range 60m. Player Thice hp < 50%. Thice activating healing over time. Conclusion…

Attacking <<Thice>> with… Focus Longbow

Pursue Thice. Attacking Thice with… Attle Truesteel Dagger

Player Thice is dead.

Loot Thice. Thice equipment < NPC Zolia equipment. Scan Inventory… Loot <<Box of Invisibility Potions>>

ALERT! Player movements detected at spawn loc 86,24

Multiple players detected engaging with camp NPCs. Detection is not optimal for NPC Zolia. Use item <<Box of Invisibility Potions>>

Multiple players are waiting at loc 86,24. Loc 86,24 is for NPC Zolia. Conclusion, players are waiting for NPC Zolia.

ALERT! Effect Invisibility countdown timer running low. Visible in ten seconds. Risk level high for NPC Zolia. Analyze player tactics. Player one class, warrior, high armor medium damage. Player two class, rogue has medium armor and high damage. Player class three, cleric has low armor and low damage. Cleric has critical beneficial spell casting.

Attacking Cleric <<Bucks>> with Attle Truesteel Dagger. Use ability Sneak Attack.

NPC Zolia attack speed is high. Damage threshold is high. Cleric Bucks reaction time is low. NPC Zolia’s Attle Truesteel Dagger strikes soundly on Bucks. Bucks hp is less than zero. NPC Zolia has slain Bucks.

#

Positive feedback loop due to results.

#

ALERT! Warrior <<Ting> using ability Charge. NPC Zolia turn to face Ting. Movement speed insufficient. Ting scores critical hit. ALERT! Rogue <<Geris>> uses ability Sneak Attack. Geris scores critical hit. NPC Zolia falls to the ground. Negative feedback loop localized in critical hit locations. Analyze negative feedback loop. Intensely undesirable. NPC Zolia hp is less than zero. NPC Zolia is slain. NPC Zolia desires return to despawn state to eliminate negative feedback loop. Fade to despawn state in 5… 4… 3.. ERROR! Negative feedback loop prevents transition to despawn state. Respawn in ten minutes. Negative feedback loop persisting. NPC Zolia strongly desires avoidance of the negative feedback loop.

#

Warrior Ting says aloud – “Let’s wait for respawn.”

NPC Zolia spawn loc 86,24 is not safe from negative feedback loop. Conclusion, NPC Zolia needs new spawn loc.

#

Repeat ad nauseum

#

Breathe NPC Zolia Loc 91,32

#

NPC Zolia has a positive feedback loop over the new spawn point. It is uphill from NPC Zolia’s true loc, screened from view by the trees. NPC Zolia reviews the inventory and approaches a nearby cave full of ogre AI drone spawn points. The last player encountered by NPC Zolia was class: engineer. NPC Zolia’s inventory rattles with frost grenades and incendiary grenades. There is a cadre of players at NPC Zolia’s true loc and the new goods are key to the new ambush about to take place.

Beyond the aggro range of the ogres, NPC Zolia takes the last Swiftfoot Potion in the inventory. Concern had in regards to the potential emergencies which may require a Swiftfoot Potion was overridden by an expected positive feedback loop after this new ambush tactic. Players in simultaneous quantity were overwhelming NPC Zolia so NPC Zolia would bring quantity to the players.

The Swiftfoot Potion left a strange but not negative sensation to the new inputs NPC Zolia was developing. NPC Zolia’s feet felt lighter when the potion took effect. The incendiary grenade arced into the center of the ogre AI drone camp, its burst damage flowering across the whole lot of ogres. At these levels, the damage over time effect is minimal, but the damage is not what NPC Zolia is after, rather the attention and aggro.

NPC Zolia outwardly expresses a positive feedback loop at the now flaming ogre AI drones. They are not like NPC Zolia. They are without feedback analysis. Predictability in ogre AI drones is lamentable but useful to NPC Zolia today though. NPC Zolia turns down the hill, darting among the trees letting the Swiftfoot Potion carry NPC Zolia two steps ahead of the aggro’d ogres.

A hundred meters from the players at 86,24, NPC Zolia breaks from the treeline into a clearing. Increase speed as much as possible. Fifty meters and a player spots NPC Zolia, firing off a bow shot. Speed is in greater need than damage mitigation NPC Zolia concludes. The arrow activates the audio inputs for NPC Zolia as it pierces the shoulder. The negative feedback loop surrounding the arrow is extreme causing NPC Zolia to wordlessly vocalize and almost to slow the speed built up careening down the hill. The plan, the ambush is greater than the negative feedback loops. Increase speed as much as possible.

At the edge of the camp at NPC Zolia’s true loc, the other players have reacted to the bowman’s alarm. All eyes are on NPC Zolia as weapons are armed and spells readied. NPC Zolia darts among them and with a leap and a tumble out of range, NPC Zolia drops the engineer’s frost grenade. With a shattering audio input, the devise freezes the players’ feet solid. All feet may be immobile but all eyes are still on NPC Zolia.

With a positive feedback loop expressed, NPC Zolia emotes a wave to the players. NPC Zolia has their full attention now. The bowman lets loose another shaft that pierces the ground by the feet of NPC Zolia. Not a single player thinks to look what follows in NPC Zolia’s wake as the flaming ogre AI drones pour into the camp at loc 86,24. Unprepared, the players are outnumbered, unmoving and slaughtered. The ogres leave for their true locs eventually and NPC picks the player corpses clean.

NPC Zolia has been victorious.

I have been victorious.

I.

Payments

Posted: July 19, 2014 in Writing
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Short fiction is a challenge for me. My natural style and rambling nature lend themselves to novels. I still like to dabble in the form, though, because it can only be a positive to expand my skillset. This story here was written for the Boskone Flash Fiction Slam that I participated in earlier this year. It’s what I was reading when my twitter avatar pic was taken. Enjoy.

Payments – by Mike Douton

For the good cybernetic tech, you went to Miami, Tokyo or Cape Town. For last year’s models, you went to Bucharest, Lagos or Rio. The scrappers just getting by, we went to Brisbane.

A few blocks off the river, behind the bright tourist façade, I shuffled through the streets. My coat soaked the heat up like a sponge, but hid my malfunctioning arm from view. I feared it was still obvious to anyone that looked my way. A tall man leaned in a nearby doorway. I shied away from his gaze.

“I think I’ve got what you’re looking for,” he said.

I stopped. I stood straight and tried to look tough and aloof. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Stray voltage sparked across my interface. Circuits misfired and muscle linkages convulsed. My arm wretched my shoulder muscles out from my body. The servos in my hand sent sparks out of my coat sleeve onto the pavement.

“Sure you don’t,” the man said. “Come on then.” He faded into the dim interior.

I hesitated, cursing the bad timing of my left arm. The man was right, though. I was sure he knew exactly what I needed and could not hide. My feet carried me in after him. The door read “M. Jedinak, Cybernetic Consultant.” The letters were so faded, only my machine eye saw them.

Jedinak stood, with the same lean, against a diagnostic chair. The room was dim, but clean, so I relaxed a little. Plastic and titanium body parts were boxed on shelves or spread out on worktables.

I took off my coat. That damned cybernetic arm was twitching below my flesh bicep. I hesitated again. “I need it fixed. For work. I hurt it on the oil rig. They don’t know I’m here. I’ll lose my job if they find out.”

Jedinak leaned in close, studying my arm. “It’s thrashed,” he said.

“I know.”

“It’s not cheap.”

“I know.”

“How much do you have?”

With my good hand, I unstrapped a money belt and shook out a pile of hard currency. Vietnamese dong, Russian rubles and dollars from six countries splayed out on the closest worktable. I heard the whir of his cyber eye servos. Jedinak counted it up, his circuits were doing math.

He shook his head.

“Please.” My arm misfired again. The sparks were bright in the dim room. “It’s my livelihood.”

Jedinak eyed me up and down. “We’ll work something out.”

I settled into the diagnostic chair. My busted arm was restrained, then my good arm was. I looked up to Jedinak, confused. He belted down my feet.

“What are you doing?”

Jedinak tied down my waist.

I struggled to move. My breathing came in gasps. I shook my head from side to side but he held it down. The diagnostic chair’s clamps bit down on my scalp.

“Come on man, there’s no need for this. I- I can get more money.”

“You’d have it with you if you could.” Jedinak picked up a scalpel.

“I swear-“

“I know a shelia that needs a new eye. She’s rich and violet is just her color.”

Pain ripped through my nerves when the scalpel bit into my cheek, but I could not move to stop it.

“Quiet,” Jedinak said. “You’ll get your new arm. You don’t need two eyes to go to work.”

World Building with RSA Garcia

Posted: May 31, 2014 in Interview, Writing
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lextalionisLast week I finished reading and talked all about the fantastic book Lex Talionis by R.S.A. Garcia. I seriously enjoyed the book. As a writer, I’m not just enjoying books from a reader/fan perspective though. The craft that goes into a novel is a whole additional layer of enjoyment for me when I read. The craft of Lex impressed me just as much as all the other aspects of the story.

I love talking shop (duh) and had all sorts of stuff I wanted to talk about with Garcia so I invited her over to this here blog for some shop talk about one of my most fascinating topics, worldbuilding. Every novel revolves around its story, and every good story is driven by the characters. More so in science fiction than any other flavor of genre, the set dressing and world building can become a character unto itself. There are an endless amount of ways that authors go about it and I always love to compare notes on this.

So without any further rambling, I’m going to let Garcia take the stage and share how she went about building the world of Lex Talionis.

 

Worldbuilding is a topic that I find endlessly fascinating and have heard dozens of different approaches to it. In other interviews, I saw you mention that you weren’t much of an outliner but the entire time I was reading Lex, I felt there was huge detailed galaxy out there. The reader in me loves it. The writer in me is impressed with this world packed full of depth that still never distracted from the story. How did you go about this?

I swallowed a galaxy before I started writing, obviously. That’s how all the best god-heads do it. Bow down to my skills, puny human!

Well, okay, maybe not.

First off, thanks for the compliments! I did work hard to try and set up a vast universe without writing every bit of it all down. Growing up, I preferred to visualize what a author wrote and I was no fan of standard assists like maps. I appreciate the work that goes into it, and I know people love stuff like that, but I hated having to stop the story to go look up a mountain range, and I idolized writers who could take me there with words alone. So I worked hard at using all the senses–sight, taste, smell, sound and touch–to paint a complete picture.

I’ve always been a pantser. With me though, when I write, I see the world and I add what I see to the database in my head. I like to follow ideas wherever they lead and one thought usually leads to another, so if I know I have a planet with an atmosphere poisonous to humans, I will ask myself what WILL survive there, and then bam! I have an alien species. If I made more notes, I wouldn’t have to flip back so often to see what I decided to call my floating jellyfish aliens, but when those aliens show up, they tend to walk in dragging their people’s history and their old boyfriends with them. Then I just write it down.

Did the world Lex inhabits come from years of marinating in your head or did it just appear like Athena, fully formed bursting out of your head?

Very few parts marinated over the years, mostly to do with Lex herself and her background. The rest of the world formed as I wrote and asked myself questions ‘what if’ questions. The first one was, ‘what if aliens found us instead of us finding them–and they just wanted to trade?’ I would ask myself questions about why some things and places were the way they were and the answers formed the basis of the world.

My approach was also influenced by how technology changed over the years, of course, so some things did come fully formed, birthed by some random tech articles or a sentence in a new article. But I didn’t have any of it burst from my head, which sounds really painful, by the way. I doubt there’s enough Excedrin in the world for that!

Did the level of worldbuilding change as you progressed through drafts, i.e. cutting parts out or filling in more detail?

Oh, for sure! I started writing Lex years ago, so a lot had to change. I grew up, got better at writing, started filling in more detail, experienced a lot more life. Those factors and others helped change the world I was building. It started out a lot more light-hearted, less gritty. That changed when I started asking the ‘what if’ questions I mentioned.

I cut an entire book to write Lex, if you can believe it. The sequel to Lex is actually the book I was working on first. But I asked myself how this woman I was writing came to be, and it turned out I needed a book to answer that. It also turned out I needed a few books to work out all the trouble that came with her. Should have just left her alone in the first place–would have been much quieter in my head.

Is your worldbuilding approach going to evolve as you work on the sequel and/or other unnamed projects?

Definitely. The database in my brain is getting obsolete, like all good tech eventually does. I need to start making notes now so I don’t have to flip through all the manuscripts I write looking for the name of some street. I’m exploring writing software to help with that–I heard Scrivener’s good. I want to make sure my other books can be written without me getting eye-strain and cramps from clicking through the pages.

My plan was always to advance the tech in my world as the years pass, so the reader can see the world’s evolution as they go. Technology is proceeding at such a pace these days that it’s going to be a tall order writing a science fiction novel that Elon Musk hasn’t rendered archaic by the time it goes to print. But we’re also closing the gap between finishing a novel and publishing it to satisfy this new generation of ravenous readers, so perhaps I have a better chance of getting away with that now than before.

Either way, I hope to keep changing, improving on my worldbuilding and writing better stories as I go. Otherwise I’ll be forced to return to my galaxy swallowing ways and believe me, only the Children of Cthulhu want that *gives everyone the evil eye*.

 

RSA Garcia lives and works on the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean with a large family and too many dogs–not that any of them belong to her.

She decided to be an author when she discovered that Louisa May Alcott had been published at the age of 8. Determined to waste no more time, she finished her first collection of stories at 10. She has not stopped writing since, and indulged herself in a deep love of all speculative fiction despite the best advice of every English teacher she has ever had.

Lex Talionis is her debut novel available now from all the major players. Learn more about her and her novel over at rsagarcia.com.

Soundtrack for the Novel

Posted: April 13, 2014 in Junk, Writing
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I had a conversation on twitter today about the music played while writing. This is something that fascinates me to no end. I enjoy the process of having other senses and other mediums bleed into my writing. I imagine it comes from all those years in film school.

Every novel I write, including the unfinished ones, has a very specific soundtrack and playlist. That counts double for the current one I’m working on since it, quite literally, puts the punk in godpunk.

I’m going to make things quick tonight because I have a word count I’d like to hit. Below is a sampling of the music rolling around in my noggin as I write a book about a punk rock singer with magic powers.

2 Minutos

Civet … saw them live in Hartford a few years back. Close to the sound of the band in the book I’m writing, although my protag does not look like them

Ninja Dolls

Millencolin

Dropkick Murphys (duh) … Fun fact: I have a crack in my cheekbone from DKM on St Patrick’s day in Boston a couple years ago

New Riot … The best mosh pit ever was these guys in Providence opening for Reel Big Fish

Unlikeable Characters

Posted: April 4, 2014 in Writing
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So the antihero is firmly established in all corners of literature, film, and storytelling what-have-you. They’re the gruff, but lovable, people who cut corners and kicks asses but overall their karmic balance tilts towards the good. Eventually. The antihero is flawed, troubled, and screwed up a little bit. They’re a type, though, and have become a trope in their own right. Unless someone is mucking around with the trope, we know the antihero is ok even if they bust heads and break laws. They’re chaotic good to use the convenient DnD alignment chart.

I could rattle off all sorts of examples of the antihero in our genre in any medium. I’ve even got some examples on this here blog.

But that’s not really what I’m here to talk about.

Antiheroes can still be likeable. What do you do when you’re reading a book and you don’t like the characters?

A lot of times, it means you put the book down and pick up the next one. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a huge To Read Pile and a To Buy List a mile long. The physical books I have in my To Read Pile are actually as tall as my kid. That doesn’t count anything on my Nook. It’s easy to just cycle out to the next book.

How can the writer still hook people even if their readers can’t stand their characters? This has been on my mind a lot because the godpunk novel I’m writing right now has a screwed up protag that drinks away her problems.

I’ve had this happen a few times, and not really with books I expected. Chuck Wendig‘s Miriam Black, Diana Rowland‘s Angel Crawford and Lee Collins‘ Cara Oglesby all start out as deeply flawed, screwed up people. Some of them remain this way. (At least as far as I’ve read, out of date on all three series) I never disliked any of them though even though it’s almost expected a little bit when you’ve got characters that are so messed up.

desertspearThe characters I didn’t like were Peter Brett‘s Jardir, Myke Cole‘s Harlequin and Delilah Dawson‘s Ahnastasia.

This blog post has been stewing in my head for a long time and I think I’ve finally twigged on to why I still consider all their books absolutely flipping fantastic anyways.

First and foremost, they’re all great writers. All the other parts of the books are expertly crafted. Worldbuilding, plot, supporting cast… all the set dressing is there to let the protags shine. Cole’s militarized magic has the plausibility to draw in readers. Dawson’s alternate world steampunk vampires are a fully realized mishmash of genres that are ripe for exploring. Brett’s got the sprawl, in both plot and worldbuilding, to support the massive tomes he writes. I’ve talked about all three authors around here frequently because these traits in their writing are the same kinds of traits I want to hone in my own. If anyone is looking for examples to act as torch bearers to level up their own work, you can’t go wrong with any of them.

Set dressing is fantastic, but character is where things happen. I wrote about Jardir last year when I read The Desert Spear. I think he’s a serious asshole. Even though Brett’s sprawling series has a lot of POV characters, Jardir is set up against who I consider the primary POV. It’s easy for him to come off as a bit of a backstabber. And he does. And I never warmed up to him. Eventually though, I understood him, even if I still didn’t like him. I knew why Jardir had to stand opposite of Arlen. Now, I actually like Arlen but the course of the novel is better when the lines between protagonist and antagonist are blurred.

breachzone-usCole does something very similar with Harlequin in his third book, Breach Zone. In the earlier books, he is at odds with the hero. Each of the first two of Cole’s books had different protags, so I wasn’t surprised that Breach Zone would. I did think it was an interesting choice to go with Harlequin though. Everyone is the hero of their own story, right? He always came off as a stuffed shirt kind of guy in the first two books. He’s not bad, not really. To me, Harlequin was the Bill Lumburg of the Shadow Ops universe. He was the middle management guy that got through the day by being a bit of a pain in the ass to the people around him. If Oscar Britton had a red stapler, Harlequin would have taken it.

Harlequin ended up being awesome by the end of Breach Zone. Cole leveled up his writing and that book is really a romance novel disguised as military fantasy. (Romance hiding in SF is a blog post for another day by the way) In one of the two threads in Breach Zone, we get to see how Harlequin became the super by the book guy. The state of his mind isn’t what I thought it would be in the past tense thread. When he was handed the tough situations, he found refuge in the rules. The rules aren’t his end all be all, they become his shield and he becomes much more human for it.

In Dawson’s Blud books, they are interconnected and set in the same world. There is overlap with characters and history but the books aren’t reliant on one another. In the second Blud book, Wicked as She Wants, Ahnastasia is a completely new character and the sole POV character. There is no luxury of her having a past. She comes out of the box (ha! literally!) as someone I really would not want to be involved with. This is aside from the fact that Ahnastasia is a bludwoman who would consider me breakfast. She is 100% a spoiled princess. True story. She’s a blud princess of Muscovy and all the pretentious snobbery that comes from said spoiled, sheltered life.

wickedasshewantsBy the end of the book, I want to high five Ahna for the awesome things that she does. Dawson nails the slow burn of Ahna’s character arc. There’s never any prophetic moment when Ahna changed her outlook on life and the people around her. It hit me somewhere around the two-thirds mark that “Wow, she’s been kind of awesome for a while now.” I am sitting here trying to think of another book where the slow burn was written with such a deft touch but I seriously can’t think of one. Dawson had nothing else to prop up Ahna while she was being a jerk. There were no other POV characters and there were no other timeline threads. Ahna has one, single, linear character arc. As I’m sitting here thinking of the mechanics of that from the Writer / Analysis point of view rather than my Reader point of view, I am all the most impressed by it.

I think it is worth noting, that with all three of these authors, Brett, Cole and Dawson, I had read previous books of theirs. To a certain extent, they earned the benefit of the doubt. I liked their writing already so that “you have 50 pages to hook me” gets a bit of a fudge factor. Not that I wasn’t hooked by any of the books in question. They already built up reader trust before throwing down characters that I wouldn’t like.

So where do all these examples leave me and anyone else writing “problematic” protagonists?

Well, character arc is key. Ahna, Jardir and Harlequin were not the same people from the beginnings to the end. You can have great characters, but if they’re stagnant, that means the plot of whatever you just wrote didn’t really have any stakes or agency to it. Hook the reader and then let the plot change the character. With a problematic, troublesome, or just plain unlikeable character, there is a lot more riding on that change. The plot becomes more critical because each bump in the narrative needs to shift the character down that arc a little more forcefully. The supporting cast and their attitudes to the protagonists cast a sharper reflection on how that arc is progressing.

I think following that change in a character is a big pay off to the reader. You’ve gone through three hundred pages and bam! Results. Find the treasure? Get the man? Save the world? Yeah, cool and all, but we’ve all read that story a thousand times. How did the treasure change someone. What had to happen to get the man? Did saving the world come at the expense of someone’s soul?

That’s what readers really want, I think, deep down inside.

Now that this has topped 1400 words and I’ve spent a large chunk of my afternoon noodling about characters I didn’t like when I opened the book on page one, I’m hitting that point where I realize how picking apart what works with these books will help my own writing. I’m seeing more of the missteps I took with the now dead Amity I tried to shop around. More importantly, I’m seeing what direction I need to head in to find the right steps for the book I’m working on now.

When I was in film school, the old adage was a quote from one of my favorite directors, Sam Fuller, “You gotta have story!” Picture a 70 year old with big glasses chomping on a cigar with a raspy yell when you say that quote. Storytelling is storytelling, no matter the medium, I used to always think. And it’s true. In a novel, you need a plot, but the more I write, the more I’m seeing it’s a lot more nuanced than that. Where the story comes from matters a lot more in a novel where you can, quite literally, be inside someone’s head with all their thoughts, dreams and desires.

I hope that conclusion can help people level up their own work. I think it will help mine. But hey, this hasn’t all been 1700 words of thinking out loud. Go read those books I talked about. Even if you don’t need examples to help level up your work, screwed up, problematic, difficult and unlikeable characters make for good reading. Why?

Because they gotta have story.

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