Answered and Asked

As most of you know I went to DragonCon this past weekend.  It's what's caused another delay in Bastion, has kept me from writing any more of Mind the Thorns and has been eating up what little spare time I can squeeze out of life now that school has resumed.

But I did have an amazing time there, much of it good, some of it bad, and a little of it frustrating.  I'm going to start with one of the more frustrating moments.

The name of the panel was "Vampires and the Women who Write Them".  It featured an array of women authors of Urban Fantasy ranging from those who had just started writing to those who had been writing about vampires since the 1960's.  It was quite the collection and what I saw as an opportunity to get to the ins and outs of writing good, solid urban fantasy.

It was also a chance to be talked down to by none other than the wonderful Laurell K Hamilton.

Repost: Narrators- The Challenge of 1st Person

This is from the archives given that this week has been kinda bat-crap crazy for me.  It also reminds me that I need to get some serious work done on my next few chapters too....

The 2011 Smurf movie introduced us to a variety of unique smurfs, among them Gutsy (a kilted smurf) and Narrator (shown above).  At one point in the movie, while Narrator is describing the ongoing battle scene another smurf looks at him and shouts "Really?  Now?"  At this Narrator shrugs and says "It's what I do."

When it comes to 1st Person Past Tense writing I find that the idea of the narrator is profoundly problematic and one of the least understood or acknowledged challenges in writing, especially among young or new writers.  There is a distinctive appeal to having someone relate their accounts of events in their own words.  We, as readers, are treated to their thoughts, their statements of their feelings, and their interpretations of the story.

Guns, Politics, and Writing

Image Courtesy Raw Data

As much as I have political opinions, I've always been leery of sharing them here because:  A)  I don't want to risk alienating possible fans (customers), B) I've got other venues to share them, and C) I really want to focus on my writing, methods, inside scoops and the like.

Once in a while these paths converge and they do so in an odd way allowing me the excuse to talk a little politics as well as talking about the writing process.

I'd been meaning to post this for a few weeks now, pretty much since I posted Chapter 11 over on Bastion, the one that focuses on the teen-aged daughter of a rugged suburban survivalist.  I did not entirely mean to get preachy in there but I realized that the more I re-read the chapter the more I had essentially worked in my own political views into the character's mind set.

Then this week, I learned of a related tragedy.

Bastion vs Thorns: Why Bastion is Winning

Well it finally happened, and I feel like I've somewhat arrived:

I got a complaint that I haven't updated Mind the Thorns.

That tells me a lot of things.  First it says that someone is actually reading it.  That rocks.  Second it says that someone reads it and cares enough to want to know what happens next.  That also rocks.  Lastly it means that not only do they want to know what happens, they also are willing to go out there and ~ask~ for more of it.

I really need to work on it.

However, since the launch of Bastion, it has only missed one update for Spring Break and is currently on pace to keep going without interruption.  The real issue is:  Why?

Repost: On Being a Cover Band

There's been a bit of a curfluffle as there often is over on Good Reads, this time about 50 Shades of Grey. For those of you who don't follow literary circles (using the term loosely), the 50 Shades series is a trilogy of novels that follow a dominant man as he seduces an innocent, loving, young woman. The works are getting a great deal of attention in part due to the history of the work (it began as Twilight fan fiction) and because it's become the new guilty pleasure: A saucy kinky steamy romance complete with handcuffs and blindfolds.

And while a great deal can be said about the transitory nature of the book and how they've brought a good number of people out of their shells, or rather lead them to think thoughts that they thought only "those people" would think, I'd like to focus on the first of those two, the origin story of the novels.

But first, let's talk about Cover Bands and Harry Potter.

Love in Space ME3 Style

So I know I'm late to the game, but I am finally playing Mass Effect 3. Finally.

Actually if I'm being honest I've had the game for a while (as in when it came out) and I played it once before but I didn't get very far. I also took a passing stab at ME1 and gave up on it fairly quickly because I wasn't quite sure what to make of a FPS RPG and so despite the reviews I gave it a pass to indulge in other Bioware titles. One of the notable ones I really enjoyed was Dragon Age: Origins, even though I was unable to see it through to the end.

But I'm playing it through and I'm enjoying the story. It also happens that recently the question was raised about the relevance of in game romance and story telling.

And this takes us back to the nature of stories, video games, and the stories we tell. I know for me, part of my writing muse has been to work on the tapestry of a good game and adding my own stories to the characters there.

So, ME3 and the nature of romance....

Clip vs Mag

Some time ago I had the chance to get some first hand experience with firing a hand gun, the point of which was to have the experience to more accurately write the scene in Mind the Thorns where Regan defends herself from a band of hunters. It was a good experience and I think that it enriched my story telling.

For Bastion I have been networking with a mix of "experts" to get things right in the particulars given that all of my characters have such wide ranging backgrounds. But this also creates its own dilemmas.

Specifically, what do you use to load a gun? A clip or a magazine?

Passion for the Passionless or Regan becomes Bella Swan

I got an interesting email last week while working on the latest update for Mind the Thorns.  To paraprhase my Beta reader who sent the email:

"Is this girl ever going to grow a Superbowling* back bone?  Seriously!"

And that's when I realized that when I set out to write a "Better Twilight" but also with the twist of it being a Reader-Directed novel, I ran the real risk of it turning into "just another Twilight".  Only rather than Meyer-pires, it is populated with Oster-pires, and rather than being about a teenage angst ridden girl, it's a middle-aged, still somewhat angst ridden woman.

Here's a little backstory on the creation:

Write what you know, Again

Some time ago I talked about the importance of knowing what you're writing about.  At the time it was to reference my trip to a gun range to fire a hand gun for the first time.  After all, if I'm going to write it, I should know what it's like so I can capture that for my character.

Which also reminds me that I probably should get back over there and squeeze off a few bursts out of AR-15 or so.

So, as I've mentioned my latest project is to write something that blends "Fighting back for our planet after the Alien devastation" and "We are all that is left of Humanity".  I want it to be para-military based but that means that in the backstory of my characters there will probably be some military experience.

And aside from having memorized FM22-5 (or what ever its new designation might be), I really don't know that much about the military.

Guest Post: Writing Military

By Janine Spendlove

Rob is an old friend of mine, and we’ve both kind of gotten into the whole “writing thing” on our own, around roughly the same time. It’s been really neat to go on this parallel journey with him. One of delights has been a recent project he’s working on where he’s been tapping my knowledge base for one of his characters/story scenarios.

You see, in addition to being a writer, I am first, and foremost a United States Marine. My Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) is that of a KC-130J Aircraft Commander.

Given my background and the back forth Rob and I have been having about his story (basically, me correcting all the things he’s getting “wrong” about Marine aviation – things that only someone in the community, like me, would know), he asked if I would do a guest blog post about the top 5 things people get wrong about the military.

I sat down with my husband (also a US Marine) to brainstorm and we came up with the following “top 5” (trust me, there are a whole lot more than this). Please bear in mind, given that we are both Marines, our knowledge base tends to be deeply steep in that, so what we have to say does not necessarily count for the other branches of service. So what does that mean? If you plan to write about the military, you’d better do some research.

Only if you mean to

It's no real secret, but I'm working on another major web serial that will launch within the next month.  This one, unlike Mind the Thorns, will not be reader directed, will update weekly (where I was forced to move MtT to every other week), and will feature a mix of prose, and multimedia or other updates.  My plan for it is to first have a at least a month's worth of writing done before it goes live so I have some wiggle room to ease up or work ahead as I need.

Because the story involves members of the military, I've been in close contact with several friends with military experience and they have been kind and patient enough with me to let me bounce ideas off of them, and proof read my work for factual inaccuracies and procedural oopses.

I've got a longer blog post coming soon that addresses one of those conversations but I wanted to hit on another theme that has come out here.  Specifically this:

Soldiers are trained not to fire warning shots.

No Genre Fiction For You

Here's the truth about writing genre fiction:

Frankly, no one new to writing should do it.

When I was in college I took creative writing class. It was an entry-level course in the English department. Something like English 140: Intro to Creative Writing. When we got our first assignment, the professor made it clear that she did not want anyone writing genre fiction for her class. If she wanted us to write a love story, she wanted it set in the real, modern-day world, with real, modern-day characters. No alien space scapes, no historical sailing ships. Just two people dealing with a problem.

Likewise, sometime after college, I became involved through my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, on a website for new artists. She had been active therefore sometime and invited me to join. Artists would submit their pictures and they were open to critique from others. And as you critiqued other’s pictures people would follow links back to your page and critique yours. It also had an incredibly active in Email list-serve. Advice about how to become an artist flew around fast and furious. The most common thread among the emails was the debate of whether or not a fantasy artist should go to art school. The prevailing opinion among starting artists was that art school was a waste of time and energy because all they did was make you draw oranges and bottles and useless things. If you were going to do nothing but draw dragons for the rest of your life why did you need to spend hours and hours drawing a cube? It was a waste of time wasn't it?

Where does the story start?

My latest writing project is something that I consider a crossover between Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Wead, and the video game for Xbox "XCom." In my review last week I played up some of it stronger points. Honestly the game is, hyper addictive, and has me almost wanting to write fanfiction for it. 

In addition, it also has what I consider a fairly underplayed story line for the dystopian world that seems to be very much commonplace. The Hunger Games for example I believe is meant to be a highly evolved American, human society. Revolution, for as long as he managed to keep watch it, was us without electricity. But what about the wasteland caused by aliens? Definitely stories there that need to be told.

The real challenge I'm finding now, is figuring out exactly where the prose will be begin. I know going into my project that I will be posting things out of linear sequence. I know that I want to do flash-forwards and flashbacks all over the map. I want you to find out about something that the main character, well one of the main characters, did 30 days after the alien invasion. Then, in the next update, I want you to see her give a video diary taken three days before the first attack. I want to create that conflict of what is happening now, then give some some of what came before and what you can expect to happen in the future.

Mind the Thorns Reflections

Here I am, 100 posts on Fictional Omens, and 20 chapters of Mind the Thorns and I'm feeling very contemplative.

It's been a very interesting run so far on both counts but mostly I want to think about Mind the Thorns and how that has played out as time has gone on.  It was an experiment, to be sure, and one that I'm proud to have engaged in.  Quite a few things worked, a few did not, and for the most part I feel like my writing has done nothing but improve in the time I've worked at it.

Which, before I get into the nature of Regan and the dangers of trying to write something as immersive as a reader-directed novel, I want to talk about.

Writing is work.

The Rise of Genre Fiction

Fellow blogger and Author Elizabeth Baxter has a post up over at the Indy Book Blog about the Rise and Fall of Genre Fiction.  I think she offers a good glimpse at it but really there is so much left unsaid.

I shall take this opportunity, dear readers, to say it.

The question of the day:  "What the heck is it with everyone being into Genre Fiction?  How did True Blood become mainstream?  Why do we have everyone and their cousin watching Game of Thrones?  And how can you crack a joke about BDSM at a craft show and everyone laugh it off?"

The answer put forth by Baxter is that it has to do with the global depression.  So summarize- nah that'll take to long, let me sum up: the world sucks, people know the world suck, so they want to get as far away from the world as they can.  Nothing like escaping to Westeros, or to the towers of Grey Enterprises to forget about how far behind on your car payments you've slipped.  Why read about courtroom dramas and political in fighting when you can turn on CNN, MSNBC or FoxNews and get the exact same story, played out as though a cheap hack of a writer were coming up with the predicable and convoluted plots?

Speaking of which, seriously?  If I wrote a political drama I would not have named the guy Wiener.   Just, ya know, sayin'.  A dude needs some cred, amirite?

But I think Baxter only skirts the start of the deeper roots.

Summer Nights (of Writing)

Some time ago I declared that I was going to spend 3 months as a writer, working full time 5 days a week, pounding out a chapter in the sci fi epic novel, a chapter for the online web serial, and at least one short story.  In addition I was going to edit the web novel, promote FantastiCon, promote the web novel and maintain the blog.

I knew it was ambitious.

I knew it was going to take work, dedication, and perseverance.

Writing is hard and I was ~ready~.

So... how'd it go?

Writing "Real" Fiction

So a while back I waxed poetic on the merits of writing fan fic as a means to practice your art and to establish some kind of reputation as someone who can tell a story, craft dialogue and engage characters.  I stand by that advice, but I would like to deal with some of the negative stigmas that Fan Fic gets and how some of them are legitimate.

One thing that I see in a lot of fan fic, but rarely in quality published writing, is the use of specifics.  The main character does not get into a hot rod to drive to school, she climbs into a 2012 Pontiac Solstice with turbo charged V8, leather seats and the eight speaker stereo.

This makes me want to ask the author:  So?

Write what you know

Write what you know.

This is the mantra of writers.  I sometimes think that the code should be "If you don't know it, don't write it." One of my biggest pet peeves is not so much when someone writes something that's just a little off but when it propagates significant misinformation on a topic.

For example, in the 18th century, women wore pouches under their skirts called "pockets".  It was a relatively new invention to attach these directly to garments as we know them now.  Back then the pockets were separated from the garments and worn on a separate band about the waist and under their skirts.

Despite this fact, over and over, at re-enactments, women will walk around with their pockets on the outside of their skirts and show off the lovely embroidery on there.  They'll talk about the hours women would spend on needle work to adorn the pockets (they did) and the pride they would put into making them (they had it) and how women would be happy to show them off (they did not).  To suggest they did is a bit like talking about how women today would show off their lacy bras to anyone and everyone because they were so proud to wear such cute underthings.

Casting for Stories

One of the things that always struck me as very sophomoric with writing was the "Cast List" for a piece of fan fiction or story.  If a writer wants the reader to conjure up a specific mental image for a character, then it's their job to provide that image in the prose itself.  And to be honest even that task is not easy.

In writing FantastiCon, I had an exchange in the first chapter that provided a very indepth description of a walk on character.  Allison was at the desk of her apartment complex with a random, unnamed other woman.  I then went through everything the random girl was wearing and contrasted it with Allison.  Then Allison walks off and we never see random girl again.

This drove my wife nuts.  She got a full paragraph treatment to a character she never sees again, one that doesn't even get a name.  So why did I do it?

Review: Extinction Point

I'm a junky for dialogue.  Buffy, Gilmore Girls, Firefly, The Avengers.  Anything with characters verbally jousting is fun for me.  It's my favorite thing to write.  Two, or three people, put in a room, given a few props to throw between linquisitic fencing and I'm happy.

Why do I open a book review with this?

Because there is nearly no dialogue at all in Extinction Point and I still could not put it down.

I also should say that I thought I was downloading a book called "Extraction Point", with the cover art featuring a city and a girl on a bike.  With that title I thought I was getting cyber punk.

But it wasn't.  And that's perfectly fine.