Moral Equivalence

I was gratified that Sarah Hoyt gave me what is essentially free advertising at the site Instapundit.  I'd gotten a mention at the site before, but Sarah posted my book's cover and the blurb.  I cannot fully express my appreciation for what she did.

The comments, though, were interesting.  Many were positive or sounded intrigued, but a few that were critical accused me of injecting moral equivalence into the political debate.  For starters, these are the people for whom the book was written(on both sides of the aisle).  But second, and most importantly, I wasn't trying to create moral equivalence or pick a side - Schism is designed as a cautionary tale about just how bad things could get if we don't figure out how to calm the hell down.  It's not about one side oppressing the other, or how another might be justified in pushing back.  It's supposed to be a grim tale that shows just how out of control things can get.

Far too many entrenched partisans don't seem to understand that.   That is why we may be too far gone.  The spark in Schism may vary from reality a bit, but the end results could very well be the same.  That should frighten everyone.

Avoiding Polarization

We live in a polarized age.  I tried to take advantage of that with my most recent novel, Schism.  That said, I still try to keep my own personal politics close to the chest.  People want me to write good stories with compelling characters, not give my opinion on police brutality or Donald Trump.

But it’s getting more challenging to stay non-political.  Not because I would go out and write a bunch of essays on race relations or talk about marginal tax rates, but because so many others are not only talking about politics, but expecting others to talk about it(and hold the same view they do).  I was on an author’s site recently, an author I admire, and his post was about seizing the moment in writing.  Find an opportunity and take it through to a good story.  Had that been all, I’d have had no problem, but he ventured off into political territory talking about how to seize this moment to change the world(of course, in the way he thinks it should be changed).  Most of what he said politically, I was diametrically opposed to.  I managed to provide a comment on his writing advice while avoiding politics, but it was hard.

I have several authors on my blogroll who will get political, and they’re from both ends of the spectrum.  It gets tiresome to hear about how everything is political.  We get politics every day now from the news, TV shows, books, movies, and even our damned sporting events.  Is it too much to ask that we have at least one area where we don’t have to find ourselves in political conflict with someone?  Can’t we just say, “I’m tired of the rancor and just want to veg out on a good story.”?

There is nothing more polarizing today than the current political climate.  I’ve seen friendships of decades ruined over whether one likes or dislikes President Trump, whether one supports or doesn’t support the Black Lives Matter movement, or what one’s position is on the nature of the transgender movement.  Think about it for a second – how would your perception of me change if I held a different view from you on any of these topics?  Most folks think that no one of rational mind and good character can possibly disagree on their position, so it becomes a dividing line.  Well, I’m not interested in a dividing line – I want everyone to buy and enjoy my stories.  But I’m also as human as the next person(I think), and I have strong opinions, so when I see someone say or write something I disagree with, my inclination is to get involved.  While it may make me feel better in the moment, it will alienate someone over the long term.

I want to stay even keel, but it’s getting harder.  I wonder how long before everything comes rushing out?

SCHISM RELEASE!

Schism is live on Amazon.  You can pick up the paper back here, and the ebook here.

Developmental Patience

One of my biggest challenges in writing is being patient with story development.  I know (most of) the story I want to write, and I want to get it out as soon as possible.  However, as I found with past drafts of Akeldamaand Salvation Day, this leads to first drafts that are…well…less than good.  It builds no tension and doesn’t let the reader get from A to B in their own minds.  Instead, it drags them into the story forcefully.  So forcefully, in my opinion, that they’ll escape as soon as they can.

Take my new project.  I’m starting a sci-fi/fantasy mashup that begins on the bridge of a ship heading to a new world.  The reasons are manifold for why they’re traveling to the new star, but just putting all of that in one or two paragraphs creates a clumsy story that doesn’t get the reader to care about them.  Finding ways to gradually bring out information as an organic part of the plot is where I’m struggling, for I want to delve into the main story, but I also know that giving too much info too quickly will turn off readers.  Plus, they won’t remember all of that info anyway.

I wrote several drafts of the opening of both Akeldama and Salvation Day because the opening sequences read more like textbooks than they did like novels.  I have a funny feeling that this new story will be the same way.  So much of the backstory is important to the plot, but just vomiting it on a page will dampen enthusiasm.  I think I can get to better character development too if I bring this stuff out slowly, but I struggle with the specifics on that.

This is likely a challenge for most writers, not just me.  Maybe getting too excited about a project is what hurts us in bringing along a book at a more natural pace.  Or perhaps it’s why I always get scrambled eggs when I’m trying to make a quiche – I don’t have the patience to let it develop.

Obscure Finds

I know some readers think we writers plan out every element of a series we bring out.  Some writers do; most don’t.  Sure, we have some vague idea of an overall arc if there’s a series we want to write, but we aren’t organized enough to intricately lay out all of our plans(usually).  The reason this is important is due to obscure hints and references we drop along the way.

In writing Salvation Day, I very deliberately dropped in obscure hints that most people only picked up on in retrospect.  However, in planning out the sequel, where Mike Faulkner descends into Hell to try and rescue his wife, I’ll have to reference my original novel to see if I can use something originally thought of as a throwaway as some kind of clever foreshadowing.  I did leave a few things in the hope I could eventually use something – the realm of Limbo comes to mind – but much of that may simply be wasted as nothing extraordinary comes from them.

In other words, readers are usually very clever when they link together these disparate pieces.  That doesn’t mean the writer was as clever in creating them.  Even within a novel itself, sometimes a writer just got lucky to remember a piece from earlier that fit rather than planning out the storyline.  I wish we were that smart, and we sometimes are, but don’t let the mystery become reality when it’s not always warranted.

Previous Story Tie-Ins

It seems like just reading a story is not enough – we want to know everything about what’s going on.  We used to be able to accept some story elements on background, but now we want to hear the entire tale, which means going into the Land of the Prequel.

The problem with prequels is that we already know where the story is heading, so how do we add an element of the unexpected?  From Star Wars(we know Anakin will become Darth Vader and the Empire will rise) to the world of Fantastic Beasts in the Harry Potter realm(we know Dumbledore will defeat Grindelwald), the ending of those prequels is what gets us into the stories we already know.  So how do we get tension without surprise, or at least surprise that doesn’t alter the story to follow?

To me, the most obvious way is to introduce some character we all become attached to, and then kill off that character.  In the Star Wars prequels, maybe that was Mace Windu or Qui Gon Gin.  My guess in the Fantastic Beasts series is that it’ll be either Queenie, Jacob, Porpentina, or Lyta(Lyta being the clearest choice, in my opinion, to set her family on the path that would lead to Bellatrix LeStrange).  But this is part of what makes prequels so hard because these characters we get attached to come somewhat out of the blue since they’re not really mentioned, if ever, in the original series that got us here.

So what’s the challenge?  Is there one?  I’ve struggled with this as I think about my own writing.  There’s an entire backstory to Homecoming, and I’ve dropped enough hints throughout the text to give an idea, but is the story worth it?  I don’t know.

Writing Without Publishing

I’m a writer.  That means I write.  However, I also want people to read my work, so that also means I publish.

Unfortunately, in the indie circuit, publishing isn’t cheap.  Sure, it can be if one is just looking to upload a generic word document to Amazon with a solid color cover, but that’s just not a book to me.  I want a good cover.  I want a bound book with a back cover synopsis.  I need a proof copy so I don’t have to find mistakes after publication.  If I want to continue publishing, I’m either going to need to sell more books, which hasn’t happened yet, or I’m gong to need to put more of my own money into it.  Since I need to do strange things, like eat and put my kids through college, I can’t afford to be a bottomless pit of cash.  It costs at least $750, bare minimum, to bring a book out right, and I don’t know if I can keep doing that with all of my other obligations.

So why did I bring all of this up?  Am I looking for pity?  Nope – I just wanted to say that even if I decide I have to discontinue publishing until I have a larger cash flow(if ever), I’m going to continue to write.  Writing is in my blood, and any writer worth his or her salt will tell you they feel compelled to write.  It’s not something easily discarded – it’s like eating.  It’s just comes naturally regardless of our financial situation.

Maybe I can find other ways to keep publishing – crowdsourcing, perhaps? – but I have to keep writing.  I’ve just started designing an intricate new world that my brain can’t let go of, so it’ll soon start to take shape on paper.  Whether y’all see it or not is another story.

Writing The Unfamiliar

As I recently mentioned, I’ve started a new novel.  Since a big part of the novel is fantasy, I’m spending time with that which is unfamiliar to me.

Writers should always spend time with the unfamiliar, and that’s not limited to topics.  When I wrote Akeldama, I used the Catholic Church as the main organization, not because I was Catholic(which I’m not), but because it’s the largest religious organization I could think of to wrap around the story.  Therefore, I had to learn about the Church or the story would look trite and cliched.

A writer that doesn’t delve into the unfamiliar will fail.  A buddy of mine wrote a book where the military was a prominent feature.  Yes, it was a science-fiction setting, but it could easily have been classified as military fiction since while the setting was the future, the main characters were all Soldiers and the action was based on a military campaign.  The problem was that it became readily apparent that the only experience this guy had with the military was through movies and TV shows.  Everything was a stereotype and bore no semblance to reality.  Sure, it might fly with a certain subset of ignorant fan, but anyone who had any inkling of military life would chuckle their way through the book the way we chuckle our way through Attack of theKiller Tomatoes.  The writing was obviously lazy and showed no effort to make it more real.

Unfamiliarity is uncomfortable but necessary.  We cannot grow without it.  Sure, we can stay in our bubbles and write only what we know, but won’t that eventually grow stale?

Writing, So To Speak

Grammar and spelling are weird, or at least they’re weird in relation to how we actually talk.  Think about it – there are lots of things that are wrong in writing that we use in everyday conversation.  Instead of singular when talking about his or her car, we say “their car,” even though we’re only talking about one person.  We constantly end sentences with prepositions.  And we add extraneous words that don’t have much to do with the content of the conversation, but which we find comforting.

So why does this matter to us?  It matters as a writer because we have to figure out how it affects our writing style.  A lot of books are stuffy and erudite, but that can be a turn off for many people because we just don’t speak that way.  So how conversational should our writing be?

My own style tends to be very informal.  I want readers to feel as if they’re in a conversation, or like they’re sitting around a fire being told a story by an old storyteller.  If writing is too formal, it turns off people who might otherwise be attracted to what you have to say.  Yes, there are people who appreciate formal writing styles, but the stories that incorporate them aren’t usually the kinds of stories I tell.  Pride & Prejudice is a great story(I guess) and should be a more formal style, but books about giant insects sent by God don’t lend themselves well to formality.

I guess it all comes down to knowing the audience, as well as knowing your own comfort level on how you write.  I’m not sure I can tell a story in a stuffy and formal way, or at least not in a way I or anyone else would enjoy.  And if I’m not enjoying the writing, I can promise that the audience won’t enjoy what I have to say.

Repeating Blog Topics

Part of the problem with maintaining a regular blog is that I sometimes forget which topics I’ve already covered.  That means that, after going back and looking, I’ve found that I have repeated blog posts.  I had a couple on my book signing a couple of years ago, and I’ve covered topics from spelling and grammar to font choices more than once.  In fact, part of me is sure I’ve had a post on repeating blog posts before.

So how can I stay fresh?  Beats me.  Anyone got any ideas?

Page Links

As you can tell, on the right side of my page are a bunch of links to other pages.  So how did I decide to link to these pages?  And are they permanently attached?

When this blog started, I went through numerous other sites looking for who was well followed and who wrote good content(in my opinion).  I also wanted to see who posted regularly since updated content is critical.  I initially came up with over a dozen sites that I listed.

I have since added a couple of sites and gotten rid of a few.  One I got rid of became exclusionary and decided folks not agreeing with him meant they were nasty people who needed to drop off the Earth.  Although I never personally engaged with him in that way, I saw what happened to people who did, and I wasn’t interested in that kind of toxicity.  Another couple of sites just up and vanished, so removing those links was easy.

I also found myself referred to other sites that were in line with my style, and I added them.  They had good discussions of both writing and marketing, so I thought they’d be good additions.

The biggest challenge, and one I should soon correct, is how to deal with sites that, at best, post new material infrequently.  There are several near the bottom of my list that haven’t posted stuff in months, if not years.  The sites don’t seem active any longer, so are they still of any value?  I seem to be holding onto them out of laziness and comfort, neither of which is a good reason to have them hang around.  So pay attention – the blogroll will get updated sometime soon.

Overly Complicated Worlds

How do you like your stories?  What I mean by that is do you prefer simple plots that are easy to follow, or do you like curvy, winding roads that make you go back and see where you missed some obscure plot device?  Are you a Harry Potter fan, or is Game of Thrones more your style?

I think I’m somewhat in the middle, although I often start out way too far on one end of the spectrum, and by that I mean that I almost always start with an overly complicated plot.

Take Akeldama, for example.  The world of interact in between vampires, the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, and the governments of the world is complicated enough.  However, when I first began mapping it out, I had lines of influence and intrigue going all over the place.  There was FBI involvement, in addition to the CIA.  The KGB was involved more heavily, as was the Mossad.  The Chinese government played off of the Japanese government, and the Sicilian Mafia balanced out the Yakuza.  I figured out how each one influenced the other, and whether the relationship was mutual, opposed, manipulative, or just at the edge of influence.

Once I began to outline and write, however, I figured out I’d need a thousand pages or more to do it any justice, and even then it would require multiple readings to understand it(if ever).  While I enjoy stories that reveal new information when re-read, I also like ones that allow me closure upon the first reading.  So I chose to drastically pare it down and focus on the main plot points.  The same thing happened with Salvation Day(Angelic/Demonic relationships, rival corporations) and Wrongful Death(multiple spirits, dreams that interact with reality, neighbor involvement).  In fact, as I’m beginning to outline a new story now, I’m finding myself still doing the same thing, making the worlds very intricate.  Maybe too intricate.

Why do I do this?  Because I like believable stories, and the world is a complicated place.  I’ve long realized that I over-analyze the world, mostly because too many people under-analyze it.  There are ripple effects and consequences beneath the surface that affect everything that comes after.  Relationships, science, and religion are far more subtle than our social media world seems to like, but as I know how complex things are, I find it tough to leave that complexity out of my stories.

Of course, people go to books to relax most of the time.  They want believability, but only so they can reasonably suspend their disbelief(confused yet?) and sink into the story.

New Book Project

Just to let everyone know, I’ve started work on a new project.  This one is a sci-fi/fantasy mashup that has only just begun to take shape.  I got inspired one day when I heard someone talking about using magic and science together, and I started wondering what would happen if a science fiction world encountered one where magic was real.  What would be the reasons?  How would their interactions be affected?  Why would the two worlds even collide?

I started playing out a scenario in my brain, and I decided to start from a sci-fi vantagepoint at first since I’m much more familiar with that genre(my reading list of fantasy isn’t real long).  So why would my sci-fi folks be traveling to a new world, and why hadn’t they already encountered this kind of stuff?  Then, I started figuring out what the magic world looked like(drawing a map and getting out the colored pencils for the various factions involved was fun).  Now I’m working through an outline of the conflict – why does it matter that the sci-fi ship showed up?  Does their presence mean something in particular to a specific problem of the magic world?

I still have a very long way to go(I’ve written a page and a half right now just to get me started), but it’s exciting.  Ask any writer, and it’s always exciting to start something new.  The key is to have the patience to develop it right as opposed to just vomiting out stuff so I can OMG GET TO THE END AS SOON AS I CAN!!!  That’s where I’ll struggle.