Death of a Character

Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the “Battle of Hogwarts” and has become customary, JK Rowling tweeted out an apology for killing off a character during the battle. This year she chose someone outside the battle, but a character who died to save those who would win. Dobby, the house elf.

In general there seem to be two sides to the thought of killing characters. Either the author should respect the characters and their fictional lives making death only and option when no other is logical, feasible, or avoidable. The second, seemingly championed by George R. R. Martin and Robert Kirkman, is that no one is safe. Any character, at any time could be killed. My own feelings lie somewhere in between.

So far, in my writing, I have only killed off two characters. The first was in a story/book that isn’t finished or published. The second is the main character of a story called “Unfathomable”. While writing this story I speculated and teased the idea that my main character would survive with a horrific tale to tell of the sights he observed, but the more I thought about it the less that path felt right. It wasn’t as if I needed my main character to be sacrificial for the story to work, but in order to create the fear and tension required to put the reader in the small cramped submersible trapped in an underwater cave tracking down an undiscovered creature, his death was the only option.

I respect my characters. I put a lot of work into breathing life into each and every one of them. I strive to make them all unique in some way and doing so means that unless it serves the story I don’t plan on killing them off. But, that doesn’t mean that it is unavoidable. There are times where it will be necessary. And when death comes to a character I hope my readers will understand it wasn’t without cause or reason.

Rowling’s tweet yesterday frustrated me. In order for the Battle of Hogwarts to be epic and hold the weight it did, fictional lives had to be lost. Sad, though they may be. If everyone came out the other side with a few scratches, but otherwise unhurt, the fight wouldn’t have felt as big or as important. Going back now and apologizing for the deaths of characters as she does makes it seems as if she’s bowing to the will of a few disgruntled readers. In turn, compromising the story she wrote and in some ways minimizing the fictional lives and sacrifices of those characters.

As such, I promise never to apologize for the death of a character. If they die. It was necessary.

Moving Foward…Slowly

I am not meant to be a prolific blogger. I have a few weeks of ideas and then I get sidetracked. Either way, I set myself some pretty hefty goals the last time I posted. I buried myself in those pretty deeply during the last two months.

I spent a good chunk of March beginning work on serious edits for my novel, Hush. That definitely whooshed by with the speed Douglas Adams always found so entertaining. I pushed through a solid 75 pages of Hush. If my math is correct (of which there is no guarantee) I’m about 28% of the way through.

Then the beginning of April arrived and I realized that I needed to get started on the two short stories I promised myself I’d write for anthologies due the end of May/beginning of June. In order to have time to revise/alpha/beta/professional edit, April 1st had always been my target for those projects. Fully aware of the snail’s pace at which I am working on Hush and the continued long-term future of that work I switched gears.

Project #1 is a time travel story. My first fully formed idea for this project has now been moved into the mental folder marked NOVEL IDEAS. A great concept that simply got too big too fast. The story I’ve decided to work on for this unnamed time travel anthology from Fiction-Atlas Press is about a rocket scientist who after getting fired and blacklisted buys a junk yard where he finds his discarded projects. His passion is reignited and moves to complete his time travel device to prove that his former coworkers and bosses were wrong to toss him and his ideas aside so casually.

Project #2 is for a pizza themed horror anthology entitled “Tales from the Crust”. From the moment I saw the call for stories I knew I needed to do something. This just seemed too ripe for fun ideas to pass up. I haven’t started writing this story yet, but I’ve worked out the bulk of the plot. I’ll be outlining and filling out the details while I finish drafting the time travel story. Not typical for me, but I already have a title for this one. “Which Pizza?”

The goal is to have these drafted in the next couple weeks to allow time for revisions and edits before submitting the end of May. Once those are sent off I’ll turn my attention back to Hush.

As much as I write I’m continually learning about my process. Each writer is different and has their own. What works for one doesn’t work for another. Taking a break from Hush to create these new stories for anthologies calls was necessary to keep myself from burning out on creative/writing projects.

Needless to say the deadlines I set for Hush two months ago have been shattered, but overall, that is better for my sanity and the quality of the project. The last thing I want is to get to the end of my self-edits/revisions and have a novel that isn’t improved from when I started because I pushed too hard to get through.

I’m going to attempt to update my Facebook page with some tidbits and fun stuff regarding these two short story projects (both of which I’m really enjoying working on) as they get closer to completion.

Deadlines.

For the last year or so I’ve been writing short stories on a deadline oriented basis. All but two stories (I think) written during that time were created with a particular venue in mind. And as such had a very specific deadline attached. The good news is that I completed the work and submitted at or before the deadline in nearly all of those cases. The bad news is that because I don’t have a hard and fast deadline for my novel, it has been continually pushed to the side.

Last night I finished a draft of another story with the deadline for the anthology being February 28th. The countdown is on to get it revised/edited/tweaked/etc. Then I found two anthologies that want submissions end of May/beginning of June, both of which I’ve already mentally committed to concocting ideas for. But as much as I enjoy the challenge of taking those submission calls and crafting a story that fits the requirements, I am going to attempt to switch gears for a few months.

Beginning Monday, in addition to the time I’ll spend revising my newest short story I am going to buckle down and take a good hard look at revising/editing Hush, my novel. And since I seem to work better when I have a hard and fast deadline, I’m going to lay out my current plan for Hush’s editing right here.

By April 1st – Have a revised and self-edited version of Hush completed.

By May 1st – Have changes made based on alpha feedback and have a version ready to be seen by beta readers. (Of which I have a couple in mind, but definitely will need more feedback.)

By June 20th – Have a copy ready to send to a vetted/hired a content/developmental editor.

From then on, the process will depend on the amount of necessary work with and from my chosen editor, so as much as I would like to put hard dates on further production goals I’m going to pass.

Nose to the grindstone. Why? Not because I want to be done with Hush. Although a part of me does. But because after seeing the hard copy of my story published in a magazine most recently, I want nothing more than too see Hush in my hands and the hands of friends/family/readers.

And just for the sake of entertainment … a great quote from Douglas Adams on his feelings about deadlines.

Make Writing A Habit

Toward the end of 2017 I ran across a group on Facebook called the 365 Writing Club. The idea behind it is simple. Every day in 2018, write. The minimum goal they required was 100 words. Publication, blogging, even completion of stories/novels/poems isn’t the focus. The ultimate goal is the creation of a positive habit for a writer. How can you be a writer if you don’t write?

I took part in a couple challenges of a similar nature in the last year or so, but they were limited to a quarter of the year. This is long term. I know my main writing task for the year is editing/revising my drafted novel, but I am well aware that I need to continue to produce if I want an audience for my writing and desire for that audience to grow. I also know that blogging is a way to attract readers for my fiction as well as interact with other authors. So, after checking the rules (to make sure blogging counted) I signed up.

I had hoped to make it through January and write something everyday. Enough to qualify. (I set my goal at 150 words a day.) I didn’t succeed there, but I have managed 6500 new words on stories and blog posts in 30 days. If I can keep up that pace I’ll come close to my all time high of 80k-ish words in 2016. I can also guarantee, that among those nearly 80k words I’ll have new and exciting stories written that I can submit and hopefully share.

Right now I have no plans to begin writing another novel this year, but if writing every day helps form the habit I hope it does, then who knows. Not as if I don’t have a whole handful of ideas for novels sitting around gathering dust.

Petition to Stop Fan Petitions

This blog inspired by a recent article on CBR.com

Petitions started by fans of particular geek/nerd franchises are nothing new. As pointed out in the article I linked above they have just become exponentially easier to initiate as well as gather “signatures” for since the ease of access to and overabundance of internet connections.

The article proposes that these fan petitions are “ruining … everything”. Sadly, there is no true argument about anything actually being ruined, just the mention of two specific petitions. Now, are the petitions ludicrous? Yes, but their existence hardly qualifies as ruining anything. With all the social media outlets, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., the only thing these petitions seem to bring to light is the number of fans aggravated by a particular nerd/geek/fandom issue.

One such petition is to have a “Zack Snyder” cut of Justice League released and netted over 100,000 signatures. Another collected almost 100,000 fans signatures “demanding” that Disney rollback Episode VIII, stall Episode IX, and remake VIII because they didn’t like it.

Or, when Ben Affleck was announced to play Batman/Bruce Wayne in BVS, petitions began to show up online, the largest gaining close to 100,000 signatures. A quick Google search showed at least 4 other petitions with less that 100 signatures each. None of which had any effect since he’s now played the character 3 times. Having now seen Affleck in the role in 3 movies I will openly admit he’s not my favorite to play the character, but I can imagine worse choices.

I’m not disagreeing with fans ability to voice their concerns or dislike for a particular movie, casting choice, or even change to a character’s mythology, but these petitions give off the aire that fans are entitled to complete control of fandoms. That is simply absurd.

The petitions need to stop. Not because they are futile, but because they are selfish. We should be thrilled that we live in a world where these comic books and superheroes are being made into incredible visual motion picture spectacles. Growing up even 20 years ago these same characters were too geeky and nerdy to be mainstream, to be popular. Now we are getting to see them come to life as we never dreamed. As a whole these fandoms should just enjoy the explosion of geek/nerd entertainment being popular enough for TV and movie studios to keep the train rolling.

As a side note, some petitions shouldn’t exist because at times change is a good thing (i.e. Doctor Who regenerating into a female Doctor) and sometimes, a show was cancelled because it didn’t live up to fan expectations (*cough cough* Inhumans).

I get it. Fans, particularly those of comic books and superheroes, are enthusiastic and extremely passionate about characters they know and love, but these petitions do little more than highlight those same fans inability to see the forest for the trees.

The Infamous TBR List

As a writer I am most definitely a reader as well and as such I typically receive a fairly hearty pile of books for Christmas and birthday gifts. But once all the wrapping is discarded and the new and wonderful books sit piled high next to my desk the real trouble begins. Where do I start?

In all reality I’m making this a bigger deal than it is, but still…

Aside from finishing whatever book I’m currently reading, how do I pick the next one? Should I go with the one I’ve wanted the longest or the newest release that looks incredibly enticing?

Like most readers I have a running To Be Read List (TBR) that is longer than a skyscraper is tall. It’s a list that is never ending and grows longer more than it shrinks. Some books have been on the list for years and others only a few months or less. Do I pick up where I left off? Or pick up something different too keep things from getting tedious?

Back sometime last year I decided I was going to try and read an entire series (16 books) beginning to end. Haha, yeah. That didn’t last. Maybe the reason I stopped was me, maybe it was the series. Maybe someday I’ll go back and revisit that question along with the remaining 14 books. But nevertheless, I made it 4 books into that series and was distracted by a new flashy title away from books that (although I wanted to read – and still do) I planned to read. With that task abandoned I am back at square one.

This year I received a couple of classics, a couple of graphic novels, and a couple of newer releases I’ve been waiting to get my hands on. So, as I am about halfway through one of those newer releases I couldn’t wait to get my hands on I’m already itching to pick up another of the shiny new covers from the TBR.

Sometimes I think about actually creating an all encompassing TBR instead of the mental one I currently have so that when I can’t decide what to read next I can literally just throw darts and TADA!

Until then, I’ll just continue to look over the top of my current read, eye-balling the pile, already ruminating over where I’ll let me mind travel next.

Goals vs Resolutions

Since I began taking my writing more seriously a few years ago I have made more “resolutions” than ever before. But this year in particular I have seen more comments/posts/blogs/etc about not making resolutions and instead making goals. I have decided to follow suit.

When searching the resolutions in Google one of the definitions given is “a firm decision to do or not to something.” Trying the search again, but this time for goal, one answer is “the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.” A resolution seems pretty cut and dry. If I may borrow from Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Goals, on the other hand give a little more leeway.

The more I’ve thought about it, when it comes to writing, the term “goals” just seems more appropriate. Partially, for me, because it is little more fluid. I’m setting my sights on a few specific tasks and going to put forth the effort to reach said desired result.

My biggest goal for 2018 is to see my novel, in print, in my hand by Christmas. I will be ecstatic if this comes true, but there are so many factors that go into this becoming a reality that I feel like making it a resolution leaves me either a success or a failure. Either it happens or it doesn’t. By making this a goal, even if I’m close, but not there, in the desired timeline, I will count it as a win, a success.

There are many parts of being a writer that are cut and dry like resolutions. A story was accepted for publication. It was rejected. A story was finished by the deadline. The deadline passed and the project was not completed.

I’m hoping that by looking at my aims and goals with a little less stringent set of guidelines I will remain committed, encouraged, and excited for everything I can accomplish in 2018.

Book of the Year (2017)

A few weeks ago for the last episode of The Geek Awakens we went around and discussed a few of the things that we remembered most about 2017.

On air I spoke about how Wonder Woman was probably the geek highlight of the year for me. And as far as movies go, I maintain that stance. There was little about it wasn’t phenomenal and exciting. But I would be remiss if I didn’t add to my choice from the show.

While I was thrilled with myself and my ability to read the books I did during the year there was one in particular that stood out to me. A God in the Shed by J-F Dubeau. A title produced by Inkshares (a crowdfunded publisher of sorts), blew me away. The book was exciting, haunting and profound. The book begins with the capture and arrest of a serial killer that has been terrorizing a small Canadian town for eighteen years. That’s how it starts! And it goes downhill from there. Secrets that should have remained buried are unearthed. A killer behind bars, but people continue to disappear and a creepy circus sets up camp on the edge of town. There are touches of Lovecraft, King, and Barker, all blended together magnificently with some thriller and crime novel aspects woven in as well.

Simply put, this is a book for anyone that enjoys any of those genres. (One small note, there is some gore, but if nothing out of the ordinary for fans of King or Barker.)

Two years in a row now, my favorite book has been one I’ve discovered through Inkshares. Like with all publishers, there will be some that stand heads above the rest, but two in a row is good enough odds for me to dig through their upcoming titles and read another.

Halloween Treat

Over the last couple of months I’ve tried my hand a few pieces of “micro-fiction”. Super short, usually less than 250 words. The challenge is obviously telling a cohesive story in such a minimal amount of words. Below is one I submitted to a Halloween themed contest. The story wasn’t picked, but since I’ve lapsed in blogging lately I thought I would share this one as  a special Halloween treat from me to you! Thanks for reading.

Trick or Treat

The old, crumbling, rotted house appeared to have been carved out of coal. Windows often represent eyes, and these were asleep, if not dead. Only the red light from the setting sun spattering through dying trees kept the house from disappearing into the darkness.

Charles nudged Fred forward. “Go on.”

Fred hesitated.

“Fine. We’ll go together. But Damian did it alone last year.”

“Well, Damian was dumb enough to shoot his eye out with a firecracker,” said Fred, unconvinced of Damian’s moxie.

The two traipsed up to the porch and the large, orange, plastic candy bowl. Inside lay two fake eyeballs. One brown, one blue.

“One for each of you, my dears.” The crone materialized in front of them and cackled.

 

Rebirth or Legacy

Marvel’s X-Men (the 90’s cartoon) is the reason I love superheroes, but my dad is the reason I read comics. During junior high we started regularly visiting a local comic book shop. And at the time I was under the impression that you were either DC or Marvel. It was as cut and dry as Cubs/Cardinals. With my dad being into DC and my affinity for X-Men I sided with Marvel without hesitation.

A few years ago I was drawn back into comics because of The Walking Dead on AMC. Once I find out a movie or show is based on a book/story/comic I’m a sucker for the original content. I want to know the fun little tidbits that don’t translate from one medium to another. I want to be able to pick out the Easter eggs (the homages to the source material). After 3 seasons of TWD I dove headfirst into TWD Compendiums Vol 1 and 2. I burned through them in less than 2 weeks. I wanted more.

Needless to say I quickly found myself at the local comic book store itching for each new issue. While I waited the weeks between TWD I worked my way back into other comics starting, of course, with Marvel. Now, the way the local comic book store presents the new issues Marvel and DC sit on the top shelves. It was easy to wander from what I knew into uncharted territory with DC titles literally right next to each other, besides, who doesn’t love Batman.

Apparently I picked the right time to begin discovering DC comics. Not long after I started reading Batman and went back and read the last few years worth of Justice League, DC began their Rebirth. I jumped on the boat along with a lot of other people. I picked up the one-shot Rebirth and read it that night. It is very much centered on Wally West as The Flash, a superhero and character I knew very little about, but his struggle to return to the world he knew and my desire to know where he went and who sent him away hooked me immediately. The icing on the Rebirth cake was (SPOILER) the last page that tied Alan Moore’s Watchmen in with the rest of the DC comic book universe. (Like I said, I’m a sucker for the source material.) As it currently stands I am waiting on the edge of my seat for the upcoming event that will answer questions and expose the threads tying everything together.

As Rebirth was slowly pulling in more of my interest Marvel announced their own back to basics reboot, Legacy. Instantly I feared this was a matter of seeing DC’s success and trying to hop on board, a feeling of which I quickly discovered I was not alone. Last week, Legacy hit shelves. I tempered my expectations as I read the issue that night. While even a week after release, I am not as excited about the upcoming revelations and reveals as I was with Rebirth, I am very interested to see how Marvel plays their cards. (I’ll withhold spoilers since the comic only released a week ago.)

While DC used their event to bring back a lone key character, Legacy has reintroduced (or teased) multiple. All of which, will have to find their place in the comic book universe amongst some drastic changes from their last incarnation. And similar to Rebirth, Legacy indicated that there are forces at play, twisting and toying with the lives of certain characters, that are bigger than any or all of them could have imagined.

My hope is that Legacy will find a strong footing to drive their universe forward as Rebirth seems to have done for DC. While I may be currently straying towards the DC side of the argument, I can’t help but desire for Marvel to do something to wow me and yank me back.