Amazon's at it again.

And authors are apparently upset, at least according to the New York Times.

Why? Amazon created Kindle Unlimited, a subscription service that allows unlimited downloads for a monthly fee.

Within a month, author H.M. Ward saw her income fall 75 percent.

"Six months ago people were quitting their day job, convinced they could make a career out of writing," according to Bob Mayer.

'Those people' may be out there, but I am most certainly not one of them. I've never contemplated quitting my day job in order to make a living as a writer. Seems like an impossible pipe dream from my perspective, to be honest. And having finally launched the book, it feels even more unobtainable. That, however, is my own fault, as my material is quite niche.

I would be remiss not to mention that Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) really is amazing. I was able to put up a book and have it available for purchase all over the world. And Amazon lets authors in Kindle Select earn up to 70 percent of every sale, far more than any traditional publisher.

On the other hand, publishing is changing so quickly one cannot safely rely on it for an income, as the bottom of the boat can fall out at any time.

Ms. Ward, fortunately, has sold over six million books since 2011 and likely has a decent cushion to land on. Authors who left their jobs and were just scraping by are in a different situation entirely. I feel for them. It takes guts to follow your dreams. Writing, however, seems to be something of an income roller coaster, fluctuating monthly, so you'd best have a strong stomach and solid cash reserve before you try it.

In 2010, Amazon had 600,000 e-books in its Kindle store. Today it has more than three million.

That's a lot of books. At some point, books will be produced faster than people can read them. Revenue from ebooks in 2013 was three billion. Three billion! Now that's a lot of mystery, romance, and erotica. Just how much can people read? How long before the market is hopelessly saturated and a need arises for services vetting titles? Will the user star rating system be enough? How many will be compelled to game the system? Inquiring minds and all that.

Apparently the goal of Kindle Unlimited is to draw in readers and entice them to buy even more books.

The books, in that sense, are loss leaders, although the writers take the loss, not Amazon.

But authors are not impressed. As Kathryn Meyer Griffith says: “They’re doing a good job of recreating that whole unfair bogus system where they make the money and we authors survive on the pennies that are left.”

One of the ways to deal with the changes Amazon has implemented is to release shorter books more frequently. That had already occurred to me. For example, kboards only allow you to have one promotional thread per book. You get one discount period per ninety days per book. Multiple titles means multiple promotional threads, multiple sales periods, and greater exposure. To top that off, people only notice you if you have multiple items in your inventory. 

H.M. Ward's first book was 500 pages. Her new books are roughly 100 pages. 

Kindle Unlimited pushes this trend even further, as you get the same amount of money no matter how long the book is. 

Ward now plans to release volumes every month. 

“I’ve started working with four co-authors,” she said. “If you’re not constantly putting out new material, people forget you’re there.”

Seems wise. Other authors are breaking their books into sections and publishing each chapter separately. 

Amazing.

Everything changes, only faster.

It's an interesting article. Check it out.

Feeling blue? Have some yogurt.

Scientists have linked mood to stomach bacteria. Who knew?

Want to talk about the post-apocalypse?

Check out the post-apocalypse forums. 

Adventures in the Post-Apocalypse: Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth

Jack Kirby created Kamandi in the early Seventies, when he hopped over from Marvel to DC. The comic follows a young boy who was raised in an underground bunker, Command-D (from which 'Kaman-di' gets his name). When the bunker is destroyed, he’s thrown out into a wild, post-apocalyptic world filled with gibbering monsters and animal peoples. There are rat-men, ape-men, lion-men, tiger-men, alligator-men, bear-men, leopard-men, nuclear-men, and you get the general idea.

This isn’t The Road.

Rather than being a barren, lifeless wasteland, the post-mystery-disaster world is a fertile playground, ripe for adventure.

Which, of course, is the point.

The post-apocalypse can be divided up into two types: bleak and adult, and fun and juvenile. Kamandi is the latter. This is a comic a ten year old boy would love.

Character sketch of Kamandi

The book has a standardized format that never varies. Each issue broken into four chapters. The title and credit page is always followed by a double spread, typically a lavishly illustrated post-apocalyptic landscape with the Statue of Liberty stuck in somewhere.

The first double page spread. You-know-who is featured prominently.

Sentient and well armed apes attack Kamandi: "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!"

Planet of the Apes was an obvious influence. Kirby takes the film as a starting point and then runs with it, and doesn't stop. The live action Ape film was grounded by a limited production budget; there was only so much they could pull off convincingly. Kirby’s imagination, by contrast, is free of such limitations, and he lets it loose.

The three nuclear men in indestructible mode.

The disaster behind this post-apoclayptic trope fest is described by Kirby as ‘a natural disaster linked with radiation’, but it really doesn’t matter what caused it all.

It could have been a dirty telephone.

The result? Humans, of course, have been left mental midgets, reduced to the status of cattle. Animals have evolved into dozens of sentient species. And yet, legacy vehicles and devices are everywhere, and still work. Nevermind how long it would take for lions (and just about every other large mammal) to evolve into intelligent humanoids, complete with a distinctive fashion sense and accompanying civilization. If that kind of selective aging bothers you, you’d best back away from the book slowly before your brain explodes.

The post-apocalypse is the most fun with Variable Decay. Our inner ten year old wants cool mutants loitering about recognizable landmarks, after all, and Kirby doesn't disappoint. He serves some up every issue.

Kirby doesn’t let little things like science or facts get in his way.  He'll explain things away with little snippets: animal evolution, for example, was accelerated by a drug called Cortexin. 'All we have to do is add a line of dialogue…'


In one of Kamandi’s first adventures, he comes across tiger lancers fighting leopard-men. Beause why not? It’s not his fight, but he intervenes anyway, shooting a leopard sniper, and in doing so, saving tiger team leader.

The tigers capture him, beginning a long tradition. Kamandi is going to spend a lot of time getting captured. But the grateful tiger leader and Kamandi become fast friends.

He's done up like a competitor in The Hunger Games and brought to watch the tigers worship their god, an ICBM. Echoes of Beneath Planet of the Apes. The nuke is minded by Dr. Canus, a super intelligent dog like Mr. Peabody, only less snarky. Canus has to stop Kamandi from detonating the nuke, bored-Charlton Heston / Taylor style.

For some reason the dog is intrigued by this suicidal talking human, and saves him from certain death. Once mans best friend…

The Rat-men of New York, New York

Canus goes on to introduce Kamandi to Ben Boxer, a mutant human who’s ‘a natural atomic-pile’ and able to make himself invulnerable using his ‘cyclo-heart’. Yep: scientific bafflegab is thrown around to justify all sorts of cool, batty stuff.

Kirby created a couple of maps of his new earth, and you can follow Kamandi’s adventures across them. The Tiger Empire rules the eastern seaboard, although Rat-men control the half-submerged ruins of New York. Gorilla communes dominate Texas, lions rule California, and devils dominate Canada, except Quebec, where human herds run free through verdant forests. Why? Because the other monsters and humanoid animals never learned to speak french.

Such is the power of Language Laws!

Map of Kamandi's world. It was later expanded to include Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Canus, Ben Boxer, and Kamandi head south, seeking Boxer’s home: Tracking Site, City of the Nuclear People.

Sounds super cool, right?

Nuclear powered people! When these guys tap their chest, they turn silvery and invulnerable.

I want me a cyclo-heart.

Sadly, when they finally reach their destination, they discover to their (inevitable) horror, it is ruled with an iron grip by a giant brained midget: The Misfit. 'A pumpkin-headed toad’ is how Kamandi describes him, within earshot, which probably doesn’t endear Kamandi to the little fellow.

Never piss off a giant brained midget in charge of nuclear powered people! As fast as you can blink, Misfit enslaves Kamandi and rides him about Master-Blaster style (if you remember Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome), just to let Kamandi know who’s boss, then shows Kamandi Mr. Morticoccus, The Ultimate Germ. Tracking Site must keep Morti contained if life on earth is to continue.

You just know what is going to happen.

Bat attack! Giant bats are the natural enemy of Nuclear People.
Never invite them on the same talk show episode.

The first collection of Kamandi ends with the battle for Tracking Site City, with the fate of the post-world at stake. One good apocalypse deserves another.

Endless action

The issues are filled with fights, chases, Kamandi getting captured, daring escapes and lots of punching.

The Last Enemy

The endless ‘manimals’ come across as just silly. Too much of a good thing, too quickly. Creative overload can be a problem for someone as imaginative as Kirby.

The series can also be repetitive, but this is a problem with every comic from the Seventies: all of them reiterate their premise on an issue by issue basis, a necessary evil to bring newcomers up to speed pre-internet. When issues are read over a period of several months, or years, it’s not noticeable. When the comics are read all in one go, as a collection, it becomes annoying.

It’s also aimed at a fairly young audience.

Nevertheless, the scope of imagination on display is impressive. It can be seen as derivative but I prefer to look at it as building on previous efforts, combining tropes into an entirely new thing.

Lucas for example built Star Wars atop Flash Gordon, which he couldn't get the rights to. Same thing here.

In fact, the genesis point for Kamandi was actually a short story called The Last Enemy, which he did before Planet of the Apes came out. Zing!

As far as the post-apocalypse goes, Kamandi is one of the wildest and most fun out there. It would inspire other franchises, such as Thundarr the Barbarian, a children's TV show which Kirby also worked on. Series creator Steve Gerber, better known for creating Howard the Duck, brought him in because he had great taste.

I don't even know what this is.

Kirby both wrote and drew the Kamandi series all the way up to issue 37. From 38 to 40, he only drew it. Then he passed it on to others, and there my interest wanes.

Statues of the Tiger Empire

Flower: Kamandi's doomed love interest

A Land of the Lost like landscape

Crab dinner fights back

Prisoner of the Leopard People!

Sketch of a slave cart and master ape on a tricycle,
because that's the way the future rolls.

Zigging and Zagging along The Promotional Path

I've finished all the basic steps I believe one should take upon publishing on Kindle.

I have a blog, a Facebook page, a Goodreads page, an Amazon Author page, a Kindle book page, maybe even a Kindle Author Book Blog page. I don't know. I've set up so many pages in the last week I don't remember them all, which calls into question how effective they will be.

But due diligence has been done. The one thing I'm not stepping in is Twitter. I didn't even have a Facebook page until a couple months ago. There are limits.

My initial plans have changed quite drastically. No plan ever survives contact with the audience, as they say. I'm thinking of postponing the banner ad 'campaign' and hoarding my micro-ad budget until I get some reviews. If I can get a couple of good ones, or even one that I can find a positive sentence in and then thoroughly misrepresent in an ad banner, I'll splurge. Until then, I doubt they'd do me much good. I'm an unknown quantity of unknown quality in a market absolutely saturated with prose.

Supposedly most books, print books that is, don't sell more than 500 copies. Since it's much easier and cheaper to buy an ebook, it initially seemed reasonable to set the goal of selling 1000 copies as an objective. True, at $3.99, that'd only bring in $4000, of which I'd make roughly $3000. From the outside, it probably looks like a fairly modest ambition. Or even subpar.

Ha! How quickly the foolish dreams of the novice are dashed on the rocks of reality.

I now realize that a reasonable goal will be to sell 100 books within the next year.

My main objective will be to have fun and improve my writing SkillZ. That's been achieved, to a greater or lesser extent (let us not quibble), and it's best to just be happy with that. Not making any money I can certainly live with. I wasn't planning on giving up my day job. But not having any audience at all just makes me think of that Beatles song Nowhere Man:

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.

In The Yellow Submarine, they show the 'Nowhere Man' sitting, even dancing, at a typewriter.

Brrr.

I've been reading up on the kboards a bit. A lot of people are writing erotica, which does very, very well on kindle. Oddly enough, book promotions often explicitly exclude erotica.

Erotica probably doesn't need them.

It's a whole other world.

You can apply to be a Bargain Book, but they want four star ratings for that, which likely better serves established authors. A new writer is likely to attract speculators who ultimately don't like the book, and it only takes a few negative reviews to drag a book's rating down. Fortunately, by the time you publish your tenth book, everybody who hates your writing has learned to avoid it.

Ratings can have quite an effect on how well a book does, and what opportunities are open to it. It's very competitive. Which just motivates people to manipulate the system. I recall reading a story a few years back about some Amazon writers who created fake online identities, and then went around writing scathing critiques of their competitors and fawning reviews of their own work. Amazon had to implement new policies to clamp down on this phenomenon.

Makes you wonder.

Nowhere Man, don't worry,
Take your time, don't hurry.
Leave it all till somebody else lends you a hand.

Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to.
Isn't he a bit like you and me?

The best of world building: J.R.R. Tolkien

The greatest map in all of fantasy and sci-fi literature. 

I love world building. There's nothing quite like being transported to a convincing alternate reality. There are a few of such sweeping scope and imagination that they've stuck with me for decades. They aren't just convincing. They delight and intrigue and tantalize. In the end, I don't care if they break the cosmological constants so long as they entertain and inspire.

Team Fellowship

To bastardize Homer Simpson, in my house, we don't obey the laws of thermodynamics.

J.R.R. Tolkien, in my books, is the uncontested King of World Building.

He's not the first. Not by a long shot. But Tolkien is unquestionably the most punctiliously thorough. This is a guy who wrote The Silmarillion, which is essentially a thousand page background document for the world of Middle Earth.

It doesn't get more hard core.

Heck, the appendices of Return of the King are almost as long as the book.

Tolkien developed not one, but several imaginary languages and scripts for the peoples of his imaginary world, along with some of the most thrillingly detailed maps. I remember pouring over Tolkien's rendering of Middle Earth when I was a kid for hours on end. Then I'd scribble my own map in pencil crayon, aping Tolkien's style and populating it with dark forests and jagged mountain ranges. Half the boys in my grade six class read The Lord of the Rings around the same time, and we were fascinated by it. Middle Earth was a thrilling, magical place. It was an alternate world, thought out in minute detail. There's a history behind everything, grounding the material and making it all the more believable.

If only real history were so emotionally fulfilling. But then, that's what myth is for: it makes history make sense.

The two big dudes.

There's something obsessive compulsive in Tolkien's work, which neatly fits with the mindset of a young boy. When boys get interested in something (or at least when I did), they learn absolutely everything about it, and Tolkien delivered on that thirst for detail in spades.

My grandfather had a Tolkien calendar, painted by The Hildebrant Brothers, which reproduced Tolkien's map in sumptuous detail, and I spent an inordinate time looking at that as well. After 1977 ended, I kept the calendar for over a decade. There's something incredibly solid about the way the Hildebrants sculpted and defined shapes with paint. The milky white highlights and deep shadows guide the eye with expert precision about the page with the confidence and surety of a master.

Even now I am in awe of not only Tolkien's imagination, but the art it has inspired. His imaginary world is a meme that sits in the heads of millions and millions of people, as real a place to many as ancient Rome or Greece.

Let there be no mistake: the key to the story are the characters, Frodo and Sam and Gandalf and Gollum, and the environments they travel through can only have meaning in relation to them. They resonate against each other. A world without characters is just an empty space. But a well conceived and emotionally resonant one can take the story, and the characters, to the next level.

Quiet beginnings.
Gandalf meets Bilbo.

Tolkien was a product of his age, which straddled the apex The British Empire. He was born under the reign of Queen Victoria in 1892, and if you read his work you can certainly see a fondness for monarchy and traditional order. The third book, after all, is called Return of the King, which is a big hint as to where his sympathies lie. Indeed, he has been taken to task for this traditional bent by Michael Moorcock in his essay, Epic Pooh. But Tolkien's views are not two dimensional; he advocated, for example, for the dismantling of the British Empire.

And while his books idealize rural life, he was no Luddite. He had doubts about how society was changing, which is understandable, especially these days. Ours is an age of unprecedented, accelerated change. Workers have to adapt quickly to keep up. Careers need to be reinvented. Learning and education are lifelong pursuits out of necessity. It's the only way to remain relevant and employable.

It should be remembered that even the Luddites were not acting out of blind, anti-technology zealotry. They were acting out of self-interest, protecting their jobs from being rendered obsolete by mechanical looms. It's futile to stand against the tides of progress, but it is understandable why some choose to do so.

Tolkien learned Latin at a young age, as well as Welsh, and studied Anglo-Saxon. He collaborated with his cousins in creating a language called Nevbosh, and later a language called Naffarin on his own. This interest in language would later find expression in The Lord of the Rings, for which he'd create Quenya, Sindarin, Black Speech, Entish and Valarin.

Biblo writing the Red Book of Westmarch.
Or There and Back Again. One of them.

Tolkien mixed Nordic mythology together with his own life and inventions seamlessly. The Shire is reminiscent of an idealized English countryside, a pure and placid place upon which Saruman inflicts the blight of modern factories that belch smoke and ruin. The Misty Mountains were inspired by his trips to the Swiss Alps. The bloody, swampy, muddy mess of The Somme inspired The Dead Marshes. The war made quite an impression, upon him, after all: all but one of his close friends was dead by 1918. His wife Edith became inspiration for the main story of the Silmarillion.

The events in his fiction are externalized aspects of his self, of his own life experiences. Like an externalized dream. Dreams recycle and reconfigure our waking life and try and make sense of it. The places in his books are inextricably linked to the characters who pass through them. Good writing is holistic. Locations reflect or externalize internal struggle.

It's about emotional truth.

Mordor at its most evocative.
By the Hildebrant Brothers

Tolkien argued that Beowulf was not about a specific monster, and therefore juvenile, as critics alleged, but about mankind's struggle in general. The monster is an expression of emotional truth. Just because it's cool and evocative doesn't make it illegitimate. Let the fuddy duddy pedants bloviate while we enjoy.

That is how, as an avid youth, I consumed his books.

We emotionally react to Sauron and Smaug and the fear of the Mirkwood dark just as we marvel at the tree forts of the elves and majesty of the Misty Mountains. These are evocative, emotional places, not physical ones. Mirkwood is a state of mind.

The depth of thought that went into these imaginary realms help make the books wonderful reads, or did, back in the days before the internet and truncated attention spans. Few today can read omniscient third person POV anymore, at least not without throwing the book against the wall and running around screaming in outrage. I kid you not. Writing fashions change like everything else.

But I am from an earlier age, the last millennium, like an elf who has outstayed his welcome in Middle Earth and must soon depart for the Grey Havens. I guess it's like Florida.

Mirkwood, Mount Doom, Gondor, Minas Tirith, The Shire, Rivendell. All these places evoke strong memories in me, perhaps even more so having seen the film adaptations by Peter 'Swoop' Jackson.

There's enough detail on this imaginary world to create cool 3D maps showing Middle Earth from orbit. Which is just awesome. Few fantasy worlds inspire faux satellite shots.

Middle Earth from space. That's Mordor in the lower right.

Essays have been written on Tolkien's world building efforts. Tor has a good one (Although they are mistaken that he invented world building. More on that later).

It also should be mentioned that Tolkien's writings are a major point of inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons, which started off the whole craze of role playing, novels, movies, map making and television shows.

Tolkien defined not only the genre, but made maps and world building an inextricable part of it.

Need I say more?

For a recap on the people and creatures of LOTR? See this video:

And for those who've seen and enjoyed the LOTR films, a bit of fun courtesy Honest Trailers:

Top spots on my imaginary Middle Earth travel itinerary:

Rivendell
Who wouldn't want to visit this oasis of peace and tranquility in a world being overrun by slobbering orcs and fire belching balrogs? It's the Switzerland of the fantasy world. Better than a Swedish spa, and infinitely more scenic.

Mines of Moria
I think Moria is probably the most majestic mine ever imagined, with great soaring staircases and gaping chasms that lead down to the centre of the earth. Jackson's film brought them to life and I have to admit his cinematic version rivaled, if not exceeded, my own imagination. But I think I'd go with a tour group, and keep a close eye on the guide. Safety in numbers. It's not a place I'd want to get lost in.

Mirkwood
Another dark, foreboding place that leapt to life in my imagination. The tour would be carried out from an armored van equipped with flamethrowers, but I'd still be game.

Minas Tirith
The definitive fantasy city, and the source of inspiration for many others. Seven tiered rings! Gleaming white towers! The White Tree! The nearby Pelennor Fields archeological site, where one of the greatest fantasy battles ever was fought. How could you go wrong? You can always visit the real life inspiration: Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France.

Or just go to New Zealand.

Next time: the original world builder, granddaddy of them all!

Michael Shank's Time Trap

This is pretty amazing. From the guy who did the George Lucas' Special Edition Trailer for Episode VII.

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Quest for an Audience: Promotion devotion.

The default response to the question I have found is: WRITE ANOTHER BOOK. Written in all caps and 36 point. Write books until you've authored a library.

Period.

And they're right, of course. The best way to promote a book is to write another, and by so doing, establish a presence in the field.

But I believe they are also wrong.

Writing a hundred thousand words, or even fifty thousand, takes time. And then it needs a thorough edit. So we're looking at a year or more before the next book comes out.

While that's in progress, there are many little things you can do to promote your work.

And I believe you should.

Kboards has more about publishing and promoting than you can shake a stick at, and the more I learn, the more I realize how difficult the road ahead is.

For what it's worth, here's what I have done:

I established a page on Goodreads. You just create an account, indicate you are an author, link to your book on Amazon for proof, and voila. I also created a blog, a Facebook page, and an Amazon Author page, and I've linked them all in to the blog.

I've joined several forums and began to participate in the online writing community. This not only helps you improve your work by presenting it for constructive criticism, but gives you exposure to people who are interested in reading. Most authors, after all, are avid readers as well.

I work a day job (yay), and I have set aside a small budget to fund my writing hobby. Most of it will go into purchasing artwork, which I am happy to do. The recession in 2008 hit the art community quite hard, and there are plenty of artists out there in need of work and support. I am all for helping people pursue their dreams, even live them if they can.

For my first book, I hired a wonderful and talented artist by the name of Nimit Malavia, who has done fantastic covers for Fables. He frequently works for Marvel and DC. He did a smashing job and I'm tremendously happy with his work.

I consider it money very well spent.

I also intend to set aside a small amount of cash for promotion, likely in the form of banner ads which I will run for a couple months. I plan on spending about $100 to $150 on this. This is fire and, mostly, forget. I will run the campaign using Google AdWords, which will keep statistics on how well the ads do. I am not expecting much, and I'm good with that.

I also intend to approach local publications that do book reviews, as well as review sites online. This will likely be difficult, as they are no doubt inundated by submissions, so I intend to tread carefully. This thread on kboards has some really useful information about reviews and how to get them.

I've also written a couple of short stories set in the same world as the book, which I'm submitting them to sci-fi magazines. There is little chance of getting in for a novice like me, but you never know. One must try. If they are rejected, I will then put them up for sale on KDP Amazon, and in so doing, build the collection of titles I have written. Who knows? An editor may like my writing and the submission may draw their attention to my novel.

I also intend to shorten the length of my books. The key seems to be having a LOT of published work, rather than a few epics.

Welcome to the new normal.

I think these are reasonable steps, and they won't break the bank or soak up all my time. I suspect I will be further ahead having done them than not, and they will not significantly slow the progress of my next book, which I am also working on. It will be my central effort.

The blog, this blog, will be focused on three topics:

1) Science fiction.
2) My promotional efforts.
3) My books, short stories, skits.

Blogs do better when they are focused like a laser on one narrow, niche topic. I've decided to focus for the moment on world building. Several of my crack crew of readers noted that I seem to like it. And I do, although I've tried to keep it to a minimum. I cut over 10,000 words of background material and 'world building' from an early edit, to help improve the flow.

But it's something I find interesting and have enthusiasm to write about, so that will be the subject of a series of posts.

Quest for an Audience will be the second topic.

I hope to write an article once or twice a month, on top of smaller, less involved posts. Every one of them is an opportunity to refine my writing skills.

Finally I will also post excerpts from new novels, short stories, and skits.

I'm not if any of it will be relevant, considering that just about anything I decide to write about will already be extensively covered by others. All I can offer is a strong POV and colourful opinions.

So far, my promotion efforts have not amounted to anything, but the book only went up a week ago.

I'm still digesting the author tips and tricks page on kboards.

I'll let you know how it goes, and in the meantime, I wish you all the success.

It's official: I have an Amazon author page.

The most flattering picture of myself that I could find on short notice. I look better once I've had my morning coffee.

Check it out here.

It even links back out to this blog.

It's almost like I'm tech savvy.

Almost.

Keeping track of your character arcs

Honestly, would you want to have your world conquest defeated by a bunch of preening teenagers?

Organizing all the elements required for a novel can be challenging. I struggled with it a lot writing Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom.

I now use sticky notes and cue cards, a tool taken from screenwriting.

If I have multiple characters with arcs, I create a set of sticky notes for each, detailing the steps in their emotional journey.

I use cue cards for scenes. They're easy to move around. Key plot points are usually key character points, so there's a good deal of overlap. But using stickies as well allows flexibility as you build the character up (or down). If I just work with plot points, character development becomes secondary and I lose track of the arc I'd planned. It's much harder to keep track of everything than you'd think when looking in from the outside.

I the cards and stickies all out on a board broken up into three acts, with the middle act being twice as long as the beginning and the end ones. I then place down the stickies on, or beside the cue cards.

This helps give me an overview of the writing 'battlefield' if you will. I can coordinate the various character arcs and the plot, see it all at a glance, and move things around as need be. Sometimes you want to spread out your arc more, or condense it, or you'll realize you can align the arcs of characters in an interesting way. If you can find different colors for your stickies, so much the better. You know where each character has a major transformative moment.

Use different color pens to note positive or negative changes. Have fun. Do what works for you.

Of course, once I have my outline done and start on the first draft, I often find myself going off track. I'm not saying my process works, or that I follow it perfectly, just that it helps me organize things in the beginning. Lays down the race track. My bad driving is another problem altogether.

An effective character arc can be easier to plan than execute.

You can find lots about structure in books like Blake Snyder's Save the Cat. Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell and The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker are also very good. They give a nice break down of plots frequently used in mythology, which also run in tandem with the character arc. In fact, plot elements are really just externalized representations of what's going on inside the main characters head.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was great for that sort of thing. They'd use the poor, doomed monster-of-the-week to throw into sharp relief a flaw, or personal dilemma, of one of the main characters. Tempt their greedy side. Play on their idealism. When you start from that position, it gives the story a very strong emotional hook. Sometimes, it really IS all about them. Very solipsistic in a way: the villains attempt to take over the world and cast humanity into everlasting darkness only happens to help a main character learn a lesson about sharing.

Personally, if I was a villain, I'd be rather put out. Let's not sugarcoat this: it takes a lot of hard work, planning, dedication, and determination to take over the world. People are always trying to stop you. Let's not even get into the logistical difficulties, or what to do with it once conquered. To have such a grandiloquent effort reduced to minor lesson in the life a whiny adolescent would make it so not worth trying.

But then, we read mostly for the emotional connection.

Something to get better at. 

Creativity: are you born with it?

And if so, are you nuts?

"For decades, scientists have been tinkering with the idea that genes may have a role to play in developing creative abilities in individuals. The association described above was suggested in a study of 300,000 people with mental illnesses carried out by scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden."

Learn more over at brainblogger.

Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom

Publication calls for a promotional post. And a drink!

Check out the sweet cover by the sensational Nimit Malavia, of Fables fame!

Here's the book blurb in full:

In the barren post-apocalyptic future, former sex emporium Pleasurepit Five is the last bastion of human civilization. It has survived for a thousand years, weathering everything from nihilistic robots and gibbering megamutants to insane advertising campaigns.

Now another, long forgotten remnant of the ancient world has emerged from the smashed ruins: a rogue amusement park, under the sway of a Dark Lord wannabe. It's expanding at an exponential rate, threatening to reorganize the world into sanitized blandness.

To stop it, Pit citizen Magnum Thrax must whip a team of repurposed fembots into shape and lead them into a winner-takes-all battle for the future. Their only chance? Enlist the help of Technowitches and deliver a virus into the evil, beating heart of the Amusement Park of Doom. Yet to reach the witches, they must cross The Death Zone. Like, literally. And no one who enters it has ever emerged alive…

It's up!

Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom is up and available for purchase from Amazon, just like a real (e)book.

I couldn't help but take a picture:

It feels like Christmas morning.

Thanks to Clickit Press

Wonderful folks.

I am a Luddite, unfortunately, and have no idea how to get the hideous grey shadow around the logo to go away.

I also go around smashing power looms when the mood strikes.

It begins!

Published my first book last night.

I don't feel any different.

The book cover is in.

The artist did an amazing job. It really looks incredible.

Now everything is ready to go.

Hope to launch within the week.

Star Wars Spoof Trailer

Best thing about it? The Swiss Army Knife of lightsabers.

It's incredibly well done, and came out only a few days after the trailer dropped.

Amazing.

Mike Duran on Stephen King breaking the rules

This a great post.

Interesting to hear Stephen King commits the sin of 'head hopping' too, a phenomenon I've just become aware of.

I've worked to minimize it my book, but there are still likely some examples skulking about.

I set out to write in limited third person, as much as I thought about it, but the rules for this POV seem a little different, and more strict, than they were twenty years ago.

After becoming aware of 'head hopping', I picked up a Dean Koontz book and one by Arthur C. Clarke, just to see how they handled POV. Within a page, both authors 'head hopped'. Both! The Koontz book was written within the last five years (one of his Frankenstein series), while the Clarke book was written in the early eighties (Songs of a Distant Earth).

Stephen King wrote The Stand in 1978, and he apparently 'head hops' all over the place.

Now, I can see how it can be confusing, and I understand why authors would chose to use only one 'head' per chapter or scene, yet I think fanatical adherence to rules just restricts creativity. Some leeway should be allowed.

After all, I remember reading The Stand and quite enjoying it. I don't remember being confused at all. Same goes for Clarke and Koontz.

Yet people claim to throw books against the wall, or into the garbage, never to be read again, just because they found an incidence of 'head hopping'.

Ye gods! Seriously? 

It seems absurdly intolerant. Unless you bought the book second hand at 99 cents. Even then it'd be better to use it for kindling, a page at a time, rather than landfill. Heck, sell it back to the bookstore. Give it to a homeless person. Make a thousand plane paper airforce.

And just because most people aren't writing in omniscient third person doesn't mean no one should be allowed to.

There are still old people out there who can handle third person omniscient POV, and odds are they read more books than most teenagers do.

Take a chill pill, people.

Magnum Thrax Prologue

The albino android had lost all hope.

A hole opened in the glowing wall before him and he slipped through into an immaculate white room, his futuristic armour gleaming in the cold light. In the centre of the chamber stood an older but otherwise identical android operating a holographic interface. The younger stepped forward and saluted crisply.

“You’re late, Commander Eight-Oh-Nine,” noted the elder, without looking up. The older android rapidly tapped floating symbols. Four small silver stars were embedded in the collar of his jumpsuit; the logo of the Supreme Sponsor, GenDyn Corporation, was emblazoned over his heart. “Fifty seconds.”

The room shuddered violently.

“Apologies, Guru-General One.” Commander Eight-Oh-Nine’s left eye twitched. “The lift systems are down.” He could feel a lump in his throat growing larger, more obscene and loathsome every second. The civilian code patches to his neural net were cracking.

Be calm, thought Eight-Oh-Nine. Be more like One.

The Guru-General turned towards the far wall. “Transparency,” he said calmly, and waved a hand.

The wall melted away and revealed a scene out of a deranged fantasist’s nightmare, of earthly paradise under siege. Stretching out as as far as the eye could see was an impossible city of elegant, soaring buildings, white and smooth like oversized ceramic jars. Their foundations were engulfed by roiling smoke, out of which rose monstrous tentacles. Glistening with corrosive slime, they writhed about and thrashed at the buildings, tearing off great chunks of material. Entire structures were dragged down, one after another, into billowing darkness.

The Guru-General followed the attack with sharp eyes. He looked at Eight-Oh-Nine: “The Engines of Creation have broken through our defences. Multiple incarnations. Smoke swarm, dragon sharks, and even more efficient variants. I have made… tactical miscalculations.”

Guru-General One had a knack for understatement, thought Eight-Oh-Nine. Always as cool as a quantum computer’s nitrogen tank, for One had truly stable code. Unpatched. Pure. The original engineered neurons still firing inside the vat grown synthe-organ container.

By contrast, Eight-Oh-Nine felt his own emotions yearning to rampage out of control. He wanted to scream, hit things, run around in circles screaming like a lunatic. Like a human. Eight-Oh-Nine could no longer dream of electronic sheep. How did his superior remain so calm? Did the general not know certain death approached?

Outside, dragons with scaly shark heads swooped out of fiery clouds. Bulky gatling guns were strapped to flanks of the hideous hybrid beasts. Each bore a rider: a hunched and shrouded wraith armed with a bulky energy weapon.

The dragon sharks dove at the towers. Sirens strapped to their bellies let out a horrible, blood-curdling wail that terrified those below. Gatling guns belched depleted uranium bullets, raking buildings. The wraiths directed searing beams of plasma at defensive strong points.

In response, jets of blue energy spat out from prickly, anemone like weapons batteries that studded the towers.

A dragon-shark was hit and burst into a rain of unraveling black sand.

Androids in power armour jetted past, unleashing a wave of micro-missiles into a flight of dragon-sharks.

Good, thought the general. Still some sections left. One checked his display, and his expression soured. “Somnolence field at maximum. No effect.”

Eight-Oh-Nine pointed toward tentacles surging upward, like some great spaghetti monster. They formed a tunnel, channeling upward roiling lava. Faces and monstrous shapes tumbled over the burbling surface, only to be subsumed by visages even more horrific, each accompanied by its own tiny, glowing copyright glyph and legal disclaimer.

Artifacts of a more civilized age, thought the frightened android. Absurd anachronisms.

The display pinged, noting memetic attack. The lava was generating terror-memes powerful enough to freeze those without thought filters. The command chamber was well insulated, but those outside…

A power suit got too close and tumbled out of control into the lava, disintegrating into a puff of smoke.

“It will be close,” said General One. “Twenty seconds.”

There was a tremendous thud as a massive tentacle struck the transparent wall. The room heaved back violently. The two androids compensated easily, but a potted tropical plant slid across the room until the floor merged with it, snapping it in place.

The wriggling tentacle dissolved away into shimmering dust as the building defenses sent a massive electromagnetic pulse through it.

Eight-Oh-Nine swallowed hard and felt his sphincter involuntarily tighten. “It knows, Geshe. Abort!” The Engines of Creation must know what they were trying to do, of that he had no doubt. They’d lose everything. Anxiety ate at his mind. He rubbed tiny prayer beads back and forth between sweaty fingers. “Abort, I beg you!”

“Calm yourself. Ten seconds,” replied One serenely.

“Look!” shouted Eight-Oh-Nine, his eyes wide with horror.

Undulating tentacles had piled up, extending the tunnel through which the plasma hurtled, directly towards them. A ruggedly handsome face emerged, twisted by rage and hatred. “Give it to me!” it thundered.

One scanned the display’s flickering readings. “Transfer complete.”

A soft, soothing ding.

“CentCom database expunged.”

Out of the floor extruded a thin pillar topped by a bulb. It spiraled open like a flower petal, revealing a copper coloured dodecahedron the size of a marble.

One plucked it, severing the pillar’s soft molecular bond, and handed it to Eight-Oh-Nine.

“I am transferring command authority to you, Commander. The rest of your equipment is already in your escape pod. Get to Nike Monastery. Find the prodigy technowitch. She is the world’s only hope now,” said One solemnly. “May Begtse and the Founding Fathers guide you.”

One glanced outside.

Lava now filled the panorama. It hit the transparent wall at hurricane speed. Everything shuddered. The wall caved slightly inward, then pulled taught. Held.

The ancient android general gasped. Incredible, he thought; perhaps…

CRACK!

Fractures appeared.

One’s face fell and he rounded on Eight-Oh-Nine.

“Go! NOW!”

Eight-Oh-Nine saluted, spun on his heel, and ran at the wall. A hole opened up. He dove through, and it snapped shut after him.

As One watched Eight-Oh-Nine exit, a wave of relief flooded over him. His job was done. “May all beings be happy,” he said, clasping his hands together. “God save America.”

With a deafening roar the wall gave way. Living lava poured in, instantly vaporizing the general.

Moments later a small white pod soared up into the sky out of the tenebrous maelstrom. Tentacles whipped and snapped after it, but they were too slow, too clumsy. The pod arced into the stratosphere before beginning a slow, leisurely descent.

Inside, Eight-Oh-Nine breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps there was reason for hope after all.

Eight-Oh-Nine took a deep breath and began to meditate.

Me and my tinnitus.

I was intending to post regularly, but that hasn't happened.

I wanted to post some short stories, but that hasn't happened either.

Instead, I woke up with a high pitched tone in my head.

Doesn't seem like much. Just an irritation. Right?

Except for one thing: it didn't go away.

And I could no longer sleep.

At least, not much.

The damn noise was just too loud.

I'd get an hour, maybe two, per night. That was it. The rest was tossing and turning, wandering around, listening to music, and watching TV. Couldn't focus enough to read.

I certainly couldn't write.

I'd gotten tinnitus. It's often the result of damage to the tiny hairs deep inside our ears, but can also be caused by a viral infection, among other things.

Mine isn't in my ears.

It's in my head.

This new companion is merciless, unrelenting, and never goes away. It's like a combination of Jason and your least favorite in-law, and it's at you day and night.

At least Freddy only bothers you when you're dreaming.

I'm being hyperbolic, of course. It's really much more like Chinese water torture. Just the sonic version.

According to Wikipedia, there are no effective medications. No cure. No treatment. It affects up to fifteen per cent of people, but is only a significant problem for one or two per cent. For twenty-five per cent, it just gets louder as time goes on.

Peachy.

Sometimes, during the day, I can find an environment that's chaotic and noisy enough to mask the vile howl. There needs to be enough noise of different frequencies and different sources to be distracting, but not enough to cause hearing damage.

In one cafe, for a few moments, I even thought the tinnitus had gone away. Keep clinking those dishes!

But no such luck.

It's likely permanent.

That's the real kicker.

I saw an ENT (Ears, nose, throat) specialist in short order, by a stroke of luck and pulling a few connections.

Immediately went on an intensive treatment of steroids and anti-virals. These were intended to reduce inflammation inside my head, which might have been caused by a particularly bad cold.

That could be at root of it all.

Did no good.

But the sleep deprivation was rapidly becoming the bigger issue.

Even an existential issue.

I started to lose my sense of balance. I got regular, persistent headaches and felt sick to my stomach, but couldn't throw up. It was like feeling sick, but not being sick. A subtle distinction. I could still eat, and I began to over indulge, as a distraction.

I've always been moody but now I was self-parody.

Every time I shut my eyes the noise got louder

Action was required.

First discovery: over the counter sleeping pills are worthless.

Prescription sleeping pills got me a whopping 3 or 4 hours worth of shut eye per one-and-a-half pops. The side effect is that they make you feel dreadful, coat your thinking in cotton, and ruin your memory for the day. I'm not sure if you reach that sweet, deep REM sleep you need to really refresh.

So I had a dilemma: you can't go on forever on little or no sleep. Yet the only way I could sleep was with sleeping pills you aren't supposed to take for more than two weeks at a time.

Do the math.

Tinnitus had robbed me of rest. It was now slowly eroding my sanity. Eventually, the sleep deprivation could threaten my job, and ultimately my life.

By this point I was running multiple white noise generators during the night: fan, humidifier, heater, a white noise app on the phone, and an eight hour long Youtube video on my desktop computer.

It helped, but not much.

I still got little to no sleep.

Melatonin, valerian, gingko, and zinc pills were all added to my diet.

Got in to see a new GP and was put on a new medication: remonen.

At first, it didn't work at all. Just gave me wicked headaches and weird feelings in my head I'd never felt before.

At the end of the first week of taking it, however, I was getting more sleep.

In fact, this morning, I was woken up by the alarm clock.

That hasn't happened for some time, and it was totally AWESOME.

I didn't think I'd need alarm clocks again. Often I'd be looking at the clock, waiting for it to go off. Sometimes I'd shut it off a minute before. Sometimes I'd let it bleat for a bit.

Distraction. Always good. Even an alarm clock.

I'd say the remonen has likely saved my life, just as the American Tinnitus Association saved William Shatner's. If it continues to work, and it isn't a fluke, I'll be able to get some much needed rest.

I'm very hopeful.

As awful as the tinnitus is, I can manage, so long as I can sleep.

Believe me, you'll never realize how precious sleep is until you can't.

Exploring character: G.R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones

GoT is great at using character to drive story, and does so better than certain other currently hot cable shows (I'm looking at you, Walking Dead).

A great trick G.R.R. Martin uses: he takes inner struggles and turns them into living avatars. You can't see character's inner feelings in a TV show, so this is a great work around. And it's one way to tell who's going to be sticking around, and who's disposable fodder.

Take Stannis, for example. He's the definition of conflicted. Couldn't be more obvious if it were written on his forehead with indelible marker. He desires power, but is burdened by a conscience.

His advisors represent the battle going on inside his own noggin. The Red Lady tempts him with lust and power, while The Onion Knight appeals to his sense of duty and decency.

Desire versus conscience.

That conflict is what pulls Stannis into the third dimension. The Red Lady says his journey to the throne will require betraying everything he holds dear: family, friends, allies, honour. And as he chucks them under the wagon in his quest for the throne, he becomes more conflicted. Not something you see very often in a fantasy novel. Sauron is just a prick from the get-go. There's no nuance to be found, just flat-out evil. Which can be a lot of fun.

But Stannis? Will to Power compels him to commit horrible crimes, yet eats away at his soul. Not enough to stop, but perhaps enough to drive him mad. There have been mad kings before…

That's where The Onion Knight fits in. Stannis brings him in to save his soul.

Stannis is rigid and self-righteous to the point of being insufferable. If he becomes King, he'll spend all his time brooding over the horrors he committed to get there. Can you see Stannis frolicking about, holding mass orgies and letting go? Me either. It's gonna be Dour Kingdom Time, 24/7.

While Stannis barrels downward, Jamie stumbles up.

For him, the light is Brienne, who offers hope, honour, and redemption.

Holding him back is Cersei, the dark temptress, who's amoral, debauched, and utterly ruthless.

Their father Tywin is even worse, but his monstrous nature is shackled (you might even say it's harnessed) by his sense of duty. It's his only redeeming feature. He dictates like a demented Father Knows Best. Without his sense of duty, left to his own desires, he'd have had Tyrion throttled as a baby, just as his not-so-loving sister Cersei would have wanted.

Tyrion starts out as an amoral hedonist, a self-indulgent dwarf who desperately tries to stay out of the serious business of power. He fails, and his moral code is blown into sharp relief by waves of unwanted crises. Horrors and injustice compel him to act, again and again.

Shae represents turning inward: she's selfishness at the expense of the external world, urging Tyrion to run away with her for love.

Bron is mercenary indifference enabled by deadly ability. He can do what Tyrion cannot, but he has no sense of right and wrong. Bron's a weapon, one that could be used for good or ill. Self-interest is paramount.

Much as Tyrion tries to deny it, and run away from it, he's a moral actor, and so his reflections are not. Morality does not drive them: money, love, and revenge do. Base urges, untempered by conscience.

Danny, too, is on a downward journey, from Utopian clouds into dust coated realism. She liberates the slaves only to find her pet dragons eating hapless children. Revolts plague her rule. She can't choose between easy rights and wrongs, only between the greater and lesser evil. One way or another, ruling a kingdom sullies her. It's a humbling experience for a character driven by noble motives.

Honestly, the show is amazingly well done.

Chaos (Littlefinger) vs. Varys (order) is another awesome angle he's got going. Fire vs. Ice. So many layers.

Doing the Blogger do.

They say that if you want to be a writer these days, you need to have a blog. So voila! I am taking my first step along a new path.