Sapo Saga has been released

I've just compiled the story I serialized over at Sigild V for last month's edition of the annual A-to-Z Challenge, and while the result is surely short, I'm proud to present Sapo Saga to the world.  Here's the back cover, too, so you know what it's about:

Basically it's the condensed version of a classic space opera epic, told from the perspective of twenty-six individuals recounting their relationship to the story, which at its heart details to heroics of Ulysses and the redemption of Zuri, both of whom are heroes of the Sapo Order and saviors of the planet Zala, and are equally desperately needing to be rediscovered by a galaxy that has forgotten they were real people.  The people lending their thoughts strange from friends and relatives to the persons responsible for finding out the truth about what really happened.  Central to the whole thing is the mysterious Kindly, the android depicted on the cover.

You can purchase it here (digitally, here).

Speaking of that cover, yes, it's the first time I've delved into creating a distinctive, art-centered cover, so on that score, it marks a transition in my self-publishing.  Thanks for your continued support.

IWSG May 2016 - May the 4th be with you...

This is an Insecure Writers Support Group post...

I love Star Wars, in part because it stands as a triumph of the imagination.  George Lucas took things he loved (old sci-fi movie serials, Hidden Fortress) and showed everyone why he loved them.  (This makes him a little like Quentin Tarantino, actually.)  And the first version he came up with (later adapted by Dark Horse Comics in its The Star Wars) is virtually nothing like the saga as we'd get to know it.  Hollywood literally spent twenty years trying desperately to catch up with it, and it was such a tough job the fans eventually considered that Lucas himself wasn't up to it when he created the prequel trilogy.

His imagination, however, was a powerful lure.  I grew up with these movies.  By the time I was old enough to watch them, the original trilogy had already been completed, and my family watched them over and over again.  I was young enough to be extremely impressionable, in a number of ways.  The scariest parts of the movies were things I wasn't really ready to face.  I vividly remember that iconic moment when the Emperor removes his hood and reveals his ugly...Wait, you say that never happened?  Well, it did for me.  That, and tiny, shrunken Princess Leia.  I mean, that was a gimme, right?  Only if you didn't understand how the scene was being presented in that prison cell.

Beyond that, and in conjunction with Star Trek (I know, right? most fans like one or the other), Star Wars was to have a profound impact on my budding creative life.  Like Hollywood, it was to be a daunting journey.  I didn't write a word of Star Wars fiction until about a decade into my budding career.  (I've previously written about the huge challenge I set for myself later, the 101 Star Wars Variations.)  A lot of writers tend to be inspired by what they read rather than watched.  That certainly seems to be my experience, anyway.  There are definitely writers who crib from their viewing habits (it's always obvious), but it's far more common (see George R.R. Martin and other famous fantasy writers, obviously following in the footsteps of Tolkien, for instance) for reading habits to be exposed.  Most sci-fi writers still exist in the insular world of book logic, including those actively penning Star Wars (and Star Trek) fiction.

Well, not me.  Star Wars was too important to me.  And yeah, I've been chasing it ever since.  Probably a foolish obsession, I know, but one I can't shake.  It defines the term "saga" for me, and what I always wanted from that saga, but never found except in the movies, what I've always wanted for my sagas.  I mean, what would be the point otherwise?

It's not all Star Wars (or Star Trek).  Last time I checked in I talked about the need for inspiration that truly inspires you, and a large pool of it.  But without Star Wars, my pool would be considerably more shallow.  In both senses.

Is it an impossible dream?  Who knows?

IWSG April 2016: Steal Like an Artist

Welcome to another month of the Insecure Writers Support Group, which meets digitally on the first Wednesday of every month.

The only thing I have to tell you this month is to read the opening chapters of Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist.  The rest of it is rubbish, but the first few chapters are essential.  The title argument is pretty clever, in that it suggests you gather a lot of heroes, and steal from them, because it's a lot harder for someone to say you stole from them in that they won't really know what you stole. 

Which is to say, love what you love, and then take away from it what is most valuable to you. 

The third chapter is entitled, "Write the Book You Want to Read," which is equally essential.  So many writers write for the sake of writing, imitating instead of translating, that it's incredibly wearying. 

Imitation is the act of doing what you saw someone else do.  Translation is figuring out what it means from the only perspective you'll ever truly know: yours.  Because translation means taking a story and making it your own.  Believe me, people really can tell the difference, and telling your own story makes all the difference in the world.

But writers are notorious for ignoring good advice.  We're an impetuous lot, prone to all the mistakes everyone else already made, because most advice is about as lousy as everything else Kleon says in his book.  So many of us are motivated to write, to simply put words together in the general semblance other people will easily understand, we overlook the art of it. 

But it really is better to be an artist, and, hey, you might as steal like one, right?

IWSG March 2016 - Impending A-to-Z

It's time, once again, for everyone to climb aboard the IWSG train!

This month I'm just going to briefly touch on my plans for April's annual A-to-Z Challenge.  This year I'll be participating at Sigild V, where I tend to post my short fiction experiments, so yes, that means I will be writing fiction this year.  I tried doing that last year, but it didn't go over well, so I switched tactics.  This year, however, I'm writing ahead, so everything will be done before anyone reads a word of it.  This will also have the effect of getting me back into the writing mode, which is something I've been working on the past few months, after an especially trying period in my life.  I've found that the years I spent writing full-length manuscripts were perhaps a more unique period than I thought they were, certainly an excellent foundation for future efforts, but something that now seems like a different phase of my life as a writer, and so once again I'm relearning what exactly that means.

Always keeping things interesting...

WRiTE CLUB 2016

In my ongoing attempts to right the wrongs of my past, I'm allowing myself another shot at DL Hammons' WRiTE CLUB.  I've participated twice before.  The second time, after there started being so many would-be participants not everyone even made it into the competition, I...didn't make it into the competition.  I think.  Either way, I haven't done very well.  The first year I was pretty grumpy, and that's mostly what I need to overcome.  I hate being grumpy.  I can't help it, possibly, but I can also choose not to foist the grumpiness on others.  Try and be positive.  Try.  This kind of thing comes with the territory.  That's what I need to keep reminding myself. 

So I dashed off something that was fun to write, and that may be the only thing I take away from the experience this time, but it was fun to write, and that makes me feel good.  Entrants have until the 26th (because apparently this year's contest is earlier than usual), and then I guess everything concludes before the end of April, and we can all move on, regardless of how things turn out...

IWSG February 2016: Writer's Block

The first Wednesday of every month hosts the bloggers meeting of the Insecure Writers Support Group.

Today I'm going to talk about that most dreaded of subjects: writer's block.  This is something I'm very passionate about, because I think it's one of the most misunderstood aspects of writing.

You know how it is.  You want to write, but for whatever reason, you're completely unable to, not because you have too much demand for your time on other things, but because the words simply won't flow.  Writers tend to find this incredibly frustrating, and why shouldn't they?  Writers write.  Right.  They think there's something wrong with them.  And that's simply not the case.

I'm here to argue that writer's block is the most useful tool in a writer's arsenal. 

Pretty odd, right?  But it's absolutely true.  Have you ever heard a writer explain how after a certain point, a story just started to write itself?  It's one of the weirdest aspects of writing, but it's also the most telling one.  You can try and master a story yourself, but in the end it's the story itself that knows what it's doing, and every time you disagree, you end up with something less than what it could have been.  I have a theory that the weakest stories are the ones the writer forced the most to happen, and the strongest are the ones that, well, wrote themselves.

What does this have to do with writer's block?  This is the story trying to take over.  And the writer just won't let it.  It's essentially the writer getting in their own way and not even realizing it.  It's the story telling the writer that they have to take a break.  Yes, I'm literally saying that writer's block is a good thing, a necessary thing.  The more you embrace it, the better off you'll be.

Because this is the point where you realize new possibilities.  This is where the story becomes enriched, past the original idea and into a full-blown story.  Not a series of events.  A story.  This is what truly makes a writer, the ability to distance their own ego from their work.

A lot of writers depend heavily on support.  And this is a good thing.  This is the writer acknowledging, once again, that they need some extra help.  The story needs some work.  Not mechanically.  Okay, maybe sometimes mechanically.  But whatever the case, the best storytelling is the product of acknowledging that something isn't write.  It takes a humble writer to admit this.

Never take the reader's opinion for fact.  Never take a critic's opinion for fact.  If you've given the story the attention it needs, if you've allowed yourself to discover the authentic story, the right reader, the right critic will come along and figure out what you did, what the story did.  Readers can be wrong.  Critics can be wrong.

And most importantly, writers can be wrong.  That's what writer's block is telling you.  It's telling you that you need to step back and let the process work instead of trying to force it.  Again, you can always tell when this hasn't happened.  I'm not just talking about mechanics.  More writers than any of us will ever care to admit suck at mechanics.  Which is okay, because if you suck at mechanics but can somehow work around it, that's the story taking over, too, because the story will always know.

The story knows!

Sounds crazy, I know.  But it's my guiding principle.  And every time I've had writer's block, I've ended up with a story that feels more right than it did before.  I've been in writer's block on the latest story I'm working on, Miss Simon's Moxie (previously talked about here as Miss Simon's About the Moxie Incident).  Miss Simon is herself a significant piece of discovery in my writer's block, as I've talked about before.  She's become something of an inspiration machine.  A year or so ago, I was working on what has now become Miss Simon's Brute, and I'm only now beginning to see how important it is for her to be a part of that one, and why the recent idea for Miss Simon's Dime Novel was responsible for the breakthrough on Miss Simon's Moxie (and how all of them will help writing what's now Miss Simon's Doom so much easier when I get around to that).

No, I'm not trying to hook you on a series of Miss Simon books.  I'm just not that good enough at marketing.  But this is not a case of something that works for me working for you just because I'd like to believe so.

Historically, retelling stories has been a major part of storytelling in general.  More recently, I can think of one example where tackling the same subject has led to an incredibly richness that can only be understood by taking in all of the attempts.  This is another form of letting the story speak for itself, an idea that just won't go away.  To wit:

Consider the classic Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day.  You're probably familiar with it.  His character keeps experiencing the same day over and over again.  It's a terrible nightmare, but makes for a great movie. 

Now, two more recent examples of this idea are Source Code and Edge of Tomorrow.  I came to Source Code because I'd become a big fan of filmmaker Duncan Jones, who seems to be bursting with the same unique mindset as his father, the late David Bowie.  In it, Jake Gyllenhaal, yes, keeps experiencing the same day over and over again.  This time it's because he's been drafted by a military program that's using him to test out a new machine that will hopefully be able to prevent disasters.  The whole experience is pretty transcendental for reasons I don't necessarily need to get into here.

Anyway, then there's Edge of Tomorrow, in which Tom Cruise, yes, experiences the same day over and over again.  I finally got around to seeing this one because of all the positive chatter it received despite a rather tepid box office response.  There came a point where I realized I'd seen something like it before. No, not Source Code or Groundhog Day, but The Matrix Reloaded.

What?  Really? you're asking me, incredulous. 

Really.  This was the second movie in the Matrix trilogy.  It was also the first of two massive disappointments for fans transfixed by the first one's suggestion that there's a good explanation for why life is so disappointing, and it involves lots of kung fu and explosions!  Fans found the second and third films ultimately unnecessary attempts to duplicate the first one.  I never saw them that way.  What fans expected was to have the first one fleshed out.

And that's exactly what the sequels did.  The thing is, they kind of explain that Neo's powers are derived the same way Tom Cruise eventually becomes a super soldier in Edge of Tomorrow.  Cruise experiences the same events over and over again.  He begins to anticipate rather than simply react.  He's able to dodge what he knows is coming.  Although this is not the way it's presented in Neo's case, by the second film we have that wonderfully verbose Architect explain it exactly that way. 

So we end up, if we're paying attention and reading between the lines, realizing that the entire Matrix story is basically exactly like Edge of Tomorrow.

There is of course a massive difference in storytelling.  That's the art of storytelling.  That's why any of us thinks we have something new to say.  That's why every time someone complains Hollywood has nothing new to say, or that there are no new stories, it's the silliest thing ever said.  Because that's literally the story of storytelling.  It's the way it's done.

And it can't happen if you don't let it.  Get it?

The story knows best.  Writer's block exists to help you.  Get out of your own way.  You'll be amazed at what results.  And eventually, you'll have readers who do, too.  I never subscribed to the idea that stories exist for immediate results.  They are perfectly visceral things.  And instant success is nice.  Except sometimes the results aren't what you thought they'd be.  Because you left out the most important part, the story itself.  Because the story knows best.  It understands better than you that the tradition isn't the enemy.  You are.  When you get in your own way, you'll be telling yourself that, too. 

Now you know why.

IWSG January 2016: New Year's Goals

The Insecure Writers Support Group meets digitally the first day of every month.  This being the first of the new year, I figured I'd discuss goals and how I intend to approach them...

I've pushed myself for so long wanting and expecting and needing a paying future in writing that I've sometimes been hysterical about it.  I couldn't see a future where I'd be happy doing anything else.  Strangely, last year taught me a different way in the most unlikely circumstances possible.  First I thought I might never write again, and then I found a new job, one I'd never thought I was remotely qualified for: helping raise a baby. 

I won't regale you with the wonders I've already experienced in that regard here.  Instead, I'll talk about my new perspective (same as the old one), and what it means about my writing future.

I will try and not push myself so hard, and not be so hard on myself.  I will try to write, and let that be its own reward.

That's the short of it.  The long of it is a series of projects, some old and some new.  One of the old ones is Brute, a story I've talked about here in the past, previously entitled The Pond War.  It's the manuscript I was working on a year ago that I ended up abandoning for a variety of reasons, one of them being guilt (I won't be talking about the reasons for that again).  I always say that when a story has trouble being put into words, it's the story telling you that something is wrong, that if you persist with it as you're currently thinking about it, it's a mistake.  Every story eventually takes on a life of it's own.  I think most of the stories I've read that feel wrong are ones that were written without taking this into consideration.

So I had put it aside, and continued thinking about it, and eventually new thoughts came to me.  Among them is the new narrator, Miss Simon.  This old gal will be narrating a lot of my manuscripts, including About the Moxie Incident..., which concerns an amnesiac president strolling about Washington, D.C.  Miss Simon is intended to help me find a consistent comedic voice.  She made her debut in Mouldwarp Press Presents: Barbarian Translation - The Trojan War, which took care of two birds as a result (I have a jones to write about the Trojan War).  I liked the results, so the idea seems like a go.

I've been thinking about my Space Corps saga lately, thanks to my sister's feedback on the Seven Thunders manuscript I've had sitting around for a few years.  She wanted to know if the main characters were going to pop up in later books.  The more I thought about it (one of them was always going to star in one already, but the main character was only going to make a cameo at best), the more I knew what to do about that. 

So I've become more interested in getting around to writing more Space Corps books.  The only thing I want to do before I get into that (besides, probably, the Brute and About the Moxie Incident... manuscripts) is take one last stab at the Star Trek writing contests I've been entering for fifteen years (with a gap, mind you).  There's another one for this year's fiftieth anniversary of the franchise.  I've got a handful of days to write an entry.  If I win entry into the anthology, there's a publishing deal that comes with it.  I will go ahead with Seven Thunders, which has always been my baby.  If I don't, I will self-publish Seven Thunders, something I've been long reluctant to do.  But things have changed.  I kind of no longer expect big readership.  If I'm going to write this stuff, and be such a coward (and/or completely incompetent) in the submissions process, it might as well be at least available. 

It's not quite the same with my comics goals.  I lost another contest, but I'm sticking around the venue, which is kind of like what I was doing a decade ago.  If someone notices whether or not I have talent and/or potential, so be it.  But I guess I'm no longer absolutely concerned as to whether or not I have a future in comics.  I don't know whether it's because I've written so many novel manuscripts since the last time I pursued this particular goal, and not written nearly as much material in comic script form, but at the moment I'm just wondering if this one's at all reasonable at this point.  The guy who beat me (y'know, relatively speaking), has obviously made a lot more progress, with or without the win.  (His name?  Deniz Camp.  If he turns out like Drew Melbourne, at least I'll get to talk about things like Double Steak Day!)

I haven't talked about comic books nearly as much as I have prose fiction here.  That may change in the coming year, too. 

But I'm officially taking the pressure off myself.  If nothing really happens for me, so be it.  There's an adorable little girl who probably won't really care anyway.