Christer Lende's Blog

I’m somewhat established writing fantasy. You know I can do it. I know I love it. So what am I doing dabbling with science fiction?

Sneaking away to watch fantasy

From when I was a child, I’ve loved both fantasy and science fiction, but struggled watching both genres due to . . . age restrictions. My mom wouldn’t allow me to see The Lord of the Rings, and I desperately wanted to see them. I was around 11 at the time The Two Towers came out on DVD, and was under strict orders not to watch it. It could “scramble my little brain,” she said. Perhaps she was scared I would swear allegiance to Saruman and paint his white hand on my forehead, not knowing I would end up dreaming about riding with the Rohirrim. Anyway.

Some of my friends had cooler moms who didn’t care as much about what their kids consumed, and after school, I went home with them. Naturally, I got to see all three movies this way, without my mom ever suspecting a thing (this would come back to bite me in the ass later).

I loved them. I think I watched the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I know it’s also called Battle of the Hornburg, settle down) fifty times that year.

But I grew older, and was suddenly of age to watch the movies with my mom. She was excited and rented the first one, buying some sweets for us so we could fully enjoy the movie.

Somehow, I kept predicting what would happen (like an absolute idiot), knowing characters’ names before they were said (what was I thinking?), and even told her names that were not said in the movie. She quickly figured out that I’d seen it before, and I cried and apologized. It all ended well, and we saw the movie to its end together.

Then it happened all over again

But while all of this happened, the exact same story played out with Star Wars. I was not allowed to see the Star Wars prequels, so I snuck over to some friends and when Darth Maul blasted that dual lightsaber, my brain melted. The Jedi fights in the prequels are absolutely crazy. I didn’t care much about the story, but I LOVED the action, the speed, the finesse, and I’ve always wanted to recreate that.

Isn’t this art from my next book, SPECTER, so FREAKING COOL?!

Swords in space?

When I played outside with sticks in hand, I pretended to be in one of two universes: The Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars. If I wanted to hack and slash - I was Legolas, slaying orcs with arrows and daggers. But sometimes, I wanted more finesse and class - so I was a Jedi, expertly wielding my lightsaber, dueling my friends or slicing imagined robots to pieces.

The concept of lightsabers really stuck with me though (as with A LOT of others). The idea of using swords in space is so cool, and I wanted to create that -  hence Specter came into existence. Before I go deeper in on Specter, let me answer the original statement regarding the genre-change. I’ve always loved both fantasy and science fiction, and have spent a lot of time in both genres, loving fantasy, such as Pirates of the Caribbean, and scifi, such as Interstellar and the original Alien. So moving between the genres feels natural to me, as they both feel equally familiar. The reason I’ve written SPECTER is because I want to recreate what Star Wars gave me as a kid. I’ll never forget the thrills or the tears my 14 year-old-self felt watching Anakin and Obi-Wan fight on Mustafar (during Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith). It was beyond awesome, but also heart wrenching watching the ending.

Another AWESOME depiction from SPECTER.

SPECTER is only inspired by Star Wars in the way that there are swords in space. Other than that, it’s entirely its own story. The blades in SPECTER aren’t light or laser, but regular steel blades. So how do I make that work? In science fiction, surely there are guns, rifles, tanks, spaceships, futuristic technology, tyranny, planetary warfare, and so on, and the answer is: yes. All these things exist, and so do people wielding swords. The Dune method would work, with shields only blocking bullets, but I have another method (when I wrote SPECTER all those years ago, I didn’t know Dune existed).

This is where the fantasy element comes into play. I won’t reveal too much, but when a subset of humans ingest a rare and valuable gas, they are granted certain powers. Some of these people get the ability to move with uncanny speed and think faster than supercomputers. It’s not like the Flash, as that is too overpowered, but they can still run at inhuman speeds. Non-instant-acceleration and momentum is a very real thing in SPECTER, but these super soldiers are able to deflect bullets with their blades, for instance. So they are still INCREDIBLY fast, and when two of these fighters meet - well, speed of the lightsaber duels in Star Wars pales in comparison.

This is how I make swords in space work, and it works better than I could have imagined. This gas gives other powers too, and there are in total 11 classes with different powers, but I’ll go more into this in the future.

SPECTER is coming along nicely, and I think it will be ready sometime this year. I am so freaking excited, and I hope you are too. I’ll continue dropping tidbits here and there, until the book hits the shelves.

My debut book “The Beast Hunters” recently won “Best in Fantasy” in the 2022 Indies Today Awards, a competition for self-published authors, and it had me burst out in dance in public while walking my dogs. The rush was incredible, and I definitely want to chase that (though it’s a pretty hard thing to chase). Does this make me qualified to spew any kind of story-telling knowledge? “The Beast Hunters” has great ratings on both Goodreads and Amazon, so it can’t be that bad, and a lot of people seem to actually be loving it. I don’t know if this is good enough, but I’m gonna do it anyway and talk about what I think it is that makes “The Beast Hunters” a strong first book in the trilogy (the trilogy is called The Beast Hunter of Ashbourn").

I believe there are recipes to storytelling, and I know some people think that sucks and there shouldn’t be any kind of laws to follow. Well, there really isn’t. Your story is your story, and you can do whatever you want, but there are some tools that often can help make the story fun for readers, and these are the ones I use the hell out of (because they rock).

Foreshadowing

Reading this, I bet you thought “of course,” because it’s so obvious, but there are so many ways you can use this and so much you can get away with that I have to talk about it. Foreshadowing is how you can get away with anything as an author if you do the groundwork well enough. However, if you don’t foreshadow cool events or especially twists, readers will most-most-most often feel cheated. You run the risk of creating a “Deus Ex Machina”-moment (which means “God from the machine), where “the hand of God” swoops in in the last seconds before the hero dies and saves them without them earning it. However, if you foreshadowed that if a character stands on that exact spot, holding that exact sword, after having done some sacrifice or another, then suddenly when they are saved and you’re explained why, it doesn’t feel as “meh” anymore. That’s not a great example, but let’s say you want to hang your character mid-way through the book, but also want them to come back from death (which is not uncommon in fantasy). There’s a right way to do this and a wrong way.

So your character is hanged, killed off, and the readers are shocked. “How can this happen?” “Oh, but I liked him so much.” Let’s say there is no foreshadowing for any kind of scenario, and the character returns suddenly into the gang of main characters. They’re happy he’s back, but wonder how it’s possible. He tells them something, like . . . I don’t know . . . let’s say when he dies, he creates a seed that burrows into the soil and he grows back from that seed. This is not necessarily a very cool twist, but that just means you have to work harder on the foreshadowing. Anyway, so he tells them, and as a reader, you’d most likely think: “How convenient . . . so the guy just happened to have some trick up his sleeve that saved him,” and you’d be right to think so. It will make you distrust any death in the future of other characters because it seems like the author will just “make them survive” in some way. This can be called “plot-armor”, and all Deus Ex Machina moments are plot-armor, but not all “plot-armor” is Deus Ex Machina moments.

However, if things that have happened in the story “suddenly click” once the character reveals how he survived, then it’s cool. If things that blended into the sentences or maybe seemed a little abnormal, suddenly make sense. Readers like this a lot, because there’s a huge payoff to some unknown build-up.

So how do you do it?

Okay, so for example in our seed-survival scenario, there are tons of ways that you can hint at this peculiar way of survival. Let’s say he’s a beast hunter (just to make it simpler), and during the case he might show an incredible interest in flowers and plants along the way. This is simple, but fairly effective. You can take it a step further by making some part of the case take place around some specific flowers, maybe even involve them as some clue? If someone in the group knows about his “condition,” and they don’t want to reveal it to the main character, they can talk in code about it in such a way that it will make sense when it’s revealed. You can do it in so many ways, and it’s soooo freaking powerful. I get away with so much.

This is how I used it in “The Beast Hunters”

This is hard to write without spoiling anything, so I’m just gonna go ahead with a SPOILER WARNING! The next part contains a major spoiler for The Beas Hunters!!

Okay, we good? Great. In my book, I have a character who’s hung about 50% through, and the scene builds up with readers thinking another character will pull some stunt to save him. So it’s pretty shocking when the rope tightens and his neck snaps - and many were left wondering if “that just happened.” I’ve asked a lot of readers if they felt that he wasn’t really dead, and it’s about 50/50 between people who really thought he was dead and people who felt it couldn’t be the end. But all I talked to loved it when he returned, and wondered how. When he explains he’s actually not human, but a beast called a morgal, readers want to know how that explains his survival. In short words, he has a physical heart that beats magically that he has locked inside a chest and buried it to keep it safe. When he dies, he takes over the body of someone nearby his real heart that has died prematurely and becomes them. He usually places his heart close to or in a cemetery, so there’s a reasonable flow of possible bodies.

His name is Topper. So how do I foreshadow this so that when Topper returns it’s awesome instead of lame? The main character, her name is Ara, doesn’t know of his nature, and he tries to hide it. While in a beast hunter shop (only for beast hunters), Ara is warned to be wary of her other mentor, named Khendric, as he seems to change apprentices often. The reason for this is that Topper dies often and returns as a new person, which naturally seems like Khendric constantly loses his apprentices. This suddenly makes sense to Ara after she learns of his nature. Another small thing to notice is that Topper seems quite knowledgeable about things in the world such as locations, roads, rivers, and such, which comes from him having lived for more than 200 years. There are also small comments everywhere in the story that suddenly makes sense once the readers learn of his nature.

As an author, using foreshadowing is incredibly powerful, and if you do it well, you can get away with almost anything.

The Apprentice Trope

I am well on my way to writing my second series too, which is an AWESOME science fiction series, and in both that and The Beast Hunter of Ashbourn series I use “the apprentice trope.” This trope is when, usually, your main character is unknown to the new world exposed to them. Ara is shown the Beast Hunter world by Khendric and Topper, and is totally new. This happen in Harry Potter too, to (you guessed it) Harry Potter. Same thing in Narnia with the kids. The apprentice trope is insanely nice and easy to use, because as an author you get to present the world to the reader through the main characters. We get to learn of the world with them, and you just make it so much easier for yourself. If you don’t use this trope, and all characters know of the world and theme, it’s easy to fall into the trap of “info dumps,” which is where the author suddenly starts writing things about the world that the reader needs to know. This works better in dialogue if the dialogue seems natural, but if it’s just there, written plainly to the reader, it usually slows down the story and may break the immersion. They might be wondering “Why am I being told this?” Which is a good question, and the answer usually is: “Because you need to know this for the future.” And that is not a good answer. It’s the author's job to hide what the readers need to know in such a way that it’s fun and exciting to learn about, and the apprentice trope makes that a lot easier. If you’re writing your first book, and have the opportunity to do this, I would highly recommend it.

In The Beast Hunters, I do this with Ara. In her first days with them, she learns how to set up a camp outside in the wild and make it safe against all kinds of monsters. This is a perfect opportunity to take the readers on her journey so they can learn how different this world is from our own. In Ara’s world, to stay safe at night, you need to spread acronal powder against spikers, put spears up against varghauls, make sure you have a circular defense against dustdevils, and so on. And while Ara learns this, so does the reader. It’s a perfect way to show the reader the world true Ara’s eyes. Without her, I’d have to have the beast hunters set it up like usual, but they wouldn’t talk about why they did what they did, and if they thought about every monster they safeguarded themselves against, it might come off as info-dumpy. I’m not saying it can’t be done, I’m just saying it might be easier when using the apprentice trope.

There are many other things too

The book is littered with a myriad of other cool things too that help. There’s a compelling mystery that grows to be way more than the beast hunters’s first thought. There’s a lot of humor, especially between Khendric and Topper, which serves as a good contrast to the dark world they live in. There are gadgets and secret beast hunter knowledge and techniques too that draw the readers in. And for originality, the premise of the world is that all monsters are new (except one). You won’t find werewolves or vampires here, instead you’ll find villagemothers, borlins, wretchers, yenferds, oxins, claylins, emerons, and so many other creatures. I’ve heard that besides a good story, the monsters are what people stay for. They are fun, and it’s like discovering Pokemon again. When Pokemon first arrived, we didn’t know any of them, and that’s what we found exciting, and I hope to create the same feeling.

There are so many other tools to use for storytelling, but I think these two are some of the main pillars in this story, together with the “found family trope” as well. Thanks a lot for reading and good luck with future reading and writing endeavors.

There are two important factors when trying to reach your dreams: creativity, and getting the job done. Getting ideas and letting your creative juices flow is vital, but it’s also the easy part. Too many of my friends have had great ideas, started working, and then simply fallen off when the motivation died, and discipline was non-existent. This is truly normal, so if you can stick to some passion of yours even when motivation fades, you’ll hone your skill AND be better than like 95% of people who couldn’t.

While writing five books, I’ve worked two jobs and studied for my MA in electrical engineering, while also consistently working out three times a week, walked my dogs every day and player D&D once a week—all due to one simple habit: I wrote five hundred words every day. I have a huge excel document where I tracked my progress, which was the key to ‘getting the work done,’ but how did I get in the famous ‘flow state’?

I didn’t. I just sat down and started typing, even though often, I felt I was in the opposite of a ‘flow state.’ Starting writing felt like trying to start a cold, rusty, chainsaw. But I did still start writing, despite the chainsaw refusing to start. Because I forced myself to work, I subconsciously got into the story and the characters with every passing word—-as if I was heating, oiling, and tending to the chainsaw. Suddenly, it started without problems, and I was in my flow state! I just had to sit down and start, not pondering whether now was the right time or not. Everything doesn’t need to be perfect, and the stars won’t align, so just get to work!

I love working on multiple projects, and when I get the chance to help develop a game like Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore, then I’m all in!

Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore has a fantastic concept when it comes to the world, to truly let players feel like they’ve stepped into a breathing, living universe. Choices you make will impact your character and the world around it. Because GellyBerry studios have created all their tools themselves for the past eight years, they’ve made it incredibly easy to push out quality content quickly. Because of this, if you’re the first player to find a secret passage, you might end up being the only player on the server with an item, or a title. Maybe there’s a boss for only three days, and at the end of those days, its gone forever. Those who killed it got the rewards, and the rest will have to wait until a new boss or mystery is introduced.

But, let’s talk about the conversation system!

You actually talk to the NPCs in the game. If you need an amulet, you better make damn sure you write it. NPCs respond differently to whatever the player writes. Saying “Sup” and “Greetings” have different responses, and if you walk up to an innkeeper saying “I will kill you,” you better make sure you can.

NPCs react to different keywords and it opens up to new interactive gameplay, where if you meet a strange woman as you enter a town, and ask the blacksmith about his daughter, you might find out the two are connected. Or perhaps you find a note in a house, and when you ask a city guard about it, it starts a quest. Stuff like this is why I’m so excited for Ethyrial! Especially because I get to make it. I will help develop everything that has to do with story and lore in Ethyrial; from simple quest lines to huge story arcs, and I can’t wait to get started.

An actual breathing world that doesn’t care about you

I’ve played World of Warcraft (WoW) since I was twelve (and now I’m twenty-eight), and it’s been a huge part of my life, like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. What was so amazing about WoW was the feeling of stepping into something greater, something so grand it would be a true adventure. You were allowed passage into this world where you started out as a nobody in a world so rich and so uncaring. You started out in level 1, a simple, new, adventurer, and the world felt like it breathed without you in it, as if it kept existing when you logged off. You had to claim your spot, just like everyone else. If you saw someone with cool gear, you would have to go through the same trials to get it. When you entered a new place with quests, they weren’t dependant on each other; one asked you to go to the northeast to deal with the undead, while another to the other side of the map. It was your responsibility to figure out the most effective way to do the quests. Sometimes you were lucky, other times it just sucked and you had to travel the whole zone to do two quests. But that made it all feel so worth it at the end when you’d actually done the work.

World of Warcraft today is so different

When you get to a new place with quests, you might see two available. You take them, and they also happen to require you to go to places right next to each other, and be about the same thing. It’s convenient and goes quickly. “How nice,” you might be thinking. You deliver them and get three new ones. These three are also all bundled together at another location. You complete these too and this is how it goes on forever.

I don’t feel like I’m making any decisions. It feels like I’m being told how to play the game, and much more: the world feels like it’s made for just me, constructed to my convenience. I’ve grown to dislike this a lot. I feel like the road is prepared for me, instead of me having to prepare for the road.

That is not what Ethyrial will be!

In Ethyrial, you have to make your own way. There are main quests, but you won’t have an arrow showing you where to find them. You have to immerse yourself in the world.

The world is not built for you and doesn’t revolve around the player, instead, you get to partake in a living, breathing world full of mysteries waiting to be solved.

This is exactly what I miss in WoW and in so many other games today: real challenge and a chance to make yourself out to be who you want to be. Growing from zero to hero feels amazing. In WoW today, you’re called “Champion” every quest, and you’re treated as if you’re some sort of key for Azeroth’s continuation. While I played, whenever I was told I was the key I kept thinking “I bet you tell that to all the other boys and girls too.” And I wasn’t wrong.

In Ethyrial, if you’re the first to do something that grants a badass title, it’s yours. There are no name-changes, or realm transfers. If you’re known for being evil, you will be known for that, until you turn for reputation around. Your choices matter for your character, your spells, your skills, your renown. It’s amazing, and I can’t wait to create a great storyline for it.

Here’s a quest line I’ve made, just to show you the complexity behind a simple quest. This all starts from the same place, but can end four different ways, and they impact your character. You might be celebrated as a hero at the end, or despised by the local guard. Maybe you chose to aid the bad person and are another quest is banned for you, but aligning with him opens more doors later because of his influence.

You progress through different paths in the quest by saying different sentences and words to the NPCs, meaning you have to actually think about what you say. You have to be engaged and active.

In Ethyrial yon won’t always be punished for acting sinister. That’s not how the real world works. Sometimes being the hero is fantastic, yet sometimes it pays off way better to act heinously. It can really go both ways, you just gotta decide if you’re looking out for number one or wants to be a savior.

There’s so much more I can say about the game, but showing a video is often easier. The game enters an open alpha soon, and you can get to play by following the links in the video.

If you want to know more about how the game works, check it out here:

The people aboard this game are amazing, and I’m privileged to work with them. To see more of their content, check out their channel here.

Ok, the 2018 Robin Hood movie is terrible.

Why is this NOT a good movie and how can it be fixed?

The movie has some great names behind it: Taron Egerton (Kingsmen) and Jamie Foxx (Jango Unchained and so much more) and is directed by Otto Bathurst (who’s known for Peaky Blinders). So a lot of huge names, so why’s it so bad?

Let’s start from the beginning!

It’s been some months since I saw it, but I will try my best to remember.

This is not how medieval combat worked?

The movie starts off with a squad of archers moving through ruins looking for enemies. They are ALL archers. And all the enemies are archers or use huge crossbows nailed to the floor. Everything is just arrows flying. So I’m thinking the director had seen a lot of modern war-movies, and simply replaced the assault rifles with bows and the machine guns with massive crossbows. That’s NOT how it ever was. What about infantrymen? Cavalry? One could argue it’s just this encounter, but there would not be any encounters like this. Who would send in a squad of ONLY archers into ruins? What if just around the corner stormed a butt-load of infantrymen? The archers would be slaughtered. Yes, I understand that it’s cool, but it’s DUMB.

Wouldn’t it be a lot cooler if our protagonist, Robin Hood (he has a different name at this point, and later just goes with ‘The Hood’, but imma call him Robin Hood, cause it sure robbed me of joy) was a lone archer, sneaking around in these ruins to keep his squad of infantry soldiers alive? Like, they slowly moved through these ruins, and Mr. Hood was sneaking around in the outskirts, or on different levels, saving them, really showing the value of having a great archer. I know this isn’t how it worked either, but at least it’s closer and makes the protagonist stand out more. Now he’s just some dude in a squad.

Anyway, Robin has a stand-off with John (Jamie Foxx), and John loses. He’s taken prisoner and his son is executed (I think, it’s a bit fuzzy here). Robin tries to save John’s child, but can’t, but it shows how good of a person he is, my oh my.

I’m gonna jump a little, to introduce the (reasonable) bad guy!

So Robin comes back to England and his estates are claimed by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Now Robin has to get him. Naturally. He attends this meeting where the sheriff talks to the masses, and he’s actually sort of reasonable: “taxes are high because we’re funding a war ways away to keep the bad men from coming to England,” but Robin ain’t having none of this shit - he’s a bad guy because he’s older and wears a gray robe AND THE MOVIE MUST HAVE A BAD GUY. So what’s Robin’s plan? He’s gonna infiltrate the sheriff’s council, while also donning a hood and stealing from him. Anyway, also at this gathering you have one guy screaming something like “for the people, you suck mister sheriff!” (this is important for later, but doesn’t come off this way).

Oh, and while all of this is happening, there’s of course . . . love.

So before Robin went to fight in the crusades of wherever he fought, he was in love, with Marian (Eve Hewson). After all, she did try to steal from him and is a beautiful lady, so it makes sense, right? They fall madly in love because . . . well, she’s pretty. I guess. Anyway, then he had to fight in the war, but now he’s back and it’s time to reunite with his lost love.

But no . . .

Remember the guy from earlier? The guy who screamed back to the sheriff? Yeah, that guy, she’s with him now, and his name is Will and it’s the Fifty Shades of Grey guy (decent actor though). That’s what Robin finds out when tracking her down, and decides to leave her alone, but then John finds him. John is Jamie Foxx by the way, and has now lost his arm I think, so he can’t shoot with a bow anymore. They team up to bring down the Sheriff, cause he’s a baddie, remember? Oh, he’s so bad (he’s not really that bad, I’ll show you later). They have a training montage where he’s teaching Robin to become a better fighter and there are some really cool shots here and there, but there’s also SO much dumb stuff.

They’re just wearing normal sweaters!

First of all: they’re wearing sweaters! It looks like normal sweaters like we’re using in our time. This isn’t the best image, but if you see the movie, try to notice how nice and cool their clothes in these scenes are. And there is also another foolish thing that I would have LOVED when I was 14. I’m not saying 14-year-olds are stupid (though I was at the time), but as I’ve gotten older, such a cool scene becomes just really dumb. What is it?

Ok. There’s this scene where Robin has had enough of all this training, and is fed up. So Jamie, sorry, John, decides to teach him a lesson. He tells Robin to shoot him. Reluctantly, Robin does so, unloading a bunch of arrows in John’s face - but he bats them all away with a cane - and ITS SOOOO COOL. But like, why?? What if you missed one and there you go - dead. It’s such a risky thing to pull off just to show that Robin can’t load arrows quickly enough. Is it visually cool? Yes. Is it a clever thing to do? HELL NO.

Anyway, so Robin infiltrates the Sheriff’s council.

So after “The Hood” has been introduced to Nottingham, and everybody is afraid of this masked menace, Robin also wants to get close to the sheriff. This way, everybody learns that Robin of Loxley has returned after thinking he was dead. The sheriff had no idea, and I think he reinstates Robin’s properties to him. Very bad guy as you can see. In every shot where Robin is talking to the sheriff, but not looking at him, he looks fucking furious. Like he REALLY wants to off this guy. Why though? It’s never been established. He’s stealing from the poor probably. Through really forced conversation, the sheriff loves Robin, especially when he tells some of the other council members to scramble off. And like that, he has his in. It was that simple.

When exiting, Robin randomly meets Will (Fifty Shades guy and his ex’s new bf). Robin states how Will is like a man of the people. How they all look to him. And I was like: “What?? Are we supposed to know this because of an off-handed comment in one scene where he shouts from a crowd?” It’s just a small comment that’s forgotten a second later. No one even joins in on Will’s chant at the time. Couldn’t they at least have echoed his sentence?

Well, well, the two guys talk, and they’re just really angry at each other. I don’t know why Will is so angry at Robin, but it feels like he knows that Robin is “The Hood” and this angers him because . . . <>.

Let’s jump a little more . . . to the really dumb stuff.

Ok, so a lot of stuff happens, and one of these things is that the sheriff hires a specialist squad to deal with the hood - and it’s Robin’s former general in the army. He’s actually imposing and suddenly I feared a little more for dear Robin’s safety.

Anyway, there’s a party, an important party to get into, hosted by the sheriff. Robin is of course invited, cause he’s starting to get friendly with the man, but customs is that two commoners are also invited to represent the people . . . I think. The reason is getting blurry in my mind, BUT whatever because it’s Marian (Robin’s lost ex) and Will (her new bf and ‘voice of the people’). Just by coincidence. So now they are at the party too, and two very important things happen here:

Important thing one: Marian’s outburst.

There’s this one scene where the sheriff is standing around a table with Robin and some other people, and Marian approaches. And OH MY the things she says to the sheriff is so out of bounds that in Game of Thrones she would have been executed on the spot. I don’t remember exactly what she says, but she’s outright ridiculing him in front of his peers, and even those below him. She states how he’s stealing from the people and that judgement will come for him. What does he do? Nothing. He just takes it. He doesn’t seem like such a bad guy, right? What’s happening here is that the director is TELLING us that he’s a bad guy, NOT showing us. Which do you think leaves a larger impression?

Important thing two: Robin’s actions have no consequences

There’s a REALLY strong moment in the movie, where we could really get some character development for Robin, but no . . . instead, the director just took the easy way of no consequences. I’m guessing he wouldn’t dare risk anything. I read somewhere that the “Fear of risk, is the death of imagination”. That applies here:

The sheriff goes into this room which Robin desperately needs to get into, but he doesn’t have high enough clearance yet and must wait outside. His friend, who is also a monk, walks up to him and they talk (he’s been in the whole movie, but there’s been no point in bringing him up until now). This monk knows of Robin’s secret identity as “The HoOooOod” and is also a part of the hidden uprising, with Robin, to get rid of the sheriff. Robin decides to use his monk friend to get closer to the sheriff and forcefully throws him through the doors into the room where the sheriff is talking to a bigger baddie from the church.

Robin says he’s found one in the uprising, a rebel, and totally outs his monk friend. The sheriff is furious as wishes to have the monk killed, and hands Robin the knife. Can you feel the tension? I could. Will Robin kill his friend for the sake of a larger cause? How much does it mean to him to bring down this corrupted man? The knife’s in his hand. He stares his friend in his terrified eyes. I’m not gonna drag this out. He doesn’t kill him, instead he says it would be a greater punishment to cast him out of the church, and out of the eyes of God. The sheriff and the high-priest (or whatever he is) agrees and there you go. No consequences.

How to fix this:

This is such a golden opportunity to have a great character moment. Say that he killed his friend, and it truly hurt him to the core, but it had to be done to keep is cover, and Robin has to deal with it. Firstly, it could be used as a wedge to create more tension between these people in the uprising. Marian and Will would wonder if they could trust Robin or not, and he’d have to prove through courageous acts that he is actually on their side, all while dealing with the horrible actions he had to perform to get peace. It would add a lot of depth to the story. Freedom doesn’t come free, it has its cost. But nono, a hero has to only be good and pure of heart.

Robin’s former commander enters the game

Either before or after this, Robin or “The Hood” has to flee because he tried to rob a great bank or some shit went down at the party, and the specialist squad is on his tail . . . and they do NOTHING. I mean, it’s like the knights of Ren in the Rise of Skywalker - they just don’t do shit. They don’t ‘‘almost get him,’’ and they pose no larger threat at all. WHY BRING THEM INTO THE STORY THEN? What this does, is that the next time they appear to try to get Robin, I’m not gonna be scared. I’m not gonna feel the tension.

Time for the big showdown!

So it’s time for the big showdown of the movie and I’m only gonna touch on the stupid things. Marian has left Will for Robin and the two are reunited, but she doesn’t know he’s “The Hood”. Robin appears in front of the commoners with his mask on, inspiring them to cause a rebellion. The war starts and some stupid stuff goes down:

Robin saves Marian and together they flee on horses. She removes his hood, not surprised when it’s him. After this point, he never puts the mask back on. Like, was he only using it to hide his identity from her? Suddenly he doesn’t care about his secret identity. Let everybody see!

At some point, he doubts his abilities, and Marian gives this really cliche speech that he is the only one who can do it. If not him, then nobody. He has to get up again and finish this. So he does.

Robin’s former commander, the specialist, joins in again, this time really ready to get “The Hood”, but as a viewer, I’m not even scared. And that’s good, cause NOTHING happens. He follows Robin on horseback and achieves nothing before Robin just outrides him.

During this whole rebellion there is ONE THING that seems small but really infuriates me. Robin and Marian are finally together again, and in almost all their encounters they’re smiling to each other. You have serious moments where they are doing vital work to topple this empire, but they smile and are just two happy little lovebirds. It seriously takes away the seriousness of the moments. Like, I get that they’re happy to be together, but stop smiling so much to each other, stay focused on the task at hand! It would show a lot more determination of they put aside their love and remained resolute on their task, and not SMILE SO MUCH! I have nothing against smiling, but that’s just not the place for it, as it tells me that everything is fine.

In the end, Jamie Foxx kills the sheriff and Will becomes the bad guy for the sequel, which WILL NEVER happen.

Judgement

This movie is not good and did not do well. It’s a 3/10 from me. The actors are doing a good job, but the storyline is terrible and there is no risk.

Thanks a lot for reading! If I got you all the way down here, wow! Thanks!!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images on this page.

The dreaded berserker, one of the many playable characters in Champion’s Call.

I’m honored to announce that I’m working with Brave Horizon Studios on developing storylines and lore for their new board game: Champion’s Call. To me, this is huge! I’ve always loved board games, especially those more for the adult audience, like: the Game of Thrones board game, Munchkins, Risk, and Lords of Waterdeep. I’m also a sucker for tactics and tactical play, enjoying video games like The Battle for Middle Earth, Civilization, Company of Heroes 2, and this board game (Champion’s Call) combine all of that together!

It’s like DND, but without the Game Master - and you fight each other!

If you’ve ever played Dungeons&Dragons, or have a semi-inkling as to what it’s about, Champion’s Call is a turn based tactical skirmisher, as if Dungeons&Dragons was a Player-vs-Player board game on steroids. There are endless possibilities, meaning no two games are the same. The tactical aspect is pumped to the absolute max, where a mind for strategy is rewarded (but risky plays may also pay off and mercilessly destroy your foe’s tactical plan).

I came into contact with Brave Horizon Studios and the owner got to read my Science Fiction book Specter because I wanted to impress him enough to let me loose on his board game. Luckily for me, it worked, and I’m now set to write interesting story and lore about the characters people get to play!

I’m so pumped and psyched, and can’t wait to root myself and create a rich and fantastical world! Thank you to the people at Brave Horizon Studios! I will do my best!

Contacting agents is an energy consuming task. I spent maybe a month together with one of my editors to craft a query letter (a 1-sided document to best present the story), and then another month to write the synopsis (a run through of the whole story, spoilers and all) for The Beasthunter of Ashbourn. When that was finally done, I realized through my other editor and four agents, that the book is simply too long. So I split it up, which was easy, since the book was already split into “Part 1”, “Part 2”, and “Part 3”.

But now I had to work on a new query and synopsis for the first part of the book. It’s mind boggling work, because you REALLY need to find the best way to present your story, and the story has to be excellent. It took another month of studying every word for too long, me and my editor constantly wondering if this is the best way to present the story. I asked for other people’s thought on it, and they all offered great help, but all the help pointed in different directions. What one guy liked, another disliked, and I ended up not knowing what to go for. At some point, you just have to make a decision though, and I landed on something. Then it was a new month of writing the synopsis, but I got it completed too.

Agenting time. I send it out to about 20 agents. First I send to my two dream agents, and then a lot of other agents I would still love to work with. Waiting for an answer takes time. Agents receive so many applications they have to look through, all while still working with their existing authors, that I feel sorry for them.

But after some time, the answers started raining in, and it was all ‘No’s. The agents are polite though, I’ll give them that, but none wanted to take up my story. I’ve had such success with people who read my books, that I still believe 100% in them, and I decide to self-publish.

I order a cover for the first book, write and get a cover for a book magnet (a short story to introduce my world to readers), and order a date to get reviews for my book and settle on a launch date. All is going great, I’m getting more attention than I thought I would with my book magnet and—then my dream agent answers. 

The email starts like all the other: “Thank you for the opportunity to consider your query. I sincerely apologize for the delay in my reply; I try to stay on top of my query box but I am afraid that sometimes the volume of submissions makes it difficult to give a timely response to everyone who submits to me.”

I’m thinking what I’m always thinking: another rejection.

But then he says he’s interested and requests the 10 first pages of the story. I’m told very few people get this far, so I send them right away! I can’t sleep that night, and I have trouble getting back to reality at the possibility that might open up.

That’s where I still am today. He’s one of the largest fantasy agents, he’s a busy guy. It might take several months to get an answer, if I get one at all. But at least there’s a chance! I so excited, and I might postpone the launch of “The Beasthunter of Ashbourn, Willbreaker” to see how this goes.

So, we’ll see. If he likes it, he’ll probably ask for the 50 first pages, and then the full book, but that’s only if he likes my writing. We’ll see. I’ll surely update.

Here’s the query letter that got his attention:

Dear Agent

I am writing to seek representation for my first novel, THE BREAKER OF WILLS, a 78 000 word adult fantasy crime story. I am particularly excited to be making contact with you, as I’m a huge fan of Brandon Sanderson, whose style and worldbuilding has been a real inspiration for me.

During a vicious attack on her home, Ara’s parents are brutally murdered, but she is saved by two beasthunters named Khendric and Topper. With nothing left to her name, she is taken under their wings where she learns the job of a beasthunter: to protect humans from the terrible monsters of the world. The suspects can be anything from trollmen and varghauls to gorewings and spiderlings. However, in Ara’s first case as a beasthunter apprentice, corpses are piling up faster than she can dig up clues—the village of Cornstead is on the brink of panic.

Even with the help of the two beasthunters who saved her life, the monster haunting the village remains elusive. While trying to solve the case, Ara must battle her own distrust toward her new companions. Her natural scepticism and reluctance to trust are deeply rooted in her upbringing: with a father who beat her; and a mother who ignored her plight. Are the two men only playing nice for some sinister purpose, or do they actually care about her? Through learning, being treated with respect and overcoming great challenges, her barriers crumble. Slowly, she learns to trust again.

As they close in on the beast terrorizing the citizens of Cornstead, superstitious villagers blame the brutal crimes of the monster on the beasthunters. With her mentors arrested or gone, the creature plaguing the village unhindered, Ara is again desperate and alone. With the risk of losing everything, she must reunite her newfound family and save the villagers, even as they condemn her to death.

Ara’s story occurs in a world where dangerous and terrifying creatures are lurking around every corner and without proper knowledge, you can be their next victim. THE BREAKER OF WILLS takes inspiration from THE WITCHER SERIES and MISTBORN, with monsters, magic and strong characters navigating a perilous world. The novel stands on its own with a complete storyline, but hints at a bigger mystery, and has the opportunity to be expanded into an already written trilogy: THE BEASTHUNTER OF ASHBOURN.

My name is C. A. Lende and I’m from Norway. I am currently working for the Norwegian movie producer behind “Who Killed Birgitte”, “One Love” and “All about my Father”, Bjørn Eivind Aarskog, on developing the storyline for a Norwegian thriller. He hired me after reading parts of this book, trusting I could bring his vision to life.

Thank you Mr. Agent, for taking your time to read my submission. I look forward to hearing from you.

The Norwegian producer Bjørn Eivind Aarskog

I have a talented friend working in the movie industry, and one day they really needed some stand-ins. My friend and I have worked together a lot on YouTube videos, and I’ve been an actor in some Norwegian tv-series and movies (minor roles), so he naturally called me up. I told him that I was busy and couldn’t make it, but he kept nagging me. A thought at the back of my head told me that ‘what if there’s an opportunity’, and after his fifth call, I came along.

I met the producer of the show they were filming, and we had a really good connection. My friend told the producer: “See that little dude (meaning me)? He writes awesome stories. I’ve read them all.”

So naturally, when the shoot was over, I contacted the producer Bjørn Eivind. We talked and I was to make him something. I came up with a really cool Norwegian thriller series, and he liked it a lot, but brought up some really good producer-reasons for why it wouldn’t work. However, he had another idea for a movie and asked if I wanted to develop it. I liked the idea, and of course I said yes!

Since then, we’ve developed the whole storyline, gotten rejected twice for financial support, edited the storyline, and have now gotten our first batch of money (around $10 000). We’re still just starting out, but the plan is to make an international movie, and I’m really psyched! Hopefully, I’ll have more updates soon!