Katherine Vick's Blog

It's been September. I work in education. Do I need to offer any further explanation as to why I have had no time, energy or inspiration for a new blog this month? So I hope you'll forgive me for offering up a rehash of an old favourite instead. :)

The Unachievable Heights of The Chosen One

Ah, The Chosen One. That staple of the fantasy world. Destiny’s Child, born under an auspicious star, with a unique birthmark foretelling their glorious fate, generally blessed with a stunning or striking appearance, an unusual eye colour and unexpectedly modest origins for their impressively regal heritage, watched over at a distance by a guardian just waiting for the right moment to reveal their secret power and fated purpose in saving their realms from a lurking evil. Step forward all you fantastical Eriks out there, for you are legion.

But as anyone who has read my novels may have guessed, I have a few issues with the trope of The Chosen One. Because as the father of modern fantasy, JRR Tolkien himself dictated, fantasy is escapist but also aspirational. And although his work does have a Chosen One – Aragorn, I’m looking at you – who does his bit extremely well, he isn’t the one who saves the day. That role falls to a couple of very ordinary little hobbits. And ultimately, it is Sam with his very ordinariness and lack of ambition that makes the whole thing work.

And that, to me, is a far better story than a person marked by destiny standing up and saving the day as they were always meant to. For isn’t it far more inspiring to the rest of us to see someone as ordinary as we are coming good for us all? Ordinary people standing up for what they believe in against the wrongs of the world is something anybody can achieve if they are called on to do so – the Resistance in Europe during the Second World War for example or even just the British Home Guard, straightforward people who’d lived straightforward lives now willing to protect their homes against a looming evil. These are people we can aspire to – though one would hope we never have to. Unlike a Chosen One, they are people we could be.

I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I am shockingly lacking in flashing eyes of a special hue or magical gifts or impressively regal heritage. And so, if one extracts Pleasance from the equation, are my heroes. But, I do hope at least, they are people my audience can see themselves in. At the end of the day, we can all support our friends and do the right thing in spite of ourselves like Shoulders. We can all rail against the impressions other have of us and show them what we can do like Flirt. We can all fight against who we are supposed to be and be who we are like Pleasance. We can all embrace learning and teach ourselves new skills like Dullard and most importantly, we can be kind like him. And like Fodder, we can all stand up for what we feel is right against ridiculous odds.

Because ultimately, it should not be up to some flashy, unachievable hero to save the world on our behalf - it should be ordinary people who see injustice, stand up and say no more. And, unlike a Chosen One, that is something we can all aspire to.

 My tired old brain has failed me again - I have both forgotten to write a blog this month and had no ideas for one anyway. So I'm doing a Blog Redux on this offering from 2020 about how precious and unique a book is to every reader. :)

***

The human imagination is an extraordinary thing, when you stop and think about it. Being as I am not of a scientific bent, I have no idea of the ins and outs of how it can possibly work, how it is that a lump of grey meat inside a wrapping of bone could possibly generate images, ideas, unheard sounds, regurgitate things once seen and create whole new universes out of nothing. Indeed, to be honest, I don’t want to understand how it works - that would destroy the magic. I’m quite happy just to have the means to play in new and never before seen realms in the depths of my own head.

But there is another special thing about the imagination – it is unique.

It is a strange thing to consider that no one will ever see my characters exactly how I do. Oh, I can describe them down to the freckles on their noses but one of the beauties of books and taking a world out of words rather than pictures is that everyone’s imagination will give it their own slant. Even the finest description in the world will never generate the same mental image in two different brains. No one will ever picture Dullard’s sweet, awkward smile in quite the way I do. No one will see Flirt’s weary eye-roll on quite the same face, hear the special tone that’s worked into my Shoulders’s voice, the glory of Pleasance at her imperious best or Fodder’s best long-suffering sigh. For all my efforts to capture these moments on paper, in a way that is both sad and special, they will always be utterly unique to my head and to me.

But in many ways, that is the magic of a novel. Unlike a film, where every watcher shares the same words and images, every book is a totally individual experience to that person’s imagination. No one will ever see it exactly as they do. It gives reading a book a personal edge that a film or a comic or any other genre that creates the images for you can never quite compete with. Because every book belongs totally and utterly to that reader. It’s their one-off experience that no one else can and will ever share. It creates a connection between the reader and the words because the reader has invested their imagination to create it. The author may write the words but it’s the reader that gives it life in the privacy of their own mind.

As stated in a quote I recently posted to Facebook, no two people will ever read the same book. Everyone will see the characters I have created and cast out into the world in their own special way. They will give Dullard a smile unique to them, Flirt an eye-roll they like, Shoulders’s voice their own special whine. The rage of their Pleasance and sighs of their Fodder will come from their lives, their experience, their imagination.

As an author, it’s an odd thing to contemplate – that these characters that have been so long just mine are now out there, looking and sounding different in other people’s heads. In the depths of my control freakery, it’s hard not to feel a bit possessive. But it’s magical too to consider that I have set them free to live dozens of different lives, to be something individual to every other person who reads them, that I have given a unique gift to every person who reads my words.

The Joy of Tropes

As anyone who has read my novels may be aware, I like toplay with tropes. I like to try at least to puncture expectations and point outthe kind of plots and characters a narrative tends to rely on with big fatsignposts. I don’t like to let the obvious and predictable pass by withoutcomment. Sad as it sounds, that’s my idea of fun. ;)

But – and here’s the thing – I point them out while tryingto adhere to a satisfying narrative structure myself. Stories where the badguys win and everyone dies horribly do exist, but they aren’t much fun for theaudience – there needs to be the escape, the payoff, the triumph in order toleave the reader smiling and satisfied. There needs to be victory overadversity, a price or a heroic sacrifice to make the moment hard earned – an easyvictory is no fun either, there has to be some drama or strife. That is whatmakes a tale worth telling.

So while I poke at tropes, oddly enough I don’t actuallyhave that much objection to them being used in the name of telling a fun story.It doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment. Indeed, sad nutter than I am, predictingthe plot to come – and being proved right – is just as fun for me as beingsurprised by an unexpected twist. And an absolute prime example of this?

The Jurassic Park/World films.

I have just seen the latest one and as we all must know, theseare as tropey as they come. Like most of you, I suspect, I also accuratelypredicted the fate (and manner of fate in several cases) of every singlecharacter in said film by using the below simple predictions – because the formulais always the same.

Male and female leads always survive. However imperilledthey seem, they ain’t for chomping.

Examples of this: Alan Grant, Ellie Satler, Ian Malcolm, SarahHarding, Owen Grady, Claire Dearing and [SPOILER FOR JWR] Zora Bennett, HenryLoomis.

Anyone under the age of eighteen is also safe as houses, ifprobably scarred for life. Their guardians are generally also pretty safe,unless they are evil.

Examples of this: Lex, Tim, John Hammond, Kelly, Eric,Amanda & Paul Kirby, Zach, Gray, Maisie and [SPOILER FOR JWR] the Delgadosand Xavier.

Anyone nefarious or greedy and self serving – especially ifthey endanger the kiddies - is not only doomed but will suffer the IronicDeath. You know they are dead from the outset and you can generally be prettysure who or what or under what circumstances they will be taken out. It’s justa matter of time.

Examples of this: Donald Gennaro, Dennis Nedry, DieterStark, Peter Ludlow, Hoskins, Eli Mills, Wheatley, Gunnar Eversol, RainnDelacourt, Lewis Dodgson and [SPOILER FOR JWR] Martin Krebs.

There will often be a secondary character, just below theleads, who will also be safe, although sometimes not before making an ultimatelysurvivable Heroic Sacrifice (see below).

Examples of this: Ian Malcolm (first film only), Nick VanOwen, Billy, Barry, Franklin, Zia, Kayla and [BIG SPOILER for JWR] DuncanKincaid.

There will also be what I call Character Disposables – they aredecent, probably harmless (though occasionally gun totting), they get somecharacter and a moment or two, but you know they are only there for one reasonand is to enter the dinosaur food chain.

Examples of this: Muldoon, Mr Arnold, Eddie, Burke,Udetsky, Cooper, Nash, Zara, Mr Lockwood (though not killed by a dinosaur, hewas killed because of them) and [SPOILER FOR JWR] Nina, Leclerc, Bobby

And then of course there are the Just Plain DisposableDisposables – anyone in a uniform generally falls into this category, certainlyanyone in black body armour and/or carrying a gun or anyone doing lesscharacterful nefarious things like chasing, buying or selling dinosaurs orshooting at them. They are literally just meat in clothing in the finesttraditions of their kind.

And then of course comes the Heroic Sacrifice. This always happensbut, despite seeming so, isn’t always fatal. Somebody will throw their life onthe line, being willing to die generally to save a kiddie or the leads bylighting a flare (that one’s common, see Ian Malcolm, Claire Dearing and [SPOILERFOR JWR] Duncan Kincaid) or dying or seeming to die while trying to preventothers from doing so (see Muldoon, Eddie, Billy, Paul Kirby and strangelyenough Blue the Velociraptor – twice).

Oh and there will always be a Tyrannosaurus Rex. That’s justbasic. It may seem to die but it never will.

And I knew all that was coming before I even went in andidentified each and every one long before it happened. Because sometimes it’skind of fun to be in on the trope and get what you anticipate – there’s asatisfaction in that. Sometimes an audience simply wants their straightforwardexpectations met. Because at the end of the day, it makes one feel a part ofthings and where’s the harm in that?

Unless one is a Disposable, being chewed by a dinosaur. Obviously.;)

 The Importance of Thinking Twice

We live in a reactionary world. That’s simply the way it isnow. Someone says something or does something and around the world peopleReact. They get quite fervent in their reactions and the reaction builds andthen suddenly it becomes a Thing. But I do wonder how many of these Thingswould not develop in the way they do at all if people just stopped and thought twice.

Because it isn’t the first thought you have thatmatters. It’s the second.

The great Sir Terry Pratchett has beaten me to this insight,of course, in his Tiffany Aching books. But I shall do my best to clumsily articulateit all the same. Our first reaction to anything is instinct. It’s born of ourculture, our upbringing, our influences, our religion, even deep, primalemotions – it’s the thought that comes without even thinking about it. So, forexample, if you grew up in a time when or a place where, for example,homosexuality was considered unacceptable then one’s first instinctive reactionto a gay kiss on TV might be –oh, that’s not right, I don’t agree with themshowing that, or some such.

But here’s the crunch. While I know there are people who automaticallydisagree with me on this – we’ll get to that – I maintain that first thoughtisn’t what matters. What matters is how you react to having thatthought. What matters is what you think second.

Because if your second thought is to double down, tocontinue feeling disgusted and objecting to someone living their life in amanner that doesn’t hurt you in any way, because that’s what your cultural,social or primal instinct tells you, bluntly, you are choosing to beprejudiced. You are choosing to accept that instinct as a fact of your life andto re-enforce it. You are choosing to remain in your narrow cultural and temporalhorizon.

But if your second thought is to say – no, that’s notright, it’s none of my business how they live and love and it doesn’t affect meso why should I care? I’m going to try not to think like that - then youare choosing not to accept that instinctive thought. You are choosing toconsider and analyse what’s happening for yourself and not simply follow thepath your instinct has taken you down. You are choosing to be more accepting ofothers. You’ve taken control of your own thinking and looked at it critically. You’vechosen to think more broadly.

And I feel that is vital to everyone as we simply can’thelp our first, instinctive thoughts. They were instilled in most of usbefore we even knew what instilling was, as small impressionable children. Thereis very little we can do about them other than choose to confront, examine andwhere needed, push them away. But herein lies another problem – the reactionsof others.

Because, honestly, part of the problem out there is the instinctivereaction of other people not to forgive the first thought. They condemn someonefor not immediately understanding that culture, that viewpoint, that lifestyleautomatically, in spite of that person making an effort to understand – and indoing so, they are reenforcing that person’s first instinctive prejudice. Forif a person tries to be better and is met with sympathy and understanding, theywill know they made the right decision and carry on fighting their instincts.But if they are condemned for that first thought and for not having an inbuiltinstinct not to think like that – and few do – it pushes them away, back intothe arms of the first thought not to like it, as trying to resist it becomesunwelcoming and hard. It makes being better too much effort.

Because we have to allow people to change. We have to allow peopleto think. We have to allow people to broaden their horizons and learn tounderstand each other. Otherwise, what hope is there for any of us, or even forthe world? If we condemn everyone for their first thoughts, we condemn most ofthe human race. But if we encourage other people to think better, we can changeus all for the better as well.

And maybe, just maybe, a world where people learn to acceptand understand each other for what they are and judge people as individuals andnot by their ethnic, social or cultural group might not feel as impossible asit does right now. Maybe we might even become a true human race after all.

 Citing the Nazis

It is a fact universally acknowledged that if one invokesthe Nazis in an argument, that argument is lost. Everyone knows that, don’tthey? Bring up Hitler in an online thread and that thread comes to an end.Compare someone to a Nazi and you are the one who ends up looking ridiculousand extreme. Putting something modern day alongside the Nazis is considered theultimate in overreactions.

And in the vast majority of cases, that’s true. But at thesame time, there is a tremendous risk in dismissing all such comparisons withsuch instant contempt. Because if we aren’t careful, we might end up forgettingone of the most important lessons that history can ever teach us – how people withextremist, dangerous views can work their way into power.

For anyone who has it available to them, I would stronglyrecommend watching the first series of the BBC documentary series Rise ofthe Nazis because while it is a hard and sobering watch, it is also alesson in the dangers of how a group of people can rise in credibility bywearing a polite face right up until they don’t have to. It tells the story ofa nation with economic difficulties and a weary population, tired of their government,looking for an alternative and voting in an outsider party previously regardedas extreme but now making themselves more respectable, who were promising tofix all the problems other politicians had caused and restore their nation toits previous glory. Is that sounding worryingly familiar to anyone else keepingan eye across the world stage right now?

And the great problem with democracy is, once you are in,you’re in, and whatever one decides to do with that power, short of revolution,there’s not much the rest of us can do about it. And maybe the promises will bekept and they will govern in exactly the way they have promised. Or maybe theywill show their hidden face and people’s lives will be indelibly changed –maybe they will find ways to keep themselves in power beyond their term andrestrict the freedom of those who oppose them to say so, as others have donebefore them, becoming entrenched and quietly abolishing democracy altogether.And that’s the trouble – how does one tell before the event if citing the Nazisis an overreaction or a valid concern?

And the simple truth is – we can’t. But it would be deeplyfoolish of us to dismiss the possibility of it happening again. All over theworld, extremism is rising and working its polite face into politics. And it iswe, the voters, who need to remember the lessons of history and not get fooledagain. We need to think long and hard about who and what it is we are votingfor and not just fling a vote to a group bordering on the fringe of dangerousjust because we are sick of everyone else. People need to think before theyvote.

So here I am, citing the Nazis. But I really hope I don’tlose the argument.

 The Importance of Example

What is a good relationship? It’s a big question and theanswer will differ from person to person. Some folks will draw on examples,good and bad, from within their own family to decide what it is in a partnerthat matters to them. Some will take an answer from their culture, theirreligion, their society. But some, poor souls, may decide to take their answerfrom the example of film and television and that is the point, I fear, wherethings may start to go wrong. Because using something designed to be dramatic(often melodramatic) created for the purposes of entertainment as one’sexample, consciously or not, is not the way to a happy and fulfilling future.

Take the British soap opera EastEnders. When it started,forty years ago now, it was known for its gritty realism and tackling socialissues. It addressed matters like alcoholism, domestic abuse, HIV, gayrelationships, PTSD, racism and drug abuse. I used to watch it regularly, longago, but abandoned ship when, quite frankly, the storylines got unutterablyridiculous. Just to put this into context, I decided to watch the recent 40thanniversary week episodes out of nostalgia and it can be summarised thus:

A woman who was recently hit with a spade and left fordead by unknown persons decides her ex husband is responsible. She steals a gunfrom a profoundly depressed man intending to use it to kill himself (he iseventually stopped and taken to hospital) and goes after said ex, shooting himin the arm but learning in the process that the person who actually hit her washis mother. After a confrontation with the both of them, she pushes said ex infront of an oncoming car. The car then swerves and crashes into the side of thepub where the (fourth) wedding of a pair of longstanding characters is underway,hitting gas cannisters and blowing the building to bits and trapping a chunk ofthe cast inside. The driver of the car is the fiancé of a heavily pregnantwoman who let her take the fall for him killing his ex wife and then locked upher sister and forced her to confess in his place when he found out the truth.Said pregnant woman gives birth in the ruins of the crumbling pub while saidevil fiancé is crushed in front of her and her sister by a bathtub fallingthrough the ceiling. Meanwhile in another part of the pub, another woman andher ex husband (now with another woman) have a heart to heart and confess theirundying love – and then he is crushed by a falling beam and dies.

So as you can see, these days gritty realism it ain’t…

That is an extreme example. But the point I’m making is thisis the context from which people may draw their ideas about how life is lived.A place where people regularly have passionate sex with people they can’t standby the light of day. A place where, quite genuinely, I cannot think of a singlerelationship ever having lasted without either a major bust up or one or bothparties having an affair. A place where the exciting, dangerous, passionaterelationship is always preferably to a steady, gentle, loving one. Back in theearly days of soaps like EastEnders, storylines about rape and murder were rareand big news – now murders happen regularly and I can think of half a dozencurrent characters who’ve been raped off the top of my head. The ex who wasshot and the man who tried to shoot himself have both taken bullets before,both from former lovers. And there’s a way of behaving that comes across too –when life goes wrong, you smash up a room and scream. When someone is inhospital, you shout at the poor staff who are just trying to save them. It’smelodrama all the way and it is infecting the world.

It's not just EastEnders that are responsible for thisthough – the majority of TV dramas, films and a lot of recent books fall intothis mould as well because it is somehow becoming normalised as the way to be.And the trouble is, I feel like people of the recent television watchinggenerations are learning subliminally that this is the way to behave. Besplashy, be passionate, sleep with the exciting lover over the steady one,shout the odds and smash things up. Because at a subconscious level, that’s howthey see the people on TV behaving, so isn’t that just the way they should be?

I deliberately made the romantic male in my novel anawkward, kind, clever and unattractive man whose better qualities shone throughand made him wonderful to the woman who discovered them. Because at the end ofthe day, I feel like the world needs less real life drama. It needs lessshouting the odds, less passion, less melodrama. It needs people to pick theirlife partners by their personal qualities and not by their physical attributes –which after all, rarely last. When the attractiveness fades, there has to besomething left other than a person you don’t like or things are never going toend well. Everyone just needs to calm down and think.

And I do have a tiny bit of hope. EastEnders held a vote asto which partner in a romantic triangle a woman should pick – her ex-husbandwho made her feel safe or the dangerous younger criminal with great abs. Andthe viewers chose the ex-husband. So at least, perhaps, I’m not entirely alone…

 Well, here we are - a whole five years today since The Disposable first became available for all you lucky peeps to buy. ;) It was a strange old time for me - I'd just had an operation and was laid up, COVID was just kicking off and the world in general was a very odd place to be and in all of that, I was trying to plug a book! It was hard to imagine what life would be like down the line - and to be fair, I wouldn't have imagined the world would be as it has become lately - but one thing I am very glad of is that my four book Plot Bandits "trilogy" of The Disposable, The Merry Band, The Narrative and The Taskmaster is out there in the world. :) For while I haven't exactly been setting the publishing world alight, knowing that Fodder, Flirt, Shoulders, Dullard and Pleasance and their friends are out there for other people to get to know (and hopefully love!) as much as I do gives me so much satisfaction. That they exist and live in other people's heads apart from mine matters to me on a level I didn't even realise and I'm so glad those kind souls who've taken a chance on reading my novels have got to meet them too.

And now, I'd like to offer up some thanks - to start with, thanks to my lovely publishers Thinklings Books for taking a chance on me and getting all my books out there in spite of the difficult times, helping me, the worst self publiciser in the world to try and tentatively suggest that maybe folks might enjoy my books if they, you know, felt like trying them. ;p I would like to thank all the friends and family who supported me and plugged me, and my best friend who was there with me throughout the decade of their creation. And of course I also have to thank all those kind souls who took a chance on buying the strange little novels of an unknown British lady writing about the madness that lives in her head - I appreciate every single one of you and do hope you've enjoyed hanging out with my bonkers creations. And if you have, tell your friends - they might enjoy my books if they, you know, felt like trying them. ;p

 The Importance of Human Thought 

With apologies to all those in favour of it, I’m going to havea rant about my issues with Artificial Intelligence again. But this is somethingthat isn’t going to go away and I fear that, as so often with the human race,it is something we are plunging into without thinking about the consequences.

Because the major consequence, if we aren’t careful, will beto crush our ability for creative thought by giving it all to a computer.

I think I can speak for many when I saw that jobs that don’tinvolve brain work are not very stimulating. Mindlessly copying or inputtingdata into a computer, repetitive tasks – this is work that pays bills but doesn’tignite passion or indeed brain cells. Where jobs become interesting, wherepeople become enthused, is where thought is involved – analysis, diagnosis,assessment, creativity, imagination, problem solving, projection, discovery, inspiration,whatever you want to call it, whatever kind of work it is and whatever form ittakes, it is the spark in a working life.

AI has no spark because AI has no imagination. All its humanqualities come from humans ourselves, artificially grafted on and input fromexisting human creativity to create an illusion of inspiration based oncenturies of our brain work. But what it can do is simulate our ability tothink and do so quickly, simulate our ability to create art, writing, music butsoullessly and make life easy for those who did not previously have the capabilityof creating such things themselves.

So AI can replace human thought in a working capacity. Butone thing it still needs is someone to mindlessly input the data. So if we aren’tvery, very careful, we will end up leeching all of the joy and the passion outof working life by handing all the thinking to the computer and leaving ourselveswith nothing to do but mindlessly feed it information. We will turn ourselvesinto the unthinking drudges letting the computers do all the fun part ofexisting for us. We’re only a few short steps away from being the human race asshown in the Disney film WALL-E – and that’s the best case scenario!

I am aware how melodramatic I must sound. But listening tothe news talking about developing AI to create jobs – it will create short termjobs for computer specialists, but it will wipe out other, less specialised,people’s jobs altogether. Look at the Customer Service industry and how hard itis to get passed useless and uncaring chat bots pretending to be people tospeak to an actual human being. It used to be people manning those helplines,what’s happened to them? Business will always replace people with cheapersoftware it doesn’t have to pay or worry about treating properly if it can. Itwill make it harder for those without good qualifications or specialist skills tofind work. It will either take the jobs of those people or make them mindlesslydull. And I’m sorry to sound harsh but business will cheerfully let it if theirprofit margin increases.

We need to be careful at the moment – we are only a fewsteps away from crushing human creativity and taking all the small pleasure outof life for millions if not billions of people. And that isn’t a world I wantto see.

 The Dangers of Othering

You may have noticed from the tone of my blogs of late thatI feel like humanity is in a very dangerous place right now. And though there’sprobably only a half dozen or so of you out there reading these as I shout helplesslyinto the void, I still feel the need to do it or I’m probably going to burstwith frustration and rage. So my apologies everyone but here we go again…

It’s always someone else’s fault. We all know that person,don’t we? Anything that goes wrong in their world, well, it wasn’t their fault,oh no, impossible, it was someone else who caused it, it wasn’t down to them.The dog ate my homework. He pushed me. She wasn’t looking where she was going.They didn’t explain it properly. It wasn’t made clear that wasn’t allowed. Iwanted to be there and they were in the way. They didn’t do what I told them todo. They weren’t behaving properly. I wanted to do it, they got in the way.They came over here and took our jobs, it’s not down to me that I can’t getone. They didn’t deserve it, why shouldn’t I have it? Everything’s their fault- it just can’t be mine.

And then that person becomes a politician and that’s whenthe trouble starts. Because democracy, let’s be clear, whilst a wonderful idea,boils down to be being a popularity contest. Most people don’t sit down andread the details of a political manifesto, they listen to the rhetoric anddecide who they like or agree with the most. To be popular, a politician needsto make sure that no mud sticks to them and nothing is their fault and to make votersfeel like any problems aren’t their own fault too. They need to distract you fromthinking things are down to them. And what’s the best and quickest way to dothat? Blame someone else, of course.

It’s that other party’s fault. It’s the people who supportthem. It’s the people who don’t agree with us. It’s that other cultural group.It’s that neighbouring country, they are to blame. It’s those incomers, theyaren’t contributing. They are the criminals, that’s why the crime rate is up.They are taking our resources, that’s why we haven’t enough money. They aretrying to interfere with us, all our problems are being caused by them. Everything’stheir fault - it just can’t be ours.

And slowly, though rhetoric, through media, throughpolitical desperation, suddenly whole groups of people, whole races, wholereligions, whole nations, whole regions stop being human beings and start beingThem. They are The Others. The ones who are to blame. The ones who, if we couldget rid of them, all our problems would be magically solved. They are the problem,they are the evil ones, they are a homogenous mass of bad, they barely count aspeople anyway, so why shouldn’t we drive them out?

And history well documents what happens next. After all, theRomans did it to the Christians. The medieval Crusaders blamed Islam. The Protestantsaccused the Catholics and the Catholics pushed right back, in a variety ofdirections. Pretty much everyone over the years has had it in for the Jews,though Nazi Germany took it to a whole new level. 1950s American blamed theCommunists – the Communists blamed the West right back and their Russiandescendants still do. Islamic Extremists do it to everyone who isn’t one ofthem and innocent Islamic people suffer retribution. And now, in countriesacross the world, everyone blames the Immigrants.

Nationality seems to be irrelevant (race possibly less so) –it’s simply those nameless incomers who are to blame. They don’t conform, theydon’t contribute (yes still somehow manage to take people’s jobs), they arecriminals, they bring down the area, they are different, they are wrong, we don’twant them in our back yard. They aren’t like us.

The other big one at the moment is – it’s our national neighbour’sfault. They aren’t behaving like us. They aren’t doing what we want them to do.They aren’t towing our line and seeing our superiority. They are wrong, theyare the enemy, they are out to undermine so we have to take them down and putthem back in their place. They aren’t like us.

And then we are back to - they are the problem, they are theevil ones, they are a homogenous mass of bad, they barely count as peopleanyway, so why shouldn’t we drive them out?

They are The Others.

No, they are not. They are and always will be people.They are human beings with lives and feelings and problems, just like you. Andto dehumanise and other them, usually for the sake of some politician who wantsto shift the blame and some media outlet who wants to fuel clicks, is never,ever right. True, there are bad apples amongst them. But there are just as manybad apples everywhere else, because is what humanity is – there’s alwayssome. Blaming the mass for the faults of the few is wrong. Whenever you feelthe urge to Other someone, just try to imagine for a moment yourself in theirshoes. How would you want to be treated? You’d want to be treated like a humanbeing. History is replete with lessons about what happens when a group or raceor nation is so othered that their right to be a human being is taken away. Itdoesn’t end well for anyone, especially the human race as a whole.

And that is a lesson we could all do with remembering rightnow.

NOTE: Shortly after writing this blog, I found in a book I was reading a quote that beautifully sums up what I have tried to say here. The book is The Betrayal of Anne Frank by Rosemary Sullivan and the quote, on page 291, comes late in life from Miep Gies, one of the brave helpers who sheltered and supported the Frank family and others during their concealment from the Nazis in their annex in Amsterdam during World War II:

"The message to take from Anne's story is to stop prejudice and discrimination right at its beginning. Prejudice starts when we speak about THE Jews, THE Arabs, THE Asians, THE Mexicans, THE Blacks, THE Whites. This leads to the feeling that all members of each such group think and act the same."

And this is from a woman who lived it. 

 Hello to you all - I hope all those who celebrate it had a lovely Christmas and I'd like to wish you all a very Happy, Safe and Prosperous New Year. Look after each other, care for your fellow man and above all, be kind. :)

There we go - with the sentiment out of the way, I shall now indulge in some hideous self advertising of the type I've been too tired and grumpy to undertake of late. I have these books out, you see, and what better New Year Treat than to give them a try or encourage friends and relatives to do so? And, yes, I do feel ashamed of myself - I'm too goddamn British for all this self advertising! But nonetheless....

The first novel, The Disposable can be found here:

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Disposable-1-Plot-Bandits/dp/1951471024

USA: https://www.amazon.com/Disposable-1-Plot-Bandits/dp/1951471024

The Narrative Must Be Obeyed

Everyone in the Taskmaster’s Realm knows how thestory goes: the boy of destiny goes on a quest, defeats the dark lord, and getsthe swooning princess. It’s a great story, if you happen to be a knight or awizard or a hero. But it’s pretty odious if you’re Ordinary: a barmaid who hasto inflate her bosom and have her backside pinched, a homely prince who can’tbuckle his swash because his face doesn’t fit, or a soldier who gets killedover and over and over again just to progress the plot.

Fodder of Humble Village is one of those soldiers,and, frankly, he’s sick and tired of getting speared, decapitated, anddisembowelled twice a day so the good guys can look glorious. In fact, he’s notgoing to take it anymore.

No matter what The Narrative tries to make him do.

Its sequel, The Merry Band can be found here:

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Merry-Band-Katherine-Vick/dp/1951471083

US: https://www.amazon.com/Merry-Band-Katherine-Vick/dp/1951471083

The Taskmaster Strikes Back!

Fodder successfully rebelled against The Narrative once, but noweverything’s going completely and horribly wrong.

It soon becomes apparent that his own companions are even more unstablethan he realized, between Flirt’s suicidal rashness, Shoulders’ increasingdesperation to keep his head attached to his body, Princess Pleasance’sunwillingness to speak, and Prince Dullard’s inability to shut up.

Unfortunately, Fodder has bigger problems, because the Taskmaster isfinally getting serious. That means it’s not just the Heroes hunting Fodderanymore; there’s an entire pantheon of gods after him.

It’s too late to turn back, and Fodder wouldn’t even if he could. He’sdetermined to unveil the secret of the Quickening, even if it means saving theworld while he's at it.

And continuing with book three, The Narrative: 

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Narrative-Plot.../dp/B0BGSGN9ZF

US: https://www.amazon.com/Narrative-Plot.../dp/B0BGSGN9ZF

The biggerthe army, the harder it falls.

Everyone inthe Taskmaster’s Realm knows that narrative convention is as real as the lawsof physics (and often much realer). The ferryman is crotchety and greedy andmust be tricked. The mystic ghost has essential wisdom to impart. Barbariansare stupid, hairy drunkards led by a berserker. Convention is just the way theworld operates.

And it’s oh,so predictable.

So whenFodder and his friends are forced their separate ways, held captive againstimpossible odds, and threatened by a fate worse than death, they begin towonder: If we know exactly how the world works, can’t we make it work forus?

It’s time toplay.

 And the grand finale - The Taskmaster!

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BZBW5DKF

US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZBW5DKF

The Perfect StorybookEnding?

Just as Pleasance gets a grip . . .

Just as Dullard realises the truth . . .

Just as Flirt and Shoulders get ahead . . .

Just as Fodder exploits literary convention . . .

Just as Ordinary people actually start to listen . . .

Just as readers begin to feel tantalised by the blurb . . .

Wait.

You didn’t think we were about to spoil the ending for you, didyou? This is the fourth and final book of the Plot Bandits “trilogy”! We’resaying nothing.

And there, I'm done. It's safe to come out now...;p