Anthony Pryor's Blog

Another brief update, since things have been unsurprisingly busy since August. School startup proved a real challenge this year but we’ve finally gotten to the end of it, sparing me a little time to follow up and try to get people to actually read my goddamned books… I’ve completed 4 of 5 installments of a new novel The Ravenglass Fragment which will be available at various retailers and hopefully will get people interested in reading more.

I’m in the process of creating a few more shorter works of 10k or so that I will also be publishing at Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, etc., under a new imprint “Metal Angel Press” — these will be genre works including fantasy, adventure, noir and hopefully other exciting tales of cyberpunk, space opera and other cool categories. I’m going to be putting up my own work as well as (hopefully) other folks and maybe we can all have some fun together.

I’m switching my newsletter/mailing list to Mailchimp as it looks as if I’ve got a bit more control that with the current plug-in, but that shouldn’t affect anyone who’s currently subscribed. Also, all you folks on the mailing list will be getting your free copy of the first installment of Ravenglass, a dark ages horror-fantasy called The Dream of the Rood, and starring the mysterious half-demon warrior Arngrim (if you’ve read Wings of the Fallen you know all about him, of course, but here’s another opportunity to see him kicking ass and taking names).

There’s so much other stuff on my plate now too — a couple of very neat rpg writing projects which i will definitely post about soon, as well as upcoming events like Orycon and the HP Lovecraft Film Festival… I hope to report from both as well. In the meantime, stay cool and keep your eyes open — and if you happen to read this and haven’t subscribed to my newsletter, please do, and accept The Ravenglass Fragment as my gift to you.

Me and my kid with my last copy of She Who Watches. Wheee!

I had a smashing time at Westercon, despite being either on panels or working my booth for most of the weekend. I admit regret at not getting to meet any of our distinguished guests, including Charles Stross, John Scalzi and Bobak Ferdowski (aka NASA Mohawk Guy), or to attend the end-of-con party in which our guests hung with con members to watch the Juno probe enter Jovian orbit. Mind you, just sharing the con with these distinguished gents is enough for me — who could ask for more than being in the same ballpark as NASA’s leading sex symbol, the guy who is bringing the Cthulhu Mythos (among other things) into the new era, and the Sad Puppies’ Public Enemy Number One?

With kind assistance from my daughter Devon, her bf Bowen, my own sweetie Beth and several other fine folks, my experience at the booth went without a hitch — we didn’t run out of money, the phones and Square credit card app worked flawlessly, and by golly I sold out of She Who Watches. In the end I exceeded my goal, which was to break even, going so far as to make enough extra to actually pay for the Blueray of the MST3K Season 11.

I had a fine time in my spot smack between Clockwork Dragon Publications and Wrigley-Cross Books, so I was in good company, and I also had the opportunity to snag rare copies of both Cinema and Sorcery by my bud Scott Woodard, and the soon-to-be-classic Arabella of Mars by Hugo-winner and also good friend David Levine. I participated in several panels, including one on Violence in Fantasy, where we agreed that there is, indeed, violence in fantasy, and I couldn’t really bring myself to get into any arguments since how much violence is too much is really an individual decision, and if someone else is appalled by Game of Thrones, it’s not really my place to tell them otherwise (I know, it makes for a very uncontroversial panel, but I’m really not as into arguing as I once was). I was likewise on a panel, cleverly titled Are you a Social Justice Warrior? which I was afraid would degenerate into a huge mess, but ended up being calm, respectful and quite informative, since pretty much everyone on the panel was on the same page, and the people who use the term SJW as a pejorative tend to be too shy and retiring to actually show up in person to defend their views. Finally I, Scott Woodard, my ex-love muffin Rhia Louve and my other good friend, mobile game designer Hunter Mayer had a panel on good rpg design, which despite my lack of preparation (I didn’t realize that I was the moderator), went pretty smoothly.

All in all it was a great four-day convention and actually turning a small profit went a long way toward mollifying my sadness at missing out on our cool, awesome other guests. I’ve been home all this week, wrapping up some work for Frog God Games and working on my novella series, which I hope to start putting out online in a couple of weeks. So far I’m about 12k in to Book Two, and once that wraps up will move immediately to Book Three, which I think everyone will love since it’s from Loren Hodges’ POV, and of course includes Beowulf the dog, who I think remains the fans’ favorite.

Finally I got a good number of folks to sign up for my newsletter so I need to get my act together, add them to the list and start publishing… Stay tuned everyone. It’s been a great week and I hope there are more just around the corner.

If you’re attending Westercon this weekend, here’s my panel schedule. For the rest of the con I will most likely be manning my booth and selling as many copies of The Shepherd as I can. Come by for an autograph or chat with a lonely author…

 


Anthony Pryor Reading


Madison


Fri Jul 1 6:00:pm – 6:30:pm


Anthony Pryor reads from selected works


Anthony Pryor



Saturday 10am Kaffeeklatsch


Multnomah


Sat Jul 2 10:00:am – 11:00:am


Small group discussions with authors, artists, and other interesting personalities (referred to as “hosts”). Sessions are limited to the host and a small group of attendees.


Anthony Pryor, Carol Berg, Curtis Chen, David D. Levine, Diana Pharaoh Francis, Morris Allen, Sonia Lyris



Violence in Fantasy


Jackson


Sat Jul 2 2:00:pm – 3:00:pm


Battles, torture, swordfights . . . why do we see so much violence in fantasy literature? Is it a requirement? How much is too much? Do you as a writer have limits? Does every epic have to end in a battle?


Anthony Pryor, Jim Doty, John Shirley, Wendy Wagner



Social Justice Warrior


Ross Island


Sat Jul 2 6:00:pm – 7:00:pm


Are you a Social Justice Warrior? Do you write to bring about a new world order? If the Sad Puppies are right and we have an agenda to write about all humans – is that a bad thing?


Amber Clark, Anthony Pryor, Frog Jones, Jim Minz, Sienna Saint-Cyr



Autographs


Autographs


Sun Jul 3 10:00:am – 11:00:am


Get your goodies signed!


Anthony Pryor, Curtis Chen, Emily Jiang



Craft of Game Design


Ross Island


Sun Jul 3 3:00:pm – 4:00:pm


What does it take to create a tabletop roleplaying game from the ground up? Hear from a panel of writers and artists who have invested countless hours into creating some of your favorite RPGs.


Anthony Pryor, Gibbitt Rhys-Jones, Hunter Mayer, Rhiannon Louve, Scott Woodard

So here I am, with three books in the bag (order yours today, and leave a review), wondering what comes next. So much of the work is on the front end, but of course once the books are out, in stores, or available online, there’s still a metric fuckton of work to do. I’ve already experimented with some services to promote my stuff on Facebook and book enthusiast pages with limited success, and I’ve learned that many of the promotional type groups on Facebook are really just for DIY self-pubbers to dump info about their books then disappear, and so aren’t all that effective. My interviews seem a hell of a lot more effective and certainly more interesting, but needless to say you’re not going to get a lot of response unless people actually recognize you or have read your stuff in the past. Attempts to contact folks from the old Wulf mailing list have of course met with no success, as almost all of the old addresses are defunct, given how long it’s been since I was in touch.

Arngrim had a certain style back when he was a Viking, don’t you think?

A more interesting and fulfilling option is to do self-promotion online by writing MORE stories about my characters and putting them out on Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, Kobo, etc. either free or almost free, so I’m setting aside other fiction projects and focusing on producing a new short novel, or rather a series of novellas, set a couple of years after the events of A Shadow in the Deep, with each part featuring a different member of Alex St. John’s demon-hunting Scooby gang. The first one, The Dream of the Rood, features Arngrim the demon-Viking and is set in the dark ages, soon after he and his companions first came to this world. There he and his companion, the monk-poet Cynewulf, have to deal with an artifact from Mimma-Lemnu’s world and the madness that it creates. Though by appearances all is relatively well by the end of the tale, its events resonate in the modern world when Alex and his companions have to deal with the artifact again, this time reassembled and far more powerful. The shattered relic gives the series its name — The Ravenglass Fragment. Part two, In Darkness They Walk (tentative title, anyway), is progressing, and eventually I want to have five connected novellas available for purchase.

In addition to wanting to tell more stories about Alex and company, the novellas will have information about the original Shepherd series, and links back to this very blog where users can subscribe to my planned newsletter, and also receive all of the Ravenglass Fragment novellas for free. In fact, if you’re actually reading this, feel free to go over and sign up, let me know what format you want, and I’ll get e-copies to you as they are completed.

This weekend also marks my first foray into SF conventions as both a participant and a dealer flogging my own works. I have a table in the dealer’s room, I’ve recruited my wonderful daughter and her partner to help give me some relief, I’ve signed up for Square, purchased a cashbox and a receipt book, printed up postcards and bookmarks, and generally done as much as I can to get people to read and buy my stuff. I’m not entirely sure how this is going to go down, but frankly if I break even I’m going to be thrilled. I’ve also got a reading and an autograph session scheduled, and once more I’m not sure how successful those are going to be, given my lack of a household name. My panel schedule is light,  consisting of I think two panels, one on violence in fantasy (a favorite subject) and a second one that I’m fearful will get way too political (I’ll report on those later).

As I haven’t done this before I’m kind of sweating bullets. Will the Square work, or will we not get reception/wireless? Will I have enough change in my cashbox? Was it worth paying for the postcards and bookmarks, or should I have gotten the heavier stock? Will anyone want my autograph? And above all else, will anyone even want to buy my books? It goes on and on I’m afraid, and as I said before, a book’s publication date isn’t the end — it simply heralds the coming of even more complications.

I’ve said in the past that I need to blog more regularly, but life seems to keep intervening and there always seems to be something more interesting or pressing to do. I still want to change that, and now that I’m at least trying to push my stuff a little harder, I think I have an obligation to the people who visit here to actually make the thing interesting.

Honestly, the kind of blogs where writers go on and on about how they write, where they write, why they write, etc., doesn’t really interest me all that much. A little of that is fine — I’ve certainly done my share — but the creative process is so personal, it’s not always a relatable struggle, and while it’s interesting to see how other people create, it’s not vital. So I’m going to keep doing fun stuff, like movie and game reviews, reflections on a life in gaming and wanna-be writing, movies, TV and other stuff. I already want to do a weekend miniatures campaign and chronicle that, and there are always those awesome swords-and-sorcery movies out there that need to be dissected and (lovingly) mocked. And upon reviewing the 1970s classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I realized that it simply doesn’t hold up for me like it used to, and after a couple of hours of being deeply annoyed at the “peaceful” aliens and how they’ve been fucking with humanity for the past century or two, I came to the conclusion that they’re really just a bunch of dicks. Hopefully more on that later.

I’ll try to blog from Westercon if I can, hopefully with all good experiences, and I’ll send photos and love notes as feasible.  In the meantime, see you soon.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I forgot my second novel was coming out this week, from those great folks at Permuted Press. Check it out here and let me know what you think. And if you liked it please drop me a review at Amazon, B&N, Smashwords or wherever you bought it… I’ll throw up an excerpt shortly, and I’m trying some new promotional tricks to get some more eyes on it.

As for some reason I’ve been crashing early these past couple of weeks I haven’t actually had a lot of energy to work on my blog, but I figure it’s probably a good idea to occasionally tell the world that I’m alive. First off, there’s a great interview with me at the NIWA site and it’s for a great organization that gives local writers a real boost. Second I’ve finally figured out Facebook’s somewhat arcane terminology and realized that the best thing for my author presence is not a PROFILE or a GROUP but a PAGE — the difference between which had always in the past eluded me. So anyway, I’ve created an author PAGE here where folks can follow along with more day-to-day stuff about my writing, get news flashes and stuff. I fully understand the differences between the three types of FB page, but being the technological neanderthal that I am, I’ve kind of struggled getting them functioning correctly. Anyways, I THINK everything’s where it should be… My Facebook widget has been updated, but it doesn’t go to the right page yet — hopefully it’s simply taking a while to update info on a server level.

That said, it’s always cool to share photos, right? Well, I don’t really care so I’ll throw out a few recent pictures for your enjoyment and edification.

This is a male bold jumper spider (Phiddipus audax for you biology snobs) that I found on my mom’s car this week. He was very friendly and happily hopped up onto my iphone so I could transport him to a safe spot where he wouldn’t meet a horrible fate like getting slammed in the car door or accidentally sat on.

My cat, LC (aka “Fat Kitty”). I realize that the Internet is not the place for cat pictures, but here she is anyway.

And finally, some shelf porn from my game room. I have only played a fraction of these games over the past few years, I fear. Hope to change that soon.

And with that, a fond fare thee well til next time. The final installment of the trilogy, “A Shadow in the Deep” is out at the end of this month and I have to say it’s my favorite of the three. See you then.

I never had problems with allergies when I was younger, but these days it seems to be hitting me harder every year. So I’m home today feeling drippy and fatigued, and I thought it might be a good time to post an excerpt from She Who Watches, as a small inducement that might, just might, make you want to read more. Enjoy!

Damien’s small and surprisingly tidy bedroom was upstairs facing the back of the house, but he’d knocked the wall out between the other two bedrooms, creating a large space that was a computer geek’s wet dream.

“After the house and my car, this is where most of my inheritance ended up,” he said, indicating a tall black structure that lurked in the corner, humming ominously amid more piles of books and papers. “It’s a 64 blade Linux server enclosure. Multi-terabyte RAID-6 array for storage, high-performance workstation, incoming fiber optic line, generator for backup, the whole nine yards.”

I was impressed. “How much did all this cost?”

Damien shrugged. “You don’t want to know. And the power consumption makes the cops think I’m growing weed or something. But I need it, given the sheer amount of data that I have to deal with. I wrote a series of scripts that search the net for key words and phrases, looking for patterns and similarities. Then it sends me a report and I look at the references that seem most relevant. Those I store and use in my articles.” He tapped the big enclosure gently. “I’ve got texts and images of thousands of rare occult books, out of print periodicals, obscure articles, publications, comics, pulp magazines, blogs, journals, everything. This could be the most extensive collection of occult materials in the world, right here in the corner of my office. I’ve got hundreds more printed books downstairs in my library.”

He gestured toward an office chair. “Sit, please.”

The workstation had a monstrous 27 inch screen, and when Damien sat beside me and gave his mouse a few clicks, a world map appeared, with fifteen or so colored pin icons scattered across several continents.

“I can filter my searches any way I want,” he said. “These are the results of my original search when I was just looking for violent crimes in which the word ‘Shepherd’ appears.”

I remained silent, watching as Damien did more arcane things with pop-up menus and search criteria.

“After we talked I took a closer look at those crimes and saw that they all involved knives or stabbing weapons, along with the ritualistic cutting of symbols into the victims’ flesh.”

Damien described the crimes with almost clinical detachment, but I’d been living with the victims’ ordeals for the past six months. I shivered.

The mouse pointer darted across the screen. “There were other similarities. Some babbled gibberish while they killed or raped their victims. Some butchered their dead victims and engaged in cannibalism. I missed all of that, of course. I can be really blind when I’m manic. So focused on one idea that I don’t see what’s staring me in the face.” He pulled down a menu and tapped another button. “I added all of those criteria to my search and look what happened.”

Dozens more dots appeared, each with a date beside it.

“Over a hundred now,” he said. “And in each case, the killer used a stabbing or slashing weapon, cut symbols on the victim’s body, babbled in an incoherent fashion, or used a language that he didn’t normally speak. Not all of them mention the Shepherd, but in most other aspects they’re identical. Most of them aren’t assaults, either. They’re murder. Lots more than I originally thought. The perpetrators that were caught were all either imprisoned, executed, or committed to mental institutions. Many of these crimes remain unsolved to this day.”

I leaned forward to look at the screen, reading the dates. “Jesus, Damien. They didn’t end in the ‘50s.”

More dots appeared with later and later dates. Damien clicked again and the dots changed to different colors according to the decade in which they occurred.

“They happen in waves,” Damien said. “The blue ones happened in the late ‘40s, yellow in the mid-‘60s, green in the ‘80s…” Red dots appeared in western North America, along the route of the I-84 Killer’s spree. “And now it’s happening again.”

There was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “These crimes are all identical to the I-84 Killer? Over a hundred murders over sixty-plus years?”

“I count a hundred and twenty-two. Maybe more, but the records get scarcer the farther back you go.”

“All over the world.”

“All with three or more similarities.” Damien stopped, as if reluctant to continue. He rubbed his cheeks with one hand. “Some are spot-on identical. The ‘Shepherd’ pattern was only one aspect of a larger crime wave. All around the world, men have been killing and raping with the same M.O. Just like the I-84 Killer. I didn’t see the pattern, Alex. I should have. If it hadn’t been for you I’d have missed it entirely.”

“I don’t like where this is going, Damien.”

“Neither do I. In most cases there’s no record of the supposed gibberish that the killers babbled. In one case I was able to find a transcript of one of the interrogations from 1988. It was in Nice, France, and the guy who did it was a Spanish transient named Ramon Soto.” He picked up a stack of papers that sat beside one of his printers. “I printed it out and highlighted the important parts.” He handed it to me.

I looked at it. “Damien?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t speak French either.”

He took it back. “Sorry. I keep forgetting…”

“Forgetting that not everyone is as gifted as you are?”

“Take it as a compliment, Alex.” He opened the transcript to a series of highlighted paragraphs. “Most of it really is nonsense. The transcriptionist did her best, tried to type some of it phonetically in case he was actually speaking another language. Itcheloot. Agunaba. Bagnakunachee. But here he actually starts to talk in Spanish. He never says anything about a Shepherd, but he does say some interesting things. The interrogator asks him in Spanish why he killed the man and Soto says ‘él me ordeno’ — ‘he ordered me to.’ The policeman asks who ‘he’ is, and Soto says ‘el bestia dentro cabeza me,’ — ‘the beast in my head.’”

I looked away, as if not seeing the printed words would help me to feel less helpless, less confused. “The beast in my head? What the hell does that mean?”

“We’ll never know. After that Soto refused to respond and they finally ended the interview. He died in custody a week later, cause unknown.”

“You’re scaring me, Damien.” I felt as if dark, mad eyes were staring at the back of my head, across scores of years and thousands of miles.

“Yeah, well I’m pretty scared myself. I don’t have an explanation for any of this, and even if I did I don’t think I’d like it. All that cosmic uncertainty I talked about is suddenly right in front of us.”

I looked outside. A pair of doors with large glass windows led out onto the upstairs porch. Night was spreading across the neighborhood. The streetlights were almost invisible through the thick trees in the front yard. I wanted to deny it, to find some logical reason to reject everything Damien had told me, but I couldn’t.

“If this is all true, what the hell is going on?” I asked. “Has some bizarre cult been committing rapes and murders for the past sixty years?”

“It’s one possible explanation, Alex. But only one of many.”

“You said it yourself — three incidents is a movement.” I waved my hand at the screen. “You just found over a hundred.”

“I think there was at least a small amount of hyperbole in that statement. Besides I wrote it when I was manic and thought I was right about everything. There’s really no way of knowing for certain why this is all happening. Or whether it’s happening at all.” He hung his head. “Damnation. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s just my own mind screwing with me.”

Damien was silent for a moment, then perked up.

“Oh, yes. I found something else interesting.” He rummaged through the stack of papers and handed me another printout. This one looked like a high school yearbook photo.

“A little present for you, Alex. Meet Robert Leslie, aka Pine Street Bob. Born 1961, graduated 1979, Holy Grace Young Men’s Academy, Seattle, Washington.”

I frowned at the picture. “Pine Street Bob? How did you get this?”

He shrugged. “I can find just about anything about just about anyone. It just depends on how hard I want to look and what laws I want to break. Finding out about Bob was easy.”

“Are you sure this is him?” I held the printout up, trying to connect the smiling, fresh-faced youth in the picture with the burnt-out street person who had been haunting my imagination. Had the delusional Pine Street Bob really started out life as a Catholic schoolboy?

“Reasonably. You can never be certain with transients — no fixed address, no socials. Many don’t even use their real names. But I’m relatively sure — young Robert here seems to have devolved into your friend Pine Street Bob.”

Damien read from another printout. “Young, intelligent, deeply religious. His yearbook bio says that his goal was to join the priesthood, but he never did. He ended up with a history of emotional problems, a string of jobs, increasing mental disturbances, reports of violent behavior. He moved all over the Pacific Northwest — Seattle, Olympia, Anacortes, Post Falls, Boise, Eugene, finally Portland. He’s been here for a few years, and he has quite a dossier. Disorderly conduct arrests in ’11 and ’13, later assault charges dropped because the victim was another homeless man and they couldn’t find him. The report says that Bob kept screaming that the guy was ‘The Shepherd’ and cut him up pretty badly with a broken bottle.”

I felt my neck hairs raise again.

Damien continued. “They arrested him by that abandoned cement plant out in the industrial area near Blue Lake. You remember — the one that had a fire last fall?”

“Yes, I remember.” It had been a bit of a scandal — an abandoned site that the owner had let go completely to seed. When someone saw smoke and called in the fire department, they’d discovered a fairly extensive homeless community there. The sheriff had fined the owner, kicked the homeless people out and promptly forgotten about the place.

Damien took the photo back from me and contemplated the innocent, smiling face. “Something happened to our little Bobby. Something took this kid and made him into what you saw outside your building.”

“Schizophrenia, maybe? It can happen to anyone.” I was still looking for a rational explanation, for some way to make it all make sense.

“No arguments here.” Damien stroked his chin thoughtfully. “But no. It’s got to be more than that. Certainly he’s disturbed. His history was pretty clear. But why the Shepherd? Why is he following in the footsteps of all those other men? Disturbed, loners, petty criminals who start demanding to know about the Shepherd and eventually kill and rape because of it?”

“He read about the Shepherd crimes somewhere and decided to add them to his delusions? Maybe he read your articles, Damien.” I was busy searching for some other explanation, something that would make sense of it all.

“Not unless he can travel in time. He had a history of violence well before my article was written. Besides, he asked you about the Shepherd before the article was even published. No, there’s some other influence at work. God knows, maybe he’s part of our hypothetical serial murder cult. He certainly fits the profile.”

“Damien, are you suggesting that Pine Street Bob is the I-84 killer?”

There it was, plain and ugly as an open wound.

“No, I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just observing, looking at patterns. And noting that Robert Leslie fits them.”

He was starting to sound like Manic Damien again, but it didn’t bother me. Manic Damien was who I wanted to talk to right now.

“He’s got friends too, Damien. That first day I saw him with another homeless guy who looked like Uncle Creepy. He was there again today. He waved at me. Said ‘Hi, Alex.’ They both looked at me like…” I shivered. “Like they wanted something from me. God damn it, Damien, do you think they could be…”

Again, I let my voice trail off, unwilling to finish a thought that was too awful to contemplate.

I suppressed a shiver. The fact that Damien kept his whole house underlit didn’t help matters. “What do you think we should do? Call the cops?”

“And tell them what? That we think Pine Street Bob and his buddies might be part of a murder cult that’s been raping and killing people for a half century? That he’s going to be a murderer at some unspecified future date?”

“Shit.”

“Exactly. You see the position we’re in, Alex. It’s where I’ve been for years, seeing patterns and thinking things that no one in their right mind would believe.”

Damien held up Robert Leslie’s photo. His eyes stared out of the picture — younger, healthier, brighter. But they were the same eyes that I’d seen in the picture of the Irish rapist, and the same ones I’d seen staring out of Pine Street Bob’s face.

“Gaze into the abyss, Alex,” Damien said. “It’s already gazing into you.”

Hi all — it’s been a mad couple of weeks and I have not had a chance to catch up here, though I’ve certainly had my moments on Facebook and elsewhere. Social media is kind of a necessary evil these days — I can’t say that I’m especially fond of it, but unfortunately it’s become vital for our survival. In any event, The Shepherd Book One: She Who Watches has arrived through the good offices of Permuted Press and is available in e-book and trade paperback formats. We sold through all available copies for the first couple of days (and Amazon and B&N no doubt noted that most of the copies were being bought in Portland, Oregon, but that’s okay), and I’ve gone through the usual stages of the new author — exhilaration, crushing self-doubt, joy, sadness, reflection, self-criticism, more crushing self-doubt, more exhilaration, and so on. My interview on SFFworld.com went well and I’m going to try to hit people up for more, and I also got a very good review on nerdsonearth.com, for which I am enormously grateful.

I’m still dithering about what the next project should be. I’ve got a “weird western” (a term I don’t like that much, but I guess I’m stuck with it) in the can, and I’m wondering about trying to sell it or just going the hybrid self-pub route, but as I waste my time trying to improve my slap bass (I really suck, but I am getting better) and playing Fallout 4 (probably grist for the mill of a future blog entry), I’m trying to decide whether to finish a long novel set in a world where D&D tropes actually exist, or maybe do a gothic fantasy about a half-demon detective and his wild elf companion that’s based on a game I ran for Rhiannon years ago, or maybe do that vampires vs. werewolves story we also came up with during an old World of Darkness game, but then again vamps and werewolves are so fucking cliched these days, just like frakin’ zombies, and by god I’m glad my agent made me take all the zombies out of She Who Watches, since it encouraged me to start experimenting with different monsters and focus on stuff that hadn’t already been done 1,000,000,000 times by fanfic writers who get seven-figure contracts to write their pathetic sparkly vampire pastiches with the serial numbers filed off, with some BDSM added, and then they get to hang around on the set of the multimillion dollar production of their fucking piece of crap fanfic movie adaptation and tell the director what to fucking do…

Sorry, I digress.

Anyway I wanted to write an entry so that this blog stays current and doesn’t drift off for months like it tends to sometimes, since I’m now promoting a novel and trying to get some attention. I probably won’t end up doing too many posts of that pretentious “how I write” and “how I create memorable fiction for the ages, unlike you sad little peasants” type of entries that can be so irritating. I guess if I do I’m going to try to do some “anti-how to write” entries since so much advice that’s been given to me over the years has been really bad advice. I don’t think there is any one way to write, and if you produce good stuff that people enjoy and want to read, that’s the right way to do it.

Not that I don’t have my pet peeves. I think that writers should be at least conversant with the language that they’re writing in, have a grasp of basic grammar and know where to put apostrophes. On the other hand, a lot of silly arguments we have — the current foofaraw over the Oxford comma being only the most recent — are just that — silly. I use an Oxford comma when it’s necessary to clarify the meaning of a sentence. Otherwise I don’t. It’s that simple.

(And that stupid example that I’ve seen so often on Facebook “We invited the strippers, Lenin, and Stalin” versus “We invited the strippers, Lenin and Stalin” is so fucking stupid anyway, since neither sentence is good English, and the entire problem could be solved if the sentence read “We invited Lenin, Stalin and the strippers” without resorting to the fucking Oxford comma, so there, you punctuation snobs…)

I’ve had a lot of discussions with my best friend and fellow writer Dale over this one. I think that in recent years we’ve both grown quite suspicious of most writing rules that begin “Always…” and “Never…” unless they’re of the most basic nature such as “Always spell your words correctly” or “Never submit a manuscript written in crayon.” Other rules are less useful.

That’s not to say that they’re all false, or even that they’re not true most of the time, but “Always” and “Never” rules bring to mind Emerson’s quote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

When Dale and I were at a con several years ago, a very good and articulate writer on a panel about writing flatly told us “Never write in first person” and (at the same panel, mind you) “Never open a story with dialog.”

Okay, we’ll deal with dictum number two later, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell is wrong with writing in first person. I do it a lot and I think I’m pretty successful at it. To me first person flows much more easily and I like doing it. Not that I do it all the time, but it’s my favored mode. Yes, it has its problems, and it may not always be recommended, but to have a supposedly knowledgeably author who has a bunch of stories and novels under his belt be so utterly dismissive of this particular way of doing things is unbelievable. Had he said “Avoid writing in first person” I’d have disagreed but understood. To say “Never” is simply to display what a limited imagination you have.

A short parenthetical here, by the way — while researching first lines I came across this blog, which is on the Writers Digest site and has a lot of good material, but in this short article contains a huge howler that I’m surprised the author didn’t catch. He claims that the phrase “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents” is the opening line to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, when of course we know that it’s the opening line of The Call of Cthulhu by my man HP Lovecraft. Marquez’s actual opening line, “Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice” is damnably powerful, but god damn I wish people would attribute correctly.

So should you never, ever, ever open with dialog? Of course not. Just as “Never write in first person” would have horrified Herman Melville and James Joyce (among many others), telling a writer never to open with dialog would elicit a laugh from George RR Martin who opened a certain little-known and poor-selling novel called A Game of Thrones with “‘We should start back,’ Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them,” and from the obscure Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, whose opening to a minor work titled War and Peace reads “‘Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes….'”

Sure, most stories don’t open with dialog. Sure, there are good reasons not to open with dialog. But for god’s sake, never say “Never”, especially when it comes to writing, because there will always, always be such exceptions as to render your entire point moot.

Another hill that some people have chosen to make a stand on is prologues. Oh, don’t ever write prologues, they say. Readers just skip them. They’re unnecessary, they include backstory that can be in the main story, etc., etc., etc. One blog asks readers “Do YOU read the prologues?” Well, yes as a matter of fact I do. As a reader I like them. I think that when they’re well-written and relevant they enhance the story and make me want to keep reading. And yeah — I suspect that many prologues are unnecessary. In fact I’m a little dubious about my use of one in the third volume of my upcoming trilogy (see how I managed to work a little self-promotion into this post? Learn from the master, kids…), but I like both prologue and epilogue in the second and feel that they both enhance the story. There are very few story elements where the providers of sage advice differ more radically from the people actually doing the writing than when it comes to prologues.

I’ve seen similar advice as well — once I recall discussing a writer’s advice that “every scene has to contain conflict.” Again, conflict is (using another cliche here, folks) the essence of drama. Without conflict you’ve got people sitting in a room talking about the weather. But every scene? Come on. Here’s an illustration, as well as me raving about a TV show I’m really enjoying.

The “SyFy” Channel series The Expanse is based on the series by James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), of which the first volume is Leviathan Wakes (is that a kickass title or what?). The TV series covers about half of the first novel, ending at a pretty suspenseful moment in the story.

Here’s a minimal spoiler description of events in the novel:

Our hero James Holden, XO of the ice freighter Canterbury receives a distress call from a lost ship called the Scopuli. The Canterbury diverts course to go rescue the stricken ship. There’s no question that they need to reply to the distress call and the crew all cooperates with each other. Very effective and interesting, moves the story along and makes you want to read more.

In the TV series however:

Our hero James Holden is offered the position of XO on the Canterbury when its previous XO goes space happy. He turns down the promotion because he doesn’t want the authority and because he’s having an affair with the Canterbury’s astrogator. The captain tells him to take the job temporarily to see if he likes it. Then the Scopuli’s distress call arrives, but the captain and crew don’t want to respond because doing so will lose them their berth and on-time bonus, so they delete the log and pretend that they never got the signal. Consumed with guilt Holden then goes back and secretly undeletes the log and acknowledges the distress call but doesn’t admit it was him. The crew blames Holden’s lover the astrogator, but he keeps the truth to himself.

Okay, what’s the difference? The novel has all that stuff happening, but there’s no interpersonal conflict (that comes later). Holden is XO at the beginning of the story — there’s never a refused promotion. He isn’t banging the astrogator, and when the distress call comes there is no question that the ship has to respond — everyone immediately snaps to and heads off to save the Scopuli. There’s no mention that I can recall of lost bonuses or docking berths.

Which one’s better? Frankly, neither. They both work fine. While the novel doesn’t have the series’ interpersonal conflicts, it initially focuses more on story than on character, while the series piles conflict on conflict on conflict, mirroring the bigger conflicts that are developing elsewhere and moving the story along at breakneck pace. Which is also awesome, by the way — it is a fascinating example of telling the same story in two very different ways, both of which are compelling and exciting.

So no — I would argue that conflict is not necessary in every scene. It certainly can help, and it certainly is necessary in many scenes, particularly pivotal moments in a story. But not every single scene — what is needed is purpose — a scene has to get the story somewhere, or else it’s more weather discussion and navel-gazing. Rather than “scenes must always have conflict” I’d say “scenes must always have direction.” I know it’s an “always” statement, but I think it’s such a fundamental matter that it’s as obvious as “scenes must always be written in a language known to the reader.” I think the only real “always” rules are just the most basic common sense.

As (to use yet another cliche) some rules are made to be broken, maybe it’s good to have “always” and “never” rules around just so we can screw with them and find ways of subverting them. While I do agree that “always” usually should translate to “try to do this” and “never” can be presented as “avoid this thing”, I’d challenge anyone who wants to write to look at those statements more as challenges than rules carved in stone and handed down by the elder writing gods.

My other “sage advice” to people who want to know how to write (and have the lack of good taste to actually think I know what I’m talking about) I tell them to copy the hell out of other writers. More on that in a future discussion.

Peace out… More to come… Check out The Shepherd, Book One: She Who Watches, available at major online retails everywhere, in bookstores (and if your local bookstore doesn’t stock it, then have them order a copy!) and from Permuted Press! And if you’ve bought it and enjoyed it, please feel free to leave a review! See? More self-promotion. And so very, very subtle of me…

I’m up a bit late as I got obsessive about pulling the remnants of the crap that got left behind by vile individuals who apparently have nothing better to do than sneak links to check cashing services into MY freaking web page. I’m really not sure how they do it, but then I’m just a lowly computer jockey, not a glamorous international hacker sitting in my mansion deep in the heart of Russia or the Ukraine, making myself obnoxious by screwing up other people’s WordPress pages. Maybe someone could explain the vulnerabilities in the WordPress system that allows outside people to set themselves up as administrators and pull this kind of crap. So far I’ve discovered that the hacked pages have a lot of extra  tags and also some odd markers, but for the life of me I’m not a good enough coder to figure out why, or how they got there.

That said it’s been a busy week, even though it’s spring break at the school district and I’m taking Monday and Friday off. I’ve sent an email off to the old fans of the Wulf Archives, hoping that their addresses are still valid, I’ve set up a Goodreads page (and discovered that my reviews average 3.77 stars out of 5, even though none of my novels have any reviews yet) and I took flyers about my upcoming novels to a handful of local bookstores. I’m happy to report that my books are going to be stocked at Powell’s City of Books, the largest bookstore in the world, and probably at local Barnes and Noble outlets as well. At least one bookstore seemed overly posh and the manager looked down his nose at me as a lumpen author of sleazy genre fiction, unfit for his sophisticated little shop, but I’m not naming names because they MIGHT actually stock me. I’m looking into a few more shops over the next couple of weeks.

Tuesday is the big day, when She Who Watches finally drops and I see how the last few years’ labor pays off. I’m of course tormented by the usual crushing self-doubt and fear, but hey it’s too late to back out now. I’m trying to hit the ground running and sell my supernatural western while outlining a new fantasy series, so I’ll keep you all informed.

As I while away the hours until that fateful moment when my first book is finally released I still naturally have a normal life to live, though sometimes I forget. This weekend was our own Gamestorm, a very pleasant and surprisingly relaxing experience, located at the Vancouver Hilton, just across the wild Columbia river in Washington. For those who don’t know, Vancouver (known colloquially as “the ‘couv” I’m told) is a marvelously quiet, peaceful little burb just north of Portland, where folks can live in Washington (no income tax) and shop in Oregon (no sales tax). On the other hand, downtown Vancouver often feels almost deserted, and walking along its streets I sometimes feel like Charleton Heston in The Omega Man, waiting for the next mutant attack.

That aside, the con has been at the ‘Couv Hilton for years, but this was the last one, as the gathering has finally outgrown its facilities. I usually attend as a panelist and (when I can remember to register), to play a few games now and then. Gamestorm was the scene of several intensely enjoyable boardgaming and rpg sessions, and among the latter was a particularly exciting Savage Worlds session in which the players took the roles of the crew during a famous ship’s infamous last voyage (you know, that one Gordon Lightfoot sings about), where we discovered that the sinking was caused, not by a storm, but by a particularly nasty Great Old One known as the Witch of November who lurks beneath the frigid waters of Lake Superior. We managed to defeat that one at the cost of our own lives, though all the world believes that we perished in a terrible shipwreck.

Anyway, that’s beside the point. This was one of those weekends when I didn’t preregister, so I mostly worked the con as a panelist, discussing the importance of storytelling (one panelist, a designer of an especially cool-looking rpg called Spirit of ’77) flat-out asked the audience “Why did Phantom Menace suck?” It was a serious question, and one that triggered some very good discussion about relatable characters, good plotting, and clear stakes, all of which were, to a greater or lesser degree, absent in the SW prequel trilogy. I also did a very large panel that was a huge game design Q&A, though when the facilitator asked us to start putting topics on Post-Its and gathering into “breakout groups” I started to wonder whether I was still at work.

As I said it was fairly low-key, and the only real game I played was a very exciting scenario of the hoary classic wargame Panzer Leader, which our host had designed utilizing new counters and maps that are available online for diehard grognards who don’t mind a little DIY work in their wargaming.

This scenario was set during the hypothetical 1946 invasion of Japan by the Americans, a campaign code-named Operation Olympic which, to the benefit of both sides, was never actually fought. The morality and effects of the atomic bombing of Japan are of course major controversies to this day, and I can understand the feelings expressed on both sides. Despite one’s feelings about how and why America used this terrible weapon, the fact is that it eliminated the need for a long, costly and bloody land invasion. Whether Japan might have surrendered anyway, or whether the bombs should have been dropped where they were remains a volatile and painful subject.

In any event, Dale and I faced off in a scenario from a campaign that never happened. As the Japanese player I was in command of a scratch force of poorly-trained infantry backed up by the last remnants of the empire’s artillery and armored forces. As it turns out, the Japanese did have some decent tank designs, but these were never produced in large numbers and were mostly held in reserve to defend the home islands, which is the position that I was in as defender.

The Japanese had set an ambush for an advancing Marine column — infantry and armor with air support available later in the game. Initial attacks by my artillery were ineffective, since despite Panzer Leader’s great design, its artillery rules were a bit dodgy, and probably one of the game’s weaker elements. My objective was to destroy as many American units as possible while Dale’s was to exit units off the map edge, past my blocking force. He responded to my attack by swinging half of his forces around my left flank while driving his heavy armored units into the bridged city in the center.

And it was bloody. My left flank was held mostly by the aforementioned low-grade infantry, but for the greater glory of the Empire they held out for several turns, refusing to die even when asked politely. Meanwhile my artillery finally started hitting something as I zeroed in on the vital bridges as the marines pressed across with tanks and infantry. I held my heavy armored units back, waiting for Dale to cross the bridges, and when he did, the tanks attacked, inflicting heavy casualties.

Since Dale’s big sweep had left my right flank unengaged, I quickly loaded up guns and troops onto my small remaining reserve of trucks and attempted to shift them to the left, where American Sherman’s were advancing, faced only by light, poorly armed and armored Japanese tanks. As the American advance was getting bogged down in the city, I hoped to delay Dale’s advance as long as possible and hopefully kill the 15 units that I needed for a marginal victory.

My plan was foiled by the arrival of American air power, which swooped in like bald eagles on cringing mice, blasting the trucks and their cargo and also knocking out several of my precious tanks.

We were about six turns into a 12 turn game, but we’d been playing all morning, and the next group was about to kick us off our table, so we called it at that crucial moment. It could easily have gone either way. Despite appalling losses, the Japanese were hanging in there and most of their heavy tanks were intact. Two heavy howitzers were trained on a couple of American mortars and their transport, and if I had managed to kill a mere five more units I’d have my 15. Dale, on the other hand, was in sight of the map edge with very little in the way of opposition from my left flank, north of the city. Though the Japanese had had good luck there, the battle nonetheless tied down their most capable armored elements in a struggle from which they could not afford to withdraw. Had Dale managed to slip his 10 fast-moving Shermans off the map edge before I destroyed the required five more units, he would have salvaged a marginal victory.

In the end, as it is so often when Dale and I play, we ground each other to a bloody stalemate that either of us could have won with the right die rolls. The sheer horror of the scenario, the mounting losses on both sides, and the desperation of both attacker and defender were strong reminders, even in abstract game form, of what a nightmare Operation Olympic would have been, had it actually come to pass.

And so today we carry on, playing games on boards and computers, and read of the terrors that other men and women faced while smashing the obscene travesty of fascism. I game what people lived, and the cardboard or electronic shapes that I manipulate were once human beings who lived and died so that I could be here now. And in that I was reminded very vividly, for also that weekend Beth and I went out to dinner at a pleasant Vancouver restaurant, and while on the way home spied a figure walking down the street with the aid of a white cane.

Beth offered to open the door for the man, but he smiled affably and held up a mug that said “1916”.

“See what they gave me?” he asked. His voice was still strong. “It’s my Centennial mug.”

I admired the mug and bid the gentleman good night, noticing that he had at some time sustained serious facial injuries and probably reconstructive surgery — probably why he was maneuvering with a white cane.

This man was coming home from celebrating his 100th birthday. And from his injuries I speculated that he might have been a veteran — of course I didn’t know for sure since I didn’t ask, but his age would have put him in the thick of things in the 1940s. Our interaction with him was brief but pleasant, and for some reason it made me glad I’d been there. If he wasn’t a veteran, well he was certainly a fit centenarian, and if he was… Well…

“I hate the people who start wars,” I said quietly as we walked back toward the hotel. “But the people who fight them… Well, that’s another story entirely.”

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell

Each Christmas come since World War I I’ve learned its lessons well

That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame

And on each end of the rifle we’re the same.

— John McCutcheon, Christmas in the Trenches

The novels page should be up to date with links for Amazon and B&N — I’d like to add others but this theme doesn’t allow it yet — I’m going to request that in the next rev. In any event, if you’d like to preorder, the links are there, and I suspect there’s going to be more fun to come.

And on that subject, here’s the guest blog I wrote for Permuted Press, explaining how HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard both inspired me and made me want to create a different and less nihilistic fictional universe.

I’ve just added a couple of new short story links to the page, including a nifty little pulp number called The Big Fall, which features my own Grey Ghost character and the classic (thankfully public domain) pulp hero the Phantom Detective, and a swords and sorcery tale called The Winds of the Past. Just hoping you’ll enjoy these. I’m also going to try to get a mailing list link up if I can find a plug in that does the job and doesn’t charge me an arm and a leg.

I’ve got paperwork to get my books stocked at Powell’s Books, the biggest and grandest bookstore in the world, and I’ll be poking at other local book haunts as well. As I flatten the city of Seaside on the Oregon Coast, I imagine the bookstores there and in neighboring towns (out of gratitude that I didn’t blow them up as well) might want to order at least a couple of copies.

And so it goes. I’m still counting down to my release date (22 days), and hoping that all goes smoothly. I’m hoping to have a dealer’s table at Westercon in Portland over the 4th of July weekend and I’ll have lots of autographed copies and tchotchkes for everyone’s enjoyment. I’ll also blog and send out photos, since that’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?

More to come. Lots more…