Will Bowron's Blog
June 5, 2022
Our relationship.
I’ve always wondered who the first person was to say that there is “more than one way to skin a cat.” How did that topic get brought up in conversation? What unfortunate cat is getting skinned? By multiple people, it sounds like? It’s a morbid saying, but one repeated so often that the words sort of disappear and the translation reappears as it should in the frontal lobe.
“There is more than one way to do something.”
When I started working on Vigilant, I wanted it to be a comic book. I grew up with a Batman: The Animated Series poster over my bed. I bought, read, and then unfortunately lost the first printing of Ultimate Spider-Man #1. I went to a high school where I was lucky enough to be able to select Watchmen as one of my summer reading books. Comics have long been a part of my life and literary journey, if you want to call it that.
So when I decided to start writing, I researched how to write a comic script, got initial character sketches and sample pages from illustrators, and was well on the way to investing a lot of money and time into something that would put exactly the image I wanted in the reader’s brain.
But the more I wrote and thought about Vigilant, the more I realized that the themes of truth and ambiguity that are pervasive in vigilantism would be absent from my attempt to capture the concept in a literary form.
And since art reflects life… there was more than one way to skin a cat.
Comics are a one directional medium. The author and illustrator tell you exactly you need to see in your mind. This allows them to have incredible, beautiful moments, epic fight scenes, and special effects only available in billion dollar movie budgets.
Novels require a dialogue between the author and the reader. In Vigilant, I described only what I believe you need to see to be able to move the story along. It’s not my job to selfishly tell you how to imagine Taylor Gardner or Sam DeWitt in your mind. It’s not my job to add dialogue or character actions where they aren’t necessary to the story.
It’s my job to give you the framework required. You’re the one who has to flesh it out.
In my senior year at Rhodes, my senior thesis class focused on comparing the works of two writers separated by a generation, race, background, and heritage: William Faulkner and Toni Morrison.
During her Nobel prize acceptance speech, Morrison gracefully weaved her way in and out of a story that summarized her view of the purpose of living, language, and literature. In crude summation, she said that she believed literature is joint effort between the author and the reader.
The final moments of her acceptance speech were, “‘I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done – together.’”
I’m no Toni Morrison, but this is something I truly believe. The moment you start reading the first word on the page, you and I will begin an intimate relationship. We create something together. Something unique that only you can see and experience. I hope I’ve provided a framework you’ll enjoy building on.
Vigilant comes out on June 7th, 2022. I can’t wait for our relationship to start.
“There is more than one way to do something.”
When I started working on Vigilant, I wanted it to be a comic book. I grew up with a Batman: The Animated Series poster over my bed. I bought, read, and then unfortunately lost the first printing of Ultimate Spider-Man #1. I went to a high school where I was lucky enough to be able to select Watchmen as one of my summer reading books. Comics have long been a part of my life and literary journey, if you want to call it that.
So when I decided to start writing, I researched how to write a comic script, got initial character sketches and sample pages from illustrators, and was well on the way to investing a lot of money and time into something that would put exactly the image I wanted in the reader’s brain.
But the more I wrote and thought about Vigilant, the more I realized that the themes of truth and ambiguity that are pervasive in vigilantism would be absent from my attempt to capture the concept in a literary form.
And since art reflects life… there was more than one way to skin a cat.
Comics are a one directional medium. The author and illustrator tell you exactly you need to see in your mind. This allows them to have incredible, beautiful moments, epic fight scenes, and special effects only available in billion dollar movie budgets.
Novels require a dialogue between the author and the reader. In Vigilant, I described only what I believe you need to see to be able to move the story along. It’s not my job to selfishly tell you how to imagine Taylor Gardner or Sam DeWitt in your mind. It’s not my job to add dialogue or character actions where they aren’t necessary to the story.
It’s my job to give you the framework required. You’re the one who has to flesh it out.
In my senior year at Rhodes, my senior thesis class focused on comparing the works of two writers separated by a generation, race, background, and heritage: William Faulkner and Toni Morrison.
During her Nobel prize acceptance speech, Morrison gracefully weaved her way in and out of a story that summarized her view of the purpose of living, language, and literature. In crude summation, she said that she believed literature is joint effort between the author and the reader.
The final moments of her acceptance speech were, “‘I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done – together.’”
I’m no Toni Morrison, but this is something I truly believe. The moment you start reading the first word on the page, you and I will begin an intimate relationship. We create something together. Something unique that only you can see and experience. I hope I’ve provided a framework you’ll enjoy building on.
Vigilant comes out on June 7th, 2022. I can’t wait for our relationship to start.
May 23, 2022
"So... It's like a superhero book?"
Not really. But let me take a step back first.
I’ve always been interested that in the real world, we admonish and despise violence, but in the fictional world, it’s something we cheer on. Think James Bond. Think Batman. Any of the hundreds of super-powered character-focused movies and TV shows that have come out in the past 15ish years. These are the good guys in their stories, and still, their entire presence and justification for having their stories told is the violence.
It's the fantasy of it that lets people cheer them on. Stories about the hero dealing with a gambling card player who cries blood or a guy who can shoot a gun that freezes people. These stories allow people to disconnect and say, “Yeah, this is violence I’m allowed to enjoy because it isn’t real.” This is violence that for some reason we’re naturally inclined to cheer on but have been reinforced not to in the real world.
But what happens when those superpowers all go away and that line between fantasy and realism is blurred? I think that’s one of the reasons why the Dark Knight trilogy was so successful. Money as a superpower isn’t unheard of these days. It’s the closest thing we have to allowing the viewer to enjoy the violence in a speculative world while keeping it tethered to reality.
So, when I started thinking about writing a book, I wanted to touch on these things but keep it entirely tethered in a superpower-free reality. What would it look like if vigilantism was common and accepted as a replacement for the police in a major metro city? Would it be chaos? Would people fall into factions and rhythms and routines? Would people be afraid of it? Try to take advantage of it to become famous? What would the actual effect be on crime in the city? These questions were the framework of what I wanted to write about in VIGILANT, with one core question in the middle of it.
Who does violence affect?
This might sound like a dumb question, so just give me a second to explain. We decry violence in the real world because of the impact it has on people. Because it hurts people. And I don’t even mean the direct effects between two people involved in the instance of violence. I’m talking about the second-order effects of the violence.
James Bond movies never talk about the wife or husband of the armed guards/henchmen who were killed by an MI6 spy. The bullet fodder for an action movie probably just signed on to a security job to pursue a paycheck and will never come home to their partners and children. Those movies don’t show a wife pacing at home after her husband has been missing for three days. Since her husband took a dangerous line of work, she’s probably not able to pay the bills just on her own salary. How will she be able to care for the kids? Did she say goodbye and that she loved him before he went to work? Did she even know what his job entailed and how risky it was? And now all she’s going to be left with is good memories and the lingering questions of why did this happen?
In a comic book world, if you take out the superpowers, take out the billionaires and the suits of mechanized armor and everything else inaccessible to the modern human being, what impact does violence have? These second-order effects of violence in a semi-lawless world was what I tried to address in VIGILANT.
I hope you find the story exciting and entertaining, but I also hope it makes you argue with yourself a little bit. Is a city deep into the thralls of all-out comic book hero vigilante justice an entertaining thing? Or does the concept of crazy people walking around with deadly weapons fill you with a certain level of dread? I know, that’s a quite a lofty and potentially self-important goal, but you as the reader can take what you like from the book. Mostly, I hope you enjoy it.
That would be my superpower. Creating something you enjoy.
Stay vigilant.
I’ve always been interested that in the real world, we admonish and despise violence, but in the fictional world, it’s something we cheer on. Think James Bond. Think Batman. Any of the hundreds of super-powered character-focused movies and TV shows that have come out in the past 15ish years. These are the good guys in their stories, and still, their entire presence and justification for having their stories told is the violence.
It's the fantasy of it that lets people cheer them on. Stories about the hero dealing with a gambling card player who cries blood or a guy who can shoot a gun that freezes people. These stories allow people to disconnect and say, “Yeah, this is violence I’m allowed to enjoy because it isn’t real.” This is violence that for some reason we’re naturally inclined to cheer on but have been reinforced not to in the real world.
But what happens when those superpowers all go away and that line between fantasy and realism is blurred? I think that’s one of the reasons why the Dark Knight trilogy was so successful. Money as a superpower isn’t unheard of these days. It’s the closest thing we have to allowing the viewer to enjoy the violence in a speculative world while keeping it tethered to reality.
So, when I started thinking about writing a book, I wanted to touch on these things but keep it entirely tethered in a superpower-free reality. What would it look like if vigilantism was common and accepted as a replacement for the police in a major metro city? Would it be chaos? Would people fall into factions and rhythms and routines? Would people be afraid of it? Try to take advantage of it to become famous? What would the actual effect be on crime in the city? These questions were the framework of what I wanted to write about in VIGILANT, with one core question in the middle of it.
Who does violence affect?
This might sound like a dumb question, so just give me a second to explain. We decry violence in the real world because of the impact it has on people. Because it hurts people. And I don’t even mean the direct effects between two people involved in the instance of violence. I’m talking about the second-order effects of the violence.
James Bond movies never talk about the wife or husband of the armed guards/henchmen who were killed by an MI6 spy. The bullet fodder for an action movie probably just signed on to a security job to pursue a paycheck and will never come home to their partners and children. Those movies don’t show a wife pacing at home after her husband has been missing for three days. Since her husband took a dangerous line of work, she’s probably not able to pay the bills just on her own salary. How will she be able to care for the kids? Did she say goodbye and that she loved him before he went to work? Did she even know what his job entailed and how risky it was? And now all she’s going to be left with is good memories and the lingering questions of why did this happen?
In a comic book world, if you take out the superpowers, take out the billionaires and the suits of mechanized armor and everything else inaccessible to the modern human being, what impact does violence have? These second-order effects of violence in a semi-lawless world was what I tried to address in VIGILANT.
I hope you find the story exciting and entertaining, but I also hope it makes you argue with yourself a little bit. Is a city deep into the thralls of all-out comic book hero vigilante justice an entertaining thing? Or does the concept of crazy people walking around with deadly weapons fill you with a certain level of dread? I know, that’s a quite a lofty and potentially self-important goal, but you as the reader can take what you like from the book. Mostly, I hope you enjoy it.
That would be my superpower. Creating something you enjoy.
Stay vigilant.
