Warning: Spoilers for the Tin Soldiers Short Story - Proceed with Caution
As I mentioned in the blog's mission statement, I have decided to explain some of my thoughts and reasons behind some of my stories in The Dreadful Call. I have decided to start with one of the easier ones for me to explain, "Tin Soldiers." As some of you might know, one of my favorite past times is the recreation of famous battles and maneuvers in miniature form, with little painted figures on large six foot by four foot tables, covered in terrain and other accoutrements.
It's pretty involved. You have to assembly and paint the figures yourself even before you start playing. The rules themselves are rather elaborate, usually anywhere to fifty pages to three hundred depending on what you're into. It's kinda like an investment, of both time and money, in which the only reward is a good looking army to bring to the field.
For me personally, the modelling aspect is second fiddle to the game play. While I can enjoy putting everything together and making the paint job look as great as possible, after you paint your twentieth soldier in the exact same scheme the novelty has most definitely worn off.
This story was born from my association with that hobby. At one point I became interested in the history of war-gaming, and delved into any information I could discover about it. Wow, there was a lot on that topic. I'd always assumed it was a relatively recent hobby in the scheme of things, perhaps at most a hundred or so years old. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is old, really old, possible more than a millennia. And the people who have done it? Everyone from the layman (like myself) to very famous personages.
So it hit me, what if one of those famous men had a special set of miniature soldiers, imbued with their won will? To be honest, at first I had doubts about following down that train of thought. Not the most original idea for a story. Small Soldiers, Toys, one of Mr. King's short stories, (hell, Rudolph and the Red-nosed Reindeer Christmas Special) lots of movies and books have been done about toys coming to life. However, by focusing on a specific adult hobby instead random children's items I hope I made something new. That, and setting it in Victorian times as a quasi-fable.
A word on that particular line of thinking. It is really hard I think nowadays to come up with an entirely novel concept. I'll be honest when I think I do finally have one, for all I know someone else may have already beat me there, someone whose work I've never heard of before. When I told my brother Joel that I was writing The Dreadful Call, he said "Good luck man. Everything in the world already has been wrote." Or similar words to that effect, probably not verbatim. His point, however, was crystal clear. There is a lot of people writing stories nowadays, and when you write you're not just competing against them, you're competing against every story ever written, past and present combined. A ray of sunshine, that Joel. Why do I bother? And the tears fell down....
Just kidding. What makes things different is not the concept so much as the viewpoint. Take zombies for instance. Completely overdone nowadays. I feel they're coming out of the woodwork with so many book, movies, and video games about them currently (oh yes, pun intended). But Romero's zombies are different than Lovecraft's or Howard's. Frankenstein's monster is vastly different than the dancers in Jackson's Thriller or Shaun of the Dead. It's the variety that makes things interesting, not the actual subject. Otherwise every reference after the original would be garbage, which is clearly not the case.
Well, that's enough for now. Thanks for reading, and I hope you found it worthwhile. Oh, and speaking of zombies, read "Pigeons from Hell" by Robert E, Howard. Best zombie story ever!