A Body at Rest Tends to Stay at Rest

So yesterday I started writing again. Vacation + sickness means no writing, but taking that kind of break can make it hard to get started again. I compare it to a cold engine. It's hard to get the thing to turn over once it's been sitting still for awhile. Writing is definitely like this. I have some friends who are beginning their first efforts into writing and others who are renewing their efforts after a long hiatus. The same thing seems to happen. They begin with their first chapter, maybe the second, maybe even the third, and then they invariably stop. Something somewhere in what few words they've written isn't "right." They stop and like so many before them, they no longer continue forward.

I know some professionals edit as they go along, but for new authors, I always think this is a bad idea. Newtonian physics apply to writing as much as they do to bodies in motion, I think. Unless acted upon by an outside force, forward motion begets forward motion. Keep writing and you will write more and more until you have a finished novel.

Yesterday I think I managed only a few hundred words--and by few I mean 500 at best out of two hours on a train. I was tired and completely out of the habit of writing. Today, I wrote on the morning train (1300) words and again at lunch (1200) words. It feels great. It feels like my engine is finally warmed up. And it feels like I am in motion. As long as I keep writing, I will remain in motion.

Exploring the Subgenre

An agent asked me at the end of last year, "Do you have any sword and sorcery?" I love sword and sorcery. Okay, I love Conan. I have extolled the greatness that is He-Man and Thundarr the Barbarian here before and they're both just rip-offs of Conan. If you say sword and sorcery, I think Robert E. Howard. I'm sure other people have written sword and sorcery. Other people than Tolkien have written epic fantasy, but unlike him, I can't tell you a single sword and sorcery author that didn't make his mark by writing pastiche Conan stories first.

And that's a problem, isn't it? Do you have any sword and sorcery? No, because I don't read sword and sorcery. I read Conan. I don't think I could write one without just telling a similar story, I said.

That's what I said, and I meant it. But dammit that agent asking for it seemed like the excuse I needed to tell the story I had been wanting to tell for so long. Fuck it. I'm going to write sword and sorcery and readers will see the influences and that's okay. Hell, John Scalzi went so far as to mention STARSHIP TROOPERS at the end of OLD MAN'S WAR (of which the ties become very obvious a third of the way into the story). I can do the same. It'll be okay.

So here we go, miss agent. I'm writing you a Conan story.

...

Wait, why is my protagonist a 20-year-old woman? How did that happen? Where's Conan? This is a Conan story. What are you doing here, lady? Oh, you want to be the main character? Okay, I guess that's fine. I don't usually write females as main characters. It's not a matter of gender, just a matter of the stories I choose to tell. Klara was supposed to be my first female main character, but that's the second book of a trilogy that isn't being published. She's like Hilary Clinton and you're like Elizabeth Warren. I've been assuming Klara was going to be first for so long that I didn't notice Amelia just walking up and saying, "This is my story."

But hey, my Conan story has turned into an Amelia story, and that's pretty cool. I think it'll be better for it. I still have a Conan-esque character (and an Ookla-esque character for that matter, if the reference makes sense to you), but they're there to further Amelia's story. Oh, and sorcery and lasers and radiation and a post-cataclysm world. Let's rock this thing.

I don't usually love a story this much this early in the draft. I hope that's a good sign.

Escaping the List

I love fantasy but there are fantasy characters that make me put a book down as soon as I see they're involved.

Vampires
Werewolves
Zombies
Dragons

Wait, what? Dragons? How could dragons be on the list? It's the most iconic monster in all of fantasy. Smog, anyone?

And that's the thing. The dragon is the most overdone creature in the genre. No one does anything interesting with them. No one twists them in new ways. It's the same hard-scaled, fire breathing, treasure hoarding, lanced knight riding on its back because this super powerful creature is somehow still beholden to humans, monster in every book.

There are some books I'm missing out on. I've been told by numerous trustworthy sources that I'm missing some worthwhile novels because of this policy (TWELVE, THE GREYFRIAR, etc.) and it got me to thinking. Maybe I'm missing something worth reading. Now I could read either of the above because vampires are so high up on the list, it'll take more than some really good recommendations for me to pull them off. Sparkle or no sparkle, no vampires nada.

In 1999, I gave up watching TV. It seemed like nothing good was on TV and the commercials were atrocious! I didn't give the tube a try again for five years when I found out I missed both Firefly and The West Wing. I missed other good shows like Buffy and Angel, but Firefly and The West Wing rate in my top five best television shows ever. EVER. And I missed them.

So what books am I missing?

So I looked around and saw something that piqued my interest, a little ditty edited by Anne Sowards, who I've gotten to know on Twitter and she's pretty cool. SONG OF THE BEAST by Carol Berg.

Dragons are still the big scaled things that breathe fire, but the premise as to why the are beholden to humans, the origin stories of how dragons affected the world, and their need for the main character. It's a great idea. It's a genius idea! I'm still coming to terms with the ending, but I wouldn't hesitate recommending this book. If you're looking for some good fantasy, give it a try. I'm so glad I picked it up.

Transcending Genre

I'm not a huge Neil Gaiman fan. I do not dislike him, but in the scale of fandom that belongs to him, most everyone I know falls into the "I would give him a kidney if he asked for it" category, and I'm not there. Not all his stories resonate with me. And while my wife owns all his books, and I am thus at my liberty to try them all, I tend not to finish most I start.

The exception to this is Neverwhere. I love me some Neverwhere. I love it so much because if I was going to write that story, I would write it pretty much just the same. (That's big praise from me because I write the stories I want to read, thus he's doing all the work for me and I can sit back and relax as a reader unconcerned with being the writer.) I used a rarely used word today to fit into Twitter's 140-character limit, elseways. It reminded me of Neverwas (a good movie, check it out) which sent me on to Neverwhere.

I would love to write a book named Elseways, but I think if I did, it would end up being a lot like Neverwhere. That got me thinking on what kind of story I would write for Elseways. I bounce around within fantasy a lot: traditional, pre-steampunk, post-apocalyptic pulp, sword and sorcery, epic, contemporary. The one I never write on is urban. Urban is not my cup of tea. And too often, people use urban when they really mean contemporary. Urban fantasy deals with worlds within worlds, most often fairies, vampires, and/or werewolves, but regardless, it includes a Venn diagram of a world laying on top of our own that of which the average citizen is unaware.

Neverwhere is Urban Fantasy. But because Urban Fantasy is not my cup of tea, I balked at it and thought to myself, really, isn't it more contemporary? That was an unfounded claim because clearly there is a Venn diagram of worlds going on, which is the requirement I just put forth. So what's the problem? Well, so much urban fantasy is about fairies, vampires, and/or werewolves that something like Neverwhere just seems like a high-quality contemporary fantasy. And I'm really loving contemporary fantasy right now. Thus, I want this book I like to fall into a genre I like. Logic be damned!

I think if I were to ever write an urban fantasy, it would be Elseways. That's a title that could get me over that hump. The real goal wouldn't be to write in a subgenre that isn't tea, but to write a book that isn't Neverwhere. I already associate them and I just came up with the damn title. That's not a very good sign.

That and I don't actually have a story. But I have a title now, so dibs. I call dibs. Go find your own title.

(And happy new year.)

Bringing KITT Back

First let me apologize for my absence. I've been fiddling with more personal, non-writing specific posts. That was fine and all, but there was one topic I've been trying to tackle for awhile that is difficult because it involves another company owned by the company that owns mine. In other words, there's a lot I'm not allowed to say, even if it was in support of the company. At least, a lot I'm not allowed to say without getting permission, and I don't want to go through that hassle. Job is over there. Joe the writer is over here. And I want to keep those two separate. I've been burned too many times in the past for not doing so.

And then there was the biggun. I was one of the three million people that lost power. Now I've lost power before, but I've always been fortunate in that it comes on a few hours later. I think the longest I've ever gone without power (as a result of a calamity and not the electric company turning it off or not having a home to power) was five hours. Not this time! Three and a half days. And that's still not as bad as some! But you learn a lot about how your house is heated when there is none. We eventually had to flee to a motel as the heat fell below 40 degrees in our house. We were lucky that we got a room in town, one of two that required we wait in the motel lobby for an hour waiting for reservations to be cancelled.



So then power came back and I had a lot of work to catch up on. Still, I had an idea today I'd like to share. While it's still not the post I've been brainstorming on for awhile, I think a lot of you might find it recognizable.

Those of you 30 or older, at least. The youngins might only remember the reboot from a couple years ago. And if you remember it, I apologize. It was quite awful. I would rate it worse than the reboot of Bionic Woman, which was sadly awful as well. What am I talking about? Knight Rider.

It's the show that made David Hasselhoff famous before Baywatch. It aired at a time when Saturday morning still showed cartoons (not Power Rangers or VR Troopers or any of that offal, I'm talking about real cartoons). Saturday afternoons were the pantheon of young boy television. A-Team, Incredible Hulk, Airwolf, Knight Rider, Battlestar Galactica (original). Dear lord, I weep just thinking about its greatness (I also weep when I watch the pilot of Airwolf and discover just how bad that show was).

I'm also old enough that I got the tail end of the greats from the previous decade. That means the Six Million Dollar Man and the original Bionic Woman. Plus all their made-for-TV movies! SO. GOOD!

I was excited to see the reboot of Bionic Woman and sad to see they missed the mark so badly. I gave Knight Rider a chance. I had given Knight Rider 2000 a chance, so why not this? I had less confidence that they could do it right because it's such a niche story that the original series covered a lot of bases. And as expected, it was a crapper. Even with Val Kilmer as KITT. Like so much TV, they tried to be what the other show wasn't, even though the other show worked for its time. Now you had a car that could do everything, a hot shot idiot driver, and an ex-flame with an axe to grind as the scientists daughter.

These things are expected. There are so many political decisions that go into TV casting now, that you can't have an all-guy cast except for the chicks in bikinis like you could in the '80s. That's a good thing. But it's approached with specific biases (e.g. your lead still needs to be a white male) that it makes casting pretty predictable.

Today, for some reason I cannot imagine, pieces for the show fell into place. The reboot had a few right ideas in that it needed a younger cast. Not the middle-aged guy talking to the old guy except when he was talking to his car. It needs some women who are competent. And it needs a talking car. It doesn't need an "on the run from the law" when in the first episode you introduce a car that can do everything. There is no cop in the country that's going to catch your car, so why are we watching?

So here's what we do. Make the lead Idris Elba or Taye Diggs. Let's break that "all leads must be white" mold right now. We know it's not true and these two are recognizable enough that it won't be a big stretch for the less liberal of America to sign onto the concept.

Knight Industries returns as a military research and design company, run by an old white guy. We'll name him Michael Knight. It never made sense that Knight Industries was run by Devon Miles and Michael Knight was just an employee. Let's fix that with a little throw-back to the old series. It's a pity Edward Mulhare couldn't fill that role because that would have been awesome. RIP, sir. This new character is the CEO and head of research, the guy that started it all. And while the company has grown well beyond that scope (we'll see later), Dr. Knight is all about military research that saves lives.

Specifically, he's working on an adaptive AI program to be installed in military Humveess to reduce the amount of casualties by IEDs and other impediments. They are in the final testing phase before the computer system goes operational. His team?

Captain Taye Diggs Idris Elba, United States Army, detached to Knight Industries to serve as military liaison, field expert, and the best damn driver in the military.

White chick engineer. Former military. She doesn't mind getting greasy and she's great with machines. Mix Zoe with Kaylee from Firefly and you're looking good here.

Indian nerd. Let's get rid of the typical gangly guy with the thick nerds or the FOB import. Have an Indian guy great in electronics without the accent that doesn't look like he was beat up all his life. He just likes to get his nerd on. (The first time you see KITT's red light going back and forth, I'd love to see the computer say "By your command." It makes me squee with glee.)

Chinese AI expert. He's your mole. Oh, that's right. We're throwing some Scarecrow and Mrs. King in to this thing. We're well ahead of China on adaptive AI, and they send in a ringer to take what we have and eliminate the team. Make it look like an accident. The Humvee explodes, but Taye Elba saves the primaries of the team (except for Michael Knight and the red shirt engineers who don't get names).

This is all part of a grander espionage that the team must foil because there's not time for anyone else to do so! But in so doing, they alert the Chinese spy they're still alive and still have the technology. They install the AI into Captain Taye Elba's own sports car and use it to save the day. Most of its systems are off-line because it was built to be in a custom-made Humvee. It can't go invisible or any of that stupid shit.

Now Michael Knight's daughter shows up. She runs Knight Industries clandestine unit, farming out equipment and computer resources to the CIA and such. The entire team has been declared dead and there's an espionage war that America can't openly fight. Do they want to wave the red, white, and blue while using awesome gadgets and kicking some ass? Why yes they do.

Oh but wait, their families have been told they're dead. Captain Taye Elba was privy to some super heavy top secret shit. If ever he disappeared or was killed, his family would be relocated with new identities. He has a wife! He has a son and a daughter! And now they're gone. He never got to tell them he was okay. He must find them. But Young Knight chick won't let him. It's for their own safety. And KITT is still an infant AI and follows its own protocols, doing what it must to keep Taye Elba away from his family. Oh the angst! Who can he trust? Who are his friends? And what other dangers are there out there aside from the Chinese! A resurgent Russia, a corrupt military industrial complex, and a boss who never seems on the level.

Dun. Dun. DUUUUUNNNNNNN!!!!

Okay, Hollywood. Get on that. That's a show I would watch as long as you don't make it suck.

(How not to make it suck. Have them working to get KITT operational through the climax, but they can't get it working in time and the humans carry the load on their own. At the end of the pilot, THEN have KITT finally go online. Having a car that can do anything basically means you're filming 41 minutes of car chases which is Nascar without the beer.)

Shaking It Up

So my wife and I used the last of our groupons for the year. We're fortunate that she acquired so many earlier this year because with our current financial hardships, none of this would have been possible.

A year ago for my birthday, I drove up to the North Country. I had the day off and I wanted to go up to the mountains so that's what I did. I stopped at Canterbury, New Hampshire. There's a shaker village there. Don't know what the shakers are? They're like quakers but awesomer.

I didn't know they were awesomer at the time, but as our groupon (actually I think it was NH Daily Deals), we got a reduced admission and got to take the tour (which normally costs $17 per person). So that's what we did over the weekend. We headed up to Canterbury and took the guided tour, which is one of the better guided tours I've ever been on. And it was there that we learned about the shakers.

Dude! Dood! I've never experienced Christians like these. Truly, I was moved, and I'm not even Christian! Civil equality, feminism, hard work, scientific advancement, all in the 18th century! Don't think about all that being part of a religious sect back then, do you? They invented the clothes pin, the washing machine, the circular saw, the dorothy cloak, the rotating oven, and the flat broom. And most of those were invented by women! They boiled the sheets of the sick every day, changed clothes every day, and considered all labor equal and important in the eyes of god. So while they fell into typical gender roles in terms of work, that was more a matter of upper body strength and there was no difference between working in the laundry and plowing the fields. They were all fine work to be cherished.

The method invented for drying clothes in the winter was AWESOME! And really, the method for tracking everything in a proto-socialist society (you only owned your toothbrush and your comb) was super awesome. Everything (from a spoon to your short) had a demarcation. Each building had a letter and each room/drawer/cupboard had a number. So if someone found your missing shirt under a bench, you would return to your room and find your shirt laundered and pressed and in your shirt drawer because it had D.14.7 embroidered in it which means that shirt is stored in the 7th drawer of the 14th room in the Dwelling house.

DOOD!

It's actually pretty sad that there are only three shakers left in America (in Maine). The New Hampshire village has been turned into a museum, and I'm glad it was. I would have hated to miss out on learning about these people. I will absolutely use some of this stuff somewhere in a story.

(Also, Ken Burns did a documentary on them, if you want to learn more and can't make it out to one of the villages-turned-museum.)

Collaboration!

I will admit that I'm not a fan of collaboration. But I realized today that it's not a matter of not being a fan of collaboration, it's just that collaboration has never been presented to me in a fashion that I particularly cared for. But then I got linked to a video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing Nirvana's Lithium at a show in Seattle. And from there I got linked to hitRECord. Holy balls! This is genius!

Now I will say that I have not yet registered for this site (but I will) or participated (but I will). I will also admit to having a huge man-crush on JGL. He's one of my favorite actors. I will go see a movie if he's in it because I trust the quality of his work (he owes me big for GI Joe). But take a look at this video and tell me that doesn't make your creativity bone tingle. It tingles right down in the coccyx.

Kimball Farm in Westford, MA

We have a tradition here in the Selby household. My wife's birthday is a month and a half before mine and our anniversary is in between. We make a birthaversary event out of it. For each of our birthdays, we choose a place we want to eat and an adventure we want to go on. This year, Jen wanted to go to an awesome Greek restaurant named Amphora in Derry, NH. For her adventure, she wanted to go to Kimball Farm in Westford, MA. She's wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride for awhile, but they're incredibly expensive out here (maybe everywhere). Kimball turns out to have an "aeroballoon" ride. It's a big helium balloon tied to a passenger ring that holds twelve people. They raise it on a winch and you fly 300 feet in the air.

They also have two mini-golf courses (that were a lot of fun), batting cages, an arcade, animals, and bumper boats. You get the right idea when you hear bumper boats, bumper cars but on water. But it is SO much more fun! Take an outboard motor, put it in the center of an intertube, drop a seat over it, and go to town!



I could do this for hours! If you're ever in the area, you should definitely give it a try. It was an awesome adventure.

Kindlegraph

I said it would be cool to add your signature to an ebook at a signing and three days later it's real!

It sure would be cool if I had a million dollars...

...

I'll let you know what happens on Monday.

As for the above, it's a good first start but their invasion of your Twitter privacy is a deal breaker (not to mention it's only for the kindle and I prefer the nook).

Progress!

And the Blind Shall See

If I had known that I was going to attend Sara Megibow's Writer's Digest webinar today, I would have posted earlier. It was a last minute decision1, and boy am I glad I attended.

It was a seminar on querying. I have attended such a seminar before hosted by her boss, Kristin Nelson. That seminar was geared specifically for sff. I've also followed Kristin's blog for YEARS, so I've heard a lot from the Nelson Agency about what makes a good query. So why did I attend? Because I continue to suck at queries.

Actually, at first, I asked Sara on Twitter whether I would get anything new from the presentation. And while she admitted that their philosophy on queries is pretty similar, there was one fundamental point I was short-selling: Sara isn't Kristin.

It has to be hard for an associate agent to work for a popular and established agent. How easy must it be to assume she parrot's Kristin's opinions or is the "second" option at the agency. Attend a webinar hosted by Sara, and you'll have that misconception dispelled. I will go so far as to say I learned MORE from Sara's presentation (which wasn't geared specifically to sff) than I did from Kristin's.

The part that resonated with me the most is when she took examples of debut authors and showed us how she took their query letters and formulated her pitch to editors2. That made a REALLY big difference in how I see queries and how I will approach them in the future. I rewrote the query for JH but am waiting for the audio archive to become available and listen a second time before I finalize things. It feels like there's a hole in the middle, which probably means it's perfect.

Now, if you're counting pennies and this kind of topic doesn't seem worth the expense, I will also point out that the webinar ends with a QA session3 and then you get to submit your query to Sara for critique. This is like a free swing. Here's my query. *feedback* Okay, here's my revised query, no harm no foul!4 I have heard from other people that sometimes the expense is enough for this fact alone. Basically they're buying a query critique and the rest is just icing.

For me, querying truly is my biggest weakness5. I want to improve and I feel that I have. Looking back at previous queries, I definitely have. *shudder*

If this sounds like something that may be helpful to you or if you've been on the fence about this kind of thing, I strongly recommend it.


1 Okay, technically it was a last sixty minutes decision. I went and grabbed lunch and then came back and participated.

2 She even spoiled Roni Loren's big reveal of her new cover. I know a secret!2 1/2

2 1/2 A secret until tomorrow when Roni reveals her new cover.

3 Sara saw a question I submitted and said hi to me. I squeed like a tween fangirl. :D

4 The query I submitted after Kristin's webinar led to the closest I've been to signing an agent.

5 Shut up, Liz! I like my pacing just fine.

Feline Masters



There are many reasons why I prefer cats over dogs. Many many reasons. Today's reason is because their genius knows no limit. We have three cats, an old man and a brother and sister we adopted a year and a half ago. The young boy fancies himself the king of the jungle and regularly mauls a string I run in circles for him.

Alas, I was unavailable yesterday and his sister wanted to play too. So the young buck (heretofore known as Wolfgang) took his string in mouth, hopped up on the kitchen table, and dangled it over the side. The young lass (heretofore known as Jitterbug) then proceeded to play string with him, no humans involved.

This level of complex thought staggers me. Truly they will rule the world some day.

GOO! (RE: He-Man)

I often site the original He-Man mini-comics that came with the toys as one of the largest influences of my writing career. It's very true. I was five when I was allowed to buy my first He-Man figure and those comics stirred a creativity in me that I had never known before.

...AND NOW THEY'RE ONLINE!!!!!!!!!!!

You must go read them all right now. Then you will want to write fantasy too!

The site is alphabetical. They're better in order of release. Here are the first four when He-Man was more Conan and less television cartoon product:

Sweet, Sweet Crazy

I don't hop on the bandwagon too often, but this was just too much fun not to share. I've seen it a couple places, but Pat at Pat's Fantasy Hotlist convinced me to click and read the comments.

It's best if you read the review (which I think is incredibly fair), but then you have to read the comments. My favorite is the 8th comment. That is the epitome of professionalism. Epitome.

(And if Jacqueline Howett should find my blog, your sentence structure is atrocious.)