Casting THE THING IN THE WOODS

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about what The Thing in the Woods would look like as a television series. I was recording a podcast with Jarod Cerf--which ultimately came out in March 2018--about Thing and we discussed actually casting a Thing in the Woods television series or movie. There are spoilers below.

James-The protagonist of the story, an Atlanta teen unwillingly transplanted to small-town Georgia. Jarod suggested Tom Holland, but in Captain America Civil War and Spider-Man Homecoming, Holland is entirely too cheerful and happy-go-lucky. There's a darker, more serious aspect to James--heck, he blows 20-30 cultists to hell with a Claymore mine--that I have trouble imagining Holland pulling off. Also, although Tom has the right hair and facial structure in this picture, he's lacking in freckles. Michael Cena also came up, but I took one look at him and was all, "No." Jarod suggested mining teen shows like the ones on The CW for candidates, and that might be a good idea. After all, Tom Holland would probably command a very high salary to star in what would realistically be a low-budget indie horror show.

Amber-The female lead and James' love interest, an Edington native and a fellow high-school senior. Amber is based on a girl I knew a long time ago back when I was a newspaper reporter who looked a lot like Taylor Swift. I have no idea if Taylor Swift can act, but between her being much older than the character (Amber is 17-18, Taylor is 28) and the fact it would only be worth her time if she were paid a truly mammoth amount of money, that's not going to work. Whoever plays Amber has to be tall and slender and realistically able to fight with a gun and bash in an adult man's head with a brass lamp. I thought about Jennifer Lawrence--in this picture she looks perfect and in Hunger Games she showed she could be tough as well as pretty--but like Taylor Swift she's much older than the character and would require a heft salary. Yes, Dawson's Creek-style casting is a reality in Hollywood to the point there's even a TVTrope for it, but it's something I'd like to avoid.

Phil-The leader of the cult worshiping the titular Thing. The film Ravenous came up in the discussion, along with actor Richard Carlyle. I did a Google Image Search and this image came up. If Carlyle looked this this and could play a patriarch (i.e. loved and feared), he would be perfect to play Phil. Phil was a captain in Vietnam, so he'd be in his later 60s or 70s and he's specifically described as a grandfather. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Negan from The Walking Dead was another possible option for Phil, but he's too associated with Negan--people wouldn't see Phil, they'd see "Negan sacrificing people to a tentacle monster."

Sam-I'd initially thought Jeffrey Dean Morgan could play Sam, a Gulf War veteran and Phil's henchman. He'd need to shave the beard and play him as more of a sad-sack good-guy type. In terms of appearance, the way he looks in P.S. I Love You--you can see some of those here--would be great. As Jarod pointed out, this is a man who is introduced going to a Best Buy to get a copy of Borat for his new Blu-Ray player. Problem is, I re-read parts of the book for a flashback and Sam is actually a tall, wiry redhead with a goatee. Danny Bonaduce might work as far as looks, although he's a little too beefy. Matthew Jaeger might work better.

James Daly Sr.-James' father, an Atlanta attorney. The perfect actor in terms of looks would be Chris Noth, who plays Peter Florrick in The Good Wife. I've never seen him act before--I never watched the show, I think this was something Jarod suggested--so I don't know if he could pull him off.

Andrea Daly-James' mother, who worked in bank public-relations, left the workforce to raise the kids, and works part-time at a used bookstore to help support the family. I can't really remember what she looks like, although I think she's blonde. A bunch of possibilities can be found here, including some who wouldn't break the bank in terms of their salaries.

Jeffrey Reed-He's the cult's enforcer and Phil's personal attack dog. He needs to be someone who's big and strong enough to manhandle whoever plays Sam. Although Norman Reedus--Daryl from The Walking Dead--is rednecky enough to be Reed, he's not going to be realistically throwing around Sam played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. In the Walking Dead episodes where Daryl is a captive of the Saviors, it's clear Negan is taller than he is. Some of the thuggier Saviors from Walking Dead might work too, although again, if Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Sam, we run into the issue of "why are they beating up Negan instead of the other way around." Tom Hardy might work, except he's British.

Maad-Most of the male Indian actors in Hollywood are too old to play a high-schooler. Here's an IMDB list. Karan Brar seems like the best one, since he was born in 1999 and is a Disney Channel actor. Danny Pudi might work, but he's about 10-15 years older than Maad. Aba Sinha from The Social Network and Kunal Sharma are younger, but still in the same boat.

AH Scenario: The U.S. Nukes Dresden...And Others

I'm still self-banned from the alternate-history forum I've been a member of since high school in order to focus on my day job and more important projects (like finishing my planned sequel to The Thing in the Woods), but I still visit the public sections fairly regularly. There's a relatively new scenario that might be of interest to World War II enthusiasts.

Behold "The Atomic Bombing of Germany, 1945." According to The Good War, an oral history of WWII that I read for AP U.S. History in high school, the atomic bomb was always intended for Germany, although the European war ended before it was ready. In this alternate timeline, the Trinity atomic bomb test takes place in 1944--how the bomb is ready a year earlier isn't discussed in detail, but a memoir by a Manhattan Project scientist on how it could have gone faster is cited--allowing for Germany to be targeted soon after the Battle of the Bulge.

Germany hasn't gotten nuked yet, but the B-29s are gathering in Britain and a lot of faux historical articles in the timeline indicate when the hammer is about to fall. Dresden is going to suffer its historical fate (albeit somewhat worse, if it suffers Hiroshima level casualties as opposed to the real-life ones), and a couple other German cities are on the target list.

I'm not going to apply for readmission to the site just to post on this (and probably get sucked into endless discussions about Star Wars, Donald Trump, etc. in other sections of the forum), so I hope it gets updated soon.

Music Inspired By Other Faiths I Enjoy

As most of you know, I am a Christian. I'm a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), although given the theological liberalism of much of the PC-USA, ECO is looking more and more interesting. However, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy listening to music inspired by other faiths. Here are some examples:



Given how this is based on Miriam's "Song of the Sea" from the Book of Exodus and Christianity has no validity except as the successor of Judaism, this isn't really "another faith" per se. It's still in Hebrew--"mi chomocha" means "who is like you, Lord?" according to a Jewish friend. The artist is Debbie Friedman, who seems like the Jewish equivalent of a contemporary Christian artist.



This one invokes the Horned God of Wicca, the lord of the hunt, and this one is actually a bit raunchy. The notion of the gods coming down and having their way with mortals is alien to the Abrahamic tradition (before anyone starts, the conception of Jesus was a non-sexual supernatural act--we don't worship Zeus here), but many polytheistic cultures have plenty of demigods. One wonders what it's like to be part of a religious tradition where getting knocked up by a god is a distinct possibility. This song is by S.J. Tucker, who has liked some of my comments on Twitter.



The Norse story of Ragnarok has always been interesting to me, especially since I read the story of Thor and his Mutual Kill with the serpent Jormundgand in James Byron Huggins' novel Leviathan. A pity iTunes doesn't have this, because I'd love to buy it. For the record, this is a Sabaton cover of a song by Amon Amarth, but since Sabaton actually enunciates, it sounds a lot better. There are Christian songs celebrating Jesus's return like Nicole Sponberg's "Hallelujah" or the various versions of "Days of Elijah," so a song celebrating Thor's self-sacrifice in destroying a monstrous world-devouring snake would work too.



This is about ritual magic I think, and given the reference to "so mote it be," perhaps it refers to Wicca. In S.M. Stirling's The Protector's War (I think), a Wiccan priestess thinks to herself "I will have him. So mote be it" or something to that effect upon meeting the man who will eventually become her husband. This is also by S.J. Tucker. Let the record state that the Bible condemns all forms of occultism, not just "black magic," so listen to the song if you wish but don't go doing what's described.

(Also let the record state that the magic in Harry Potter isn't the type of magic the Bible condemns with the exception of divination, which is generally depicted as fraudulent.)



This one is by Manowar. If I were an Asatruar (a practitioner of the Norse religion), I'd be interested in licensing "Loki God of Fire" for religious purposes. It gets the character of Loki right--in most of the Norse myths, he was a trickster but was still a friend of the gods. I suspect the influence of Christianity made him into a more overtly demonic entity, although I'm not sure. Evidence for the worship of Loki in ancient times is scant but it's not nonexistent, but there are some modern Asatruar who worship him. Given my propensity for shocking people, I could imagine going for Loki-ism as a means of seeking attention. :)



Sometimes it's hard to understand what exactly they're saying, but they're invoking the names of various mythological goddesses like Astarte (Semitic), Inanna (Mesopotamian), Kali (Hinduism), Isis (Egyptian), Hecate (Greek), Demeter (Greek), and Diana (Roman). It's my understanding that Wiccans believe that all the gods are aspects of the Horned God and all goddesses are aspects of the Goddess (in one of S.M. Stirling's books the Hebrew God is referred to as the "jealous" aspect), which would allow for deities to be invoked willy-nilly despite being members of different pantheons.

Although I've got a friend who really loves Muslim nasheeds (which might have contributed to his conversion to Sufism), I haven't got any here. I've never listened to them. Perhaps I'll check them out.

Many of these songs are produced by actual musicians. If these are songs you're interested in listening to, I would recommend you purchase them on iTunes. Even though I found most of these on YouTube, I ultimately purchased them so the artist could be paid for their work.

My Reylo Plot Bunny, Or Why I'm Going To Hell (LAST JEDI Spoilers)

One of my real-life friends is a major Star Wars fan and, in particular, is a Reylo shipper. Yes, she wants Kylo Ren, also known as Ben Solo, the son of Han and Leia who fell to the dark side, to have a romantic relationship with Rey. Based on what happened in The Force Awakens I didn't think that would be particularly healthy. Seriously, he tries to mind-rape her (only to get mind-raped himself), kills her new friend/father-figure (and his own actual father) in front of her, sadistically injures one of her friends, tries to forcibly recruit her to the Dark Side ("YOU NEED A TEACHER!") while shoving a lightsaber in her face, and then she proceeds to beat the crap out of him. Had she submitted to his recruitment/wooing at any point before she turned the tables and taken a chunk of his face and shoulder, it would have certainly been unequal and abusive.

However, the events of The Last Jedi have made me far more interested in the idea. Here there be spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie, don't keep reading:

Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver spend much of the film having telepathic Force chats and clearly have a great deal of chemistry. She clearly desires him physically to at least some degree, based on her reaction to seeing him with his shirt off. When Kylo reveals that Luke had tried to kill him as a teen, she takes his side immediately ("DID YOU CREATE KYLO REN?") and sets off to redeem him much like Luke had tried to save his father Darth Vader in the original trilogy. When his master Snoke has her at his mercy, he kills him to save her and then the two of them gloriously battle Snoke's bodyguard and wreck the hell out of them together. Kylo then asks her to join him...but she's not buying it because she wants him to call off the pursuit of the fleeing Resistance and he wants to finish them in order to "let the past die." They briefly battle over Anakin's old lightsaber, Kylo is knocked out, and Rey flees the ship. Someone pointed out online that her feelings are for Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren, and he's just "doubled down" rather than renounced evil.

Of course, beyond the fact that Rey isn't willing to betray her morals and let her Resistance friends get killed to get her hands on the beefy Darth Emo, there're additional problems. Kylo's attempt to woo her even after he's killed Snoke is manipulative and emotionally abusive. "You're nothing...but not to me." He's trying to break her down and make her emotionally dependent on him, which I believe is called "negging." That's probably the same kind of crap Snoke pulled with him. "Mom and Dad and Uncle Luke don't care about you, but I do." If Rey had gone along, it'd be continuing the cycle of abuse. Someone I've communicated with on Twitter suggests his intentions toward Rey are more benign than Snoke's were toward him and given how Rey is clearly more powerful he probably knows better than to overstep, but still. I pointed out on Twitter that it's Kylo's responsibility to repent of his wickedness, not Rey's responsibility to fix him. Seriously the "good girl saves bad boy" cultural meme has harmed vastly more good girls than it's saved bad boys.

However, there is a way forward that doesn't involve Rey sacrificing her morals and independence, even for Adam Driver. After Snoke's death the First Order General Hux nearly shoots the unconscious Kylo and when he attempts to stand up to his presumptuous power-grab, Kylo violently puts him his place. Kylo knocks Hux around sometime later...and then proceeds to look like a flailing maniac in front of the First Order's army when Luke does his astral projection thing. Not only does Kylo not remember Machiavelli's adage "never do your enemy a small injury," but he's just lost the respect of a lot of his troops. Hux is now in a good position to take revenge.

So I'm thinking Hux will finally find his balls and stage a coup against Kylo, probably once he gets a safe distance away. Kylo will survive and go on the run and end up hitting rock bottom, which might have been Luke's intention by showing him up so publicly in the first place. The Dark Side, seeking power over others, etc. has cost him his family, the power he'd briefly achieved, the woman he's got at least a Villainous Crush on, etc. After all, I believe everybody is redeemable, but you have to WANT to repent, and as of the end of The Last Jedi, Kylo doesn't. Getting overthrown and forced into hiding might change that. The image I had was him crying into blue milk in the Mos Eisley cantina. Meanwhile, Rey has recruited some young Force sensitives to be her new Jedi padawans (I'm thinking the stable-boy from the end of the film and for the purposes of this story an older girl who looks and acts a lot like Wednesday Addams). Upon hearing of a powerful Force user, she arrives on Tatooine and finds...him. They initially get into a confrontation only for the First Order troops to arrive and they have to fight them off together.

Then they give into all the unresolved sexual tension and hook up. I'm imagining that Force-sensitive stable-boy, now a little bit older, finding them in the Millennium Falcon bunk and the following exchange:

Stable Boy: "Master Rey, what are you doing with him?"

Rey (hastily covering herself): "We're having some...philosophical exchange."

Wednesday Addams: "Looks like something else was getting exchanged."

Yes, I'm going to hell.

On a more serious note this could be a retelling of the Expanded Universe story of Luke Skywalker's recruitment of Kam Solusar, a fallen Jedi who'd been forcibly converted to the Dark Side by Darth Vader, only with a romantic plot. It'd probably be more conflicted too--part of what makes Kylo interesting as a character is his emotional complexity, the tension between the Dark and the Light. Even though Kylo would know full well the bad end the road goes, the Dark Side might still have its attractions, and the power it can provide would be really helpful when the First Order is reconquering the galaxy, the Republic has been decapitated, and the Resistance is gutted. Meanwhile, Rey is clearly not going to approve of anything that could herald Ben Solo reverting to Kylo Ren and, voila, drama.

On the other hand, if we ended up with a synthesis of Rey's and Kylo's ideas re: the Force...Grey Jedi? Seriously Disney, if this is generally where you're going with it (obviously they're not going to have sex jokes in a Star Wars movie), don't just abandon the idea to avoid possible liability issues.

Thoughts on a THING IN THE WOODS Television Series

Once upon a time at DragonCon 2011, I heard from author S.M. Stirling that short stories make good movies and books make good miniseries or television shows. Although many movies have been made from books (think Shawshank Redemption or Jurassic Park), many short stories like "Who Goes There," which became the film The Thing, provide plenty of material to work with. However, many books would need to be cut down to fit a 1.5 to 2 hour film (in Jurassic Park, for example, the staff briefly regain control of the park before everything collapses into even more dino-violence, while Congo lost multiple sequences, including an entire rival expedition). Making a book into a miniseries like The Stand or Roots or a full-blown television show like The Expanse, The Man in the High Castle, and Game of Thrones allows for much deeper exploration of characters, settings, etc.

More recently, I listened to an episode of The Creative Penn podcast that references the increasing demand for intellectual property by entities like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. For example, The Man in the High Castle is an Amazon Prime streaming show, and Amazon Studios has a whole lot of movies listed here. Amazon's submissions system is pretty interesting--it's like a crowd-judged contest.

With that in mind, I've put some thought into how my teen horror novel The Thing in the Woods would look as a television series. Spoilers below.

Episode #1: The episode would open with belligerent homeless Panama veteran Leroy Tolliver getting arrested by a couple of renegade sheriff's deputies in the small town of Edington, GA. Instead of being taken to the local jail, he's taken to place of sacrifice, where he's offered up to a tentacle monster worshiped by a local cult. Cut to protagonist James Daly working at the Edington Best Buy, where he meets Sam Dixon, a local man who is also a film enthusiast. Having purchased a movie, Sam goes to a nearby barbecue restaurant, where it's revealed he's a member of the cult and Phil Davidson, the owner, is the high priest. Sam argues with Phil over the death of Tolliver, who's a fellow veteran. Phil puts Sam in his place and it's revealed Sam's wife is Phil's cousin's stepdaughter and she has recently miscarried. James returns home and we meet his family--James Sr., an Atlanta attorney whom the Great Recession has left underemployed, his mother Andrea, and his younger sister Karen. We'll also meet Karen's friend Amber, a local theater enthusiast who has a crush on James. James "doesn't like liking" her back, thinking he can do better once he goes to college.

Episode #2: James and several fellow ex-Atlantans (Edington is rapidly becoming a bedroom community) have dinner at a local Zaxbys and get into a confrontation with some redneck kids. They're challenged to an ATV race. The following Saturday they meet up at a half-finished neighborhood and have their race...perilously close to the tree farm owned by the cult where Tolliver was sacrificed. The episode will end with James' rival Bill injuring himself, James' attempt to help him, and the tentacle monster attacking them both.

Episode #3: It begins with the appearance of the monster, the death of Bill, and James' escape on an ATV during which he gets slashed across the face. The other kids rush him to the hospital, where Deputy Bowie, a cult member, attempts to bully him into claiming Bill had knifed him and James had shoved him into the pond in self-defense. James' father intervenes, citing several holes in Bowie's story, and takes James home, where he's grounded. Meanwhile the cult gathers in the woods, where Phil is challenged by a relative of Bill's. Phil orders Sam, Bowie, belligerent racist cultist Jeffrey Reed, and another cultist off on a mission to kidnap Maad, an Indian friend of James who is an interracial relationship with a white girl, and his family to be sacrificed.

Episode #4: The cultists arrive at Maad's house and Bowie attempts to use his authority as a policeman to get Maad's family to come outside to be arrested. Reed reveals himself and his gun too early and all of them end up in a gunfight with Maad's father. Edington police arrive--Phil had forgotten the area had been annexed by the city government, whose police force is less infiltrated--and the cultists are forced to flee. Phil spins the failure as their god's judgement on the cult for various failings and persuades them to sacrifice Bill's angry relative instead. He begins plotting to kill the Atlanta teens...starting with James.

Episode #5: James is at work at the Best Buy when Amber comes to see him, ostensibly about some speakers for her television. Instead she interrogates him about what happened at the ATV race, hinting that she knows something. James agrees to meet her for ice cream to discuss it. Amber has to defend this decision to her prejudiced friends, who are convinced James murdered Bill. Soon afterward Sam arrives and reveals his role in the attempted abduction of Maad's family. He tells James to go to the library and check out a book about mysteries from the Civil War. James does so and learns about a Union detachment wiped out near Edington, with the sole survivor raving about "the thing in the woods." He encounters Karen, who is greatly amused that he's meeting up with Amber, but blackmails him into doing her chores.

Episode #6: James learns from Maad at school about what happened at his home. Later that day, he and Amber have their date and Amber reveals that her uncle had been killed by the cult in the 1960s for helping a civil rights activist escape being murdered. Furthermore, she's distantly related to both Sam and Phil. She advises James and his family to get out of town immediately. James and Amber are spotted by James' mother, who calls him and orders further punishment for violating his grounding. Meanwhile, Sam argues with Phil again at the restaurant and soon after a mysterious man in a suit with dark glasses arrives and hints that he knows what happened. Phil orders the cult to go into action against James and his family immediately and orders Reed to attack Sam to keep him from interfering.

Episode #7: James is chewed out by his parents for violating his grounding while Reed attacks Sam and his wife. He's about to kill Sam (against Phil's orders) when Amber arrives and beats him into unconsciousness with a brass lamp. Sam's wife hogties him while Sam and Amber rush to James' house. The cultists have already invaded, chasing away James' mother and sister and kidnapping James' father. Sam discovers James hiding in a closet and, pretending to be a loyal cultist, takes him to his car. James briefly overpowers Sam, only to be restrained by Amber, who reveals they're going to rescue James' father and end the cult's reign of terror. They return to Sam's house where they collect various guns and some Claymore mines Sam stole from the local National Guard armory. Sam renounces the cult and dramatically re-embraces Christianity and they're off.

Episode #8: Sam drives his truck into the tree farm with James and Amber hidden in the back. James and Amber agree to go on a date and get a bit affectionate, interrupted by an amused Sam. James and Sam set up a Claymore mine, ordering the cultists assembled for the sacrifice of James' father to disperse, but one of the cultists draws a gun on them and James sets off the mine, killing most of the cultists. James rushes to free his father, only to be set upon by the surviving Phil. Sam distracts Phil, who shoots and wounds him but is in turn shot and killed by James. They untie James' father, but the nearby pond is roiling. The Thing in the Woods is coming.

Episode #9: The final confrontation with the Thing. It seizes Sam, who is wounded when James sets off the second Claymore mine. The monster is hurt, but it's able to kill and eat Sam before continuing after James, who's joined by Amber. The two retreat to the car with James' father, doing battle with surviving cultists who had been guarding the gate, while the monster pursues. James plants the third and last Claymore mine and finally kills the Thing, only for the Edington police and the mysterious man from the restaurant to arrive and arrest everybody. In the hospital (he received minor injuries that will become very important in the planned second book), James is forced to sign off on a statement that his father had been kidnapped by meth dealers who had a pet Kodiak bear and is promised a brand-new car (confiscated from drug dealers) to ensure his silence. The episode ends with James coming to collect said car from the police department before meeting up with Amber. As he drives toward her house, he grimly wonders what else strange might be out there in the world.

Thing could be a miniseries if I squeeze the above story into two or three longer episodes (as plotted out the above episodes wouldn't be very long), or perhaps one of those British TV series where it's a single, often rather short, season to tell a complete story and then it's done. Some material could be expanded to fill out a full season (or at least make ten episodes)--the novel strongly implies the civil-rights activists had been murdered and Amber's uncle captured and sacrificed by a much-younger Phil, which can be depicted in flashback. However, it doesn't have to end with just one season, I am working on a sequel, The Atlanta Incursion, that could serve as the basis for a the second season. I do have a third novel planned--there's a time-skip and it mostly takes place in Afghanistan--that could serve as a third season.

So moving back to that bit about Amazon crowd-judging television scripts. Maybe I should write one and send it over to one of my television-writer friends to take a look?

"Walking Dead" Season 8 Predictions Fulfilled (or not)

When Season 7 of The Walking Dead ended back in April, I made some predictions based on my own knowledge of military strategy about what would happen during Season 8. Now that Season 8 is halfway over, here's how things shook out. Spoilers ahead, obviously.

*For starters, although it would have been a good idea for the less-numerous forces of Alexandria, the Kingdom, and Hilltop to use the dead as weapons, I figured they'd use them mostly against the outposts rather than the Savior headquarters. This they did in one battle, laying siege to a Savior outpost and not pressing the attack until the dead Saviors began rising again and attacking their former comrades. That's not quite the same as doing what the Wolves did and using guys with air horns to herd massive numbers of zombies onto a target, but the principle is the same.

That said, I didn't anticipate Rick and company would have the sheer ruthlessness necessary to lead a horde of zombies into the Sanctuary. Granted, they (the troika of Rick, Maggie, and Ezekiel) didn't use the Walkers to destroy the Sanctuary completely like how Arcturus Mengsk used the Zerg to destroy the Confederate capital world of Tarsonis in the original Starcraft, instead using them to trap the Savior leadership cadre and the bulk of their forces while they picked off the Saviors' outposts. That's still taking a pretty big risk with one of the remaining centers of civilization and, based on the comments about "the workers," one of the few remaining manufacturing centers. And if the Saviors hadn't been able to hold the stairs when Daryl and his renegades smash a path for the zombies into the Sanctuary interior, the Saviors and the civilians under their thumb would have been annihilated.

*I vaguely knew the Kingdom would take major military losses (they do in the "All-Out War" arc in the comics), but I didn't anticipate the majority of Ezekiel's army getting machine-gunned. Seriously, it's just him and his sidekick Jerry returning to the Kingdom, with Ezekiel a broken mess. I'd thought the Kingdom powerful enough to fight the Saviors on its own earlier, with Ezekiel's caution after the losses they'd taken clearing out the dead staying their hand, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

*It seems Rick was able to bring the Scavengers (the "Junkyard Gang") on-side. Were I in his position I would have made their extinction top priority, but Rick erred on the side of mercy and diplomacy rather than making examples of people and it worked. At first. Perhaps the show-writers read the article claiming that The Walking Dead was a fascist show because it promoted group survival at the expense of others and morality as naivete, or perhaps The Week was always overstating its case to start with. After all, the closest thing to a fascist tyrant on the show is Negan, one of the villains.

Of course, the Scavengers are unreliable as always, and bug out as soon as they see that the Sanctuary is no longer besieged by the dead. Rick's lucky that Carol and friends just happened to be there. I think some reprisals against the Scavengers might be in order, but that'll have to be for later given the state of Rick and company's alliance at the end of the episode.

*As far as Negan's battle plan is concerned, he does seem to focus on defeating his enemies with a minimum of death--for the rank-and-file at least. Rick's former friend Morales, who had joined the Saviors at some point, tells Rick that he, Ezekiel ("the king"), and Maggie ("the widow") were to be taken alive is possible, with Negan later revealing he intended to kill "the best" people in "the worst" way to intimidate the rest. My strategy would have been to take out Rick, Maggie, etc. and restore the status-quo ante as quickly as possible, letting Ezekiel save face by claiming he'd been misled by them or something. Of course, that was based on my notion the Kingdom was much more powerful than it ended up being.

*When the Saviors launch their offensive, he goes straight for Alexandria in a coup de main against the enemy high command, particularly Rick. That was one of my possible Negan strategies, and it seemed to have worked. With the majority of Alexandria's troops apparently elsewhere, he's able to take the town with minimal effort. Were I in his position, however, I wouldn't have trashed the place. As he himself observes, the town has got plenty of useful assets like solar panels, and he knows from his spaghetti-making visit that the place still has electricity, running water, etc. His minion Gavin tells the residents of the Kingdom the Saviors intend to occupy the Kingdom as their new base of operations and one article about Season 7 said that it made no sense for Negan to not leave occupying forces in the towns that pay him tribute or move into a much nicer house in Alexandria.

Were I in his position, I'd have wanted the physical assets of the town as intact as possible rather than wasting resources in an attempt to terrorize people. Making it my new headquarters and putting one of my lieutenants in charge of the Sanctuary would be a bad idea given how the new commander of the Sanctuary could challenge me for control and/or misgovern it to the point they lose control (see the squabbling middle management and rebellious workers before Negan appears alive again in "The Big Scary U"), but claiming a house for my own and occasionally visiting and holding court there is doable.

*The episode reveals a critical weakness in the Saviors' military--Negan delegates a lot to his subordinates and doesn't seem to be in regular communication with them when on the offensive. Gavin doesn't seem to ever report back to Negan that he's taken the Kingdom but Ezekiel is nowhere to be found, while Simon captures Maggie and the Hilltop convoy, disarms them, and sends them home completely on his own. He never reports back to the boss that he's captured one of the top three priority targets alive. Given what he said about how Hilltop is needed to farm, Simon might have been given more latitude in that particular case, but he might also be going off the reservation due to his beef with Gregory. In any event, the Hilltop's force is largely intact and, though disarmed, might have a reserve of guns back home they can reequip with. Maggie herself remains in charge and is declaring that it might be them making a "last stand," so Simon's actions might end up requiring the Saviors to fight an unnecessary battle.

So if I were Negan and I found out about this, I'd first give Simon a hiding (if not remove him from power entirely--the man is unstable and entirely too nasty) and then make improving communications a priority. Given how Negan has his own radio network (last season our heroes pick up broadcasts from him), it shouldn't be that hard for his minions to keep in touch using CB radio or surviving cellular infrastructure.

Untold Stories Behind Other Stories

Sometimes when you see a movie, read a book, etc., there's something that indicates there's another interesting story in this world waiting to be told. Think Obi-Wan's reminiscing about how Darth Vader "had been a pupil of mine before he turned to evil" and "was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force." Although the Star Wars prequels weren't all they could have been to say the least (I left Revenge of the Sith straight-up laughing after "NOOOOO!"), it's my understanding the Clone Wars cartoon (the various versions of them) is well-done and the fall of Anakin Skywalker could have been a great tragedy in the Greek sense. He has his tragic flaws...fear of loss, anger...and between the negative influence that drawing on the Force using these emotions has and the fact a dark lord has been grooming him since the age of ten, things don't end well for Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme, the Jedi Order, etc.

Well, that can be applied to some other stories, ones much less well-known than Star Wars.

*I saw a high-school stage version of The Wedding Singer with a former girlfriend and there's a line where Julia reminisces that her young-Trump boyfriend Glenn used to be much sweeter before he got so much money. There might be a story there...Glenn could have entered the New York business world a much better person (perhaps emulating or working for a relative...there's a line in one of the songs "don't cry uncle unless your uncle's the CEO") and got seduced by the money, power, sex, perhaps drugs, etc. that this world offered and turned into a massive jerk. The Glenn we see in TWS is a selfish, controlling, narcissistic jerk, but the murderous warlord Darth Vader was once a pleasant little boy who loved his mother, had lots of friends, and wanted to free the slaves.

*Although I've never seen the Australian Western film The Man From Snowy River (at least in its entirety), I did become curious about it and found there was actually actually a live musical "arena spectacular." It tells broadly the same story as the original film--a penniless young cowboy proves his worth as a man and woos the daughter of a wealthy station owner--but look closely at the cast. One of the side characters is named "Harrison" and is a young cowboy who made a fortune betting on horse racing. The disapproving (until the sequel) father of the spirited young Jessica is named Harrison and he made the money he used to build his ranch betting on horses. The musical is actually a prequel to the film.

(Given how zealous he seems to be about keeping his daughter away from protagonist Jim Craig in the films, the love story from the "arena spectacular" might have ended badly and soured him on the whole "redneck cowboys wooing ranch heiresses" thing. Yes, Harrison is a controlling ass whose behavior alienated his brother, his dead wife, and his daughter, but if it turns out there's some actual wisdom hidden in the class prejudice, sexism, and narcissism it takes the events of both films to at least mitigate, it would make him more interesting.)

*In the Sharpe television series, there's a soldier named Harris who the other characters say should write a book. He's based on a real soldier, who wrote an enlisted man's account of the Napoleonic Wars entitled The Recollections of Rifleman Harris. How Harris "wrote" that book--an illiterate man, he dictated it to an officer friend who eventually got it published--could be an interesting story too.

(The fictional Harris is literate and dies at Waterloo in the TV series, but if Michael Crichton can do the "mostly dead" thing for Ian Malcolm in The Lost World--he dies in Jurassic Park but shows up in the sequel--so could Cornwell and friends if there's any interest.)

And there are plenty of other examples. The TVTropes "Hero of Another Story" and "Villain of Another Story" have plenty. The Avengers depicts Hawkeye and Black Widow bantering about something that went down in Budapest that I think could make a good basis for a prequel movie. In my Wastelands world (the first of many planned novels is under consideration by a major publisher, so fingers crossed), I have the villain Grendel's son Falki reference events I later turned into the novella "Son of Grendel. I also have another planned novella explaining just why Sergeant Ezekiel Thaxton fears the Blood Alchemy Host (an army of mutants bred in the shadow of an abandoned nuclear reactor) so much.

Older Newsletters to View, and Sign-Up for New Ones

Like many writers, I have an e-mail newsletter. I promised newsletter subscribers exclusive content, and although I haven't (yet) provided wholly original fiction or other more lavish perks other writers have, I have provided behind-the-scenes information, important announcements in advance, etc.

Here are some older newsletters for your perusal:

*This one features two short science-fiction stories a man I know from the alternate-history forum wrote and posted there. This might be my first exclusive content for my newsletter readers, except for the small issue that I'd posted it some years ago on the blog. Still, it's free content for one's readers. You've got to give people a reason to want to follow you, and other than friends/family and super-duper fans, people are probably not just going to be interested in what you're up to.

*This one informs my readers that I've got stories in a new collection, but also provides a lot of back-story for these tales that appear in it. For example, an early draft of "The Beast of the Bosporus" was reviewed by Philip Lee Williams, author of All the Western Stars. Based on his suggestions, I made the final battle in the harbor of Constantinople much less anti-climactic, among other things.

*In this one, I lead with an announcement that two of my stories will be free for Halloween. Again, you should emphasize what you can do for others, not what others can do for you. I then discuss my progress on various writing projects, including expanding Catalina Merrill's role in Battle for the Wastelands and a dieselpunk short story I still haven't finished revising.

*In which I discuss Kij Johnson's heartending short story "Ponies," which is a rather disturbing in which animal abuse is a metaphor for teen-girl bullying.  Given how common "mean girls crap" is, this is a story I felt would stand the test of time. It's also free content that might interest one's readers. This one also features why I might put out Little People, Big Guns under a pseudonym.

If receiving this type of information is something you'd enjoy, sign up here to subscribe to my newsletter. I'll be sending out some exclusive character-biography information tomorrow and I'll work my way up to better perks. I only send out once a month or so (or longer if there's nothing important happening), so don't worry about being spammed.

Another Military SF Novella: "Discovery and Flight"

Back in April, I blogged about my military scifi novella "Ten Davids, Two Goliaths," set in Lindsay Buroker's Fallen Empire universe. I've been really busy with real-life work stuff, so outside of my newsletter I haven't had the chance until now to reveal the sequel, "Discovery and Flight."

Here's the Amazon blurb:

A month has passed since Lieutenants Geun Choi and Tamara Watson and the other pilots of the Alliance's Dragon and Raptor squadrons destroyed the Imperial cruisers Achilles and Sarpedon. Now the Empire is brutally striking back, dispatching a fleet of warships to destroy the Alliance's outpost in the Kir Asteroid Belt.

Choi and Watson now have to face an enemy far more skilled and dangerous than two cruisers with trainee crews, one bent on their total annihilation. Fighting alongside them are expert Alliance pilots Alisa Marchenko and Bradford Tomich, but even their help might not be enough. Who will live and who will die when the Imperial battle-group comes knocking?

Taking place before and during the events of Lindsay Buroker's short story "Remnants" and after Quinn's previous novella "Ten Davids, Two Goliaths," this tale set in Lindsay Buroker's FALLEN EMPIRE universe will thrill fans of STAR WARS, FIREFLY, WING COMMANDER, and the adventures of Honor Harrington.

I'd planned since the publication of "Ten Davids" that the buddy-pilot duo of Geun Choi and Tammy Watson could be a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern way to depict the early days of the rebellion against the Sarellian Dynasty. After all, the play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" tells the story of Hamlet from the point of view of two minor characters, and other than a couple short stories, Buroker generally doesn't discuss what happened before. Although "Ten Davids" depicts an incident that is never described in the main series, "Discovery and Flight" showcases the battle immediately before the events of Buroker's story "Remnants," which you can find in the You Are Here anthology.

"Discovery and Flight" is the tale that also changed the most in the telling. I'd made the characters in "Ten Davids" purely original because nobody would think characters who appear in the canonical series would be in any real danger, a common problem with prequels. However, I'd noticed sales for "Ten Davids" declining relatively rapidly after the first two months and suspected one cause was the complete non-appearance of any canonical characters. Given how series regular Bradford Tomich is depicted as sexually promiscuous, having him after female lead Watson made a lot of sense, while "Remnants" explicitly describes series protagonist Alisa Marchenko flying for the Alliance in that battle.

(Also, Tomich in the main series is a more complicated character than just a Casanova wannabe and the events told but not shown in "Remnants" would give him plenty of chances to show his legitimately heroic side. I wanted to avoid Flanderizing him into a mere lecher.)

I also changed some of the mechanics of the battle based on discussion in a guest post I wrote for "Ten Davids" on the blog of notable indie science fiction writer Chris Nuttall. Some of his readers took issue in the comments section with my idea that Billy Mitchell's theories on air power vs. ships could be transferred seamlessly into space combat, and some of what they said rang true to discussions on the Battlestar Galactica forums about how formidable a capital ship's flak batteries would be and how American ship-based antiaircraft guns became more effective against Japanese aerial attacks as World War II went on. When I posted about "Discovery and Flight" on Chris's blog, it got the discussion going again.

So if you liked "Ten Davids, Two Goliaths," I'd encourage you to read "Discovery and Flight." The more of these I sell, the more likely I'll write the planned third Choi and Watson novella, "Torpedo Protocol" and the Imperial-centric companion novella "Fallen Titan."