Some Good Books From Graduate School...

I will soon hand in my last assignment for a class on global social movements, completing the coursework for a master's degree in history (major world, minor U.S.) at Georgia State University in Atlanta. All that remains is the oral and written exams I'll be taking this June and I'll have my M.A.

As part of earning a master's degree, one has to read a lot of books. I chose the non-thesis option, so I had to take ten classes instead of nine. And that means even more books. Luckily this is a subject I'm strongly interested in, so reading wasn't a chore at all.

Below are some of my favorite graduate-school books and the reasons why I enjoyed them.

Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History-Editor Alexander Cook oversaw an anthology of articles by different historians focusing on different situations using Mao's Little Red Book as the lens. And it's really interesting--you have the student left in 1960s and 1970s Germany, you have the Shining Path in Peru, you have the Maoist-ish regime in Tanzania, and China during the Cultural Revolution. Plus it's provided me with some choice dystopian bits like every village having a loudspeaker providing the population with the regime's guidance--and in some cases loudspeakers inside people's houses they can't turn off.

Before European Hegemony-This book describes the world system from the 13th Century until the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean with armed warships. The bare bones of this world system are wool from England is made into textiles in the Low Countries, traded by Italians into the Middle East, and eventually from there goes to India, the East Indies, and China. But that's a massive oversimplification. My main problem with the book is that it understates the role of Islamic piracy in the Mediterranean in the Dark Ages (something the Pelican History of Medieval Europe points out), but that's a pretty small nitpick.

Killing for Coal-This book is about the big 1914 coal strike in Colorado. It's generally remembered for the Ludlow Massacre, but not for the fact that the miners proceeded to spend the week after the massacre beating the crap out of the Colorado state militia. Seriously, if things hadn't been headed off, there could've been some kind of statewide U.S. version of the Paris Commune. The book is a really interesting exploration of the coal industry at the time, the labor struggles wracking it, and just how darn important coal was for the U.S. at the time. This book played a major role in my decision to add more class-labor elements to the Wastelands series I'm working on, plus it was a source of really interesting information on what coal was used for. Fortunately most of Battle for the Wastelands (the first book, which is already written) takes place in a more rural area among soldiers scrabbling to maintain a limited technological base; it's the second novel, Battle for the Wastelands: Escape (formerly titled Escape from the Wastelands) where this influence will be felt.

Before Columbus-This book examines the Mediterranean antecedents of the Spanish settlement of the New World. There's a very interesting historical analogy involving the Reconquista. Parts of Spain the Christians conquered from the Muslims were like the British Empire in India, with a large number of Muslims ruled by a Christian/collaborator ruling class, while others were like the American West with a relatively small Muslim population and a much more arid landscape. I remember reading somewhere that Spanish kids play "Moros y Christianos" instead of "Cowboys and Indians" and that might be the inspiration for it. The Colombian Exchange, one of the books I'm reading for my exams this June, definitely compares the cowboy culture of the Spanish New World with Spain before the Muslims were expelled.

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II-I first learned about this from an excerpt in the historiography book The Houses of History and ordered an abridged one-volume work for a paper on the influence of author Braudel. It's a good example of the "longue duree" type of history with a strong dose of environmental determinism. Very interesting.

White Flight-Although I question the argument that modern American conservatism emerged from specific policies intended to stymie integration (there are non-racist reasons to oppose expansion of mass transit, after all), this is still a very interesting history of Atlanta, the city supposedly "too busy to hate" during the Civil Rights era in the U.S. Lots of interesting stuff, including what happened to an American Neo-Nazi trying to keep blacks from moving into a particular neighborhood in the late 1940s. Seriously, antagonizing a prosecutor who's a WWII Marine veteran is a really, really bad idea. Also provides an interesting political history of Atlanta and the surrounding communities before, during, and after the civil rights era.

Birth of the Modern World-Another book I'm reading for exams this June. This is book is notable for introducing me to the "industrious revolution" paradigm that predates the Industrial Revolution and puts the American Indian wars in the context of Australian wars against Aborigines and the wars of the British and their Indian clients against tribal peoples in India. Growing industrial states finally suppressing tribal/nomadic peoples, basically.

Britons-A very interesting book about the origins of the British national identity. Some of the material early on really de-romanticizes the Jacobites (apparently they weren't even that popular in Scotland) and uses patterns of landownership and intermarriage to describe the growth of a collective "British" identity incorporating English, Welsh, Scots, etc.

American Babylon-I met the author while selling books at a conference and he was very pleased to know that I liked this book, which is about the growth and decay of Oakland, better than Origins of the Urban Crisis, which is about the growth and decay of Detroit. The latter is considered one of the best books in the field, but I thought American Babylon was written better and more detailed.

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures-Chocolate and tobacco were used in sacred and political ceremonies by the indigenous populations of the Spanish New World. So how exactly did they become popular foods/products in Europe? This book explains how. It's also got some interesting stuff about how the Indians adapted to Spanish rule and how the Spanish colonists picked up a lot of indigenous culture in Mexico.

May Writing Contest: The Results

Yesterday was the last day of May and thus the last day of the first month of the writing contest involving my friends Nick, Lauren, Sean, and I. The goal is to write the most fictional words, with the loser buying the winner lunch.

My word count, which I tracked per project per day on an Excel spreadsheet, was 19,154 words spread out across multiple projects. So here goes:

The Thing In The Woods-The word count went from 6,349 to 19,361. The first two chapters are completed, albeit rather short, and some great big hunks of other chapters are written. My plan now is to finish the entire first draft before I start graduate school in late August. It's young adult, so it'll probably be shorter anyway. I'm guessing it's around a third done, 40 percent on the outside. One of the biggest additions is that I've now got a romantic subplot involving the male lead, a rather snobby Buckhead transplant to a small town south of Atlanta that's rapidly turning into a bedroom community, and a local girl who's into theater. Given how my friend James R. Tuck said the big difference between young adult and adult fiction featuring teen protagonists is whether or not they're facing "grown man problems," high-school dating shenanigans will make it "younger."

(Yes, Battle for The Wastelands has a teen romance tidbit too, but it's not nearly as important. What to do about the flirtatious cowgirl Alyssa Carson takes up much less screentime so to speak than the Flesh-Eater threat to the protagonist's hometown, the starvation threat to the Merrill refugee camps, etc.)

The Cybele Incident-I went from 15,817 words to 20,215 words. This is net word count, since I ran the completed chapters through my Kennesaw writing group and they had ideas on what to cut as well as what to add. I wrote a new beginning to make the male lead Lt. Commander Thomas Briggs more sympathetic and more competent and added a new wrinkle to female lead Captain Adhirai Lakhani's battle plan to make her more sneaky-subtle as opposed to simply brutal and "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." She's genetically-engineered to be the next stage in human evolution, so having her act like an unsubtle moron kind of makes the people behind it look inept and stupid. I'm shooting for a shorter word count than Battle for The Wastelands, so I'm probably around a third finished.

The Wastelands Universe-I started writing the manuscript for the third novel in the series just so I could write down a 1,000-odd word sequence in the harem-intrigue subplot that came to me in a burst of inspiration. The second and third novels in the series give the female characters a lot more screentime, in particular the women of the villain Grendel's harem. I also started writing a sequel novella centered around Grendel's daughter Astrid, which would take place chronologically after the fourth, fifth, or possibly the sixth books. Finally, yesterday at the gym I had another burst of inspiration and wrote a 700-odd word scene that elaborates on Alyssa's character a fair bit.

I haven't gotten specific word counts from the others yet, although I'm certain I've beaten at least one of them. This coming month will be a lot tougher, since one will have more free time and the other will be more organized in tracking their word counts. Best not slack off. There are whole stretches of May where I didn't get any fiction writing done at all (15 out of 31 days, nearly half of the month). It'd be easy to blame my paying writing gigs, which have to take priority over my personal writing, but I could have still gotten some stuff done. At the very least, I could have broken 20,000 or even 25,000 words.

The Great Summer Writing Challenge...

Today I was chatting with my friend Nick and we were discussing the progress of our various writing projects. I referenced author William Meikle, whom I have corresponded with via Facebook and Twitter. Meikle seems to have a book out every few months and I asked him what his secret was. His response was basically writing 2,000 words per day. Nick has a novel he's working on, but as a teacher, it's easier for him to write during the summer when he has lots of time off.

Nick suggested we have a competition to write 2,000 words per day during the summer. I'm preparing to go to graduate school this fall and I've got various freelance writing clients I need to attend do, so I figured instead of 2,000 words per day, it would be better to set the word count by month. The way I currently do freelancing, work tends to pile up at the end of the month, so 2,000 words per day isn't very practical for several days.

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to have a writing competition covering the months of May, June, July, and August. The loser (by word count) has to take the winner (by word count) out to lunch. The minimum amount of words to be written is 10,000 words, which comes out to roughly two or three chapters per month. And that's the minimum.

Luckily I have three possible projects to spread this out:

*The Cybele Incident, my NaNoWriMo project from last November. As of today it's 15,000+ words written, roughly 20-25 percent done. I've been using my Lawrenceville writing group to give myself deadlines to have each chapter done, which has served me well in getting the first five chapters written. I've also gotten most of the next-to-last chapter done. Five of the 21 slated chapters complete, with one almost done--two chapters a month means it's done in seven months. Three chapters a month equals five months.

*The Thing In The Woods, my one-shot Lovecraftian horror novel that draws on some of my experiences living in and reporting on a small town on the southern fringe of Metro Atlanta. 1,517 words long as of today. I was thinking that this was something that, if I really applied myself to, I could finish fairly quickly, since it doesn't require the same degree of expert knowledge that TCI (hard science and Naval protocol) does and it'd be shorter and require less military knowledge than the Wastelands novels (more here later). Eleven chapters total, so at two per month that's five months and three per month that's three and a half to four mouths. Given the lack of need for research, all I'd really need to do is apply myself.

*Escape from the Wastelands, the sequel to Battle for The Wastelands. As of today it's roughly 25,000 words written, around 20-25 percent done. Given how this is a sequel and I haven't sold the first one, this isn't going to be a priority. After all, if I can't sell the first one, what good is a sequel? Unless I e-publish it of course, which I'd really rather not do. At present this is 42 slated chapters, but many of them could be consolidated and worst case scenario, it could get split in half. After all, I've done it before.

I posted on Facebook and called on all of the mutual friends of Nick and me to witness the challenge and nag us into meeting our targets and now Sean CW Korsgaard wants to join in. The fact he lives in another state could be problematic re: actually getting lunch, but he will be coming to visit Georgia sometime during the summer.

As I said on Facebook, let the games begin...in a month. :)

AnachroCon Post #2: Useful Things Learned

Here's my second post about the 2013 AnachroCon, which will be more general than my last one.

One of the panels I attended was entitled "Viking and Norman Re-Enacting," which taught me a lot of useful information. Much of the information I learned will appear in the Wastelands novels, which feature a Norse-analogue culture known as the Sejer. In particular, the Norse used A-Frame tents whose wooden poles were elaborately carved. I've started tinkering with the second novel Battle for the Wastelands: Escape while I wait to hear back about the first Battle for the Wastelands and the tents of the Obsidian Guard, the tyrant Grendel's personal troops, will be like that. The Norse also used box chairs--no legs and the seat could be used for storage. Grendel's throne will be based on this design.

(Norse shoes were also held closed with toggles, which I'll squirrel away in my files for later. The Sejer in the Wastelands world have shoes with laces.)

I also attended a panel featuring my friend James R. Tuck that discussed the directions writers other than H.P. Lovecraft have taken the Cthulhu Mythos. This included the Delta Green stories about an American covert-operations group fighting the cosmic horrors as well as the works of Brian Lumley. I'll have to check these out--the Delta Green world sounds particularly interesting and I'd love to write stories set there someday. There're also more whimsical works, like a cookbook of all things entitled Cuisine from Beyond.

At the "State of Steampunk" panel, I learned a bit of welcome movie news. Cherie Priest's novel Boneshaker has been optioned as a movie. A bit more digging revealed that the film rights have been bought and work is underway. Although I had my issues with the book, I'd still see the film more than likely.

I also learned about a small press called Combustion Books that is putting out steampunk books. Their business model is unusual--they pay the author a set amount per print run, no strings attached. If there's a second print run, they'll pay for that, and so on and so forth. If a larger publisher expresses an interest in the work, no problem. I'll keep them in mind.

Another publisher I encountered is Georgia-based MV Media, whose representatives were there selling "sword and soul" books. Rather than taking place in faux European environments like most sword and sorcery, they take place in faux African environments. I'd found Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology on Amazon awhile back, so I'd already known about them. Those of you with an interest in Afrocentric fantasy fiction, whether you want to read some or sell some, should check this out.

Finally, I met up with a member of my alternate-history message-board who is attempting to revive the site's defunct podcast. I have begun discussing an interview with him, since my alternate-history short story "Coil Gun" appeared in Pressure Suite - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3 and my self-published story The Beast of the Bosporus is essentially "secret history." He's already agreed to host "Beast" tie-in I've already posted here.

What I'm Working On At The Moment

Projects

*Battle for the Wastelands

*"Coil Gun" Screenplay

Last Thursday, my Kennesaw writing group reviewed the entirety of Battle for the Wastelands.  Got some good critiques (grenade explosions don't throw people, they shred them) and some out-of-left-field critiques (including one suggestion to have the Merrill army destroyed in the climax and have Andrew and friends set out on their own).  Revising accordingly, with the deadline DragonCon. I did get a request from a publisher last year for the full manuscript when it was done and I might send it out earlier.

One suggestion was to cut POVs to reduce overall word count, since the current draft is 105,000 words (the draft they reviewed was 104,000 words) and many novels of its type are much shorter.  I have a rather specific vision for the overall series and much of the material is set up for stuff that happens later.  Radically changing the story at the moment isn't going to fly.  However, fat lot of good plans for later in the series do if one cannot sell the first book.

I've also decided to retitle the later Wastelands novels.  Escape from the Wastelands is now Battle for the Wastelands: Escape, while the planned third novel is Battle for the Wastelands: War.  This is in the vein of my friend Alex's upcoming novel Clean, whose full title is technically Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel, as well as my friend James' novella That Thing At The Zoo, which is subtitled A Deacon Chalk Occult Bounty Hunter Novella.  Heck, look at the Pirates of the Caribbean films and how the first one had the subtitled The Curse of the Black Pearl, while the subsequent films had subtitles as well.  A nice, distinctive series name like Mindspace Investigations or Deacon Chalk: Occult Bounty Hunter is good branding.  Although Andrew Sutter is the protagonist, he's not so central to the story that I can label everything "An Andrew Sutter Novel."  Heck, Andrew isn't even in Son of Grendel.

I've also gotten a lot of work done on the "Coil Gun" screenplay.  Current page count is 77.  A friend of mine who is a TV writer out in Los Angeles says that the bare minimum is 90 pages, so I need 13 more pages from somewhere.  I got it to 77 pages by starting the story out much earlier with the Afrikaners capturing some ethnic-Indian Australian commandos assisting Indian rebels and the angry response of the Afrikaner government to that.  I don't think I've adapted all of the material from the short story into the screenplay just yet--for example, there's the Afrikaner spacecraft carrying multiple nuclear warheads deployed against Albuquerque--but I'm probably going to need to come up with some extra stuff.  All I can think of is a new subplot involving a character's wife who is a teacher, but I haven't developed that much.

I haven't been working on a whole lot else at the moment due to the primary revising Battle is taking and various real-life job issues.

What I'm Working On Right Now...

Current Projects

*Battle for the Wastelands

*Escape from the Wastelands

*Untitled Superhero Project

*"Coil Gun" Screenplay

Battle for the Wastelands has been finished for some time.  I've been tinkering with it, revising it based on suggestions from my friends Nick, Korsgaard, and others, and awaiting the final meeting of my writing group where we go over the whole novel.  That's slated for later this week.  Once I make the revisions based on those comments, I'll start sending it out to agents I've identified by reading the Acknowledgements sections of books like Dead Iron by Devon Monk, the Clockwork Century novels by Cherie Priest, and others.  Hopefully I won't have many significant changes to make, especially since I took out all the phonetic spelling of dialect ("'em" for "them," "somethin'" for "something," etc) at the behest of pretty much all of my writer friends.

I've also been working on Escape from the Wastelands, the second book in a planned series of eight.  Right now I'm done with the first three chapters and a significant block of text toward the end (it was originally the second half of one book) and need to finish Chapter Four.  A lot of the chapter is written already--I just need to write a battle scene in the middle.  When I brought Chapter Three before my Lawrenceville writing group, the group wanted more human interaction (including a sense of humor) among the characters, so I've been working on that.  The character Will has been established as kind of a jerk, so I figured someone not concerned about the feelings of others would be interested in pranks.  I haven't found the chance to work that into Battle, but I was able to plug that into Escape.

I've also gotten started on a new project based on how Abaddon Books has opened up for novella submissions.  I'm not familiar with any of Abaddon Books' existing worlds and they are open for new worlds, so I decided to start on a new project.  Not going to go into a lot of detail at the moment, but the premise involves supervillains relocating their operations to the Third World after the rich countries develop a significant deterrent to their behavior.  The deadline to contribute is in September.  I've written the prologue and plotted out the rest of the book.  If Abaddon Books isn't interested or if the story gets too long, this one might be a candidate for self-publishing.

Finally, I got a lot of work done on my screenplay adaptation of my short story "Coil Gun," which appears in Pressure Suite: Digital Science Fiction #3.  At DragonCon 2011, S.M. Stirling said short stories make good movie scripts and books make good miniseries, and I decided to test that theory out.  I wrote 15 script pages today, bringing it up to 62 pages total.  The problem is, a page equals a minute of film time.  A good script is 90-120 pages long.  Not sure how I'm going to add 28 pages.  Maybe I can describe some of the space battles in more detail rather than just saying spacecraft are fighting.

Stuff I'm Working On Now...

Since I imagine you got sick of seeing every blog post about writing entitled "Productivity Update," I decided on a different title this time.  So here goes...

-Escape from the Wastelands-Three complete, continuous chapters now.  The Lawrenceville group has seen the first two and I'll be sending the third chapter (and hopefully a couple more) their way when the deadline comes July 22.  This novel was originally the last half of a longer novel, but I broke it in half.  So basically a whole lot of the later half of this book is done, but there's not much at the beginning.  In the event I find a buyer for Battle for the Wastelands, I hope to be able to finish this one relatively quickly.

-Battle for the Wastelands-My Kennesaw writing group is going to go over the whole manuscript Aug. 1, around six weeks after I sent out the whole manuscript for their critique.  I've done some tinkering since then, including revamping the climactic airship battle based on learning more about how historical airships operated.  My goal is to start querying agents and publishers, with DragonCon being a big source of the latter.  Hopefully there won't be big revisions to make based on the Aug. 1 meeting.

-"Melon Heads"-Back when I was at student at the University of Georgia (this was in the fall of 2003, I think), I was surfing the Internet for urban legends and came across the tale of the Melon Heads.  I cannot find the original site at the moment, but the gist of it was that back in the 1950s, a doctor opened his home up to children with hydrocephalus.  He abused and experimented on the children, who one day rose up and ate him, then fled into the nearby woods.  They (or their descendants) are supposedly still living out in the woods, killing and eating animals and attacking people.

I wrote a short horror story about the "Melon Heads," thinking they had never been covered before.  Over the last few years, I've been trying to send it to different markets and it's gotten better each time.  The current version is a bit tongue in cheek, on top of the gruesome violence that some of my friends who've read earlier versions have seen.

(I actually brought it to a church writing group once and got some very shocked reactions, including a revelation by one group member that he actually had hydrocephalus and had it remedied surgically.  I was expecting group members to be shocked if not outraged, but I wasn't expecting anything medical to come up.)

Unfortunately, now I'm running out of places to send it.  It's getting to the point that I could either send it to some market that won't pay much if at all, or I self-publish it for the Kindle.  My friend Jeff Baker has done this with his short story "Slip Drive" and made more money than I'd get from the lowest-paying markets.  My friend James R. Tuck has also self-published some crime fiction on Amazon too.

I sent the story out again this morning after the newest version of it got rejected by a new and well-paying market.  If I get rejected again, it might be time to, as I often say on Facebook, "sacrifice it to the Kindle god."  James knows some artists who create e-book covers, so I'll take a look at their work and see what they've got.

"The Past Is Ashes"-This short story is the result of a trope-inversion exercise I came up with and is one of the first new short stories I've written in years.  Basically the hero's quest for revenge is not the result of the villain destroying his hometown (cliched), but the villain instead building a fort there.  This leads to his neighborhood being eminent-domained, his family having to move into the ghetto because house prices have gone up everywhere else, etc.  The actual Word document is called "Gentrification War."  I sent it out last week to a market with a history of getting back to me quickly.

-"Djinn"-In addition to sending this one out to various markets, I'd like to include it in a collection that I'll get into detail about in a bit.  Basically it follows a group of American soldiers into a cave complex in Afghanistan, hunting for al Qaeda.  They find their prey dead, clawed up or burned.  Then the mysterious killer comes after them.  I'll basically describe it as "Jeepers Creepers in Afghanistan."

(Don't laugh.  "Jeepers Creepers" is actually a really good movie.)

I sent a partial to a relative who is a two-time Afghan vet and he took issue with the accuracy of some of it, including some of the weaponry used.  I set it aside after that, but I've done some thinking and I don't think the problems can't be fixed.  I've tinkered with it a little bit, but haven't written much new material.

Now about the collection.  I've noticed a theme in most of my horror fiction that they'll all fit into the real world--the events are not widely known and don't have much impact on the wider world.  That reminded me of the quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet--"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."  I pondered an anthology with the title More Things In Heaven and on Earth, but I've found that I've only got three or four stories that are in good enough condition.  "Djinn" would make five.  At minimum, I think I'd need ten.  One collection I enjoy--Nameless Cults: The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert Howard--includes over twenty stories.

I'm told collections are hard to sell unless there are very famous authors involved, but my friend Nick said there are agents willing to represent them.  Given my writing priorities these days, I'm thinking this will have to wait until after the first Wastelands books are done.  Maybe after that, I'll be a very famous author.  :D

How Fans (And Critique Groups) Can Make You Write Faster

One of my big problems in getting anything significant done in writing is procrastination.  When the "creative bug" comes, it comes hard--when I was in St. Thomas, for example, I wrote 2,000-ish words for a scene in a later Wastelands book in half an hour to an hour--but a lot of the time, it's just not there and writing becomes a chore.  And often when the "creative bug" comes, it's a different idea from my main project.

That's why I've got so many unfinished novels but only one complete (original) one.

However, when I wrote my two Harry Potter fan-fic pieces The Wrath of the Half-Blood Prince and Lord of the Werewolves, one of the things that kept me churning out the chapters (to the point I finished the nearly 200,000 word Wrath in just under a year) was that I had a lot of readers who were eager to see the next chapter.  This kept me focused and gave me deadlines--I had a whole lot of people to please.

I applied this lesson to my original fiction.  Instead of my pack of online fans, however, I had my two writing groups, one in Kennesaw and the other in Lawrenceville.  This got me producing, in some cases submitting them in multi-chapter batches.  In the Lawrenceville group, you have to commit before you submit, so many times I committed to having something to critique in order to force myself to get it done.  As a result, I ultimately finished Battle for the Wastelands and got the much-shorter novella "Son of Grendel" finished within a few weeks.  Possibly less than two months even.

This means this weekend is going to be a busy one.  I've committed to having something turned in for critique on July 8 this Sunday (July 1).  At minimum, it would need to be the first chapter of Escape from the Wastelands, but I've got more of the second chapter written.  And I've got work and social obligations too.  But I'll be moving along on the book.  God willing, if I get an offer for Battle after this year's DragonCon, they might want the second book pretty quickly, and churning out chapters like I do will make that easier.

P.S.

I just found out that Wrath is listed here, in the "Fan Fic" section of the TVTrope page "For Want of a Nail."  I'm a happy camper.

Productivity Update: June 23, 2012

Just got back from a week in St. Thomas with my family.  Brought the notebook I usually carry in the car with me in case I should get a notion while I'm away from a computer.  I ended up filling up sixteen pages on both sides and a seventeenth page on one.  Wow.

I wrote much of two scenes, one from Escape from the Wastelands (Book #2) and the seventh book, tentatively titled Ruling the Wastelands.  The former is a duel between cowgirl Alyssa Carson and the villainous Falki Grendelsson, while latter is a really good character moment between Catalina Merrill and Andrew Sutter.  Hopefully this one will see the light of day, since it's so far ahead in the chronology.

Also elaborated on several characters and devised the plots for several novellas for e-readers a la Son of Grendel.  Some of them are "historical" (taking place before the first novel begins), while two more are "interquels" (taking place during the events of the novel).  At present, I have just as many if not more ideas for novellas than actual books in the series.  Given how relatively quick they are to write, this could be a way to tide fans over during the waits between novels.  Delilah S. Dawson came up with the idea in her first guest post, so props to her.

(Got to come up with some pertaining to protagonist Andrew Sutter though.  Bernard Cornwell wrote two extra "Sharpe" stories centered on protagonist Richard Sharpe, but the novella plots so far focus on Grendel's sons and the Merrills.)

I'm still waiting on comments from a couple of my betas for Battle for the Wastelands, but between their busy lives and the fact I'd like to have my Kennesaw group critique the whole novel and make the necessary changes before DragonCon this year, time is running out.  My plan is to add the additional Battle material I came up with over the trip, make one more pass for dialogue (one of my not-yet-reported betas had some problems with that), and then send it to the Kennesaw people sometime this weekend.  We'd meet to discuss it in early August and that gives me three weeks to revise before DragonCon, where publishers and (hopefully) agents roam.

Given how I've got a couples shower to attend, the Lawrenceville writing group, church, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, timing this is going to be tricky...

Update on the "Wastelands" Projects

Here's an update on the projects set in my "Wastelands" universe...

Battle for the Wastelands-I have received critiques on the finished manuscript from two of my five beta readers, with comments from one slated for later this week.  One beta largely enjoyed the work, although on his recommendation I have switched the order of some scenes at the end and will look for opportunities to add descriptive language.  The second beta pointed out some inconsistencies, namely a character with a wounded leg being able to jump around a lot in a fight scene.  I'll need to fix those too. 

The third beta told me that although he liked the story overall, there are some instances of dialogue being unintentionally funny, the same swear words being used in succession by different characters, and people repeating things they think.  I'll need to see the critiqued manuscript before I know which ones are which, but I could potentially cut a some writing flab there.  This'll give me room for more description without reducing the overall word count (some publishers actually want above 100K words) or allow me to have a leaner manuscript (better for other publishers).

I was also hanging out with a steampunk enthusiast friend Memorial Day and he said a hydrogen airship would not explode like the Death Star.  I watched old newsreels on YouTube about the Hindenburg disaster and confirmed it.  A burning airship will sink flaming to the ground, but not go off with an explosion so large it momentarily blinds the protagonist.  He also pointed out that antagonists with half a brain wouldn't have one airship floating directly atop another one.  So I spent most of last night, when I wasn't distracted by pointless debates on my alternate history forum, rewriting that scene.  We'll still have "airship demolition derby," but it's better this way.

"Son of Grendel"-Over Memorial Day weekend, I finished the first draft of "Son of Grendel," although I'll need to go back and elaborate on some things.  Right now, it's just under 17,000 words.  Once I've sent the last half or so to my Lawrenceville group in early June and make changes based on earlier Lawrenceville recommendations, I will cycle it through my Kennesaw writing group in two 8,000 word chunks, much like how James R. Tuck sent his novels and novellas through.

Escape from the Wastelands-Not a whole lot, although I did include this along with the revisions of Battle and "SOG" to differentiate more between the standard weapon of the world (something resembling a Sharps rifle) and the "Old World rifles" (essentially modern assault weapons left over from the pre-apocalyptic world).  A lot of my reading about the Pacific Theater of World War II will show up here, including enemy infiltrators and some of the awful "little details" of war like digging foxholes in formerly enemy territory and accidentally digging into enemy graves, being unable to leave foxholes due to artillery bombardment and having to throw one's waste out of the hole with a shell canister, etc.

Now that Battle and "Son of Grendel" are (mostly) done, it's time to start writing query letters.  I don't intend to start sending them out until after the final revisions are done in case they get back to me faster than the standard eight weeks and catch me flat-footed, but I should at least start planning them.  I have written queries and synopses before, back when I wanted to pitch a Starcraft novel.  It turns out Blizzard doesn't accept unsolicited material--something I could have found if I'd done a bit more digging on their website--but I think this was good practice.  Hopefully I've still got the letter and synopsis hidden away somewhere.  I've also requested a library book on the publishing process from contacting an editor/publisher to contract, which will help as well.

(If "Son of Grendel" is critiqued by the Kennesaw group in June/July and Battle by the novel-writing spinoff group in August, everything should hopefully be ready to go by DragonCon.  There are a lot of publishers there, although I don't recall many agents.)

Possible Change of Plans for "Battle"

My original plan for Battle for the Wastelands was to take it to my Kennesaw writing group's novel enthusiasts after my beta readers are through with it, probably sometime in early June or post-July 4.  I would revise according to their suggestions and then wait until January to submit to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.  After all, that's how my friend Alex Hughes got a book deal.

However, I am seriously considering a change of plans.  Right now, steampunk and young-adult dystopian fiction are really popular, and Battle can be credibly described as both.  To publish a book takes around a year or so after acceptance (getting the editing, marketing, etc. set up), so waiting an additional few months on top of however long it takes me to find a publisher (which is not guaranteed) risks "missing my moment" so to speak. 

However, Sean C.W. Korsgaard, the first beta reader to finish Battle (he gave it a very good review) warned the trend might last for years, so it's not "now or never."  He said paranormal romance has only started to slow down years after the success of Twilight and I should make the series as good as possible rather than try to cash in on The Hunger Games. 

One must remember the study showing how children who waited for two marshmallows when given the choice of one now or two later ended up doing better in life.  I've never participated in that sort of experiment, but I did take a job at The Griffin Daily News, even though it was in a small town far from my friends and I could have signed on for a DeKalb County weekly, because it was in the long run better for my career.

Either way, I won't change my short-term plan.  I'll still wait for comments from my remaining beta readers, revise Battle accordingly, and then submit to the Kennesaw group.  Things will only diverge once I revise based on the Kennesaw recommendations.  The original plan was to sit tight, work on Escape from the Wastelands (the second book) and Son of Grendel (a prequel e-novella), and wait for January.  The new plan would involve looking for agents soon afterward.

I still might end up entering ABNA anyway if I cannot find an agent by January.  Doing well at ABNA will make a manuscript more marketable, after all, and if I don't get an agent due to poor novel quality, ABNA critiques might help me improve the manuscript enough to get one.  Given how agents can get a writer a much better deal than working with a publisher on my own, I'd only try to market the book myself at utmost need.

Update on My Writing...

Since you're no doubt tired of all my writing posts being called "Productivity Updates," I think I'll come up with a different title for this one.

Projects

*Battle for the Wastelands

*Son of Grendel

*"The Past is Ashes"

*"Needs Must"

*Other Wastelands projects

I've had Battle complete for a bit now.  After spending a couple of weeks going over the manuscript, marking changes, and then marathon computer sessions revising it, I've sent it out to some of my friends who've expressed interest in it.  I suggested they have it back to me within a month to six weeks.  Then I'll revise it and get it to my Kennesaw writing group sometime in early July for a complete look-over.  That's why I haven't been blogging as much this month.

(Early comments are positive.  One of my readers, an Iraq vet who has read the first half, said I did a good job handling protagonist Andrew Sutter's transformation from a hunter into a killer of men and my tactics are good.  That's good to hear, considering how I've never served in the military.)

Though I've finished Battle, I've done very little with Escape.  I brainstormed a small scene at a recent work conference, but that's about it.  When I was in elementary school, I read a novel called Turn Homeward, Hannalee about a Georgia mill girl taken prisoner by Union soldiers in the Civil War and sent North.  One of the visuals I can remember close to 20 years later is the protagonist seeing a battle in the distance.  She cannot hear it, but she can see the distant light of the fires and the flashing of the guns.

I've been tinkering with the timeline and military strategies of Escape.  Protagonist Andrew Sutter and his unit won't be part of the initial assault on the old Merrill capital, but I will have them join the fun (if you consider a steampunk Stalingrad fun) later on.  The scene I wrote features the march to the Merrill capital and the first thing they see is the glow from the burning city.

I also wrote a little bit of text for a later Wastelands book featuring Falki Grendelsson brooding at one of his father's monuments.  Odd, writing text for the sixth or seventh book in the series before the second is finished or the first one is sold, but the Muse comes when it does.

Speaking of Falki, I completed the first two chapters of the novella Son of Grendel that I hope to sell alongside Battle.  I actually finished the second chapter first and was up so late completing the first chapter Sunday that I didn't even submit it to my writing group until Monday morning despite the deadline being Sunday.  Hopefully they won't be too upset with me.

Although the basic technology level of this world is Civil War plus or minus, the combat scenes have a tendency to resemble World War I in terms of the importance of defense and artillery and the massive bloodletting.  This isn't problematic--later Civil War battles like Cold Harbor resembled WWI, complete with trench warfare and horrifically bloody frontal assaults.  The "Old World" (read: modern) weapons deployed by Grendel's elite Obsidian Guard should tip the balance back in favor of attackers, especially if their enemies don't have them.  In the first chapter of Son of Grendel this does not happen, but that can be explained away by the number of guardsmen being relatively low and the terrain not being in their favor.  And they do a hell of a lot of damage anyway.

The third chapter of Son of Grendel looks like it'll be fairly short, unless I merge it with the fourth chapter.  Both of them have got a fair bit of material already written.  I  might be able to get this done more quickly than I planned.

Still haven't done much with "The Past Is Ashes," although I could probably finish that one fairly quickly.  I haven't submitted any short fiction anywhere in quite some time.  I've also got the two stories I sold in 2008 but were never published I can send out as well.  I did add the additional material about what exactly the home invaders in "Needs Must" want though.

Over the last few days, I've done a lot of general brainstorming but hadn't had a chance to add the results to my Word documents.  Basically a lot of geography and history for the Wastelands world, general military strategy, etc.  That's something I'll need to set some time aside for.

Productivity Update...

Here's an update on my writing progress...

Earlier this afternoon, the Lawrenceville group went over the last two chapters of Battle for the Wastelands.  The scene where a character gets his leg amputated was duly applauded, but the group suggested some changes to the ending.  The changes they suggest involve a certain character surviving the crash of his airship--which was brought down by another airship being shot down above it and crashing into the top of the gas-bag--and battling another character on the ground.  They said having another character simply finding him dead at someone else's hand cheapened his story.

The problem with that scenario is that personal confrontations between leaders get less and less likely the higher the technology level.  Hector killing Patroclus and then being killed by Achilles makes sense in the Bronze Age technology level of the Iliad, as do Richard III killing Henry VII's standard-bearer and going for Henry himself at the Battle of Bosworth Field or (I think) Spartacus attempting to personally engage Crassus and getting pretty close before being cut down.

Although the Civil War (the tech level for most of the Wastelands world) featured a Confederate general who was killed in battle (I don't remember his name, but he bled to death from a thigh wound) and another leading a patrol in person and being killed by friendly fire (Stonewall Jackson), it's not like Lee and McClellan ever crossed sabers themselves.

The response was, to quote TVTropes, "Rule of Cool."

(shrug)

Oh well.  Realism can be bent somewhat for entertainment purposes.  The goal is to produce something one wants to read, after all.

Another project I've just started is called "Son of Grendel."  I took a page from James R. Tuck, who wrote a prequel novella entitled "That Thing At the Zoo" that was released before his debut novel Blood and Bullets.  Novellas have historically been poor sellers, but e-readers like the Kindle have helped get around this problem.  No binding and distribution costs, after all.

In Battle for the Wastelands, villain Falki Grendelsson makes a reference to having participated in the suppression of a rebel group that had killed a prominent soldier in the Obsidian Guard, Grendel's personal army drawn from his homeland.  Before the battle, he'd thrown a spear onto the battlefield, which is a Norse tradition dedicating the enemy to Odin.  No prisoners.  To top it off, he'd inflicted the infamous blood eagle on one of the survivors.

"Son of Grendel" shows what Falki had told.  I've plotted out twelve or thirteen chapters.  The final product will probably be 20,000 to 30,000 words long.

I've also written some additional material for Escape from the Wastelands.  Not a whole lot.  Basically I introduce Andrew and his squad doing their part in the advance northward into the crumbling Flesh-Eater empire and exposit some of the stuff that happened in the last book.  I'm going to need to read some second books in a series, like perhaps A Clash of Kings (the second book in A Song of Ice and Fire, sequel to A Game of Thrones), to see how they reintroduce everyone and explain what went on before.  I remember reading ACOK before I read AGOT and wondering who was it who had a bunch of molten gold poured on his head, so perhaps the "reintroduction" is more subtle.

I'm going to need to expand the role of Catalina Merrill some in the series, since she's the only female POV character so far.  Due to her being the concubine of Grendel (and the most restricted of them, since she's not some groupie girl but a high-ranking enemy captive), she doesn't live a very exciting life.  I don't think I can work much into Escape, but in the planned third book Marching Toward The Wastelands, I think I can work in some harem-intrigue subplot.  I've already foreshadowed some of the politicking involved in the first book.

One project that has been lagging somewhat is the screenplay version of my short story "Coil Gun."  43 pages long, out of an ideal length of perhaps 90.  In order to get it the right length, I planned to expand on the role of the protagonist's best friend who is in orbit aboard a powerful American battle-station during the opening night of World War III.  Problem is, I don't have a whole lot of ideas on how to do it.

I intend to go to Los Angeles sometime this year.  I can make it a business trip if I've got a completed screenplay and I've made contact with some agents.  I was originally planning on going sometime this spring, although if I reschedule my trip for early fall, this gives me more time to finish.  I'll look on the bright side--43 completed pages means it's roughly half-done.  :)

For the record, "Coil Gun" appeared in the Kindle anthology Pressure Suite: Digital Science Fiction #3.  This anthology, and others, can be purchased here.  DSF has been having some issues with money lately and how soon they can get back to publishing depends on how much money the anthologies make.  You can read all about it here.  DSF was one of the best markets I've ever worked with and I'd like to see them back in action as soon as possible.  I've got one completed story (also set in the Afrikanerverse) I could send them, as well as partially-completed new military-SF story.

World-Building Tip: Daily Life In...

I was listening to the Writing Excuses podcast on non-traditional settings at the gym the other night and they brought in author Saladin Ahmed, an Arab fantasy writer who writes stories set in a fantasy version of the Middle East (the main example being Throne of the Crescent Moon), not the standard fantasy version of medieval Europe that most high fantasy or epic fantasy stories are set in.

Saladin discussed world-building with the hosts and one thing he said had been very helpful to him was a series of books entitled Daily Life In... that dealt with different historical eras.  I made a note to myself to find these books and then forgot about it until this morning.

I just requested several books from my local library system, including Daily Life in Civil War America and Daily Life in Victorian England, which are part of a series on daily life in different historical periods.  Given how Andrew Sutter's environment is more like the Civil War U.S. or the Western frontier, books on that topic will be appropriate, while Grendel's capital of Norridge and the advanced civilizations Andrew will encounter in the later books after he crosses the Iron Desert are steampunk and therefore books on Victorian England will be appropriate.

It might even be a good idea to buy some of these books, although the actual Greenwood Press Daily Life series does not appear to have had a large print run and the average price of these books is $30+.  Still, if I was willing to shell out $50 for the BattleTech codex Clans: Warriors of Kerensky for research purposes (and at some point I need to write some more BattleTech fiction, since I got paid $196 for my story "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge"), these books might be worthy investments.

Luckily the local public library has a lot of them, so I can just request them whenever I need them.  For those of you who have access to good public libraries and are interested in improving your world-building, I'd check these out.

In addition to books dealing with daily life in the time period you're interested in writing about, primary sources from that time would also be a good idea.  I also requested The Civil War Notebook of Daniel Chisholm: A Chronicle of Daily Life in the Union Army 1864 to research what life in a more organized army would be like--it will be useful to improve the Merrill-army sections of Battle for the Wastelands and will be especially useful in the later books of the series where we see Grendel commanding troops in the field and Andrew rising through the ranks of another army. 

Bernard Cornwell based a lot of the Sharpe novels on The Recollections of Rifleman Harris, the memoir of an enlisted man in the British Army of the Napoleonic Wars.  I might try to get hold of that one as well--even though the technology in the world of Wastelands is around 50-60 years ahead of the Napoleonic Era, the two Sharpe books I have read (Sharpe's Tiger and Sharpe's Triumph) provided me with lots of useful bits of information, including stuff on the use of bulls for transporting heavy goods and how Napoleonic-era armies actually had smoke-bombs for infantry use (to mask advances under fire).

I hope you all find this useful.

Time For a Name Change

I just took a look at my Blogger stats and apparently one of my "Battle for the Wastelands"-related posts was viewed because someone did a search for "Karl Steuben."

I did this search myself and apparently Karl Steuben is an artist with lots of work to his credit. Given how the character of Karl "Mangle" Steuben from the Wastelands novels is a wicked man who experiments on himself and others to create an army of mutants, I don't think Steuben-the-artist deserves to be associated with him.

So I'll change the name, although I'm not quite sure what I'll change it to. I think I'll keep the surname, since Frederick Von Steuben was a German (Prussian specifically, I think) officer who helped the Americans during the Revolution and my goal with the story is to be evocative of an earlier time historically.

Given how "Mangle" is a "non-ethnic white" (as opposed to some of Grendel's other supporters, who are essentially Norse or Arabic), I guess I'll boot up that "Old West Baby Name" site I'd found and see if I find anything good.

Something Awesome from Robert Howard's "Conan" Stories

Found this on TVTropes.  The site lists this under Badass Creed and said it's from Howard's Conan poem "The Road of Kings."


Gleaming shell of an outworn lie, fable of Right Divine
You gained your crowns by heritage, but Blood was the price of mine
The throne I won by blood and sweat, by Crom I will not sell
For promise of valleys filled with gold, or threat of the Halls of Hell!
When I was a fighting man, the kettle-drums they beat
The people scattered gold dust before my horse's feet
But now I am a great king; the people hound my track
With poison in my wine cup and daggers at my back.
What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing.
Rush in and die, dogs — I was a man before I was a king!


This is awesome.  Very Nietzchean and Will-to-Power, which is appropriate considering how the film Conan the Barbarian began with Nietzche's "What does not kill us makes us stronger."

I need to work in an allusion to this in my "Wastelands" novels, for Grendel and ultimately for Andrew Sutter.

(Oops...was that a spoiler?)

I did ponder a sketch of Grendel ramming his foot down on one Merrill soldier while shooting another with his "Old World" rifle (a modern assault rifle, probably an AK-47 or an M-16) and title it "I Was A Man Before I Was A King."  When I was in Britain in 2006, I saw a Star Wars-related magazine cover depicting Vader bringing down his lightsaber on a Rebel Alliance soldier, so it would be in a similar style.  I could also do a similarly-themed sketch with Andrew doing the same to a Flesh-Eater.

I already have a sketch of Alonzo Merrill in my sketchbook, which I used to visualize him for Chapter Nine of Battle for the Wastelands when the character is introduced, so I've already got some "Wastelands" artwork.

However, until my "Wastelands" novels become popular, there's not much of a market or audience for that.  I suppose I could post it on DeviantArt, but that risks the ideas being stolen.

Productivity Update: Jan. 23, 2011

Crashing with my parents right now because I've gotten a new job (not saying where) but haven't found a new place to live.  Because my computer is at my old apartment, the writing I have gotten done is either when I'm back there packing things up to move or on my parent's computer--basically, a lot less of it.

As far as Battle for the Wastelands is concerned, I've lately fleshed out a few characters and relationships thereof (which will be important for Battle and the sequel, Escape from the Wastelands) and, in the outline, consolidated a few chapters. 

The former is important because character development is one of my weak points--the consensus of the Lawrenceville writing group I'm going to head out to in an hour or so is "make us care about your characters before you kill them."  The latter is important because publishers are reluctant to buy very long novels from first-time writers.  My goal is for Battle to be around 100,000 words long, if not less.

Most of the consolidation has taken place toward the end--content that would have been its chapter has been added to other, more developed chapters, and there will be *** scene breaks.  This means more multi-point-of-view chapters--for much of the story, it has alternated POVs between protagonist Andrew Sutter and antagonist Grendel, with an occasional chapter from the POV of Alonzo Merrill, a rebel leader.  Although there was one dual-POV (Andrew and Grendel) earlier in the story, now there're at least three, one Andrew/Grendel chapter and two Andrew/Alonzo chapters.

Now, the fact I've jammed multiple chapters together doesn't in-and-of-itself mean the final word count will be significantly affected.  However, I don't want individual chapters to go on too long, so I'll try to keep them limited to 5,000 words maximum, with most of them being significantly shorter.

(With 31 planned chapters post-consolidation, each chapter would need to be an average of 3,225.806 words to hit 100,000 exactly.  Obviously there's a bit of fudge-factor to be taken into account, but still.)

I'm going over the second version of Chapter 12 with my Lawrenceville group this afternoon.  I'll try to finish Chapter 13 in time for the next meeting of my Kennesaw group in two weeks.  Basically need to flesh out a relatively small battle (company-sized units on both sides) and its aftermath.  Considering how the chapter includes a substantial revelation about the character Owen Gollmar, it might be getting on the long side.

I did add some extra material to the next chapter of The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot, although I haven't posted a new chapter since I think November or December.  Only two chapters and an epilogue left.  At this point, the Fallen has risen from his North African tomb and all hell is about to break loose.

For those of you interested in the Transformers, here's the story:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5208263/1/Revenge_of_the_Fallen_Reboot

Hopefully I'll have it done by Spring.  Maybe a quarter of the next chapter is done and I can write fan-fic chapters extremely quickly, as the readers of my Harry Potter stories can testify.

A Philosophical Objection to "Karmic Deaths"

Some background...

On the Harry Potter site FictionAlley, there was a topic entitled "Who Should Have Killed Bellatrix" discussing whether or not it was realistic or appropriate for Molly Weasley to have taken down Voldemort's chief lieutenant, the wicked Bellatrix Lestrange.

I said my preferred choice was that Lupin and Tonks take her out together, since she had vowed to "prune" the Black family tree after learning Tonks (her niece) had married Lupin (a werewolf).  Having them prune her instead would have been entirely fitting, not only due to her stated homicidal intentions but because the two of them represent anti-racism and individualism (Tonks' mother was cast out of the family for marrying a Muggleborn; Lupin is unjustly despised for his condition but unlike most people, Tonks did not care), as opposed to Bellatrix's Pureblood-supremacism and tribalism.

However, when we last heard from Lupin before he was killed, he was dueling the Death Eater Antonin Dolohov, and Rowling later said Dolohov killed Lupin and Bellatrix killed Tonks.  I said that if Harry, Ron, and Hermione had killed Dolohov soon after the Weasley wedding and the Death Eater takeover of the Ministry, when they had him at their mercy but chose instead to erase his memory of having seen them, Lupin could have survived ands my scenario of the two of them destroying Bellatrix could come to pass.

(In the movie, Ron wants to kill Dolohov, but Harry says if they kill him, the Death Eaters will know the Trio had been there.  I don't recall what happened in the books.)

Somone on the board said they didn't think the depiction of a group of 17-year-olds killing someone was a good message.  I said that having the heroes be too holy to finish a dangerous character (who will later go on to wreak more havoc) and then have the villain conveniently destroy themselves (as ultimately happened to Voldemort, something another board member said was deliberate on Rowling's part) so the heroes remain "pure" rather than continuing rampaging around actually teaches a bad moral message.

Here's what I posted, cleaned up a bit:

About "seventeen year olds not killing" being a bad moral message, it (and Karmic Deaths in general) teach that:

1. You Can Win a War With Clean Hands-No, you can't. There are lesser evils--nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the lesser evil than a land invasion or blockading Japan until most of the population starved to death--but victory often requires doing distasteful but necessary things.

In Oklahoma!, the villainous Jud Frye conveniently falls on his own knife so Curley and Laurie can ride happily into the sunset with "clean" hands and yet not have to worry about Jud taking revenge at some future date (as he very well might--earlier in the play he semi-confesses to having killed a woman and her family because she favored another man over him).  In real life, this does not happen, or at least not very often.

2. Good Always Wins-Not in this life it doesn't.  How many times have good people/nations been crushed by the bad ones? The Czechs lost their freedom in 1938, got it back briefly in the aftermath of WWII (before a Soviet-sponsored coup), and then lost it again until 1989.  The Poles lost their freedom in 1939 (earlier if you count the fact they were under a domestic military regime that participated in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia), suffered the loss of (I think) one-third of their population to the Nazis, and spent 40+ years under Soviet domination.  On a personal level, 25 percent of all murders go unsolved and truly massive numbers of rapes go unreported.

3. Someone Else Will Take Responsibility-One TVTropes entry is entitled Big Damn Villains and describes how the villains will often do something evil but necessary so the hero can remain "pure." This isn't realistic either.  Sometimes, there is nobody else to take responsibility, nobody else to do the necessary thing. 

Sufficient to say, in my fiction, there won't be "Karmic Deaths."  I am not willing to sacrifice realism to paint a false picture of evil being something easy to defeat.

Now for the record, although I have never been to war and it's been a long time since I've been in a fight, I'm not some armchair warlord ignorant of how awful war, combat, etc are.  Most of my writing involves violence in some form or another--in order to write it realistically, I've had to do a lot of research and thus I know that war, violence, etc. are evil things that should be avoided if at all possible.  I depict war, but I depict it as something truly horrible rather than some unrealistic glorified situation.

Due to this ethic, in Fiction Alley's "Plot Bunny" (story idea) forum, I posted a suggested storyline where the three kids kill Dolohov because with the Ministry under Death Eater control, simply handing him over the proper authorities is no longer an option.  Due to their lack of the skill needed to cast the Killing Curse, they essentially batter him to death with Stunners, with Harry contributed Sectumsempra.  It is a horrific, brutal act that gives them all (especially Ron and Hermione, who unlike Harry haven't killed before) what knowledgeable readers would recognize as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, something those who have killed in war are often afflicted with.

(I think this would be entirely fitting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, given how dark the book is.)

In my planned Wastelands novels, protagonist Andrew Sutter will participate in large-scale battles and many individual combats and I will not invent unrealistic scenarios to have the Forces of Good win the day without blood on their hands.  However, I will most definitely show the psychological toll this takes on them.

For example, early in the story, Andrew hesitates to kill a fleeing officer of the Flesh-Eater Legion, an evil cult that is extorting tribute from his town, and said officer summons a Flesh-Eater army.  During the resulting fight, Andrew again hesitates and another character dies at the hands of a Flesh-Eater scout Andrew could have killed.

(Most people are hardwired to have trouble killing other humans, something that takes significant training to overcome.  Dave Grossman, who I think is a Vietnam veteran, wrote extensively about this in On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.)

As a result of the above situations (and the consequent obliteration of his hometown and the death or enslavement of most of the people he grew up with), Andrew suffers from horrific survivor's guilt and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and, because he has associated hestitation at violence with failing to stop evil men from killing people he cares about, he is much less inclined to be merciful. 

Externally, he will appear to be this apocalyptic bringer of destruction, but internally, we're talking a whole Santa-sack full of issues.  I hope will be able to write Andrew in a way that does my planned tormented gunslinger justice but at the same time doesn't turn into melodrama.

I wanted to post the links to the discussions and "plot bunny" I mentioned, but either FictionAlley or my Internet connection is acting up right now and I am having problems getting there.

The Novel Has Been Split: An Update on My Writing Projects

It's been awhile since I updated my loyal readers on my various projects. So here goes...

My most momentous creative decision thus far is to split Escape from the Wastelands into two novels.  The first one will be titled Battle for the Wastelands and the second one will retain the title Escape from the Wastelands.

I had already pondered doing this for reasons I will get into later, but it was conversations with Alexandra Hughes that sealed the deal.  She has a 130,000-word novel that she has not been able to sell, in part due to its length.  I calculated how long the original Escape would have been, based on an average length of 4,000 words per chapter, and it came out to 160,000 words.  Bringing the average down a bit, it would still be 130,000 to 140,000 words.

That's entirely too long, especially since I recall reading somewhere that the proper length for a first novel should be 90,000 words or so.  The Wastelands tales are genre fiction (I've described them as "post-apocalyptic steampunk Westerns"), so thats another reason not to go too long.

Also, as a member of one of my writing groups (I think it was Lawrenceville) said, "make us care about your characters before you kill them."  Character development is historically one of my weaknesses, but here's how the situation specifically applies to Wastelands.

In the original Escape, Andrew survived the destruction of Carroll Town and briefly fought in the army of Alonzo Merrill, who is the last surviving male of the dynasty that ruled the area before the Flesh-Eaters came.  There's a major battle and it will appear that the Merrill army has been destroyed and Andrew will flee south across the Iron Desert.

He would have only been with the Merrill army for maybe three chapters tops.  That's not a lot of time to get attached to characters before they're killed off.  At worst, the whole situation could be considered a retread of the fall of Carroll Town, not that long before in terms of both story-time and page-count.

Expanding Andrew's time among the Merrills--I've got 50,000 words to write before I hit the 90K mark and I've kicked the apparent destruction of the Merrill army into the new Escape--gives me time to expand on the Merrill war against the Flesh-Eaters, worldbuild a lot more, and introduce a new group of people for Andrew (and the readers) to get attached to.

I haven't planned much of the Merrill phase of the expanded story beyond the capture of a Flesh-Eater dirigible designed for close-air support, but I do have a new group of characters planned who will become Andrew's Nakama.  I've used the structure of the Five Man Band to create the basis for the characters, although don't worry, the scenario isn't cliched.

(For starters, the group is a squad of soldiers and "The Big Guy" is the sergeant, so he, not Andrew, is in charge.  Plus I'm tinkering with making "The Smart Guy" a fellow survivor of the fall of Carroll Town and an outright case of what in our world would be recognized as Asperger's Syndrome, so he's not some comic-relief nerd but something a bit more complex.)

Andrew's new "Nakama" will remain intact until early in the new Escape, giving the reader plenty of time to attach to them before the hammer falls.

I just posted on my PlentyofFish profile that I hope to finish the novel in a year.  So if Battle for the Wastelands isn't done by November 2011 and I don't have a good reason, feel free to give me hell.

Also, I've contacted Daverana and canceled my anthology of short fiction.  I did this for several reasons, but the clincher was that in order to make the required word count, I would have had to fill in the three stories that I sold to Daverana's now-defunct (but hopefully coming back at some point) Flashing Swords magazine with a lot of older material I have been unable to sell, material that often required massive revision.

I figured it would be a much more effective use of my time to work on new material, including my novel, rather than tinker with stuff that I wrote in college.  This is not to say that some of them won't see the light of day--Nick Hoffmann said "Old Daniels' Mine" would make the beginning of a good TV series, while some members of my Kennesaw writing group said it came off more like a transcribed TV episode than a good story in its own right.  I'm seriously considering turning it into a telemovie script.  :)

And as usual, my Transformers story The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot has been neglected.  I haven't updated since early September, when I finished a chapter in my personal notebook while waiting for a friend's birthday party to start at DragonCon.  Luckily, I've only got three chapters or so to finish, so once I actually start writing, it won't take that long.  I particularly like what I'm doing with my Magnificent Bastard interpretation of Starscream (that I feel is more faithful to the promotional material surrounding Movie-Starscream than the actual movie was), so I definitely want to end the story.