Going Back to DragonCon...

This time last year, I was starting a new job and needed to focus on learning how to do that properly. The year before that, I was a graduate student at Georgia State paying for my M.A. by working as a graduate research assistant and didn't want to spend the money.

Things are a little different this year, so I'm going back to DragonCon! For those of you who aren't in the know, DragonCon is the big science fiction, fantasy, horror, comics, etc. convention in Atlanta every Labor Day weekend.

In 2008 I went to DragonCon and met representatives of the company holding the rights to the BattleTech science-fiction franchise. I spent the next year (I probably could have finished it faster) writing "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge," which tells the tale of the Clan Wolf invasion of the Oberon Confederation, and told them in person in 2009 that I'd submitted it.

(I also got a good reference from established BattleTech writer Loren Coleman, who vouched for me that unlike some other fan-fic writers, I wasn't insane and actually did believe in the rights of copyright holders.)

They ultimately accepted the story and it's now considered part of the BattleTech canon alongside books written by established authors like Michael Stackpole, Mr. Coleman, Blaine Lee Pardoe, etc.

This time around, I've got two completed novels--the post-apocalyptic steampunk Western Battle for the Wastelands and the Lovecraftian science-fiction/horror The Thing in the Woods--to pitch. I've got got two more incomplete projects, the horror/dark comedy/bizarro Little People, Big Guns (which I've blogged about under its original title Badgers vs. Midgets) and the science fiction Bloody Talons: An Oral History of the Avian War, that I can pitch as well. Even if they're not done now, I can get permission to submit them once they're done.

(Bloody Talons is the secret project I've been referencing in posts tagged with "aliens" and "alien invasion." It can be described as a cross between World War Z and Independence Day. I'm still going to keep the details close to the chest though, since it's maybe 1/3 finished.)

When I was at DragonCon in 2011 and 2012, I made contacts with publishers and pitched Battle. Although neither pitch panned out (I did get a "this is good" rejection from one publisher though), meeting representatives of publishers at conventions is a good way to get around the "no unsolicited submissions" bar. If you get permission, it's not an unsolicited submission anymore. Just be sure to reference that in the e-mail to be safe.

Furthermore, even if I don't sell anything as a result of my visit, it's a good way to network and learn. I've interacted with Michael Stackpole and Stephen Michael Stirling, both of whom are really cool guys, and learned about the craft of writing. I might acquire some interesting new books (which I could get signed, considering how many authors are there) and collectibles. And I just learned from my friend James R. Tuck that the Fire of Brazil near the hotel has a $10-12 lunch. Considering how those Brazilian steakhouses are typically $50+ I think I'll hit that up pronto.

It's going to be a fun weekend. :)

Back To BattleTech

This morning I ordered the Wars of Reaving BattleTech source-book from Barnes and Noble's website, finally remembering to use one of those e-mail coupons my membership entitles me to. Between the 20 percent off and the free express shipping, I saved $10. That covers around a fifth of the two years I've had a membership there, a lot more than 10 percent off an in-store purchase would.

Why am I discussing this purchase? Because I've decided to try my hand at BattleTech fiction once more. In 2009, I sold a short story entitled "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge," which covers one of the early battles of the Clan Wolf invasion of the Inner Sphere, to BattleCorps, the official tie-in site for BattleTech fiction. However, due to some matters I'm not going to discuss, I set aside some partially-written stories and focused on other work.

However, things changed and I decided to give one of those stories a look. The BattleCorps guidelines advise new writers to stay away from established characters and well-known areas of the BT universe, lest a good story be rejected for conflicting with established canon. "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge" describes part of the Battle of the Jallington Vale, which took place during Clan Wolf's invasion of the Oberon Confederation world of Drask's Den. That conquest is described in the 1990s Clan Wolf manual I own as being something resembling the Persian Gulf War--much of the Oberon army was destroyed from the air before ground combat even took place--and I'd researched the Gulf War a fair bit for other projects. There also appeared to be no mention of it beyond the entry in the Clan Wolf book, so it was fair game. And considering how they bought it, it all worked out.

My next story, "El Hijo de Hermano Abdullah," takes places in the Deep Periphery, in the wars between the Ummayyads and the Castilians. That aspect of BattleTech canon is also not well-developed, at least in comparison to the Inner Sphere. I pitched the idea to one of the BattleCorps editors, who suggested I purchase War of Reaving to see what's been going on in the Deep Periphery since then. Given how the Clan worlds are considered part of the Deep Periphery and I had heard there'd be some major doings related to the Ummayyads and the Castilians not mentioned in the Periphery source-book I bought for "Skirmish," I figured it would be a wise investment.

Plus the Wars of Reaving that ravaged Clan Space at the same time as the Word of Blake Jihad trashed the Inner Sphere could be a good source of stories. I am not a fan of the FedCom Civil War and WOB storylines and figured I'd center my BattleTech stories on the Clan Invasion Era in the Inner Sphere and the Periphery other times, but the WoR, which take place outside the Inner Sphere, would also work.

"Free express shipping" means 1-3 business days. Maybe when I get it, I'll review it here.

Just Got Paid for "Coil Gun"

I'm a very happy camper right now.  I just got paid $271.05 for "Coil Gun."

This is my first professional level sale, so I don't know how it goes with other markets, but my other sales were to lower-paying markets that did not pay as quickly.  Kudos to Michael Wills at Digital Science Fiction.  And this is my largest haul for anything I've written--the next biggest contender, "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge" (BattleTech), was $196.

(Which reminds me, I've got some more stories in mind for protagonist Arnold Hoefer, who was fairly well-received on the BT boards, and the Clan Wolf conquest of the Oberon Confederation in general.  Maybe I can get to work on those at some point.)

"Coil Gun" will be in the third edition of Digital Science Fiction, which will come out this August.  When it becomes available, I will promote the heck out of it via this blog, my Facebook fan-page, and other means.  Once print editions become available, I intend to head down to Griffin and do the book signings I promised my former co-workers at The Griffin Daily News so long ago.

The Four Writings I'm Most Proud Of

Decided to list the four completed works I've written that I'm the most proud of, in order of pride. Here goes, with spoilers contained therein...

The Skirmish at the Vale's Edge (BattleTech)

When I visited DragonCon in 2008, I found a booth for Catalyst Game Labs, the company that current produces the BattleTech game and licensed fiction, and figured this would be a good writing opportunity. However, I let the project sit by the wayside while I worked on other projects until spring/summer 2009. I decided then that I ought to have the story done by DragonCon 2009, so I could find the Catalyst people again and tell them I'd submitted something.

I purchased some BattleTech source-books online and went to work. I remember watching the BattleTech animated series when I was in elementary school (it was on UPN on Sunday mornings, before church), so I remembered the Clans. Given how new writers are encouraged to start out far away from the important characters from the books and games, I figured the Clan invasion of the Periphery was a good place to set a story.

The Clan Wolf conquest of Drask's Den reminded me a lot of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which I'd researched extensively for my Gates of Vasharia project, so I went to work. I like to think my future biographers will have a field day with all the inside jokes--there's a city on Drask's Den named Carrollton, after the town where The Griffin Daily News is printed, while the protagonist shares a surname with my coworker at the Griffin paper.

I finished the story over the summer of 2009 and ran it through my Kennesaw and Lawrenceville writing groups twice and ended up submitting it to BattleCorps, the online BattleTech fiction compendium, a few days before DragonCon. After some tinkering, it went up on http://www.battlecorps.com/ in early October 2009. Since it's an older story, it can probably be purchased for $2.00 or so.

Four cents per word is not considered a "pro rate" (that's $0.05/word plus), so I can't count this toward membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America. However, it still came out very lucrative for me and I intend to write more. The protagonist proved to be very popular with the BattleCorps denizens, so I think we'll be seeing him again.

Best of all, my story is now considered BattleTech canon.  For those of you who need some clarification, that means it is now considered as valid as any of the source-books, gaming manuals, or novels as far as the history of the BattleTech fictional universe is concerned.  I've made a mark, albeit a small one, on one of the biggest gaming franchises out there.

Lord of the Werewolves (Harry Potter fan-fiction)

Although this is fan-fiction and therefore I cannot make any money on it (unlike my original story, "I am the Wendigo," which we'll discuss later), I do like this one. But before I describe why, some background.

In 2008, I wrote a novel-length Harry Potter fan-fic entitled "The Wrath of the Half-Blood Prince," which took place during the First War of the Dark Lord (in the timeline, the 1970s) and was about Snape.  More on that later.

In order to get ideas and share my own thoughts, I joined the FictionAlley web-site.  While I was there, I made the acquaintance of Kyli Ann Rasco, who was an active poster in the threads critical of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I did not agree with all criticisms of the last book, but one of the better arguments was that Lupin and Tonks were underused. All they did was get married, have a baby, and die (offscreen, no less), and Lupin acted like a total tool when he learned that Tonks was pregnant. Both of them could have done so much more--Tonks, a shape-shifter, could have been a hard-core Order of the Phoenix assassin, while Lupin, a werewolf, could have challenged the terrorist Fenrir Greyback for control of Britain's werewolf community.

Kyli and I started corresponding and so "Lord of the Werewolves" was born. We both came up with ideas, I wrote the chapters, and then sent them to Kyli for revision and approval.

I'm proud of this for several reasons. Firstly, it's probably one of the most character-centric things I've ever written.

Remus Lupin starts out the story the way he is in canon--a nice guy who doesn't have a lot of moral courage (werewolves are treated similarly to how those with AIDS were treated in the 1980s and he was so glad to have friends that he never stood up to them, even when they did bad things like bully the nerdy young Snape). However, there is a dark, violent side to his character (we see hints of it in the earlier books) that is unleashed when Tonks, injured in a battle with her mad aunt Bellatrix Lestrange, is denied medical treatment by prejudiced doctors and miscarries. After killing the two Healers, Lupin is forced to kneel before Fenrir Greyback to escape the vengeance of the wizarding legal system, now under the control of the Dark Lord.

Once he's realized how thoroughly he's screwed up, he begins planning something resembling Operation Valkyrie (the plot to overthrow Hitler)--he'll assassinate Fenrir Greyback, blame the Death Eaters, and turn the werewolves against the Dark Lord. In the meantime, as a rising star in Greyback's outfit, he becomes more assertive and aggressive, or as one of my readers described him, "darker and edgier." As another reader said, he ultimately "finds his backbone" and is able to stand up to both the Forces of Evil and the often-prejudiced Forces of Good.

I did not put as much thought into Tonks' characterization, but it's there. She starts out her usual spunky self, ends up in a very dark place as a result of her miscarriage and her husband's apparent abandonment, and pulls herself back together. She ends up using FiendFyre as a weapon of assassination, and is back to normal by the end of the story.

I also got to indulge my penchant for making truly awful puns. Here's a selection from a chapter taking place on Valentine's Day...

"Oh Merlin," Tonks said from underneath him. "Professor Lupin, I didn't think you still had it in you."

Lupin smiled.

"Well, you could say I was just hungry like the wolf."

Tonks giggled. That warmed Lupin's heart. He decided to keep the jokes rolling.


"Who knew Miss Tonks liked it on all fours?"

She laughed. "I admit, not my usual cup of tea. But damn."

"So nice, we did it twice."

Tonks laughed again.

The "hungry like the wolf" pun provoked much groaning from those who heard it. This selection also reflects character development on Lupin's part--in a chapter taking place during their honeymoon, it's Tonks who is the sexually-dominant one (due to being younger and much more energetic). However, in this one, some months after kneeling and swearing allegiance to Greyback, Lupin has shown himself much more willing to take charge, so to speak.

Here's the story, for those who want to read it:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4764695/1/Lord_of_the_Werewolves

I am the Wendigo (original)

I wrote this one when I was a senior at the University of Georgia. In December 2006, I sold it to the webzine Chimaera Serials and it went up in January of 2007. I was ultimately paid $20 for it, which is somewhere between $0.01 and $0.02 per word.

Chimaera Serials died later in 2007 and the web-site ultimately went down within the last year. Somebody has posted it on an Internet forum and let it sit there for years as a free "calling card" to give out to people. I had to take it down in order to self-publish it on Amazon and it's available here.

I think "I am the Wendigo" is probably the scariest thing I've ever written. I think that's something to be proud of.

The Wrath of the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter fan-fiction)

I started writing this one after reading Sindie's "The Moment It Began," which I found via some fan-art on DeviantArt.com. It started out as a one-shot in which the Death-Eater-to-be Mulciber attacks Lily, not Mary Macdonald (as was the case in the canon timeline), and Severus Snape unleashes the titular wrath. However, there were enough people who wanted more that I continued the story, to the point that when finished (it took all of 2008 to write), it was longer than the first three or four Harry Potter books combined.

One reason I'm proud of this is how popular it is. It's gotten over 250,000 hits, it's been included in over 40 fanfiction.net collections, and hundreds of fanfiction.net users have included it in their "favorite stories" list. This means there are hundreds if not thousands of people who will remember my name when, someday, they see my original novels for sale.

It's also my first finished novel and showed me how to avoid letting projects fall by the wayside--I had a large number of fans who read, wrote reviews, and were expecting more. When you have people waiting for your next chapter, it provides an extra push to write it. I've put this principle to good use with my original fiction, using my two writing groups.

Although character growth and development was not my original concern when writing the story, there was enough of it that one member of FictionAlley pointed it out, in a most unexpected place--the Marauders!

For the record, I don't like the Marauders. I think they were a bunch of thugs, with James Potter in particular being the Gryffindor equivalent of Draco Malfoy. Only Lupin gets any sympathy because he was less involved with their bad behavior and went along with it because he was desperate to have friends, not because he was truly a bully or sadist.

However, this member of FA (whose user-name I cannot remember) said I did a really good job depicting the transformation of the Marauders "from bullies into men of character." I believe Rowling's intent was to depict James as having abandoned his cruel ways as a youth to become a heroic fighter against Evil and although this isn't portrayed very well in the books, I figured I ought to include it in the story.

Of course, at one point in their school days, Snape gives him a good working-over with Sectumsempra in a midnight-mugging-gone-wrong.... :)

I did give Snape a character-arc too. He starts out as being concerned only about Lily and his own position in Slytherin (in that order) and his initial breach with the Death-Eaters-to-be was, like his canon break, the former taking precedence over the latter.

Once away from the bad influence of his evil friends, he slowly detoxes from their selfish and racist ways and, seeing his abusive Muggle father's treatment of his witch mother, firmly represses any controlling attitudes he has toward Lily (although he immediately backs down when she calls him on "I won't let you..." in the books, that attitude is still there). He ultimately grows to the point he protects James from Arnold Trigg, whom he had taught Dark Arts and who had gone progressively insane as a result of his fiancee's death at the hands of the Death Eaters.

Lily gets a character-arc too. In a snippet in Deathly Hallows, when she criticizes Snape for what Mulciber did to Mary, she focuses on the fact it was "Dark Magic" more than what Mulciber actually did. The events of the war push her to be more flexible and less moralistic. After all, I could argue aggression using "Light Magic" (James' bullying of Snape, seen in flashback in Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix) is worse than self-defense using Dark Magic (Snape's retaliation using Sectumsempra).

I also tried to make Tobias Snape, Snape's abusive Muggle father, into a more complex character. Rather than making him an alcoholic vagrant, as is often done in Snape stories, I depicted him as a war veteran (the Suez Crisis and the Malayan Emergency, which would have taken place when he was a young man) self-medicating his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with alcohol and as a mill-worker whose livelihood is disappearing as British mills lose market share to cheaper foreign producers. He's also on some level insecure and frightened of his wife's supernatural powers, which explains why, when he's been drinking, he berates her and puts her down. He also has a secret love for musical theater.

(He's still a colossal jerk and I admit I teared up writing a scene depicting him drinking and ranting--it was that depressing.)

Here's the link if you want to read it:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4026081/1/The_Wrath_of_the_Half_Blood_Prince

My Last DragonCon Post, Featuring Mike Lee, Food, and Other Stuff

I've been busy working on Escape from the Wastelands and stuff that caught my attention, so I haven't yet put up everything from DragonCon.  This post won't be as long and detailed as my last one because in the "What Women Want" panel, I spent more time writing down ideas for Escape inspired by the panelists' discussion than writing down what they actually said.

At DragonCon, there was a panel on writing for gaming universes that featuring Warhammer 40,000 author Mike Lee (who is absolutely hilarious and fun to talk to) and a father and son, one of whom was a writer and the other a graphic designer.  Here are some things I learned...

Firstly, gaming companies consider the licensed novels a marketing tool primarily.  Novels are timed with product releases--a novel about the Black Templars Space Marine chapter would be released at the same time as a new Black Templar gaming codex.  Time is tight--Black Library often gives writers 90 days to put out a novel.  Around three tie-in books come out per year.

Secondly, established characters are products and gaming companies are very protective of them.  It is rare for book characters to enter the game-canon (i.e. appear in codices, become playable characters, etc.) 

This is something I was already somewhat aware of due to writing for the BattleTech universe--new writers are advised to avoid using "name characters" like Victor Steiner-Davion because what they've been up to is documented to the nth degree.  Good stories have been rejected because they feature established characters doing something when established canon has them somewhere else.

That's why, in "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge," I invented an entirely new Oberon Confederation MechWarrior named Arnold Hoefer to be my protagonist and his Clan Wolf antagonists were names from the Clan Wolf codex who didn't have any established back story.  I intend to write more stories about Hoefer and the Clan Wolf characters and I can't imagine them crossing paths with any canon characters with the possible exception of Phelan Kell (who served as bondsman to Ulric Kerensky, the ruler of Clan Wolf, and was inducted into the warrior caste for saving his life) and then it would be very brief.

A fun fact I learned about Games Workshop's headquarters in Nottingham, UK, is that it is locally known as "the Reichstag."  It's a huge black building with a giant Imperial eagle (symbol of the Warhammer 40,000 Imperium) on it.  One can ask a local cabbie to take you to "the Reichstag" and he'll take you to GW.

During the discussion of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and the different strength levels of the diffferent factions, Michael Coker said something that at the time was absolutely hilarious:

"Every time the Necrons show up, the Imperium gets its ass handed to them.  Because they're the goddamn Necrons."

But back to writing stuff.  Lee described having to rewrite part of his novel Warhammer: Reaper of Souls to feature a character being near a burning city in order to accomodate a poster that depicted one of the characters from the novel near a burning city.  I guess this was to ensure continuity between the novels, the gaming canon, and the promotional materials.

The "What Women Want" panel gave me lots of interesting ideas for Escape, including elaborating on one character to make her a "strong female character" and making the racial situation in one of the nations more diverse.  However, as I said earlier, I was too busy writing those down to get a whole lot of the general advice.  The one bit of advice I can remember is that a trait women like in male characters is fatherliness/being a father.  I think they said there were too many "boy-men" in fiction.

I also got into a brief argument with one of the panelists about whether Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox's character from the live-action Transformers films) could be considered a strong female character or not.  My contention was that she was, based on her combat capability (hotwiring a car to pull a wounded Bumblebee back into the fight in the first movie and crushing the Decepticon imposter-bot "Alice" in the second).  I probably should have planned what I was going to say more before stating my disagreement, since I neglected to mention her loyalty to her father to the point of getting criminally cited for not testifying against him and her ruthlessness in torturing the Decepticon spy in the second film.

The author, whose name I cannot recall, said in response to my kill-the-Fembot defense that anyone could have done that, that her intelligence/mechanical skill was not elaborated on enough, and that she ended up needing to be rescued.  I don't agree with any of those points--in fact, I could make the argument that Mikaela is even more hard-core than Sam himself.

(I distinctly recall her referring to Sam as a "little girl" at one point.)

Also, if you're ever at the Peachtree Center building in Atlanta, be sure to check out Cafe Momo.  It has a buffet there where you can buy food by the pound.  This means meals are a bit on the pricey side, but they're really good and you can get a balanced meal (fruits/vegetables), which is pretty unusual at a mall food court.  When I was at DragonCon, I had at least two meals there and they were good, with the exception of some marble cheesecake I had to pay extra for.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, I went to the Metro Cafe Diner.  The first time, I went with members of my Lawrenceville writing group and didn't eat anything.  The second time, I had a chicken-and-cheese quesadilla at the bar.  I now know that both salsa and honey mustard both make good sauces for the quesadilla, which was really good in and of itself.