Category Archives: Nonfiction

March 10, 2023 · 3:37 pm

Did I miss a golden opportunity?

With my regular cash clients on indefinite hiatus, I’ve been applying steadily to freelance positions advertised on journalism websites, Linked In and the like. The most interesting was for a “with” ghostwriting gig, as in The Perfect Assassin by James Patterson with Brian Sitts. The company in question provides the plots, then pays a writer to flesh out the details — dialogue, setting, etc.

They’re doing this in several genres so I applied for the fantasy gig. Last week I turned in a 1,000-word scene following their plot, and I think it was good, but they gave me a No at the start of this week. The problem may have been that my tone was urban fantasy when they wanted a Tolkien or George RR Martin vibe. Did I miss a golden opportunity? It would have certainly been more fun than most of my paying gigs and might have boosted my name recognition factor. On the other hand, I don’t know what length of book they wanted: the pay would have been good for 60,000 words, unsatisfying for 100,000. Plus it would come in three scheduled payments per book (one when the first quarter is done, one when the manuscript is done, one when revisions are finished or something like that). I don’t suspect them of chicanery but a new company might run out of funding before I got the cash.  Who knows?

Otherwise the week went well. I spent some time jotting down ideas for the next phase of Let No Man Put Asunder and got about 5,000 words done. I’m already thinking of revisions; if I hit my minimum for the month, 10,000 words, I may go back and polish everything, as I did with the first few chapters already.

I rewrote Mage’s Masquerade and I’m really pleased with it. I’ll print it out and do a final read in hard copy later in March.

I finished rereading The Impossible Takes a Little Longer and it’s much better than I thought. Not publishable but as I’d hoped, the story arc is largely there. I started jotting down notes on fixing things; a big one is a lot more intensity in my protagonist’s emotions. I’m putting her through the ringer but it’s not showing on the page.

I read the second half of Obolus to the writing group — well, I got about halfway through in the time allotted. That’s frustrating as I need feedback on the ending, so I’ll wait and read that part again at the next meeting. Otherwise the reading went great. They found it much improved over the draft I read them a couple of months back. One guy said my lines were so good that like Douglas Adams I distracted him from the flow of the story. I can live with that.

I also reread Oh the Places You’ll Go! which I intend to release as a solo short story. It looks good but it made take more editing to make it good enough.

That plus a little bit of research reading covers it, I think. Plus I had articles about comics writer Jim Shooter and a noteworthy Silver Age Hulk tale over at Atomic Junkshop. On Con-Tinual’s Facebook page I participated in a discussion about Wonder Woman, a topic you may have noticed I’m fond of.

#SFWApro. LOTR covers by Barbara Remington, Wonder Woman cover by Gene Colan. All rights remain with current holders.

 

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March 3, 2023 · 4:16 pm

March came in like a … well, it came in like March, I guess.

Which is to say this was not a spectacular week, but it was a solid, productive one. Well, if you discount Monday.

Sunday night it was Plushie’s turn to get diarrhea and need to go out every two hours or so. As my boss is much more understanding than TYG’s, I volunteered to take point. I spent most of Monday in a daze, without the presence of mind to do more than blog posts (here’s one on superhero teams and another on the debut of Poison Ivy). After that, things picked up.And hey, he’s cute enough to be worth a little sacrifice. Though the strange squirting sound he made when he pooped was gross.

I got a lot of prep work done on marketing for 19 ♾️. Things like local bookstores that might host a signing, book events in the area, book bloggers who might be up for reviews, etc. Of course this will be no use unless I forge ahead and contact the bookstores, which I never did with Questionable Minds. This time I must not fail!

I wrote about 1,600 words on Let No Man Put Asunder. I stopped right before the next big fight because I’ve painted Paul and Mandy into a corner and I’ve no idea how to extract them successfully. Hopefully I’ll find the solution next week.

I submitted two short stories to various markets and applied for several freelance job openings. And I began rereading Impossible Takes a Little Longer to see how well it works and what I need to fix next go-round.

Last weekend we stopped by PetSmart to shop for pet toys and found an adoption event in progress. Didn’t adopt — we have enough — but I did get to see my first polydactyl cat.#SFWApro.

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February 22, 2023 · 5:10 am

What makes a Jekyll and Hyde movie, exactly?

When writing my movie books one of the first requirements is to figure out the scope of the project and the boundaries of the topic.

When I wrote Now and Then We Time Travel, for instance, I ruled out covering A Christmas Carol. Although Scrooge does witness his past, he doesn’t interact with it so I decided it was equivalent to visions of the future — I didn’t cover those either— rather than physically traveling across time. As a practical point, films of the Dickens classic have been well-covered elsewhere and approaching them as time-travel films wouldn’t bring any new perspective to them. The exception was Chasing Christmas, a variation which does work in time travel.

On the other hand, Premonition (2007) got in despite the title. The film has Sandra Bullock bouncing back and forth through time after her husband’s death rather than merely foreseeing it.

I face the same problem with my possible Jekyll and Hyde film book, as witness two films and a TV episode I caught this past week.

The TV one is a second season Outer Limits episode “Expanding Human.” A series of mysterious crimes leads cop James Doohan to a scientist experimenting with consciousness expanding drugs. The drugs have given the guy a second personality, superhuman and evil; he plans to create more of his homo superior kind and killing everyone who isn’t fit to survive.

Would it qualify? It does have a super-scientific drug transform an ordinary scientist into an evil second personality but unlike Hyde, the new being doesn’t appear to be drawn from the scientist’s buried dark side. He’s simply a monster. Is that enough?

Similarly there’s the movie HORROR HIGH (1973). A forgettable low-budget film, it’s teen protagonist is picked on by both bullies and teachers. The kid’s experimenting in science class on turning a guinea pig into a monster; when the teen gets an accidental dose of the experimental formula he becomes a brutal man-beast who kills one of his tormentors. After that, he starts using it intentionally.

I don’t think I’d count this one but the opening scenes make a big thing of the kid’s English class studying Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which makes it clear they do see this as a variation on Stevenson. So if I go ahead with the book yes, it’ll be in there.DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (1971) clearly belongs but rewatching it I was struck by how little it has in common with Stevenson. Stevenson’s book (which I’ll be blogging about soon) deals with hypocrisy: Jekyll wants to sin without besmirching his pious reputation so he transforms himself into the less inhibited and physically dissimilar Hyde, freeing him to sin without restraint. The film’s Dr. Jekyll (Ralph Bates) is driven purely by mad science: he wants to cure all disease but doing that will require centuries, so he starts researching eternal youth instead. He gets it by paying Burke and Hare to provide him with women’s corpses so he can extract chemicals from their female organs. The effect of the drug is to turn him into a woman, Mrs. Hyde (Martine Beswick), supposedly his widowed sister (it helps that Beswick and Bates look very much alike). When Burke and Hare are lynched by an angry mob, Jekyll begins murdering women himself; when things get too hot for a man, he turns into Mrs. Hyde to kill and kill again. But before long, Hyde has an itching to be the only one in their body …

If the film, like I, Monster, dispensed with the names of Stevenson’s characters, would I count it? I’m not sure. That’s the sort of questions I’ll have to resolve if I go ahead with a pitch to McFarland.

For the record, the movie’s a lot of fun. Great character actors in supporting roles, solid turns by the stunningly sexy Beswick and Bates and a great story that brings together not only Jekyll, Hyde, Burke, and Hare but Jack the Ripper. It’s well worth the time. Though I don’t quite buy the relationship between Jekyll and the pretty girl upstairs; Ralph Bates is good-looking but he lacks the sexuality or charm that makes me believe some actors can trigger love at first sight.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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February 10, 2023 · 4:10 pm

It’s a shame I cannot work full-time on fiction and pay the bills

Because as my one of my main nonfiction clients (I’m not counting McFarland) has wrapped up its project (I suspect they’ll be back with something else eventually) and the other hasn’t contacted me in a while, I’ve been doing mostly fiction. I’m enjoying it. When I’m too tired for fiction, I work on submitting shorts or paying taxes.

It can’t last though because I need to make money on top of my Social Security, and make it more regularly than occasional short story sales and McFarland royalties. Though speaking of sales, I sold another copy of Questionable Minds recently, so thank you unknown purchaser.

So I’m applying for various other freelance gigs. I’ll let you know if any work out.

But this week, at least, I got to make fiction a priority. I rewrote Mage’s Masquerade and while it’s not finished, I think I’ve licked the problems with both the mystery plot and the protagonist’s love relationship, building them up so they make sense. I rewrote Paying the Ferryman (I have got to think of a better title) and much improved it. However I think it’s as good as I can get it without feedback so I’ll read it to the writing group soon. I also worked on a couple of short stories that are still in the Oh God, This Will Never Work phase. If I keep working on them hopefully they’ll be in better shape soon; one I think is close, the other … may be a waste of time. We’ll see.

I got some more writing done on Let No Man Put Asunder. It’s going well, though that has me pessimistically waiting for when I discover I’ve plotted myself into a dead end. But you never know, maybe I haven’t.

I also started work on putting together my Magic in History anthology (which will have a better name soon). I know the stories I want to include and I’ve begun the editing.

I also began thinking about my next film book, though I’m not pitching McFarland right away. Out of three possibilities, I’m inclined to go with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde b0ok. It’s a small enough number of movies that it won’t consume as much time and effort as Aliens Are Here did. However I will have to answer several questions before I propose it, mostly about boundaries. For instance, where is the line between Jekyll and Hyde and split personalities in general? Or a film such as The Nutty Professor which is very much a Jekyll and Hyde variation even though it’s different characters? Stay tuned.

Satisfactory all in all though it is sometimes hard maintaining a high creative level. As I mentioned in a previous post it would help to get up and take breaks but it’s hard sometimes to break away, especially with dogs in my lap.

Speaking of which, here’s Trixie hoping I’ll play with her favorite toy, the rubik’s cube on the floor.#SFWApro. cover by Samantha Collins, rights are mine.

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January 4, 2023 · 5:12 am

Well everyone else is blogging about their 2022 stats, so …

While I check to see how many visitors I get day to day, I don’t think much about yearly performance. But a couple of other bloggers were discussing Most Popular 2022 posts, so why not?

The number one stat in 2022 is people just arriving on my home page rather than looking for a specific post. I don’t know if you’re here because you read something of mine or you’re just bouncing around the Internet and landed here, but welcome!

As for specific pages and posts, the Hellboy Chronology is still top dog, 900 hits more than the second place winner. As a Hellboy fan, I created for my own use but I love other people have found it handy too. I’m a little behind with the new TPBs coming out, but I’ll read and enter them all over the next month or so. By which point I think something else will be out, darn it!

The number two post in 2022 was about Alexandra Erin’s Shirley exception — “Well yes I support an abortion ban with no rape exception but surely they’ll make an exception if it’s a ten-year-old raped by her father.” Thus allowing them to support draconian laws while pretending they don’t support the consequences (I think state politician Neal Collins may fall in this category.

This one wasn’t anywhere in the top 10 in 2021. I presume it’s the relevance in the post-Dobbs world and some Republicans enthusiasm for abortion bans that don’t even allow mother’s life exceptions that got people checking it out.

My Sherlock Holmes quotes applying to writing have been popular — I really should do another of those — and “there is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact” came in at number three. “Any truth is better than indefinite doubt” was at eight; “insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories rather than theories to suit facts” was nine (or ten if you count my home page as one).

Fourth was my About Me page. Fifth was my discussion of Alan Moore’s clunky effort to rehabilitate golliwogs. After #6 on misogynist Matt Walsh, we got a general discussion of racist tropes in LXG.

I would draw some conclusion from this, but I don’t have one to draw, sorry.

Cover by Mike Mignola, all rights remain with current holder.

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December 9, 2022 · 4:00 pm

Working is now, thoughts are on then

Overall a good week. Except my insomnia — sleep-maintenance insomnia, where the sufferer wakes up and can’t get back to sleep — was in overdrive. Coupled with a couple of unexpectedly late nights and the time Plushie kicked me awake — he sometimes likes to sleep where my feet are — I’m feeling way zonked as I type this. Hence once again using this Jack Kirby cover for the Sandman story “The Man Who Never Sleeps.”But fortunately writing is something I can do in the dead of night if I’m up, then nap during the day. I did that at one point today only Plushie (again) nudged me awake, then waited expectantly for — well, I’ve no idea. Good thing he’s so adorable.As I mentioned last week, Paying the Ferryman loses a lot of the tension — okay, almost all of it — once we get out of New York. This week I rewrote it to increase tension and I succeeded. I also sharpened the direction of the story to fit with the ending — except I still have no idea what’s going to happen to Eleanor, my POV character in the remaining stretch before the end. She needs a challenge to fit her skills (amateur but gifted thief), a danger to go with it and so far I’m coming up empty. But I will find the answer because the rest of the story’s too good to give up on.

I also put some thought in on the next section of Impossible Takes a Little Longer. Depending who KC turns to for help, we either get to use a lot of the previous draft or I do more new stuff. I’m not sure yet which is the right way to go.

Today I worked on an old short story, The Love That Moves the Sun. After reading over the feedback from my writing group, I made a few changes but it really required much less work than I’d expected. With any luck, I’ll have it off after the holiday, assuming I can find a compatible market.

I also took one day off to handle various chores: contractor appointments for this or that repair, mailing some presents, planning for the writers’ group Christmas party TYG and I are hosting this weekend. Full credit to my wife, she’s amazing at organizing To Do lists for this stuff. I mostly handle invitations and the cooking (chili, apple tart, cookies, cornbread from the Bread Head book I mentioned this morning).

I also spent some time thinking about next year and what I want to accomplish. Coming up with a not-too-specific list of 2022 goals and getting detailed month by month worked well for me this year. I intend to do it again next year. But I’m also working on a 101 in 1,001 list of goals — 101 things to accomplish in the next 1,001 days — for the first time in several years. I may not use it as an actual goal list but coming up with so many forces me to be creative and think of things I’d like to do or need to do. That will help with whatever list I do make.

And I had two blog posts out, as usual, at Atomic Junk Shop. One expresses my distaste for nonfiction writers who think they’re the story, the other discusses pets and comic books, reworking a post of mine here from several years back. I have to say, this John Romita sketch (over Kirby layouts) of Ka-Zar snuggling with his sabertooth Zabu and talking to him like a beloved pet really touches me.  Wises, bravest, swiftest, I talk to Trixie like that all the time.#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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December 6, 2022 · 5:00 am

Golems, Jews, zombies: a book I contributed to

JEWS IN POPULAR SCIENCE FICTION: Marginalized in the Mainstream, edited by Valerie Estelle Frankel, is the book that contains my essay on golems in speculative fiction along with a dozen others. Typically for a book like this, some of them didn’t work for me: I’m familiar with debates over Superman as Jewish symbol and couldn’t get into Jewish themes allegedly found in The Last Airbender (the essay on Jewish themes in Tolkien worked better for being conscious it’s an odd thing to look for). Most of them, though, worked very well indeed.

One article, on the Ferengi as “space Jews” argues they do start out as negative Jewish stereotypes but the writing on DS9 makes them more complex and the Jewish elements less stereotypical. A couple of articles look at Jewish characters in comics, concluding that even characters whose Jewish faith initially runs deep get less noticeably Jewish as time passes, and not Jewish at all when they jump to TV. And “Jewish” is often limited to things instantly recognizable to non-Jews, such as menorahs and Hanukkah.

And while I remain a fan of Ragman, one essay makes a good case that his abilities aren’t Jewish — the whole idea of evil souls getting trapped for their sins in the rag suit is much closer to Christian themes.

My favorite article by two teachers showed how they demonstrate to students the way you apply Jewish religious law to new issues. The topic was the zombie apocalypse: given Judaism’s mandate to treat the dead respectfully, is it acceptable to burn or mutilate the living dead? If the zombies are living virus-carriers, is murdering them acceptable? The answers are a)yes, saving the living counts for more; and b)yes, but only if someone’s in imminent danger, not if the zombie is infected but not turned.

My essay’s awesome too, so if you want to pick something up as a gift this month and you know someone who’d be interested, here’s the link.

#SFWApro. Ragman cover by Pat Broderick. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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November 25, 2022 · 4:30 pm

For some reason I only got about three days of work done … oh, wait

And most of the three days went to working on another of my paying-gig accounting articles. So not much else to discuss.

I did rewrite Don’t Pay the Ferryman (I may retitle it Paying the Ferryman) and I think I have an ending that will work. I also finished the first chapter of my revamped Let No Man Put Asunder but I’m not sure where to go next (I’ll discuss that in its own post soon). And then came Thanksgiving and today, which I’m also taking off. so that’s about it. Though I did post at Atomic Junkshop about DC’s new characters from 1965 and my love of Sherlock Holmes.As Charon plays a role in Paying the Ferryman, here’s Ernie Colon’s depiction from Arak, Son of Thunder.#SFWApro. All rights to image remain with current holder.

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November 22, 2022 · 5:00 am

Writing to sell (and a discount sale!)

No, not writing stories with an idea of what will sell sell, but things like cover copy, Amazon online blurbs, and ads. I put in a lot of work during the countdown to publishing Questionable Minds. I browsed Amazon ads when they pop up in my FB feed, and they pop up a lot. It was primarily to get a sense of how other authors push books online, though it’s also just part of my love for books in general. When I worked at Waldenbooks in the 1990s I’d read the back copy of lots of books just to see what they were like. “Men’s adventure” books, Sweet Valley High, Babysitters Club, serious literature. It’s one of the things I miss about bookselling — sure I could do it in a bookstore but I rarely have that much time.

The style in promotional copy has changed a lot. Author Gail Z. Martin (I know her from cons) says it’s due to Amazon allowing all kinds of searches so including really nitty gritty specifics about tropes and subcategories helps grab readers. Thus romances (I’ve no idea why I get so many — it’s hardly my first pick) break down into subcategories such as grumpy single dad, grumpy boss, grumpy neighbor, grumpy single-dad neighbor. Plus lists of tropes such as enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, bullies-to-lovers (that one makes me want to vomit), smoldering romance, sweet and gentle romance, frazzled single parents, etc.

So, here’s mine: ”

Enter a “steam-psi” Victorian world where newly discovered “mentalist” abilities are changing everything — and they’ve given Jack the Ripper a path to absolute power.

In Victorian England, 1888, some say Sir Simon Taggart is under the punishment of God.

In an England swirling with mentalist powers — levitation, mesmerism, human telegraphy — the baronet is unique, possessing mental shields that render him immune to any psychic assault. Even some of his friends think it’s a curse, cutting him off from the next step in human mental and spiritual evolution. To Simon, it’s a blessing.

Four years ago, the Guv’nor, the hidden ruler of the London underworld, arranged the murder of Simon’s wife Agnes. Obsessed with finding who hired the Guv’nor, Simon works alongside Inspector Hudnall and Miss Grey in Scotland Yard’s Mentalist Investigation Department. Immunity to telegraphy, clairvoyance and mesmerism are an asset in his work — but they may not be enough to crack the latest case.

A mysterious killer has begun butchering Whitechapel streetwalkers. With every killing, the man newspapers call “the Ripper” grows in mental power and in the brutality of his attacks. Is murder all that’s on his mind or does he have an endgame? What plans does the Guv’nor have for the Whitechapel killer? And if Simon has to choose between stopping the Ripper and unmasking the Guv’nor, how will he decide?

Questionable Minds is set in a Victorian England struggling to preserve the social hierarchy while mentalism threatens to overturn it. The cast of characters includes Dr. Henry Jekyll (and yes, his friend Edward Hyde too) and multiple other figures from history and fiction. It has a tormented, morally compromised protagonist, serial-killer villain, a devoted father-daughter relationship and a passionate but complicated love affair.

Trigger Warning: Multiple brutal murders. Nineteenth-century sexism and imperialism. A child in danger.”

I think it works. I hope I’m right. I’m also thinking of going back and redoing the copy for Atlas Shagged and Atoms for Peace and seeing if that can juice sales any. Can’t hurt! Questionable Minds is available in ebook on Amazon or other retailers. Or there’s the paperback.

And while I’m promoting myself, I’ll note that McFarland iscoffering 40% off all titles through November 28, including all my books such as The Aliens Are Here. Use HOLIDAY22 as the code at checkout!

#SFWApro. Covers by Samantha Collins (t) and Zakaria Nada.

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November 11, 2022 · 4:30 pm

Today was exhausting but the week was good

What was with today? TYG was out for the morning which threw my schedule off. Then at lunch she was back, plus we had the pressure washers in to clean the house, plus the dogs were freaking out because the pressure-washer team were DUDES MAKING STRANGE NOISES!!! Fortunately I woke up early enough to complete my week’s 30-hour quotient.

The week went well overall. I did a couple of presentations Tuesday night on Continual, one on small-town fantasy and another on new books we had out. I’ll share the links when I get them.

I worked on Obalus which I’m now retitling Don’t Pay the Ferryman (or maybe Pay the Ferryman) — I’d dropped that because Shadows Reflected In Darkness was titled Don’t Pay the Merryman but now that it’s changed, they’re not so similar. To my surprise when I tried writing through the parts I was uncertain about I found an ending. It’s not a good ending but unlike the deus ex machina of the previous draft’s ending, it does follow logically from what’s going on. I can work with it and improve it.

I had a similar experience working on The Impossible Takes a Little Longer. By moving up some of the bad surprises lying in wait for KC I was able to keep the tension high without feeling its too rushed. In several ways it’s going to work better than the previous draft, which is of course the goal.

The downside is that I’m cutting out a lot of stuff. The previous drafts have KC taking a trip to New York to meet fellow superhero Captain Wonder. It took up several chapters. Gone now because it doesn’t make sense (trust me). I’m wondering if I’ll end up with a really short novel or an unacceptably long novella but hey, in the age of ebooks and self-publishing that’s not a dealbreaker. So onward! The only way out of the crazy maze is to keep going!

And today I completed one of my for-pay accounting articles. I don’t know if there’ll be another assignment this month but if not, more time for fiction!

So that was all good. And Metastellar put up my short story The Savage Year on their webiste.

And now the weekend. Bread baking, a friend’s play, and reading a book about spiders. Fun!

#SFWApro. All rights to cover images remain with current holder. Strange Tales cover by Jack Kirby.

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