The Galactic Christendom Video Pitch

Recently I saw a post on Twitter that went, roughly, "Post three pics that sell your story." Fuck it, videos instead.

Just add DEUS VULT and lightsabers and you get Galactic Christendom.

Sure, there's substance behind the scenes to ensure that it all holds up, but there's your elevator pitch. It's what I use when I think I'm losing focus, because if I can nail that mood then I'm going to entertain the audience and that's what I have to do. This sets the expectations that I need to fulfill, and thereby allows me to identify and filter out what doesn't belong (such as nihilism and the degeneracy it brings). You don't get much more simple than that, in terms of useful writer tools.

Settling in at Solaris VII: Making #AGundamForUs

If you haven't noticed yet, there's plenty of giant robots in Galactic Christendom. As far as any outsider would say, this is a mecha property. It is also a Space Opera property; that's not a conflict in the least. (The Macross franchise at times approaches being a literal Space Opera, but instead sticks to idols and rock stars.) That means that the serial I'm doing here is a mecha story, and I am not being subtle about it.

The follow-up I'm plotting now ("The Taking of Countess Gabriella Robin") has plenty of giant robot combat, starting with a cunning raid on an innocent world in Galactic Christendom and culminating in a fleet battle on the enemy homeworld. Once more, I follow the motto of Mekton: Action, Romance, GIANT ROBOT COMBAT. Throw in massive starships slugging it out in orbit over exotic alien worlds, and you've got something you have to be John Scalzi to fuck up. (Even at his worst, Yoshiyuki Tomino delivered.)

There's going to be more over time. Now that I clearly see an opening, I'm going for it.

Eventually I'll have one of those easily-remembered three-word-titles for my franchise, something I'll need to figure out when I finish a manuscript and need to put together a cover and start a promotional hustle. The overall plan is to use multiple stories to bring a pile of characters on the stage before the big mashup begins and we start building towards the events of "The Ghost Fist Gambit".

So yeah, I'm in the arena. I'm on Solaris VII and ready to throw down.

And I'm not going to be shy about what my ingredients are, or why I'm drawing from those inspirations to make this thing happen.

Putting Together a Brand Franchise

Earlier this week, over at the main blog, I posted about an idea I had in the wake of digging Super Robot Wars V. This is how I would use the idea for the purpose of writing fiction.

It starts as being similar to how I would use it for gaming, but it quickly diverges. The purpose for gaming is to set up a meta-framework for campaign play; the purpose here is to set up Shared Milieu.

You still have Civilization vs. Empire (Law vs. Chaos) as your overarching theme, personified by the Lensman and his enemy counterpart, but after that it's wide open. Were I so fortunate as to have the blessing of the Smith Estate, I would gladly do this openly to establish a franchise that starts with stories ostensibly in separate and distinct genres, but slowly merging over time to mashup into a complete and coherent whole- in effect undoing the splitting and ghettoization of SF/F that happened when the Pulps fell.

I don't, so I'll have to find ways around that to get what I want out of such a structure. An idea like this has an eye on building a brand and a franchise with it, over the long term, something I think a lot of authors in fiction don't think through and suffer for it should they get anywhere (including selling adaptation rights). Most reading this may not realize it, but that is what Marvel Comics and D.C. Comics accidentally created (themselves iterating on Street & Smith's The Shadow, who created all of the core superhero tropes that all of superhero comics use to this day).

In time, this would be something I'd put into my estate (i.e. in a family trust) so that it could continue to produce revenue for my future beneficiaries. (The risk, of course, is that post-mortem installments go the way of Disney's take on Star Wars and just produces sanctioned fanfic. (That can be worked around, but you need a good legal construct for it.)

There is NO attempt at Literary Realism. If I want anything like that, I'll do it as wiki articles; there's no audience for it, and therefore no one willing to pay me to write it. This is a structure for proper pulp stories, the way they used to write, with an eye towards allowing awesome big stories like the aforementioned game. (And it is; at the least, watch some playthroughs and see how they not only blended the narratives of the mashed up shows, but also added the united original elements that ties them all together. Brilliant work.)

Suddenly, ANTHOLOGY!

I got invited to contribute to my first fiction anthology recently. After a group chat last Sunday, I got clarification that we can talk about this publically now that we're all working on it, so here it is: Six Salvations

Daddy Warpig gave us our prompt last Sunday. Where we've gone with it is very, very different from one to the next. As far as I know, I'm the only one opting for a historical setting. Everyone else is (more or less) contemporary or in the future, and we're going for very different takes on the McGuffin we're given in the prompt and what it means. I'm confident that readers will enjoy our stories, and therefore the anthology as a whole.

No, this doesn't mean I'm benching Blood Moon. After having some beta readers give me feedback, I'm going to rewrite it and the new goal will be to have it ready when the anthology drops so I can take advantage of cross-promotion. After I finish these two stories, I'm moving on to another right away. Dragon Award winner Brian Niemeier has a great post on how the giants of the Pulp Era made their fortunes today, and what that means for me is that I've got a lot of professional development to do this year.

In short, Trad Pub is so wrong that they're not even in the same galaxy as right- and hasn't been for decades. Those who want to prosper need to stop with the obese books and get back to the historical norm--the mean--that is the 40-60K word novel. That sort of length is proven to sustain reader interest, and it's time we got back to it. All of the years I've written for free are finally starting to pay off.

Managing Expectations: How You Win, Keep, and Grow Your Audience

While reading this guest post by Karl Gallagher at the Castalia House blog, this comment by Monalisa Foster caught my eye. Specifically, this part right here:

While I don’t disagree, especially about the New Wave, which I hold responsible for the “death” of sci-fi (at the same time that sci-fi books died because of the trick/unexpected ending, sci-fi movies and games took off because they maintained, for the most part, the positive endings), I submit for your consideration, that genre is about setting and endings/expectations.

She hits the core point again here: Fantasy outsells sci-fi and I think that’s because readers know what to expect.

And bookended here:

To illustrate how important reader expectations are, I point out Romance. This is big “R” romance, where the ending is prescribed. That ending is HEA (Happily Ever After) or HEAFN (HEA for now). Readers want to know what they’re getting.

I submit that readers want positive endings, heroic characters, the good guys winning, the bad guys losing. No whiny, depressed losers emoting all over the page. I want to see sci-fi get back to that.

This is not the first time I've heard such observations. Many years ago, Mike Pondsmith wrote this into the Game Master advice section of his Mekton Zeta tabltop role-playing game. He cited (then) well-known examples of fulfilling audience expectations, but not necessarily in the straight-forward manner initially put to the audience. He wrote similar advice for his Cyberpunk 2020 supplement, Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads.

The point here is expectation management. People group things they find to be alike and label them for ease of reference; that's what genres are- groups of stories that deliver similar experiences to an audience. People like familiarity because it's reliable; you know what you're going to get. So, if you want to succeed, you need to deliver on the expectations of that audience. Danielle Steel didn't goat-fuck her readers into a multi-media empire of romance, and neither will you. (You'd think the Big 5's current regime would know this, but we know better; they don't.)

However, fulfilling those expectations need not--and some say should not--be as straight-forward as a drag race. Going back to Pondsmith, his example of making good on expectations in an unexpected manner was the original Super-Dimensional Fortress Macross; the promise was that we Earthlings would defeat this hostile alien invader and preserve Mankind thereafter. The swerve was that a good chunk of Earth got blasted and we ended up having to integrate with their remnants after the war. Sure, Mankind won, but not without sacrifice and not without complication after the fact.

See what I'm after here? There's your liminal space, where you can work your magic and define yourself as a writer. Scott Lynch broke out as strong as he did because his debut novel did just that, on multiple levels; as the protagonist Locke Lamora schemed and scammed his way towards fulfilling your expectations of the fantasy caper he set up early on, so did he pull a swerve on you and got you looking away while he pulled a con on those expectations so that what he delivered when he delivered turned out to be not how you got what you wanted, but you got it nonetheless.

Robert Howard's Conan went on adventures, or had them thrust upon him, that fit a general plot profile; it was how Howard executed it that made him stand out as a writer, and in seeing the difference between two different characters in the same scenario (Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword; Kull: By This Axe I Rule) you can observe how Howard's choices differed even when he adapted the latter into the former.

Now, accomplished authors already know this; they can tell you how they made this happen once they put this knowledge to practical use. But you? You're new, or you're struggling and looking for insight, or otherwise dealing with issues in developing your craft or story (or both). Yes, knowing the structure of narrative is important, but being lazy or incompetent about it means becoming like the folks I rant about over at my main blog and that's no good for you personally, professionally, or artistically. You need to master the tools, not to be a tool.

There is no shortcut to be had here. You have to get it before you can make it. Then you have to get it right, and in time you'll become so good that you can't get it wrong. There's no other way to mastery than to make the work, so go on and get on with making your 10,000 pots; the sooner you develop-by-doing, the sooner you will become wise and skilled enough to translate what your mind imagines into stories that your audience cannot wait to pay you for.

So learn what your audience expects from the story you're writing. Then learn how to deliver on those expectations. Then learn how to make use of the room you have to satisfy without failing that fulfillment promise. Remember: Anakin Skywalker did bring balance to The Force. It's how he did it that makes George Lucas rightly revered, not that he did it at all.

Developing That Protagonist: Lacann Pell

I'd been tinkering here and there with that story fragment I posted two weeks ago. Here's a bit I did about the character I featured:

Lacann Pell is a man from a frontier world with mandatory military service for all men. He's 38 years old at of this story, and spent most of the last 25 years as a solider specialized as a scout and infiltrator. He has some experience in covert operations and diplomatic missions, mostly to support or suppress insurrections. Most of the men he entered service with died in the last war, a galaxy-wide conflict that's resulted in the known galaxy falling under the rule of a usurper tyrant, and his world backed the losing side.

He's on this mission because elements within the winning side already plot rebellion against the usurper, so this is meant to be a mission to garner assistance to that end. Some of his countrymen, seeking to curry favor with the usurper, have already disavowed Lacann and his surviving brothers-in-arms (now scattered and dispossessed). This disavowal threatens his family, especially his wife, and he lacks the means to protect them on his own; in return for his part in this mission, the senator he's working with will aid him in saving his family from his enemies at home.

He's a fit adult man, standing about six feet tall and classically Greek in his mien: think black hair, shoulder-length and tied back in the field; eyes black as his hair. He speaks laconically, preferring to keep silent unless necessary, and efficient when he does speak- this is the sole tell of his education. His long years in military service and martial training forged in him a degree of emotional control that's kept him alive when others died, a fact not lost on those familiar with him.

His skills include one traditional boyhood sport: slinging. He keeps a homemade sling wrapped around his body somewhere whenever dressed, and when he's home he teaches slinging to the boys in his village.

Quote: If.

I have a habit of naming characters in a manner that reminds me of the core traits, a shorthand, and this is no exception. Lacann's now got a motivation for doing this thing and seeing it through. Complicating this? Not hard, but "Hostiles intercept Lacann's scouting mission." is a bit on the nose, and so I think we can do better than that.

That's what the deuteragonist can do: complicate this good and proper. Next week.

The Lost Adventures of the Pulps: The Flying Ace

Over at the main blog, I've spent some posts this past week talking about action in tabletop RPGs and why Lucasfilm is in a position to successfully revive the Ace Pilot iconic figure and his equally iconic form of action-adventure. I say "successfully", because there was a failed attempt since the turn of the millenium to do so in the West: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Sure, I liked this film, but I'm not going to sit here and bullshit you that this film was actually good. It wasn't, and the trailer here was somewhat deceptive as to what the final film's story was about. As is so common with failed pulp revivals, this was an example of a man whose love for the genre overroad his good sense, becoming hubris in the process. That is why he attempted something far beyond his capabilities, turning what could've been another Raiders of the Lost Ark into another Conan the Destroyer.

So, let's take a look at this archetypical character and his typical adventures:

• The Flying Ace is a man in his physical prime, often right at the confluence of youthful exuberance and age-worn experience. Variations on this character often rely on altering the character's age to adjust that balance of influences. For you younger folks, Poe Dameron of The Force Awakens is so typical of the archetype as to be iconic in its expression.
  
• Like his ground-bound counterparts (racers and riders), he's got a competitive streak and a certain penchant for mischief- even as an older, more sober-minded man. This is often the basis for his considerable charisma, as his repeated practice of his core habits and skills instills a mindset of competency in adversity born of seeking and overcoming challenges that test him. He is, very much, an Alpha Male sort of character- and often finds himself in positions of leadership, becoming more formal and important as he ages. (e.g. Roy Fokker of Macross fame)
  
• His adventures feature the display of his skills as a pilot, both in the coming and going to the sites of his adventures, but often in the formulation of the conflicts as well as their development and resolution. While he is capable on his feet (and often is quite capable of two-fisted action, good with his sidearms, or both), he's routinely deficient in highly-specialized skills or fields of knowledge that fall outside his core competencies- he's a Man of Action first and foremost, like James Bond.
  
• He routinely encounters his opposite number in his adventures, either a literal recurring nemesis or simply an enemy ace pilot. If this antagonist is not the chief antagonist, then he will be one of the major lieutenants to that mastermind and his decisive defeat is often the signal that the climax of the adventure just hit. (Otherwise, it's that of the mastermind directly.)
  
• His adventures often involve McGuffin hunts, which drive the plot; this is not a mystery subtype, as the Flying Ace is not a detective. This is often a way to integrate the Ace into an ensemble cast where he operates as an equal on a team instead of a master or subordinate in a (para)military unit. Attacking enemy bases, or defending their own, is a regular part of his adventures; the former as part of the final act, and the former as the initial act if not the inciting incident.
  
• Because he's an ace, even if he's using a known real aircraft his specific plane is an "ace custom" model tailored to his specific qualities in order to maximize performance- a real-life trope turned genre fiction trope that carried over to newer forms, such as Mobile Suit Gundam and the many Ace Custom models used by Char Aznable. His counterparts will often also have their own customs; these will routinely be visually as well as technically striking and impressive.
  

If you want to go digging through the pulps, the serials, and old TV series then do so and learn directly from them. If you want something far easier, then you want to look east to Based Japan, where Flying Ace stories remain regular attractions for well into the present day, and they've done both deconstructions as well as reconstructions of the archetype and adventures over the years so the experiences are varied. Yet the core elements remain, especially in the more popular offerings (popular often for playing it straight). Time to bring this back, because it's a short step from the Wonder of Flight to the Wonder of Spaceflight, and that fundamental innocence--the joy of flight--is something we're going to need going forward.

And I'm tuning my engines.

Don't Hate the Tie-Ins

I've said for some years now that I have no hate for authors who take on work-for-hire contracts to write tie-in novels for popular properties. Some folks I first knew as tabletop RPG people used that opportunity to build up the skills and personal brand needed to successfully transition to selling their original works (because we can't all be Scott "My editor discovered me by reading my Livejournal." Lynch), such as Jeff Grubb- and similarly, I first read Mike Stackpole and R.A. Salvatore through their gaming tie-ins (BattleTech and Forgotten Realms, respectively).

Timothy Zahn? First encountered him when he wrote Heir to the Empire, and gave us the glory that is Grand Admiral Thrawn about 25 years ago. (Never been a big reader of the tie-ins for Star Wars, but I'm familiar with the now-disavowed corpus that was the Expanded Universe due its ties to--and outgrowth from--the original West End Games version of the RPG.) So making tie-ins didn't hurt him, and there is one big reason why it worked: Zahn's tie-ins were faithful, fun, and satisfying reads that franchise fans wanted.

So yeah, you can't just half-ass it and expect things to be golden. You have bosses--and I don't mean the readers--and they have a brand to protect (if they are at all competent), so there's homework to do and meta-narrative concerns to satisfy in addition to just writing a good story, but so long as you can be a team player as well as a good storyteller these tie-ins can help cover two ongoing concerns: making a living, and building your personal brand.

Yes, you should take all the precautions that you would for any other contract offer, and you had damn well be ready and able to walk if that offer doesn't measure up, but if you get a decent deal and your alternative action plan isn't going to give you better results during that same time and resources spent, why not? What you learn therein you can--and should--apply to putting out your own original works.

(Lucasfilm, start using your position to find new talent and break them out writing tie-ins. Your go-tos are not helping with the SJW bullshit they're slipping in, and that also means you have some serious rot in your offices because they aren't doing their job of keep that out.)

Embrace The Wiki as a Marketing Tool

It's well-known that writers of speculative fiction, especially those exhibiting secondary worlds for their stories, take an iceberg approach to such things. They write down so many notes about things regarding the world that the lore so generated often becomes an selling point to itself; the enduring allure of Tolkien's Middle-Earth is the most famous example, but there are other examples in all the major genres- and not just written forms (e.g. Star Wars).

We no longer need to either file those papers away to be revealed never, or only long after the books that came from them have become some form of classic. We have the means, here and now, to make those papers part of an ongoing marketing effort that helps to sell not only new books in the series but also that increasingly-larger backlist of previous books. Wikis are that means.

The successful launch of Infogalactic shows that you can use the wiki technology without letting every last motherfucker on the planet having access to it. You can lock it down, and only put out what you want; the rest just get to read it. This is a way to allow you to make use of what you do with your world-building as a means of promoting yourself, your brand, your works, and those of your collaborators while you finish work on the manuscripts that you do this world-building for.

I'm going to give this a go in the near future, once I generate enough material to merit the work of putting one up. When I do, I'll put out a call for help because it'll be new to me and I could use a hand or two.

The Importance of Settling Your Story

BlizzCon 2016 is this weekend, and while I'm getting all hyped about all things Blizzard I have NOT doffed my storyteller hat. The folks at Blizzard Entertainment get a lot of shit, some of it deserved, but they're also showing that they get their genres and the medium they're working within when using those genres.

Alas, the Virtual Ticket doesn't televise the tie-in product panels, because aside from some promo reel stuff about it you're not getting info about what I find to be a major positive development: the production and publication of the Warcraft setting bible, World of Warcraft: Chronicles. The first volume (on sale now

Yes, there's a follow-up coming, which I regard as a good thing for now, but that's not the point. The point is that the mess of inconsistencies behind the Warcraft property is finally getting cleaned up, and this revised bible is the foundation for future development of that property. This is what I mean by "settling your story": know how your fictional setting works, down to the nuts and bolts. My experience with doing this is that stories suggest themselves emergently just from letting the setting operate without interference. There's going to be points of conflict, and conflict is the basis for all drama, so rather than force it just let it be and work out your stories when the lawful conditions permit them.

That's it. Not hard. Just play through your postulates to their conclusions, and you'll get all the story fodder you will ever use.

Respect the Formula

On YouTube there's a user by the name of Razorfist. When he's not talking about videogames and comics, he's talking about movies. He's often mocking in his tone, and rightly so, but he's also not wrong about what he says. However, out of all his action film videos the one he did in 2011 for Segal's Out For Justice most directly hits the salient points I'm after here- how to make commercially-viable genre fiction.

With all the hatred RazörFist has been hurling at the video game industry, we were about due for a good old fashioned '80s / '90s action flick, and this time Steven Seagal provides the ammunition with his 1990 classic Out for Justice. Watch in awe as we witness the mustache bandit's violent homicidal rampage, Steven Seagal's fake Italian accent, and Gina Gershon's perfect melons.

Again, Razorfist's taking the piss, but he's not wrong. What you need out of an action film is this:

• An obvious villain for an antagonist. (No moral ambiguity here.)
• A signature action sequence that sticks with the audience well after the fact.
• A protagonist who is Iconic in nature.
• Protagonist engages in righteous slaughter against the villain until he kills the villain.

To which you can, and whenever possible should, add: a hot chick for the protagonist to deal with. "Story" is irrelevant; the audience demand here is to watch Iconic Hero do Heroic Deeds (which routinely do revolve around righteous slaughter, and have since then Ancient World; read your mythology), kill the bad guys, and get their just rewards (which, often, is what the girl is for- but not always). It's the secularization of old and sacred drama, and you're a damned fool to not see it as such. Same applies to Romance, Horror, and other genres with known formulae at work.

Yes, it's a formula. Yes, it's been lampooned plenty of times. Yes, lots of people deride it as low-brow and crass.

FUCK THEM. SIDEWAYS. WITH A SHOVEL COVERED IN SHIT AND BURS.

The definition of a professional is someone who make a living doing it. Professionals DO NOT BALK at reliable gigs. They may use psuedonyms or some other cover to avoid "tainting their literary credibility" or some such bullshit, but they do it because they like Civilization and want to enjoy its benefits- and that requires paying for shit, which means money. That action movie formula? That's a reliable gig, and plenty of folks who now get Oscars once hustled in the genre film trenches hustling to get fucking paid.

That's you, right now. No sales. One sale. 42 sales, 15 Hugos, and a TV series or two. Whatever, you need to get paid and that means not shitting on reliable forumlae for commercial viability. Being "arty" or "literary" is reserved for people with Fuck Off money or patronage.

This is the practical end towards the "know your audience" maxim. You need to know that audience so you can deliver the goods and get paid. You're not some fru-fru bullshit artist. You're a craftsman, a fucking working-class work-with-your-hands craftsman, and your craft is story-telling. Your job is to make stories that others will spend money to buy from you. You wouldn't shit on a proven formula for making a chair, a shirt, or Mac & Cheese, would you? Fuck no, that's retarded. You'd leap at that shit and be grateful for it.

Respect the formula. That's what makes you the money, because that's what's proven to be what the audience wants. It also takes a lot of work off your shoulders; you can focus on making a very good work of that sort--on your execution--than wasting time on reinventing the wheel making characters that readers don't want to see, or conflicts that get readers to use your work as toliet paper, or other failures to provide the value that your audience expects out of you. They want a bolt-action rifle. Don't fuck around; just make the best fucking bolt-action rifle your skills can manage.

And if you aren't looking to go pro as writer? Respect it anyway. If no one reads your writing, then you might as well not write at all.

Your Future Competition: R. Author

Automation, far more than immigration, is the real threat to the social order of the world's nations. We've been feeling the effects for some time, as robots took more and more menial bitch work away from human hands in manufacturing. Then they took the skilled work, de-skilling it into bitch work, until now where a plant operates on a fraction of the labor it used it. Other heavy labor sectors are feeling that pinch, and now it's coming into the services like a tsunami.

"But Walker, I'm a professional writer! I'm safe!"

Like Hell you are.

Writing is a craft, and that means it has predictable structure to it that can be and has been codified into a program. While it is currently automating the bitch work (Do you see the pattern yet?), once the software is sufficiently refined it will begin deskilling the knowledge workers who currently do analysis reports and similar fact-based (but predictably solvable, due to pattern-based logic) work. Now that one such robot suite is free, expect that time to come sooner than later.

"But Walker, I write fiction professionally! I'm safe!"

Oh please. Go look at that GIF again. The vast majority of fiction, "literary" (what bullshit) or "genre", is just as predictable and tied to a knowable structure as news reporting. That you can sell books on writing fiction, focusing on structure and other craft elements, also means that you can turn all of that into a useful algorithm that takes input like a Mad Lib and spits out commercially-viable fiction. The future crap Syfy Originals will be where this starts, followed by the better horror films, and then blockbusters will come forth that are mostly or wholly written by robots.

Ten years, easily, until R. Author is a real and immediate competitor. Twenty on the outside. The variables aren't even with the software, but wholly external factors behind the scope of this blog post. A child born today will come of age in a world where his new entertainment is robot-written, both the story and (for games) the coding.

Where, for most of us who write either professionally or as a sideline hobby, does that leave us? Don't expect the quality of robot copy to be crap for long; if the Associated Press can plug in their style manual into their bot and get the reliably good results that they do, it wouldn't be hard to do the same for fiction. Polishing may be something left for humans, but most of the dredge work? Robots. Yes, including that first draft and making the covers.

In the end, we may become nothing more than folks playing with online forms filling in blanks and polishing the results before feeding it into the robot audiobook creator and formatting it for Print On-Demand and E-Reader, something that we may be doing for whole manuscripts multiple times per day. It'll be like the days of the pulp magazines once more, only digital and worldwide: still making the same shit pay, while hustling even harder to get it.

Reflections on the Iconic Hero Story

Following on a previous post, it's time to expand on Robin Laws' Iconic Hero a bit.

Iconic Heroes not only have a Core Ethos, but that Ethos is also the fundamental story structure one can expect when you read one of those stories. When you got a ticket for SPECTRE, you knew damn well that you weren't going to watch Bond do a manners comedy routine. You were there to see the hottest girls, one of the hottest men, serious spy drama and action, and world-spanning adventures in exotic locations. Just as you're a fucking retard to ignore the Iconic Hero as a reliable way to get paid, you're also a retard if you poo-poo the Iconic Story that routinely goes along with them. Let's bring this back to my Iconic Hero, Ken, and his Core Ethos: Ken kills monsters preying upon Mankind to purify a corrupt world.

This, played straight and literal, makes his core story that of a monster hunter. Yet there is a flexibility here that I'm using to inform Ken's overall development in his iconic stature. As I noted previously, the big break is the Cataclysm; beforehand, Ken's an increasingly disaffected vigilante sort whose story would remind you of the Deathwish series and afterwards it becomes a monster-on-monster story that blends my love of Howard's barbarian heroes with Vampire Hunter D. There are influences from the Westerns in Ken's iconic story structure, as one would expect from a man like me, but in essence it is this simple- and simple is flexible:

• Ken encounters a monster attack.
  
• Ken attempts to tell the local authorities so they can do their jobs.
  
• Ken finds that the authorities are unwilling or unable to do their jobs.
  
• Ken finds out why the authorities are useless, or worse.
  
• Ken can't walk away from the situation, so he does the job himself.
  
• Ken leaves having killed the monster, but also unable to stay.
  
• Ken moves on.
  

This is the value of the iconic story; once you have the Ethos, you have the plot and you can then build out your story beats and other narrative structure elements from there. It takes a hell of a lot of worry off your shoulders, and you can then turn that energy towards improving your skill at executing the writing of the story. Just like how the music world as their standards, so does the fiction world have its iconics; appreciate them, especially if you're like me and just getting started, for the benefits that they bring and use them to allow you to focus on honing those basics of the craft.

Why Ken is an Iconic Hero

When I write fiction, I prefer to write using an Iconic Hero as my protagonist. Since Robin Laws gave me the direction, here's a link to his 2012 blog post talking about it in the context of doing The New Hero. Here's the big deal, taken from that post:

What Makes a Hero Iconic

While a dramatic hero follows a character arc in which he is changed by his experience of the world (examples: Orpheus, King Lear, Ben Braddock), an iconic hero undertakes tasks (often serially) and changes the world, restoring order to it, by remaining true to his essential self.

Prevailing creative writing wisdom favors the changeable dramatic character over his serially unchanging iconic counterpart, but examples of the latter remain enduring tentpoles of popular culture. It’s the clear, simple, elemental iconic heroes who keep getting reinvented every generation. Each such classic character spoke to the era of its invention, while also evoking an eternal quality granting it a continuing resonance. We are going to create a new set of heroes who speak to the contemporary world while evoking the inescapable power of the iconic model.

An iconic hero re-imposes order on the world by reasserting his essential selfhood. The nature of his radical individuality can be summed up with a statement of his iconic ethos. It is the ethos that grants higher meaning to the hero’s actions, and a clue to his creator’s intentions. An iconic hero’s ethos motivates and empowers him.

For someone looking to get paid writing fiction, you're a god-damned fool if you dismiss the Iconic Hero as the focal point of an evergreen series. Conan of Cimmeria, Solomon Kane, James Bond, Indiana Jones- these are well-known Iconic Heroes that keep selling for their creators even long after those creators died. Ignore this at your peril.

So, of course when I hit upon The Burning of Hugo I went to my own Iconic Hero: Ken. Sure, he's different in that he's not the fearless slayer and consumer of the undead that he is after The Coming of the Azure Flames, but what defines him as an Iconic Hero--that ethos Laws talks about above--is present and fully-formed.

Ken kills monsters preying upon Mankind to purify a corrupt world.
Before the Cataclysm, those monsters are criminals--often those above the law, or exploiting social norms--that he has no qualms ensuring that they die. After the Cataclysm, those monsters are literal Things That Should Not Be, and he kills and consumes them to put them down for good. He's a Scourge, he knows it, he's good with it, and abides by the consequences of it. Those aware of him rightly fear him.

There's another element to having an Iconic Hero as your focal character. It allows you the option of using supporting characters for Dramatic Character Arcs, contrasting against your Iconic Hero to enhance the process. 2000 A.D. does this wonderfully with Judge Dredd, and has for many years now. That's a very worthy example to follow, adapt, and tweak to fit your needs and preferences in a way that is far superior to the outright fucktarded moves that D.C. and Marvel have done in the same time.

So, as I continue re-writing and revising The Burning of Hugo, know this: the Protagonist is Iconic. Everyone else is not. If you want to see Dramatic Character Arcs, look to the other Dramatis Personae in the piece; Ken being exactly who and what he is will only enhance their arcs.

The New Barbarians-01

The end, for me, was liberating. Many years of skulking in the shadows, carefully crafting opportunities to cull cancers from the population, now came to an end. No more need to hide away what I really am, and so when the burning ended I emerged ready to carve out my place in this restored world. Using my bolthole as a base of operations, I quickly and effectively terminated--or is it re-terminated--the zeds I encountered within a five-mile radius of my bolthole. Boy, am I glad for all those hours at the range; I got near-perfect one-shot-one-kill ammunition efficiency when engaging zeds.

By the following Spring, I found that I kept my radius clear of hostiles. Food and other supplies were still good, but resupply would become necessary sometime during the coming months because I had not the space to stock for more than a year at a time. During the warmer Winter days, I scoped out some nearby cabins and found them both intact and uninhabited. I found one near a lake, well out of sight, and relocated there before the season turned to Summer. Once I settled in, and dug out a new bolthole, I went about scavenging. Ammunition, fuel, food, and other supplies I managed to recover from other boltholes I established as well as from failed hides that I cleared out. So, when Summer arrived, I was ready to go when an opportunity arises.

I had a radio. I monitored it. I heard from desperate folks within reasonable reach of my location, so I went to them. Typical fools. Unprepared, out of supplies, and freaking out now that their world is gone and somehow they survived it. My conditions were the same: "I'm the boss. You do as I say, and I let you live. Pack your shit up and follow me, or I'm leave you to get eaten."

Twelve interventions I made over the Summer, and three did not come with me. I refused two due to their being human cancers that somehow survived the burning of the world; I kneecapped them and let them suffer the indignity of getting eaten by zeds. One refused me, so I shot the man of the group and that got the rest in line. I put them all to work around the household--and yes, I now lead a household--getting ready additional space for living and storage for the winter.

That Winter took its toll. Foolish women and wimpish men acting like children didn't take well to living as their grandfathers did, so I showed no mercy in punishing them. I made examples of them, and once made I took pains to bind the rest together by blood: I took the best women as wives and began making my own heirs. I coined our household "Lakeside Hold", and when one of my wives addressed me as "Master" I went with it. The old world was dead, and with it the unnatural and toxic ideas that could not live without its artificial substitutes for real life. Natural Law abhorred the decadence I hunted in the shadows, and now once more the world is as it once was: a world where family is all, blood is life, and everyone knew their place- or else.

I remembered an article in a magazine from years before, when this was a nascent movement. "The New Barbarians" they called us then. Well, they're all dead and gone and we are thriving. If this is the new barbarism, then I am the new chieftain of the resurgent clan: Clan Thorson.

Administration: End of 2012

This is the last Friday for the year 2012. Time to take a moment out of the fiction and talk reality.

As of this year, I finally settled into a format that works for me. I will continue this format into 2013 and see if I can make it work for a full year. If, at this time next year, I find that it continues to serve me then I will stick with it until it doesn't.

Most of this year's stories took place in the waning years of the Old World, our world, and--as reality didn't see any sort of world-destroying event--the post-apocalyptic milieu created by the Azure Flames is safely considered an alternate future history. In 2013, I intend to return to the post-apocalypse side of that divide, and you shall see that new set of stories starting next week on Friday, January 5th.

Next year there shall be one story per quarter, going 12 weeks long, with a week left as a buffer to post what is necessary that quarter. That makes for four stories by the end of the year, and--as I will be finished with my Master's Degree work by next Summer--I will attempt to do something I've intended to do since I started this 'blog: collect, correct, curate and publish a volume of stories. If I can, I want to publish both in electronic and Print-On-Demand formats.

If I can't make that happen in 2013, then I will for certain in 2014. The traditional publishing world is no longer the default method for writers to become capable of making a living, or even a strong part-time supplementary income, and for those who prefer to be in the driver's seat (like me) making use of the new frontier of e-publishing is the way to go.

Expect a new story about post-apocalyptic Ken next year. Expect stories featuring, in some manner or another, stories about the folks I've posted about in the last five weeks. Expect me to continue to hone my craft, to get better, and to continue to write about that which interests and excites me. See you next year.

Legacy of the Hero: The Last Meets the First-12

The Pebbles Vote Before the Avalanche Hits

The Privy Council of the Solar Nation met behind closed doors in the royal palace of Solland. Their enemies, lead by Lord Acton, met clandestinely in the home of Lord Acton in the city below the palace, well-guarded and well-hidden. Both groups met because of the same incident, the same event, meant that the long-abated conflict over the Solar Nation’s direction will hold no longer. A civil war, one precipitated when Zebulon assumed the throne a generation ago, is now finally come- and many within the Solar Nation see it coming.

Within the Privy Council, Zebulon and Keela again meet with their council of advisers and key officials around a circular table in a room decorated with maps. Their enemies meet in a room just like it. Both tables are covered with written reports, lists of things and more lists of other things, covered by mugs of this or that stuff of choice. Junior members come into and out of this room with more reports coming in and more orders going out.

“Zacharion is now out of our sphere of influence.” Zebulon said to his fellows, “I am certain that, whatever else he is to do, he is not served by insisting—by word or deed—on his involvement anymore. This is a matter for our nation, not for the last living legacy of Holy Ilker.”

Down in the city, Lord Action said “The princess has returned from her excursion, and she is now notably changed. Though yet a child, she already has steel in her spine- steel of a higher grade now than formerly the case, due to this incredible boy that passed through our realm. The boy’s existence poses a long-term threat, as he certain intends to continue the direction that the Usurper began. We know it, so I say that we must assume that they do also- and will move to protect him.”

The junior members of these two factions slip away, talking to their families and friends, and under the influence of drink and fatigue they let the essence of that position come forth. Word spreads and becomes rampant rumor-mongering, and the many smaller factions and common people then act in accord with what they hear- for all by now know of Ilker’s death and the boy’s passing through court and out into the countryside. Stronger wills amongst them move faster and gather about them sympathetic minds of lesser quality, forming bands and gangs, and those groups decide that they—not the king nor the Acton faction—will make this happen as they would like.

In the cities and towns, within days and weeks, extant factions take up affiliations for one or the other of their own accord and use this to bring into the streets issues and disputes long confined behind closed doors and shrouded alleys. Brawls turned to riots, riots to street-fights and soon sections burned as one side escalated faster than the other could react.

In the countryside, villages quickly conformed to one banner or the other in the manner of their town-dwelling brethren and began raiding each others' farms and stealing or burning each other crops; within a month, a civil war that once could’ve been contained within formalized warfare and political maneuvering broke free into a general uprising and burgeoning chaos as men great and small took this opportunity to settle old accounts and advance ambitions long suppressed.

Neither the loyalists in the palace nor the rebels of Action’s salon took anything but revulsion over the catastrophe; once they learned how it got started both sides swiftly struck to make firm and full examples of their errant juniors. Acton’s erring agents became grisly dawn-hour discoveries, swinging from tree limbs and towers across the land by their own superiors. The king, citing ancient and justified law from before the Azure Flames, publicly executed them by his own hand.

Zebulon, sensing Acton’s mind, cornered him in court and—at sword-point—ordered him to cooperate to put down the general chaos. When Acton, spitefully, did not immediately comply the king declared Acton a traitor and revealed his knowledge—all accurate—regarding Acton’s past and present treachery. Acton’s house and allies also became outlaws on the spot, and those present in court that day joined their leader in a most ignoble death. The rest fled to redoubts believed unknown and far from prying eyes, gathering to them those very petty partisans affiliating themselves with Acton and in a short time the many gangs became an irregular—but organized—army, one that Zebulon could handle.

“Order out of Chaos.” Keela said as her husband ordered the muster for war, “A scheme that’s as old as Man, and reliable as the dawn.”

“Indeed.” Zebulon said, “Now, before this disorder gets again out of hand, let’s end this one and see to it that it does not spread. For the sake of the future."

Stalker-Introduction

"In the years immediately after The Great Scouring, before the Wars of the Damned, there came abominations and other things changed by the Scouring. One of them was the Stalker, father of his race, a cunning hunter and killer of others changed by the Scouring. This is the story of his emergence from the wilderness, and how he entered the Annals of Man."- the Chronicles

This is a post-apocalyptic adventure story. Featured are mutants, zombies, survivors and plenty of cunning. I hope that you enjoy it.