Coming & Going For The Week Ending 7/30/2022

Notable comings and goings this week:

• Robert Krose's entire Mammon series is out on Kindle. The first two books are also available in paperback, hardcover, and audio; check their individual pages.
• Jon del Arroz opened preorders for Blunder Island at his site store so as to avoid fuckery by SJWs. This will close in a few days, so get on this now.
• Imperium Press's New Releases page is here; has reprints of classics of literature and history that you'll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere for a decent price.
• DVX Publishing has a slate of upcoming releases that will be certain to tantalize and invigorate you in the weeks and months to come. See herehttps://dvxpublishing.com/upcoming for more.
• Antelope Hill Press has an ambitious slate of originals and translations coming soon that will keep you busy when you wait for DVX and Imperium to get new stuff up for sale.
• Out of the United Kingdom, Claymore Books published How It Was Done, about Burnley BNP and its story by one who did it. You may also like Hammer of the Patriot.
• Yakov's campaign for Light Unto Another World continues. Found here.
• A new Super Robot mecha novel, Validus-V, by Van Allen Plexico is up at Amazon in Kindle and paperback. Found here.

Signal Boost: "Ice & Monsters" By Peter Nealen

Nick Cole wrangled together some of the Galaxy's Edge regulars to do a launch stream for a new military fantasy adventure series yesterday.

This new venture of Nick and Jason to open an imprint and use the following and structure they erected in the creation of first Galaxy's Edge and now Forgotten Ruin is a welcome one, as this is exactly the "Fork and Replace" strategy playing out in real time.

I concur with Nick that "Contemporary Military Goes Into Fantasy World" works far better when actual combat veterans who know how to write do so, as they are far more likely to address the premise honestly and with a high degree of verisimilitude, something that is lacking in the most well-known example in this genre: GATE, by a JSDF veteran.

I look forward to seeing where this goes, but as Nick and Jason are taking up something of a Big Brother role I can be confident of another success like Forgotten Ruin.

See for yourself by clicking on the image link below that takes you to the Amazon Page:

Signal Boost: "The Cosmic Courtship", by Julian Hawthorne

The folks at Cirsova have decided to do another recovery project. This time they aim to recovery and republic "The Cosmic Courtship", by Julian Hawthorne.

To quote the project:

While most are at least somewhat familiar with Nathaniel Hawthorne as one of the great American authors, less well known is that his son, Julian Hawthorne, was an incredibly prolific writer in his own right. Julian wrote on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from literary analysis of his father's works to poetry to period romances and adventures. Late in his career, Julian even dabbled in the emerging genre of Science Fiction [Hugo Gernsback had only recently coined the awkward term "Scientifiction" when this story was first published.]

The Cosmic Courtship was serialized in Frank A. Munsey's All-Story Weekly across four issues, beginning with the November 24, 1917 issue and running through the December 15, 1917 issue. While this story has been in the public domain for some time, it has never been collected or published elsewhere until now.

Cirsova Publishing has partnered with Michael Tierney and Robert Allen Lupton to preserve this story for posterity and ensure that it is not lost to future generations.

This is a worthy project, so I have pledged to it. It's already well past its goal; it's going to happen, so you're safe in backing this project and now we're only dealing in Stretch Goals- and if the next one --$8K--gets hit then backers get digital as well as physical copies and a copy gets donated to Project Gutenburg to further ensure that this tale remains available to future generations to enjoy and learn from.

There's more; click on the image to go to the project page, read the additional Stretch Goals and pledge your support. Remember that this is aleady a done deal; you're getting a copy if you put your money down, so this is now about making bigger things happen.

Signal Boost: Shining Tomorrow's Audiobook Campaign Launch

I'm spending this post to boost the signal for my colleague Rawle Nyanzi, the author of Shining Tomorrow. He's launched a campaign at Indiegogo to finance the production of an audiobook version of the novel, and I suggest that you entertain the offer. The campaign's perks double as de facto pre-ordering for the book, so don't worry about needing to buy that separately if you back the campaign.

The Business: Nick Cole's Got a Playlist You Should Bookmark

Nick Cole opened a YouTube channel. On that channel he's putting out a video series for independent authors to help them succeed.

He's still putting out videos for this list, so it's going to grow over the next several weeks (as he has time), and even if you're an old hand you may learn something useful. For folks relatively new, this is a playlist you should revisit as you go; he's talking from experience here, and you're a fool to ignore wisdom that you can benefit from without suffering to get it.

And if you can afford it, go get a copy of the After Action Report that breaks down exactly how Nick and his partner Jason Anspach did what they did to make Galaxy's Edge hit like a colony drop. Using that information to plan your book launches is invaluable. (Sign up for his newsletter while there, then sign for mine- see Contact.)

Making the Setting: The Villains of the Piece (Part One)

This post follows on from this post I did a few weeks ago. Since that post, there's been one change worthy of noting here: the agreed-upon title is "Archduke", not "Duke"; the former is for the head of the house, while the latter is for the heads of the vassal families immediately under him as well as that of the heir apparent.

There's a thread running through this setting from the ancient past to the far future: the consequences of Genesis 6. The angels that went AWOL on God because the local women were too hot to resist never repented of their errors. Instead, they lied about it, doubled-down, and projected their failings on to others. In the time immediately before the Coming of the Azure Flames, these angels returned to the world and renewed the very activities that got them imprisoned in the first place. It is due to their actions that an otherwise flawless plan by the other notable bunch of fallen angels to do their Pinky & The Brain impression failed so dramatically and unleashed the worst of the Nephilim--the demon Legion--upon the world (in the form of a zombie apocalypse). (Lew's not happy about that.)

During these times, some peoples took the promises of false gods and other saviors and escaped certain death in exchange for loyal service; many of these were also of that same bunch of fallen angels, playing those roles, aiming to establish herds of their own to play with as they wish. The more far-sighted and capable of them took their herds off-world, establishing Conveniently Human Aliens for Mankind to encounter once Earth got sorted and going to the stars once more became a viable course of action.

What does this do?

• A single point of origin for Evil.
• A single point of origin for "non-humans": they're corrupted Men. (Hybrids, if you will.)
• A believable explanation for other setting elements: a lack of AI (too easily possessed, as they are soulless egos), why undeath is a bad thing (it's not really you, but a specific demon running your body like a corpse-puppet; think like you're playing one in a game), Full-Conversion Cyborgs require the blessing of the Church (too close to death), a taboo on the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (part practical and part dogma; irradiated land can't be settled, and "Steward of Creation" dogma applied on the stellar scale)
• A Big Bad you can punch in the face, good and hard, like Superman can do to Darkseid. Even if you can't truly destroy them, you can beat the crap out of them and put them down for a long time. (And I haven't decided if true death is beyond a protagonist to do or not, yet; this is just for necessary reader morale purposes.) If Tolkien can do this with Morgoth and Sauron, I can do this sort of thing too.

The fundamental thread here is that of violating taboos in the name of some seaming good because the consequences cannot be seen, or if seen then accepted. Fear, pride, envy- all common elements in tales where these guys have a presence, even when not literally present. Same as it ever was, but concrete in forms that the Fall From Eden is not to a lot of people. From here, we can branch off into other themes and motifs.

Behind the Scenes: How I Did Some Practical Worldbuilding

Over on the main blog, I did a post this week about practical worldbuilding, using the blasters of Star Wars as an example. Allow me to expand a bit here.

For my own Space Opera stories, I use blasters. Not just for immediate familiarity, but also because it makes illustration and any adaptations easier to do. It also makes things easier for me to write; if I know what Duke Far's sidearm looks like, then I can write more fun things he can do with it that may not be so with others.

I'll summarize here how they work: they're plasma casters. The "ammunition" is gas sealed in the cartridge, and the action has the electronic power required to ignite the gas and discharge it down the barrel. You think it's "pew pew" until you see the hits, where you get a fist-sized (for sidearms) burn that goes into the target. Shields can defeat them until overloaded, but they aren't cheaper than blasters by a long shot; personal armor isn't to stop the hit from doing damage, but rather to keep it from killing you through some level of heat dispersion.

Personal blasters I model on rimfire-chambered pistols and rifles. Duke Far's sidearm, in particular, is modeled on a Ruger Mk.IV Target model like this one here. Just imagine that pistol discharge discrete blasts of plasma upon Baron Sheelak's minions while leading his loyal marines in the story I wrote for the PulpRev Sampler: "The Ghost Fist Gambit"

The end result gives me what I want out of blasters. Not only do I get to signal character by having a character prefer to use a specific item--using character's preferences in aesthetics as shorthand--but I also get to preserve the use of the logistical problem of ammunition, something that I can turn into plot-relevant complications with ease. Also, if I get enough people wanting to do fan art, official illustration, I have easy guides to point people to.

Now, I'm under no delusions that folks with money and connections are going to read my short and back dump trucks to my door looking to buy this or that set of rights. However, if I get anywhere in this hustle then I had better be ready for that possibility. (If you want a good reason as to why, read Brian Niemeier's post on protecting your IP as a writer.) Yes, it's the Boy Scout talking, but I've never gone wrong by being prepared.

So yeah, I'll be doing what Brian's done and boning up on the negotiation thing for when that dumptruck backs up to the door, and making that event happen down the road will be because I've done some practical worldbuilding to make it easy to adapt to other media.

On The Books Does Pulp Speed, The Dragons Final Ballot Is Live, and Story Fragments

First, Brian Niemeier had a great episode of "On The Books" talking with Name about "Pulp Speed". Less than 30 minutes, so give it a listen over your break(s), and take in the conversation.

Second, the final ballot of the Dragon Awards are out. Brian, Declan Finn, John C. Wright, Jon Arroz, and several others previously on either Geek Gab Prime or On The Books made the final ballot in one or more categories. Congratulations, and good luck on winning your category. The final results will be announced at DragonCon, so you won't have to wait long.

Audiobooks, Castalia Signs McCarthy, & My Updates

First: Brian Niemeier's "On The Books" had Jim Fear on this week to talk about audiobooks. The show went well into the topic, which means that it dealt with the business of the matter and what it means for you, Mr. Indie Author, as it gives you an opportunity for your book to produce yet another revenue stream. This one's well worth your time.

Second: Tara McCarthy, one half of "Virtue of the West" (w/ Brittany Pettibone, also an author w/ her twin sister of Hatred Day), signed a contract with Castalia House. Her first book is Irreplacable: How And Why We Must Save The West and the link will take you to a page where you can opt-in for email notifications.

Third: Now that Astounding Frontiers is live, I know of five outlets that are friendly to all things Pulp, Superversive, and pro-Puppy (i.e. anti-SJW and the Pink Slime fake SF/F crap that SJWs produce). (The others being Lyonesse, Sci-Phi Journal, Story Hack, and Cirsova.) This is good news. I can only hope that (a) these succeed beyond the wishes of their founders and (b) more come online as the marketplace for non-converged stories once more shows itself.

Fourth: The anthology is still in the editors' hands, so I have nothing else I can say at this time. As for my own projects, I've gone over my novel manuscript and picked it apart. Revising has begun, using everything I've learned since I wrote that thing to make the work into something good that sells. The revision's objective is to produce three not-fat-fucking-tomes (so, around 60K words) and release them in quick succession. Cut material will either be put up here or reworked into shorts (initially intended to be offered to the above outlets) before being collected and published in a volume. Once I have a manuscript done, I'll get more in detail about this.

Oh, and I may throw out another post this weekend with some stuff I'm thinking of cutting.

Geek Gab's "On The Books" Nails It Again

Brian Niemeier's mid-week show on the growing Geek Gab podcast network nailed it again with this week's show. (You are subscribed to the Geek Gab channel, somehow, right? You should be!) This week he talks with Jon Del Arroz about Jon's new novel, For Steam and Country, and the inevitable necessity for authors to be competent businessmen- especially as indie authors.

It's unfortunate that YouTube doesn't do Chat Replay. As usual for a Geek Gab show, the live chat is a value-added experience that the show itself cannot possibly take full advantage of for later listeners. I encourage you to, if you can, make it when the show is live (until such time as Chat Replay is a thing). The chat conversations are often as good as one's going on in the show itself.

Taking the Turtle Route: Slowly Working Towards Overnight Success

First: No dice at Cirsova; maybe next time, if I'm lucky enough to be invited to do so. Got a submission at Storyhack now, and I hope to get in there. Still waiting on Jesse; man's busier than I thought, but other anthology elements are coming along and I look forward to seeing the final product.

Second: My daily blogging (most of it at the main blog) has gotten me access to posting on the Superversive Press blog, two appearances on Geek Gab, and now a guest post on the Castalia House blog. I've gotten to a solid regular readership at the main blog, many of whom are also writers, bloggers, and gamers. This ground-up approach is working.

This one and Empire have smaller readership, but that's due to a combination of topics and frequency; daily posting in particular is a big contributor to building and maintaining readership. It's that readership that lead to the opportunities aforementioned, and this slow-but-steady pace is entirely mine; no one gifted it to me, so I owe no one but my audience anything, and that is important to me- this success, or failure, is wholly and entirely MINE. No one to blame, and no one to claim.

Which is why I will keep at this blogging. It's the daily writing habit that every successful writer insists is the basis for their success. Jesse Lucas launched PulpRev recently, and I'll be posting there when I can figure out what I can contribute. In the meantime, I'll put the finish on another short or two and get those out there- and yes, novel plans are still being worked out. (By the time I think I've got something I can handle, new info comes my way that has me reconsidering because said info is too good to ignore.)

Third: Gotta learn from the betters. So when masters show up where I can easily see or hear them I pay attention. This week that meant being there for Geek Gab: On The Books, where John C. Wright appeared and he talked with host Brian Niemeier (both award winners and successful writers) and talked shop. Embedded below.

Geek Gab Gaiden: "On the Books", w/ Brian Niemeier

Dragon-award winning author Brian Niemeier, one of the triumverate of hosts for Geek Gab, now has his own side-show project that focus on writing:

On the Books will bring you expert writing advice, discussion, and interviews without all the fluff and scope creep. Instead of setting a hard and fast fifteen minute time limit that risks arbitrarily curtailing informative discussion, my goal is to set up a flexible format with a base running time of ten minutes for a solo episode, plus five additional minutes per guest (in which case I get five minutes and give the bulk of the show to the guests).

You can read the full announcement post here, and I encourage you to not only read the full post but to give the first episode a go. That I embedded below for your convenience.

This is a welcome addition. I concur with his assessment that most writers, editors, etc. doing this are going about it all wrong and give bad advice that people looking to get paid and make a living (in whole or in part) satisfying readers (i.e. do what Larry Correia does), instead giving advice for those that preen for the hope of getting table scraps from the SocJus Death Cultists in New York or London.

If you're a working writer, or want to be one, put this in your feed and listen to each episode as soon as you can- live, if you can manage it. Brian's one of the up-and-comers, and he's got wisdom for you to heed. (Oh, and buy his books; they're getting real awards by real readers and real fans for real reasons- and not the fake shit the WorldCon set pushes on you.)

The Opening Crawl In Practice

As promised, this is the Opening Crawl in the current draft of Lacann Pell and the Blood Moon of Rammagar:

The Privy Wars are over. The Free Lords lost. The Solar Guard is gone. The Electoral Collage is abolished. Only the Usurper Vidun won. In the wake of the death of Duke Navare's death, most survivors ceased overt dissent for fear of retaliation. Those not willing to surrender went underground.

Young Duke Ireton, a Free Lord in exile, joined with a Privy Lord- Duke Farr. They cooperated on a course of action against The Usurper, starting with establishing a logistical network outside of the Usurper's control. Operating from a former Free Lord outpost never discovered during the war, the dukes and their chief allies organized their campaign and dispatched agents to execute it.

One mission is to establish sanctuaries beyond the Usurper's reach. The lost colony world of Rammagar promises to be such a world, if it still exists and if it remains inhabitable. Veteran scout, former Free Lord commando, and Ireton family retainer Lacann Pell traveled to Rammagar in one of Farr's shuttle accompanied only by a pair of automatons. Duke Ireton stands by awaiting Lacann's report.

There you are. The resemblance to what you see in a Star Wars film is deliberate, as was Lucas' use of this device being deliberate invocations of the serials of the 30s and 40s, summarizing what lead up to the events of that episode so if you missed them you weren't a ship out of water. If you're doing things that are fantastic, or you're looking to establishing a mood quickly, spending three fucking paragraphs setting it up isn't a bad thing.

Yes, even if you end up not using it in the final manuscript. Having that crystal-fucking-clear in your mind makes everything going forward easier, because when you cut immediately to the inciting incident (in media res) (which Blood Moon does, starting when Lacann arrives at Rammagar) you will know what to tell the reader and how to say it to hook them into your story as fast as your skills allow. (Ideally, with the first sentence.)

If you do use it, then going in media res is the go-to follow-up technique to use. No need to spend pages doing this when you can skip the boring shit and get on with the adventure that your reader is there for, and that's why I'm stomping about here- it's a very good tool to identify that point and get you (and your reader) there right away (and from there, for you the writer, to quickly outline the rest of your story and know where to do your beats and likely how and why to do so).

The Hustling Part of the Writing Game

Independent author and Dragon Award winner Brian Niemeier, again putting down the reliable method for building yourself up in this business:

Indie author marketing tips:
-Build your blog & social media accts.
-You are your brand.
-Give value to bigger names to forge relationships.

— Brian Niemeier (@BrianNiemeier) January 27, 2017

He would go on to post a link to the book of the man who asked that question, demonstrating the principle in action. Get used to this if you want to be part of this game, no matter what genre or niche you want to be part of in particular. The Big 5 (and their foreign counterparts) are all going down, as are the major bookstore chains that they've long worked with and through.

Even if you're with one of them, they aren't going to hustle on your behalf so you need to do it yourself- and if that is what you need to do, why the fuck are you giving them such a big cut? Go to a smaller house that isn't shambling like a zombie, or go wholly independent, or be like Brian and do both. (Read that post; he's paying closer attention to the publishing work than I am.)

There's more to the hustle than marketing yourself, and that's learning how to make what you write sell. Writing is a craft, and crafts are like any other technology: discoverable, repeatable, refinable, perfectable. For what Brian does, what I want to do, and many others in the genre fiction world we've had some proven techniques for generations now- now being rediscovered and relearned by folks who (a) want to get away from the Pink SF/F pozzed piss-poor pap and (b) want to actually pay fucking bills by writing like Robert E. Howard did nearly a century ago.

Living master John C. Wright did a post on Lester Dent's template for reliably-sale-able pulp adventure short stories, a formula that Michael Moorcock would go on to expand and refine for his novel-length works. Brian would add that Hollywood most definitely uses its own formula, and then there's Campbell's Hero's Journey which George Lucas made famous (because he used them for Star Wars).

And yes, for whatever you want to write you can count on there being a proven and reliable formula for that if you want to actually sell what you write. For self-help stuff, you can see it in how Mike Cernovich and Ivan Throne wrote their books. Comics have their conventions, varying by genre. Romance is so formulaic that there are Mad Lib generators, and some folks use them for something other than a joke. Learn what your niche's formula is and master it before fucking with it. Yeah, it's part of the hustle, and there's no getting around it.

The days of an author being solely a reclusive, introverted individual leaving the tasks of promotion, publication, and revenue oversight to others is done- a temporary state, now disappearing as the mean reasserts itself. Once more, your success is entirely on you to achieve, so get up and lead your way to it- and get used to this being your life.

Characterization: Another Perspective

I hang out online with a bunch of folks, one of whom is Oliver Campbell (Rabbit in the Road, The Twisted World Verse One: The Dusk Harbinger). While in his Twitch channel the other night, he started talking about character and motivation. I wish I had recorded it.

It's hardly difficult to find books, articles, blogs, etc. on the importance of motivation in creating and conveying believable characters. It's something else to hear it taught the way he did, while playing The Binding of Issac: Rebirth, that other night.

He talked through exercises. Imagine a dude with asthma; how does that change how he things, acts, and what he worries about? This meant that you work your way into seeing things from that other individual's perspective- one that is NOT your own. Using that knowledge, you put words down that bring forth this character on the page and from the interaction of perspectives with circumstances you soon find narratives writing themselves. Once you know what motivates a character, figuring out how and why they do what they do is easy. That's how you get the narratives writing themselves, leaving only the details to has out. Knowing his perspective brings you into knowledge of that motivation.

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.

World Building: The Hidden City & Its Defenders

The Hidden City is one of the successors to the Old World destroyed by the Coming of the Azure Flames, and like the others it had ties to the twin conspiracies that foolishly destroyed that world in their hubris. In this case, the founder of the Hidden City was a programmer, engineer, and occultist by the name of Roger M. Ire. Inspired by Disney's Tron as a boy, he pursued programming and engineering as he got older; these lead him into philosophy as a sideline in university, which is also when he got into the occult and recruited to DARPA.

Once initiated into the Deep State, Ire would gain access to secret information Disney used to inform Tron, going on to realize the concept and figure out how to make real the postulated digitization of real matter into a digital construct. In doing so, he pushed for and contributed to several patent-making advances in computer and network hardwarve, software, and firmware; these patents allowed him a passive and clean income that freed him from needing to maintain a cover identity as most do.

The occultist side of the twin conspiracies saw the potential in his work, and gave him the cover he needed to get out of the known hubs of IT and engineering in favor of hiding in plain site in Minneapolis. He hid his work under the guise of medical technology research, gaining access to power and network resources needed for his laboratory; in this lab, he did what--again, through Disney--was fictionalized in Tron: Legacy: the creation of a virtual city-state that people could freely transit to and from.

But Roger Ire, by now, was no naive idealist like fictional Kevin Flynn. His studies of the occult led him to conclude that programming was so much like sorcery that they had to be related somehow, and his presence around medical research of all sorts lead him to conclude that DNA has to be some form of code--therefore, a symbol representing a thing that has effects in reality, which therefore can be manipulated to make effects that he desired. He concluded that the solutions to several long-standing known issues of Mankind could at last be solved, permanently, and drew up a few plans to do so.

That was when his contacts in the occultist conspiracy also informed him of the Grand Ritual plan. He--like Solador's Archmage--saw through immediately as hubris destined to fail and bring ruin, and he moved to execute a survival plan. He took a big gamble, as he suspected that the Minneapolis area was a convergence of hidden energy, and devised devices that he--at the time--did not fully understand to tap into it to use as emergency power to keep the Hidden City online.

When the Azure Flames hit, he sealed the lab to all physical access and put the taps into place before taking one last trip through the transit portal to the Hidden City and hoped for the best. Instead of facing oblivion, he found himself faced with a crisis of power surging into the system; he was right about the power source, but had no idea that it had been dormant and came to live in the wake of 90% of Mankind being either nuked to ashes or consumed in the waves of blue-white flames that followed. The Hidden City, then a small thing, grew into a gleaming metropolis in the blink of an eye as Roger struggles to use what threatened to overwhelm him in maddening sequences of program resolution and iteration from the inside.

To cope with the surges, Roger connected to the Internet knowing that the Deep State installations meant for Continuity of Government would be online, connected, and hardened enough to stay up. With the power at his command, he got into the local systems and usurped their automated tools so that he installed and integrated additional transit portals throughout the world and then secured these facilities to his command alone. It was during this crisis that Roger became aware of what went on outside in realspace, becoming aware of The Necromancer and the undead horde he controlled.

At this moment, Roger had a sudden thought: "This is my mission, to reformat the whole of Creation and bring it into the perfect system."

The Hidden City would, over the years, grow both in virtual and real population. During the time of The Necromancer is when Roger--now known as The First Founder--started recruiting real people to operate in realspace as his agents. (N.B.: This is a big part of the Solador story; Roger sends an agent to overthrow The Archmage.) It is here that Roger, and his growing body of disciples, turn the power of The Hidden City to making super-solders.

Roger and his disciples created their first model based on a need for deniability and concealment, but when action became necessary great power could be put to hand. As this first cadre was a small one, a focus on quality in power to make competency in acumen was the goal and (as all of them were survivors of the Old World) they used a Japanese model as their basis: The masked heroes of the tokukatsu genre and their animated counterparts.

They then blended this model with an older American one, that of DC's Captain Marvel (a.k.a. "Shazam"), giving each agent a secure passcode keyed to their unique genetic code- a sample of which Roger kept on file as a security failsafe. Later iterations and revisions would refine this concept until there was a clear gradation of power, granted by demonstrated quality of character as well as loyalty to The Hidden City (and, by extension, to Roger), and Roger decided to foster this via deliberate generational eugenics improvement. The goal? To create the ideal agent of the City and its interests as the Guardians of Civilization.

And, unnoticed by most, this was when Roger's fall into hubris became complete.

10,000 Pots: How I Went From Writing Papers To This Book

I normally don't punt here, but I also don't like repeating myself. To work around my fiction project issues, I'm putting out a non-fiction book first. Go read that post at my main blog for context. Below I start talking details.

It's going to be structured something like this:

• Introduction
• Papers Are Teh Suck
• Forums, Flamewars, and Fuckwittery
• Wait, You Can Go To School For That?
• What Is This Livejournal Thing?
• Blogging? Hey Mikey, He Likes It!
• Whadda Mean "Indie Publishing" Is a Thing Now?
• Puppies at the Gates
• No Perfects (Or How I Embraced Teh Suck)
• I Can Haz Booky-Book (And So Can You)
• Epilogue

I'm telling stories here, and by telling my stories I'm showing you readers how I went from sucking diseased donkey balls at writing to becoming competent at it, enough that I can reasonably sit there with professional writers and talk shop like I know what I'm talking about. (And I have- hi Scott, Brian, and Oliver!) The order above is not a strict chronology; that shit overlaps like the lattice on an apple pie. What you're going to get, if I do my part, is show you that you can get where you want to go without realizing it. In short, you can goof your way to success.

But there's another reason, which I mention in the Epilogue, as to why I'm doing this book now. I need Momentum. Getting that first hit in, and then following it up, matters. It's how I got into this daily blogging habit; I just did it, one hit and then other and another and another. I did not worry about being perfect, just in doing it. I cared only about getting good, and staying good, by doing it on the regular.

What I didn't realize, by doing this as a hobby, is that by not caring about making it perfect and so on I actually got good merely by keeping up the momentum. The doing was the process. The habit was the means. That's why I'm calling this book "10,000 Pots", because I've made thousands of posts and written hundreds of papers and wrote millions of words across multiple media in multiple genres without ever realizing what the fuck I've done.

So, once that popped into my head, a book ceased to be any form of anxiety. It was just a matter of putting in the time at the keyboard before I fuck with formatting and other make-it-pretty adjustments (like a cover). This book, therefore is the start of a book-publishing habit.

Now you see where I'm going with this. From daily blogging (regular writing and publishing, short form) to (interval To Be Determined, but no less than a year and likely less) book publishing. Nevermind awards; awards worry gets you out of No Perfect mindset (Thanks Cernovich for making that a thing.) and wrecking your momentum. I want to write, and I want to eat. Publishing books, in addition to blogging, does that; again, thanks to Cernovich for showing me that this can be done- I just have to do it my way (what he calls "establishing a brand").

(World Building) The Necromancer

The Necromancer is the first of the big players to arise in the wake of the Azure Flames. Like all of the others, he is a consequence of the pre-cataclysm conspiracies to establish a global tyranny. Unlike them, he is a consequence in the most literal sense: he had no ties to either of the conspiracies, and instead arose because of the effects of their failure.

The Necromancer was a ghetto kid, son of a waste of a mother and abandoned before birth by his father, and kept in check only so much as it kept his mother in the good graces of the authorities. He got shot when a firefight between street gangs broke out over a particular corner of the drug trade, and the gang-bangers (being notoriously incompetent shooters) cared not where their fire went. As he got rushed to the hospital, the cataclysm began; he was abandoned at the operating table, dismissed as a worthless punk kid better off dead, and left to die.

As he died, Christopher Walken appeared to him. Only it wasn't Walken, but someone appearing as Walken did in The Prophecy, calling himself an angel of God and offering the boy a chance for revenge- to make the world feel his pain, listen to his word, and obey his commands. The boy agreed, and the angel--who is Satan--gave the boy over to Legion.

Legion is the source of The Necromancer's power. He does not control the boy, as the boy is not dead and Satan forbade Legion controlling the living. Legion abides because his desires are being fulfilled, as he now controls billions of corpses, but chafes at being subject to a boy's borrowed authority (as he serves as Satan's anchor on Earth). Satan is the deniable Grand Vizier to The Necromancer, playing the boy like a fiddle as he knows the boy's psychology and pushes his buttons as a master pianist plays the keys.

The Necromancer has other henchmen at his disposal, which are the damned souls of the worst of Mankind allowed to take up the dead flesh at The Necromancer's disposal and walk the Earth once more to fulfill The Necromancer's will. Other damned souls are yoked to serve as immaterial shades, advising The Necromancer. All of these are withdrawn once Satan removes his support, albeit not at once, and their removal serves to track progress in the war against The Necromancer; until that support is withdrawn, they return time and again to menace the enemies of The Necromancer.

The Necromancer, billed as "Master of All Flesh", endures for as long as he does because he and Legion cooperate. They erect a worldwide Empire of the Dead, complete with ziggurats and sacrifices, following Satan's advice. However, Satan (being the Supreme Deceiver) ultimately betrays both his human and his demonic ally once their usefulness is at an end and he shifts his allegiance to the Empire of Man. Knowing his allies' weaknesses, Satan elevates the Empire and enables their conquest of The Necromancer; providing verifiable proof of The Necromancer's actions drives the Empire of Man's propaganda efforts that galvanize the people to support the Emperor. The Necromancer ends his life as it began: mortally wounded, on a table, and abandoned to die. The Emperor, at the final moment, recognizes that his enemy is truly at his end and gives him the mercy of a swift, painless death. The Necromancer then goes to Hell.

The final death of The Necromancer marks the end of the first phase of the world post-cataclysm, and the shift from surviving in a hostile ruined world to the rise into a recovered world filled with terrible purpose and horrific fury at that which ruined what came before.

The Big Ideas in My Works: The Solador Series

I'm using posts here to flesh out elements of my fictional world that won't gt a lot of attention in these manuscripts. A lot of the stories I'm writing tie together via the cataclysm that destroyed the old world and created this one, mostly through the common connection of the conspiracies behind that event.

The Solador books (currently) work around the idea in LeGuin's "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas", but what is forsaken is inverted: instead of a forgotten child left to suffer in darkness, the sacrifice is of a designated hero who is elevated to celebrity status (and dehumanized accordingly) and upon whom the community piles on their expectations at the prompting of the Solador leadership: The Exalted. This figure is meant to represent them to the Exalted, as go-between bridging the ordinary and the supernatural. Said leadership installs the hero, manipulates his rise and controls him with rewards given to such heroes in the mythology that these leaders deliberately copy. When the hero becomes too unstable to control, they orchestrate his fall and elevate his replacement to ensure that this control mechanism continues.

Of course, the protagonist is that hero. The deuteragonist is another pawn who figured it out and aims to put this scam to an end. The Antagonist is the leader of The Exalted: The Archmage. Other figures mentioned or featured include The Necromancer, the other Exalted (The Champion, The Devil, The Hierophant, and The Physician), and Master Bradley of The Hidden City. The hero's wife, children, and his dog Han are minor (but significant) players in this story.

The theme of the Big Idea (occulted schemes of control) continues in Solador's signature feature: "The Blessing of the Unconquered Sun". This is a full-body augmentation, centered around a gem implanted in the forehead. From this gem--the Soul Gem--comes a woad-like full-body tattoo made of gold and silver. The system exists to prevent one from being turned undead; the means is by incinerating the corpse as soon as life stops, in a manner that resembles a program's deresolution in the original Tron, leaving only ashes and dust behind. There is a secondary effect that the body's resilience is greatly improved, akin to wearing well-padded armor. Implications are addressed, and intended by the creator: The Archmage.

So: trauma-based mind control, active perception management, culture-level political manipulation, wars meant to be sustained to control internal population, occult powers used to set up and sustain a false religion, and what it takes to keep that going vs. how fragile it is if at all vulnerable. That's what's going on here, while writing about adventures involving undead hordes, fighting against terrible odds, treachery within, and the inevitable victory of Truth over Lies.