Saturday Scenes 02 - A Shot in the Dark

This is a couple of scenes I wrote as part of a project I've been working on for over a decade. It's taken on many different forms, beginning life originally as a screenplay for a film, then morphing into a TV mini-series, a graphic novel and a prose novel. 

It's one of those projects that's been rattling around in my head for a long, long time that I pick up occasionally and then ultimately fall off of. But it's a premise I really like, which is probably why it's stuck with me for so long and gone through so many revisions. Some day, I hope I get to release some finished form of it, whatever shape it may take.

So here's an excerpt from The Valiant. These two scenes focus on Amanda Benes, a detective and single mom, and her teenage son, Alex. They live in a city that's about to be turned upside down by a vicious gang war and the appearance of a mysterious vigilante.

The alarm had been going off for three minutes. 

Amanda Benes’ still form was curled under the sheets of her queen-sized bed, on the side furthest from the window, one arm spread across the cool, unoccupied side. The alarm had been going off for three minutes, and still she didn’t wake.
Outside, a black and white roared through the neighborhood, the siren wail mixing in with the aggravating electronic alarm. 

Benes opened one eye, saw red and blue flickering just outside her window, then receding as the black and white raced away down the avenue. With a grunt, she rolled toward the alarm clock and slapped it silent. She moved into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, not even looking over at the empty side, alone in the slatted darkness of her bedroom. The morning light, warm and orange, didn’t even register for her. 

She stood and walked into the shower and turned the water up as hot as it would go. 

Steam filled the small room until she could barely see the tiled wall next to her. She leaned against it, her face resting on her forearm as the water poured hot and stinging over her. She sighed loudly, trying to empty her mind for a moment, then stretched. 

Twenty minutes later, she clipped on her holster and slipped in her 9mm. She walked into the kitchen, and she rolled her eyes when she saw what was going on there. 

“Feet off the table,” she said, moving toward the coffeemaker on the counter behind her son, Alex. He rolled his eyes, and put all four feet of his chair back on the floor. He continued to munch on cereal without saying anything intelligible to her. 

The decade-old coffeemaker chugged to life and Benes rinsed out her travel mug. She noticed the paint on the wall was peeling above the sink again. Without turning, she asked, “What time did you come home last night?” 

“Dunno,” Alex answered. “Late.” 

“Your curfew is eleven,” Benes said. “There’s nothing worth doing out there past eleven.” 

Alex twisted in his chair toward her. “I don’t even want to go out until eleven!” 

Benes stuck her mug under the spout, and hot coffee filled it. “Be home by eleven.” 

Alex grunted. It might have been a swear. 

“Hurry up,” Benes said. “I’m driving you to school today.” 

“I’ll take the bus.” 

“I’m driving you to school today, Alex,” Benes repeated. “Get your stuff.” 

Alex stood, a sour look on his face, and walked out of the room. The cereal bowl stayed on the table. A drop of milk fell from the spoon. Benes grabbed it and put it in the sink as if by reflex. She heard Alex stomp through the living room, exaggerating his movements as he packed his bag for school. He tapped his foot waiting for her by the door. She took her first sip of the strong black coffee, made a face, then sealed the mug and walked out of the kitchen.

----

In the car, Alex stared out the passenger window, not saying a word. Even getting him to put on a seatbelt felt like a chore. Benes sat silently frustrated, weaving her way through the morning traffic, occasionally glancing over at him from behind her sunglasses. As usual, she let him choose the radio station, and as usual, he’d chosen some hard rock song that grated on her ears and raised her blood pressure.

He didn’t even really like that kind of music; he just chose it to bother her. 

Amanda Benes was a good detective. 

“Or a mom,” her partner had said once. 

“Same thing,” she’d replied. 

Her cell phone rang. She silently thanked whoever was calling and tapped the ‘Phone’ button on the steering wheel. The music cut out. 

“Benes.” 

It was her partner, Ed Nguyen. Speak of the devil. His voice filled the car. “Where are you?” 

“On my way to school.” Alex turned and gave her a scowl. 

“Great. Body in Dumper’s Alley.” 

“A body in Dumper’s Alley. Stop the goddamned presses.” 

“I’m there now,” Nguyen said. “See you when I see you.” 

“Sure. Later.” 

The rock music returned as Nguyen ended the call. Alex reached over and turned the volume knob higher. Benes’ jaw clenched. She knew saying something would just cause him to push further. Every morning was like this. At least, the mornings when he didn’t just grab his bag and run out the door to the bus stop down the block. The silence between them was longer than she’d realized.

In a few minutes, Alex got out of the car in front of his school without even looking at his mother. She just drove away. 

Dumper’s Alley was buzzing with activity. The yellow police tape always brought out the neighbors, even in an area that goes through a lot of it. Dumper’s was the widest alley in the neighborhood, and lined on both sides with dumpsters, a popular place for everyone and every scumbag in town to drop their trash and unwanteds. Benes parked her car next to a couple of black and whites with their flashers on and walked toward the tape, pulling on a pair of plastic gloves.

Nguyen met her at the edge of the crime scene, steaming mug of coffee in his hands, as usual. Also as usual, he was wearing a crisp dark suit with a red tie.

He’d fill that mug four more times before their shift was over. 

He lifted the yellow tape for her, then followed her into the alley. 

“What’ve we got?” she asked, ducking only slightly under his arm. 

He didn’t miss a beat. “Body. ME’s probably gonna call gunshots as COD.” 

“There’s another shocker.” 

“Just wait.” 

Partway down the alley, slumped up against a rust-rotted, scuffed yellow dumpster, was the body of a man in a sharp business suit. There were two holes in the man’s chest, blood pooled all over his stomach and the ground beneath him.

“Hello,” Benes said.

She checked his pockets, though she was sure Nguyen had already done so.

“No wallet,” she said to herself. “No ID.” She stuck a finger in his mouth and opened it slightly. “Teeth are smashed to shit. Hopefully his prints are in the system?” 

“Yeah,” Nguyen said. “What are the chances of that?” 

“Right. Doesn’t look like he bought this at Jose’s Thrift,” Benes said, standing. 

“Still, you never know.” 

Nguyen scoffed. “Because we’re that lucky.” 

Benes heard the clicking and snapping of the crime scene photographer behind her. She hoped he was getting the right angles this time. She glanced around the body. 

“No sign of the gun,” she said. “Tons of blunt-force trauma. Someone beat the shit out of him before he was killed. Executed?” 

“Yeah,” Nguyen said, with a strange tone. “About that...” Benes knew she wasn’t going to like what he said next. 

Nguyen turned and pointed toward a nearby dumpster, which had a perfect impression of a boot pounded into the side of it. Benes walked over and knelt down by it, running her hand along the side of the impression. “What the hell...” 

“Yeah,” Nguyen said. “What do we do about this?” 

Benes shook her head in disbelief. 

“Box it.” 

“The entire thing?” 

“The entire thing.”

Nguyen nodded toward the CSI team waiting by the coroner’s van. “Shit. They’re not gonna like that.”

Gender equality, you say?

This picture was posted on my Facebook timeline:

(Click to enlarge)

I think that's pretty important, especially after my last post. Sort of like the next logical step. And I have to admit that, as with the last post, it has a sort of "oh, duh" quality to it.

And I have to admit, also, to being somewhat hesitant about it. And here's why: I don't feel that violence against women is ever justified. I've never hit a woman, I often feel that men who do are to be loathed. The flipside of that is that the characters in my novel are predominantly in the military, so violence is going to happen to them.

So as I'm going through it and changing the gender of a character here or there, the problem becomes that many of them are injured or killed in violent sequences. And I feel bad about that.

Should I? As I said, these are characters who are in the military, and it is absolutely an action/adventure novel, so violence is part of the quotient here. I feel an awkward guilt over it, and I'm not even sure that's justified.

In the end, I think I'll be okay - it's not like I'm going out of my way to be extra cruel towards these female characters. I'm putting them there because I want to be inclusive, even though that awkwardly means that they're included in violence.

What say you?

UPDATE: I'm going to post a few responses that I've received.

Jessica: Important questions to ponder. I think if the violence they suffer (and dole out) is equal then it's ok. Still tough though because of how prevalent violence against women is. I would encourage an author's note perhaps that offers a trigger warning?

Nichole: see, in the context that you write the stories in, i don't see it as an issue, because it's not like you deliberately write about women getting assaulted without defending themselves. these women are enlisted in the military or something very similar and get into situations where they are likely to be involved in some sort of violent combat. your female characters are usually rather badass and are more than capable of defending themselves.

Masha: I always understood the phrase "violence against women" to not just mean what the words say, but to refer to a specific set of behaviors where women are targeted because of the uniquely vulnerable position women occupy. For example in domestic abuse, or in cases of rape.

I don't think there is anything inherently more wrong in a man attacking a woman, than a man attacking a man. But when he does so in a context when his violence is not judged, when his violence is seen as acceptable, because of attitudes people have about men and women- "she asked for it" or "she belongs to him" or "he cant help himself, he is a man and men cannot control themselves after all" it becomes something different. It's not just the violent act itself that is wrong, it's the context in which men feel justified in taking out their rage on women, free from blame.

Martin: I think as long as your violence isn't consistently driven by gender then the violence itself in the narrative shouldn't be a problem no matter who it's against.

Karen: Seems to me that violence is part and parcel of being in the military, in a combat situation. Women in combat? They're going to get wounded, maimed, killed. It goes with the job.

Sound off in the comments if you agree or disagree. 

Cast of Dramatis Personae Characters

(Image: stock.xchng/michaelaw)

So, here's something sorta embarrassing... I was having trouble remembering the names of some of the characters in my novel.

Yeah. I know.

They're totally minor characters, basically just red shirts. But, it's important to keep that sort of thing consistent throughout the entire piece, right?

So I did something that I really ought to have done from the start - create a list of characters and their associations. I know, I know, Writer 101 stuff. But, I've never really been one for taking copious notes or planning things out with more than just a bare outline and my brain.

In some circles, this is called "pantsing." People who do this are "pantsers." I realize how very 7th grade that sounds, but really, we're just trying to reclaim it.

But there it is. Look at me like a cautionary tale. Your novel will be full of strangers if you don't do things right. It doesn't have to be terribly in depth, just a straight up list. Is there a family, or groupings you need to keep track of? Go for it. Because most of my characters are in the military, I organized it by their squads.

Effort: Five minutes.
Not having to keep looking back through old chapters to remember character names: Priceless.

Current Soundtrack
"Black Sails" by Bear McCreary

Oh, hello there 2014

(Image: stock.xchng/nh313066)

It's apparently been an entire year since I updated this blog. Many things have changed since then.

Many things have also stayed the same.

I finished the Weirdo Company serial! That was a huge moment for me, hitting the "publish" button on the last of 10 parts. I had such an incredible amount of fun writing that story and creating those characters. I initially told myself that I was done with it for a while, and went to work on another project.

But the problem is, ideas for more Weirdo Company kept nagging at me. So I abandoned the other project and threw myself whole hog into a new Weirdo Company novel.  I haven't settled on a title yet, but frankly that's not surprising.

Along the way, other life things happened. I went to five weddings last year, three of them in about the span of a month. It was exhausting, and expensive, but at the same time a good deal of fun. My relationship with my best friend deteriorated until it was no more. That was also exhausting. And I got my heart broken, which was even more exhausting.

In the middle of all that, I got promoted at work. I don't work the night shift anymore, which is huge. I enjoy the work that I'm doing, and I feel like it's another step forward and toward what I would really love to be doing.

But I keep plugging forward with more Weirdo Company. It's comforting. It's fun. I'm pouring a bit more of my own emotions into this one, so hopefully there will be a little bit more dramatic meat beyond all the swearing and explosions and strange monsters.

It's also not a serial, it's a novel, though it keeps a lot of same serial format. I think fans will find a lot to like, and maybe I'll attract some new ones. Maybe.

I'm also writing this post from the very awesome Danish Pastry House in Medford. It's a fine little place that has lots of baked goods, sandwiches and really excellent coffee and tea options. I wrote a blog post for my second job about sleep deprivation while I was pounding back a chai latte. How's that for funny?

But, ultimately... How I'm feeling is this: 2014 will be big. Bigger than 2013. More things are going to change for me. I'm making that happen, rather than waiting for them. This is the next step that I've been building toward since I started self-publishing. Taking that leap was me beginning to do something different with my life than simply go to work, come home and do it all again the next day.

It's a little weird.

Current Soundtrack
"Inception" by Hans Zimmer

How I Wrote a Serial

Part One: Formulaic Nonsense
I’m already five-deep into the “Weirdo Company” 10-part serial. When I first started, I did a little research and I looked up some monsters that I thought were either interesting to build an action/adventure story around or that I’d simply never heard of before and thought would be cool. (“Hellshark” was an idea I came up with a couple years ago as a joke, and it fit right in.) So I found 10 monsters as I had already decided I wanted to write 10 chapters of this story.

While that idea was still forming, I settled upon the idea of mapping out the entire story like it was a season of a television show and treating each chapter of the serial like an “episode.” I looked at my list of monsters and started coming up with basic plots for them. Sometimes these were as simple as “The team is trapped underground with _____” or “zombies vs unicorns.”  But as the list went on, I had other elements I wanted to introduce that would link all the stories together until I basically had a short paragraph for each of the ten episodes. From there, I decided on a certain format each episode would (loosely) follow.

The basic formula is that each episode begins with a “cold open.” For example, the first story, “Zombies vs Unicorns,” opens with a brief scene of a scientist escaping a facility overrun by zombies, and then we jump a couple weeks later to introduce our characters as that situation has grown out of control.  The second story, “Ninja Werewolf Assassins!” begins with a harrowing chase sequence, and then the next scene actually jumps back in time to explain how we got there. So both stories follow the same format, even if the content of the scenes themselves is wildly different - and even the time jump is diametrically opposed.

Next, introduce the characters and throw them into the plot. In “Blood of the Keres,” I introduced the characters via a briefing scene, followed by them traveling to Europe and generally getting slowly drawn toward the inevitable final confrontation. That’s fine - I still had a big action-packed opening, and then I built every action sequence larger and larger until the all-out battle at the end.

And that’s the basic formula for each episode. Think of it like a check mark - Start with some big action, then bring it down a little, then build bigger and bigger and bigger.  

For “The Great Dragon Egg Robbery,” I eliminated the opening teaser.  The story has three major action sequences - a train/highway chase, a truck highway chase, and the finale.  In between are sections of plot and character development, but what I wanted this story to be, as the big “halfway there” episode, was essentially an action showcase. So I formatted the story around that. In terms of the plot, we actually open three days after this particular mission has been going on, and the team is frazzled and harried from the last few days. I sprinkle some information here and there in the dialogue to fill us in on what’s happening.

And here’s where we get to one of the important things I want to talk about: Length.

John Ward asked me to help him understand how to write something and keep it short. He said the temptation for many writers is to expand their story as large and as long as they can make it.

Each episode of “Weirdo Company” is around 14,000 or 15,000 words. That’s more than enough time for me to develop relatively simple plots, sprinkle in some action sequences, character development and one-liners.

Think about your average TV episode. I’m going to give my college screenwriting professor, Robert Johnson a shoutout here, because he was awesome and so were his classes. I learned a lot of wild stuff in those classes, such as that TV dramas are often split into A-plot and B-plot. The A-plot is the one with the major focus, while the B-plot tends to get less screen time. In the case of CSI, the A-plot is the murder and the B-plot is generally character-oriented, such as one of the investigators is dealing with a family issue or something along those lines.

In “Zombies vs Unicorns,” the A-plot is the mission - Weirdo Company has to deal with the zombies and the unicorns in a little town up in the mountains of New Hampshire. The B-plot is the new recruit, Davis, acclimating to the team and their charter to deal with strange and dangerous monsters.  In my chosen format for the serial, the next episode, “Ninja Werewolf Assassins!” sends the team on a new mission, but continues the character arc for Davis, who deals with the emotional repercussions of the first episode. And then the third episode does that again - new mission, coupled with character side-plot.

I did that five times.  Now it’s time for episode 6, “Chupacabras on a Boat.” My original plot outline had the team hunting Chupacabra through some tunnels and an oil rig, but since I used tunnels extensively in “Blood of the Keres,” I decided I wanted to look at some different locations. Well, where’s one place that Chupacabra absolutely doesn’t belong? On a boat, duh. So now that I have my simple, ludicrous premise... it’s time to get to work.

Part Two: Don’t Do What I Do

I’ll admit that a lot of times when I start writing, I don’t really know where I’m going with it. I’m not a fan of outlines, I never have been. That got me into a lot of trouble in school when teachers would force me to outline a paper I was going to write, and it was like pulling teeth. Then, once I’d finally come up with an outline, I’d ignore it completely and get an A.  My brain just seems to organize things on the fly, then I go back sometimes and edit.

So, and here’s where my process should probably not be recommended to everyone (or anyone) I often just start writing and see where it takes me. While I’m doing this, the story is slowly coming together in the back of my mind. When I finish a scene, I think for a bit about what should logically come next. Sometimes, that works out fine. Other times it doesn’t.

A lot of writers will read this and think, “You’re freaking insane.”  So be it.  I probably am. But I found that this is what works for me. Some writers will say, “Yeah, me too!” and that’s cool, also.  If you’re the kind of person who’s super organized and you need to have an outline, then here’s what I’d suggest:

Teaser
Act One
Act Two
Act Three
Act Four
Act Five

Or variations thereof, depending on your story. But try it. This is what’s called “breaking the story” in Hollywood. Tear it up into chunks and put them together in a way that makes sense.

TV dramas, at least when I was learning about them, were organized into a teaser and five-act structure. The teaser, as I mentioned before, sets things up.  “CSI” usually starts with some kind of act of violence, then jumps forward hours or days to when the team has found the body. Gil Grissom looks things over and spouts some kind of pun or witty remark and then all of a sudden The Who is rockin’ us through the title sequence. After that, each act progresses the plot forward but it also does one other thing: each act ends on a cliffhanger. You want your audience to come back after the commercial, right?

In writing this serial, I’ve tried to sprinkle little cliffhangers throughout as I would jump from scene to scene.  Give it a try! Outline a teaser and five acts for your story, each one increasing the stakes for your characters until you get to the climax, then slam us with the best you’ve got!  

Should you end each episode of your serial on a cliffhanger?  Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the nature of the story you’re telling. For “Weirdo Company,” the stories don’t end with explicit “To Be Continued...” cliffhangers (yet...) but I like to hint that the overarching plot is advancing, hoping that the reader likes these little teases enough to come back next month for another bite. I’ll admit, in five episodes, I haven’t given away much about the villains’ plan, but those revelations are coming. How quickly you seed them through your story is up to you. But a good place to do so is probably around the end of each episode, to sort of set the stage for your next one.

Part Three: Watch Your Mouth

So we’ve looked at the structure of a serial being devised like a TV show - carry over your character arcs even if you resolve your plot, divide your episode into acts, etc. So what? You could probably still write a 100,000 word novel with that structure. How do you keep it in check?

Most TV dramas, without commercials, clock in at about 40 minutes, sometimes a little longer like 42. Since I’m developing “Weirdo Company” in the mold of a TV series, that means there’s not a lot of space or time for artful navel gazing. So the plot of each episode is going to be relatively simple. The “CSI” crew have only 42 minutes to solve a murder. Well, I’ve only got about 42 pages to do the same thing.  

Economy of language. Don’t screw around.

One of the things I don’t do much of in “Weirdo Company” is talk about what things or people look like. I’ll give cursory descriptions like “a black Mercedes,” “a gray BMW,” or “a high-ceilinged room that felt like a cathedral.”  I think I might once have mentioned the hair color of a particular character, or that one character is large and muscular.

But otherwise, I’m not spending a lot of time on what things look like unless it’s important. I try to trust the reader’s brain to fill in that information for themselves. Since that’s taken care of, I mostly just focus on action.  In this sense, I don’t mean action in terms of gunfights and explosions, but actions, movements, etc. Instead of focusing on describing the way things are, I focus on describing what they’re doing.

Example: in “The Great Dragon Egg Robbery,” the opening action sequence involves Harper trying to stop a runaway train. I don’t describe what he’s wearing. There’s no scene that says “Harper arrived, wearing a neatly-pressed Saville Row suit with pinstripes and two buttons, his tie cleanly cutting down the center” or whatever. Instead, I just make passing mention to him straightening his tie.  Suddenly, your mind pictures him in a suit.

I could say something like, “Anders was a beefy man with a thick neck, square jaw, and a scar that ran across his eye. He’d gotten it years earlier in a battle with an enraged sasquatch. He looked at him quizzically, the meaning plain in his face.”

Or, I could say, “The big man, Anders, looked at him with his one good eye, questioning.”  The focus isn’t on the fact that Anders is big, or even that he’s scarred but on the action of him asking an unspoken question.  If I toss in that he has “one good eye,” the reader will more than likely conjure up an image of a man with an eyepatch or a scar, or whatever they innately want him to look like.

Spend just enough time on what things look like to get the basic gist across, and the reader will do the rest on their own. A short-form serial is no place for you to go wild with your characters’ deep inner thoughts, or to lovingly explore every nook and cranny on that tree in the background.

After all that, what am I saying?  Get to the frickin’ point.

Do it quickly. Do it succinctly. Still do it with flair, because you don’t want your prose to be boring, but don’t dilly-dally.  This also relates to your plotting and structure, too, not just how many words you use.

I started writing the opening of “Chupacbras on a Boat” and it was about four hundred words that mostly consisted of characters walking into a room, dropping their bags on their beds and then sitting down in an office for a briefing before getting to the fighting. it was totally boring. So I lopped it right out and got down to business. Sometimes you might have to do that - write the boring part until you get to the good part, and then ditch the boring part. Remember that you can always sprinkle some background info into the good part to explain things to the reader without having to actually explain things to the reader.

Part Four: The Gang’s All Here

The “Weirdo Company” series has seven or eight recurring characters that are generally in each episode. Think about the original “Star Trek.” Everyone knows about Scotty, Chekov, Sulu and Uhura, right?  Sure. But the main characters of every episode were Kirk, Spock and McCoy. The others were around, but they were rarely the focus of an entire episode, maybe just a few scenes here or there. Still, everyone tends to think of them as main characters.

Well, I might have seven or eight characters that are always in these episodes, but I’m really only focusing on three. Harper, Davis and Rhymes are the characters with the most “screen time” in my serial. The others are there, and they serve their distinct purposes, they’re just for support because I need a larger world than three characters. You might not, but in continuing the TV analogy, they’re my supporting cast. They’re my Scotty, Sulu, Chekov and Uhura.

Even in a modern ensemble TV drama, you’ve got a couple people who are always at the forefront of the action. “The Walking Dead” is undeniably about Rick Grimes, even with the hugeness of that show’s cast. We might focus on Andrea and Michonne for a bit, or toss a couple scenes to Glen and Maggie, but we’re mostly following Rick.

So don’t try to give all your characters equal time. Don’t always try to flesh them out as much as you can. Sometimes, you just need your characters to be who they’re supposed to be. Flint is the medic, Mendez is the gunner. Tailor their actions and dialogue to those purposes and they’ll do just fine.

And now: Villainy.

Your story will probably require some kind of antagonist or villain. Mine has two, a pair of brothers who call themselves Joker and Thief. Joker is the plotter, Thief is the doer. I’ve set up that dynamic, so the characters feel fairly well established even if we don’t know much about them - particularly their plans. But through the dialogue we know that Joker wants to rule the world and has some sort of intricate plan to do so while Thief does what he’s told and is resentful of his brother’s power over him.

All these things lead back to being economical. Don’t put more effort into something than you have to. Focus on telling a good story, rather than trying to flesh everything out. The short form prose is less about depth. I could write thousands of words about the backstories of every character, give all of them more time to do things like drink coffee or walk their dogs, but I’m stripping away everything that, while interesting, is ultimately unimportant.

NaNoWriMo is upon us!

Yes, the yearly writers Mecca is here: NaNoWriMo, the month when everyone sits down and tries to crank out a 50,000 word fan fic masterpiece!

Every year I find some excuse not to participate, though this year I'm getting closer. I've got two jobs and so many writing irons in the fire, that I just can't sit down and crank out a novel from scratch. Instead, I'll just use my NaNoWriMotivation to work on a novel project that I started before but only got about 16,000 words into before it came grinding to a halt.

I think that's a pretty good use of my time, considering the two jobs and working on the Weirdo Company serial. That project is going well, since I just released Weirdo Company: Hellshark and I've already made solid progress on the next episode, Blood of the Keres.

So, I'm feeling pretty good about NaNoWriMo, even though my participation is a little... NaNoWriModjacent. 

Any of you out there going to dive into this yearly sacrifice ritual?

Current Soundtrack
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier by Jerry Goldsmith

My wasted Saturday

Today I had all kinds of things I wanted to do.  Big things, important things.  Things like finish the cover for Hellshark. Well now it's after 6 and what have I done today?

I put a bunch of beef in the crockpot and then watched 30 Rock until it hurt.

Okay, so I did do some work on the cover for Hellshark. Not bad.  And I managed to stick to Paleo meals today, unlike yesterday (stupid, delicious calzone...).  So I guess I didn't waste the day after all?  The beef is still in the crockpot.  It's been almost seven hours.  I hope it's delicious.

Here's the latest WIP cover for Hellshark, which I'm planning on uploading Monday for Tuesday release announcement.  Special thanks to Smalls for suggesting red, glowing devil eye.

Current Soundtrack
Quantum of Solace by David Arnold

Progress Update: 'Ninja Werewolf Assassins!'

The second part of the Weirdo Company series, which began in Zombies vs Unicorns, is well under way.  This next adventure of Lt. Harper and his band of monster hunters takes the team to the United Kingdom, where they will team up with their British counterparts to capture a wanted terrorist with a deadly secret, a dastardly plan, and a painful connection to General Thibault.

Right now, the story stands at 9070 words, about 4,000 of which I've added just in the last few days.  This one is just pouring out of me now, and I'm having a blast writing it.  It goes a little bit deeper into the characters, as my plan had always been for the first story to act much like the pilot episode of a TV series.  In fact, I'm approaching the entire Weirdo Company series like it was a TV show, and I've plotted out the arc of the "episodes" through a complete "season."  I'm hoping to release one per month,  with some real fun surprises in store.

In other news, I am still getting used to having an Olympus Mans Google+ page.  Right now it's really bare, but I'm going to be adding content slowly, and especially a lot more as I release more of my work and get down to another upcoming project that I'm very excited about.

Current Soundtrack
"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" by Brian Tyler

ZvsU, now on Amazon!

ZOMBIES vs UNICORNS

is now available on Amazon:

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"They are the US military's special response unit for monsters and other creepy-crawly creatures that go bump in the night. They are Weirdo Company. Lead by Lt. Paul Harper, the team embarks on a mission uncomfortably close to home: Contact has been lost with a small farming town in the northeastern United States. What the team finds there will set them up for the fight of their lives, as the townspeople have been turned into vicious, bloodthirsty zombies.
But Harper and his team, including a green new recruit Davis, will discover that there is far more danger in this town than just zombies. Because if the people have mutated into something grotesque and dangerous, what has happened to the farm animals?

"Zombies vs Unicorns" is the first story in the 'Weirdo Company' series and features thrilling, summer blockbuster-style zombie-killing action and a few fun surprises."

The zombies are coming

Tonight, despite being massively sick, I managed to sit down and finish "Weirdo Company: Zombies vs Unicorns," the first in a new short story series.  It's silly, gory fun.  If you like zombies, you'll probably dig it.  If you like explosions and summer blockbuster-style action, you'll probably dig it.  If you like unicorns, you'll probably hate me forever.

Here's the cover I eventually settled on.  It's a bit simpler than I envisioned, but, deadlines are deadlines.

I'll have the links up as soon as the book goes live.  I can't wait to hear what people think of it.

Announcement: Weirdo Company

I'm very close to releasing my next story.  The story itself is finished, and I'm making progress on the second.  This is the beginning of a pretty massive project.  Work on other things, like the novel, are still progressing, but this is going to be one avenue that I'm exploring.

It's called "Weirdo Company."  A series of 10 short stories about a military unit that handles weird, screwed up missions involving monsters and other scary creatures.  It's not designed to be very serious, sort of like the "Call of Duty" games that feature zombies.  It has lots of violence and foul language, but it's also very silly and ridiculous. I hope people like it.

The first adventure is called "Zombies vs Unicorns" and I thought I would share some of the work I've been doing on the cover for it, the last step before release.

This is the first design I sort of slapped together quickly.  It's pretty lame, though I kind of like the treatment of the text:

You an see it's very plain, and the zombie and unicorn are sort of oddly off-center, which doesn't quite work very well.  And that 'blood spatter' looks more like bad spraypaint (which, I'm pretty sure it actually is).

This is what I've settled on for an overall template for the cover:

I think it looks much nicer, though I may play with the text a bit before I'm done.  The gray area in the middle will feature some artwork of a zombie and a unicorn.

Here's the beginning of it, in the form of a rough pencil sketch:

The picture is of poor quality because I took it with my phone rather than scanning the actual sketch.  But I think you get the idea.

Anyhow, I'm pretty excited about this project.  It's almost ready to be unleashed upon the ebook world, and I hope people enjoy it.

Current Soundtrack
"King Kong" - James Newton Howard

Status Update

Just some thoughts:

I'm waffling on the title of my novel.  Whether or not to include the word "City."

The novel itself is coming along well.  Following the outline, piecing back together parts of the 20,000 or so words I'd already written, discarding some, rearranging and rewriting others.  It will be much better now.

At the moment, it's about 9924 words, but there's still pieces to be added back from the original.  I suspect that I'll only lose about 3,000 or 4,000 words and then I'll be ready to start writing the rest of it.

I don't have a goal word-count for this project.  The disparity of online opinions of what length 'officially' constitutes a novel told me I should just write the damn story and see how long it ends up when I feel it's appropriately finished.

I plan on having a couple people read the novel before it's released to get some feedback as well as some extra editing help.  I didn't do that for "Show Me the End of the World" and there ended up being a couple of embarrassing errors.  I did it for "The Box" and felt much better about it, despite one friend's assertion that he got a Grammar-Nazi Eye Twitch (I suspect he was exaggerating).

"The Box" continues to sell an average of one or two copies a day.  Those three dimes keep rollin' in...

Current Soundtrack
"Thor" by Patrick Doyle

Outlines are hard like my...

...high school algebra finals.

What?  Where did you think I was going with that?


Anyway, I've written before about my difficulty with outlines. But I decided a novel, as the single largest writing project I will have tackled so far in my life, deserved more than just to be spat out upon my keyboard, spewed forth from my brain without direction of any kind.

Thus it was that I completed an outline for my novel (which I have yet to settle on a title - that will be another blog post, I assure you).  It's a pretty basic outline which merely lists a couple of goals for each chapter, sentence fragments of ideas that I think should happen at each point.

"So and so meet at this place and discuss such and such" is essentially how it goes.

"So and so beat the crap out of each other at bla bla" and so on.

But one of the things that struck me while I was writing it was that the structure of it seemed to flow a little better.  The outline adheres to the basic idea of the novel I've had in my head, with some added junk thrown in.  But therein, you'll recall, was my problem - I constantly have new ideas I want to add in which ends up changing the project drastically as I'm writing it.  With the outline, I'm hoping to avoid it, but I don't know if that's possible because I simply found myself modifying the outline on the fly!

My high school art teacher, who always was reminding me that I was very talented but extremely lacking in organization and follow through, once said that "the real world doesn't have outlines."  This was because my naturally cartoonish artistic style meant that every object I drew had lines to define its shape instead of using shade.  It's sort of hard to describe, but essentially it boils down to, Look at the world around you and note that no real object has a black line around it.

This is a completely different kind of outline, but the idea popped into my head earlier as I was finishing the outline.  I thought this was very funny because now years later, outlines are still bugging me and I'm still a giant pain in the ass who lacks organization and follow through.

Free! Free!

That's right, folks - Everyone's favorite word!  Today (April 4, 2012) and tomorrow (April 5, 2012) my new short story "The Box" is free for everyone on Amazon.com.  Feel free to download it to your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Android device, PC, Mac, read it right on your fancy-schmancy Internet browser, or... I guess you could print it out if you feel like putting too much effort into something.

But it's free!  So do whatever you like!  Read it, share it, tell all your friends and family how freaking awesome I am... :)

But above all, enjoy.

Current Soundtrack
"John Carter" by Michael Giacchino

The dreaded outline

I am not what you would call a particularly organized person.  I tend to just sort of let things happen, let them pile up.  I don't really plan things all that well, and I'm sometimes very poor at budgeting my time.

Of course, this is a problem for a person who wants to tell stories.  Disorganized stories can be a huge turnoff for a reader.  But my writing style is very "get started and see what happens."  The number of times I've started a project only to decide halfway through to veer off in another direction because I had what I thought was a better idea is astonishing.  It also means that there is a graveyard of unfinished stories, screenplays and half-baked ideas littered like slaughtered corpses throughout my hard drive.

For writing short stories, this is actually rather an easy problem to overcome.  They're typically short enough that I can just write and see where it goes and generally be pleased with the outcome.  I had some struggle with "The Box," but overall the writing of it went smoothly.  Of the stories in "Show Me the End of the World" only "DreamTime" and "Man's Best FrienD" went through any serious revisions.

But writing a novel is an entirely different animal.  I've even written screenplays without any real outline... they just sort of come out of me the way they do, and I rarely feel the need to go back and change them.  I've been slowly revising one that's been gestating since college, but even that has remained largely the same in terms of its structure.  Each time I read it, I see where I could make a funnier joke or that I need to add an earlier reference to pay off something that happens later, but for the most part the skeleton of the thing hasn't changed in the years since I originally sat down to write it while working crappy desk shifts in good ol' Larned Hall.

For this novel, I attempted to come up with an outline.  The problem is that when I sat down and started writing the novel I almost immediately started deviating from the outline!  I've struggled with this problem for all the time I've been a writer; rigid boundaries simply don't agree with me.  Outlines for school papers were a pain in the ass, and when teachers forced me to do second and third drafts as part of the assignment, I often simply passed in the first draft again and they'd get upset.  Even at work, I hate being constantly boxed in by design concepts older than I am, and I'm constantly battling with people over this.

I guess what I'm going to try for the novel outline is to simply write a simpler one.  I was trying to sketch it all out down to the individual scenes, but that isn't working for me.  I think I'll just put one or two sentences down for the goal of each chapter and hope that I can stick to that.

But maybe I'll get halfway through and decide, no, that's not how I roll.

Current Soundtrack
"Total Recall" by Jerry Goldsmith

What's inside 'The Box'?

The Box

A mysterious artifact is uncovered in the desert. It is metallic, perfectly cubical, covered in strange writing... and older than human civilization. Four strangers are brought to a secret laboratory to unlock its secrets, including a codebreaker, a linguist, and a young prodigy physicist. What is the box? What secrets does it contain within? Finding out will send the team on the greatest adventure of their lives... and could mean the end of everything they know.

"The Box" is now available, exclusively on Amazon!  I have to admit that after uploading yesterday, I pretty much checked the status of it compulsively until it went live.  Amazon takes a few hours for ebooks to go on sale once they've been uploaded, and I was being my usual impatient self.  It finally appeared on the site at about 7 pm, and I immediately shared it across all my usual networks (I'm heavily into Facebook and Google+, so be sure to 'like' me on Olympus Mans and circle me on G+).  

Then, of course, I couldn't get to sleep last night.  Too excited.  It's a blast seeing your name on something that's for sale on a huge site like Amazon.  I'm not sure that'll ever become old hat for me.  At least, I hope it doesn't.


Now, about that novel...

The Editing Phase

So as you may know from previous posts, I've been working on a new story that I'm rewriting from an old one.  It's called "The Box."

Wellllll it's pretty well done.  Clocking in at just under 16,000 words, I'm steadily going through it now making sure all the i's are dotted, all the t's crossed.  I've had a couple people read through it and got some positive feedback on that end, as well.

On that note, I'd like to mention that editing a document in real-time with another person on Google Docs is pretty awesome.

But this story is nearing the finish line.  I can't wait to get it out there.

Current Soundtrack
"Tomorrow Never Dies" by David Arnold

Milestones and finish lines

I hit 10,000 words on "The Box", finally.  It's coming along nicely, and I'm gearing up to bring it to its big, Baysplosion-y finale.  This made me think of the issue of pacing.

Generally stories are supposed to build to the climax, which is the big moment or scene where everything kind of hits the high point.  All of your storylines converge, the emotions of your characters reach their tipping point - essentially this is when you get to the entire point of your story.  When the audience is gripping the arm of their chair, riveted by whatever you're showing them.

When it comes to action-adventure stories, this generally means that things are at their most dire for the hero, and the villain is on the cusp of victory and world domination or some such.  Sometimes, it's okay to buck this idea.  In "Raiders of the Lost Ark", for example, the climax of the film is really when Indy and Marion are tied to a post and the Nazis are opening the Ark - although the film's biggest action sequence is arguably the fight on the plane tarmac followed closely by that amazing truck chase (which to this day is one of my favorite action sequences in any movie - ever.)

Or sometimes, even, your biggest action sequence comes at the beginning of the film.  The Battle of Hoth, anyone?  Generally, though, I think I like films that have a slower first-half and then unleash hell in the back.

Writing a short story is a little different.  With "The Box", which has a lot of action adventure elements in it, more so than any of the other stories from "Show Me the End of the World", I've tried to maintain a sort of even pace in the sense of building it steadily.  There's a creature hunting the characters in the story, and each encounter with it gets bigger and longer and more dangerous than the last.  What I'm hoping is that this lends the story a feeling that it's leading to a huge climax, that the finale of the store will be me letting loose with something truly awesome that made reading the rest of the story worthwhile.

Because if your climax fizzles, well... quite simply, as a writer, you've failed.  Don't let the reader come away disappointed in your payoff.  That's a fear that I've had about my writing rather often.  I'm afraid that I have these great ideas that I can't follow through on for whatever reason.  In screenwriting, I often found my way around this by tossing in some kind of action sequence which ultimately, regardless of how much I love the action/adventure genre, is just lazy writing.  If I'm ever going to overcome my own fears regarding my writing, I've got to force myself to sit down and think about what I'm doing and if I can't come up with a way around a problem, then the solution isn't to sidestep it with action but to go back and address why the problem exists.


But I digress.  "The Box" is almost finished.  At this point, I'm proud of it.  But it's not finished, it still needs work.

I still need to unleash it.

Current Soundtrack:

"Captain America: The First Avenger"
 by Alan Silvestri

Decisions to be made

You'll recall in a previous posting I mentioned that I was rewriting a lost story that didn't make it into "Show Me the End of the World" called "The Box.  Well not only have I been rewriting it, but I've also expanded upon it.  From my admittedly spotty memory, the story wasn't all that long.  But the new version I'm writing is actually quite a bit longer than I remember the original being.

Whether this makes it better or not, I can't be certain.  It might suck. I'm gonna have a couple people read it and give me some feedback on this one, I think.  I'm not sure why I'm so uncertain of it.  My usual rule is that if it's fun to write, then it's fun to read.  This one is fun to write, but for some reason I get the impression it might not be that fun to read.  Maybe it's the length?  Maybe parts of it feel kind of repetitive?  I won't know until I get some people to take a look at it and tell me what they think.

But because it's turned into a bit of a longer project, it's sort of usurped my novel that I was working on, so that will be delayed a bit.  That's totally fine, of course, because I don't want to rush that, nor do I want to demand that my friends and family who just shelled out their hard-earned cash for "Show Me the End of the World" to do so again just a couple months later.  No, the novel will take time and patience and preparation (but, y'know, I've already nearly finished a cover for it...)

I will, however, put "The Box" up on Amazon for the Kindle.  I might even enroll it in the KDP Select program, which requires that it be exclusive to Amazon for 90 days, but gives it some greater promotional push.  "The Box" was supposed to be a short story; honestly I think it'll end up being more of a novella.

Current Soundtrack

"Battle: Los Angeles" - Brian Tyler

Goals for writing

Y'know, I'm not the most organized person in the world.  That honor goes to a girl I know who color-codes itineraries for weekend trips to New York City.

Lately, though, I've been setting what I think are manageable goals for myself.  Through the magic of Google Calendar, I've created tasks like "Write for 1 hour" several days a week, and it feels rather good to check those off.  A lot of times I'll sit down to write and find myself distracted by Facebook or YouTube or god knows what else.

But setting easy goals seems to help more than I anticipated.  For example, tonight I set the simple goal of "Write for 1 hour," but that was at 8:30 and now it's 10:40 and I just stopped.  Obviously, that's not going to happen every night.  I'm usually at work right now, but if I can rejigger myself to do that in the afternoon before I go into the office, it should work out nicely.

Writing is like going to the gym.  Get yourself into a routine, and it becomes easy.  Break that routine, though, and heaven help you.


Current Soundtrack
"Fast Five" by Brian Tyler