Author Archives: Bob Evans

Querying; the Bad and the Good

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Querying, for those who do not know, is the process of sending an introductory letter along with samples pages from a project and often a full synopsis of the novel to agents seeking representation. Agent representation is pretty much essential if one is pursuing traditional publication versus going the self-published route. (Nothing wrong with self-published, a number of terrific novels have come out that way, but it is far more work as the writer adds graphic design and other jobs to their already full plate. It is not for everyone.)

I have two novels that I am currently in the query process, both horror stories, one folk/cosmic, the other a take on werewolves in an isolated Rocky Mountain town. The querying process is quite a test of endurance.

Agents, when they are open to queries, receive hundreds per month and as such their passes when they decline to explore representation further are fast form letters sent impersonally. I hold no ill-will over such procedures, reading and passing on submissions is work that generates zero income, they do it for the same reason the writer is submitting it, the hope, the dream, of finding that perfect match that leads to a great and wonderful future.

The standard form nature of an agent passing leads writers to engage in ‘rejectomancy,’ trying to divine meaning from the impersonal response. It is possible but of a very limited scope.

I mentioned that agents get hundreds of submissions. Far more than they would desire but it is the nature of the beast. They have absolutely no need, inclination, or motivation to invite even more, so if the form actually does invite further submissions, that does tell you something. Sadly, it doesn’t tell you why that particular work got the pass, if it was the concept, it the agent has something close to it already out to publishers, or if the subject just didn’t ‘click’ with the agent. What I can surmise is that it was not the actual writing competence. They have no time to waste hoping someone shows improvement. So, if you get one of those, though the pass hurts, rejoice that your writing did not actually suck.

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Screw Canon

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Canon, a rule, regulation, or dogma decreed by a church, is often used in fiction to declare which elements of backstory and non-depicted events are part of the fiction’s reality. These days, particularly with the Star Wars franchise I see the term lore used much more often but in the same manner, those events or concepts that are considered part of the franchise’s universe versus theories generated by fandom without any official standing.

Debates about events that are perceived as ‘canon’ can generate intense, personal, and often bitter arguments, particularly online. Personally, I care very little for when canon is violated if it is done in the service of a better story, if it is done because that institutional knowledge is lost from the creative team and the story simply stumbled into something that conflicts with earlier narrative for no real reason, that’s sloppy writing but it generates no anger in me.

Star Trek V forgetting that Jim Kirk had an actual brother, Sam, is such a case, but Star Trek: Strange New Worlds exploring Spock, T’pring, and Christine while shattering ‘canon’ is such interesting character work that I am perfectly happy with it. I can still watch the episode of the original series Amok Time and the seasons of Strange New Worlds with equal enjoyment.

Canon as backstory is good and nice but it should not serve as a straitjacket and when something better comes along it should not prohibit its utilization.

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Series Review: Manhunt

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Adapted from the book Manhunt: The 12-day chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson, the Apple TV series centers on Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies) as he navigates the complex political and logistical battlefield is trying to apprehend John Wilkes Booth following the assassination of President Lincoln.

Apple TV

The story utilizes flashbacks to explore Stanton’s relationship with Lincoln, Lincoln’s plan for the post-war period, and some of the intolerable cruelty visited upon the enslaved of the south. Menzies is engaging as Stanton, displaying a quiet obsession as he pursues Booth while many for varied reasons seems open to the concept of simply letting the killers vanish into history.

Anthony Boyle as Booth plays the man as a person determined to live in glory as a hero while showing that under the surface the man roiled with jealousy for a level of fame denied to him.

I am about halfway through the 7-episode adaptation. The production values are quite high, something that seems standard for Apple TV productions. They are willing to spend the cash required to make each series have the look and feel of first-rate feature films, be that far future such as Foundation or Murderbot, period such as this, or contemporary like Slow Horses.

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Loyalty, Obedience, and Subservience

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Over the weekend the news broke that the administration pulled the nomination of Jared Isaacman as the head of NASA. Isaacman, a billionaire like so many in Trump’s cabinet, was a pilot, a civilian astronaut, entrepreneur, and a person committed to crewed space exploration. Even with the budget cuts proposed, there were many in the space flight community that had been thrilled for Isaacman to have been nominated as NASA Administrator and among the grifters, charlatans, addicts, and conspiracy nuts already serving in vital posts of this government Isaacman represented a rare competent pick. The action of Trump 86’ing the nomination really should have come as no surprise.

From White House spokesperson Houston “It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon.”

Many have described that as meaning that Isaacman was not sufficiently ‘loyal’ to Trump personally, but I do not feel that loyal is the correct word here.

Loyalty is inspired not commanded. A person feels loyalty as a spontaneous emotional reaction to the person or ideal that provoked it. A person acting out of loyalty wants to perform the services to the subject of their admiration. To not be of service creates emotional wounds that the person would likely carry for the rest of their lives. Loyalty is generated within the person who acts upon it not from any external source or order.

Obedience is commanded. It derives from external authority. The captain of a naval ship orders a sailor to perform a legal action, and the person complies because to not do so invites unpleasant consequences. Compliance is imposed by exterior forces with the person acting selecting the least painful course.

Subservience, which is what Trump demands, is abasement of one’s own will, wants, and desires to another. Subservience comes not from an inspiration born of admiration nor from a legal authority but the self-destruction of one’s ego, the corruption of one’s soul to please another from a desire for either selfish reward or terror of the consequences of disobedience.

It would appear that Isaacman refused to sink to subservience and has been cast out of Trump’s circle which at least saves the man from verbally prostrating himself in public meetings mouthing endless exaggerated claims to sooth the fragile ego of the man-baby currently occupying our highest office.

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Life Has No Factory Reset

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It’s not uncommon when a relationship has become terribly strained and stressed for one of the parties involved to suggest that they ‘start over’ but such a step, short of a fantastical memory wipe, is impossible. We carry our histories inside us and the weight of all the past words and actions press us inevitably forward. This is also true outside of the romantic realm.

There are some current and former members of the Republican Party who long for a return to the party that they remember, often this is from a very distinct and fenced off recollection of the party, usually centered on the ‘Reagan Revolution’ discarding the party before that time. Such dreams are pure fantasy. The population, both inside and outside the party, carries the history of all the words and actions and hurt that has been visited upon this nation and this world by the GOP of the last quarter century. You cannot unwind history. This is not a malfunctioning iPhone that can be restored to factory settings and reloaded with fresh applications.

The people killed and injured by handing the nation’s health systems over to a conspiratorial nutjob cannot be made whole again. The international relations cannot be mended with mere words. The brilliant minds denied entry or chased away will remember their treatment for decades and will remain wary.

A startling fact I learned this morning is the number of physicians looking to leave this country. Over the same period in 2024, 71 doctors applied to become licensed in Canada, for 2025 that number rose to 615! Now we are the subject of a global ‘brain drain’.

If a massive health event were to take the principal instigator of our nation’s pains from this mortal coil the damage will have already been done. The dark period of rebuilding and constructing of a new Republican Party would be shortened but not eliminated. There are terrible times ahead and the next century may not be America’s.

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Andor: Final Thoughts

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I have finally finished watching the Star Wars inspired television series Andor, which follows both the character of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) introduced to audiences with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the growth of the Rebel Alliance as they struggle against the Galactic Empire.

Disney Studios

Andor is quite simply my favorite Star Wars inspired media that I have encountered, unique in that it avoids tales of mysticism and chosen bloodlines for a more complex view of people in crisis. While it repeats the phrase ‘Rebellions are built on hope’, it also depicts that rebellions, vast criminal conspiracies, are often riven with conflict, competing power centers, and a willingness to do terrible things for their ultimate objective.

I refer to it as ‘Star Wars inspired’ and not directly as Star Wars because I do think the difference is immense. Star Wars is the collection of stories centered on the Skywalker clan and their associates. Those tales focus on noble bloodlines, characters born ‘better’ than the masses, and have much more in common with fairy tales than the lives of ordinary people living through difficult times facing terrible decisions. In Star Wars the fascism of the Empire is an abstract thing, shown here and there with its casual cruelty to principal characters of the story but otherwise something that we need not actually see. In Andor, the fascism is the day-to-day experience of the people, and we live it not only in the arbitrary ‘justice’ system that dispatches people to labor prisons for minor offenses but also in the bureaucratic nightmare of its security services as talented dedicated officers are hamstrung and eventually crushed for their initiative.

I applaud Andor for its multifaceted depiction of the Alliance, from politicians deluding themselves that politics and policy can still save them, through idealists writing their manifestos while running from the law to fanatics blinded to the suffering and the evil that they do by their need to win.

Andor which began with Cassian leaving a brothel where he had hoped to find his sister and killing a pair of police officers that tried to shake him down is not ‘realistic’, but it echoes our world and its corruption.

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Staycation

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I’ve been absent from the online spaces here because I took a little staycation break over the Memorial Day weekend. Having secured five days off in a row, I lounged about the house, visited the zoo, Balboa Park, and Riverside Park with my sweetie-wife while working on absolutely nothing.

That last phrase is not quite true. A writer’s mind doesn’t seem to be able to turn off completely and while shopping Monday evening I did manage to solve an issue with my 80s themed cinephile horror novel in progress, something that will end act 2 and propel things into act 3.

In addition to video games and laziness, I completed a couple of television seasons. With my sweetie-wife, we finished off Season 2 of Andor, that simply fantastic and amazing show set in the Star Wars universe but divested from space wizards, knights, and princesses with an approach that is closer to real-world revolutionaries. A complex tale of shadowy worlds where compromises are required for victory and one’s opponents are not kept incompetent to save the plot. As you can tell, I loved it.

On my own I finished watching season one of Severance. While I enjoyed the series  and the mysteries provided enough interest to draw in for a completion it did not hook me the way Andor or The Pitt did. It is interesting, and I will undoubtedly watch season two, but it is not a need but curiosity that draws my interest.

This morning, I return to my desk at the day job, with no question that a ton of emails are waiting to be quickly scanned, sorted, and most deleted and then back to processing and fixing Medicare Advantage enrollments. I will also get back to actually writing my horror novel and working my way towards that scene that will propel the next major section of the story.

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I Must Be Dreaming

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No, I am not referring to some sudden and terrific news I have received but rather to a classic refrain from characters in film, television, and prose that has always struck me as a bit false.

Characters suddenly finds themselves in some implausible situation, transported to a second-world fantasy or such and all too often they will insist or mutter or ponder if they are dreaming, because this simply can’t be real.

Here’s my problem with that. Dreams, no matter how strange and defying of conventional reality, always feel real. During the dream you don’t question them or their breaks in any rational logic, you always just accept them.

Yeah, I was at work talking to a co-worker, turned the corner of the hallway and now I’m back in high school and stuttering in front of a cheerleader. The transition from one reality to the next happens and you don’t question it.

So, a character opening their eyes and finding themselves surrounded by elves and the like isn’t likely to go off asking if this is a dream because that’s not how dreams work. Not only is the question clearly so overused to have become a cliche but the incongruity of the character asking that question breaks for me suspension of disbelief.

Joss Whedon, apparent scum that he is, I think really nailed the logical and illogical absurdity of dreams in the final episode of season 4 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. As we follow the characters through their dreams, being stalked by a supernatural entity to give the story some stakes, the world around them shifts and changes in the span of an edit but the characters do not notice. They do not question that the college has suddenly become the high school, that the back of the ice cream truck leads without a break into a basement. That is how dreams work and as we dream them, they feel right, they feel true.

I would advise to excise any mention of a character thinking that the fantastic environment that they find themselves in questioning if it is all a dream.

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False, Fixed, and Unshakable

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The other week on YouTube I came across Doctor Elliot’s channel. The doctor is a psychiatrist practicing in the United Kingdom, and I stumbled on his channel following doctors reacting to The Pitt and its medical accuracy.

In one of the videos Dr. Elliot swung into precisely how delusion is defined by modern psychiatry, that it is a belief that is false, fixed, and unshakeable.

A little epiphany lit up in my head.

As someone who has stood against Trump since before he came down that escalator, (I have never liked the man or any of his public appearances and never watched the damned show that propelled him to an office he is wholly unfit for.) his supporters have diagnosed me with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Their accusation of ‘derangement’ costs me not one moment of sleep. I know that I have not elided any of my core principles to stay acceptable to the mob.

What did light up for me was thinking about those Republicans old enough to have been supporters and voters as far back as Regan. The ones who proclaimed loudly and with such apparently firm conviction that their political positions did not arise from grubby self-interest but rather solid and well thought out philosophies. The supporters who now have spun their deeply held convictions into support for a philandering, greedy, corrupt, man of such low character you would not trust him to watch your wallet while you visited the restroom.

Why?

Because they are deluded that the Democratic Party is always the worse option. It is their fixed, false, and unshakable belief that the Democrats must always be the wrong choice that traps them with Trump.

This is not true for every single person that voted for Trump in 2024. Many voted because they were unhappy with conditions as they experienced them in the two years leading up to the election. Some tried to argue with these people that it wasn’t really that bad, using charts and numbers and data to prove their point but they missed that the motivation wasn’t empirical but emotional. There’s a reason why the Trump coalition had a larger share of infrequent voters than Harris’.

Some voted for Trump because he was exactly what they wanted, a cruel racist man promising to make the lives of those for whom they shared contempt for tough and unpleasant.

Some voted for Trump because there were goodies to be had, taxes to be cut.

But there remains that segment deluded with the belief that the Democrats are always the wrong choice, firm in the fixed, false, and unshakable convictions which are in actuality bereft of any actual convictions.

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So, I Finally Started Severance

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Despite the second season having already completed its airing, (airing strikes me as grossly incorrect in the age of streaming) I only began watching the series Severance this past weekend.

Apple TV +

The series is a science-fiction program centered on the ‘severed’ workers at the mysterious Lumon corporation. ‘Severed’ is a mechanical/surgical procedure that causes memory formation and retrieval in those altered to be spatially controlled. In the case of these workers while on the ‘severed’ floor they have no memory of their lives outside of the work area and when off that designated floor they have no ability to recall anything that occurred during their working hours. Each worker lives two lives, one where work is their entire existence and one ‘normal’ outside of their shift on the ‘severed’ floor.

 

 

The show’s protagonist is Mark (Adam Scott) a man who in his regular life is dealing with crushing grief and at work who has recently been promoted to a supervisory position which now includes a new hire, Helly (Britt Lower). Things become complicated when a ‘severed’ worker, Petey, approaches Mike in his outer life with information that Lumon is hiding the truth of their work and that being ‘severed’ is actually reversable.

Severance is executive produced by Ben Stiller and his company Red Hour Productions, (Stiller is a noted Star Trek fan as his production company indicates.) and Stiller directed the first two episodes.

I have heard since the series’ release of season one that this was an interesting and challenging show with surprising twists and reveals but it has been only in the last few days, I made time to start watching. Right now, I can’t say if I am completely sold on the series.

I have watched two episodes, and the world building is interesting, the concepts are fascinating, the acting is quite good, but the show hasn’t managed to set a hook that forces me to come back for the next episode. Comparing my reaction to Severance with another show I recently started watching, The Pitt, produces a striking contrast.

The Pitt is a medical drama with no genre conventions, normally the sort of series that would provoke little interest from me and it was only doctors praising the accuracy that caused me to watch the first episode, and I was utterly hooked. From the very first show I had favorite characters and those who I disliked, and I had to watch more. I burned through the entire series in about two weeks, skipping only one night when I was still so mad because my favorite character had been physically attacked.

Severance has produced no reaction like that. It is interesting, the world building with the people who live outside of the company have valid and interesting reaction to such technology, and there are mysteries to be uncovered, puzzles to be solved, but so far nothing that is emotionally compelling. The series is prompting curiosity but not much more. That is not to say I will stop watching; I will give it a few more episodes but unless something changes it could fall into a well of disinterest where I simply watch other things and fail to return not from dislike but simply not caring.

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