Category Archives: writing

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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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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64 Circles and I am Dizzy

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So, today is my birthday. The Earth has circled the sun some 64 times since I arrived and this morning I was gifted with a moderate migraine when I opened my eyes.

Luckily, I had already arranged to take today and tomorrow off from the day-job, but back on Friday, so nothing is expected of me.

The migraine subsided after lunch, and I even managed about 900 words on my 80s cinephile horror novel bring the total to just over 19,000. That’s anywhere from one quarter to one fifth done depending on how it shakes out. The story has seen two ‘on screen’ deaths, one off-screen and a good friend corrupted by a released evil. Yeah, in other words, a good time.

Writing a novel set in a time period I remember but also one that is a little fuzzy is interesting. I was just about to have a character comment on Ted Turner colorizing classics, evil, evil man, but a bit of quick research showed that did not really break big for another 4 years.

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That Elon Conspiracy Theory

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There are those who question why Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, put so much time and effort as a special employee of the government into the ludicrously conceived ‘DOGE.’ He was never, much less easily, going to find 2 trillion dollars in waste and fraud in a federal budget of about 6.8 trillion dollars. What he has cut is funding for things he did not approve of and that seemed to threaten him in some way. (See which Inspectors General were fired.) Tesla stock and sales for the current calendar year have severely fallen with some markets seeing declines in car sales for nearly 80 percent. the actions taken by Elon do not seem wise for someone wanting to hang on to their wealth.

One theory, backed with no real evidence, is that gaining access to so many sources of data from within the government was Musk’s real goal. Musk’s entry into the A.I. space with ‘Grok’ is a little behind his competitors and the theory suggests that such a vast trove of data would be an asset in Musk catching up.

Along those lines I have seen one curious data point.

Last year before Musk had access to the data, such as from the Library of Congress, I asked Grok to summarize the plot of my novel Vulcan’s Forge. I have done this with several A.I., some created lies, inventing plots while others responded with answers that they did not access to that information. None have ever actually provided a synopsis. Grok in 2024 invented a plot that had absolutely nothing to do with my novel.

This year, in the last few weeks, Grok now provides a short synopsis with not inaccuracies, getting plot, characters, and themes correctly.

Did Grok get my full manuscript from the library of congress?

I have no real evidence of that, but it certainly gained access to the text, which I never authorized.

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Forty Years of Dungeons & Dragons and My Work In Progress

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After we graduated boot camp my friend, way back in 1979, introduced me to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and I have been playing and game mastering tabletop role playing games ever since.

As a game master I often had a fairly good but still vague idea of what course adventures would take as the players explored and completed them. The path could not be nailed down with precision as players are a tricky and chaotic lot with a tendency to divert the best laid plans into something wholly unexpected. Because of this one of the skills required to keep a game running is the ability to make crap up on the fly and keep it consistent with what has already transpired.

This skill is now in full force with my latest work-in-progress.

The vague concept of using old nitrate film that had been cursed, or such, has rattled around in my brain for some time, but earlier this year it became a little more solid. Executing it required some research into San Diego during the summer of 1984. That occupied time and with the passing weeks the motivation for the story began to ebb. In order to keep it from dying without being written I simply dove straight into the project.

As of yesterday, I am about 15 thousand words into the text and while I have that vague idea I am chasing and a little more solid conception of the act structure, much like so many games I have run over the decades, I am inventing it as I go along. Characters don’t really exist until I put them in a scene and then I have to make fast notes on the side so the details that came alive in the moment are there to be referenced when they return.

It’s all so haphazard and yet I can feel it working. I have little doubt that the novel will be completed and right now it’s also very exciting.

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Thinking About Vampires

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After seeing Sinners this week, I’ve found myself thinking about vampires here and there. Now, vampires are not my favorite type of monsters or horror tale, for me that goes to the ghost story. In fact, most vampire movies leave me cold. I am in that minority that actively dislikes The Lost Boys and count myself among those who read Interview with the Vampire in hardback and had no interest in any other book in the series.

What I do find fascinating is the way the vampire is used by so many creators with so many different attributes.

Until Stoker came along and published Dracula in 1897, the nature of vampires varied a great deal by regional folklore. Stoker in his research gathered the aspects he liked and wanted, discarded many others, and created the template that so many others would follow or deliberately shatter.

Vampires are the dead reanimated. This makes them cousins to the post-Romero interpretation of the zombie and a more distant relation to the traditional version. In modern culture I have seen the two as opposite sides of the same coin. Vampires, as we often depict them in movies today, are the ultimate expression of individuality, iconoclasts surviving and preying upon a larger society that they no longer are a part of. Zombies are the unnamed, undifferentiated great mass, they are the faceless crowd where absolutely no one is special.

Vampires feed on blood. In folklore this is often shown as an unending hunger with the beasts when located in their graves or tomb bloated from their gorging. This is not sexy and is rarely if ever shown in film. By the time Buffy the Vampire Slayer arrived in the cultural scene blood had been reduced to a mere nutrient with any animal’s blood sufficing to meet a metabolic need that remained inexplicable.

Vampires are destroyed by sunlight. This is not found in Dracula where the count walks about in the daylight but with greatly reduced abilities. Count Orlok’s destruction with the rising sun in Nosferatu  set the standard followed by countless films with his gentle fading eventually giving way to explosive detonations in Near Dark. Sinners settled for simple combustion.

Vampires cast no reflection. This is another classic aspect and one that gets upgraded to the contemporary times with the creatures often not appearing in video or film. The British limited series Vhad a secret agency hunting the vampires using pistols that had small video screens attached to allow for rapid identification of their targets.

Vampires must be invited into a space. This aspect comes and goes. Some creators use public spaces like a club or a store are having open to all invites while retaining the restriction for private areas, some dispense with it entirely. Buffy’s force field at the threshold always struck me as a little over the top, while Sinners played a much more subtle action where it was clear the vampire desires to enter but simply doesn’t actually try until invited.

The most problematic and yet widespread aspect of the vampire is the repulsion by a cross or crucifix. Traditionally this is straightforward Christianity, the symbol of the power of a real god and his manifestation in the world of the living acts is a shield against evil and a promise of eternal life not damnation for his believers. As society secularized over the decades, the ‘reality’ behind the cross’s symbolism faded with most creators supplanting a ‘truth’ of the Christian religion with the power of faith by the wielder.

By the time we get to Buffy, the cross itself is simply another talisman wielded by non-Christian with equal efficacy. Sinners wisely dispenses with this aspect entirely, a vampire wearing a cross has no particular meaning and a vampire can easily repeat the Lord’s Prayer without any ill-effect.

I would suggest to anyone thinking about crafting a tale with vampire think deeply about not only which aspects to include but also to why those aspects apply.

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The First 10,000 Words

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My untitled 80s San Diego-based cinema-themed horror novel just passed 10,000 words.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I needed to get this book started because I could feel the enthusiasm battery starting to drain away and if it got much lower while I did prep and research there would not be enough juice to start the writing engine.

This has led me to writing a novel with even less of a mental outline than the last two books I completed, but I think it’s actually started.

My cast of characters is slowly revealing themselves as they step into the story, David Ludendorff, my gay movie theater owner and so far, the character at the center of this ghost story. The theater’s manager, Tram Nguyen, college student and reserved, Terrance, Dave’s best friend and occasional lover, and I just introduced Cyril Jones, long time projectionist at the theater but he’s going to be the first body to hit the floor in this plot.

I have a very rough idea of my 5-act breakdown. The numerous novels and stories I have constructed with this 5-act method I think plays a large part in how I can make the writing work without the aid of an outline. The structure gives me just enough guidance to keep me pointed in the correct direction, so I do not feel lost.

If things go as planned, I have high hopes of completing at least a first draft before Halloween.

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And the Book Starts

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So, I have actually begun placing words in a line starting my next, still untitled, horror novel. Once again, I do not have a full outline in place, have only the sketch of a 5-act structure and only some of the key characters but delaying was not an option.

One thing I have learned about myself as a writer is that there seems to be a bank of enthusiasm when a project first explodes in my little noggin. The idea generates a lot of ‘wow’ and energy as I really really like the prospect. This fuels the research and planning stages but as time passes that burst of energy drains away. The idea and scenes are thought on less and less until if the writing doesn’t actually start, is empties and I find I no longer have any passion for the project.

It dies.

This novel, dealing with cursed nitrate movie footage and set in the summer of 1984 in San Diego, needed to start or I was going to no have the drive to write it at all. So, this week, despite still not have a great opening, I wrote an opening. Maybe a better one will come along. That has happened before, where after the entire book is written I finally figure out how it should have started. The important thing is to get this moving, after about 10,000 words a project usually has enough momentum to find its way to the finish line.

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