Category Archives: writing

The Deep Background of Vulcan’s Forge

My SF/Noir novel Vulcan’s Forge, published March 2020 by Flametree Press, is set on the distant

Flame Tree Publishing

and isolated human colony of Nocturnia, but the events of the story takes place centuries and centuries after the destruction of the Earth.

In the early 22nd century, after fusion power plants had become common, Artificial intelligences practical, and humanity has settlements, some quite large, throughout the inner solar system, a rouge brown dwarf is discovered with an orbit that will take through the solar system, disrupting and destroying the rocky inner planets.

Face with extinction humanity designs, constructs, and launches hundreds of automated solar sail arks. These arks do not carry crew or people but rather the egg and sperm of animals and people along with sophisticated A.I.s and the equipment to construct human colonies. Once an ark has reached its target system, should it have survived the centuries long voyage still functional, and provided there is a planet suitable for terrestrial life, the A.I. build the colony and its required infrastructure, and then utilizing artificial wombs, birth the first generation of human born on alien worlds, preserving humanity and numerous other Earth species.

Surprisingly cheap, due to plentiful fusion power, the resources of the solar system, and artificial intelligence each ark cost in today’s dollars about half a billion to build, equip, and launch. With the arks so affordable they are not the sole domain of governments and numerous cultures, religions, sub-cultures, and even a few individuals commission arks in a bid to save and ensure to continuity of their ways of life. There is even a couple of arks dedicated to making sure that out there among the star Texas continues to survive and thrive.

The colony of Nocturnia was settled by an ark commission by a group who fetishized Urban Americana of the 1950s. Believing that mid-twentieth century America represented some sort of ideal culture they programed the A.I.s of the ark to disseminate this as the colony’s sole culture. Naturally their ideas of what comprised an ‘ideal’ culture from one which more than a century and a half separated them were based more of myth and misunderstanding.

The novel picks up on Nocturnia as the third generation has come into its own and Jason Kessler, a man ill-suited to the social conformity of the 50s discovers that the colony harbors a deep and deadly secret.

As a traditionally published novel Vulcan’s Forge can be ordered from wherever books are sold. I am including links to San Diego premier specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy along with links to Amazon.

Mysterious Galaxy Paperback

Mysterious Galaxy eBook

Amazon Paperback

Amazon eBook

Productive Again

I was quite fearful that this damned flu was going to derail my work-in-progress novel. Knocked out of commission for nearly two weeks as I hacked and wheezed and barely maintained any coherent thought my book languished without any active editing or composing.

Normally if something derails my writing and editing after the interruption, I return to work by re-reading the outline. This returns me to the mindset of the novel, puts the characters back into my head, primes the pump for more creativity. Writing this beast without an outline meant I couldn’t do that this time.

Instead of an outline I re-read the chapter that was in progress and either by luck or due to a story that was still going strong in my subconscious I fell right back into the world or Wallace Point and it’s terrifying secret. (Well, at least I hope it’s terrifying. That’s for the readers to determine.)

I know that I have fully gotten back into the flow of the novel because for the last couple of nights as I lay in bed waiting for blissful sleep to arrive my brain has exploded with solutions to vexing plot problems.

The evening have also seen the return of my editing as I have now edited the first five chapters of the work and been pleasantly surprised that this rudderless approach hasn’t yielded a meandering aimless story.

Pantsing a Novel: What I Have Learned So Far

“Pantsing” is writing a novel by the seat of your pants, without an outline. Until this novel, currently codenames The Colors of Their Trade I have also worked from detailed outlines. My most intensive outline was more than 80 pages with the story broken down to almost each and every scene.

Trade started with just a vague odea of exploring the subtextual themes in Kurt Siodak’s 1941 screenplay for The Wolf-Man. Then a single scene occurred to me, I wrote it and my fellow scribes in our writing group seemed to enjoy it. Now I am 17,000 words into a novel that IO hope lands between 80,000 and 100,00 words and I have learned a bit about what it is like in world of pantsers.

First off, in addition to the document I am writing I need to have a companion document open at the same time where I can keep a list of the characters and their traits. Instead of having worked them out ahead of time and usually documented in a database of sorts, I need to make these notes as they appear because in four or five chapters I may not remember their details if I do not.

Second, I am not flying entirely blind into the dark night of the plot. As a proponent of the 5-act structure, I have in my mind a mental map of how the story should be shaped. I may not have an outline for each act with every major twist and turn laid out as map, but I do have destinations in sight and those, hopefully, will be enough to keep me on course.

Third, trust my instincts. Major characters have appeared in scenes where I had not expected any characters to make an entrance. Intuition inspired a chance meeting and that intuition has been cultivated by decades of writing and analyzing stories and their structures. So, when Tony Packard appears and steps forward as the pastor of the new church with its twisted Christian ideology, I have learned to let him.

Fourth, don’t sweat solutions to problems that haven’t yet appeared in the text. I knew that certain world-building and supernatural processes needed to be crafted for this modern horror novel. When I worked by outline, I would have stopped and solved those issues before committing to composing the outline, here I have not. I have trusted that I will be able to solve the puzzle when the time arrives, and I have already. last night as sleep snuck into my brain an answer, consistent with the characters, the theme, and the tone burst from my synapses.

So, with the novel about 1/5 drafted I am surprisingly confident I might make this work. Certainly, the years of writing and critiquing has helped, but so have decades of running Role Play Games where plot and story are often hastily laid down just ahead of the player’s speed locomotive have also contributed to this book.

The Experiment So Far

Just over two weeks ago, May 3rd, I posted about an experiment in my writing as I began a novel without a written outline. My normal process for writing a novel involves extensive notes, outlining, and breaking out all the acts, before I tackle the actual drafting of the book. With this book, working title which is very likely to change The Colors of Their Trade, I have no notes save the once I make as I write, no outline, and a bullet point of six or seven elements to break down the 5-act structure.

As of yesterday, May 18th, I had nearly 10,000 words written for Trade, major characters and relations defined in the text, and narrative momentum that so far has not abandoned me. I believe, perhaps in error, that if I can get the entire 1st act drafted, about 15,000 to 16,000 words then the project will have survived its most critical phase.

Mind you, I am not flying completely by the seat of my pants with this. I have a clear understanding of the five-act structure, 1) establishment, 2) disruption, 3) point of no return, 4) chaos and collapse, and resolution, and what elements are critical this this story’s various acts, that for each act I have a clear destination and goal. That said, while the goal is visible for each act the path to it is not.

This is an experiment in another matter as well. It is a horror novel and I have never written long form prose horror. All of my horror to date has been short fiction and one feature film screenplay that is utter garbage.

I am considering but not yet committed to the idea that when I get act 1 completed that I might show it to a few people and see if it is working as well as it appears to me.

Still, the process continues and only the future knows what it will hold.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

Well, This Blows

I had been scheduled to participate in the programming for this year’s WesterCon, a science fiction convention that moves about the American West from city to city each year.

Yesterday, I got an email from the con committee that the convention has been canceled. It was of course written in a passive voice, so it was impossible to determine what had happened behind the scenes to destroy this year’s event, but WesterCon number 75 is not going to happen.

In addition to the fun of panel pontification this was going to be my chance to see an old friend, Gail Carriger, who had been named the convention’s Guest of Honor, and perhaps even share a panel or two with her.

At least the news came down before I had ordered copies of my novel, Vulcan’s Forge to hand sell at the convention.

Still, this is a bummer.

A New Experiment In Writing

For a week or so a very vague idea has been knocking around my cranium. Mostly themes and conceptual elements with very little in the plot of character save for what arises naturally from theme and conceit.

Normally, this is the part where I just let the ideas free form in the back of my thoughts, make occasional notes here and there, until a character a resolution present an ending to me that is strong enough to build an outline on.

However, by Monday one scene, not particularly dramatic, had floated to the front of my thoughts and with a writer’s group meeting on that night I decided the go ahead and compose this disconnected scene.

By the end of lunch, I had 1400 words about a character visiting an isolated bar in the mountains of Idaho, returning to the tiny town from which he had escape decades earlier. It was an experiment in tone and setting with perhaps just 300 words devoted to any real conflict when a Nazi biker attempted to drink at this local watering hole. Surprisingly it was well received by my writer’s group with some member expressing interest in where the tale was going.

As I said earlier, this point in my process is normally one of thinking and outlining. Plotting the critical elements, reveals, and reversals that will drive the story, not actual writing of scenes and characters.

But that is what I am doing. Yesterday at lunch I continued the scene and will do so again today. Flying by the seat of my pants I am going to drive for what would be the end of act one for the story that doesn’t have an ending, yet.

In all likelihood this will crash and burn shortly after takeoff, but for now it’s intriguing me enough that I simply cannot walk away.

Sometimes Plots Holes Don’t Matter

Do not misunderstand me, the majority of the times if there is an element of your plot that given a few seconds of thought unravels the entire affair, it should be fixed well before the work is finished,

By the way by ‘plot hole’ I do not mean an inaccuracy that plays to genre convention even if it is factually in error. When Tony Star emerges from the cave where he had been held captive wearing his Mark I, built from scraps, every rifle and machinegun there would have had more than enough power to penetrate the metal. That’s not why we are at that movie, we’re there for superhero fun and that allows an amount of ignoring physics.

No, when I talk plot holes I am talking about illogic within the bounds of the accepted genre or conventions of the piece. However, if the characters and emotions of the piece grab your readers or audience by the throat then none of that would matter.

A wonderful example is the beloved classic film Casablanca.

Some of its plot holes and error are quite well know. Transit papers signed by Charles de Gaulle, who was in England and fighting the Nazis from there, would not only be worthless in Vichy France, but they’d also get you arrested. For refugees Ilsa and Victor are amazing dapper and well-fed enjoying their champagne cocktails, but this film is a romance and in romances we want beautiful people live beautiful lives.

The plot hole that really undermines the story if you think about it for two second and that no one cares about because the characters have seized our hearts so thoroughly centers on Ugarte the murder and thief that stole the transit papers and handed them to Rick to hide before Ugarte’s arrest. Prompting two problems in the plot.

1) Why in the world would Ugarte hand them to anyone? He expects to sell them very soon for a vast amount of money. How was this to work? Make the deal with victor, get the handshake, and then run back to Rick to get the papers? This non-sensical action only takes place so that Rick ends up with the MacGuffin.

2) More seriously, the police know it was Ugarte who killed the couriers and stole the papers, they arrest him at Rick’s and haul him off to jail. The next morning, we learn that he died while in custody with the corrupt police dithering between shot while trying to escape or suicide as the official report. A night of torture that killed him and we’re expected to accept that the murdering thief never gave up Rick’s name as the man holding the papers? Ugarte did not come off as the ‘die to protect your sources’ type at all. Again, this is only to keep the plot alive. Rick arrested kills the narrative dead.

And yet of all the times I have watched people experience this classic for the first time no one has ever questioned these actions.

With lesser characters and lesser actors, they would have. Our entanglement with this people blinds our critical eye.

World-Building is Revealing

Whether we are speaking of writing, or gaming, world-building, the process of laying out a fictional environment and how it functions is reveals aspects of the creator’s implicit assumptions about reality.

I noticed this most clearly in Role Playing Games where the world-builder in question is the person who ‘runs’ the game. They established the history, sociology, and politics of their campaign setting and then through the players’ interaction with the world and its peoples reveal their own ideas about how our world really works.

One gamemaster ran campaigns where it was never possible to ‘get ahead’ while obeying the law. For the players to not fall into endless crippling debt, they always resorted to criminality. That person also believed that the world we live in was rigged and that cutthroat selfishness was required to triumph over others.

Another rana Dungeons and Dragons campaign where every evil human had at some point in their backstory had been broken. Evil wasn’t something someone chose but the result of someone ‘snapping.’ This gamemaster sees people as innately good and that evil also has a reason, a cause.

This I think applies to authors as well. There is a well-regarded, award-winning SF author and in every one of the novels they wrote at the heart lies a conspiracy. A cabal of people working in close collaboration for their own benefit and to the harm of the general population. Do I think that this author, whom I have met and is a fine and generous person, believes in whack-a-doodle ideas like ancient aliens, Q-Anon, or that Finland isn’t real? No, but I do suspect that they think that there is coordinated effort where there may simply be convergent goals and methods.

I am sure a careful reading of my own work and games would reveal aspect of myself that I am unaware I had put there. This is an unavoidable effect of world-building. Another author I know works very diligently to not be ‘political’ in their writings and yet their politics are on clear display in the way they craft and utilize their characters. When we create we must draw from ourselves and what we think is real so we cannot but help to have our works reflects some aspect of our true selves.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempts to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

Concerning Chocolate Factories and Super-Spies

Last month a controversy erupted with the publishers of Roald Dahl’s children’s books announce that new editions of the classic novels were to be released with the language modified for current sensibilities.

It was reported that the changes were guided by sensitivity readers from an organization called Inclusive Minds. Sensitivity readers are people from a community that helps authors and artists to walk the minefield of art that takes place or utilizes communities outside of the author’s personal experiences. Just as with editors sensitivity readers can be a tremendous boon to a work, helping to avoid serious, ignorant, or even hurtful mistakes, but not all sensitivity readers are equal, and some are not up for the tasks for which they have been engaged. This is even more exponentially true when dealing with collectives where individuals may be incentivized to find more and more examples of problematic language or scenes to ‘validate’ their own sensitivity.

Another group if sensitivity readers working for another publisher has recommended changes and deletions to the Bond franchise of novels written by Ian Fleming. Again, this is an attempt to bring these works into accordance with modern sensibilities. These, like Dahl’s writings, are notmodern works. The period is which they were written and published does not, in any manner, excuse their racism or their sexism.

There are those of the period that criticized these works but the works as they were written and published are historical artifacts of what was acceptable at that time. To change them is to lie about what was acceptable, to lie about the history of what became popular, wildly popular. These altered texts, done without the artists input, advice, or consent, are not the texts. They are adaptations fraudulently presented as the texts.

Roald Dahl has been dead for 33 years, and Ian Fleming for 59 years neither man profits from these changes and therein to my eyes lies the real trouble, what we have done to copyright.

The publishers and the estates of these men have the legal right to do whatever they wish with these novels and creations because we have lengthened copyright absurdly. Life of the author plus an additional 70 years means that James Bond doesn’t begin to fall into publics domain for another 11 years and it will be another 37 for Dahl’s works. If both these collections were in the public domain then people who believe in the alterations could produce their editions and other could continue to produce the original texts and both needs could be satisfied, but this insane extension of ownership three generations beyond their creators has distorted everything beyond reason.

I am not defending any of Dhal’s choices, actually I have never read those children’s novels, and I am revulsed that Bond as a character feels that rape has a ‘sweet tang.’ These works have serious issues but serious issues do not vanished by sweeping them out of sight.

Variations on a Theme

Spoilers for The Menu

I thoroughly enjoyed the feature film The Menu. Recently I discovered that there was a rumored to be a deleted scene where the critic Lillian Bloom is waterboarded with the broken emulsion she clocked during the breadless bread course. I couldn’t quite work out where in the film such a scene would fit, and I searched out the script online.

It was easily located and a very good read. (For screenwriters it is always wise to remember that a script must first be a good read before it can become a good movie.) Rather than search out the waterboarding scene I simply enjoyed the script from front to back.

I would hazard to guess that 90 percent of the script is up there on the screen. There are minor tweaks here and there, a few lines cut short in the final edit and a couple of beats dropped. I do miss that there are a couple moments that would have clued the audience in faster on Margot’s and Tyler’s relationship. In particular there’s a bit where Tyle is concerned that Chef is mad and won’t like him and Margot points out that Tyler is paying for Chef to serve him, and it doesn’t matter if Chef likes Tyler or not. There’s a beat where it’s clear Tyler then puts together two and two and wonders just how much Margot likes him since ‘ding dong’ he’s paying her to be there.

The waterboarding scene took place in the third act while Margot had been dispatched to retrieve the large barrel. During her absence Lillian is tortured with the broken emulsion and the nameless famous actor player by John Leguizamo is force fed nuts by his assistant Felicity, coerced by the staff, activating his allergy.

Frankly, I agree with this sequence being cut from the final film. First and foremost, it’s a level of barbaric cruelty that feels at odd the cultured cruelty Chef Slowik engrained for the rest of the evening. Thematically it doesn’t fit. Secondly it violates the film’s point of view. The entire film we are with Margot as she experiences the horrors of the strange sadistic diner. To witness the explicit torture required violating that POV on a very serious level.

Reading the script is a wonderful exercise in understanding the necessity of editing. Ideas that felt so right and proper when written have a very different feel when filmed or show or even read in context in the final draft.

Reading the script enhanced my appreciation of the film and the talented people behind it.

Robert Mitchell Evans

Literary Saboteur