Ben Monroe's Blog, page 3

My Graphic Novel is (mostly!) Out!

Last fall, I was commissioned by Petersen Games to write a graphic novel adaptation of their upcoming board game Planet Apocalypse. The game itself is designed by Sandy Petersen, who you might know from the original DOOM computer game from the 90s. This new board game shares similar DNA, with a storyline about a demonic invasion of earth, and the hapless human defenders who must save the remnants of humanity. There’s lots of blood and gore, and if you liked the old DOOM game you might appreciate this one, too.

That being said, I went into this project with my anxiety riding high, because I’d never written a comic before. How do you do it? Every industry has their best practices, and I had no idea what they were for comics.

Fortunately, there was help out there. A buddy of mine who runs the Dorkland blog knows a metric buttload about comics and pointed me in the right direction. First off the greatest resource was the book Understanding Comics. If you’re remotely interested in the medium, read it. It’s a great look at the history of comics as a medium, and how they work to tell stories.

The main thing I learned in that book was about the pacing of visual stories via the medium of comics. Also fortunately, this confirmed my suspicion that I could fall back on my degree. Years ago, back in the dim dark period before the rise of the internet, when modems screamed like banshees (c. 1989) I went to SF State (go ‘Gators!) and got a degree in film production, with an emphasis on screenwriting and directing. One of my Directing professors had said something that stuck with me over the years: “if you really want to understand storyboarding, read comics.”

And this was absolutely true. As I was writing the comic, I realized it was sort of a combination of writing a screenplay and blocking one out as a director/cinematographer would do. Framing, pacing, all that just clicked into place as I started writing.

The process was really interesting. I was writing the book a chapter at a time (roughly 24 pages) and handing them off to the artist. By the time I was deep into the next chapter, I was starting to see sketches come back of what my script was directing him to draw. And when those pages then got inked, and the colorist took over with her magic, the whole thing just started to blow me away.

Well, I think the thing turned out pretty great. It was released just this past weekend at the GenCon convention in Indianapolis. From everything I’ve been led to believe, it should be available to purchase via Amazon and all the usual suspects in the near future. I’ll be sure to let everyone know when it’s available.

Hope you like it!

Horror fans are the best fans

Last weekend was the first big in-person promotion for Tales for the Camp Fire. Spent the weekend with the rest of the local HWA crew at the Bay Area Book Festival, where we sold out of the book on the first day, and sold a ton more on the second.

Every time we sold a copy of the book, it was a jovial madhouse, as everyone at the booth grabbed pens to sign them. Not often you can buy an anthology and get almost a dozen of the authors to sign the book right in front of you. Sort of the literary equivalent of getting a pizza hot out of the oven, I suppose.

I was really happy to see how excited people were about the book. The idea really resonated with so many folks; I lost track of how many people we talked to that said that they or someone close to them had been directly affected by the fire.  I don’t know what the word is that means both proud and humbled, but that’s how I spent the weekend.

I'm really proud of the effort we put into it, and the local horror community for pulling together to make this project happen. Kudos to Loren Rhoads, E.M. Markoff, and L.s. Johnson for all their work putting the book together, and to all of the other contributors for donating their time and talent to the project.

We even got a nice shoutout in a paper close to the area affected by the fire.

I've known this for years, but horror fans are the best, with the biggest hearts, and this weekend really proved it.

We’ve other signings and author events lined up over the next few months. Most in the SF Bay Area, so not accessible to everyone, but join our Facebook Page for info.

Scary Stories for a Good Cause

It’s been write-write-write for me for a few months now. Sadly neglected updating my blog here, but here’s something to explain why.

For the past four months, I’ve been working with other members of the local chapter of the HWA to produce a charity anthology benefitting victims of the 2018 Camp Fire. Those of you from the area remember the uncertainty, the anxiety surrounding the fire. I live nearly 200 miles away from the center of it, and we were told to remain indoors for a full week because of how bad the air quality had become.

So when we were at our monthly HWA meeting, we decided to put together a book to raise money for victims of the fire. It’s been an amazing process seeing this book coming together. The book was skillfully edited by Stoker-nominee Loren Rhoads, and features 24 amazing horror stories in it, all written by local, Northern Californian authors. It’s got reprints of classic stories by local authors, and a handful of new ones written just for this book (including a new one by me, the Quarry.

Folks, if you like good short horror stories, and feel like throwing some dough at a worthy cause, you need to check out this book. It’s available for preorder now, with a release date of May 2. 100% of the profits from this project are going to be donated to the North Valley Community Foundation for their work with wildfire relief.

Get it. You won’t be disappointed.

Tales for the Camp Fire

(Oh, and regarding other writing, I’ve knocked out a couple new short stories in the same time. Started sending one of them around to see if anyone’s interested in it; fingers crossed!)

Dig me, I'm a "Horror Expert"

Just before the holidays, I was asked to contribute a short article on “Great Horror Movie Performances Nobody Ever Talks About” (short being, 200 words or less). I jumped at the chance to do this, because I love talking about anything related to horror, especially if it means I get to point people towards a movie they might not otherwise bother to watch.

Now, I admit in addition to loving pointing people to movies or books they might not bother with otherwise, it’s sort of in my nature to rock the boat in strange ways. So initially, I thought, “You know what would be funny? I should talk about ‘Blacula’.” Because it’s kind of really an interesting movie, if watched with the perspective of the time it was made, and what else was going on in the world then.

And then I watched the movie again for the first time in a few years. And then I remembered that damn if wasn’t a great actor, and even if the whole movie was pretty cheesy, he still brought his A-Game. Funny thing too, as I’ll still always think of Marshall as the “King of Cartoons” in “Pee Wee’s Playhouse.” Funny old world.

So in the end, it wasn’t hard at all for me to write the piece. I just wrote about how awesome Marshall was even if the rest of the movie was a great big ball of cheese. As of this writing, it’s a free watch on Amazon Prime. Give it a shot if you’re so inclined.

This guy read everything by Stephen King. You won’t believe what happened next!

Sometimes, I come up with strange ideas.

Case in point: two years ago 2016 was drawing to a close. My “to be read pile” was woefully empty, and I was thinking about what I wanted to read next. My wife and daughter were reading “Little Women” together, and that got me thinking that I’d surprisingly never read “the Shining” before. (Yes, I was a fan of “Friends” back in the 90s, I’m not ashamed to admit it.) We were also getting ready to take a trip up to Lake Tahoe in a couple of days, to let the kids play in the snow. And then I figured, well what the heck. What better book to take along with me for a few days in a cabin in the snow with my family than “the Shining”?

I took a quick trip out to my friendly local book store, and was able to score a copy of the book with no effort at all. And while I was there, I started looking over all the other Stephen King books, because why not? As I was looking, I realized that while I’d never considered myself a “fan” of King, I’d read a ton of his books over the years. I think the first books of his I’d read were Pet Sematary, Cujo, and Christine, back in the mid-80s when I was in High School. The Stand and Cell I read in the early 2000s. And after getting laid off from a shitty job about ten years ago, I read the entire Dark Tower series back-to-back.

It suddenly occurred to me that while I didn’t consider myself a “fan,” I’d read more words written by Stephen King than any of my other favorite authors. So I had an idea. “What if,” I said to myself, “I read all of King’s stuff?”

I mean, why not, right? I’m constantly reading. I never go anywhere without a book. I knew that the next couple of years, I’d be reading books back to back anyway. So why not all the Stephen King books?

Why not indeed?

So I came up with a plan. The plan was fairly simple, and easy to sort out thanks to the miracle of Wikipedia, and a few other resources. To be able to actually do this, however, I had to restrict myself a little bit.

Read everything by Stephen King, in order of publication.

Skip any books which I’d read in the past ten years (because I’d just read “It", “the Stand,” and the entire “Dark Tower” series in recent memory

Only read the books currently available in paperback. I don’t remember why I made this one of the restrictions, but I love paperback books, they just feel comfortable to me.

And that’s what I did. I started with “Carrie” in the few days before the snow trip, and then was on to “the Shining”. “The Dead Zone” followed, and then “Cujo”. As mentioned above, I’d read “Cujo” back around the time it was originally released. But hadn’t read the “Dead Zone” ever, and was amused to note the threads from one book to the other.

One after the other, only skipping a very few books, I read the entire King Ouvre. It all took just over two years to complete, quite literally ending last night when I read his collaboration with Richard Chizmar in “Gwendy’s Button Box” (a marvelous book, with echoes of the best of the fairytale type stories of Bradbury and Matheson).

The books were great, pretty much across the board. Great mix of novels, short stories, novellas. Anything you can imagine a book could be, King can write it. Some of the stories were gory, in your face horror. Some of the best were reflections on life and loss (I’m looking at you, “Insomnia”).

And in a stunning moment of synchronicity, I plowed through his book “On Writing” just at the exact moment I needed to read those words. A copywriting contract I’d had the year before had blossomed into a request to write a horror novel and a graphic novel for that same company. I was wrapped up with anxiety, worried if I could do the work. And King’s “On Writing” gave me the encouragement to take the bull by the horns and bring that book to life.

In the time of this project, I’ve become not just a casual reader of King, but a fan, and even something of an evangelist of his work. I’ve bent the ears of friends as I read through the books, finding connections, or coming up with theories and questions. (E.G.: I’m pretty much convinced that the Shop from “Firestarter” is working to create kids with psychic ability and train them to become Breakers for Randall Flagg.)

The project ended last night, though he’s published another couple of books already. “The Outsider” and “Elevation” are on my list and I’ll be giving them an enthusiastic read as soon as they’re out in paperback.

So, as I said up above, sometimes I come up with strange ideas. This epic read-through was one of my better ones. I learned a ton about the craft of writing, and was enthusiastically entertained throughout. And honestly, there are a number of books I read through this project that I’m already looking forward to reading again sometime.

Trying Something New, and Discovering Something About Myself

Years ago, I decided I didn't like Manga comics. So long ago, that I don't even remember why. I joked with my kids about "those weirdo backwards books," that are done right to left, instead of the western way of left to right.

After recently reading Scott McCloud’s "Understanding Comics," and getting really interested in his thoughts on Manga, I decided to give them another shot.

I'd heard good things about the horror Manga of Junji Ito, so decided to start there. And this is some seriously good, weird stuff.

But, what I discovered in reading his "Tomie" was interesting. For those who don't know, my left eye does not turn all the way left. It never has; birth defect. So, go figure, reading books from right to left is pretty much a PITA for me. It quite literally gives me headaches, makes my eyes tired, and kind of stinks.

All these years, I had myself convinced that Manga was “lame,” when really, it was a physical problem that probably affected me the first time I tried reading them, and I just didn’t get it then.

I'm enjoying reading the book, but I have to take a lot more and more frequent breaks doing so than with regular western "left to right" books.

So just a thing to think about. What makes you uncomfortable, whether on an emotional, or physical level? And if you think about it a bit, why?

Try something new. You might be surprised.

My Novel Is Out!

Hey! My novel In the Belly of the Beast is live as an ebook on Amazon. It'll be free for everyone on September 27th, but it's also free now as part of the Kindle Unlimited program. If you don't want to wait until the 27th, or don't have KU, it's $4.99 for now, but I’ve been told the price might go up to $7 or so in a month or two. They're putting final touches to the print edition now, so that will hopefully be available shortly.

And if you like the book, please help spread the word by leaving a good review on Amazon. They really do help. And tell all your friends! (And if you hate the book, tell all your enemies!).

In the Belly of the Beast is inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft and the epic tabletop game Cthulhu Wars, published by Petersen Games. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of humans fighting to survive in a world ravaged by malign alien gods and monsters

The novel tells the story of a small group of human survivors trying to find a safe haven amidst the ruins of civilization. While traveling through a treacherous mountain pass, they find themselves caught between rival cults, and discover there are worse things in the cold places of the world than frostbite.

So, I'm a novelist now?

The cosmic horror novel I worked on earlier this year is poised for release. It's really sort of a surreal feeling. When I started the project, I was admittedly terrified. I'd never written any fiction longer than a short story here or there. But when I started on it, the project just flowed. The writing was smooth and fun, and I learned a heck of a lot about the process of writing fiction while doing it.

The publisher (Petersen Games) has started advertising the book, with an eye toward an ebook release via Amazon late in September. I'm of the understanding that a print edition will follow after that.

What's funny, is though I've written and published half a dozen game books, a few short stories, won awards for copywriting, and done lots of corporate/technical writing stuff over the past 30 years, my first long-form fiction release has me more excited than anything else I've ever worked on.

What's next for me? Well, I'm writing a script for a graphic novel for Petersen Games' "Planet Apocalypse" boardgame IP. And I'll be working on another novel, and another graphic novel for them after that. And I'm about 10k words into another novel that I've been working on for myself. Something to chill the bones and curdle the blood. A haunted house story, with a Lovecraftian "cosmic horror" twist to it.

I'll leave you with the update from the latest Petersen Games newsletter:

In the Belly of the Beast is inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft and the epic tabletop game Cthulhu Wars, published by Petersen Games.
 
The novel, In the Belly of the Beast, tells the story of a small group of human survivors trying to find a safe haven amidst the ruins of civilization. While traveling through a treacherous mountain pass, they find themselves caught between rival cults, and discover there are worse things in the cold places of the world than frostbite.

We plan on launching our first novel as an e-book on Amazon, and we'll be giving everyone a 2-day opportunity to download it for FREE! What's in it for us? We want you to help us create an Amazon e-book Best Seller! 

Look for more details in the coming weeks!

 

 

Writing (Cosmic) Horror Is Fun!

The work for hire novel I started in February is firmly set in a version of the universe created by H.P. Lovecraft and his collaborators and imitators. There's obviously positives and negatives to working within these ideas. Lots of stuff has been written over the years in his Mythos, and I've read plenty of it. Some of it was even pretty good. 

One of the things I'm enjoying in the project is thinking about the notion in Lovecraftian fiction that "seeing a monster drives you crazy". I get the notion of being scared, but not having your mind shattered by seeing something weird. 

Some of it is explainable when you've got something like Cthulhu itself, which is not just a big squiddly godzilla sort of thing, but also described by HPL as this vast battery of alien psychic energy. Contacting Cthulhu's dreams is like trying to fill a milk jug with a gorilla: when Cthulhu twitched in its death-sleep, the emanations of its dreams caused ripples of madness. That's easy enough to work with. There's also the bits where the character discovers some unknown truth about the universe, or themselves, and that never ends well.

Trying to get my head around describing things in a way that explains why contact with the mythos is mind-shattering is a fun challenge. I've often thought of trying to understand the Lovecraftian bent of cosmic horror thusly: You and a friend are standing next to each other, and looking into a tall mirror. Each of you is looking at the same mirror, but you're seeing slightly different reflections, based on the angle you're at. How is it that this single object (the mirror) can reflect infinite possible angles, all at the same time? I'm sure a physicist could explain it in a way that makes sense (and takes the magic out of it). But to my mind, it's something fundamentally confusing and unsettling.

That's (to me) the essence of Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Underlying strangeness, a sudden discovery of a fundamental -wrongness- in our every day perceptions of our place in the cosmos. So, there's all this to think about, which I'm finding to be a really fun challenge. Even though the themes aren't quite so obvious as I'm writing the first draft, I've got tons of notes in my notebook to push more of this stuff into the revision.

So, I'm writing a book...

It's a funny old thing, life. The curveballs, the unexpected, all the little oddities and surprises that somehow add up to the unique story of "you".

Last summer, I was approached by a company I'd done some copywriting for in the past. They've published a few popular boardgames, and wanted to expand the settings into fiction. For them, it's a legal thing. They need to shore up the IP of their settings in as many types of entertainment media as they can. So getting a book written for their most popular game makes business sense.

"Would you be interested in writing a novel based in our game world?" they asked me. I seem to recall thinking about it for all of one second before saying "yes!". After that, there were contracts to sort out, details of the project, all the sorts of behind the scenes stuff that goes on before the actual fun of writing begins. By the end of the negotiation the project had blossomed from a novel for one game to also include scripts for graphic novels of two more upcoming games they're doing. 

In January, I admit I was having a crisis of faith. Faith in my own abilities, faith in myself. I was set to start writing the book in February, and was beginning to freak out. What if I couldn't do it? What if my prose wasn't any good? What if a meteor fell on my head and I died? The oh-so-familiar spiral of anxiety was becoming a whirlwind of self-doubt, and I was close to backing out of the whole thing.

And somewhere in there, I had a moment of clarity. I realized not only what an amazing opportunity this was (I've written short fiction in the past, and have wanted to write a novel for years now), but that folks who'd hired me in the past had enough faith in my ability to trust me with the flagship novel for their setting. 

But the real "kick in the pants" moment for me came when a friend told me flat out "Stop ruminating and just do the work. 'Ruminating' is the essence of privilege." That really slapped me out of my funk.

I got home from that conversation, and just started banging out words. Not even related to the work-for-hire project, just started writing on another novel I'd been mulling over for a while. Within a week or two on that, I had 10k solid words, and the beginning of something good. I've had to put it aside while working on the contract book, but I'll be getting back to it soon.

Which brings me to the contract piece. I've been writing on it regularly and consistently for the last 2+ months. Right now, I'm at about 52k words, and I'm happy with it. It's not polished, and it won't win any awards in its current state. But I'm getting it done. I'm on track to hit my 95k target by the end of May, and then I'll have time to polish it until it gleams.

I'm reminded of the old saw about an artist saying the way to sculpt something is to get a block of marble, and knock off all the stuff that doesn't look like what you're sculpting. But in this case, I feel like I've been at the quarry for the last couple of months trying to get my block of stone out of the ground.

But most importantly to me, is that I'm just doing the work. What Steven Pressfield calls "Butt in chair time" in his book "the War of Art". It's rough work, but I'm loving it. 

The thing I've enjoyed the most so far, though, is those moments where I'm writing and something pops into the story and I have no idea why it's there. But all the writing books say to "trust the process" and "let the story tell itself", and all that. So when something weird pops into my head while I'm writing, I just trust that it's for a reason, and put it in. And then as I keep working suddenly I get a flash of an idea that explains why that thing was important. Sometimes it happens shortly after the initial idea, sometimes it's days or weeks later. But it keeps happening.

All those funny little random pieces that click together, and the puzzle solves itself. And all I have to do is keep putting one word after another until it all comes clear.