Kevin Wright's Blog: SaberPunk, page 4

Copey Copy This

What’s the most difficult stage of the writing process for you? First draft? Beta read? Structural edit? Copy edit? Proofread? I suppose the question is a sort of Rorschach test for each individual writer, particularly the indie writer who often is not in a position to shop out any portion of the process and therefore must do it all by themselves.

For me, the most difficult—as well as the most important portion—is the copy editing stage. The copy editing stage is the stage that adds the polish necessary to truly elevate a work. Without solid copy editing, even the most engaging story will put many readers off due to typos and grammatical issues.

So how do you get someone to copyedit your work? Simple: you pay them a fairly large sum of money. Now typically, I don’t have a large sum of money that I could just throw at some copyeditor. Hell, I wish I could because copy editing, alongside with being the most important stage, is also the most mind numbingly boring stage. The most difficult stage. The least fun stage. And on top of that, it seems there is never any way to truly rid your manuscript of all those little errors you just can’t see anymore.

But you know all of this already.

So here’s a little trick I’ve used on my books: print out your manuscript and then use text-reader software to read it to you as you skim over it. Set the reader to a speed that’s in the Goldilocks range for you and then sit back and listen, finger hovering above the pause button, waiting for mistakes. You will find them.

One of my English teachers in high school taught me to read my work out loud when editing. It was a great tip and still is. However, if you have the attention span of a six-year-old, as I do, you invariably read over the mistakes because you just don’t see them anymore.

Having the text reader read to you provides some clinical detachment. Like regular copy editing, do it in small chunks. I find one chapter per sitting works best.
You’ll detect grammatical errors. You’ll hear misspells. You’ll find it highlights the repetition of words in short spans. Bottom line: if you take the time to go through your entire manuscript this way, you’re sure to find many of those nagging little errors that have eluded you up until this point.

So give it a try and happy hunting,

Kevin Wright
-Amazon Author Page http://amzn.to/2noAXKj

Review of 'Chords of Infinity' by T.F. Grant

‘Chords of Infinity’ was written by Stephan Godden under the pen name T.F. Grant and published by Firedance Books in 2015. It’s a lean 170-page collection of science fiction stories running the gamut from a near-future tale involving an old woman’s loss of her longtime mate to sentient interstellar space hulks vying for freedom from their enslavement at the hands of their cruel masters. Like all good science fiction, there’s plenty of today in Grant’s tomorrows. And there isn’t a story I didn’t enjoy, and there are more than a few that are simply excellent.

Two words: ‘Felix and Lucius.’ Well, that’s three in actuality, but you don’t have to focus on the ‘and.’ Focus on the other two because they are, together, the prime reason to read ‘Chords of Infinity.’ The duo takes center stage in ‘Felix and Lucius: Entanglements’ and ‘Felix and Lucius: Belonging.’

Do you like cyberpunk? Well, I do, and Felix and Lucius are cyberpunk at its best. Lucius is your standard 117-year-old master sleuth, and Felix is your typical, run-of-the-mill, sentient combat-chassisied cybernetic panther. Together, they solve crimes in a post-apocalyptic nightmare vision of London.

Now for a moment, forget those crimes (which are invariably horrific). Forget the breakneck pacing(it’s sleek and swift). Forget the slick action and incredible settings (one story takes place on a derelict ocean liner that’s been reduced to low-income housing). And forget the numb-skulled cop foils who never quite grasp exactly what’s going on behind the lush curtains of red-taped intrigue that the duo perpetually slash right through. For me, the best that ‘Felix and Lucius’ offers is the interplay between the two titular characters.

Felix and Lucius have some sort of quantum mind meld that allows them to read each other’s thoughts via internal IM. So as Lucius is externally verbally slashing some jacked-up flatfoot or grilling some vampish femme fatale, he and Felix are also internally bouncing spitfire patter between each other. It makes for some simply awesome scenes where you feel like you’re watching a verbal ping pong match on fast forward being played with panache by a triad of masters.

Throughout ‘Chords of Infinity,’ Grant does not spell everything out for you. He does not inundate you with description. He will not bore you with info dumps. What he does do is ask you to trust him as a storyteller. What he does do is ask you to sit back and get comfortable and put on your seatbelt. You’re in good hands with him behind the wheel.

Review of 'Escapology' by Ren Warom

I had some concerns when I began reading Ren Warom’s Escapology. But I’ll get to that. For now, just know that I’m a fan of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. A big fan. It’s my favorite sci-fi novel, in fact. William Gibson’s writing moves. It’s sleek and stylish and you may not know where it’s going or even where you are when you get there, but you definitely feel the wind blowing back your hair while it’s happening. Ren Warom has a similar style which is the style of excellence incarnate. Warom’s writing style wasn’t my concern, however, it was merely its foreshadowing.

In the interest of avoiding spoilers with either work, let me just say that my concerns pertained to the many and profound similarities between the two, culminating in Escapology’s first chapter appearance of a character by the name of Mim who is dead-nuts identical to Molly from Neuromancer. Dead-nuts…

As I said, I had concerns.

Before Mim’s nail-in-the-coffin appearance, there was always this echo of Neuromancer pervading the prose in many forms: in the main character(Shock Pao), in the setting(the Gung), in the opening sequence(hangover), in the drugs(pervasive), and in the writing style(excellence incarnate). However, holding my concerns at bay and on the strength of Warom’s writing, I continued reading, and I didn’t stop because, as it turns out, my concerns were unfounded.

As I said, I’m a fan of Neuromancer. Warom is, too, she has to be, and that first chapter of Escapology is Warom’s tip of the cap to Gibson’s Neuromancer. She’s acknowledging Neuromancer for the masterpiece it is before striking off on her own drug-induced cyberpunk thriller. It’s a madcap dash through a futuristic techno-junglescape where everyone and anyone is a predator. The rub is that there’s always a bigger, badder, nastier predator waiting just around the next corner. And it’s hungry and you’re delicious.

—Kevin Wright

SaberPunk #2 The Colour Out of Space

SaberPunk #2
“The Colour Out of Space” by H.P. Lovecraft

Greetings all,

SaberPunk’s second installment highlights my personal experience with “The Colour Out of Space,” a story written by H.P. Lovecraft and published by the magazine “Amazing Stories” in 1927. Lovecraft has been somewhat famous for decades for his many Cthulhu Mythos stories and lately for having been a racist weirdo.

The thing that stands out to me about the title of this fantastic story is that it is incredibly lame. I dislike it so much that, back in the day, even after I had read a great many of Lovecraft’s stories, and considered myself a fan, I was still so put off by it that I just could not bring myself to give it a chance. And it’s only about 20 pages long. So why didn’t I just take a stab at it?

Here’s why:

Crack open most any book nowadays and run a finger from top to bottom along the right or left hand side of the text and you’re likely to see a lot of empty white space. Dialogue. Short paragraphs. One sentence paragraphs. Breaks. Those empty spaces provide some breathing room. They provide hope. You can fly through those pages.

Now open almost any work by Lovecraft and you’re likely to see a giant block of lead-heavy text. This text is so dense that you can use it to cover and protect your naughty bits while getting an x-ray.

What’s my point? My point is that you can’t breeze through it while sitting on a noisy subway or munching snacks in a cafeteria or at home with your daughter running around the house threatening your son with “The Punching Game.” To read any of Lovecraft’s works, you need the perfect storm of quiet, of solitude, of the time to read, and all while still possessing the will and energy and focus to invest yourself wholly in it.

And need I say, those perfect storms, for me, are rare.

Oftentimes, even when I found myself happily within this most rare of alignments, I didn’t want to risk wasting my limited time on something new, and especially on a story whose title filled me with a sense of such overwhelming apathy. So instead of giving it a go, I’d just read one of the stories I already loved. “The Rats in the Walls.” “The Call of Cthulhu.” “The Whisperer in Darkness.” “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” All awesome titles. All awesome stories. With no risk involved.

So, how did I actually get around to reading “The Colour Out of Space” that first time? As with many wonderful things in my life, I have comic books and my older brother to thank for it.

Knowing I’m a Lovecraft fan, my brother(who is a comic book aficionado) used to buy me any comic that came down the pipeline that was even remotely related to Lovecraft. And there were a lot of them. Some were good, some were awesome, like all the ones illustrated by Richard Corben, and some were pretty terrible. Any way, they were always short, easy to read, and I never seemed to pay my brother for them, so it was never a big investment for me in time, effort, or money.

So naturally, one of those Lovecraft comics my brother bought for me had “The Colour Out of Space” in it. So I hazarded a peek. It was short, about ten pages, so I took a stab at it, and I blew through it. Which made me want to read the full story. Which I finally did.

So “Colour Out of Space” was written during the pulp era heyday of horror and science fiction. Lovecraft had allegedly grown tired of lame aliens and anthropomorphic aliens and bug-headed aliens and just plain shitty-old aliens. So he set out to write a truly “alien” alien. And that’s what “The Colour Out of Space” is about, a truly “alien” alien. The alien, the backwoods New England setting, the characters with creepy biblical names and the horrors that beset them are all perfectly done. This is Lovecraft’s best work, in my humble opinion, and I’ve read on the internet that it was his favorite as well, so it must be true.

So, my advice? Go to the horror section of your local library or ask your weird friend to borrow his or her worn copy of one of Lovecraft’s anthologies. There’s about a thousand of them. Make sure “The Colour Out of Space” is in it. Then make sure the edges of the pages of the copy you’re borrowing are yellowed and the cover dented. The spine should be broken in. For some reason I cannot adequately explain, it just doesn’t seem right to read Lovecraft on an ebook reader, but you do what you have to.

Now find a proper place to read. Quiet is a must. Alone, too, unless that special someone is also reading. It’s dark outside, and inside you sit beside a window, with bugs outside buzzing and crawling up the rusted screen. Maybe a single harsh lightbulb dangling from a wire above is your light source. It sways in the intermittent breeze that blows on your face. If a dog is barking somewhere off in the distance, so much the better. Now crack open “The Colour Out of Space” and invest the time and the effort. Ignore your family for an hour. You won’t be sorry.

Rock on.

Kevin Wright’s works:
Revelations http://amzn.to/1rbza7Q
GrimNoir http://amzn.to/1GaFsYw
Lords of Asyum http://amzn.to/242AqeO
Kevin Wright Author Facebook page: http://bit.ly/1nZem3j

SaberPunk #1 'Elric of Melnibone'

Greetings all.

This is the first entry of my new blog, SaberPunk. Awesome name, I know … or maybe I just think it’s awesome and really I’m trying too hard for it to sound cool.

Anyways, I chose the name mainly because I like it as a play on the science fiction genre ‘cyberpunk,’ of which I am a fan (particularly of William Gibson) but with the word ‘saber’ in it, to cleverly denote a more fantasy-centric feel. My wheelhouse for reads, fictionwise(I enjoy history as well) is mainly confined to the realms of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror (though I also enjoy detective fiction).

Who are my favorite sci fi and fantasy authors? In no particular order: Joe Abercrombie, China Mieville, Neil Gaiman, M. John Harrison, H.P. Lovecraft, Patrick LeClerc, Lloyd Alexander, Robert E. Howard(Conan! Though I prefer Solomon Kane to the mighty-thewed barbarian), J.R.R Tolkien, of course (except for Tom Bombadil whom, I believe — probably along with anyone else who’s ever read it — would be gleefully edited out of ‘Lord of the Rings’ were it published in this day and age), and again, of course, George R.R. Martin.

And exactly why should you care about SaberPunk and me and who my favorite authors are? Really you shouldn’t. I’m not very important. Not even slightly.

Moving on, my plan for SaberPunk is to offer reviews, opinions, or just discuss works and authors within these particular genres. I’m hoping to work my way through both classics that many fans of these genres(myself included) may have missed or overlooked or forgotten and some new works that aren’t quite so mainstream(mainly indie authors). Maybe you’ll find a new favorite author. Maybe I will. Maybe you’ll begin to hate me. Maybe I’ll begin to hate myself. Who knows?

The first work I’d like to highlight is ‘Elric of Melnibone’ written by the sci fi and fantasy legend Michael Moorcock and published by DAW Books in 1972.

I was first introduced to ‘Elric of Melnibone’ in the early 1980’s when I started playing Dungeons and Dragons, the role-playing game that made young men across the world virtually irresistible to women. Thumbing through ‘Deities and Demigods’ (the greatest — in my opinion — work of TSR, the publisher of AD&D and Dungeons and Dragons) was always one of my favorite literary pastimes(I’ll highlight ‘Deities and Demigods’ in a later post because it is so very awesome).

The first thing a 1980’s nerd(I used to be wicked smart) such as myself would notice about Elric in ‘Deities and Demigods’ is that, despite being the marquee entry in his respective area of Melnibonean Mythos, Elric is not tough. Not even in the least. For a guy who memorized the stats of all the gods and goddesses and heroes in ‘Deities and Demigods’ and pontificated regularly on who would win if Thor fought Zeus in a no holds barred contest of fisticuffs and thunderbolts(It’s too close to call, but my money would be on Thor because he’s Thor), and who was the toughest god(It’s Hastur the Unspeakable pg.45), Elric was far and away one of the most disappointing and pathetic entries in the entire book. His strength and constitution are 6 and 3 normally, which means that the 1980’s version of myself, a ten-year-old lad, could have probably taken him a fair fight. Not the stuff of legend, except for the fact that he looks like the cracked-out albino version of the lead singer of virtually any eighties hair band, which might be considered awesome by some.

So, when I was about ten or so, I became so enthralled with the Elric Mythos that I never went out and searched for him in book stores or the library. I have no excuse(It was probably that strength of 6 thing and I didn’t want to read about a guy I could best at arm wrestling). Fast forward thirty or so years to last month when my friend handed ‘Elric of Melnibone’ to me because he thought I’d like it.

He was right.

‘Elric of Melnibone’ is the first full length high-fantasy novel featuring Elric. It’s about 170 pages long, and it’s good. It’s not the greatest fantasy I’ve read, but I can see how Moorcock was looking to turn the world of fantasy, at the time, on its head. It seems to me(I was not born until 1976 and have neither researched nor confirmed and cannot corroborate that the following statements I’m making are even slightly true)that much of the fantasy of the day was centered around powerful warriors whose martial prowess more often than not carried the day(See: Conan, Kull, Aragorn, Boromir, Prince Gwydion, Solomon Kane, etc…).

Enter Elric, the desiccated husk of an albino emperor of a fallen empire, who is only able to function due to the imbibement of various magical potions he brews. Essentially, he’s a fantasy version of Walter White that’s become addicted to and requires his own homebrew of methamphetamine to function. If he doesn’t have his drugs, he just kind of sits around. Maybe he does poetry or something.

Also, unlike the beefier heroes such as Conan, who pretty much do what they want without hesitation or regret, Elric feels. He regrets. He does possess a conscience. He’s just not ruled by it, or even swayed by it, not even a little. In fact, after he pontificates on the evil he’s about to commit, he usually commits it. Within the first thirty pages of the book, he stands by approvingly as a woman and child are tortured to death … under his own orders. Then he pretty much high fives the torturer for doing such a darn good job. Elric makes Jaime Lannister’s murderously incestual decision making prowess in ‘Game of Throne’s’ seem trite by comparison. In fact, it seems like Elric’d be more comfortable sitting next to Emperor Palpatine and zapping the crap out of whiny Jedi knights than being the protagonist in a series of high fantasy novels and rescuing damsels in distress(Fear not, the said damsel in distress is the love of his life, but she also happens to be his cousin, so it’s still rather icky).

‘Elric of Melnibone’ is dark and it’s horrible and it’s good. And even if you don’t dig it, it’s a super short read. So read it.

Rock on.

Kevin Wright
Revelations: http://amzn.to/1rbza7Q
GrimNoir http://amzn.to/1GaFsYw
Lords of Asyum http://amzn.to/242AqeO