Tony Noland's Blog, page 21

9 Reasons You Should Give Up On Your Dream

1. Your dream is stupid. Or at least, that's the message you've heard so much that you believe it.



2. Your dream will never make you rich. Because making money is all that matters, right?



3. Your dream isn't appropriate for someone of your gender. Drop your pants and do a genital check, OK? Some things are for you, some aren't. Don't be a troublemaker.



4. Your dream will take too long. Anything that can't show an immediate return isn't worth pursuing.



5. Your dream requires a degree. You didn't go to the right school and it's too late to do anything about that.



6. Your dream will offend your father and/or mother. Honor thy father and mother, kid. That's a message straight from God. You don't want to piss off God, do you?



7. Your dream is dangerous. What if you get hurt? What if you go bankrupt? Have you thought about that? I mean really thought about that?



8. Your dream isn't "you". We all know who you are. You're the same person you've always been. We know what you're capable of. Believe me, you won't make it.



9. Your dream is threatening to me. And when I say "me", I mean that it's threatening to every one of the little bits of status quo that form the world around you. People, jobs, house, bills, religions, political affiliations... everything. You don't want to risk all of that do you? Well, do you?



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How did we get here?

Oh yeah... like this.



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"Fun, hurty brained meta-weirdness" - a new review of Verbosity's Vengeance

In her blog review of "Verbosity's Vengeance", Kate Sherrod describes my book on Goodreads (4 stars) as "A fun, if hurty brained, read." I'm going to parse that to mean that it doesn't read like your standard, easily-digested superhero story. Her blog review is more expansive in discussing what she liked (and what she didn't):

It's quite a challenge, taking a trope as concrete and action-oriented
as superheroes and setting them to work in an intellectual, abstract,
intangible arena like language and usage. It takes a brave writer to
try.


Tony Noland is nothing if not brave.

...

Verbosity's Vengeance, in other words, winds up being a fun read
(with a bit of an entertaining twist toward the end that really made me
smile) once the reader's brain powers through the meta-weirdness.

Kate's review is detailed and thoughtful, so go give it a read. Once you've done that, you can buy "Verbosity's Vengeance" at Amazon for Kindle, and buy it directly from me in EPUB and other formats suitable for Nook, PC, Mac and other e.reader formats.



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Words + Words = Novel

I'm over at FridayFlash.org today talking about how I turned a 1000-word superhero story into a full blown novel. The most important part of the process was deciding what kind of book I wanted it to be and what kinds of characters to inhabit it:

I did it by thinking about my hero, the Grammarian. I gave him a
backstory, along with some old enemies and even older friends. I thought
about work/life balance when your day job and your “second job” both
take up so much time. If you’re out saving the city every night and don’t even have time to
deal with normal wear and tear on your costumes, how would you find
time for relationships, either friendly or romantic?
That led to the introduction of a love interest: Dr. Kate Hunter, scientist and entrepreneur.

This post gives an overview of the whole novel writing process, from trees to forest. If you've ever wanted a tour of the factory floor, now's your chance.



Bonus: what's the difference between my writing style and Stephen King's? Read on to find out.



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"Verbosity's Vengeance" is available at Amazon for Kindle, and for Nook and other e.reader formats directly from me.



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Coffee shop prank

A movie promo prank at a coffee shop. Well done.





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The science of werewolves

I'm pleased to welcome my pal Cecilia Dominic (@RandomOenophile) to Landless today. She and I have a great many things in common, not least of which is an adventuresome spirit when it comes to food and drink. We get together over a bowl of crunchy frog or a steaming platter of curried goat entrails whenever her travels bring her to Philadelphia. I'm looking forward to visiting Atlanta and comparing its local delicacies with those found here in the city of brotherly love.



Cecilia is visiting in connection with the release of her new werewolf book, The Mountain's
Shadow, available for preorder now at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. For this guest post, I asked her to talk about her combination of science
with the traditional horror/fantasy element of the werewolf. What is attractive about the idea of having science in a supernatural story? As you can see below, she gave a terrific answer!



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Thanks,
Tony, for inviting me to guest post on your blog!




[image error] When
someone asks what my novel The Mountain'sShadow is about, I often give the short answer of "werewolves with a
scientific twist." The genre is urban fantasy (or paranormal depending on
who's classifying it), and the main character is a behavioral epidemiologist,
or someone who researches the spread of disease. She's close to discovering the
cause of Chronic Lycanthropy Syndrome, the hot new behavioral disorder in kids,
when a series of strange circumstances makes her lose her job. In spite of a
sudden shift from researcher to heiress, she never stops approaching challenges
as a scientist.




A lot of urban fantasy and paranormal romance seems to emphasize
the fantasy without any scientific explanation for the origin or process of
what's happening, particularly when a character is transformed from human to
something else. Adding the science makes it more enjoyable for me. For example,
in Anne Rice's The Wolf Gift , she
talks about the hormonal changes that happen in preparation for the shift and
the chemicals that make the werewolf saliva different from a man's or dog's.
These elements give the story a deeper dimension and anchor it to our modern
world. That added to Ms. Rice's lyrical writing style and interestingly
tortured characters made the book hard for me to put down.




In
addition to the entertainment value, I wanted to have science as a part of the
story because I've always been fascinated by the origins and reasons behind
legends and myths. Ancient cultures came up with interesting explanations for
certain phenomena before they had the benefit of scientific knowledge,
particularly on the cellular level. Although there is a physical disorder
called congenital hypertrichosis, which causes people to grow hair all over
their face and body and which may have contributed to some of the legends,
there are also fascinating behavioral aspects.



The How Stuff Works blog pointed out something I'd never thought of
before:  how werewolf origin myths often
include the change as punishment for some sort of excess, often sexual. Perhaps
the people who came up with werewolves thought extreme sexual or murderous
behavior must come from an overabundance of animal drive, and therefore the
perpetrators must be part animal or possessed. Yeah, they didn't know much
about psychiatric problems, either.




When I
wrote The Mountain's Shadow, I
was doing my predoctoral internship in clinical psychology at the Central
Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, and I was also writing my dissertation
proposal. A lot of people don't know that those of us with PhD's in clinical
psychology have strong research backgrounds. So at the time, I was very much in
scientist mode, and I enjoyed digging around in werewolf legends and other
areas to put the framework in place.




The science in The
Mountain's Shadow is primarily in the conceptualization of Chronic
Lycanthropy Syndrome, or CLS, itself. Some people have asked if CLS is a real
behavioral disorder. Not according to the current Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual, which doesn't even mention it. At one point, clinicians must have
considered it diagnostically, and I've included references that point to case
studies below.




Lycanthropy is a type of delusion in which a person thinks they
have been transformed into an animal, or seems to think they have, which would
make it a delusional disorder. Although the root Lycan refers to a character in
Greek mythology who was changed into a wolf when he pissed off Zeus by serving
him human flesh – okay, the guy probably deserved it – someone with lycanthropy
can think they're any kind of animal.




In my book, I changed the nature of the disorder so that it
presents as extreme adolescent behaviors, and it's classified as a disorder of
impulsivity like ADHD. Of course the most interesting cases in the novel are
extreme, and the sufferers actually do change. Seeing real werewolves confuses
my poor researcher – there's nothing in the literature to describe that! – but then
draws her back in, particularly since she's starting to realize CLS might have
something to do with her "family curse."




Does urban fantasy need science to be convincing? Not
necessarily, and in some books, the magic system is so well developed it borders
on scientific. I would argue that since we are so bound to science in our
modern world, incorporating elements of genetics, chemistry, physiology, or other
fields of scientific inquiry can make a story more real, and therefore more
enjoyable, for the reader.




What do you think? Does including scientific elements in a
fantasy plot enhance it for you, or could you take it or leave it? Why?






References [n.b. You can tell Cecilia's a PhD because she adds references to her blog posts. - Tony]:



"A Case of Lycanthropy" (article in the American Journal of Psychiatry) 
"Lycanthropy as a culture-bound syndrome: a case report and review of the literature"
(abstract for the article referenced on the Scientopia blog) 
"How Werewolves Work"
(interesting potential scientific reasons behind werewolf legends and a nice
overview in general including the common themes in the myths) 
"Happy Halloween: The Culture of Lycanthropy"




/////










Author Bio: Cecilia Dominic wrote her first story when she was two years
old and has always had a much more interesting life inside her head than
outside of it. She became a clinical psychologist because she's fascinated by
people and their stories, but she couldn't stop writing fiction. The first
draft of her dissertation, while not fiction, was still criticized by her major
professor for being written in too entertaining a style. She made it through
graduate school and got her PhD, started her own practice, and by day, she
helps people cure their insomnia without using medication. By night, she blogs
about wine and writes fiction she hopes will keep her readers turning the pages
all night. Yes, she recognizes the conflict of interest between her two careers,
so she writes and blogs under a pen name. 
She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with one husband and two cats, which,
she's been told, is a good number of each.




You can find her at:

Web page: 
www.ceciliadominic.com

Wine blog: 
www.randomoenophile.com

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/CeciliaDominicAuthor

Twitter: @RandomOenophile




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#Shutdown and campaign finance reform

I blame lots of things for our current misgovernance, but campaign finance and our primary system have to be listed among the villains.



Lots of people vote in general elections, but the people who vote in primaries are the most politically involved. They are typically less than 10% of the registered voters in the party, representing the most partisan demographic slice, the group two standard deviations out (yellow in this diagram).


 
Someone who appeals to that demographic will then have to pivot after the primary to appeal to the general electorate if they hope to beat their opponent from the other party. In a safe district, where the general electorate skews strongly to the right or the left, they don't need to pivot much.



The problem recently has been that ODD (out of district dollars) have been propping up primary candidates who are not merely partisan, but are fanatical in their extremism (the red 3-sigma tails in the above diagram).  In mildly competitive districts, this would result in candidates who appeal to the extremists, but can't win the general election.



However, the deep pockets behind the ODD aren't stupid. They focus their efforts in safe districts, knowing that the general electorate will still elect their preferred party. This is true even if the candidate for that party is a rabid fanatic who is more interested in an ultra-orthodox crusade on one or two hot button issues than in participating in the good governance of a complex society.



The fanatics have such out-sized influence because the large pool of reasonable moderates (even if only relatively reasonable and relatively moderate) are afraid to stand up to them. Moderates tend to come from districts where moderates appeal to the general electorate. A primary fight against an ODD-fueled wacko would mean a primary defeat, or (no less scary) being forced to make strong appeals to the 2- and 3-sigma crowd. That means sound bites that will be used against you in the general election.





As long as ODD is legal, it will continue to push us farther and farther into partisan paralysis.



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Cutting remarks

Science fiction becomes reality yet again.







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The Pigments of My Imagination Tour: Angela Kulig

I met Angela Kulig earlier this year as a friend-of-a-friend. She's one of the writers in the Green Envy Press writing co-op, along with my pal Larry Kollar. One of the things that struck me as we got to know each other was the energy and vision she brings to her writing life. Among her talents is the singular ability to create just the right cover art for her work, a skill I am MOST envious of. Her new book, "Pigments of My Imagination" is being released by Green Envy as e.book at Amazon, B&N, or Kobo and in a beautiful  paperback edition for the dead tree enthusiasts.




Here’s the Goodreads synopsis:







From the moment Lucia steps into Bayside Art Academy, she is fed a
steady stream of lies, but it’s not until she meets William that she
begins to question the people she trusts. Unraveling fact from
fabrication seems impossible until Lucia finds her first painting, and
discovers the dead do not lie—at least not to her.



A dozen lifetimes ago, Lucia started a war. Not a war with armies or
guns, but a bloody war nonetheless. The path leading Lucia to the truth
is hidden within lovely art that spans the ages. In this life, however,
Lucia doesn’t know where to look. Lost, she turns to the one thing she
knows with certainty—she is in love with Leo, and has been before.







To celebrate and kick off the book's debut, Angela has a Goodreads giveaway of two paperback editions.



You can also win a Kindle Fire and other cool stuff at a Rafflecopter giveaway a Rafflecopter giveaway






Angela is running blog stops all over the place, so the more you follow her, the better your chances at winning the raffle. Check the links below to get the next stop on the tour:


Blog: angelakulig.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/angelakulig
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorangelakulig



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Kick Ass If You Need To, But Be The Boss

I'm over at WinningEdits today , talking about writing, day jobs, the market for serial fiction and fanfic, Yog's law and the best thing you can do to understand the business side of writing. Give it a read. You can comment there or here.



Also, buy my book. You'll love it, I promise.



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