Andrew Seiple's Blog: Transmissions From the Teslaverse, page 13

Dire:Time

Outlining has begun on the third book, tentatively called Dire:Time.

As to what it'll be about... well, let me put it this way; Who wants to see a temporarily time-trapped Doctor Dire punch out Hitler?

Shoot, who DOESN'T?

I'll see what I can do to make this happen. Sit tight folks, there's a fun ride coming...

Website consideration

A relatively short post today, as I'm getting ready for the convention tomorrow. (Which, incidentally, has shifted venue at the last minute to the Crown Plaza hotel in Dayton.)

I've been considering the virtues and downsides to websites. I know that the Teslaverse project will need one eventually, but they ARE an additional monthly expense. I've looked into wordpress and a few other places, but I'm not very web-savvy. Most likely I'd end up having to pay someone to maintain the thing.

They say that every author needs one, but I'm musing over whether I need one NOW. Signs are pointing to now, but if anyone wants to comment below and suggest otherwise, I'm willing to listen. Might not act just yet, but I'm willing to listen.

Dire:Seed

Hey there. Short blog today.

I'm exhausted from the weekend. Three days of frantic typing, roughly thirty thousand words later, and the draft manuscript of the second book in the DIRE series is done.

I've sent it out to betas and editors... from here it'll take about a month, maybe two, to complete revision and rework. Also to get the cover art in, the artist is still finishing that up.

Wish I could get it to you all sooner, but... I refuse to skimp on quality, here. No way around it, it'll take time.

But in a few weeks, I should be able to get those of you who signed up for my mailing list a special surprise. Keep an eye on your inboxes...

Reactive Antagonists

How often have you seen it? If you play video games or RPGs at all, I guarantee you've seen it. If you've read some lazily-plotted books, it's likely that the problem's cropped up there, too. The problem of reactive antagonists.

They only seem to exist when the heroes are coming after them. They sit in their lairs and are pretty much just window-dressing, up until the point that the hero kicks in the door and initiates the final throwdown. Maybe their minions are doing things, or every now and then they're shown kicking a puppy or something to reinforce the fact that they're EVIL, but... well, they might as well not exist, as far as the narrative goes.

They don't do anything unless the hero does something. That's what a reactive antagonist is.

How do you fix this problem? Well, first you need to be sure it's a problem. If you're writing kid's books, it's okay to have an evil dark lord off being evil somewhere. He's more an end goal than a character, and matters less than the hero's development and growth. (Usually. There are no hard rules here, only guidelines.) Or if you've got a fantasy potboiler, it's okay if the dark lord's off in Mordor Equivalent #42 running the show and making sure the Nazgul don't go snacking on the orc hordes when they get peckish. Running dark empires is hard, yo.

But in a modern genre? Bad guys have no excuse for sitting still! They're going to have to be constantly taking steps toward their plan, and if you don't show them doing that, then take a hard look at it. If they're not throwing problems toward the hero every few chapters, at least, then they need a solid reason for NOT doing that, and the reason needs to be shown if at all possible. Maybe evil businessman A is counterbalanced by mad scientist B, and if he moves on hero c, then B gets all up in his grille? Stuff like that. Doesn't have to be complicated, just has to make a bit of sense.

Or hell, maybe the villain's incompetent, or doesn't have the resources to do it. Those guys are usually better served as mid-bosses, (to dip into video game terminology for a bit,) but again, there are no rules just guidelines.

So the next time you go writing, remember... conflict is at the heart of all stories. Is your villain living up to his conflict potential? If not, then consider rewriting until he/she/it/they do. Thank you and good night.

Independent Creators Expo

Afternoon, all! After some wrangling, I'm going to be attending the Independent Creators Expo and Film Festival on 20 February, at the Ramada Inn off Miller Lane in Dayton, Ohio. I will be hanging with my friend who makes cute dragon statues over in the dealers' hall, and peddling copies of Dire:Born. I'll happily autograph books, chat, or throw cards at you as you please, if you can make it over that way.

Small conventions like this are a good way for local writers to network and get word-of-mouth PR. The tables are typically inexpensive, so that you only need to move a few books to recoup your cost of attendance, and sometimes you can even get in on panels or other programming events. As long as you aren't too shy, your gain usually outweighs your risk. And you get all the joys of attending a convention, and meeting fun people!

It's also a non-standard marketing technique, that can help ally the boredom of your usual work in this area. Which is important, because if you fall into a rut, your writing can suffer. So don't be afraid to get out there and mix it up a bit, you might enjoy the results...

Find Their Voices

When I run RPG's, I usually try to give each non-player-character their own distinctive voice. Accents, tones, ways of speaking, stuff like that. It adds flavor to the game I find, helps the players visualize the person they're talking to. And honestly, it's pretty darn fun. The voices don't have to be perfect, so long as they're memorable.

I carried that technique over to me when I write. My characters all have their own voices, and ways of speaking. The goal is to make it so that you can recognize who's talking without quite as many "he-said, she-said's" on the page. I don't always succeed at that goal, but that's fine. It's still fun, and it helps me visualize the scenes that I'm writing.

And a funny thing happens, if you can find their voices... dialogue becomes easy. You don't plot out what they're going to say anymore, you just put the characters in a scene and let them talk about it. Often I'm surprised by how they banter, or go off on a subject that I didn't expect because, well, they would. It's just how they talk and act.

It was a bit scary letting them do this at first, since I was giving up control... but the more I went back and read the scenes where I tried it, the more I realized that they felt natural. Unforced. It felt more REAL.

So yeah. This technique might not work for everyone, but if you ever get the chance, I recommend that you try it. What've you got to lose?

Let your characters talk as they will. You might be pleasantly surprised at what they're saying.

The difficulty of simplicity

Short blog today, folks. Thanks to game night (and a rockin' session of Star Wars,) I'm behind on my writing.

One thousand words a day, that's the minimum I've committed to. That's the amount I must do, each and every night. I can go over, but I can't go under.

That's how you do it, y'know. That's all it takes. Say "Today and from now on, I'll write 100 words." Then after you're good with that, say "Today and from now on, I'll write 500 words."

Then you just keep stepping it up when you're ready, and before you know it, you're done. It's that simple... and that hard.

See you Friday!

Hello There!

Good afternoon. My name is Andrew Seiple. If you're reading this blog for the first time, and seeing this now, it's likely that you either met me at the January 2016 book signing, or followed the link in the back of my e-book. However the circumstances, thank you and welcome!

This is an informal blog, where I put my thoughts on literary matters, my projects, and occasionally roleplaying games. I post about twice a week, and tend to ramble.

My current project is called "Tales from the Teslaverse." It's my attempt at building a superheroic universe book by book. I've spent a good amount of time mapping out characters, tropes, and setting, and now I'm revealing it bit by bit like the horrible tease I am.

I'm going to bounce around between protagonist and antagonist viewpoints for much of it. It'll take multiple series and standalone books to fully map out, and if I do my job right they should all be entertaining. You may already be acquainted with Doctor Dire from her novel Dire:Born, or a few other places around the internet. She's got a sequel coming, and another after that to make her first trilogy. After that you'll start seeing the stories of more heroes and villains, and a few types who are solid shades of gray.

The next Dire book, (working title Dire:Seed) is currently 46% written. Expect to see it in a few months, and if you've signed up for my nifty mailing list, you'll be among the first to know when it's available. :D

Aside from the Teslaverse Tales, I'm also working on a gritty fantasy book that may turn into a series if the muse permits, and writing stories for some small freelance RPG projects. One of them should get a Gencon Release this year, if all goes well!

At any rate, I hope that you enjoy my work, and feel free to visit this blog anytime. I aim to keep this place friendly and informal, so do as you will so long as you're cool to others. If you have questions or issues just comment here or message me through Goodreads, and I'll respond as I can. Thank you and good night.

Book Signing Plans and Preparations

Five days to go...

This is pretty early. Maybe way too early. I'd been expecting to have two more books out before I started courting these. But when Half-Price books asks you to give it a whirl, you give it a whirl.

And hey, that's fine. Costs them nothing more than a table and some space at the front of the store. Costs me nothing more than time, and some minor setup work.

Part of that setup was an order of books shipped through Createspace. About thirty or so should hold me, and I'd be surprised if I move a third of them. One of the big mistakes a lot of indie authors make is ordering a lot of their books. They end up with garages full of moldering paper... since I'm going with a POD provider I don't have to order big batches at a time. They're more expensive per unit, but the cost is still within acceptable parameters.

The other necessary prep steps were to set up a mailing list, and get cards. Some fiddling out at Mailchimp got that squared away at no real cost. The interface is simple enough that it'll work for me, for a few years at least.

And once I had my signup URL (Posted in this blog description, by the way,) I could get the cards made. An artist friend of mine did up a logo as a gift, and it looks pretty nifty! I may see if I can persuade her to let me use it as an image for the mailing list, or a background for the eventual website... we'll see how it goes. The cards have my mailing list URL, and the URL to this blog.

If I'd had time I would have looked into a website, but I'm always nervous about those. I prefer to wait until the money from writing is good enough to pay someone to look into that. So that'll be 2-3 books down the road, minimum. Anyway, getting the cards printed off and shipped set me back around $30 for 500, so that's more than enough to last me for half a year or so. Maybe more, depending on how often I huck them at people.

Well.

If nothing else, the book signing will be a good excuse to see friends and family, many of whom will be stopping by. I'll have fun talking with strangers and handing out cards, and a few hours spent at a bookstore is never wasted.

Wish me luck, Goodreads!

(The event details are at https://www.hpb.com/030 )

The Glory of Astro City

Ever read Astro City? You should. If you at all like comics or the superhero genre, it's a fascinating change of pace.

It's the work of a very good author named Kurt Busiek, illustrated by Brent Anderson and Alex Ross. It was a very big influence on the Teslaverse, and it's still being published today.

The stories are good, for the most part. Very good! They take a lot of the tropes and run with them, think them out to some logical or fun extremes, and go from there. The genre is solidly silver age, with a few dips up into the modern spectrum, and it's a "kitchen-sink" setting, with everything from aliens to magic to superscience, and the heroes are across the board. There's a ton of familiar archetypes in there, yeah, but there's also androids shaped like human-sized Barbie dolls, living cartoon characters, and more.

The impressive thing, however, is that it tends to focus on character studies, rather than straight-up action. Oh, it's got some of that, don't get me wrong, but every arc gives you a perspective on a new character, or strong development for an old one. You don't just see the characters yelling banter and slinging punches, you get to see them in their day-to-day, picking up groceries, celebrating birthdays, and just generally living their slices-of-life.

It works.

It works really damn well.

It helps that it's an unabashedly positive comic, where the good guys nearly always win in the long-run, albeit at a cost sometimes. It evokes the silver age throughout, with a ton of affectionate callbacks and explanations for otherwise goofy things. It even does "Cosmic" well, and that's no easy thing. Going cosmic too early has hurt many a series, and I'll get into that in a later post. But Astro City managed it, and that's the important thing.

When I decided to put together the Teslaverse, I took much from Astro City's example. They didn't start with origins, or a dawn of heroes situation, or anything like that. Kurt just showed us, panel by panel, the broad strokes of a world which had grown up and grown old with heroes, and used each issue to peek a little more into a different part of the world.

I'm no Kurt Busiek. Dude's got chops. It'll take me years or more to get catch up to him, if I do.

But I think that parts of his method can be duplicated, for different effect, and I'm thankful to him for showing me part of the way.

Also for Steeljack. Tarnished Angel ROCKED.

But mostly for showing me the way.