Christopher Keene's Blog, page 17

Stuck in the Game Cover Launch!

Check out the gorgeous cover art for my new novel, Stuck in the Game:

Release date: August 4th

What’s your Preference on the Fantasy to Science Fiction Continuum?

Where does your preference land on this continuum?

The Problem with Horror Anime

About a year ago I wrote a FANTASTIC post called The Problem with Romance Anime, and considering the majority of my audience – you guys – are anime watchers, it has become my most consistently viewed post (fancy that!). So to give my readers what they want – and get more followers ;D – I’m going to begin a five part series of problems I have with other genres in anime, ending with what most of you perverted bastards really want: The Problem with Ecchi Anime. So… something to look forward to, I guess. But for now I’m going to be talking about the problem with HORROR anime.

The problem with horror anime is that, in general, anime just isn’t really that scary, and the few rare anime that are scary are usually riding on the coat tails of a superior genre.For the average Joe or Jane, it’s incredibly hard for 2D animation to be truly scary unless the proper atmosphere has been built up with right music, plot, imagery etc. It’s very rare for anime to do this right. To recover from this failure to become scary, many anime desperately resort to either a silly amount of gore and over the top violence, which loses its novelty after a while, or it slowly transforms into an action or fan service anime to squeeze some entertainment out of the material (I’m looking at you High School of the Dead, Tokyo Ghoul, Tokyo Majin, Deadman Wonderland, Blood C, etc. etc…).

Don’t get me wrong, though. There are a few anime like Monster, Another and Higurashi that I would consider good horror anime, but I wouldn’t say that it was the horror elements of these anime that made them “good”. For instance, it’s the mystery elements of Another, the thriller or suspense aspects of Monster and the puzzle elements of Higurashi that appealed to most viewers (I have no evidence to back this up so take my word on it). However, if you look up horror anime on Google, most of the horror known to be “good” only have horror as its subgenre. Calling anime like Blue Exorcist, Madoka Magica and Death Note horror anime is really stretching the definition of the genre in my opinion.

The closest I would come to calling an anime great is generally if it is mixed in with another more dominant genre that leads it to being actually scary. With anime like Hellsing Ultimate and Parasyte, I could say action, but because these are more cool than scary, I’ll say that the most common victim of this backpacking is the psychological thriller genre. Anime can do psycho-thrillers well. Anime like Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent (Okay Lazarinth, get Satoshi Kon’s dick out of your mouth), Yami Shibai and Serial Experiments Lane are just a few in this genre that have some really freaky things about it that could be considered scary.

Basically my complaints can mostly be whittled down to the same issues I had with the romance genre (and probably the same complaints I will have about most of the genres I focus on). Having horror as an aspect of an anime is fine, but when the entire focus of the story is to make the viewer afraid, it can come off as really contrived, over the top or incredibly predictable. If you want to prove me wrong and can think of an actually good horror anime, feel free to mention it in the comments.

Game of Thrones vs. A Song of Ice and Fire [What’s the Difference?]

Many fans of the Game of Thrones series who haven’t read the A Song of Ice and Fire books always ask if there are any main differences between the books and the TV show. The short answer is yes, but they are few and far between, and the real question is how these differences might effect the story in the future. Firstly, a big spoiler warning for those who haven’t watched the books or read the TV show (wait a minute…)

Of course there are little differences between the show and the novels that don’t amount to anything e.g. Sir Valdis not being thrown through the Moondoor, Tyrion having his nose mostly cut off, Arya not using Jaqen H’ghar to escape from the Boltons instead of the Lannisters and almost every characters’ age. However, there are big changes and absences that were made that could easily diverge from many of the key plot lines later on in the story.

Considering the show has surpassed the books, I’m not going to go through all of things that the books might do differently but instead list the changes that may force the two stories to diverge. Here is a list with each of these main changes.

The Martells

Every scene with Jaime and Bron in Dorne was exclusively made for the television series. The POV character who actually goes is Arys Oakheart. The Martells who tried to kill Princess Myrcella are swapped, and, although her death might occur in the next book, Gerold Dayne’s assassination attempt was not successful but Myrcella does lose an ear. The show also excludes the character of Quinten Martell who tried to get Daenerys to marry him and ended up being burned to death by her dragons, which is how the dragons escaped.

The Greyjoys

Theon’s escape and torture at the hand of Ramsey isn’t really shown in the book. Whoever killed Theon’s father, Balon, is left a mystery, although there are suspicions. Victarion’s POV, one of Theon’s uncles and a drowned priest is completely left out. Moqorro, a red priest that travels with Victarion, who is a lot more accurate than Melisandre in his predictions, is also left out entirely. It also excludes the plot tool of the Dragonbinder horn, which is said to command dragons, relating to his goal of teaming up with Daenerys.

The Night’s Watch

Here another magical horn is failed to be mentioned in the TV show. This time the Horn of Winter is said to shatter the wall is claimed by the watch and after this Janos Slynt is in place of Alester Thawn for the person originally going to be the next Lord Commander. Mance Rayder isn’t killed but swapped with Rattleshirt who is glamoured to look like Mance. Mance had also met Jon and the rest of the Starks before meeting him beyond the wall. Now Coldhands might be a left out character if he doesn’t end up being Benjen Stark, which Martin has said it isn’t, but even so, where’s his elk and ravens?

The Starks

So Jane Westerling (Rob’s wife) wasn’t at the red wedding in the books, which means Rob could potentially have an heir. Jeyne, who is pretending to be Sansa is married to Ramsey Bolton and escapes with Theon instead of Sansa. Sansa is still with Little Finger. Bran isn’t the only one who can have Wolf Dreams (Arya and Jon can as well), and although it could still happen, Jojen Reed isn’t dead yet. Speaking of the dead, they have completely missed out the story of Lady Stoneheart (Catelyn Stark) being with the Band Without Banners. This diverges with many plot points in Brienne’s story.

The Baratheons

There is good evidence that Melisandre didn’t actually kill Renly in the books. The blood of Gendry isn’t taken by Melisandre before he escapes, he simply stays with the Brotherhood Without Banners. The blood that Melisandre uses for her leach ritual is another Baratheon bastard that Stannis was taking care of, and, in the books, Stannis and his family are not dead but has taken the Dreadfort and is still going strong.

The Lannisters

Jaime leads the army to fight on Raventree Hall, where the rest of the Stark supporters are held up, instead of Riverrun. In the books it is Ilyn Payne instead or Bron that goes with him and the Seige is ended without a single life taken. When Cersei loses all control in her bitchy, drunken, bisexual slump,  Kevin Lannister takes over and ends up becoming a very good Hand of the King… and then Varys kills him and Pycelle, not Qyburn, because he wants the chaos to continue for Aegon’s invasion.

The Targaryens

Quaithes prophecies for Daenerys have been missed out, but with them coming true in the show anyway, they’re a little redundant. Strong Belwas is one of her of guardians that is missed out. Young Griff, or Aegon Targarian, who is the true son of Elia Martell and Rhaegar Targaryen was swapped for another baby. This is entirely missed out and their campaign is a huge part of Tyrion and Varys’ plot. Also only the Targaryens have the dragon dreams… and Tyrion, which is another plot element/red herrring that’s ignored.

The only other thing I can remember is that Samwell learns a lot about magic and the Maesters from Old Town but I suppose with him just arriving there in the TV show, that’s something they haven’t yet got to. In other words “You know nothing, show watchers.”

How to Get Published Step 12: Rinse and Repeat Pt. 2

If you’ve done everything in these steps to the best of your ability, there is nothing much more I can tell you. Now it comes down to luck and the agent/publisher’s reaction to your work depending on how well the genre or style will do in the market at the time that they receive your submission. If they like it, they will request a full or partial manuscript.

Eventually your next email to an agent or publisher will read something along the lines of: “Please find attached the manuscript of [Book Title]. If you need any information do no hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

[Author Name]”

There is no 12th piece of advice that I haven’t already said for the first rinse and repeat step in the writing section of these steps: Just keep at it. As you can see by the amount of steps, ‘writing the book’ (The first 6 or 7 steps) is only half of the process to getting published. I can almost guarantee that the ‘submitting the book’ steps will take a longer period of time, either because you need more titles from publishers to choose from, or because you have gotten better at writing the longer you’ve been at it.

Either way, until you are picked up, there is nothing I can really tell you that you won’t inevitably go through with whatever gatekeeper allows you in. I think this will be the last step for now, as I want to do posts on other subjects and anything more will be for people who have already gone passed the point of my help anyway.

How to Get Published Step 11: Rejection

As hard as it might seem, rejections are a good thing. It means that your emails are getting read and which agents will reply to you by email for the next manuscript that you have to pitch when you have more knowledge on what to query them.

Another bright side is the that the more variety you have to approaching your query and submissions, you can see what’s more likely to hook people. This is trial and error and you can’t improve your next run of trials without errors. The further you get into the process, the more devastating the rejection will be but at least you still had the excitement of getting a request. Some writers struggle to get even that.

My eleventh piece of advice: collect your rejections in the name of research. Submitting is a process, if you get it first go, good on you, but you’re in the minority. Most of you will need to go back an forth trying different titles and angles to sell your book. Ganbatte!

How to Get Published Step 10: Searching & Submitting

Yes, this is the second time I used this image. Still has relevance to the post.

There really is nothing I can say in this bit because each agency and publisher is going to have different guidelines and requirements. My tenth piece of advice is this: have these things proofread ready to go:

Manuscript
Query Letter
Two-Page Synopsis
Biography
A list of titles comparative to your book.

I would say the prepare more but there really are things you’ll need to create for certain submissions. Just make sure that these new entries to your toolkit is just as clean as the things you have already written.

What’s more important is to search out the right agents and publishers that are the best for you. A few good websites for this is #MSWL and writer’s digest.