Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 65

S.L. Huang: Let’s Also Write Our Joy

SL Huang wrote a book that turns math into a goddamn superpower, which is a thing I’d love to have because I have the math skills of a stump. I love too her journey for this book, as it is now released with Tor in a bee-yoo-tee-ful hardcover edition that you totally want. For the record, here’s what I said about this book: “This book lines up like a perfect, elegant equation — it’s fast, furious, and adds up to one of the coolest, most crackin’ reads this year.” So, here she is to talk about the supremely rad Zero Sum Game:

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Coming off of a pretty damaging week in the news cycle, I was having a difficult time writing this post. I finally said to my partner, “what on earth should I write about?” and gave her a list of topics I was considering. She said, “You know what? Right now, I want to read about something fun.”

So I’m going to talk about math.

WAIT WAIT WAIT DON’T RUN AWAY!

I’m going to talk about math as something that gives me joy, and how much it matters that we put what gives us joy into our books. Because it does. It matters. It’s important.

People often do a double-take when I say my antiheroine’s violent superpower is math. Then they see I have a degree in it from MIT and they kind of nod and say, “ah!” It fits with the old chestnut of writing what you know, sure—but I’m not only writing what I know. I’m writing what I love.

Even before I chose it as my major, math has always been something that has delighted me on a personal, visceral level. Like burying your face in a cat’s fur—that’s what I want to do with math. I remember in college sometimes curling up with my favorite Apostol textbooks and falling to sleep on them, just because they were freakin’ comforting to have next to me.

One memorable time, I blurted, “Antiderivatives give me orgasms!” and someone wrote it up on our dorm whiteboard, where it stayed for about six months, in infamy. Later, my friend and I wanted to get T-shirts with our favorite topological space, because it’s a COOL SPACE and it makes me grin and gives me warm fuzzies and if you catch me at a con and ask me about it I will squeal and tell you JUST WHY IT’S SO COOL.

(Most people laugh and tell me I’m cute when I do this. A small percentage back slowly away.)

Just like any other pursuit, even for people who love it, math can be horribly hard—I’ve had struggles with it throughout my studies, often. But at the core has always been that delight.

So in interviews, when people ask me why I chose to write a superheroine whose power is being good at math, my answer is always the same: Because I love math. It gives me joy. It makes me want to jump up and click my heels together. And I want to share that joy with others—even people who personally hate math, I want them to be able to read and glory in an entertaining ride, just for the few hours they’re with me, and say afterwards, holy mackerel I hate math but that was SO FLAT-OUT FUN.

Right now especially, I feel like we need that. You need that, I need that, we all need that.

When it feels like the world is burning down around us—both metaphorically and literally, because holy hell climate change and I can’t even hold that in my HEAD—it’s so easy to feel helpless. Utterly powerless. And, as a writer—it’s so easy to feel like our writing is pointless, like why are we even crawling up another day and banging down fake words on a keyboard when so much else is all going wrong.

Sometimes we can answer that bleakness by writing our rage—which I fully, thoroughly encourage. But I also want to encourage everyone out there, everyone who writes, or reads, or reviews… goddammit, let’s also write our joy. Claim it, celebrate it, blow it into the book marketplace for everyone else to escape into also. Don’t let the abusers in power take that away from us, too. Dig down and find the good things that matter to you, that make you want to laugh out loud or dance and twirl or give someone bone-crushing hugs—and grab those things with both hands and claim them and celebrate them. Whether it’s bees or languages or feminism or your family, let’s take those moments of glee together and share them with each other. Let’s glory in all our vast diversity of geekery and passions, and remind each other of all the reasons, small and large, why our world is worth fighting for.

Find your joy. Write your joy. That, too, is resistance.

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S. L. Huang has a math degree from MIT and is a weapons expert and professional stuntwoman who has worked in Hollywood on Battlestar Galactica and a number of other productions. Her novels include the Cas Russell series (formerly known as Russel’s Attic). Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Nature, Daily Science Fiction, and The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016.

S.L. Huang: Website | Twitter

Zero Sum Game: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Terry Brooks: More Than The Story

Terry Brooks is legendary. Legacy. OG. So, when Terry Brooks wants to pop by your website to talk about his new book, you don’t simply say yes, you throw him the keys to the blog with such ardor and glee you nearly break the sound barrier. Here is Mister Brooks to talk about his newest, Street Freaks.

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When I write a book I am always writing about more than the story you read. Street Freaks is no exception – and yet at the same time it is. Almost my entire life’s work has been in the field of fantasy, save for a couple of movie adaptations and a book on writing. Street Freaks is different. You might want to call it science fiction, but since my actual knowledge of anything scientific could be measured in a thimble, I’ve coined a different term. I call the book a futuristic thriller.

On a quick reading, I think you would agree with this designation. But there are other aspects to the book that transcend both ‘thriller’ and ‘futuristic’ – enough so that either or both terms are really not sufficient to describe it. There is a kind of weird and poignant love story. There is a vision of the future that suggests the United States will break apart and become the United Territories. There are transmats (aka matter transporters) by which we can now send our bodies to any point on the planet. Vehicles fly, but throwback versions of dragsters and muscle cars from an earlier time still race on the composite surfaces of city streets. There are elite police units with a license to kill.

More important to me than all of these are my efforts to address recognizable social issues that exist today and will almost certainly exist in the future in spite of all our efforts to change the culture. They will wear new clothes and speak different languages and morph into different forms, but they will still be with us. Prejudice is not about to go away because we decry the inhumanity and unfairness of it. Efforts to control people through government oversight are not going to become outdated or shunned by revelations of misuse. Prejudices centering on race, sexual orientation, nationality and religion are here to stay. They have been with us since the first humans walked the earth, and they are with us still. If you want to address the problems they pose, you have to come to terms with the reason they persist.

My solution to such conundrums has always been to write a story.

I decided to write this particular story as a way to showing how things might evolve, but not with any intention of solving the problem. I wanted to tell a story about how I saw the future and how those issues might evolve into something different than what exists today – but not so different that we wouldn’t recognize them for what they are.

So let me start at the beginning, because it took a long time to put the bones of the story together with sufficient clarity that I could attempt to write it. I can trace the nescient stages back to when my grandson was participating in a Christmas pageant, and my wife and I were there to lend support. It had been years since I had gone to something like this – our kids long since grown – and what startled me was how different the audience was. It wasn’t all one race, all of the same sexual orientation, or all family-traditional; it was a United Nations of people and families of every sort. I remember thinking that this was the future – not only of this state or this country but also of the world. Technology in communications, social media and travel was making it possible for a One World future to become a reality.

But what were the challenges to making this happen?

Prejudices, of course. All sorts of prejudices.

I decided to write about how prejudice of any form would always provide a challenge to common decency and the resilience of the human spirit. I wanted to write about what other prejudices might supplant the ones of race, nationality, sexuality and religion that were slowly becoming less and less of a hindrance to people understanding one another and accepting their differences.

One thing led to another. What, I asked myself, will be the prejudice of the future, and what will bring it about? The answer seemed obvious. We are engaged in genetic studies, in exploring new ways of rebuilding bodies and minds, of pushing the frontiers of expanding robotics, and of finding ways in which we can extend and even create life. Many would view such progress unfavorably. Successful creation of hybrid humans would create a new form of prejudice, which would join quite comfortably with those already firmly established.

So what if we have humans who are entirely synthetic? What if we can build robots that are as capable and intelligent as humans? What if we can repair damaged humans by using composite materials and synthetic organs to make them whole again? What if we were able to grow humans in test tubes and through genetic manipulation?

What if a human boy and a synthetic girl fell in love?

What if the boy wasn’t sure he was human after all?

Science and science fiction alike have posited as much for decades. Why couldn’t it one day become a reality of our lives?

Many would not like the idea. Many would proclaim it unacceptable. There would be prejudice and anger and mistrust directed towards these ‘fake’ people. They would be marginalized everywhere. They would band together as all marginalized people tend to do.

And what might their detractors call them.

Tweeners.

Freaks.

Or, more specifically for the purposes of my story, Street Freaks.

And these not-quite-entirely-humans would become the heroes of my story.

I was up and running. And I don’t think I’m done yet.

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Terry Brooks: Website

Street Freaks: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

 

My NYCC 2018 Schedule, For Your Perusal

Why yes, that’s right, I will be at New York Comic Con this coming weekend — so, you should totally find me at one of the following event-flavored things and come say hi. I’ll sign stuff. I’ll sign books. I’ll sign body parts — attached or not. I’ll sign babies! I have literally signed a baby, seriously, so there’s totally precedent.

I’m there Friday and Saturday, thought I will be bopping around Thursday, too.

I do not suspect this schedule will change, but it might, because LIFE IS CHAOS.

Hope to see you there!

Friday, October 5th

3:00-4:00PM

PANEL: Stories From A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Location: 1A10

Panelists: Michael Siglain and more

5:30PM-6:30PM

SIGNING: Chuck Wendig & Jason Fry!

Location: Del Rey Booth

Saturday, October 6th

11:00AM-12:00PM

PANEL: I’ll Take Dementors for $500, Obi-Wan: A Fan Game Show

Location: Room 1A18

Panelists: Delilah Dawson, Chuck Wendig, Sylvain Neuvel, Ryan North, hosted by Marc Thompson

12:15PM-1:15PM

Post-panel signing, Autograph Area, Hall 1A

5:30PM-6:30PM

PANEL: Sometimes, It Really Is Rocket Science

Location: Room 1A21

Panelists: Chuck Wendig, Dan Koboldt, Diana Pho

6:45PM-7:45PM

Post-panel signing, Autograph Area, Hall 1A

Macro Monday Is Bees, Bees, Bees

HELLO AND PLEASE TO REMIND:

You Might Be The Killer airs this Saturday, October 6th, 7pm, on SyFy Channel.

Tell your friends!

Tell your pets!

Tell your enemies!

But most of all, tell yourself. Because we all need reminders now and again.

Let’s see, what else —

Oooh oooh ooh there’s Chuck and Anthony: Ragnatalk. First episode (THE SON OF ODIN AS A CUSTOM VAN) is live and hopefully soon in your earholes. If you love Thor: Ragnarok as much as Anthony Carboni and I do (unpossible), then give a listen.

Finally, a bit of good news — Damn Fine Story, the elk-containing book that also happens to contain a lot of talk of story and narrative and character? Yeah, it earned out. (I suspect it actually earned out a good while ago, but the siren song of sweetly gathered royalties has confirmed this). Feel free to check it out if you haven’t — in print or e-book.

The world is feeling particularly poopy right now, so to medicate, here is a photo of a water lily I took at Longwood Gardens this weekend. It contains bees. Behold its meditative splendor. Or, if you’d rather, imagine those bees stinging the eyes of someone you despise. Dealer’s choice!

Hey, Who Wants A Little Hot Fresh Escapism?

[image error]SoooooOOOOooo, in case you hadn’t noticed, yesterday’s news cycle was…

Uhhh.

Ahem.

I mean it was?

Hrrrgh.

You know, it was…

*gesticulates wildly*

*makes a face*

*barfs in mouth a little*

*sweats*

WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY IS, hey, I bet you need an Escape Hatch, however, temporary, to escape the horrific amusement park ride to which we all seem irreparably strapped to, and I am now here to deliver you that precious escape in the form of —

*thunder rumbles*

ME AND ANTHONY CARBONI TALKING ABOUT HOW MUCH WE LOVE THOR: RAGNAROK. AHHHHHHH. AHHHHHH. EEEEEE. OHHHHH.

Yep, that’s right, the first episode of Ragnatalk is live.

“The Son of Odin as a Custom Van.”

You just click that link with your clicky finger, and hear us talk about the first ten minutes of the movie. Every episode is exactly that — us, talking about how even more amazing one ten-minute-increment is than the last ten-minute-increment. That link too contains a number of wonderful subscription options for you, like iTunes and such. So!

HIE THEE HENCE. Take some time to escape, if only a little.

Art by the unstoppable Lar deSouza!

*cues up some Zeppelin*

Let’s do this.

It’s Official: YMBTK on The SyFy Channel

WHY YES, that’s right, it’s official — mark your calendars! Set your DVRs! Make up a drinking game! YMBTK — You Might Be The Killer — airs on the SyFy Channel on Saturday, October 6th at 7pm EST.

It’s happening! Sam Sykes and I tweeted some inane shit, it became a movie, that movie went to film festivals, and now SyFy is gonna air it on YOUR TV.

2018 may be the weirdest, stupidest timeline, but at least we’re milking it.

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A Writing Career Is Basically A Really Weird RPG

It is assumed, quite falsely, that a writing career gets easier once it gets going. The assumption being, all you need is your foot in the door — just enough sneaker to wedge that fucker open so you can slide sideways through the gap — and now you’re in the Kingdom. After which it’s all, what, signing contracts delivered by courier and royalty money falling from the sky like rain and a dragon whose breath weapon is endless writing time, he just disgorges endless time upon you, whoosh, and now all you have to do is write, and write, and write.

But, as I’m sure you’ve anticipated already, it isn’t like that at all.

A writing career is like an RPG. (Dealer’s choice whether we’re talking pen-and-paper or video game, but for this metric, let’s go with MMORPG.)

The beginning of your writing career is in fact your entrance to a new land, but for the most part, you’re probably some kind of Scrub Knight, some Pig-Farmer Squire-Scribe who has been tasked with using his rickety wooden sword to whack rats in the unicorn stable. You’re just a ratwhacker, bringing rat-pelts to the local Publishing Guild.

Point is, your book is out, but so what? Obviously, so what is so quite a lot, thank you very much, because having a book out is a glorious thing, an impressive wonder, and you should be pleased as peaches with yourself. But the important thing to note here is, dozens, literally dozens of books come out every week in your given genre. Your book coming out isn’t the toast of the town, most likely. There’s no secret library parade, no invitation to the monthly Publishing Orgy, no golden key that opens every bookstore in America. It’s a book, and now it’s out, and you hope it does well.

Now! Maybe, just maybe, the book does well. Or maybe, hell, you were the toast of the town — certainly some debut authors are lucky enough to be chosen in such a way, given a considerable marketing and promotional boost at the outset. Maybe you were lucky, maybe your book is amazing, maybe it’s a confluence of both of those things or some other quirk in the time-space continuum but ha ha now you’ve done it, now you’ve really Won the Publishing Game.

Nnnyeah not so much.

One does not win this game.

One simply tries to stay in the game.

Again, we return to the RPG metaphor — yes, once you’ve whacked enough rats, and earned enough Publishing XP, you are granted access to a new land. You have a Shiny New Word Sword.

YOU HAVE LEVELED UP. Ding!

One thing, though —

Your problems have leveled up with you. You have new skills, new cred, new weapons, but you also have new problems. You’re not just playing D&D anymore, now it’s Advanced D&D. Success breeds new concerns. Are you more branded? Too branded? Can you easily write outside the genre in which you have found success, or is that like re-speccing your build and starting over? What will the next book look like, and can it possibly match the success of the first? And when do the contracts run out? (See last week’s post about cliff mitigation for more on that problem.) Are you with the right publisher? Right editor? Right agent? Have you chosen your ADVENTURIN’ PARTY well? Have you collected the proper blurbs, the good reviews, the nice royalties? What happens when the money runs out? Or when the totally sporadic way of getting paid in this industry leaves your budgeting all out of sync? Or, hell, what happens if you discover… you’re not just having that much fun?

(Parenthood, by the way, is similar to this: you keep thinking, ah, once we have the kid past this next step, it’ll get easier, once she’s walking, or talking, or eating solid food, or in school, or out of school, or, or, or. And diapers give way to the kid running full-tilt into the corner of a coffee table which leads to dealing with second grade social circles which leads to middle school horror which leads to now they can drive which leads to oh hey now they rule over a band of apocalyptic hill cannibals at the end of the world and they’re some kind of chosen one?)

(Though of course every child is different.)

Success breeds new problems.

Failure breeds new problems.

A standalone novel, a trilogy, a series, an award win, a bestseller tag, a box of remaindered books, a bookstore going under, an editor orphaning you, a marketing budget that never manifests, an agent gets too big for your books, an agent quits, there’s a film and TV deal, some foreign rights, a publisher shutters, a genre tanks, a genre takes off, new successes, new problems, and on and on and on. The game doesn’t stop just because you get some victory in you. Every new sword and cool spell just means a new realm, a bigger dragon, more complicated decisions.

And that’s okay. It’s just good to know it. There is no comfortable plateau in a writing career, I imagine — not one that isn’t equivalent to some kind of literal or creative death. You left the stable, and now it’s a forest. You leave the forest, and now it’s a jungle. From rats to orcs to demons in the chasm. From slingshot to wooden sword to steel blade to diamond scythe. It gets more fun. It gets more dangerous. It gets more frustrating! It gets more confusing. And it never really stops transforming itself. There’s always a bit of a grind, always a need to level up, always decisions about how exactly you’re going to tweak and advance your character (aka, you) going forward. Then there’s the sweet ding of the next level, and again you climb. Onward you go.

And onward I go, too.

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DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Indiebound  /  Amazon  /  B&N

Macro Monday Is Running Giddily Through Dry, Dead Leaves

SO MUCH STUFF GOING ON, right?

Right.

First up — You Might Be The Killer premiered at Fantastic Fest to some very kind reviews, several of which I will encapsulate here now because I will use this list to occasionally bolster my flagging ego. What? Huh? I didn’t say that you said that.

Austin Chronicle:

“Basing his script (unlikely as it sounds) on a now near-legendary Twitter exchange between authors Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig (don’t read it now – it’s pretty spoilerific), Simmons has some real fun with a back-and-forth timeline (and ever-shifting kill clock for the counselor body count), and some of the most Karo syrup-drenched deaths this side of a Hatchet film.”

Slash Film:

“Maybe order a beer or two for this one? Crowd-pleasing horror with a roaring campfire aroma flipped upside down and hilariously mindfucked with just enough subjective damnation.”

Collider:

“You Might Be the Killer also benefits from smart structuring. Told through a series of flashbacks that unfold as Sam fills in the blanks for Chuck, we witness the murder count grow (written out on screen in a fun tally gag) until the film ultimately catches up with it timeline, leading to a third act where Sam and Chuck actively try to prevent his death, despite the ever-mounting body count. The more Sam remembers, the more we learn, and sometimes we circle back to scenes we’ve seen before but see them in an entirely different way. It’s a sharp script structure and it helps what might have been bland meta horror entry stand above the pack.”

Rue Morgue:

“Though the title is reminiscent of a thankfully almost forgotten Jeff Foxworthy bit, and the film was apparently inspired by a Twitter discussion, the film YOU MIGHT BE THE KILLER is a damn fine, and darn funny, self-referential little horror comedy.”

Also for those asking when they can see it? It goes, I think, to Telluride Horror Show and maybe some other festivals? Toronto After Dark? More as I know it!*

A reminder that I’ll be at NYCC in a couple weeks. Hope to see you there.

And at Hal-Con in Halifax at the end of October.

AND IN YOUR HOUSE FOR THANKSGIVING

Okay maybe not so much that last one.

P.S. don’t forget what’s coming this Thorsday

And I think that’s it. I go back to the WORD MINES now, to continue work on this weird-ass book I’m writing: The Book of Accidents. Wish me luck — it’s a doozy.

To close, hey, have this picture of IMPENDING AUTUMN —

* I wonder what’s on SyFy on October 6th at 7pm

Coming This Thorsday, It’s Chuck & Anthony: Ragnatalk

It’s me.

It’s Anthony Carboni.

It is, as he puts it, the best dang movie in the MCU.

(okay yes also Black Panther GotG Captain America: Winter Soldier Spider-Man Homecoming etc)

Coming this Thorsday —

Er, sorry, Thursday?

A 13-part series going through the movie, Thor: Ragnarok. Prestige format, which, uhh, means we chunk this sucker up into 10-minute increments and talk the hell out of those wonderful cinematic nubbins. You want this in your earholes, so —

Sign up for updates at:

Ragnatalk.com.

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Peter Tieryas: Five Things I Learned Writing Mecha Samurai Empire

[image error]The Man in the High Castle meets Pacific Rim in this action-packed alternate history novel from the award-winning author ofUnited States of Japan. Germany and Japan won WWII and control the U.S., and a young man has one dream: to become a mecha pilot.

Makoto Fujimoto grew up in California, but with a difference–his California is part of the United States of Japan. After Germany and Japan won WWII, the United States fell under their control. Growing up in this world, Mac plays portical games, haphazardly studies for the Imperial Exam, and dreams of becoming a mecha pilot. Only problem: Mac’s grades are terrible. His only hope is to pass the military exam and get into the prestigious mecha pilot training program at Berkeley Military Academy.

When his friend Hideki’s plan to game the test goes horribly wrong, Mac washes out of the military exam too. Perhaps he can achieve his dream by becoming a civilian pilot. But with tensions rising between Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany and rumors of collaborators and traitors abounding, Mac will have to stay alive long enough first…

Starting Over In A Familiar Universe Can Be Liberating

United States of Japan was a standalone story with the character arcs of both main characters finished by the end. But I felt there was much more about the universe I wanted to explore and know about. Initially, I tried to write a direct sequel with the same characters. But I struggled because I didn’t feel there was more I could do with their story that hadn’t been covered in USJ. Rather than forcing a followup, I started a new standalone book in the vein of Iain M. Banks’s Culture books and the individual Final Fantasy games. The opportunity to start over was liberating because it freed me up to experiment, expand, and try out all sorts of new things in a way I couldn’t with the first book. Because a lot of the legwork of establishing the major background pieces was already in place, I could spend most of my time focusing on what I wanted, which was the mechas and the pilots behind them. There’s loose connections between USJ and Mecha, but it was in many ways a reset as it revolves around a new cast of characters in a different time period. Thematically too, the stories diverged. The first book was an exploration of the horrors of war and the dehumanizing effects of torture, spurred by stories of the tragedies of WWII I learned growing up; my family lived in Asia during WWII and shared many of their experiences with me. The second book concentrated on the mecha pilots preparing to fight against Nazis and is really about the theme of persistence and endurance through difficult times.

Experiment Boldly, Pull Back In Editing

The initial draft of Mecha was over 150,000 words in length, which is almost twice the length of USJ. Every idea I had, I put down on paper. There were many scenes I knew didn’t work, but I still wanted to try them and see where the threads took me. There were environments the characters visited, landscapes that were eerily strange, especially near the demilitarized zone between Nazi America and the United States of Japan. Some of those elements were cut in my initial edit. A major scene was also removed during my edits with my wonderful Ace editor, Anne Sowards. In every case of deletion, they were cool set pieces, but didn’t move the story forward. At the same time, those experimental failures made their way into other aspects of the plot and I was able to recycle the concepts into smaller bits that helped enrich the lore for other parts of the journey. They also provided context for what worked and what didn’t, where I went too wild and what, in contrast, felt like a natural part of the USJ universe. The eventual word count would settle in at around 125K words, but some of the stranger ideas that got discarded were important, if invisible, pieces of the fabric that helped the overall tapestry of Mecha come together.

Simplification Isn’t A Bad Thing

I love ambitious novels. But sometimes, a book can be too ambitious to its own detriment. What I liked about the concept of a new standalone book was that it helped me to address what I felt was one of the biggest regrets I had for the first book- I’d tried to squeeze in too many competing ideas. United States of Japan was in part a look back at the tragedies of WWII, a spiritual sequel to The Man in the High Castle, an attempt to tell the story of thought police inspired by my curiosity about 1984’s thought police, a tribute to some of my favorite Asian films and games, a desire to modernize and lyricize the I Ching sequences of TMITHC into poetic dreams, a dive into the mecha works I loved from my childhood, and an examination of American culture from an Asian perspective (+ 10 more themes). For Mecha Samurai Empire, I simplified to the point that it was just focused on the five cadets aspiring to be pilots and the struggles they face, in part reflecting my own personal journey as an artist and writer. Some of the themes from the first book naturally made their way back in, but with the tighter focus, I felt I was able to tackle many of those older themes in a more organic way. This choice also explains, in part, why writing Mecha was the most (relatively) pleasant and enjoyable writing process I’ve had.

Research AKA “Making Mechas Realistic” Helps The Story

I love books that get into the technical details as my background is in technical art and writing. There’s a ton of mecha games, books, and films already out there. But I wanted to inject more realism and get into the nitty gritty of the controls, the training the pilots would have to undergo, as well as the whole philosophy/history of the corps. That meant studying a lot about tank warfare and using tank crews as a general template for mecha crews. Mecha cockpits in MSE come with engineers, munitions, a navigator, and a communications officers, rather than the single driver mechas usually depicted in a lot of anime and games. I also drew a lot on my own experience working in the animation industry creating complex rigs and digital machinery to hopefully lend more authenticity to mecha piloting. I wanted to move away from the idea of a “chosen one” that happens in so many mecha projects. You know, where someone is just instinctually great, born to drive, learning things that take others years to master to save the world.  No matter how many jet simulation games you’ve played or manuals you’ve studied, if you, as an inexperienced person, board a fighter jet and try to fly it, you will crash and burn. In Mecha Samurai Empire, Mac and his fellow pilots go through hell before they can even touch a bipedal mecha. They have to start on the quadrupeds first, then graduate to crab tanks, and so on. Thematically, the difficulty of piloting a mecha connects with the narrative and the challenges the pilots individually face. What I appreciated most was how this forced me to really understand the world on a deeper level. Simple questions like, where do spare parts on mecha engines actually come from, and what type of fabric are their uniforms made of, helped inform the story and give breadth to aspects that I otherwise never would have considered.

Working With A Foreign Publisher Is Really Helpful

Having more eyes on a manuscript can be super helpful and getting input from my foreign publisher was incredible. Mecha Samurai Empire actually published first in Japan with Hayakawa. So I worked closely with my Hayakawa editor, Aya Tobo, and my translator, Naoya Nakahara, as the book was being written. This was a first for me (I usually publish a book and then it gets translated). I continually emailed them throughout the process about questions I had and ideas I wanted to bounce off them. I also had to keep in mind that the book would be split into two books (Bunko paperbacks) in Japan. This proved helpful in creating a structure that I knew would have to work, both as split books, and as a whole, so that the dramatic pace was held consistent throughout. Hayakawa’s staff gave lots of fantastic feedback, provided very useful insight, and made corrective suggestions that were crucial. Because so much of the book revolves around Asian influences, their input really helped take it to the next level in terms of authenticity. Of course, it did increase the complexity as I was dealing with editing from the US and Japan at the same time. Fortunately, I feel the end result was a more rounded book with tons of details for interested fans, but (hopefully) not so obscure as to alienate.

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Peter Tieryas is the author of Mecha Samurai Empire and United States of Japan, which won Japan’s top SF award, the Seiun. He’s written for Kotaku, S-F Magazine, Tor.com, and ZYZZYVA. He’s also been a technical writer for LucasArts, a VFX artist at Sony, and currently works in feature animation.

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