Eric Goebelbecker's Blog, page 4

June 22 2024

It’s been a while since I posted here.

Mostly because I’ve been busy working on Clouds in the Future and on marketing Shadows of the Past. Shadows has been selling better than expected.

Hopefully I can get back to a regular posting achedule here.

In the meantime, this Youtube channel is a goldmine for folks in a certain age range.

For example:

june 22 2024

It’s been a while since I posted here.

Mostly because I’ve been busy working on Clouds in the Future and on marketing Shadows of the Past. Shadows has been selling better than expected.

Hopefully I can get back to a regular posting achedule here.

In the meantime, this Youtube channel is a goldmine for folks in a certain age range.

For example:

Podcast Recommendation

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that if you’re subscribed to the email list, you enjoy reading. You may also enjoy podcasts, since they’ve grown in popularity over the past few years.

So how about a podcast about books?

Here’s the blurb for the Page 1 Challenge:

The Page 1 Challenge is a short-form podcast for book lovers where we DON’T judge a book by its cover.... or even by the author or the title! We judge it by reading the first page before knowing anything else about the book.

Can page 1 be captivating enough to make YOU want to read the book? That’s the challenge!

So, is judging a book by its first page fair? Oh, heck no! But it is a fun little game, and a refreshing change from the usual book review and author interview shows.

Of course, AFTER reading page 1 we do reveal the author and title, and we usually have some color commentary that the author provided just for our podcast listeners.

This is a great podcast. Short, to the point, and a great way to discover new books.

And I guess it’s technically a spoiler, but the latest episode is about Shadows of the Past!

Happy Summer or Winter, depending on where you are. Talk to you again in a couple of weeks.

A Very Dark Matter

Hi,

It’s been a while!

What I’m Writing

I’m about 20k words into Clouds of the Future and so far I’ve only changed my mind and threw away two entire chapters. That’s a good sign, right?

I’m hoping to post a preview chapter here next month, after I get some feedback from my writing group.

Multiverses Done Well

It seems like every time I come across a new piece of scifi/fantasy content, there’s a multiverse involved. This is probably driven by the success of the MCU’s Endgame film and Sony’s Spider-Verse series. The problem is, like many sci-fi tropes, multiple universes can quickly turn into a fan service, inside baseball, thing.

The obvious application for a multiverse is “What If…?” Franchises rely on an ongoing story for their popularity. “What If?” is a way to add to those stories and please their fans without “violating” the rules of established continuity. “Love the villain we killed off in the third film? Well, here’s what would have happened if…”

Disney literally has a show called “What If…?”, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. Even though it looks like an attempt to cash on the multiverse introduced in the Marvel films, What If? is a throwback to a popular comic series from the mid-70s. It was probably my first introduction to multiple universes.

“What If…?” is a fun show if you’re into the movies and streaming shows, and even more so if you read the comics. If you’re not an established fan, “What If…?” quickly becomes “Who cares…?”

So, it’s nice to come across a show that’s using the multiverse idea in a world (worlds?) that you don’t need encyclopedic memory or Wikipedia to understand. Dark Matter on AppleTV+ is exactly that.

Dark Matter establishes a world in its first episode, then wastes no time pulling the rug out from under you. This means anyone can hop on and enjoy the fun. It also means that, rather than focusing on universe-shaking events, its multiverse is about character.

The most common approach to multiple universes says that every time we make a decision, we create a new timeline.

Not going on that blind date.Going on it and meeting your future partner.Staying in bed an extra five minutes.Getting up on time, so you walk the dog at 6:30, and save a kid from being hit by a car.

But these events are most often tied to a bigger picture. In Star Trek’s City on the Edge of Forever, saving a single life would have led to the allies losing World War II. The MCU’s Endgame has its heroes manipulating smaller events to literally save their entire universe. (Or is it to create one that survives? Ugh. I need a Motrin.)

Six episodes in, Dark Matter is about identity. Are you who you are because of the city you grew up in? Your career? Your education? What does your life look like when you spend all your time at the office? Or at home? Are you the average of the five people you spend the most time with, or is there something deeper that makes you who you are?

I should probably be getting a cut from Apple TV+ subscriptions for all the time I hype their shows, but seriously, check this one out.

Independent Book Review

I mentioned a review from IBR a month or so back. It’s finally live on their site. .

That’s all I have. See you next month, and have a happy 4th of July, if that’s your kind of thing.

A Different Sequel, and the X-Men

Happy Weekend!

It's Saturday morning and I see a beautiful blue sky out my office window as I write these words. Ride the bicycle or get some writing done? Bicycle has been the answer too many times this week, which is why I'm writing Saturday morning's newsletter midday Saturday.

A Different Approach

Shadows of the Past picks up about twenty years after the Martian invasion. Most of my ideas for the series center around the mid- to long-term aftermath of an alien invasion. The War of the Worlds as 9/11, as one friend put it.

I enjoy reading different approaches to H.G. Wells' classic invasion tales, and I recently found Mark Hood's Return of the Martians, which picks up a mere two years after the first book ends.

If you're a fan of WOTW or sci-fi invasion stories, this is a must-read.

But, you don't have to take my word for it. Mark has a free eBook for subscribers to his newsletter. Amy's Story serves as a companion volume to Wells' original story and a prequel to Return. Here's a snippet from the desciption:

Amy’s comfortable life is shattered when the Martians attack. Forced to flee the burning town of Woking, she can’t prevent her husband George from vanishing into the night on a foolish errand. With no idea if he will ever return, and fearing for her unborn child, she sets out to try and find him among the tidal wave of terrified people.

Sign up here to get Amy's Story!

X-Men '97

Twenty-four years (!) after the triumphant release of the first X-Men film, superheroes have nearly worn out their welcome. While I agree that some of the recent movies and shows have ranged from "meh" to "did not finish," there have been a few high points, too. X-Men `97 is one of them.

`97 is a revival of the 1990's Saturday morning cartoon, a show that combined objectively awful animation with frequently brilliant plotting and often over-the-top voice acting. The new show fixes the animation while somehow remain faithful to the original, improves on the plotting, and (mostly) addresses the voice acting.

The X-Men were Marvel's hottest comic property for a long time, and it's not hard to see why: all the components that made Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Avatar: the Last Airbender, have been there since the mid-1970's. Outcasts with superhuman powers. A school for gifted kids. (It was literally called Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.) Coming of age drama. Strong messages about not hating people for being different and beauty being more than skin deep.

If they hadn't sold the film rights to Fox, a studio with the patience of an over-caffeinated Border Collie puppy in a butcher shop, they could have done what they did with second-tier characters in the MCU.

That's right. The Avengers are second tier. The X-Men outsold all of them in their team and individual titles for decades. The only character that came close to their popularity was Spider-Man, the guy that belongs to the studio that brought you Morbius.

The X-Men premiered in comics in 1963. They were cancelled in 1970, then revived in 1975 in Giant-Size X-Men #1 and quickly climbed to the top of the sales charts.

I bought that first issue off my local newsstand. Few things are more exciting for an eleven-year-old comic book fan than feeling like you're getting in at the beginning. Especially when one of the characters in that first issue, Wolverine, had recently appeared in an issue of The Incredible Hulk, which you had also personally purchased off the same newsstand.

I was an insider. I knew it all. I even knew who that dork Sunfire was.

I managed to get every issue of the X-Men from that first book up until when I left for the Army in early 1983. I had stopped reading every other comic by then, but the X-Men's ongoing soap opera kept me hooked.

I picked it up again a few years later while I was stationed in Germany, and only stopped when Marvel decided to spread the story out over multiple titles each month. This diluted the quality and turned making sure I picked up my monthly installment into a chore and scavenger hunt.

The cartoon is revisiting many of the stories I enjoyed back then, and is presenting them in a way that won't make a newcomer feel lost.

And you don't have to suffer through the first five seasons of original cartoon to get it. (Trust me, I did and it wasn't worth it.)

Check it out. The finale comes out next week.

See you again in a couple of weeks.

Ban the Martian Spiders!

Hi,

I'm back with spiders on Mars, book bans, and book reviews.

The Spiders from Mars

The non-human bad guys in my books hail from Mars. At least that's where they were before they arrived on Earth. (But are they really from there? I digress.)

The primary reason the aliens had for decamping the red planet was probably a dearth of mammals to munch on. But maybe the spiders had something to do with it, too.

The surface of the fourth planet warms up every spring (Mars has four seasons, just like Earth, only they're about twice as long.) This heats up carbon dioxide ice, which melts into geysers of gas that create those creepy spider-shaped holes.

The picturesque view of Mars through optical telescopes is what sparked the imaginations of authors like H. G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Since then we've sent several different probes and landers to our second nearest neighbor and now we know what's really up there, and it's no less fascinating.

Book Bans

Book bans are back in vogue. They never go away, but we're currently seeing organized efforts to toss books out of libraries based on general topics, rather than the routine attempts to eliminate individual titles.

So, it was refreshing to see some research showing that making a variety of books available to teenagers and letting them decide what they want to read helped rather than hurt them.

Here's a quote from the research cited in that article:

Interviews and observations across two school years indicated many of students’ preferred books were those they considered ‘disturbing’ – narratives that revealed difficult and complex realities about humanity and that frequently caused readers to be confused or uncertain, which might be deemed ‘incomprehension’. This reading provoked self-reflection and meaningful conversations that students linked to social, intellectual, and moral transformation.

Given the opportunity to choose what they could read, the kids opted for books that dealt with difficult subjects. And as a result, they were more empathetic and better able to communicate.

It helped them grow.

This is the best case against book bans I've ever seen.

Kind Words

I sent Shadows of the Past to Independent Book Review a while back and received some kind words. They'll be posting the review on their site soon, but I have a copy I can use for promotions.

It seems like the book made their reviewer think:

Shadows of the Past is a refreshing and reflective read. It feels especially emotional asI follow the news of international military invasions and occupations in our time.Reading Emil and James gave me some hope that there are good men on the groundwho can see past narratives of disposable people, who are shocked by deaths ofcivilians and soldiers with equal, lasting measure, and who can’t help but think abouthow it could and should have been avoided.

This was the motivation I needed to buckle down and get to work on Clouds in the Future.

If you've read Shadows, please consider leaving a review where you bought it, and it Goodreads and Bookbub. If you haven't, you can find it here

See you soon!

Sometimes It’s Best to Move On

Sometimes It’s Best to Move On

I just came across Scalzi’s review of Godzilla Minus One for Uncanny Magazine. He, unsurprisingly, nails what makes it one of the best Godzilla movies made since 1954:

Godzilla Minus One is terrific in no small part because its Godzilla is not a friend, it is a force, violent, implacable, unable to be reasoned with or controlled in any meaningful way.

Godzilla works best a metaphor. For nuclear weapons in the original and Minus One, for Fukushima in Shin Godzilla.

The problem is, as Scalzi points out, that only works a few times.

Godzilla got domesticated because he became a star. Being an unknowable terror is fine for one film, and possibly for a sequel or two. But apparently the thinking is, if you want to keep people coming back film after film, eventually you have to make your monster someone the audience roots for, even if the monster is still nominally a bad guy.

After a while, you gotta move on.

That’s where Legendary is. Their Godzilla fought the MUTOS, played hero against Ghidorah, fought Kong, teamed up with Kong to fight, um, more Kongs…

Yeah, time to move on.

The Day of the Martians

Just finished The Day of the Martians by H.E. Wilburson.

The terror of the coming of the Martians is all but a distant memory, a bad dream that has faded with time — until the shocking discovery years later, of an unopened Martian cylinder….

After gaining five awards at the 2020 Los Angeles Science Fiction Film Festival (Audio Drama category) The Martian Diaries series, continuing The War Of The Worlds, is now available as ebooks and audiobooks.

If you’re a fan of the H.G. Wells alien invasion book, start this award-winning 3-part sequel today, because you won’t want to miss this story!

Day of the Martians is a different take on a sequel to H.G. Wells War of the Worlds from Shadows of The Past. It’s written in a style close to Wells, starts sooner after the attack, and has the Martians attempting another direct attack. You could picture it being a sequel written by the original author.

More critically, it has the survivors outright avoiding Martian technology, rather than working to harness it like they do in my version.

It’s a quick read, and I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series soon. Check it out!

march 26 2024

On Deck: Plotting and outlining Clouds in the Future. Got a good idea of where it’s going, just need to map out the story beats and fleshing out my dastardly villian. More revisions on a short story for email list subscribers, too. Potential bike ride up to the dojo tonight.

Listening: The Black Keys.

Reading:  The Days of the Martians. Another War of the Worlds sequel.

See you tomorrow.

march 25 2024

Productive weekend, with significant progress on outlining Clouds in the Future, including character sketches on the various villains and frenemies our intrepiod hero will meet.

Also approved a draft cover!

There’s a wide assortment of trivial tasks waiting for me. That’s what Mondays are for!

That’s it. See you tomorrow.