Alexander Hellene's Blog, page 11

Book Review: The Pulp Mindset: A NewPub Survival Guide by JD Cowan

If you’re wondering what this “pulprev” and “newpub” stuff I keep writing about on this blog is, JD Cowan has you covered. Cowan is no stranger to this blog, and is a fine author of exciting fiction, but with The Pulp Mindset he’s created an excellent, essential primer to the world of NewPub and what those looking to independent writers in the digital age need to understand.

The Pulp Mindset is not writing guide, though I have no doubt Cowan could write a book packed with useful tips and techniques. What this book will do is help get you to think like a NewPub writer, and that means going back to the golden days of early twentieth-century pulp.

Cowan defines “pulp,” of course, walking us through the history of the genre, its luminaries, and those wonderful publications which thrilled readers for decades. He then dissects what makes a pulp story pulp, and why these elements are important to combat the morally ambiguous and unexciting gray sludge coming out of modern writers pens. These elements are ACTION and WONDER.

And besides these mechanical elements, which Cowan elaborates on, he also drills down to the most important aspect of being a NewPub author: WRITE WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE WANTS. And that is good guys being awesome and defeating bad guys. No moral equivalence or relativism. No nihilism and despair. Just kick-ass action, despicable villains, with lots of weird and wild obstacles thrown in our protagonist’s ways. 

Oh yeah–Cowan also gets into what makes a pulp hero. 

Nobody reads anymore. As Cowan states, this is in large part because the writers in the OldPub industry do not write for their audience. Many write for themselves. Some, in fact, seem to hate their readers. Many use subversion and twists as an ego trip to show off how clever they are and not to entertain.

OldPub hated the pulps because they stood in the way of said ego trips. As you’ll read in The Pulp Mindset, a small cadre of writers and critics decided that fiction should not entertain, but should teach. Pulps and their popularity were then scrubbed from the pages of history and derided as trashy, violent, and simplistic when nothing could be further from the truth.

Read The Pulp Mindset, learn which old authors and magazines you need to read and learn from, and then get out there and write. Join the revolution. 

My own pulp-inspired work can be found here.

Eternal Excuses

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The following is an article I submitted to an actual political website. It wasn’t accepted, but I like it, so I’m sharing it with you here.

“Mansplaning.” “White privilege.” These and other excuses among the Twitterati the morning after the Vice Presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris all avoid one simple thing: the truth. And the truth is that the unlikeable, unqualified Kamala Harris lost.

Of course, this being the Bizarro-World America of the twenty-first century, what actually happened cannot be allowed to permeate the public consciousness. Enter the breathless excuse-making by the media on Harris’s behalf focusing on the evil icky white man being mean to her. And something about a fly.

Progressives can’t help themselves, because it’s all they’ve got. They played the race card with Obama. They played the gender card with Clinton. Now they get to do both. It’s like an early Christmas for these shameless dorks.

So what can those of us not on Team Blue do about this? What’s the proper response to accusations that Mike Pence, and by extension you who want to vote for Donald Trump in a few weeks, are racist and sexist?

I’ll tell you what not to do: deny the accusation. The right does this all the time, and falls into the left’s frame. Many conversations in real life and on-line go like this:

“You’re a racist!”

“No I’m not!”

“Prove it.”

“I have a black friend!”

“That’s what a racist would say!”

And so on. It doesn’t work, it accepts the progressive’s view of what is right and wrong, and worse, it forces you to be on the defensive.

Dialectically speaking, such accusations of racism, sexism, being a Nazi, and general bigotry are not based observable reality. Yet they trigger conservatives so much. Why? Because rhetorically speaking, they hit the core emotions that make up a conservative’s self-identity, and that is judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

Conservatives are not any of these nasty things. They’re decent people repulsed at the idea of associating with groups like the KKK and other assorted neo-Nazis. Hence the flailing denials, which are used as proof of a guilty conscience.

Those of you dialectically minded people reading this might not think it’s this simple, but that’s because you actually operate on facts, logic, and reason. And that’s great, but you are in the vast minority. Most people’s minds are not made up or changed by facts, logic, and reason, but by emotion. This is why rhetoric is such a powerful political weapon. And the best rhetoric is rooted in the truth.

The next best type of rhetoric is that which hits where it hurts. This is what we’re talking about; obviously, the gold standard rhetoric does both, but we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Let’s go back to the VP debate post-mortem. The accusations against Mike Pence are that he got away with all sorts of underhanded tricks by nature of his white male privilege. This is ridiculous, of course, but in today’s America, a white guy can’t be better at a non-white non-guy at anything without nefarious –isms being to blame.

So what do we do in the face of absurd claims such as what we’re seeing from the media? What’s the best rhetorical response? What you need to do is think about why progressives champion these various woke causes: because it makes them feel good to think everyone is equal and nobody is better than anybody else, except for white men, who are the worst.

With this in mind, let’s think about the average progressive’s pain points. Remember: we’re dealing in the realm of emotion. It’s schoolyard stuff, and you may find it distasteful, but it works:

“Mike Pence only won the debate because of racism and sexism.”

“Are you saying that black women need to be protected and can’t handle the big leagues?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying! But the moderator let Pence get away with stuff because he’s a white man!”

“Then why didn’t Harris say anything?”

“Because of white privilege and sexism!”

“Why do you think black women need special treatment? I thought black women were equal or better than men. You don’t think that?”

“Systemic racism!”

“What system? The one that has a black woman as a vice-presidential candidate?”

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

“You think women, and black women especially, should stay out of politics.”

And so on.

It seems childish, and it probably won’t change the other person’s mind, but it will help you avoid becoming demoralized while demoralizing your opponent. We all know that morale is an important part of any conflict.

And at the very least, this kind of rhetorical battling is fun. Embrace the conflict, because it’s not going away any time soon.

Fantasy and Wonder

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This struck a nerve:

Excessive world-building and hyper-detailed magic systems have ruined the fantasy genre nearly beyond repair. pic.twitter.com/km41SgBhaz

— Alexander Hellene

Dreamers and Misfits Cover Reveal

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I am pleased to present to you the cover for my forthcoming book about Rush fans, Dreamers and Misfits, painted by my friend, the super-talented Jesse White. Not only is he a great artist, he’s also a Rush fan himself and a Canadian, so you’ll see he was uniquely qualified to make this cover.

Play “spot the Rush reference” and let me know how many you find.

Expect the book by the last week or two of this month.

Second bit of news: Appendix A to Dreamers and Misfits has been added as a site page here on Amatopia. These are selected survey results I received explicit permission to use. I decided to have this lengthy spreadsheet be online and referenced in the book, instead of being a part of the book, because otherwise it would have added some 400 extra pages, and that’s just crazy.

So keep an eye out for Dreamers and Misfits soon!

And in case anyone wonders where I got the title of the book from:

Worse Than Useless

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Noted mediocrity Bridget Phetasy, famous mainly for showing her boobs online (I’m not joking–she went full topless several times because libertarianism, or something) recently made the oh-so original and incisive observation that “conservatives don’t create culture” when, in fact, conservatives and those on the right have been for years. The thing is, is that it’s both the conservative establishment and edgy so-called new media figures like Ms. Phetasy who ignore us time and time again:

A take so cringe, it was stale three years ago. https://t.co/eLaSoSoUdr

— Alexander Hellene

Signal Boost: Fiendilkfjeld Castle by Matthew Pungitore

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Looking for something gothic and creepy to read as Halloween draws near? Matthew Pungitore’s Fiendilkfjeld Castle is the book for you.

Theodemir Fiendilkfjeld has been having strange dreams for many months. In his dreams, he sees a beautiful woman who is trapped in a castle. Theodemir learns that a missing heiress, Alison, who looks exactly like the woman he has been seeing in his dreams, was last seen at his family’s Gothic castle, Fiendilkfjeld castle, in northern Italy. Theodemir goes there to investigate her disapearance with a detective, Roman, who is Alison’s friend. The castle rests in the region of Fiendilkfjeld, which was dedicated to Theodemir’s ancestors. Believing that Alison could be in danger, Theodemir and Roman want to rescue her, and they hope that she is still alive. During this quest, Theodemir hears rumors about how this region is haunted.

All you fans of gothic horror will love this one. Evocative, pulpy, and most of all intense, Fiendilkfjeld Castle is a perfect read this spooky season. Grab a copy here . . . if you dare.

And man, what a cover!

My own books are also great to read during October. For fans of trippy urban fantasy, there is A Traitor to Dreams, and sci-fi buffs will dig The Last Ancestor.

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I Watched the Presidential Debate Last Night

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It was annoying. It was two guys insulting at each other. The hatred they felt for each other was palpable. This was not a debate. It was a shouting match. No issues were discussed. It was a dick-measuring contest between the two candidates and the moderator.

The whole thing was funny up to a point. And then it was just annoying. Donald Trump treated the entire spectacle with the utter disrespect it deserved, and he treated Joe Biden the same way Joe Biden treated Paul Ryan during the 2012 Vice-Presidential debate, but that didn’t make for an enlightening experience.

It was not serious. We are not a serious nation. There was no way to tell which man was lying, anyway.

Or was there?

Have you ever heard of Gell-Mann Amnesia? Here is late author, absolute legend, and really tall (and therefore trustworthy) man Michael Crichton explaining this phenomenon:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

Put simply: Someone gets a part of a story wrong, or is lying, about something you know a lot about. You then chuckle and carry on listening to that person, and the rest of the news media, as though that lie never happened. The key is to not have this amnesia.

Case in point: in attempting to call Donald Trump’s pro-American manufacturing bona fides into question, Joe Biden said that the U.S. government contracts for too much stuff from overseas, but that if he were President, he’d mandate that the federal government only buy American.

Here’s the thing: I work in government contracting. I know this stuff. And we already have Buy America and Buy American laws on the books. We have for decades.

Without getting too into the weeds, the United States government has a strong preference for buying American-made goods and American services. Further, it prefers sourcing materials from the U.S. Lastly, barring certain exemptions, exceptions, or bilateral trade deals, the U.S. government must buy American, or in cases a certain percentage of materials have to be American, by law.

So I don’t know what Biden was getting at. Was he saying that the U.S. government doesn’t have any Buy American mandates? Was he saying that he would require the government to purchase 100 percent of everything, in all cases, from America, no exceptions or exemptions and bilateral trade deals (such as those with Canada and Mexico) be damned? I don’t know. All I know is that I, personally, know that one of the two candidates was either factually wrong, or was flat-out lying, about something I know about.

And I didn’t forget that.

In any event, the debate was pointless. Candidates and moderators sling claims fast and furious. Nobody changes their minds based on these debates–their only purpose is to fire up one’s base and demoralize the other guy’s. Who won? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. The last presidential election I believe anybody could possibly have been honestly undecided about was Kennedy vs. Nixon in 1960. Everyone else since then knew and knows who they were voting for before the last guy was even inaugurated.

Take a break from election madness and read The Last Ancestor, a deep and FUN sci-fi/sword-and-planet tale. Buy it here!

Is Your Fantasy High or Low? And Does It Matter?

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Genre distinctions are useful. I don’t think they should be condoning, but they’re very good for both readers and writers to understand the interplay or various tropes and their interactions.

I recently asked a question about high fantasy vs. low fantasy.

We all know what high fantasy is.

What’s low fantasy?

— Alexander Hellene

If You Had Any Doubts About Whom They Serve . . .

. . . put them to rest right now, because they’re telling you.

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I am a 40-something attorney and mother who lives in a quiet neighborhood with a yard and a garage full of scooters and soccer balls. I often walk with my children to get ice cream and spend weekends hiking through a national park. I am not the type of person who would normally consider becoming a Satanist, but these are not normal times. 

Like so many other women in the United States, when I learned of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, my first reaction was not grief but fear. I fear that American citizens are inching closer to living in a theocracy or dictatorship and that the checks meant to prevent this from happening are close to eroding beyond repair.

When Justice Ginsburg died, I knew immediately that action was needed on a scale we have not seen before. Our democracy has become so fragile that the loss of one of the last guardians of common sense and decency in government less than two months before a pivotal election has put our civil and reproductive rights in danger like never before. And, so, I have turned to Satanism. 

The fact that the Supreme Court is so important to this country is a damning problem. This lady is in touch with a different reality because she thinks the Supreme Court has been a guardian of “common sense and decency.”

Words fail. Ms. Smith is, quite frankly, insane, probably due to having no real moral focus or code save “Kill all the babies.” And when your soul is empty like this, no wonder you turn to the Satanists.

But wait! Ha ha all the Satan stuff is just to be edgy! It’s totally not a real faith, guys.

Members of the Satanic Temple do not believe in the supernatural or superstition. In the same way that some Unitarians and some Jews do not believe in God, Satanic Temple members do not worship Satan and most are atheists. They are not affiliated in any way with the Church of Satan. Instead, the Satanic Temple uses the devil as a symbol of rebellion.

It’s amazing: with all the symbols of rebellion available for the choosing, they pick the one that symbolizes rebellion against God. What are the odds?

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Acts can influence your thoughts, feelings, and yes, beliefs. LARP like a Satanist long enough and you’ll start to believe it despite your professed lack of belief in the supernatural. You might not believe in all that stuff, but that stuff believes in you.

And anyway, in the next breath she calls it a faith.

Just like other faiths, the Satanic Temple has a code that their members believe in deeply and use to guide their lives. These Seven Fundamental Tenets include that “one should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason,” that “the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions,” and that “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.” 

Sounds like dorm room libertarianism crossed with actual Satanic beliefs (the Hiterian “Triumph of the Will” and all that). Also, I smell a hefty amount of bullshit along with the fire and brimstone, because these doofuses don’t treat everyone with compassion and empathy. How do I know? Because they’re all about killing babies to own Christians and appease their master.

Reading through the Seven Tenets, I was struck by how closely they aligned with the unwritten code I had used to try to guide my own life for several years. I realized, happily, that these were my people and that I had been a Satanist for several years without even knowing it. When Justice Ginsburg’s death suddenly made combating the threats to reproductive rights and a government free from religious interference more urgent, I knew it was time to join them and support their conceptual and legal battles. 

Yeah, no kidding you were a Satanist before you even knew it lady.

Even before Ginsburg’s death, the Supreme Court was unwilling to provide adequate protection for a woman’s right to choose and to control her body. The court was unwilling to keep church and state separate. Now, without her voice of reason on the court ― let alone her vote ― Roe v. Wade is in imminent danger of being overturned not based on legal arguments or scientific reasoning, but because of religious objections to what is a safe and necessary procedure for the women who seek it out after discussion with their physician. Ginsburg’s replacement is all but certain to be vehemently anti-choice, with one of the top contenders belonging to a sect that actually used the term “handmaid” to refer to some women until the popularity of the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” gave the term negative connotations.

Literally The Handmaid’s Tale. You can’t make this stuff up. What planet are we on when the United States can in any way be said to be inches away from a theocracy?

In the hours after Justice Ginsburg’s death, I sat wondering what the future would hold for my daughters. Their ability to live in a country where the religious beliefs of others would not play a role in their right to assert autonomy over their own bodies was suddenly, starkly, in danger. Traditional means of keeping abortion safe and legal seemed woefully inadequate to protect the rights that women in the generation before me had fought so hard to secure. 

Abortion is primarily used as birth control, which is disgusting. Literally nobody is “afraid” of women’s sexuality (whatever the hell that means). People–including half of American women–are rightly aghast at the practice of murdering babies in the womb.

Almost immediately I sought strength in the Satanic Temple’s efforts to turn religious arguments on their head by pushing for religious liberty for their members on an equal basis with believers in the dominant Christian faiths. And this is not just a theoretical push. The temple has launched campaigns and filed lawsuits to compel the government to do this in matters ranging from exemptions from legal mandates to cover birth control to the ability to display religious symbols in government buildings or allow religious clubs in public schools. By pointing out instances where the government has favored Christian rhetoric ― and filing legal challenges to stop it ― the Satanic Temple has transformed belief into action and has demonstrated what freedom fighting truly looks like.

This whacko is upset that a majority Christian nation has laws and morals informed by Christianity. And the sad thing is, legally, these losers are on solid footing. Because that’s what you get in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire with a de-racinated majority that tries to be everything to everybody. Diversity + proximity = war, and you’d better believe that applies to religious diversity as much as ethnic and cultural diversity.

These people are just atheist edgelord assholes with a little bit of clout who want to prove their supposed intellectual superiority over everyone else. You can tell they’re approaching by the fart-cloud scent of these smug asswipes inhaling their own vapors.

The Satanic Temple hopes to appear before the Supreme Court in a case challenging a Missouri abortion law that requires those seeking to terminate their pregnancy to first receive materials asserting that their abortion would end the life of a separate, unique person. The temple argues that these materials violate the deeply held religious beliefs of one of its members regarding bodily autonomy and scientifically reasonable personal choice. The argument the Satanic Temple is using is the same one the Supreme Court effectively endorsed in the Hobby Lobby birth control case, for which Justice Ginsburg wrote the dissent ― that no one should have to follow a law that violates their deeply held religious beliefs. If a Christian should not have to do so based on their religion, a Satanist should not have to either. This is what equality under the law means on a fundamental level.

See what I mean? This is why America is doomed to fail: because our jurisprudence has brought us to the point where not wanting to kill babies and seeing the unborn as a unique and separate life a religious belief one should feel free to ignore if it violates one’s personal feelings. We’re not talking about not standing for the national anthem or whenever. We’re talking about infanticide. And shove the “The Old Testament totally condones abortion!” canard, all you spergs out there.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, once again, that lawyers ruin everything.

This is an organization I want standing up for my rights and for my daughters’. While I support more mainstream groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Church and State, my research has shown that the Satanic Temple is truly in line with my beliefs about protecting our First Amendment rights and fighting laws that promote or are based on religious doctrine and that it is willing to use radical, creative and yet legally sound strategies to make its case.

I was able to become a mother when I wanted on my own terms. Throughout my pregnancy, I had access to scientifically accurate information and the ability to make informed choices with my doctor. While I never had an abortion, I want the same opportunities to choose for my own daughters. I am far from certain these rights will exist 10 years from now when they may be deciding when, how or even whether to start their own families. 

There is a real chance that the Supreme Court will be lost for a generation or more to justices appointed for their religious beliefs rather than a deep understanding of the Constitution or a desire for justice to be carried out on an impartial basis. Because of this, I believe that the Satanic Temple ― and its members’ dedication to fighting for true freedom ― represents our best, last defense against anti-choice lawmakers who are seeking to assert power over women’s bodies and take away our right to choose. We need creative, resolute thinkers who are willing to stand up for what they believe in and take concrete action to do so, and the Satanic Temple is full of those kind of people. I am proud to now count myself among their ranks. 

I’ll bet you are proud, lady. I’ll bet you are.

Everyone who cares about women having autonomy over their bodies should care about efforts to use religion to chip away at this right. We need to think outside the box to challenge what is coming and what is already here. The Satanic Temple is already doing that, and by becoming one of its members, I believe I have joined a community of people who will stop at nothing to safeguard my family’s rights ― and all of our rights ― when they are at their most vulnerable.

I care about the right of babies not to be murdered in the womb. The fact that pregnancy is such a bad thing to these people speaks volumes about their real beliefs. And I mean belief in the spiritual sense, because as we know, Moloch must be appeased.

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Battle lines are being drawn, and this stuff is all in the open now. Fence-sitting and being “above it all” only help the enemy. The only downside to the so-called “Satanic Panic” was that it didn’t go far enough.

Let’s create a culture of life instead of death. I’m doing my part. So are fellow writers like Declan Finn, Adam Lane Smith, Brian Neimeier, Jon Mollison, Bradford C. Walker, and Jon Del Arroz, among others. We got this.

Can’t Write? Don’t Blame the Internet.

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Recently, I made the trenchant observation that writers of yore produced a whole lot of work without any of the modern conveniences we take for granted. If they could do that, surely any “aspiring writer” these days can do the same:

Charles Dickens wrote by hand with a feather and cranked out several lengthily novels.

You can write 500 words a day on your computer.

— Alexander Hellene