Mark Teppo's Blog, page 3

Moorcock at 75

I’m going to range a bit, so let’s not bury the lede: today is Michael Moorcock’s 75th birthday. The image topping this post is a random assortment of covers for books that he has written. Books that were highly influential to me as a kid. That are still influencing me now. Thank you, sir. I hope there are many more to come.

I’ve been wanting to write something about the pulps for a little while now. Dean Wesley Smith wrote a blog post a little while back called “Pulp Speed,” wherein he breaks down some numbers for varying speeds of what he calls pulp writing. Let’s be honest. Anything these days that is falling into the category of Indie Publishing Put Food on the Table can probably be short-handed as “pulp.” And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Food on the table is a good thing. When all is said and done, my recent forays into traditional publishing haven’t been stellar in getting more contracts to fall into my lap, but that’s probably due to my lack of eager follow-through as much as anything else. (And I’ve been busy with bootstrapping Resurrection House over the last year.) All of which is to say: yes, pulp writing; let’s do some of that.

Michael Moorcock, over the years, has been outspoken about the pace at which he wrote some of his early books. Many of those haven’t aged well for me (rather, I think I’ve aged out of them), but there is undeniably a time and place and audience for those sorts of books. The fact that they’ve managed to survive at all (and still be in print) is certainly a testament to the underlying energy of Mr. Moorcock’s writing and imagination. Did you know that the origin of the names for the ancient gods of Granbretan (from the Hawkmoon books) are none other than the Beatles? Yeah, totally missed that when I was a kid. Now? It strikes me as a funny riff grabbed out of the ether by a writer who is plowing hard on a deadline. Like, “started on Friday, done by Sunday” sort of deadline.

They call this a working job, I hear. The sort you show up for and spend eight hours or more a day for. Crazy talk, I know. But hours worked = content created = money from readers. It’s pretty straight forward, isn’t it? Once upon a time, we used to ask ourselves whether we’d want be read in academia or be read by millions of paying readers. I was young then, and answered that I’d prefer the recognition offered by academia. So young; so foolish. Nowadays, the lure of the paying reader is mighty strong.

On this occasion of Mr. Moorcock’s 75th birthday, it’s worth noting that this is nothing new. The Paperback Fanatic, a zine out of the UK dedicated to the pulps of the ’60s and ’70s, has been cataloging the back in the day equivalent to the frenzied ebook market of these last few years. It’s still a content creator’s market, really. The trick is, as always, making content.

I’d like to do a little of that in 2015. It seems like a good year to make some books. I’ve got some good role models to follow.

The Immortality of Storytelling

My dear friend Mark Lewis passed away last Sunday. I wasn’t aware that he was anything other than healthy, and so the news has come as quite a shock. I’ve known Mark for . . . a long time now, and he is—was, Goddamnit—a storyteller by profession and inclination. Hell, go read his obituary at the Eugene Register-Guard. They run down who he was (is! Goddamnit!) better than I can.

He officiated my wedding. Probably the only man qualified to bless the union of a Jewish empath and a pragmatic occultist. On the Winter Solstice, no less.

He believed in the power of narrative, in the eternally magical gift of storytelling. I recall visiting he and his wife, playing Scrabble (and making up words), and listening to him talk about being true to that spark in your soul. He fought hard over the years to do what he wanted as a career, and it wasn’t always an easy path, but he did it. At the time—I was such a young fool—I would occasionally think him a bit mad to hold so tight to that belief. But you just have to look at the list of things that he accomplished to know, without any doubt, that he made a life out being a storyteller.

It is not lost on me that I’ve made some career choices in the last few years that sync up pretty well with that burning passion I saw in Mark. And I don’t find them the least bit mad now. He’d laugh about that. He was right more often than not about the important things.

He played Santa Claus on an episode of Leverage. Though, technically, he played a mall Santa who was unjustly shown the door. The Leverage crew helped out—like they do—and, well, you should go watch it for the last few scenes. Especially with the holidays upon us.

One of the characters in the ETERNAL QUEEN project is the immortal pirate captain, Lucian Moore. Modeled in one part on Francis Drake. I realize now that quite a few other parts are modeled on Mark. And that’s what immortality is, isn’t it? How those dear to us find themselves never forgotten.

Get Your Reindeer

I’ve been remiss to talk up Rudolph! because I’ve been waiting for all the various format releases to get lined up, and that’s taken much longer than I ever anticipated. Now that we’re actually within spitting distance of Christmas, it’s probably time to start that machinery. So, yes, Rudolph! is out. You should go buy a couple of copies because it’s the best damn Christmas present you can get for those in your extended circle of friends.

In fact, it’s available as part of the Holiday Storybundle. Kevin J. Anderson has this great little platform where he offers bundles of ebook content in a very “pay what you will” manner. In this case, you get ten ebooks for around $20, which should be enough Christmas cheer for anyone. I was delighted to be asked to participate in this bundle, more so because, you know, Rudolph!. And it tickles me to no end that one of the other participants in this bundle is Dean Wesley Smith, who actually bought the original version of the opening section of Rudolph! many years ago.

If you prefer to keep your Christmas reading to a manageable level, you can get copies of Rudolph! at just about any retailer you like, physical or virtual. Everyone has copies, so don’t be shy.

If you’re the type who really prefers an audio book, well, you’re on hold. Sorry. ACX has been taking their sweet sweet time. It’s been uploaded and in the channel for nearly two months now, and we’re assured it is “headed to retail,” but that’s nearly as nebulous as “waiting for QA.” I’ll be sure to blast out a note when it is actually available, but trust me, we’re just as frustrated about the delay as you are. Especially since Emil Nicholas Gallina utterly rocked the reading.

Here’s a sample of his work on Rudolph, in fact.

Rudolph! is the first book to be released under my own banner at my own publishing company. This is the first step in the creation of a sustainable revenue stream that is distinct from all the travails and headaches of the traditional publishing models. It’s also an important part of how I get to keep writing as a career option. When folks ask how they can help, this is the answer. Buy an author’s books, especially the ones that generate real revenue for them.

Liking and retweeting and all that social media stuff is great to get the word out, and I love every bit of it that my own extended circle of friends does for me, but likes and tweets don’t pay my mortgage. People buying, reading, and sharing my books does. I appreciate all of your support, and I hope that Rudolph!–as quirky as it may seem–brings you some joy this holiday season.

Cimarronin Issue 3

The third issue of Cimarronin is out this week. You can find it at Comixology or if you bought it direct from Jet City Comics via Amazon.com, you should have it on your Kindle already (via the magic of serialization). Or, if you have been waiting to get the set, you can do that too now with the Comixology Collected Edition.

So, what’s been happening with our heroes? Well, Kitazume is lost in a flashback, Irgen is lost (but not really), and Luis is worried that he has made a grievous error. Or two. And there’s a fight sequence. Or two. But hey, is that the OMVI sigil we see on Father De Viray’s ring? Well now, isn’t that mysterious, especially since we saw it in Luis’s possession at the end of last issue . . .

This rounds out the first part of Cimarronin, known as “A Samurai in New Spain.” Early next year, we’ll be back with “Fall of the Cross,” the second trio of issues with our intrepid players. Until then, enjoy!

NaNo-wayback

Nanowrimo—National Novel Writing Month—starts in November. A friend recently asked what this was, and I—somewhat cheekily—replied: “It’s what we call a ‘workday,’ but everyone else makes a month-long ordeal out of it.” I re-enabled my account, and discovered that last year’s effort was supposed to be the start of ETERNAL QUEEN ONE, and I logged all of 3K before I wandered off to do something else. And the site design now supports a decade plus of badges and icons and stuff, which makes me wonder how far back my own efforts go.

Spelunking the archives turned up the following conversation in 2004, about that year’s project: I have a children’s book writer who burned out and is living in Montana as a survivalist as my protagonist.  He wrote a series of books about a goat named Barnabas.  His last manuscript (which was never published and is partially why he went nuts) was:  Barnabas and the Apocalypse.  The tagline read:  “Where Barnabas stares into the Great Abyss and the Great Abyss stares back.”

In 2003, I pitched a process blog to go along with that year’s entry (THE BOOK OF LIES). The archives of that effort (called SYMBOLIC) are still out there. THE BOOK OF LIES was something that wasn’t supposed to be a CODEX book, but after a few iterations, I realized it was better positioned as such, and changed some names. Bits and pieces, catalogued as ANGEL TONGUE, still rattle around my head, but they’ve felt like old parts that didn’t fit anymore. However, now that I’m looking at them again (like, perhaps, the entry on the Lunar Society), they may be the right parts for the project and I’ve just been hanging on to the wrong schematic these last few years.

And then I went dark until 2007 or so, and even then it was all CODEX rewrites, POTEMKIN, and unfinished efforts at a SPRAWL book. FOREWORLD in 2010. EARTH THIRST in 2011. It seems like there is other wreckage along the way. Perhaps I will crawl through the archives further. Now is the time to write books, after all . . .

Ghost Games

Tomorrow night, the Cabiri begin their run of Ghost Games: 13 Witches, their yearly dinner theater show of spooky tales and aerialist magic. I had a chance to sit in on a pre-performance discussion about the upcoming show last weekend, where we got to see a beautiful performance celebrating the three faces of Hecate. White-gowned initiates spinning and performing on a triangular platform. In sync with their poses and movements until the very end, when they break free and create a form that both rises and descends through the triangular form.

All I can offer you is picture of a shadow of the platform and one of the altars. Fitting, I think, for the ephemeral nature of these performances by the Cabiri. This year’s performance concerns the power of witches—thirteen of them, in fact. And yes, as the number ’13’ has been powerful for me this year (offered to me by a Mesopotamian witch, in fact), I suspect this show is going to reach right in and grab my guts. Shake ‘em hard.

I had meant to write this post as a call to attend the show, but as I’m gathering links to share, I realize the run has sold out. So, um, well, that’s fabulous. In which case, let me offer you a link to the source material for the story of Erichtho, one of the witches whose story will be told. And Peter Grey’s essay on “Rewilding Witchcraft”, which calls upon us to reclaim our wild spirits before catastrophe envelopes us.

Cimarronin Issue 2

The second issue of Cimarronin is out this week. You can find it at Comixology or if you bought it direct from Jet City Comics via Amazon.com, you should have it on your Kindle already (via the magic of serialization).

We—meaning your earnest team of myself, Ellis Amdur, Charles C. Mann, Neal Stephenson, and Robert Sammelin—take you, our devoted reader, to New Spain, where we discover a bit more of the big picture that Luis is hinting at. His family—scions of Spanish nobility—have a silver mine in New Spain, and it’s constantly being robbed by local bandits. Part of Luis’s job in Manila was to have been hiring masterless samurai (ronin) to help guard the silver caravans. Luis comes back with one: Kitazume. Which doesn’t go over so well with Luis’s brother. But that may be all part of Luis’s clever plan . . .

And then El Gato shows up, and things get complicated . . .

[The whole samurai guarding the silver caravans? That’s all true. It’s the genesis of the project, and you can read about it in Charles C. Mann’s awesome book, 1493.]

Pipedream Comics reviewed the first issue. Their summary: “While not groundbreaking enough to receive full marks, Cimarronin is still a truly outstanding book made from a great script, fantastic art and inhabited by genuinely interesting, three dimensional characters. While it has some flaws in places, these can’t prevent this first installment from being an epic tale which deserves to be read.”

Escapist Magazine says: “It’s not the most outstanding debut issue (a little more background would go a long way), nor it the most deep story, but it is solid fun.”

Both of which I find to be interesting commentary from the comic book world. Novel readers are a little more lenient, it would seem, in waiting for backstory to be presented. We’ll have to see how folks feel as we move along because we dole out the backstory quite regularly as we progress.

Worldspinner

I have done my time in the basements of friends’ houses, playing endless variants of Dungeons and Dragons. We were White Box kids, and I remember saving my allowance for many many weeks to finally get my own copy. Our copies fell apart from use in a couple of years, and by that time, we had moved on Judges Guild supplements (City Sate of the Invincible Overlord!) and Iron Crown Enterprise’s Arms Law. By the time D&D revved to the 3rd edition, we had all moved on to our in-house variants.

But throughout all this time, maps were always in short supply. We used the CSotIO many, many times. Turning it upside down. Turning it ninety degrees one direction or the other. Penciling things in, erasing them three months later and writing new names. Maps of the terrain outside the city? Crude, at best.

Which is why I’m excited about what Worldspinner is doing with their Kickstarter. They’re building an online tool that creates a fabulously sexy map. And it comes as pre-populated with as many or as few fun things to do as you like. Cities. Points of Interest. Narrative arcs.

“What sort of narrative arcs?” you ask. Well, that’s where themes come in. Themes are premium content that you can layer onto your map. As their Kickstarter progresses through its stretch goals, these themes get pretty extensive. Mur Lafferty is offering Tales for the Stealing, Bill Webb gives us Dragons!, and Lisa Smedman adds Arcane Portals. Those are the goals that have been unlocked already. Goals still to come include, well, me.

If Worldspinner hits $50K, then I’m going to give you pirates and sea monsters. I’m going to turn the world of the Eternal Queen into a place you can visit. Renaissance-style High Fantasy with big nasty things that live in the corners of the map that say “Here Be Monsters” because, well, why shouldn’t there be monsters there?

And as we’re still shopping the Eternal Queen Cycle, this little bump in interest won’t hurt my feelings at all.

VCON

This weekend is VCON, Vancouver’s premier SF, fantansy, and games convention (Vancouver, BC, for those who live along the I-5 corridor). I’ll be in attendance, doing double-duty as both writer and publisher, which means I’ll be EVERYWHERE. Otherwise, I’ll be at the Resurrection House table in the dealers’ room where we’ll have four of the five fall titles for sale.

That’s right, Canada. You get first crack at The Jonah Watch. Make me feel remiss for not bringing more copies, would you?

Schedule-wise, here’s what I’ll be doing.

FRI OCT 3 @ 4pm

WHAT IS MAGIC REALISM?

We’ll be moderated by Bruce Taylor, Mr. Magic Realism himself, in fact.

SAT OCT 4 @ 11am

THE INFAMOUS 90 MINUTE OUTLINE YOUR NOVEL WORKSHOP

Oft-requested, occasionally done, this is the workshop where I run you through how to plot a novel from start to finish in an hour and a half. It is possible. It is even fun. But you shouldn’t take my word for it; Heather Roulo wrote a nice write-up of the workshop back in the day, and you can still read it here.

SAT OCT 4 @ 12:30pm

ACADEMIE DUELLO DEMO

(I’m not participating in this, but Devon Boorman will be demonstrating his masterful sword skills, and as a fan of Academie Duello, I can attest that this’ll be worth your time.)

SAT OCT 4 @ 2pm

PITCH SESSION

Yep. I’ll be taking pitches. For novels of the non-YA persuasion.

SAT OCT 4 @ 6pm

LIVE ACTION SLUSH

Wherein the panelists attempt to pass judgement on slush read aloud without coming off like total asses.

SUN OCT 5 @ 10am

SMALL VERSUS BIG VERSUS SELF

We’ll be talking about publishing, not other . . . less publicly appropriate topics.

SUN OCT 5 @ 11am

GETTING STARTED AND REACHING THE FINISH LINE

Wherein we will discuss how to actually start the damn book as well as finishing the f*ing thing.

SUN OCT 5 @4pm

FINDING INSPIRATION

Not necessarily a follow-on to the previous panel about starting and finishing, but tangentially related in that “What the hell do I do in the middle?” way.

CIMARRONIN

A GRAPHIC NOVEL written in collaboration with ELLIS AMDUR, CHARLES C. MANN, and NEAL STEPHENSON. Published by Jet City Comics on 9/24/2014.

SUMMARY: A disgraced outcast samurai living in early seventeenth-century Manila, Kitazume is contemplating ritual suicide when a divine force (of a sort) intervenes: Luis, a rogue Jesuit priest and Kitazume’s longtime friend. At Luis’s insistence, the samurai agrees to help smuggle a Manchu princess to Mexico. But little does he know that he’s really been dragged into an epic struggle for power.

Several forces have their malicious sights set on the New World’s rich silver mines: an insurgent Spanish duke, Chinese political interests, and the escaped African slaves known as the cimarrónes. And working in secret among them is a mysterious, long-lost order that has its own plans for the precious metal.

As politics and greed collide, Kitazume must call upon his deadly skills once more. But he’s not just fighting to save his friends–he’s fighting for the redemption he so desperately craves.

A FOREWORLD SAGA adventure.

FILE UNDER: Historical adventure stories

WHERE TO BUY: Amazon | Comixology