E.S. Lell's Blog, page 4

I have not actually died….

True story.

 

I’ve seriously been just pounding away at the Fifth Key manuscript. I’ve written more than 60,000 words in the past three weeks, bringing the total up to around 110,000 words at this point. Things are beginnig to come to a head now, so soon we should be able to start tieing off some of the plot threads I’ve had dangling about here and there. I’ve really been going gangbusters though, doing 2k-5k a day on most days and the juices have been flowing the whole time. I’ve only had to pause and reflect a couple times, so I think it’s going to finish out pretty well.

I also think I’ve got all of the big pieces into place, and all of the plot threads picked back up again. So at this point, it is just a matter of crafting the last few scenes. I have a lot to do, but I think I have it all sorted out now and just need to sit down and get through it.

 

Still on target to finish by the end of September though, which will give editing (I’ve already given the first 100,000 words to my editor so she can begin) and test readers almost two more full months over what we had last year finishing the Fourth Key!

 

Okay, I need to get back to work, but before I go, I wanted to say there is a sale going on at the Kalijor Press Book Store now through Friday the 21st of September (2012). If you pop over and fill your cart up with Kalijor goodness, then use coupon code: PIRATA then you can save 15% on your entire order. A great opportunity to pick up the hard covers, if you don’t have a set yet.

 

Alrght, I’m off for real now, thanks folks. I’ll return to more regular/frequent updates once the book is finished. Until then, I’ll talk at you the next time I come up for air!

 

End of Line…

 

Paul

TactiCon debrief, plus books on sale!

Heyas, everyone!

 

So, TactiCon was an awesome experience. The staff were amazing, the attendees were a delight, and the Kalijor games yielded great feedback and positive vibes from everyone who played. There is every indication that the Kalijor RPG is going to be a huge success! We still have a ways to go, but the end result will be well worth the effort.

In other news, the Fifth Key is still coming along well. I am on track to have the first draft finished by the end of September.

On that note, my printer is having a sale through the end of this week (Friday, September 7th)/ Head on over to the Kalijor Press Book Store, and use Coupon code: CITHARA20 to save 20% on your entire order!

Our next convention will be Mile Hi Con, October 19-21 where we will be on some panels and really getting more involved in the reader community! We don’t know yet what panels we’ll be on, but there will be an announcement just as soon as we do.

Over the next couple of months, we’ll be working on the Art book, and some new promotional materials, bookmarks, cards, maybe even some banners…

 

Before I sign off to get back to work on the Fifth Key, I want to welcome all of our new readers and ask you to like the Facebook page for Kalijor Press. All news and announcements will be made there first, so if you’re waiting for an upcoming project, that’s the best way to keep abreast of things!

Stay tuned for more.

 

End of line…

 

Paul

TactiCon Tomorrow!

Hello everyone.

I know updates have been a bit sparse lately, but beleive me when I say it will be worth the silence. I’ve written almost 20,000 words in teh Fifth key over the past week and change since returning from GenCon! I have set a goal to have the first draft done by end of September and in teh hands of my editor for initial cleanup. At this point we are ahead of last year’s schedule for the Fourth Key, so I see no reason to expect that the conclusion to the main story arc won’t be able to debut at StarFest in April!

I’ve also been tweaking the RPG a bit based upon feedback and testing results. This work has been pretty limited, as I’ve been focused on the novel, but it is happening. Honestly, the mechanics seem pretty solid. We still have a lot of testing to get through (magic, abilities, and hacking/cyberspace in particular), but they all function pretty similarly, so it should go pretty quickly once we get under full steam.

To that end, I am beginning to run public games at conventions and other venues. Case in point, we will be at Tacticon this weekend, beginning Friday August 31, through Sunday evening, September 2. I will be running Kalijor games on Saturday, one beginning at 9am, and the next at 2pm. The game should run around two hours and change, plus a little time at the end to debrief and get feedback from those of you who participate. We will also have a table in the dealer’s room where you will be able to find Kalijor books and art prints for your collection! TactiCon is in Aurora, CO at the Red Lion Hotel at I-225 and Parker Rd.

 

I hope to see you all there and I will update again next week after the con with more information and a post-con debriefing!

 

 

Tacticon this weekend!

Just a reminder that Kalijor Press will be at Tacticon in Aurora this weekend. We’ll be in the dealer’s room Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and I will be running Kalijor RPG games Saturday at 9am and 1pm so come on down to see us and check out the new game as it takes shape!

Location is the Red Lion Hotel, Denver South East (at I-225 and S. Parker Rd.)

And we’re back on the air!

Hello!

So, we’re back from GenCon. We had an awesome time, and are looking forward to next year’s opportunity.

Thanks to some very helpful and caring people, I was able to get away from the table a few times and actually see and experience some of the convention. It was pretty cool (although I was constantly wanting to get back to the table ‘just in case’, so I suspect I’ll never be able to truly divorce myself from that) and I got to see a bunch of great stuff. In particular, we went to see’The Gamers’ live event, which was hilariously funny, and after that they went right into the filming of their final few scenes for their new movie, ‘The Hand of Fate’. It was an amazing good time that I am overjoyed to have been able to participate in. Of course, it didn’t hurt that a good friend of mine happened to be able to participate in the shooting, interacting directly with one of the main characters, while in costume as Riana. Really looking forward to seeing the final film now!

We met a bunch of great folks, and hopefully have a few more fans out there (welcome to each of you, and thank you for joining us).

While there, I was able to run one Kalijor RPG play test. The games went into the catalogue very late, but we still managed to get a player to come check it out. Things seemed to go pretty well. There were a couple little hiccups that will lead to adjustments in the game, but on the whole, the system seems to be working. I am very much looking forward to seeing how it works with some more people where at Tacticon on the 31st.

I’ve put a couple new photo galleries up on the Facebook page, so please feel free to check those out and leave a few comments for others if you were there, or happen to be in any of the images. As for me, I am going to finish wrapping up from the con, order a few more copies of the First Key to restore stock, then get back to writing the Fifth Key. My goal at this point is to finish the book by the end of September.

 

I hope all is well with all of you, and I very much look forward to seeing you all at the next event!

End of Line…

 

Paul

Sorry for the silence, but… GenCon!

Hey all!

 

I know I’ve been quiet this week. Sorry about that. My eldest and I have been visiting some friends in Ohio. We mostly just hung out and chatted, helped with costuming and cooked (I love to cook when I have time). We also visited the US Air Force Museum, which was incredible. I highly recommend you check it out if you have the means.

 

That said, we are now in Indianapolis getting ready to start our first day of GenCon! Kalijor Press is set up at table C in Author’s Ave, which is looking right across the aisle at the artists section. We have piles of books and prints by David Magoun to sell, and we have a short story in the GenCon anthology, ‘Missing Pieces III’!

 

The hall opens at 10, so come and see us, and all the other hard working authors and artists at the con this weekend!

 

Also, I’ll be running Kalijor RPG campaigns at 1pm today, tomorrow, and Saturday in the Marriott ballroom III. I have space for up to ten players so bring a friend or two and come check the new game out while you’re here!

 

Okay, I’m off to make a cup of coffee and get ready for the first day of con. I’ll see y’all here!

 

End of line…

Paul

I’m no expert….

I just wanted to say that, while I have chosen to share some of my thoughts and feelings about writing, I think it is important for folks to know that I am in no way an expert. I’ve published a few books, and I keep writing and publishing, but that doesn’t mean I really know anything.

 

Sure, I’ve learned a lot, but every time I think I’ve hit a milestone, and I turn to look back at what I’ve accomplished, I always have that tense moment when I face front again, and see the light years I have yet to go! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not scared. Okay, maybe a little intimidated. But still, the journey is a huge part of the appeal for me.

 

I do this (writing) for the love of the craft. I do it because there is a compulsion to tell stories and a need to make my work better and better. I learn something (usually much more than something) every time I write another one. Every time I push the ‘publish’ button, I do so knowing that I have further expanded my own library of skills and knowledge.

 

I suspect that I have ‘teacher’ and ‘mentor’ in my DNA. I am an introvert by nature, but the process of ‘blazing a publicity trail’ for my books has brought out more and more of my deeply hidden extrovert. Every time someone asks me a question about writing or publishing, I light up at the opportunity; not to brag or show off, but to help. To share knowledge. Disseminate understanding!

 

I am a firm believer in the philosophy of, ‘Give a person a fish, feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, feed them for a lifetime.’ I love the energy that is shared between us as information and ideas begin to flow. I adore the opportunity to see the ‘ah ha’ light go on in peoples’ eyes. Maybe it’s because I am a father, or maybe it’s because I spent a decade teaching, training, and evaluating technicians in a past life/career. Maybe it’s just in my nature to nurture. In any case, I never claim to know everything, and I never even claim that what I know is right, or the only way (as it almost certainly is not the only way).

 

I learn most of my skills via the school of hard knocks and I am of the opinion that any time I can help someone else avoid a knock to the head, I want to. Sure, there are some things (and some people) that must be learned the hard way. After all, some lessons must be lived. But if I can help, I generally want to, and am excited to.

 

I’m not putting this out here to avoid liability, or for some other legal reasons. I’m just thinking that we should all be of the understanding that, nothing I say is ‘gospel’. There are no ‘one size fits all’ solutions or methodologies to writing or publishing. The bad thing about learning the hard way is that more often than not, learning something the hard way teaches you to ~do~ it the hard way.  The key, for me, is to always be willing to listen when someone else talks about a (potentially) better way.

 

So, I guess what all of this is about is this: Don’t be afraid to take risks. Don’t be afraid to learn something the hard way. But, if you can find someone who can help you make it easier, or better, don’t close yourself off to an opportunity for improvement just because your knowledge came about after a hard-fought battle.

A Moment of Reflection…

Please pardon me while I digress from my normal blog tone for a moment. I had this on my mind and I figured, since I am trying to do some worth-while writing here these days, it might be worth exploring these thoughts and feelings a bit.

I have very few hard rules in my life. I try to be flexible and live as flexibly and open-minded as possible. The scientific method isn’t just useful for problem solving and discovery. It’s also a good way to go through life. Form theories, look for evidence to support those theories, but always be open to evidence that points a different direction, and be willing to change your theory when the evidence says you should.

That said, I do have one pretty rigid rule. I don’t normally get involved in, let alone instigate, conversations involving politics, or religion.

That said, I would like to take a moment to say that my youngest boy and I stayed up Sunday night, August 5, 2012, to watch the MSL, or Curiosity rover, land on Mars. You may be asking what the heck this has to do with politics or religion but really, the answer should be obvious. Politics and religion regularly stand in the way of such stupendous feats of reasoning and science. It’s to the point that I myself sometimes forget that there is still a place in our world for the amazing things these incredibly talented minds are doing all over the world.

Sitting there in the middle of the night, on a work night, no less, with my boy next to me, watching the nervous faces and wringing hands of that room full of brilliant people reminded me of the days in grade school when space exploration was so much on the forefront of society that they would stop school, pull all the kids into the gym, and fire up a little 20 inch television so we could all watch the space shuttle launch. It was a thing of beauty. There was a certain majesty to it, and what it represented, that I have not felt since. Until last night watching EDL operations for Curiosity with my kid.

During breaks in the pre-landing transmission we talked about what the landing meant, what the rover was for, and why it was important. I was very glad to hear him speak about what it meant to him and what he hopes it will find. It was very refreshing. I know that my boys are mostly aware of these things, we talk very openly at our home and encourage questioning and discovery, but I also know that we are in the minority. I’ve met other people’s kids. And their parents.

I’m not saying my kids are better than anyone else’s, mind you. Nor am I saying that there are a ton of bad parents out there. I’m simply saying that, in the not so distant past (a few months now), NASA launched and recovered the space shuttle for the last time. Ever. A decades-long space program, with multiple vehicles that were each designed to run hundreds of missions came to an end with a whimper. My children would not have even known it had happened, if we hadn’t talked about it. Both the launch, and the landing were mentioned en passant on the evening news, and no mention of it was made at school, let alone a mass assembly or even streaming of the events to individual classrooms, as technology would now allow.

I know that the cancelling of the shuttle program was sort of necessary, although I take issue with the timing and methodology. I also feel that moving a lot of those activities off onto private corporations is probably a good move, in the long run. However, I feel that stopping our own launch operations while we still have need to be in space regularly was short-sighted to the point of complete lunacy. Our government (I am a US citizen, if any reading this did not know), continues to slash funding and eliminate support for space exploration, just as they do with the funding and support for the teachers and mentors that are there to inspire and teach our children, so that they can grow up to be the next generation of scientists, engineers, and adventurers that drive us, as a whole people, one world, off of this rock and out into the unknown.

Don’t get me wrong here either. I’m not itching to get off-planet (although I think it would be quite the adventure and would certainly never turn down the opportunity to do so safely) but I feel that we as a people MUST get off-planet. We need to get free of this world and spread ourselves out; establish colonies and advance ourselves as a whole. We are in a cosmic shooting gallery, ladies and gentlemen. And the old adage of not putting all your eggs in one basket was never more true than it is with our survival as a species. Which isn’t even to mention all of the amazing discoveries and advances that are waiting for us out there!

Well, this has gone a bit long, and I guess I’m rambling a bit, so I’ll stop. But I felt a need to get this out there. Because I’m not sure it’s being said in enough places or ways. Please, encourage your children, and their children. Speak to your neighbors and family. Bring back the spirit of adventure that put space travel on the front page again and again. Teach kids to question. Then teach them how to find the answers. We, as a nation, have fallen down. But to borrow a line from a recent film, “why do we fall down? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up!”

Help us. Help yourself. Write your representatives in Washington D.C. and tell them to put money back into the schools. Back into science. Back into the future of the human race. I can’t do it alone. Only together are we strong enough.

And if you see anyone involved in the MSL program, you shake their hand and say thank you to them. What happened last night was nothing short of spectacular.

Books on sale through August 10

Hey everyone, and welcome to all you new folks out there!

 

Just a quick note to say that books are on sale at 20% off over at the Kalijor Press Book Store. Just drop in, fill your cart, and use cupon code: ASTOUND at checkout to save.

Sale is on through the end of Friday, August 10th.

 

 

In other news, I will be ont eh road to Ohio that day. Going to spend a few days with some friends before GenCon begins on the 16th. Still no word on whether I’ll actually be running Kalijor games there yet or not, but I’ll be ready to do so if it goes through. If not, I hope to see you all at the table either way! Remember, we’re featured in the GenCon authors’ short story compilation “Missing Pieces III’ this year, so snatch a copy and bring it by for an autograph!

 

Okay, more ‘serious’ posts resume tomorrow. I hope to see you all soon.

 

End of Line…

 

Paul

Villains 101

Bad Guys, villains, antagonists, those that stand against our heroes. Making a villain is, in theory, a simple enough affair. They should be despicable, and the polar opposite of our protagonist, right?

 

I suppose that is one way to go, and it certainly can, and does work. It’s easy for a villain who is the exact opposite of our hero to be evil, because if our hero is good, then their opposite is evil, right? But what if your hero isn’t the standard definition of good? What if you want a layered, complex bad guy with motivations that are not so different from our protagonist? Throughout history, very few villains have truly thought of themselves as evil, right? Most of them think, feel, truly believe that they are fighting for a just cause and that others just don’t properly understand what it is they are trying to accomplish.

 

How does your main character respond when their adversary is so like themselves that they can truly see what it is they are trying to accomplish? They can understand their motivations and sympathize with them, but there is still that nugget of difference between them that makes one see that the ends justify the means, while the other has morals that keep them from getting to that end because of what stands in the way.

 

As an example of the polar opposites, take the classic arch-rivalry between Holmes and Moriarty. Here you had two brilliant, hyper-analytical and amazingly observant minds pitted against one another. One, the perceived ‘good guy’ a force of chaos that uses his powers for justice and order, while the other, who is an extremely disciplined and methodical individual, fighting to create utter chaos. Certainly this is an incredible example of this dynamic and it leaves the reader with a very clear understanding of who the villain is even though he is using forces normally associated with ‘good’ to produce outcomes normally associated with ‘evil’.

 

Now, think about Eric Lehnsherr (Magneto) and Charles Xavier (Professor X). Here you have two individuals who have essentially grown up together (not from a young age, but through most of their later formative years). They both want the same thing, a peaceful world for mutants to live in. But Charles wants to help the regular people understand and accept the mutants, and vice versa, while Eric wants mutants to be the only people left in the world. They both have a deep understanding of one-another’s motivations, past, and reasoning for wanting what they want, but neither one can reconcile the morality of the other’s position. Charles because he abhors the loss of life and black or white nature of Eric’s methodology, and Eric because he believes in his heart of hearts that Xavier’s perfect world of understanding and equality can never truly exist.

Personally, I like both kinds of villains and I try to incorporate both into my stories. Sometimes the same stories. Having a bad guy that your character can truly hate… or maybe just pity, as I tend not to use the word hate in earnest, is an easy way to get them motivated and keep them engaged. These bad guys tend to be more like forces of nature and the need to stop them is obvious. But having a bad guy in the story who your protagonist can identify with, and see where they are coming from and why they do what they do can add layers upon layers of emotional investment between them, and the reader. This gives your antagonist the opportunity to develop into a real person, just as much as your protagonist can. They can come to care for one another as brothers, or extended family, even protecting or rushing to the aid of the other when someone else enters the picture to disrupt their status quo.

 

Like true sibling rivalry, they fight tooth and nail, disagreeing at every opportunity as they try to reach what they each see as the same goal, done the ‘right way’, but anyone else who involves themselves in their conflict is likely to get attacked by one, or both of them as an outsider to their private little affair.

 

In some of my villains, I have tried to blend both of these ‘evil’ archetypes into a single individual. As an example, Gregory Shantal is seen by Riana as her arch nemesis. She wants him dead and sees everything he does as a move toward chaos, even though she doesn’t yet truly understand what he is about. Externally, she sees him as her polar opposite. Chaos incarnate. Not a care in the world about anyone other than himself. But deep down, she sees much of herself in him and what he does. She feels that she could easily become him if just a few dominos fell in the right places, and she loathes that about herself. A loathing which she projects back onto him, and uses as her justification in being the only one to deal with him. Nobody else can intervene, because deep down, she is afraid anyone interacting with him, will find out how alike she feels they are…

 

How about you? What do you think is an important characteristic for a goof villain?

 

End of Line…

 

Paul