Stuart Jaffe's Blog, page 13

Samurai 7

In 1954, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa wrote, directed, and edited a "little" movie called Seven Samurai.  He was already a pretty big name in Japan at the time, but this film cemented his reputation and would eventually lead to worldwide fame.  The movie, about a small village that hires a ragtag group of samurai to defend them to the death against insurmountable odds, has been

[image error]

from the original Seven Samurai

noted for its wide reaching influence in film and storytelling in general.

There's the well-known American western, The Magnificent Seven (1960), which is not only influenced by the basic storyline of the Kurosawa film, but also adapts several scenes doing little more than switching katanas for Smith & Wessons.  Another well-known film, the Pixar animated feature A Bug's Life (1998), also draws heavily on the story — having Flik sent out to hire "warrior bugs" (which turn out to be circus performers) to defend his small ant colony against the insurmountable grasshoppers.  But my favorite adaptation of this tale is the anime series, Samurai 7.

Produced in 2004 by Gonzo and directed by Toshifumi Takizawa, the series follows the small village of Kanna which must give up the majority of its yearly harvest to bandits (in the form of giant mech warriors).  These bandits are the remnants of a war fought in the not-too-distant past.  The village sends out a few of its members to go hire seven samurai to defend their village.  The parallels are obvious, but since the anime lasted 26 episodes, they embellished on the story a lot, creating intriguing subplots (one involving a sadistic yet childish ruler is particularly good) and exploring some of the lesser samurai to a greater extent.

One aspect of the series that I love is the mixture of science fiction elements (mech warriors, steam-driven mechanical men, all kinds of computers and technological creations) with

The anime Samurai 7

fantasy elements (some villagers can divine water and the samurai have superhuman capabilities) with samurai elements (swords, honor, etc).  It's a great mixture balanced very well.  Blending and balancing genre is something I attempt with The Way of the Black Beast, so I can tell you first hand — it ain't easy!  But when it works, it can be extremely satisfying.

Of course, there are many people who don't like to mix these genres.  But just as peanut butter and chocolate go great together, so do science fiction and fantasy (and samurai!).  If you've never tried it, there's plenty of good material out there — especially since more and more Japanese genre books are being translated into English.  I certainly recommend Samurai 7, both as an anime and a genre-mash-up.

Book Release! The Way of the Black Beast

Here it is! The cover of my new book:

[image error]

Here's the blurb:

Malja wants answers.  She wants to know why the two most powerful magicians in all of Corlin ripped her from her mother's arms, raised her only to fight, and then tossed her away to die at age ten.  She wants to know why they are trying to recreate the spells which caused the Devastation that wiped out most of the world's population, leaving behind skeletal cities and abandoned technology.  And she wants to kill them.

With Tommy, an orphan bearing the tattoos of a sorcerer, she crosses this shattered land.  Despite the challenges they face — crazed magicians, guitar-playing assassins, mutated beasts — Malja pursues her vengeance with a single-mindedness that may destroy all she holds dear, forcing her to make a terrible choice between the family she lost and the one she has built.

 

It's available as an ebook through all major channels — Kindle | Nook | Smashwords.  Print version is coming soon.

Enjoy!

Movies We Loved (Just Might Not Admit It): Conan the Destroyer

I was a teen in the '80s and that was prime age to be a fan of Ah-nold.  He had such a list of great SF movies that he practically owned the genre (outside of Star Wars).  The Terminator, Predator, Total Recall — each one a hit.  On the fantasy front, his track record didn't do so well.  Of course, Conan the Barbarian helped launch him into stardom, but that film did little to thrill me.  I've seen it several times over the years and something about it just never quite connects.

But then there's Conan the Destroyer.  This horrible B-movie was one I watched over and over.  Even now, whenever I see it on television, I can easily get sucked in.  Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, Mako, and many more ham it up like guest stars on an episode of Fantasy Island, each practically winking at the camera.  The story — about a bratty princess, a demon horn, and a bunch of other nonsense — doesn't really matter because the whole movie clicks along at a prescribed pace that is so mechanical you can practically hear the writers marking off things on their checklist.

And yet . . .

I loved this movie as a kid.  Did I just lack enough experience in life to accurately judge crap when I saw it?  To some extent, probably.  But on some levels I knew it wasn't a good film.  Heck, Dino de Laurentis produced it and I'd seen his name on enough schlock to know what to expect.  I think, rather, that this film appeals to the same weird part of many of us who love B-movies, who loved Mystery Science Theater 3000, who don't mistake this type of film for quality entertainment but instead find entertainment in the very cheesiness of the film.

There's no real equivalent in other art forms.  Over at Magical Words, I posted my disappointment with Cowboys & Aliens — a B-movie dressed up to look like an A-movie — and pointed out that books can't get away with subpar work like movies.  Music can't either.  In fact, for some bizarro reason, movies are given a pass on so much lazy writing, lazy acting, lazy directing, that it boggles my mind at times.

All I know is that watching Arnold's eyes bug-out as he tries to hold up a huge, heavy door that is clearly made out of something far lighter than it looks fills me with a giddiness that says, "Yes, this is crud, but man it sure is fun!"

 

Women Kickin Butt — Jane Yellowrock

Statistically, more women read books than men.  So, why aren't there more women kicking butt in books?  Do women not enjoy reading about their own gender taking on the forces of evil with gun, sword, and two fists?  Well, yes and no.  Or more precisely, this is a chicken or the egg kind of question.

I suspect there has always been a hunger for strong, butt-kicking heroines in greater numbers than readers have been given, and as our culture matures, the doors for such things have opened a bit more.  It's one reason for the surge of Urban Fantasy which has been dominated by strong, female leads going all the way back to the UF proto-type, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (admittedly not a book, at first).  And let's face it: Buffy used plenty of guns, swords, and fists — as well as, stakes, pikes, axes, table legs, neighborhood fencing, and anything else that was available.  Of course, there is a segment of readers (both male and female) who dislike violence in their books regardless of gender.  Statistics have shown this group leans more toward female than male, and I don't doubt that.  Had we evolved from some other group of primates — bonobos, for example — we'd probably have less war and a more matriarchal society, but as it is, human males tend to be more aggressive than human females.  I digress.  Point is, even though tough, kick-butt women are on the rise in media, they still don't match the audience.  So, I'd like to take a blog post here and there to highlight some of my favorites.

Jane Yellowrock is the heroine of an Urban Fantasy series by Faith Hunter.  Those of you who follow me at Magical Words know that Faith is a good friend.  Thankfully, she's a good writer, too.  (Believe me, it sucks when your friends ask you to read their books and the books are no good).  Jane's story begins with Skinwalker and continues in two more published books (Blood Cross and Mercy Blade).  Book 4 — Raven Cursed — comes out in the next few months, and Faith is contracted to write Books 5 and 6, so if you end up liking Jane, you'll have plenty of her to enjoy.

Jane (part Cherokee, all woman) is a vampire hunter hired by vampires to hunt rogue vampires.  That alone is pretty cool, but what makes Jane really special is that she has a second soul within her.  One put there not by her choosing.  She calls it Beast and it gives her the power to shapeshift into animals (which also puts her soul on the backburner and lets Beast loose).

This animal side of her is a constant part of her life.  One of the series' strengths is that Jane experiences the world around her through animal senses.  Her sense of smell, for example, is quite acute.  This makes for a fresh prose that explores the senses often given less attention by authors.

Jane is also highly impulsive, often leaping before she looks, and thus, getting herself into very bad situations — which, of course, makes for very delightful reading.  Though not heavily weighted toward romance (as some UF books can be), the Jane Yellowrock series does involve a triangle sub-plot that sometimes can be used to show Jane's less violent side.  Sometimes.

All in all, Jane is a fun, vicious, butt-kickin' woman.  If you like Urban Fantasy, this is one of the best series out there.  And no, Faith didn't pay me to say that (although now that I think of it, I should hit her up for some cash….hmmm…..)

The Multi-Genre Reader

Summer vacation is over!  School has begun!  My son is finally out of the house and I'm back to peace and quiet!

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration.  It once was like that, when he was in elementary school. Back then, I'd be trying to write or read, he'd come in, I'd tell him I was working, he'd leave, he'd come back in.  But he's a teen, now, so the summer was actually quite pleasant and I got a lot of work done (yeah, I know — teen equaling pleasant doesn't seem right, but that's they way it rolled).  Still, there's something to be said for total privacy.

And on that note, I've noticed that my rate of reading drops over the summer (or any vacation period).  Already, after only a few days of school, I can see the difference.  I'm reading a lot more now and not feeling the pressure to finish up fast.  I'm not really blaming this on my son, it's my own psychological failing, but it does happen.

So, now that I'm reading more, I've been thinking about the types of books I've been reading, and it brought up something that boggles my mind.  I don't get how some people out there can only read from one genre exclusively.  Only SF.  Only military history.  Only chick lit.  I don't get that.  Do you only watch one genre of television?  Will you only see movies of one genre?  Do you only listen to one type of music?  I suppose there are some people with such severe OCD that they not only experience only one genre of anything but it might even be the same book, film, show, song every day.

Thankfully, for the rest of us, there is a huge amount of variety out there, and thanks to the internet, all of that variety is relatively easy to access.  Don't get me wrong.  There's nothing inherently evil in preferring one genre over another.  I love SF and fantasy and horror.  My absolute favorites.  But historical fiction can be awesome, too.  And some of the most powerful reading experiences of my life came from literary fiction and mainstream fiction.

So, try out something new today.  Listen to a new song.  Indulge in a new TV show.  Watch that movie that never would appeal to you normally.  Give it all a try.  You may not like it all, but I have no doubt that you'll find something new and different that'll open up a greater world to you.

What Wall Street could learn from Douglas Adams

The main advice given by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (still the funniest science-fiction/humor novel ever written) is something I wish more people would take to heart — Don't Panic.  Relax.  Chill out.  Take it down a notch.  Whatever phrase works for you, people need to calm down.  This recent mudslide on Wall Street is a perfect example.

Now, I realize that a lot of what happens on Wall Street is run by computer programs (which is scary enough as it is), but there is still a human factor that appears to run entirely on emotion without any consideration for facts whatsoever.  If people would just take a deep breath and remember not to panic, things could've been a lot better.  After all, what caused the big falling on the Dow?  Because the USA was downgraded from AAA status to AA+.  Oooooooh nooooooo!  Quick, the world is coming to an end.

Come on!  Yes, it's a serious blow to our ego.  Yes, it can have serious consequences to our economy and the value of the dollar.  I'm not saying it was a good thing, and I'm not saying that people shouldn't consider reallocating some of their assets.  But the fact is that we were taken down one tiny step.  The fact is that investing in an AAA bond or an AA+ bond means little to most people — both are highly valued.  The fact is that while our government has forgotten how to operate with even a modicum of sense, it's still running.  And the fact is that if the US government were to really default, were to really completely fall apart overnight, well, heck, you'll have a million other things to truly be concerned with rather than pieces of numbered paper that people once traded for goods and services.

Maybe it's a good thing that my novel, The Way of the Black Beast, is coming out in September.  It's a post-apocalyptic fantasy in which an abuse of magic caused the apocalypse.  I'll post later with details all about it, but I mention it here because that's where you should go to live out your end-of-the-world fears — a book, not Wall Street.  There are plenty of good novels in the apocalypse category, and here's a secret:  In each one, the world continues on.

 See, that's the thing.  If the absolute worst could happen, life would still go on.  It wouldn't be the same as it was yesterday, but it would continue.  And really — we all know deep down inside that our lives will never be like they were growing up.  The world is no longer like that.  You can't go back.  But it won't end.  People thought it was all over in 1929, but we survived.  Life was different.  The roaring 20s never came back, but new good times came along and the world changed.  That's the way of things.  We may all have to start learning Chinese, but life will go on.

So, after two absurd days on Wall Street, I say take a step back, everyone.  The sky is not falling — it was just a really nasty storm that hit us.  We can survive this as long as we remember what that great sage Douglas Adams once wrote: Don't Panic.

B.B. King and The Power of Showing Up

Soon, I'm heading off to California for a week to visit family and get some much need R&R.  My son is joining me, and as it's been quite awhile since his last time out there, we have a lot planned.  Some, the usual — Universal Studios (always a favorite of mine) and Disneyland (which is hard not to do considering it's all of 15 minutes from the house).  Some, a little special — for me, that means we're going to see B. B. King perform.

Now, many of you know that I play the guitar.  I actually taught myself to play (writing that just made me realize that I shouldn't have been surprised when I started indie-publishing — I always seem take that kind of road), and the music that I fell in love with, the music that I used to unlock the secrets of the fretboard, was Blues.  I love the Blues with a capital 'B'.

As a Blues lover, I naturally listened to B. B. King, and like many guitarists before me, King's music has been an ever-lasting influence on my playing.  That, in itself, would be enough to be excited about seeing him.  But it goes beyond that.

See, I was fifteen when I first picked up the guitar.  Every summer I would visit my family in California.  And L. A. being a big, happening sort of city, often had B. B. King in town playing while I was there.  The problem: he was always playing in bars and clubs.  Of course, I was too young to get in, so no B. B. for me.  In all those years, only once was he playing at a concert hall, but it was literally the day after I left.

Flash-forward many years to 2001.  As a gift, my darling wife gets us tickets to see B. B. in Atlantic City.  A few days before the concert, on September 11th . . . well, you know what happened.  Needless to say, Mr. King cancelled his performance in honor of all the lives lost that day.  He did schedule a make-up show, but we weren't able to attend.

A few years beyond that, B. B. decided to come to Lancaster,PA (where we were living at the time) and my incredible wife managed to snag some tickets.  Finally, after well over a decade of wanting and trying, I finally got to see the man.  By this point, diabetes had struck him hard and he could not stand for a show.  Still, despite being seated the entire time, he blew away that theater with his powerful, elegant guitar-work and his equally compelling voice.

Several weeks earlier we had seen Ray Charles in this same theater.  Only a few days after, Ray Charles passed away.  So, seeing B. B., I worried we might jinx the man.  Luckily, another decade later, he is still going strong.  I never thought I'd get to see him twice in my life, but it looks like I just might get that opportunity.  In his 80s now, he still plays shows practically every night of the year.

And that, my friends, is the biggest deal of all.  They say 90% of success is showing up.  Well, here's a guy who still keeps showing up.  Gives me hope as a writer that if I keep putting out the work, you'll all start reading it more and more, and maybe I'll find myself in my 80s, still showing up.

Research and The Strangest House in the World

I have to admit it — I enjoy doing research for a book.  Sometimes a little too much.  And sometimes, I make choices in a book just so that I can go do the research.  Case in point — the Max Porter series.

The first book in this series is being considered by a small press right now, and if they turn me down, I'll be releasing it myself.  It's called Southern Bound (at least, it is for now) and follows a fellow named Max Porter, a northern boy, who moves to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to do research for a strange, wealthy family.  Turns out his office is being haunted by Marshall Drummond, a 1940s detective who was murdered and cursed.  Together they solve the mystery surrounding Drummond's death which also is connected to the family that hired Max.

Now, I know a thing or two about moving to Winston-Salem from the North, so that much required no research.  But I used the set up as an excuse to learn more about this city I've grown to love.  And as I delved into its long history, I found all sorts of intriguing tidbits.  The big one used in Southern Bound deals with the fact that during World War II, R. J. Reynolds tobacco couldn't keep up with cigarette demand (our soldiers were puffing them down super-fast).  So, he made arrangements with the US government to ship German POWs to North Carolina to use in his tobacco plants.  That blew me away and I just had to find some way to use it.

Anyway, I'm now working on the sequel (as yet untitled) and I learned of another oddity of our area.  This one comes from our neighboring town Kernersville.  It's a house called Körner's Folly.

Basically, a man named Jules Körner built this house as a showcase for his interior design business.  He intended to build another house for his family to live in, but one thing led to another, and that second house never got built.  Instead, they just kept adding rooms to the existing house.  The result: a 22-room home in which no two doors, no two fireplaces, no two rooms are alike.  Even the ceiling heights change — going from around 6 ft all the way to near 24 ft.  It's a hodgepodge of a house that also has America's first private little theater (it's the huge attic converted into a theatrical space that's still used today).  That in itself is interesting enough, but to add more enticement for me to use it in the book, I learned that just a few years ago the home was officially declared haunted.  Haunted!  And I'm writing about ghosts in North Carolina?!?!

So, I tore my teenage son away from the Xbox, got in the car, and we went to Kernersville for an afternoon to check out what is billed as "The Strangest House in the World."  Proof that it was entertaining — my son admitted to enjoying it.

See, research can be a lot of fun.

 

Of Airlines and Publishing

The trip was meant to be quick and simple.  Fly to Ft. Lauderdale, visit my ailing Grandmother, and return the next day.  Less than 48 hours round trip.

The first obstacle was finding an affordable flight.  Now, I live in Winston-Salem, NC.  There are basically two airport options.  First is Greensboro.  About a 30 minute drive from my house and easy to use.  Second is Charlotte.  An-hour-and-a-quarter from my house, and also an easy airport to get around.  Here's where things get wonky.

Turns out it's cheaper to fly from Greensboro to Charlotte to Ft. Lauderdale than it is just to fly from Charlotte to Ft. Lauderdale.  Besides the obvious screwiness of this set up, it gets stranger because despite the fact that the flight from Greensboro to Charlotte lasts all of 25 minutes, the time it takes to load the plane, taxi to the runway, wait in line, fly, land, taxi to the airport, wait for an open gate adds up to about the same time it takes to drive to Charlotte's airport.  I know airports have all sorts of incentives/penalties that they give out to airlines, but there's no logic I can find that says it's cheaper for an airline to fly two planes instead of one under these circumstances.

Looking back, what I should have done was book the cheaper flight, driven down to Charlotte, and just picked up the second leg of the flight.  I wish I had because on the way home, while waiting in Charlotte, the airline decided to cancel my flight.  Had I driven that leg, my car would've been waiting for me and the airline could cancel to their heart's content as far as I was concerned.  But, alas, that wasn't the situation.  I had to call my wife, have her drive down, pick me up, and drive back.  Then, the next day, I had to drive out to Greensboro to get my car (which, of course, now had another day's parking fees added to it).

Okay, so what's the point of relating this whole inconvenience to you?  Well, I see the same mistakes in the publishing world.  See, there are numerous reasons why the airline industry is suffering.  9/11, rising gas prices, poor fiscal management — all are contributing factors.  But the biggest problem the airlines have is that they forgot where they're supposed to make money — by serving people.  Customer service sucks on all the airlines I've been on in the last decade.  When I was a kid (back in the days of Eastern Airlines, TWA, and Pan Am), making sure you had happy travelers was important.  Of course problems occurred.  Not every travel experience was grand.  But on the whole, they cared about us.  No more.  The airlines are now so concerned with every stinking penny that you can smell it from the moment you buy a ticket.  In fact, most of their money goes into getting you to buy the ticket.  After that, the hell with you.  And it's not the pilot's fault, or the flight attendant's, or the people running the gate.  It's the executives making good decisions for their stock reports but bad decisions for the customer.  Bad decisions we have to live with.

Publishing?  Same thing.  Decades ago, publishers were run by people who loved books.  They weren't so worried about the bottom line — not that they didn't care, but that they would be happy to make a small profit on a writer they believed in and wanted to develop over make a killing off some crap.  In today's world, the publishers, like the airlines, are so concerned with every stinking penny that you can smell how little they care about your experience with their product.  As long as you bought the book, they don't care after that.  And it's not the writer's fault, or the editor's, or the bookseller's.  It's the executives who want to treat publishing like a retail outfit or a grocery store.

It's one reason the indie-publishing scene is thriving.  I can put out my short stories and collections and novels and leave them there forever (they don't spoil).  I can take the time to find new readers slowly.  I don't have to hit it big out of the gate.  If my books are moderately successful and my readers want a sequel, I can write and deliver it without facing the nonsense that has happened to numerous series in the big publishing world — namely, a series doing well (making a profit) but not well enough, so they scrap it, leaving the readers with an incomplete series.  Even though the remaining books would make a profit — the publisher would not lose money — they still cut it off because they are chasing dollars instead of customers.  They think they can make more money off of something else.  Maybe they can, but it pisses off readers — and that means losing customers which means losing money.  I'm sure there's some MBA logic to all this, but I don't get it.

But then, I don't understand the airline industry anymore, either.

 

Updates and News

It's only been a week since I jumped into the ebook world of publishing with 10 Bits of My Brain, and so far, it's been fun.  Sales are slow, but that's to be expected, particularly because I didn't blitz the promotions for the release date (and if you haven't gotten it yet, you know what to do!).  Instead, I'm taking it one step at a time to see the impact of different avenues.

First, I did little except making notice to my platform — in my case, The Eclectic Review podcast and the Magical Words blog (plus some mentions on FB and Goodreads).  So far that has produced a flicker of sales but not as much as I hoped.  Thus, my platform may not be as strong as I had thought it to be.  Although, since people don't impulse buy books in the same way they might consume music or a movie or any other entertainment, sales from that group might trickle in over a month or two.  I've now received a book review at The Canary and I'm doing a guest blog on short stories soon.  So, I'll see the impact of those.  In the meantime, I've started putting out my older short stories as individual pieces, each for only $.99 (the first is Strong Heart Blue, available now).  I figured the majority of readers don't know my name yet, so this might be a good, inexpensive way for people to try out my work.  Besides, even just one sale of my short stories thrills me.

The points here are that if you're going the ebook route, then you can use certain aspects of it to your advantage.  First, there is no shelf-life of an ebook.  As long as the internet exists, so will these books, so the pressure to SELL BIG RIGHT NOW is off.  Instead, take your time, learn what works for you, and find ways to expand upon that.  Second, smaller pieces — short stories, novellas, even poetry — now have a venue that they never had before.  And finally, if you can be realistic in your expectations and have patience in your career needs, this can be a rewarding experience.