Michael Offutt's Blog, page 116

So now that Shannara is officially greenlit you'll finally be able to pronounce it correctly.

MTV has ordered Shannara, based on the fantasy novels by Terry Brooks. The first season is going to be ten episodes and is based on the Elfstones of Shannara. The pilot is being written by Miles Millar and Alfred Gough. You might recognize those credentials from the tv show, Smallville. The first two episodes are to be directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). I'm not particularly crazy about that option, but at least he's directed action scenes.

I am interested in whom they cast for the villains: Dagda Mor, the Changeling, and the witch sisters Morag and Mallenroh. The Dagda Mor is a complete badass. Basically he's the mightiest of all the demons trapped behind this wall called "The Forbidding," which you normally can't see. It's where the elves stuck the demons after they won the war and basically shunted them off to this alternate dimension where they could have their own government and stuff. Anyway, the Dagda Mor was a ruthless and cunning sorcerer/demon and he had mighty spells. He's also not as stupid as Voldemort who kept using the same killing curse on Harry Potter probably thinking it "HAS TO WORK THIS TIME" and then it "surprise!" doesn't work.

I vaguely remember a part of Elfstones when the Reaper breaks into one of the witch sister's towers. She has a battle with it flinging emerald green fire from her fingertips (or something like that). She starts one of her twig soldiers on fire and burns to death in the resulting inferno. That should be fun. I'm also interested in who they get to play Eritrea, Wil, and Amberle. The Reaper (of course) will be all CGI (which is probably where their budget will go...that and to the various colored lightning that Terry Brooks is fond of). The elfstones produce blue fire, the Dagda Mor produces red fire, the witch sisters make green fire...fantasy fiction is all about the rainbow.

So now that Shannara has been confirmed, what fantasy fiction adaptation are you hungering for? My vote is on Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake. Let's all chant "Anita Blake! Anita Blake! Anita Blake!" How can you go wrong with titles like Guilty Pleasures, Circus of the Damned, Burnt Offerings, and Obsidian Butterfly? You can't really. HBO should produce it though. That way Anita can go full on slut. Seriously, I love that bitch. Ma petite anyone?

The Strain is really good and if you like vampires you should watch it

"...a virus exists only to find a carrier and reproduce, that's all it does and it does it quickly. It has no political views, no religious beliefs, no cultural hang-ups; it has no respect for a badge, it has no concept of time or geography. It might as well be the Middle Ages except for the convenience of hitching a ride on a metal tube flying from meal to meal to meal. That's how a plague begins. So you still wanna be the first one through the door?" --Ephraim Goodweather (CDC doctor).

Spoiler Alert, you have been warned. The pilot episode of "The Strain" pretty much had me on the edge of the couch seat the entire night. The setup for the story is masterful. It starts with a plane that's in the middle of landing when a flight attendant in first class gets a call from another flight attendant at the rear. When she goes back there to investigate, her frightened co-worker says there is a lot of noise coming from the cargo hold. Is it a wild animal? Whatever it is (because it's not completely revealed in this episode) it has enough strength to break through into the passenger area of the plane and in the two minutes it takes to land a plane, manages to kill everyone on board (I'd never heard of the phrase "we got ourselves a dead airplane" but I kinda really love it for the ominous way it rolls off the tongue).

And that's just how the show starts. The mystery quickly builds from there as we are introduced to a brilliant CDC doctor in a custody fight with his wife, a Pawn Shop dealer who has what looks like a human heart in a jar of brine that's infected with hundreds of worms that feed on human blood, and a pale faced gaunt guy with strange eyelids (and who doesn't actually breathe). The pale-faced gaunt guy seems to be the one orchestrating the events in the pilot episode. He's aware that the "cargo" has arrived at the airport and then with what looks to be a wealthy philanthropist, makes further plans to transport a 9-foot-tall coffin filled with 500-pounds of dirt across the Hudson River.

There's plenty of gore in this first episode. A guy gets drained of so much blood he pretty much mummifies on the spot. But the vampire that's draining him smashes his head like a huge melon. It was pretty gross. And the scene where the autopsy guy gets made into lunch for a bunch of newly risen corpses is pretty frightening.

All in all, I'll be watching this series all summer. It's great if you love horror. Even greater if you love vampires. The tension is high, and the ticking clock showing just how little time has passed since event zero just seems to add to that (as what's really going on here is the world is in the first hours of an apocalypse that will destroy all civilization).

Bravo Mr. del Toro. Bravo.

The Strain starts on Sunday and I'm ready to be infected

This Sunday, Guillermo del Toro's "The Strain" unleashes itself upon America. I'm super excited because uber blogging website io9 recently did an expose on how similar the scenes from the pilot are to the comic panels from Dark Horse. When you hug your source material this close to your chest, it has to be good...at least if you're a true fan. For the casual person who just happens to land on FX Sunday night by accident, all the hard work that went into the series will probably have no effect. So here are some of the panels taken from the io9 website:








So what do you think? Intriguing enough to watch? I think so.
Also, today is the day for the Woven cover reveal. Co-authors David Powers King and Michael Jensen worked together on this book, and it's being published by Scholastic. If you have the time, please click on one of the links below and go and check it out.
Michael's FBWoven FBDavid's FBDavid's BlogDavid's Twitter

Are some books too dangerous to reprint?

I recently learned that the now infamous manifesto of hate known as Mein Kampf, a book that has been suppressed in publication since the end of World War 2, is now due for the printing presses. As a part of history, Mein Kampf occupies a niche with the label "most loathed." Who among us can argue against the idea that the book and its writer nearly destroyed the very idea of freedom not only for one group of people, but for nearly the entire world?

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this work, Mein Kampf was the blueprint that Hitler used to exterminate six million Jews (and millions of others in the Holocaust). Adolf Hitler wrote the first draft in 1924 and by the time he died 21 years later, it had sold 10 million copies. The state of Bavaria is the legal copyright holder for Mein Kampf, and it has refused to allow its republication. But its copyright expires in 2015 and with that expiration anyone can republish it.

Perhaps it can be said that if anyone in the 1920's had taken the time to actually read it and taken it seriously, they would have seen the plans for Hitler's Reich and acted to stop it. So maybe by making it widely available and starting a discussion about it in the universities and schools of the world that enough can be learned to prevent the Holocaust from ever happening again. After all, no one ever became wiser by not reading something. But what is there really to learn from reading Mein Kampf? Other than the idea that if the conditions are right, any group of people will gladly follow a monster that promises paradise?

So I ask you, are some books too dangerous to reprint? It can be said that there's nothing quite as insidious as an idea when it becomes entrenched in the mind of the true believer. 

Snowpiercer wants us to realize that perspective and having options are incredibly important in life

Sunday morning, I had the pleasure of watching the science fiction thriller Snowpiercer. I think as a film, it cements my feelings that Chris Evans is my new favorite actor. As a genre story, it fits firmly in what author L.G. Smith might call "dystopian fiction."

If you are a member of the Insecure Writer's Support Group, then you might have read L.G.'s article entitled "My Dystopian Dilemma." She writes that "According to many in the industry, dystopian is D.E.A.D." I don't know enough about what agents or publishers are looking for right now, but if "dystopian" truly is ebbing off, I think I won't miss these stories of people living in dreadful, miserable societies all that much.

Snowpiercer is truly a gripping tale. Sure, you have to swallow the possibility that to address climate change, mankind induced a global Ice Age that killed off probably 90% of the organisms that lived on Earth (by accident of course). In addition, you have to swallow the idea that mankind's only means of surviving this apocalypse was to board a high-altitude train that makes one revolution around the Earth every year. It never stops. It never runs out of fuel. And it's big enough to contain thousands upon thousands of people in a perfectly balanced ecosystem.

And therein lies the problem. "Balance" is maintained by culling humans with insidious means. One way to achieve this much needed ecological balance is to deny a whole population a food source. Trapped in an iron box with nowhere to go, it's inevitable that the strong eventually eat the weak. Putting "undercover agents" in the population to convince them to revolt is another (so that those killed in the revolution drive down the population and open up an excuse for more killing to keep the population in check). And the creativeness of the oppressors and the oppressed is as imaginative as the population of survivors.

But perhaps what I found most engaging about the film is the actual metaphor of "The Train." I suppose it's a stand-in for the rat race. To get closer to the engine room is to improve your station and standard of living. It doesn't matter who you need to kill to get there. The fact is that removing a life from the train, makes room for a person where there was otherwise no room at all.

In a way, I think the director of Snowpiercer wants us all to realize that perspective and having options for escape are incredibly important in life. There are two Japanese characters in this film, and they have a kind of perspective that everyone else seems to lack. One goes so far as to be actually clairvoyant, able to see in her head what awaits on the other side of a locked gate to yet another train car. But they too are metaphorical stand-ins for the idea that even if we must all endure a rat race of sorts, that there is always the possibility of just leaving, of stepping outside and going somewhere else. Without this option (of course) we have no choice but to become monstrous and treat each other in the worst possible way.

Maybe the decline of dystopian fiction's popularity is a good thing, because it says that people are willing to embrace hope again as a society. It may mean that we all don't feel locked into something that we can't control and that we have options. And having options lies at the very core of freedom.

Tiger Mom Amy Chua defines success and I reject pretty much everything she says because it's not me

Yale Law Professor Amy Chua who wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother put forth in a recent New York Times article that (despite diversity in population) strikingly successful groups in America today share three traits that propel success. They are 1) a superiority complex, i.e., a deep-seated belief in their exceptionality, 2) insecurity, i.e. a feeling that you or what you've done is not good enough, and 3) impulse control. She goes on to call this a "Triple Package of Traits."

As a writer, I experience insecurity (number 2 in the above paragraph) far too often. I also subscribe to number 3 (the one on impulse control) because I like feel-good posts and comments that make me want to live in the moment and encourage me to continue on my path. But if I were wise like Professor Chua says I should be, I'd forgo the impulses to live in the now and inculcate habits of discipline. I can hear her say, "Self-publishing a book instead of putting it through the rigors of agent submission and time tested publishing shows you lack discipline. You give into your impulses because it is the easy path, and that is why you're a loser. That is why I will never call you successful. You will always be a failure in my eyes." And as for number one...the feeling of superiority, or a deep-seated belief that you are exceptional...it's just not me.

And you know, it's not that I disagree with Professor Chua on what constitutes "success" and what constitutes "failure." Rather, it's that I think that when you "do the math," we all understand that for some people to do much better than others, many many others must give up their own share of the "dream," whether it be writing, or a job promotion, or some kind of prestige and admiration. The reason for this is that implicit in the American dream is a chance for others to do well, too. It is not about winning at all costs, it is about doing as well as you can without hurting or impinging on the dreams of others.

And so I address my insecurities this month with a quote from the great American poet, Walt Whitman, because I have no choice but to redefine what success means for me as I will never see eye-to-eye with the likes of Professor Chua. From Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman states: "This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

If I can accomplish even half of what Walt Whitman is saying, then I should (by all measure of my life) be at least proud of the life I lived and take comfort in what small successes I've attained both in my career and in my writing by the time it's over. And that, as they say, is that; what say you?

***** 
This post is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Details can be found HERE.

NBC forbids John Constantine to smoke Silk Cuts and that angers me just a little

I used to read Hellblazer in my younger days. For those of you unfamiliar with the comic book line, Hellblazer introduced the streetwise magician John Constantine to the majority of the comic-reading world. A work of genius really, I can now say that it's one of the first comic lines that introduced me to Alan Moore's genius (which also graced Swamp Thing and made it the must read comic book of its day).

Anyway, as most of you already know, Constantine is making his appearance on television this fall. I know we got some horrible Keanu Reeves knockoff a dozen or so years ago (I don't count that as a Hellblazer adaptation). And also...it was a movie. A television series is a different medium and is a far cry from the silver screen because of its ability to be episodic just like a single issue of a comic book. Television has the ability to fully encapsulate story lines that could take an entire season to incubate. I find the very idea of this exciting. But I'm not quite sure I agree with the character edits that are happening. Namely, Constantine's chain smoking and the lack of it we'll be seeing in the television series.

There are many quirks that make John who he is. For example, John's cigarette of choice is "Silk Cut." It's a brand of cigarettes produced by the Gallaher Group, which is a division of Japan Tobacco. Additionally, he's the only character that I know of who aged in real time, meaning that every real year that passed actually made him older in the comic book.

Now, I know the reasons for not wanting to glamorize smoking on network television (or even feature it). But interfering with this character's ability to toke on a Silk Cut is going to handicap it. In other words, as I watch the series I'll be thinking in my mind that this isn't a faithful adaptation to the blue-collar warlock that I remember from my youth.

So what do you think? Should characters with destructive habits be altered to make them more acceptable for a television audience? Constantine fights vampires and demons. How is smoking worse than that? 

Even if your stories are never read you could always build an igloo with them

Because it's Friday, I give you an igloo of books (as if this would be entirely inappropriate on any other day). Have a good weekend.

I hope the Phoenix towers get built in China because they really do look awesome

So there's a proposal now to build the world's tallest tower in the Chinese city of Wuhan. However, what makes this different than just another tall skyscraper is that only half of it will be inhabited. Inspired by the Eiffel Tower, designers at British studio Chetwoods think that a structure with a host of environmental functions that act to purify a city's polluted air and water is definitely feasible. Dubbed "The Phoenix" towers, the tallest will be a kilometer high. It will also contain multiple filtration systems for cleaning the water from the lake and the surrounding air as well as a home for solar electricity plants.
The smaller tower will feature a perforated facade with a louvre system for ventilation and light control. A vertical garden, restaurants, galleries, bars and other leisure facilities are also planned. Cool, right? #soexcited

Cersei Lannister is on the cover of Effigy! On a serious note the long anticipated cover for this fantasy by M.J. Fifield does not disappoint

I feel like channeling Enrique Iglesias and singing "Finally Found You." I'm so happy that M.J. Fifield's book is finally available, and I can't wait to read it! Of course, the above cover art doesn't really feature Cersei Lannister. But I can't help but see a similarity, especially with a dagger in hand as Cersei is known for stabbing people in the back.
Cersei Lannister...there is a resemblance!
But more about M.J. and her fabulous novel, because this is her day and her time to shine. Here's the Effigy cover detail:

The survival of a once-mighty kingdom rests in the hands of its young queen, Haleine Coileáin, as it slowly succumbs to an ancient evil fueled by her husband’s cruelty.

A sadistic man with a talent for torture and a taste for murder, he is determined to burn the land and all souls within. Haleine is determined to save her kingdom and, after a chance encounter, joins forces with the leader of the people’s rebellion. She gives him her support, soon followed by her heart.

Loving him is inadvertent but becomes as natural and necessary as breathing. She lies and steals on his behalf, doing anything she can to further their cause. She compromises beliefs held all her life, for what life will exist if evil prevails?

Her journey leads to a deceiving world of magic, monsters, and gods she never believed existed outside of myth. The deeper she goes, the more her soul is stripped away, but she continues on, desperate to see her quest complete. If she can bring her husband to ruin and save her people, any sacrifice is worth the price—even if it means her life.

Release date: July 22, 2014 (one month away!)

Cover art by Ravven
About The Author:
Armed with a deep and lasting love of chocolate, purple pens, and medieval weaponry, M.J. Fifield is nothing if not a uniquely supplied insomniac. When she isn’t writing, she’s on the hunt for oversized baked goods or shiny new daggers. M.J. lives with a variety of furry creatures—mostly pets—in New Hampshire. Effigy is her first novel.

Links:
Ravven, the cover artist can be found HERE.
Of course, when M.J. isn't working she hangs out at her website HERE.
Not to be mistaken for her blog which is located HERE.
And last but not least, please visit Goodreads by clicking HERE and add Effigy at once!