John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 3

Memoirs on Special

Baseball is back, and I’m celebrating with my own remembrances of the devilish game that haunted my childhood.

“Swing and a Miss: My True-Life Adventure in Baseball” is free from Amazon.com through Thursday. In it, I recall struggling with Fear of the Ball, trying to hit that stupid eight-inch sphere where someone wasn’t standing, and the dreaded Stepping in the Bucket. I also reminisce about being taught ardent love for Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine.

Click here to get it for the amazing price of nothing!

I’m also running a sale on my collected memoir, Legend in my own Mind. It tells the story of my fierce sibling rivalry with my brother David, how we conspired to catch Santa Claus in our living room on Christmas Eve, how we once chased a runaway dog through the principal’s house, and how we made our parents want to kill us on long road trips.

And there was how I was convinced I was a space prince hiding 0ut on Earth from a galactic rebellion.

It’s a series of misadventures of two boys in the 1970’s, struggling to understand why the world wasn’t as exciting as Saturday morning cartoons depicted.

Get it here for only 99 cents.

 

Filed under: Memoir Tagged: baseball, John Phythyon, memoirs

Trapped: Navigating Another Writing Obstacle

I’ve begun the next draft of The Armageddon Clock. That’s a good thing.

However, I was really hoping to finish it today, and there’s no way that is going to happen.

Often, a rewrite is a simple process. After I’ve gone through the manuscript and made notes, rewriting is just a matter of going through the book chapter by chapter and making those individual changes.

Like everything else with this novel, it hasn’t been that easy.

Without giving anything way, Wolf gets into trouble in the very first chapter. He’s caught breaking into an enemy facility, and he fights one of the principal characters of the novel before escaping.

In earlier drafts, I strongly hinted that this was a trap, baited with juicy intel to attempt to capture Wolf. But after this opening chapter and despite Wolf working (unbeknownst to him) with his assailant for most of the rest of the book, the concept that this opening sequence was a trap is never mentioned again.

That doesn’t make any logical sense. If they were trying to capture Wolf at the beginning of the novel, wouldn’t that have some bearing on how he was treated/viewed through the rest of the book? And what happens when he finds out?

In my edit, I had decided to explicitly make the opening sequence a trap. But as I started the rewrite, it occurred to me that this would change how Wolf was perceived by the other characters.

So I can’t just go through, looking at my notes and making changes. I have to reread certain chapters to make sure there aren’t sections needing a rewrite that I hadn’t previously noted.

And that takes time.

The great irony of this book is that it’s about a countdown to Doomsday, but it’s taking me forever to get it done. It’s already taken at least four times longer than I anticipated, and my editor hasn’t even seen it yet.

Still, I’ll be working on it today. I expect to make significant progress.

I just thought I’d be done by now.

Filed under: The Armageddon Clock, Writing Tagged: The Armageddon Clock, Wolf Dasher, writing

Sock It to Me

Something strange and unexpected has happened to me.

I’ve become sock-obsessed.

I think very carefully about which socks to wear with each outfit. I struggle to get my top dresser drawer closed, because it is overflowing with socks. I impulse buy socks when I see a particularly attractive pair. I’m excited if I get socks for my birthday or Christmas.

I’m not sure exactly when this happened. I’ve always paid attention to my socks, making sure they were a good match for the rest of the outfit, but now I plan what I wear around the socks!

And I don’t want boring ones. I want plaid socks, argyle socks, striped socks, and brightly colored socks. I wear basic black or grey or brown if the occasion is serious or somber.

But otherwise, as Nathan Lane put it in The Birdcage, “One wants a hint of color.”

Only I want more than a hint. I want my ankles to light up the room when I sit down. I want people to think, “Damn! That dude’s socks perfectly match his shirt!”

Partially, I think this is due to the sock trend that has developed over the past five or six years. Nike developed those Elites — socks engineered to provide extra cushion and arch support for athletes. (Indeed, I’ve begun wearing them at my retail gig, since the floor is unforgiving concrete.)

Because it’s Nike, Elites are made in lots of outrageous colors and patterns. That made socks fashionable even for people who don’t usually care about such things.

And girls mismatch their socks on purpose now. The idea is to make a fashion statement by wearing socks that don’t match but do coordinate (the ultimate solution to losing socks in the drier). Indeed, girls’ socks are even sold in odd numbers.

So culturally, socks are a thing now. They’ve replaced ties as the quintessential signature on an amazing outfit.

And perhaps as a result, I’ve become sock-obsessed. My socks are no longer the foundation of my outfit; they are the piece de resistance — the crowning jewel on a carefully selected ensemble.

So if you run into me out in the world, make sure you have a look at my ankles. A lot of thought went into that space between my pants leg and my shoe.

I’m socking it to the world!

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Nike Elites, socks

The Case for Superman

There’s a new Superman movie out today that people have been hating on for months. It’s kind of a strange world when we can hate something for how terrible it is months before we even get to see it, but that’s the Brave New World of 24-hour news cycles, social media, and geek culture being cool.

In the film, traditional paragon of virtue Superman is the bad guy, and masked-vigilante-inflicting-his-childhood-psychosis-on-those-he-thinks-are-evil Batman is the good guy. (That oversimplifies the plot, but go with me here.) Director Zack Snyder has been pilloried for not understanding whom Superman is, dating back to his first film on the subject, Man of Steel.

One understands Batman’s worries in the film. Metropolis was razed by the battle between Superman and General Zod. And Superman is, for all practical purposes, a god. There is some reason to fear this guy flying around doing his super stuff unchecked.

But that’s not what Superman is about.

Ever since Frank Miller’s seminal work, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in 1986, there has been a growing trend to make superheroes more real, more relatable. And frequently, making them human means making them dark. Their motives are questionable. The unintended consequences of their actions are dire. The idea that they have this incredible power is frightening, not inspiring.

Eventually, this trend found its way to Superman. He’s indestructible. He can shoot lasers from his eyes. He can destroy pretty much anything. Superman isn’t a hero; Superman is a terrifying force of nature — a hurricane or a tornado. What if he comes barrelling down on your town? What if it’s your loved one caught in the crossfire of his titanic battle with some other super dude he thinks is bad?

Perhaps this trend grew from the paranoia that descended on American culture following 9/11. Between the 1980’s and ’90’s dogma that you couldn’t trust the government and the post-9/11 fear that the bad guys could be anywhere, it suddenly seemed impossible to believe anyone could keep us safe. The only person you could rely on was you. So a nearly omnipotent super-being becomes a terrifying concept.

Regardless, Superman came to be seen less as heroic and more as dangerous. This is the view Batman takes of him in Snyder’s new film.

But that’s not who Superman is.

There is another equally wrong interpretation of Superman going around that strips him of his heroism. This one is also due to his invulnerability, but the reasoning is different. In this theory, Superman is not heroic because, if you’re invulnerable, it takes no courage to rush into danger.  “Superman’s not heroic. Superman’s not brave. If you can’t be hurt, you’ve got nothing to fear. Therefore, your actions aren’t courageous.”

That’s total bullshit.

What those who advance this theory and the Superman-is-dangerous one fail to understand is that Superman chooses to act in defense of humanity.

Superman doesn’t have to save anyone. He could just let life happen around him. The planes could crash. The aliens could invade. The tidal waves could crash into the coast and sweep away thousands of lives.

But wherever he can, Superman refuses to let that happen. He fights against it. He knows he is a god, and he chooses to use his power to protect mortals, demanding nothing in return. Nothing.

Likewise, Superman knows he is a god. He could subjugate humanity. At the very least, he could knock over a small country and rule it. He could steal gold or jewels or money or whatever he wanted and be confident that, short of finding some Kryptonite, there isn’t one thing anyone could do about it.

But he doesn’t. Superman chooses instead to defend humanity. Rather than rule, he serves.

That takes courage. That takes the kind of moral/ethical fiber that few people have. By choosing not to conquer or destroy, by choosing to protect, Superman demonstrates real courage. He doesn’t have to do any of the things he does. He does them only because it’s the right thing to do.

Because the truth is, there is no Superman. There is Clark Kent in a cape. Superman is not Kal-El, son of Jor-El of Krypton. He is Clark Kent, son of John and Martha from Kansas.

These simple farmers took in an orphan. They showed him kindness. They raised him. They taught him their values — that you have to protect the weaker, that you have to serve humanity, that your purpose on Earth (whether you were born here or were rocketed to Earth, the last son of a dying planet) is to make it a better place to live. For everyone.

Superman is a paragon of virtue. Superman is not a dangerous god, who could bad at any moment. He is an inspiration. He is someone to admire. He is, before anything else, human.

Superman is a hero.

And because he has godlike power, he is among the greatest of heroes. He chooses good.

If comic book writers and movie directors want to humanize this strange visitor from another planet, that’s how to do it.

Because that’s who Superman is.

Filed under: Current Events, Writing Tagged: Batman, BvS, Superman

Done, Not Done

Finally!

After months of rewriting an old manuscript, I’ve at last completed the first (sixth) draft of The Armageddon Clock.

Regular readers of this blog know I’ve been struggling. I thought this book would be easier. I had a complete manuscript. I just had to tune up the prose and add in a bunch of things to fit it into established continuity.

But what I actually had to do was add 13 chapters and 22,000 words. To fit it into the established timeline and get rid of the embarrassingly bad writing, the book needed a lot of surgery.

So it was with great relief that I typed the final sentence last week. Yay! Done!

Except, of course, it’s not done. Now I have to read the newly minted sixth draft, edit it, and rewrite it into a seventh draft before sending it to my editor.

So, I’m back at it. I’ve edited 12 chapters so far. Thirty-eight to go.

For a book about a countdown to Doomsday, this is taking an unusually long amount of time.

Filed under: The Armageddon Clock, Writing Tagged: #amwriting, John Phythyon, Wolf Dasher, writing

The Long Tail

Conventional wisdom suggests giving your work away for free devalues it. The usual gang of Chicken Littles also declared that Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program was going to destroy publishing. No one would be able to make money from selling books if people could get them on subscription.

Perhaps these things are true. But as a very small fish in the great big Amazon ocean, I have managed to use free and Kindle Unlimited successfully.

At the beginning of the year, I ran a week-long free event for my YA novel, Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale. I believe this is my most accessible book, but it was underperforming badly, barely generating sales and garnering a mere five reviews, all of which came along in its first month of February 2015.

I set the book to run free the second week of January, bought some ads, and pushed it on my mailing list.

It did well during its free run. A bknights ad netted 347 downloads on the 12th, priming the pump for 1985 downloads when the FreeBooksy ad landed on the 15th and another 686 the day after. All told, I moved over 3000 free copies of LRRH  during the event, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but a book with only five reviews is limited in where it can advertise.

But the success of the promo isn’t measured in how many free copies I gave out. The day LRRH went back into the paid store, it sold six copies. The next two days it sold two each. And a week later it picked up a few more sales.

Yes, I know moving 13 copies in two weeks isn’t impressive, but I’m not done. That same day the book sold six copies, it generated 354 page-reads in KU. The next day was 480. The day after it exploded to 1212, then 855, then 1183. A long, slow tail spread well into February.

After giving away 3000 free copies, people were paying to read the book in solid, if not outstanding, numbers.

And they were liking it. Over the next two to three weeks, Little Red Riding Hoodie pick up nine new reviews. The worst was three stars. With 14 reviews and a 4.4-star average, I’ve got a lot more advertising options now.

And it is still being read. The long tail is definitely resting closer to the ground now, but LRRH was getting almost no attention at the beginning of the year. Now, it continues to accumulate sales and page-reads.

Free may not drive sales the way it used to, but it does drive page-reads. For the moment, that’s where the money is in the market. A solid free event creates long-tail income. I’m seeing similar results in other lines, but the data isn’t complete enough to draw conclusions yet.

Still, this is a major piece of my marketing strategy for the year, and it’s yielding results. Hopefully, it’s something I can build on.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Little Red Riding Hoodie Tagged: Amazon.com, indie publishing, Kindle Unlimited, Little Red Riding Hoodie

International Women’s Day

It’s International Women’s Day today.

That makes me a little sad. If we have to have a day celebrating the accomplishments of women and their general value in the world, it must mean that we need to be reminded that women have accomplishments worthy of celebration and that have great value.

I grew up in the 1970’s, during the age of Women’s Lib and the ERA. My mother was the strongest person I knew — an ER nurse, with a fierce mama-bear streak; a woman who taught me principles of social justice, of taking care of your family, and not to back down from a fight. I watched Charlie’s Angels and Wonder Woman on TV, and I didn’t see sex symbols. I saw women solving crimes and saving the day. In Star Wars, Princess Leia may have needed Luke Skywalker to spring her from The Death Star’s prison block, but once she was out, she was in charge. (“Someone has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, fly boy.”)

In my adult life, I married another, fierce, strong, intelligent woman, and I have two daughters on their way to growing into the same role. I have female colleagues I greatly respect and admire.

And I don’t write all this to claim some sort of superiority, or hold myself up as a symbol of enlightenment others should follow. Rather, I want to suggest that women are equal to men.

Even though we’re very different — our bodies are distinct, both physically and chemically — we are both equally capable, equally competent. Sex is no indicator of potential.

I’ve incorporated this view into my fiction. I people my worlds with strong women, who are judged on their characters, not on their gender.

In the Wolf Dasher series, May Honeyflower is captain of Alfar’s Elite Guard, the highest military unit in the country. She’s strong and capable. She’s good at her job. She’s respected.

Aurora Spellbinder is Alfar’s president. Like every politician, she’s loved and hated, depending on which side of the political aisle you’re on. She’s criticized frequently by her enemies but always over her policy, never her sex.

In The Usurper’s Saga, Vicia Morrigan is one of the principal villains. She’s clever, cunning, smart, and dangerous. A powerful magician, the heroes are afraid of her. They respect her as a foe.

And in Little Red Riding Hoodie, the protagonist is a 12-year-old girl, who has to take care of her family, because her mother left and her father’s a drunk. Sally discovers strength and courage she didn’t know she had, enabling her to be the protector of her family, and to grow for herself.

These are all fantasy books, of course. In real life, women struggle against societal prejudice and glass ceilings and unequal pay. They are worshiped as sex objects and condemned as sluts in the same breath. The battle for their dignity in a world that hasn’t yet escaped the ancient notion that women are property, just like cattle and sheep and goats whose, purpose is to enrich the men that own them. They fight for control of their own destinies while men restrict their medical care in the name of protecting them and blame the woman if she is raped.

But if real life is to change, if we are to actually treat women equally, to eliminate the need for International Women’s Day, we must imagine it. We must visualize a society where women are judged on the merits of their character and the accomplishments of their careers.

So I write books with gender equality. In my novels, the hero and the villain is as likely to be a woman as a man. There is no glass ceiling. There are no positions women can’t hold. And women are not judged as inferior solely because they hold a job that traditionally belongs to a man.

These are imaginary worlds, fantasies. But I hope someday they might better reflect our culture. I would like to see a day where the only differences between men and women are the shapes of our bodies and the biochemical functions within them.

My mother raised me to believe in such things. I want it now for my wife and in the future for my daughters.

They all deserve it.

Filed under: Current Events, Why I Write Fantasy Literature Tagged: gender equality, international women's day

The End?

Any writer will tell you, writing “The End” is a really satisfying experience. Sure, there’s a lot of editing and rewriting that has to occur, but “The End” feels good. There’s a sense of accomplishment there. Writing a book is hard, and making it to the final words means you’ve done something pretty significant.

I kind of thought I’d be there by now.

My current project is The Armageddon Clock, the final book in the Wolf Dasher series. As I blogged back in January, I’m working from an eight-year-old manuscript that needs some surgery.

I didn’t realize then that the situation was even trickier. In addition to a lot of the prose needing improvement and the old show-versus-tell problem, many of the chapters are too long. The Dasher books are meant to read like an exciting espionage thriller. That means shorter chapters with cliffhanger endings.

I prefer my chapters to be around 3000 words at the longest, and somewhere between 1500 and 2500 words is ideal depending on what’s happening in the narrative.

But I am finding 4000- and 5000-word chapters. And this makes a problem for my writing process. I’ll map out a plan to get two chapters done that day (since I’m rewriting instead of writing). And then one of them will be 5000 words long. So I realize I’ve got to move some of it to a new chapter. Suddenly, my plan to make it through two chapters of the original manuscript results in only one, even though I churned out two chapters of finished product.

Furthermore, The Armageddon Clock was the first Wolf Dasher novel I wrote, but it will be the sixth and final book in the series. So I have to make a bunch of changes and add things that happened in the first five books.

So sometimes, I’ll have a 2500-word chapter, but I need to add a scene to bring the book into the established continuity. And by the time I’m done, that chapter is 4000 words long. So then I think some of this needs to be moved into its own chapter. Or maybe the new material needs to be on its own.

The original manuscript was 37 chapters long. The current one has 35 and the heroes haven’t found the villain’s lair yet.

I can see the ending, but it keeps moving farther away from me. I’d planned to release this book this month, but I haven’t finished writing it yet.

Authoring a novel is an adventure, and each adventure is different.

But this one feels like it’s taking forever. I want to get to the end. I want to move to the next phase — editing.

The book needs to stop moving the finish line on me.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, Wolf Dasher, writing

Why Tuesday is Super

I love presidential election years.

Maybe that makes me weird, but once the campaigns get underway in earnest, once Iowa and New Hampshire begin the electoral free-for-all, I get excited.

American presidential politics is one of the all-time great spectator sports. There is so much conjecture and analysis, speculation and prediction. Then it all plays out in the polling places, and we stand back and attempt to infer what it means.

It’s Super Tuesday today. Thirteen states and territories are holding primaries and caucuses. The results are critical to every candidate’s path to their party’s nomination.

That means there are many exciting things to argue over and wonder about.

Can Ted Cruz win his home state of Texas, and if he can’t, is he finished? How many states will Donald Trump win, and will it matter since Republicans are still apportioning delegates based on results instead of the winner-take-all format that begins next week? Marco Rubio and John Kasich have yet to win a contest. Can they continue that trend and still realistically stay in the race?

How many states will Hillary Clinton win and by what margin? Can Bernie Sanders upset her in key states? Can he seize the momentum coming out of Super Tuesday, even if he doesn’t outright win many of the contests?

Maybe it’s the fact that I am a strategy game enthusiast and designed them professionally for eight years, but I love this stuff! An American presidential election is compelling theater. It’s like the NFL Draft or the NCAA Basketball Tournament. We spend weeks speculating on what will happen. Experts of every stripe are trotted out, and they sagely proclaim the outcome and what it will mean.

Then we get to watch what actually plays out and dissect who did well, who messed up, and what it means going forward.

Will the Browns pick a quarterback in the first round again? Will Xavier get a #1 seed? Will Trump have enough momentum coming out of Super Tuesday to put a chokehold on the Republican nomination?

It’s exhilarating. Speculate during the buildup, watch it play out in real time, then listen to the experts pontificate about it while the rest of us rush to social media to complain or celebrate.

What’s not to love?

Mind you, I take it all seriously. I listen to the candidates, trying to get a feel for whom I should support. I am inspired by some and disgusted by others. I make certain to vote in the primary, and I root for the candidate I select.

But it’s hard not to appreciate it for the entertainment that it is. Presidential politics is a rough sport that I have no desire to play.

But I do love to watch. Especially on Super Tuesday, when the races are still up for grabs.

Filed under: Current Events Tagged: Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Hillary Clinton, Super Tuesday

Happy Birthday to Jill!

Today is my true-love’s birthday. I continue to be amazed and grateful she found me.

I wrote a novel for her a few years ago. In addition to dedicating it to her, it’s pretty much 200-page love letter to the person who’s given me everything I needed.

So in celebration of my beloved’s birthday, The Sword and the Sorcerer is free today. You can download it for your Kindle at no charge until midnight PST.

Click this link to get The Sword and the Sorcerer for free.

Happy birthday, Jill. I love you.

Filed under: The Sword and the Sorcerer