Marc Johnson's Blog, page 2

Buying Direct

I finally added a store. If you’d like to support me, you can now buy ebooks directly from this site. The info will be in the book’s section. You can get them in EPUB, MOBI, or PDF. Please contact me if you have any questions, problems, or issues.

Why Limitations Are Good

So recently the new Twilight Zone aired. As of this writing, it’s not…good. But this isn’t a review of that show. However, it did get me thinking about the problems it has, and it’s many. I think a lot of The Twilight Zone’s problems can be traced back to one major issue–limitations…or the lack thereof.

Because it’s on CBS All Access, there’s not any limitations except by what CBS mandates. They’ve allowed longer episodes and they’ve allowed cursing. The longer episodes are the biggest detriment to it. Again, this isn’t a review about The Twilight Zone, as much as I want it to be. The longer episodes got me thinking not only about the show but about problems with other things in media.

The reason why a lot of things work when I was younger was because of the limitations they had. The people with the money had a hard cap on everything from movies, TV shows, video games, etc. The people with the money would say no. I always think of one of my favorite movies, Back to the Future. If they had a million more dollars, they would have filmed the final climatic scene in a bomb testing area as opposed to Hill Valley. That would have considerably weakened the movie. Spielberg wanted to feature more of the shark in Jaws, but they couldn’t get it to work properly. Could you imagine if you saw more of that terrible, looking shark? If you look at a lot of sequels from today, you’ll see that they have way too much money.

Everything from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Matrix sequels, The Avengers sequels, The Hobbit trilogy, and so on just aren’t as good. The reason is because of how much money they have in their budgets. Where it was a big gamble to make it in the first place, it’s no longer a gamble. Because they’re no longer told no, they no longer need to think of a way out.

In all the behind scenes interviews I’ve watched, a lot of the make up people, special effect artists, and directors always come up with creative ways to get out of a mess they’re stuck in. They either have to shoot late, try different angles, use certain materials, go to locations, etc., but they all get through it, and it’s a better product because of it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be watching the behind the scenes of it.

With the first few episodes, there doesn’t seem to be any limitations placed on The Twilight Zone. The reason a lot of those stories were written in the sci-fi and fantasy genre was to get around the censors. Rod Serling and all the other writers had to creatively come with up ways around that, not to mention the sexists and racist stigmas back in the 50s/60s, and a TV budget.

I write books where there’s no budget. That’s not always a good thing. Sure, my editors have challenged when I’ve been stuck or when plots or characters have been bad, but ultimately, I can do what I want. There are a lot of adaptations that I think work better than their book counterparts because they have limitations. If you just look at Game of Thrones (slight spoilers), it got rid of the other Targaryen, they paired up Sansa with Ramsey instead of random servant girl, Bronn trained Jamie instead of some random guy. Now that’s not to say that all changes worked because some characters were left without things to do like Brienne.

I hope studios start to realize that limitations can be good. Not only will things be less of a gamble but they’ll put out good products again. Movies and video games seem to make either a ton of money or are colossal failures. There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground. It actually reminds me of today’s disappearing middle class. At least for movie studios, you can write it off. In the case of video game studios, they permanently close.

You may be limited by a budget or a tool, but you’ll never be limited by your mind, imagination, and creativity.

Marc Johnson

Writing an Outline

I love outlining and think that all writers should utilize it. But for some reason, writers that don’t outline don’t do so because they want to be surprised. They think that outline is very rigid and unrelenting. They are wrong.

When I outline, I’m constantly surprised. As I’m currently working on the outline for my next work, FADING, there are only maybe a handful of things I actually know. I know how I want it to begin, and I know how I want it to end. But that entire middle section was a mystery to me. How could I get to one end to another and have it be an enjoyable read? As I work my way through the middle, I’m constantly adding things. Things that add tension and conflict and take the story in a new direction. Minor characters that I needed to fill a role suddenly take on a life of their own and become more impactful.

At this point in my outline, I may have come to realize that FADING may be a full length novel instead of a novella like I had originally planned. It depends on which road I’m going to take. I know that I have a tendency to rush things plot wise. I know if I decompress I could drag my stories out and make my books longer. It may add tension, it may not. Decompressioning FADING with what I plan to do will be more of a world building thing that I think people will like.

When I watch TV, I feel as if shows drag things out because they have to meet a minimum amount of episodes. It always screws up the pacing. I’m reading The Amazing Spider-Man from the beginning and it’s great to read one issue with a complete arc. Those old stories hold up, and I’m into it. There’s gotta be a middle ground, but these days, it’s all about decompression. I just roll my eyes because a lot of stories could be good or great if they tightened things up. Hopefully, I won’t make the same mistake others have made.

So I’m most likely going to decompress FADING longer than I originally thought, and it’s going to go in a direction I didn’t quite plan. I’m not sure how it’ll all plan out but I do know where I want it to go. So even though I have an outline, I’m still getting that joy of discovery.

Marc Johnson

Top 5 Reasons Why Comic Events Don’t Work

I love reading comics, but I don’t read as much from the Big Two (Marvel and DC) because the stories are terrible. There was a mandate over 10 years ago where the Big Two made it a point to publish comic events every year. I feel like this became a thing when Marvel’s Civil War came out. Coincidentally, it’s also when I started reading Big Two comics again. Since I mainly read Marvel, this will skew towards (against?) them, but it applies to both the companies.

1. NOSTALGIA NAMING

Comic events were a thing when I was a kid, but they weren’t a company policy where they did it every year. Because comic readers tend to be shrinking, they prey on those people like me who read comics growing up. That’s why all the names are very similar. Some classic events were Secret War, The Infinity Gauntlet, and Crisis on Infinite Earth. More recently named events were Infinity, Secret Wars, Infinity Wars, Identity Crisis, and Final Crisis.

Because they have very similar names, people automatically think of the good events they read when they were a kid and may be interested. More often than not, the new events are terrible. Not only do they have the same name, they have the same plot.

2. RECYCLED IDEAS

Just because you call something the same, doesn’t mean that the idea or plot has to be the same. Unfortunately, it usually is. It’s just different enough so it’s not a blatant ripoff of what came before. Often times with the exact same characters. Of course, those characters do change based on movies, or which ever character they’re trying to push. Not sure why they feel the need to tell it again and not try something new.

What’s funny is that even in the grand events they’re based off of, they end them with saying, “The Infinity Gems will never be used together again,” or having the main character retire or learn a lesson from the event. For some reason, subsequent writers forget all that only remembering the cool moments. They forget the build up of those cook moments.

3. SAME PLOTS

Back when I was a kid a lot of events had ideas that were fresh and new at the time. In hindsight, they were the same, but since no one had ever done it before, it all felt new.

All events go like this: the heroes (and sometimes villains) team up to fight the new BIG BAD VILLAIN. Now the BIG BAD always has the same goal of destroying the Earth. Of course, these days, it destroys the multiverse. While this can be done well, more often times it’s not. The reason for that is it’s a villain that we’ve never seen before, or we’ve seen very little before, and it’s usually some kind cosmic god. There’s no build up to it, and the BIG BAD always comes off as one dimensional and shallow. Oddly enough, you would think that they would devote time to develop the villain in the series, but they never do.

One of my favorite events of all time is Age of Apocalypse. It worked because they cancelled all the main stream books and created the limited series and mini series just for this one event. Not only that, but the villain Apocalypse was a character we had seen before. We knew his motivations and his goals. He had substance and weight and desire. While we had seen him countless times before, and his “survival of the fittest” was growing a bit tiresome, this was just the first time he actually won. What would happen because of that?

4. NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Because there are so many characters in comic events, that leaves little room for any actual character development. There may be one or two characters that get some development, and if you’re a fan of them, great. If not, well sucks for you.

Because The Infinity Gauntlet was originally supposed to be a Silver Surfer event, all of Starlin’s characters take top billing and get a lot of screen time. It makes sense. It works because that was what he build it up to. It also works because it’s cosmic and back then, The Avengers and X-Men didn’t really deal with the cosmic nor should they.

There were great events that did do things right and that was Marvel’s Annihilation (both of them) and War of Kings. A lot of those dealt with characters that I didn’t know or care for, but suddenly found myself caring. Of course, before Guardians of the Galaxy became a thing, no one cared about Marvel’s Cosmic since Starlin so they were able to do their own thing. Funny how things work out when you don’t have to deal with the bean counters.

5. B/C LIST CHARACTER DIES, B/C LIST CHARACTER LIVES

The Big Two always say that “nothing will ever be the same.” It’s always the same just slightly different. One of these things that happen is some B/C list character will end up dying. Usually a minority or woman but sometimes not. In any case, it has no emotional bearing at all because it’s a character you barely remember, if that.

Conversely, because this is comics, some character that you may actually care for and remember will come back. Still a B/C character but you’re still glad to see them.

While I think the majority of comic events are terrible and don’t need to be read, that’s not to say that good stories can’t come out of them. I’ve found the ancillary stories to be OK to good. DC’s Dark Metal event was terrible, but the book containing all the origins of the Batmen was interesting. Marvel’s Secret Invasion was also terrible, but all the side titles were excellent. They each had different plots that felt essential to the story and were fun to read.

I’ll never understand why people continue to fall and buy comic events. I’ve learned to avoid them and only buy them when I can get them for less than $5 or for free. And I’ve learned I’m not missing much. They’re so empty and pointless. They never have any lasting impact because by the following event, it’ll get undone or worse yet, the entire universe will get rebooted.

I blame the shared universe for this. When I was a kid, it was cool. But now when I read a book, I want the story to be small enough to only affect that world. It doesn’t have to affect the world or the multiverse. It only has to affect their world.

There were a lot of great events that took place when I was younger. Things like Fall of the Mutants or Kraven’s Last Hunt. I also enjoyed Maximum Carnage and part of Spider-Man’s Clone Wars. It always felt as if THEIR world was at stake, and not THE world at stake. That’s the key to a really great event. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering just earth-shattering to them in their neighborhood. A great event should deal with characters you care about in situations you feel for. I hope things go back to that. They probably won’t.

Marc Johnson

Eternal Darkness (The Passage of Hellsfire, Book 4) Is Now for Sale

The 4th book in my THE PASSAGE OF HELLSFIRE is now available as an ebook at the following sites. It will most likely be out in paperback within a month or two. Please give it a read and if you enjoy it, leave a review. Thank you.

AMAZON
ITUNES
KOBO
SMASHWORDS

Is it Worth It?

2018 has been a very busy year for me. It’s also been a very stressful year. For the last month, with the exception of releasing my 4th book, Eternal Darkness, I feel like things have finally calmed down. And yet instead of feeling relieved or excited, I’ve been feeling down lately.

There’s a lot of things going on in my life and a lot of pressure, and the biggest is financial. And when I look about what cost me the most money this year, it would be my books. Everything from the editing, cover art, paying for tables, ads, supplies, hosting, etc, all added up and was a huge expense this year. I’ve found that prices across the board are going up. On top of that, I’ve not sold as many books I would have liked. It’s almost been nine years and across all platforms: ebook, print, audio, I’ve only sold a few thousand books.

That’s just not cutting it. I’m still hugely in the red. Now that wouldn’t be so bad if I was in the red for the next book and had paid everything off from my previous books. But I haven’t.

I was a little disillusioned when I first started publishing. I tried to stay away from all the noise other authors do. They do the hard sell. Me, I’m more of a soft sell kind of guy. Their mind is always selling and they always push people to buy their books. They’re always thinking about marketing and how they can get people to buy their books. If I thought about marketing and promotion, it would take away from writing. So I focused on that instead. I did so because I always believed that with my third book, Reawakening, that I would break out and gain some traction.

I was wrong.

I always told myself, and others, that sales didn’t matter to me. That it was the story that mattered. And it does. But I’ve come to realize that money also matters. Not that I necessarily wanted to ever make a living off my writing as I thought when I was a kid. But it would be nice if the expenses that it costs to produce a book were bankrolled by my book sales.

As 2019 comes around the corner and the financial pressure starts to get to me, I have to seriously consider what I want to do with my writing future. I need to look deeply inside myself and ask, “Is it worth it?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes.

Marc Johnson

Tis the Season…

The holiday season is upon us once again, and I gotta admit that over the years, it’s lost its appeal to me. The magic it once had is gone. Growing up will do that to you, but I see it still holds magic for some people. I envy them.

While I do enjoy seeing friends and family I only see once or twice a year, there’s a disturbing trend I’ve noticed. Even though we’ve become such a materialistic world, people are oddly terrible at giving gifts. I don’t see people giving actual gifts or doing things for people that they would like. All I see are people giving gift cards. It wasn’t like that when I was younger.

I know everyone loves to give and even receive gift cards, but personally, I hate them. They’re so impersonal. When I see people do it, it’s like they kind of know what the other person is interested in, but instead of getting something from that store that they might like and can get a gift receipt for, they just get them a card. Not only that, but when they receive a card in turn, it’s like why didn’t they just give each other money or nothing in return? It’s kind of a wash.

Now I’m not saying that you have to get the most elaborate or expensive gift. or that you shouldn’t get them what they ask for or do something special for them that they would enjoy. My point is I wish people would put a little more thought in it. I think if people would do that, then it’d stop feeling like an obligation and the holiday magic would return. And that’s the one thing we could all use more of.

Marc Johnson

Eternal Darkness Is Now Available for Pre-Order

ETERNAL DARKNESS is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Kobo, or Smashwords. It is available December 16th, 2018.

If you would like a review copy, please email me.

AMAZON
KOBO
SMASHWORDS

Eternal Darkness Available for Pre-order

ETERNAL DARKNESS is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Kobo, or Smashwords. It is available December 16th, 2018.

If you would like a review copy, please email me.

AMAZON
KOBO
SMASHWORDS

My Top 5 Gaming Consoles

So earlier this year, I got the bug to get into the world of Retro Video Game Collecting. I’m not entirely sure why, but I feel the need to start collecting games I’ve played from my youth. I’m not going to get all crazy and buy all of X games from Y system. But I am in the midst of collecting all Metroid, all Fire Emblems, and games I love like Shining Force, Punch Out, etc.

I feel like retro gaming started to be an actual thing about 3 to 5 years ago. I see it getting bigger. If I was going to invest in something and diversify my portfolio, it would be video games. Investing in Magic the Gathering cards, I don’t get. But video games, I do. Go figure.

5. SEGA SATURN

The Sega Saturn was the best console when it came to arcade games. It captured the exact feeling of being in an arcade. Arcade games are a lot different now and are more like the Wii than anything else. But back then, you wanted to transport that feeling to the arcade to home. It cost a lot less quarters that way. The controls, graphics, and gameplay was perfect.

Another little unknown thing about the Saturn was that there were a lot of imported Japanese games on it. Unfortunately, I never got my modded but a friend of mine did and showed me a plethora of great Saturn games. I may not have been able to read anything on the menus or dialogue, but I had fun playing it.

From time to time, I wish that Sega would return and make consoles especially now as I’m reading Console Wars. As bad as the Dreamcast was, it did have some great ideas and games much like the Wii-U. I can’t wait to finish that book because I’m curious about Sega’s demise and I wonder if they cover that?

RIP Sega.

4. GAME BOY ADVANCE

Nintendo’s had a lot of great handhelds over the years, but I would say that the Gameboy Advance is their best. This has got to be the system where I enjoyed Nintendo’s portable games the most. It also introduced me to some great ones like Fire Emblem, Golden Sun, and Advance Wars. The GBA unlike the 3DS, has nothing gimmicky about it. It was just a better, lighter, Gameboy. What more can you ask for? Sometimes simplest works best.

3. THE SEGA GENESIS

Of course, I’d have to put my favorite console growing up. Out of all the systems I’ve played, the Sega Genesis wa ahead of its time. Unfortunately, it was too far ahead of its time, and that might have cost the war.

Because my dad worked for a cable company, I had access to the Genesis’s X-Band and Sega Channel. The X-Band allowed you to play online. As far as I know, there were only two games to do so, or only two games that I had that could work: Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam. And that’s when I learned that you can goal tend in NBA Jam. Thankfully, someone eventually taught me that cheat.

Since I only had two games that could work for the X-Band, it got old rather quick. What didn’t get old was the Sega Channel. That gave me access to 50 games that rotated games every month. Thankfully, the RPGs lasted longer and games would come back in rotation. If it wasn’t for the Sega Channel, I would have number played my favorite game of all time Shining Force 2, plus other little gems such as Vectorman, Comix Zone, Earthworm Jim, Ristar, and so on. I feel like today’s consoles are only now trying to do something like that.

2. NINTENDO GAMECUBE

This was an odd time for Nintendo. The fact that they didn’t partner with Sony or even release CDs for their 64 probably did them in when it came to sales and popularity for at least a decade. However, when they finally did decide to go CD, it was with these strange mini discs.

That said, there was an odd charm to the Gamecube. I don’t know if it was the shape, the games, or the fact that this was when Nintendo decided to go in a different direction than the other companies, and get back to their roots, but I feel like the Gamecube was when I became a Nintendo fan again. I also love an underdog. While I’m rebuying old games I used to play, when it came to the Gamecube, I kept all the games I loved. This system may have the most underrated library.

1. NINTENDO SWITCH

This console is the newest on this list, but to me it’s not. The Switch much like the Golden State Warriors, are the next evolution in the video game industry. For years now, I’ve been playing games on my phone, iPad, and my 3DS. Basically, I’ve been playing portable games that I can play on a smaller screen while doing something else. I also enjoy lying down while playing.

Aside from its portability and small screen, I love it because of the indie games that have on it. The Switch killed the Vita for me as all the games I would have bought on that system was ported over. Yet unlike Sony, Nintendo supports the Switch so you get Nintendo first party games on it.

I’ve only played it docked once, and it was all right. The multiplayer bit with playing on one system isn’t very good unless you have small hands. I love the Switch so much that it got me to buy physical copies of games. I’ve not had much interest in its club part, but I am curious as to where it’s going to go. In fact, I’m curious as to what Nintendo does with its system in the upcoming years.

I never bought a Wii U but I liked the controller a lot. Not enough to get one because it didn’t seem to have enough support and it was too heavy, but I could see where Nintendo was going if it stuck with that design. What I like most about the Switch is it’s not a gimmick. As much fun as I had with the Wii, as cool as I thought the Kinect was, those were all gimmicks. The way the Switch is designed feels like a next evolutionary step, which discounting their Gameboy/3DS line, they haven’t done since the SNES.

Those are my favorite consoles of all time subject to change in the upcoming years. I just wish I had time to play more video games: both new and old. What are your favorite consoles and games from the past 30+ years?

Marc Johnson