Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 108
March 19, 2014
Serial Publishing, Money, and Power
A few days ago I got this question from an anonymous reader:
I was considering publishing a novel that I am working on serially, much as you have done. Do you have any suggestions? If I might be crass, is it possible to make any sort of money from it?
It’s a question I haven’t seen answered…on my website. So here’s my sense of the whole serial publishing thing.
Short answer: I didn’t make any money from it. Like maybe $20 in five years. And it was a lot of work that I could have spent on writing.
However, publishing the Kingdoms of Evil serially did have some benefits. It taught me a little about building an audience, networking, and advertising, which any author of any kind needs. The KoE website also got me some good commenters, some of whom beta-read my subsequent books and even appeared as guests on my podcast or joined me in collaborative projects. Finally, the website helped me get an agent. I included the link in the pitch letter for my second book (The World’s Other Side) and the agent (Jennie Goloboy) read both that and KoE. Although she didn’t think she could sell either 
she asked to see my third book (Tyrannosaur Queen), which she is currently working on selling to publishers. I know not all agents care about your old projects on your webpage, but in this case, having KoE online helped convince Jennie that I can write good stories.
There is one final bit of good that posting KoE online did for me. KoE was my first novel, and it was hard to let go (I worked on the damn thing for almost four years). Putting it online and getting some “good job!” comments from strangers helped me to convince myself that I was done with the project. That allowed me to focus on writing new books, which I think is the best way to increase your chances of getting noticed.
March 18, 2014
The Singularity and the King 6
Turbo: I’m thinking the first thing we need is to handle why some technologies are working and some aren’t. So, how are certain technologies being suppressed? The whole thing could be a simulation, where physics would be easy to rewrite (haha, after getting control of whatever’s damping the technology, our heroes “wake up” from a simulated shared dream and have to deal with reality!) or nanotechnology that absolutely suffuses the environment and breaks anything that looks like technology, provided it doesn’t have the correct passcodes. Gotta make sure those ancient LARPers weren’t cheating.
Dan: Reality suppression and nanotech’s been done. What if we go the MMORPG rout and have cheaters get punished by game avatars? A huge robot angel descends from the sky (or claws its way out of the ground and runs at you, or builds itself out of machinery or animal and plantlife in your area) and smacks you when you use proscribed technology. Or just have orbital lasers blast anything producing electromagnetism or moving more than 100mph (although that’s been done too: Daybreak Zero and Souls in the Great Machine).
Making the technology interdiction mechanical will set limits on it, which the characters can get around in interesting, plot-making ways.
Turbo: No matter how the control system defines “high tech” there’s going to be ways around it. Maybe you can make a mechanical computer, but not transistors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanic...). You can make a pulse jet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_jet ) that runs on booze (I think ethanol would work, not super sure though) but since nice bearings aren’t allowed a regular jet engine is out of the picture. That sort of thing.
If the Parliamentarians are curious and clever enough, they might be able to counter the ancient supertechnologies and magic of the Imperial House. They’d still be horribly outmatched, but they could have some tricks up their sleeve!
Dan: Shielded electronics? Steam-punk technology driven by atomic piles? A human force of secret police who follow the angels’ orders to seek out and destroy technology based on their own best judgment? A sort of armed Luddite Inquisition? Is that what the Krypteria is??
Michael: How to give things a mythical spin? Use Clarke’s third law. The AI’s have gone rampant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampancy...) so a few thousand years later people say the spirits of the land are in rebellion. Certain nanotech works if you know how to hack the system. Sorcery! Certain programmes are going in self-perpetuating loops. Cursed magic swords! There’s a lot of potential McGuffins in that last one.
Things get interesting once you throw away super-tech hand-waving. Then the limits placed on technology are works of Man, not God, and might be circumvented. Also it drives home the thematic point that the difference between magic and technology isn’t the level of advancement (despite what Clark might have said) it’s the understanding of the user. It’s a magic sword in the hands of a church-ordained paladin, but a semi-sentient nanotechnological tool in the (hopefully gloved) hands of an engineer. And I say the engineer’s way of understanding is better.
March 16, 2014
Banjolnir pitch
So this is the pitch letter for the “Banjolnir” idea Daniel sent me before our podcast. I think it deserves it’s own page, don’t you?
I see the optimal form of this story as a 96 page graphic novella.
It came from a silly online conversation about the Avengers movie that drifted and then began referencing the movie Deliverence. I made this silly photoshop and then was overcome by a story idea. Rural american gothic horror crossed with Jack Kirby’s strange bastardization of Norse mythology.
Here is a rough summary of the idea assembled from my notes. I will also try to get some of my sketchbook page doodle scanned and share for reference.
The Hook: Some poor bastard is running in a panic through the woods at night, clutching his torn trousers around his waist. Behind him a cypress tree is split clean in half by a lightning bolt. He looks back over his shoulder as The one eyed god king swings his sparking infinity-banjo. “I’m ahgunna fuck the shit out of you” cries the syphilitic immortal in his strange runic dialect.
The panicked man is one of a a group of weary explorers wander into the woods of wherever and discover the magic castle of a secret race of self professed supreme beings. Slowly are horrified that they are not so much sublime gods as they are interdimensional hillbillies that are happy to discover something new to fuck and then eat.
Banjoliner(working title)
References:
Deliverance
Marvel’s Thor
Twiglight Zone: To Serve Man
Brigadoon
At the Mountains of Madness
These God Hillbillies are Immortal natives of an reality up the multiuniverse “tree” where the life is abundant and free of corruption. They were a small group of criminal seditionists, made outcast by their heavenly civilization. Imprisoned in a section of earth geography (Appalachia) that phases in and out of different realities down tree. Some are very similar to ours, most are far worse (desolation of life, inhospitable climates, populated by monsters, disease, rivers of fire, mouth bees, etc) They have had a rough go of it the last millennia, and they haven’t been in a universe as tenable as ours for a very long while.
The Elders: Ancient Ruthless Patriarchs and Wizened Matrons, Bitter, Cruel, Absurdly Arrogant despite how shit they were where they are from. They are commendable for having held out against all odds, but are to they core corrupt and ammoral.
The Young’ns: Are either inbreeds (dumb as shit pots, slightly deformed, spoiled and hyperactive, rapey) or half-breed “demigods” from other realities captured natives (Hooves etc. Abused, Sullen, really Angry).
Our Heroes: Lost hunters? Scientific explorers? They stumble across their territory as it phases into our relatively comfy world. The God tribe see them as a way out of they appalachian prison and so they are initially hospitable and play up that they are a pantheon of gods, until the toothless idiot son of the patriarch ruins the charade with his unsavory behavior. Can the humans escape their captures alive and unbesmirched?
Find out on the podcast!
March 15, 2014
48 The Godbillies or Banjolnir 1/2
This week I’m talking with illustrator Daniel Heard about the difference between a story and a series-of-events-that-happen.
The Thor trailer was good, but it didn’t have enough banjos.
How do I make this a story and not a series-of-events-that-happen?
Inciting event, and the protagonist has to deal with it
The Hollywood formula (see another great treatment of the formula on Writing Excuses)
There’s what the story is about, but then there’s what the story is actually about.
What makes a person civilized?
It’s easy to point at someone and say “you’re not civilized.”
Kentuckian? Is that a word?
48 The Godbillies or Banjolnir 1/3
This week I’m talking with illustrator Daniel Heard about the difference between a story and a series-of-events-that-happen.
The Thor trailer was good, but it didn’t have enough banjos.
How do I make this a story and not a series-of-events-that-happen?
Inciting event, and the protagonist has to deal with it
The Hollywood formula (see another great treatment of the formula on Writing Excuses)
There’s what the story is about, but then there’s what the story is actually about.
What makes a person civilized?
It’s easy to point at someone and say “you’re not civilized.”
Kentuckian? Is that a word?
March 11, 2014
Wheel in the Sky 1
Prologue
“Sir Larick? Sir Larick, speak to me!” His master fell, and Candagar stumbled forward as if pulled by a string. “You killed him!” He screamed up at the Falgaroth, but the Black Paladin was already turning away.
“It was not I who kill him,” said the enemy, “run away boy, while you still can.”
But Candagar wasn’t listening. His master was dying, but his lips moved. “Run boy.” His gauntleted hands came up to the great slash down his chest. Metal-clad fingers twisted and tore at the edges of the wound.
“What are you doing, sir Larick?” Candagar grabbed at his master’s hands.
“Run I said,” but the old knight’s actions belied his words. He grabbed Candagar’s wrist with one hand, pulled at the edge of his death-wound with the other, and yanked.
“Too late,” whispered sir Larick and Candagar’s hand plunged into the warm entrails of his master. And there he found a dagger. Instinctively his fingers coiled around the slick hilt, without knowing why he pulled the little weapon forth. With wonder he gazed at the silver ripples in its blade.
Greetings, master knight, spoke the voice in his head.
Next
By Dan, Michael, and Turbo. For a behind the scenes look at where this story’s coming from, see here.
Singularity and King 5
Turbo: I’ve started to touch upon a world full of technology so advanced it’s impossible for the natives to fully understand it. There are speaking swords made for ancient armies that have since gone feral and latch onto people in a parasitic relationship, a radiation-resistant steampunk society built around nuclear steam turbines, malfunctioning ancient super computers (apologies to Jack Vance here), that sort of thing.
Dan: I like the idea of feral technology. Which it would quickly become if it has any ability to self-perpetuate.
Turbo: Haha, the idea was that these magic swords would eventually turn the users’ bones into more magic swords, and before that they’d be running around trying to find the rare metals needed to reproduce. If you see a Conan-esque warrior barbarian, run!
Dan: Of course! That’s why those wandering swordsmen are wandering! They’re in the final stage of infection: clashing their sword against other weapons for gene-transfer, collecting treasure and artifacts as raw materials for the new sword they’re gestating, and accumulating followers who will take up the old sword and the new when gestation is complete.
And here we have our first chunk of manuscript text!
March 9, 2014
47 Criticism 2/2
I’m talking again with Melissa Walshe, social media strategist and author of the young adult urban fantasy Autumn’s Daughter. We discuss the problem of giving and receiving criticism, as well as…
Handraising language and hedging
The Oxford comma, unknown by the primitive indegenes of Europe
Prescriptivists and descriptivists
Pancakes on STIIIIICKS!
Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen
You have your drum, but what you’re really playing is the audience.
March 4, 2014
The Singularity and the King 4
Michael Silva and I were talking about our post-Singularity kingdom when who should…walk up? But Turbo Fanatic! Hi Turbo!
Turbo: People are actively working to provide inanimate objects with narrative power (smart cars that complain when they need repairs! Kitchen appliances that talk to each other!) and I wonder if there will be a point where science and technology produce a world that acts like a fairy-tale. You’d better be nice to your car if you want it to run, refrigerators helping victims of abuse, runaways talking to uplifted crows that gather trash in exchange for food, that sort of thing.
Dan: That’s a fascinating idea. It also dovetails with a project I’ve been thinking about.
Turbo: Oh man! I like that consciousness hack story! That fits nicely with the idea that future technology may be built to be anthropomorphized (I’ve seen sci-fi with fantasy and fairytale elements, but I can’t think of any time that anthropomorphization has been specifically called out as a goal for it’s own sake*). Actually, thinking a little more about it, isn’t that kind of what the iphone OS was doing? Indeed, Apple’s oeuvre seems to be about divorcing the underlying chaotic physical system from the visible external system (full of meaning and narrative power!). By that logic could we make some assumptions about future developments in technology? *Plenty of sci-fi is about AIs, but the “narrative universe” angle seems new. I love fairytale narratives but like to explore outside them, to prepare for the inevitable time when fairytales will fail.
Dan: I think that is what Lovecraft and the other counter-rationalists were getting at. The more we learn about how the universe REALLY works, the more we see that we are not its center. That scares some people, and they would prefer a universe run by a god. Even an evil god at least cares about us enough to want to hurt us.
So, that’s your theme, your conflict, your climax, and your plot right there. The characters begin what they believe is a fantasy quest, (perhaps to kill an evil god and bring back the Age of Singularity?) They succeed and kill the evil god, only to find themselves in the vast, impersonal, real universe, where the consequences don’t often make sense and bad things happen for no reason.
So the resolution of the plot, then, would be how to deal with (basically) the problems of Positivism . Do we pull the blankets over our heads and pretend that our lives are stories and everything happens for a reason? Do we abandon hope and kill each other since nothing matters anyway? Do we put the uncaring universe aside and say “let’s do what we can to make this place more pleasant?” The characters can see that their fantasy world is a kinder-garden built by their ancestors to shelter them from harsh reality. And now it’s time to build their own garden.
You know. Or something.
March 2, 2014
46 Criticism 1/2
I’m talking with Melissa Walshe, social media strategist and author of the young adult urban fantasy Autumn’s Daughter. We discuss the problem of giving and receiving criticism, as well as…
Writing is another way to improve your house
I’ve gotten some pretty negative comments
(it was on Tyrannosaur Queen, by the way)
The dinosaur freaking listserve!
The silence of not having read it
It’s about asking the right audience
The R-strategy of beta-reading
The serialization of my first story
I’m spending time with writers which pushes me to do my absolute best.
Facial cues and body language are important when you’re talking to another human being.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s ”relationship calibration”
