Kevin A. Ranson's Blog, page 9
July 8, 2014
The Matriarch: Guardians Teaser Book Trailer
The Matriarch: Guardians is available NOW, but here’s a “mood trailer” for you with bits of dialogue lifted from the text. Enjoy…and feel free to comment and share!
Extra fun bit! If you have a cool sound system or really great headphones, you’ll get a bit of a treat; I put a lot of cool and creepy stuff into the soundtrack that you’ll miss on a teeny phone speaker. Turn it up!
Filed under: Creativity, Horrificus, Literarian Tagged: #fangtastic, Cedarcrest Sanctum, Guardians, horror, Kevin A. Ranson, the matriarch, vampires
July 1, 2014
Good Guests Behaving Badly: Con Guest Commandments
Popular Arts Conventions are great places for fans and artists to meet and interact over common interests: books, film, television, cosplay, web, or whatever. The fear, however, is that fans – abbreviated from the word “fanatics” – are the only source of irresponsibility and poor judgment. For those of us who at one time or another have stood on both sides of the convention table, there IS such a thing as a bad guest.
Fortunately, David Gerrold has nailed a comprehensive list of essential guidelines that guests new and old should probably abide by. With his kind permission, I have immortalized it not only for myself but for anyone in the industry.
The 15 Con Guest Commandments… (read more)
All of you know someone who might have benefited from such knowledge.
Don’t be that guest…ever. Or ever again.
Read and heed.
Filed under: Cosplaying, Creativity, Existentialism, Management Tagged: Con Guest Commandments, Conventions, cosplay, David Gerrold, poor judgment, Popular Arts Conventions
June 28, 2014
The Matriarch Series Book Trailer
It took over a year to capture the original pictures and longer still to process them into a storybook format. I’ve had to learn a few new music and media skills to get this far, but this trailer is 100% created by me. PLEASE let me know if you do or don’t like it; any and all feedback will help me improve my work in the future. I hope you enjoy it.
Filed under: Cemetery, Conspiracies, Creativity, Horrificus, Literarian Tagged: Cedarcrest Sanctum, Kevin A. Ranson, novel, the matriarch, vampires
June 20, 2014
Meet Me @AncientCityCon in Jacksonville, Florida on July 18th-20th!
Lend me your ears…that’s disgusting; take those back this instant!
After taking a year off to concentrate on my burdening…no, bludgeoning… wait, *burgeoning* writing career, I’m a guest at this year’s Ancient City Con at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront on July 18th-20th, 2014. I’ll be bringing a bunch of books: copies of The Matriarch and The Matriarch: Guardians. If you already have one or both, bring them by to get those dead-tree editions signed at no charge! There will be panels…oh yes, there WILL be panels…including an all-new edition of The Ultimate Occult Showdown with myself and Brett Link as your enforcers…whoops, I meant “hosts!”
C’mon down, get a hotel room right on the waterfront, and party with us for the eighth-annual Ancient City Con this mid-July. Seriously, there’s nothing else to do that weekend in Jacksonville…I promise. Would I lie? I mean, when it’s important?!
See ya there!
Filed under: Cosplaying, Creativity, Existentialism, Literarian, Roleplaying Tagged: Ancient City Con, Cinephiles, Cosplayers, Gamers, the matriarch, The Matriarch: Guardians, Ultimate Occult Showdown
June 18, 2014
Are Strong Female Characters in Supporting Roles Mostly Useless?
A friend pointed an article my way called “We’re losing all our Strong Female Characters to Trinity Syndrome,” citing a concern that, while storytellers in film have come a long way in empowering female characters, those characters are often reduced to mere plot devices.
There is an essential truth to this: they ARE plot devices.
And the reason for this is just as true: secondary characters support the Protagonist’s story.
Before we crawl under the hood, understand that I am not advocating the treatment of Strong Female Characters in many works – the author of the article makes a fair point of this – but we’re not talking about Ripley from Aliens or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” because those are their stories. We are also not talking about “Women In Refrigerators,” a trope concerning violence against women in comics as a plot device to “hurt” Strong Male Characters.
The article outlines eight questions writers should ask themselves about Strong Female Characters, everything from “(can she be) seamlessly replaced with a floor lamp with some useful information written on it” all the way to “deciding to have sex with/not have sex with/agreeing to date/deciding to break up with a male hero” pointlessness. The article contends that writers should rise to the occasion to create someone worthy of the name Strong Female Character, but these could all be reduced to a single, far simpler question: Can your Strong Female Character be seamlessly replaced by a Strong Male Character? If yes, all’s good; if not, why not?
Let’s be honest: sometimes someone needs to be rescued. It’s a fact that a female in jeopardy elicits a more emotional response because, like it or not, everyone – men and women both – equate a female’s response with emotion. Males are encouraged to be strong, bury emotion to “suck it up” and “get over it,” but while “the female rape survival scenario” has become a standard trope for demonstrating how strong a woman is, the same isn’t true for men. If you can identify more than three films where the Strong Male Character is either raped or threatened with rape without Googling it, you’re more knowledgeable than I, but that’s not entirely what we’re talking about here.
Let’s address a few of the examples from the article. The first is its namesake: Trinity from The Matrix films. True, she’s a badass at the beginning and Neo’s a mere wannabe, but that also casts her in the role of a mentor; as such, the main character – Neo, not Trinity – is destined to surpass his mentor, even if she has to perish so that he may fulfill his destiny (do I even need to mention what Neo’s ultimate fate is? Uh huh, that’s right). Yes, she loves him – even if that love isn’t reciprocated – and who wouldn’t want to be the chosen of “the chosen one?” Everyone is second banana in that pecking order; Trinity gets a bad rap because she’s sleeping with the main character. Her role as mentor and martyr IS significant, even if it diminishes her story arc, because it supports the Protagonist – as it should be.
Other examples? Tauriel in The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug saves the lives of many characters including Legolas; moreover, her entire story hasn’t been revealed as yet. Katee Sackhoff’s Dahl in Riddick WAS a bit of eye-candy – she was rather proud hitting her workout goal in time for the film and happy to show herself off – but as one of the few survivors who wasn’t there to be killed off, her character was willing to change her mind about Riddick and has become a potential ally in any future sequels (fingers crossed!) Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori in Pacific Rim has one of the more significant arcs for a Strong Female Character in overcoming a scary childhood, an overprotective mentor, and her own doubts to raise herself up to an equal to the main character; by the end of all that, I submit that a kiss has been earned, but it’s still not Mako’s story.
Alice Eve’s Carol Marcus in Star Trek: Into Darkness WAS a Victoria’s Secret footnote that could have been phoned in – I agree wholeheartedly on this one. Really, JJ?
With a Strong Female Character as the Protagonist, I happily reversed this trope as a plot device in my vampire thriller sequel, The Matriarch: Guardians. My main character, Janiss, begins her second book in danger of being reduced to a mere plot device due to a fatal flaw: she fears making the wrong decision and – by choice – defers to a male. That same Strong Male Character encourages her, however, to make the active decision to take the leadership role for herself to reinforce her status as the Protagonist; it’s not his story. One of my reviewers even noted that Janiss was in danger of becoming a secondary character in her own book; little did that person suspect that this was by design!
While the battles rage on, the war is far from lost. A far worse offender was last year’s Beautiful Creatures, a story that introduced a Strong Male Character, shifted the story away to a Strong Female Character, took the element of choice away from both of them, then handed the title of Protagonist back to the Male Character…ugh. If more was supposed to be going on than what hit the screen, it needed some serious script doctoring or editing. With Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games and Tris from Divergent blasting onto the scene, relevant Strong Female Characters are not only getting top billing but are taking a commanding lead in box office receipts. Take that, Women in Refrigerators trope!
Filed under: Conspiracies, Creativity, Existentialism, Hollywood, Literarian Tagged: Janiss, Katee Sackhoff, Katniss Everdeen, Mako Mori, Strong Male Character, Tauriel, The Matriarch: Guardians, Trinity Syndrome, Tris, trong Female Characters, Women In Refrigerators
June 14, 2014
Adults Reading YA Isn’t Kid Stuff
In the wake of a Slate blogger YA-shaming adults (backlashes are occurring everywhere), I’d like to weigh in on why *I* dabble in “childish fiction.”
Complexity isn’t reserved for the old; it’s often a mistake that, too often, many adults forget how smart they were as kids and underestimate young adults. The difference is experience, not intelligence. Also, the point of view of a child isn’t any less interesting than an adult – or an alien, a monster, an animal, an addict, a plumber, or an artificial intelligence. Stephen King’s Stand By Me aka “The Body” has an all-child cast; It is born of childhood fears and has one leg in. Very few will argue that John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In is “for children.”
An interesting thing about YA is lessening the importance of sex in the story; the definition of adult (aka “literary”) fare seems to be that everything must be ultimately motivated by your crotch – music, film, poetry, whatever – because everything adults do in life must lead to something naked and primal. Kids also have the advantage of being blind to society-imposed gender roles rather than be pigeonholed in the way many adults classify things. The whole “put away childish things” and “know your place” is something children are taught, not something that just happens.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion; unlike facts, opinions are never wrong. If you like books about complex feline societies masquerading as a social commentary on the human world, enjoy. YA is just another classification to help readers find what they’re looking for, no different from sci-fi, horror, romance, thriller, superhero, or whatnot.
The truth is this: a good story is a good story. Don’t feel guilty…just enjoy.
Filed under: Conspiracies, Creativity, Literarian Tagged: kid stuff, opinion, Slate, young adult
June 8, 2014
An Unhealthy Choice: Setting Up the First Act
Hero’s Journey is the classic stock-plot framework; it works and you can build upon it in infinite ways. From a three-act perspective, this sets up our narrative and story, but it often all hinges on a single decision – an unhealthy one at that.
This is the moment where many viewers/readers will say, “Why didn’t they just do THIS?” The easy answer is “because then we wouldn’t have a story,” but the trick is to make the audience feel enough for the character to go along with it and propel the story forward…not always an easy task.
This setup also plays strongly into the ending; if the journey and character growth promised at the start isn’t clear, any ending – no matter how many explosions and cool character deaths take place – will fall short and leave the audience feeling unfulfilled by the experience. A solid story needs to provide what was promised, even if it’s not exactly in the way the audience imagined it.
Listen to Pixar’s Michael Arndt, screenwriter for Toy Story 3, explain first-act methodology (it’s cooler than it sounds) with examples from The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, and the original Toy Story.
Got all that? Now, get back to writing!
Filed under: Creativity, Literarian Tagged: first act, hero's journey, Michael Arndt, Pixar, Toy Story 3, unhealthy choice, writing
May 31, 2014
The Matriarch: Guardians is now available!
The sequel to The Matriarch has been published! The Matriarch: Guardians now available in Amazon Kindle and paperback!
“… BETTER than the original! The reader can tell that Kevin Ranson really grew as an artist between books…Vampire lovers have found their next favorite vamp series!”
http://cedarcrestsanctum.com/the-matriarch-guardians/
If you like it or enjoyed The Matriarch, please tell a fellow reader or give a copy as a gift.
Enjoy!
Filed under: Creativity, Literarian, Paranormal Tagged: #fangtastic, Guardians, horror, Kevin A. Ranson, the matriarch, vampires
The Matriarch: Guardians is now available! #vampires
The sequel to The Matriarch has been published! The Matriarch: Guardians now available in Amazon Kindle and paperback!
“… BETTER than the original! The reader can tell that Kevin Ranson really grew as an artist between books…Vampire lovers have found their next favorite vamp series!”
http://cedarcrestsanctum.com/the-matriarch-guardians/
If you like it or enjoyed The Matriarch, please tell a fellow reader or give a copy as a gift.
Enjoy!
Filed under: Creativity, Literarian, Paranormal Tagged: #fangtastic, Guardians, horror, Kevin A. Ranson, the matriarch, vampires
May 21, 2014
Artists Supporting Artists: Lessons From #AmericanIdol
Season 13 of “American Idol” is over, and someone won.
And yet everyone won.
As a rule, I don’t watch competition shows; I’m pretty selective with my television watching altogether. People with superstar dreams (note: without a ‘Z’) flock to local competitions, putting their lives on hold for a few minutes of fame and perhaps to get noticed. Sometime it’s about the prize and sometimes it’s about the exposure, but at the heart of it all, these shows are still a competition: there will be one winner and the rest are losers.
My family watches the show, and one of their favorites this season was Caleb: all rocker with a throwback sound you’d have to look for on Pandora or maybe “Ozzy’s Boneyard” on SiriusXM. Caleb looked and sounded ready-made for superstardom; he looked like he was auditioning, not competing. I paid attention, drifting away from my writing desk to listen in when his turn at the microphone came up; if you’re a fan of classic rock, he’s hard to resist, belting out David Coverdale tunes like a secret lovechild. In spite of his incredible talent, he not only sought out the other contestants for support but genuinely supported them in return. Instead of a weekly shrinking group of flaring attitudes, they all became closer, and you could see it on the screen, often with Caleb at the center of it.
They were all competitors, yet they all supported one another.
Peeking in once in a while, there was a time many years ago when “Idol” interviewed their contestants and asked what they thought of one another, highlighting the drama in the competition (possibly even orchestrating much of it). Those days are long gone, and the show itself isn’t the ratings champion it once was… too bad. You hear so much in the media about how narcissistic and selfie-oriented today’s youth are, with no ambition and expecting their handouts, yet there on the stage were over a dozen young adults competing for a single prize and more than willing to help one another reach it – just because they could.
Should all artists be like this? Lessons learned.
Filed under: Creativity, Existentialism Tagged: American Idol, Artists Supporting Artists, Caleb
