Jalex Hansen's Blog, page 2

You only hurt the ones you love or Why I like to kill my characters.

Death is the ultimate common denominator. We’re all going to experience it, most of us are trying to avoid it, and the rest of us are actively seeking it.

Plus it just makes a story better. Gollum, Jaws, Captain Ahab, Darth Vader, Sherlock Holmes, Romeo and Juliet, Jack from Titanic… Kenny from South Park. Where would those stories be if these characters had survived? Dying for something you believe in is the ultimate sacrifice.

Death can also make a loathsome character noble. Who doesn’t have to pretend not to cry when the T-800 makes Sarah Connor lower him into that molten pit and valiantly gives the thumbs up before he disappears forever? Suddenly you want a Terminator for a best friend, hero, and governor.

Kurt Vonnegut says in one of his 8 rules on how to write a great story that you should be a sadist to your characters and make awful things happen to them in order to show what they are made of. In 2011, the thirteen novels nominated for the coveted Man Booker Prize all put a main character to death.

No one wants to read about everybody ending up happily ever after, sitting around the pool eating strawberries and singing happy little campfire songs.

If this is the kind of ending you want then you shouldn’t be reading my books. Because I like to kill people.

Generally the nicer they are the more I will torture them, because nothing will wring the watermelon juices from a reader’s heart more than the suffering and often eventual death of their favorite characters.

I recently made a friend very mad by having someone kick a dog in my book. Hundreds of people have died, some near and dear to the readers, and my fake person fake kicks a fake dog and suddenly someone real is really angry.

When I have made a character so believable that their fictional death or injury upsets actual people, then my work as a writer is done. I have convinced you.

And not only that, maybe I have done you a favor by moving you to tears.

Aristotle suggested that art is the catharsis for our emotions. We like tragic endings because they allow us to express our suppressed feelings of negativity, all the rage, and hate, and despair that we hold in check to get through our daily lives can find an outlet in a movie, a play, or a book. We can live those emotions out through someone else and then step back into the sunshine with that big plastic grin in place.

If that’s the case my next book should be very therapeutic. I’m on a rampage, and I’m not sure who will survive. So prepare yourself. Maybe buy something black to wear. Because when I do something I like, I usually do too much of it.

-Jalex

Lux Omnibus Volume 1 is now available!

Lux Omnibus Volume 1 is now available!

Contains 1.1 Seeds, 1.2 Call to Arms, 1.3 Alliance and newly released character pictures.

Available on amazon.com

Omnibus, Omnivores, Omnipotence, and things that get really hot.

So I’m almost done with Book Five (Lux 2.2 Burning).  It’s getting done fast for a few reasons.  I live in a really freakin’ cold place, and right next to my desk there’s a heater.  It’s this old rectangle of coils that heat up to something just a few degrees below afterburner, and it glows a marvelous and skin crisping red, like the Eye of Sauron.  On Skype it looks purple which makes it seem deceptively cool, and perhaps more evil than it already is.  I am sure there are a million housing codes that this heater is breaking.  We are rebels together.  It inspires me to stay in front of my desk and write.  Also, I quit smoking,and now that I am no longer addicted to cigarettes, I am addicted to huge, soul-numbing amounts of food. I am eating everything. Ev. ery. Thing.

I can personally recommend that caramel covered bananas combined with a handful of peanuts and chased with three bags of gummy worms will make all of your problems go away.  And it will make you write better.

Oh yeah..writing.  See, I told you this would happen.

…So I’m almost done because I can sit here and be warm, and surrounded by food, and I have a door that locks, which is a new development and I’m sure that being able to hide in here uninterrupted has made me more productive.

And because I took such a long hiatus, I am now trying to be everywhere at once on the internet, so keep your eyes open.

The Omnibus is out and besides being a nicely revised, edited, and streamlined compilation of the first three Lux books, it also has ten  cast shots from our trailer shoot last year. Pics no one has seen yet, not even the cast, come to think of it.

I think Burning will be wrapped, and edited, and out to you early Spring.  That’s what I’m shooting for.  Because as soon as its warm again, I’m turning the heater off and running barefoot through the woods.

And you won’t be able to catch me… unless you lure me with food.

-Jalex

Oh my god it’s you!!!

You know that girl at parties that sits down next to you, and talks to you like she’s known you for years,  and gives you way too much information?

That’s gonna be me.

Hiding from enemy fire is a good idea.  Hiding from your fans is just kinda rude. So I’m going to get more personal, share my ride with you.  Like putting my actual picture on the website, admitting I am not an alien, and  telling you that I like dubstep, and movies that run as fast as Kenyans, and that most of my clothes are gray because it makes me calmer.  I talk too much.  I need to write more and say less.  I’m not sure that this is helping me reach that goal.

Often the most interesting thing about writers is that they are less interesting than anything they write about.  Most of my life is somewhere between scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro and drooling when I sleep.  Those are the parts I’m going to share with you, the in between. I’ll  spare you the rest.

So yeah. Here goes…Exposure.

-Jalex

UPDATE

 

 

Work on the Lux Omnibus has delayed the release of Lux 2.2.

 

I’ll keep you posted.

Jalex

Why “Gathering” is going South – Part One

[image error] When I was fifteen my father decided that it was time to fulfill his life long dream of buying a sailboat and living aboard. He said he would do this before he turned fifty, and managed to sign the papers the day before his birthday.

That’s the happy ending (or maybe the  happy beginning).

But before that could happen we had to trek across the United states from Arizona to Florida.

My father was never one to put his foot on the gas pedal and arrive at a destination within a specified time.  He never used a map because he could read the stars, and moss on trees, and the secret code of squirrels cracking nuts. A map would have felt like an obligation.  He liked to find an unused road and find out what was on the end, or beat on the doors of closed country restaurants to see if they would open just for us.  People always opened doors for my father then, and we had a lot of good meals and made many friends that way.

The sailboat odyssey began in a truck with a camper shell, a jerry-rigged air conditioning system of duct tape and plastic tubing, and a carsick dog.

I was in back with the dog.

We made pretty good time across the desert, a blur of dusty hills, thirsty scrub, and mountains etched against a still hot pink sunset.

The dog and I ate a lot of french fries to kill time. I listened to music the whole way. Loud, parent drowning music.  And I scribbled furiously in my notebook, working on the story that would become Lux.

But as soon as we rolled into East Texas and the outer limits of my father’s  territory, time slowed down.  The south is slow, as anyone who has ever lived there knows.  It’s a land of sitting on porches and exchanging stories with the cashier at the grocery store.  Laying in the grass is a perfectly acceptable way to spend time.  Southerners work hard but they relax even harder.  Lazy days are a blood sport in the South, hunted down with expert tracking skills.

As soon as we crossed that invisible barrier the air became heavy, and humid, and slow.

Every time we found a rest stop we would wander the area around it, theoretically walking the dog, but really walking my father.  We found dilapidated houses down dirt roads that were hung with shrouds of moss and occupied only by birds. We lived on road food like pecan logs and drove until the moon cracked open and made half its journey in the opposite direction.

I left the South when I was four, but now, returned, it sang to me in a language that only the blood recognizes, and of course it found its way into my story. A large part of this next book takes place in Alabama, Southeast Texas, and the panhandle of Florida. It is its place of birth as well as mine, but in “Gathering” you meet an eviscerated version, a South once again torn by war and divided loyalties.

So before we get to that, I want you to remember it as I do.

Come with me… see the places that most people never find.

 

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Frack-tals

 

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I am not a scientist.

 

So far I’ve managed to avoid the super smarty pants stuff in the Lux series.

I wanted the whole series to be grounded in real science, in real theories.  I like answers and explanations, so even though I’ve taken liberties (and ignorance has played a large part in that happening), I like to think that that the ideas behind the Lux and their abilities are possible…  theoretically.

To write this series I’ve studied electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, molecular biology… all those things that I avoided completely while getting a degree in creative writing…  and I have to say, I can’t believe there are people with brains big enough to hold all those numbers and letters and then attempt to actually understand them.  I’ve remembered what I could and I’m still afraid to try to sound smarter than I am, but it’s time to focus on the science part of my science fiction.

So right now I’m considering fractals.

The dictionary defines fractals as

a geometrical or physical structure having an irregular or fragmented shape 

at all scales of measurement between a greatest and smallest scale 

such that certain mathematical or physical properties of the structure, 

as the perimeter of a curve orthe flow rate in a porous medium, behave as if 

the dimensions of the structure (fractal dimensions)  are greater than the 

spatial dimensions.

Basically this means that from the greatest to smallest part a fractal pattern repeats itself.  It’s a branching structure. Think trees.  You’ve spent an entire lifetime surrounded by fractals: coastlines, clouds, the circulatory system, snowflakes.  If you’ve eaten broccoli, you’ve eaten fractals. They are used to generate images for television and movies and to make art, and  lots of other cool things I don’t even know about (and you might not either.)  The organ that lets you process all this information and (hopefully) understand it, the brain, is a fractal structure.

Lately there has been a lot of discussion in the world of quantum mechanics about fractals and the behavior of light,(which may help resolve some of the issues in Einstein’s theories, in case you’re wondering or you have issues with Einstein.) and this is what I’m trying to understand now.

Fractal antennas are used in cell phones.  I know you have one of those.  You might even being reading this post on one. It seems the same science that connects cell phones to each other may work to connect living beings to each other too.  We may have antennas in our DNA, an electromagnetic communication device.

To get a little better understanding  read this link and this one.

Right now, my brain fractals are smoking, and I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg. (Which are of course… you guessed it… fractal.)  I’ll do my best to make it all make sense, and if anyone has something to add, please drop me an email, or send me a link, or you can even try sending it by fractal.

I’ll let you know if it gets to me.

Jalex

The prices they are a changin’

 

This week before a price increase takes effect, Lux 1.2 and 1.3 will each be offered free for one day only.

Promotions run on 4/26 for Lux 1.2 Call to Arms

Lux 1.2 on Amazon

Lux 1.2 on Smashwords

 

 

4/27 for Lux 1.3 Alliance.

The new price of the first three books will then be raised to $1.99.

 

Lux 2.1 Rising will remain at .99 cents for the first month.

 

Get em’ while they’re hot.

Jalex

Drum roll please….

Lux 2.1: Rising is now available

at Amazon.com

and at Smashwords

 

Never hurts to be compared to Stephen King

Stumbled across this on the internet.

Cool.

http://musingsofanindiewriter.blogspot.com/2011/09/pulling-em-in.html

 

Pulling ‘Em In

The indie author’s severest challenge remains what it’s always been: persuading readers to give him a try. Few of us, no matter our skills as storytellers, approach that task with anything but trepidation.

There are a few well-known techniques, and each of them works now and then: giving away bits of your work as “loss leaders;” obtaining recommendations from better-known writers; leaving your books around where others might notice them; using blogs and Twitter as vehicles for promotion; and so on. The efficacy of these approaches varies from writer to writer, and from book to book, and from season to season.

Recently, while looking for some indie SF to read, I stumbled over young-adult writer Jalex Hansen. Miss Hansen displays a charming quirkiness in her brief SmashWords bio:

Jalex Hansen was conceived during an interplanetary war when her mother, a high ranking officer, captured and interrogated her father, a triple agent for the opposing side. She is fluent in seven ancient fighting styles and has cured cancer on her home planet. Jalex has mastered time travel and occasionally watches through your window at night for data in her human sleep study. Sometimes she writes.

The first of her offerings, Lux 1.1: Seeds, is free to all comers, so I downloaded it and read it. Though it has a few low-level problems, it’s an impressive start to herLux saga: impressive enough to impel me to purchase the next two segments at $0.99 US apiece.

Note the sequence:

An interesting “biography;”
A free introductory segment;
Each of the subsequent segments, issued at three-week intervals, at an extremely modest price.

Friends, as a reader-seduction technique, this one has considerable appeal.

Just in case you’re unaware of it, the foremost storyteller of our time, the great Stephen King, issued The Green Mile, his “serial thriller” and one of his very best novels, in just about exactly the same fashion. It was a tremendous hit, and generated considerable excitement among readers precisely because of the method of issuance.

Now you might say to yourself, “Okay, it worked for Stephen King, but I’m not Stephen King.” And unless King himself is one of the readers of this modest little blog, you would be indisputably correct, at least as regards technical matters of identity. But if you’re struggling for recognition in a sea of independent writers, this is an approach worthy of consideration.

Of course, your book must be susceptible to serialization. Not all novel-length works can be segmented thus; I don’t think mine can, with the possible exception of Which Art In Hope. But if yours can, and if you’re willing to take a modest chance on your ability to hold a reader’s interest through three or five or seventeen time-sequenced segments of your saga, the idea is worth some thought.

If serialization isn’t for you, then perhaps a loss-leader strategy would serve as a near equivalent: Pick something to give away — hopefully, one of your stronger stories — and include an “Other books by” page at the front or back. If Miss Hansen’s experience is any guide — her Lux series stands among the top-rated SF offerings for the Kindle on Amazon — the results might please you greatly.

Posted by Francis W. Porretto at 5:48 AM