Ken Lizzi's Blog, page 64

Drafts and Drafts

I celebrated yesterday with MBW and the HA. You know why? Of course you don’t. So I’ll tell you: Saturday, May the Fifth, I completed the first draft of Chale Thorson Book One: The Jade Dagger. (What do you think about the series title? I’m still considering it.)

We celebrated at a brewpub. And in honor of the Battle of Puebla, my first beer was a Mexican-style lager. (Pretty good, too: El Guapo. I declined to imitate the Three Amigos, you’ll be glad to learn.)

It feels good to complete the first draft, an almost physical relief. So now I’ll set The Jade Dagger aside, clear my mind of it before returning for the second draft. It is time to switch mental gears. I need to conceive of two sequels to Boss and get to outlining. I also need to invent a series title for these books as well.

So the celebration and relief is, as ever, short-lived.

The results are worth it to me, though. Creating something new and seeing it released into the market is very satisfying. And I hope you get some satisfaction as well. I mean, I experience a certain reward from writing these books but I’m not intended as the entirety of the audience. I’m writing them to be read. So I hope you enjoy reading them at least as much as I enjoy writing them.

Tomorrow then, back down into the word mines.

Game Day

The web log post is late because today was Game Day. Sitting around a table, laughing, rolling dice. It’s been several months since I last had a chance to play. I enjoyed getting back into it for a few hours.

Did I learn anything applicable to writing, practice any storytelling skills? No, of course not. I was playing a game, exploring a dungeon, fighting monsters. With respect to playing the game I learned, or had earlier lessons reinforced, that first level thieves are easily broken. Rolling up a new character requires mere minutes — another piece of knowledge reinforced by practical application.

So, yes, the post is late. It doesn’t trouble me much. Recreation is important. I believe the expression “sorry, not sorry” is appropriate. I will return next week with somewhat lengthier fare.

Return of the Son of Even More Too Late Movie Reviews: Part Deux

And we’re back with the second installment of too-late-to-be-relevant film reviews. MBW is back from her business trip. But while she was away I got in two more flicks.

First up, Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I watched this with a sincere desire to enjoy it. But here’s the thing with Star Wars — no, let me backup, make a couple of digressions.

Everyone has a sort of personal history with Star Wars. It certainly made an impact on me. The first short story I recall writing, at about ten-years old was some dreck called “Han Solo and the Boy.” (I think I’d just gotten through the Brian Daley trilogy.) Even back then I realized something was wrong, went back and filed the serial numbers off so the story became generic space opera and not Star Wars. It was still dreck, of course. Later I made a few authorized bucks off Star Wars.

So there is some goodwill. I want Star Wars to be good. But from my personal viewpoint (the only one of got, the only one I can truly express if I’m not writing fiction) is that sometime, quite early on, Star Wars lost its mojo, its Oneness with the Force. Most critics claim that the second film was the best. It was darker, addressed more serious themes. I think that is precisely wrong. I think Return of the Jedi is where Star Wars began to veer from the path. The first film offered everything an eight-year old boy (me, at the time) could possibly desire in an entertainment: young farm hands with a destiny, princesses, sword fights, rogue smugglers, monsters, spaceships, gun battles, and clearly defined heroes and villains. The film offered just enough hinted at backstory to make it seem real and lived in, but not so much as to muddy the cliffhanger simplicity of it. Return of the Jedi ushered in moral complexity and began to explore the larger politics of the galaxy, offering a more nuanced, adult story. The other films built from there, so by the time the second trilogy added on wings of trade federations, grandmother suites of slavery, and guest rooms of backroom Senate dealings the entire edifice had grown ungainly. The foundations of Star Wars simply weren’t built to support all this.

As a kid I enjoyed the second and third films well enough. When I watched them again as an adult I found them all rather hokey, but the first one held up despite the clunky dialogue. It was fun. (Not the remastered version, though. Despite what Mr. Lucas believes to have happened, as depicted on screen Han shot first. Deal with it.) So that’s what I was hoping the filmmakers would capture in The Last Jedi. And for a minute or two I thought they had. But it didn’t last. If you are telling a fun kids’ story then you can have manual releases for your bomb bay, operated by a man instead of a droid. And you can ignore questions such as the whether or not a spaceship develops an Earthlike gravitational field. You can have your Jedi princess fly back inside a spaceship and open a door sans airlock without blowing the rest of the crew out into space. But if you are taking your story and your universe seriously, aiming to tackle themes with a capital T then you don’t get a pass on at least attempting realistic science.

It had its moments, but then it would halt the fun for Rose or someone to engage in sententious speechifying, or the film would give a nod to real world problems like child slave jockeys, squandering the goodwill it had just developed. Still, I enjoyed some of the spectacle.

And speaking of spectacle, we come to Kingsman: The Golden Circle. The first film was a romp, characterized by spectacular set-pieces. The action sequences were terrific fun, over the top. Clearly that is what the filmmakers intended for The Golden Circle.

We can dispense with the plot. (The writers certainly did. Rim shot.) A film like this does not rely on plot. A plot is merely a coat rack upon which to hang action scenes and jokes. There are two problems. One is that most of the action scenes failed to reach the standards of the first film. The second is that there simply weren’t enough action scenes. Too much dead time, chit-chatting in service of character and plot development. (Did the writers and director forget what sort of film this was? Do they think we actually care about any of these people?) In short, not enough spectacle. This sort of franchise depends on expanding the envelope, out doing the previous installment. Golden Circle simply didn’t.

If you truly loved this first one I can give this a tepid recommendation. For everyone else, I’d say pass.

That’s a wrap on reviews, until next time MBW goes out of town.

Return of the Son of Even More Too Late Movie Reviews

MBW is away on a business trip. You know what that means: a chance to watch mindless action movies. After I put the HA to bed, that is.

A week won’t be time to catch up on about a year’s worth of releases. But I’ve had a chance to watch three so far. What did I think? Well, let me tell you.

First up, Thor: Ragnarok. Another of the Marvel releases that puts the ‘comic’ in comic book movie. I enjoyed the Hel out of this. It made me laugh, which is generally a good indicator that I’m being entertained. No, it wasn’t great cinema. The plot made no pretense toward complexity. But neither did the Hope and Crosby road films and they didn’t suffer for it. This could almost be considered a Thor road film, with Loki and Hulk taking turns as the buddy.

I liked it much better than the second Thor film. I think taking Thor from the fantasy milieu and dropping him into the gonzo Marvel sci-fi universe made the difference.

So, recommended. Bodes well for the next film up, another comic book movie. To wit —

Justice League. Well, at least I started off well. Justice League was turgid, plodding, and largely humorless. Jason Mamoa provided some needed charisma as Aquaman. But Ezra Miller’s schtick as The Flash grew a bit tired. I’m not going to write much more about this. Not recommended.

Now I’ve just finished grousing about a plodding, largely humorless movie. So why did I generally enjoy the next film? That is Blade Runner 2049. Well, Blade Runner is a dystopian science fiction film. It is supposed to be dour. Now, I don’t recommend this unequivocally. The philosophical questions it raised  added little to those tackled in the original. What it grafts on wasn’t really dense enough to support the sheer length of the movie. But it looked good. The performances were uniformly excellent. The music carried on the style of the original. I don’t believe the film did itself any favors by (and this isn’t a spoiler — it is established within the first ten minutes) having its lead be a replicant instead of a human. I think that undercuts the emotional stakes. But overall this worked for me.

I’ll what tonight’s Red Box offering provides. Stay tuned.

Remedial Fantasy For the Chronically Lazy: A Top Five List

A couple of weeks ago I moderated a panel on the essential science fiction writers of the Golden Age. The premise was which writers should someone read if he were interested in acquiring a grounding in sci-fi but possessed either limited time or small inclination to read copious amounts of early twentieth century fiction. Who are the not-to-be-missed highlights? It was an engaging, free-ranging conversation. Many writers were brought up and discussed. The panelists agreed more often than not. I doubt we managed to pare the options down to an easily digestible reading list.

My original concept for the panel included fantasy as well. But, as it was a science-fiction convention, that idea was (rightly) nixed. But I still think it worth discussing. What if you, dear reader, had an interest in fantasy, indeed enjoyed reading the current crop of authors? What if you wanted to learn more of the inspirations guiding your favorite writers and where certain tropes and archetypes originated. But what if, for whatever reason, you didn’t want read a bunch of old stuff? Which authors could you read, at a bare minimum to fill this gap?

This could be a major undertaking. But since I am writing a web log post and not a PHD dissertation, I’m going to arbitrarily limit myself to five. Also, I am going to make the assumption that anyone interested in fantasy has already read Tolkien so I can dispense with him entirely. Most of these authors I’ve written of before, so if you are interested in some additional thoughts of mine, feel free to browse through the archives.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

Edgar Rice Burroughs. It doesn’t start with him. ERB had his own influences. I’m guessing H. Rider Haggard, A. Conan Doyle, and Jules Verne among them. But the fantasy that followed owed him a great debt. From Planetary Romance to lost civilizations, you can read it from ERB. ERB labored in the pulp mines, in which word count mattered more than plot consistency. The point was to keep the action moving, keep the readers interested. So don’t look to him for concise storytelling or poetic language. But for rollicking, imaginative adventure, he’s your man.

Lord Dunsany. If you are interested in concise storytelling and poetic language, look to Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the 18th Baron of Dunsany. He was a master of the short, evocative tale. The influence of his conception of fairyland as a realm of beauty and mortal danger can be seen in such writers as Tolkien, Poul Anderson, and Neil Gaiman.

Robert E. Howard. Ever read anything about a sword-swinging barbarian? Well, it all started with REH. Really, what more need I say? Of course he created much more than Conan. But we’re talking the essentials here, so sadly I must forego discussing Solomon Kane, Ban Mak Morn, et al. You want to understand where modern fantasy originated? Read Conan.

Clark Ashton Smith. CAS is less well known than he should be. But if you consider writers tacked onto a sort of genealogical table, with inspirations standing in for blood relationship, then his influence exceeded his fame. CAS at the root of the chart leads to a sequence of “begats.” Jack Vance is on that table (and not just for the Dying Earth motif), as are Gene Wolfe, R.A. Lafferty, and — to a lesser extent — Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp. CAS was a poet who happened to write most of his poetry in prose.

You may ask “Where, Ken, are the women?” I had considered including C.L. Moore in the fifth spot. She beats Leigh Brackett out due to the heavy ERB influence in Brackett’s fantasies. The influence of her evocative, gothic style can be detected, I think, in writers such as Andre Norton.

But I don’t do quotas. So, the way I see it, Fritz Leiber takes the fifth slot. The fantasy duo, a mismatched pair playing off each other for both dramatic and comedic effect may not have originated with Leiber, but he perfected it.

There you have it. The five fantasy writers you need to read to catch up on the genre, if you must limit yourself to five. Of course if you ask me tomorrow, the list might have changed.

What do you think? Did I slight anyone? Am I completely off my rocker? Or is this list defensible?

 

Let’s Call It Research

It’s probably been too long since I fired off a bunch of money — er, that is, rounds. For a birthday present, MBW arranged a range day for me with a couple of friends of mine who are members of a local gun club.

Many paper targets and several paper plates suffered at hands. My groupings were tolerable, but I do need to work on adjusting my grip.

I feel more comfortable with my over-under 12 gauge shotgun. I littered the landscape with the remains of clay discs. Great fun. Now, if only quail would pop up in an orderly, predetermined manner.

I took mental note of the smells, the sounds, and the feel. In both civilian and uniformed life I’ve spent some time sending lead at targets. The memories remain. But there is nothing like fresh experience to draw upon when you are writing. Yesterday’s shooting day has already gone on to inform a combat scene in the current WIP.

Maybe I can write off the ammo on my taxes as a business expense. What do you think?

The Little Convention That Could

So that’s NanoCon Mk. V done. What is NanoCon? It is a science fiction convention hosted by the science fiction club of Longview Community College in Longview Washington, a port town on the Columbia River about an hour from the Pacific. It isn’t big. I doubt two hundred people attended. Hence, I presume, “Nano.”

Still, as Gandalf probably reassured himself, size isn’t everything.

I sat on two panels, one of which I believe I was moderating, though that was never clear. Both went well, despite my presence. I would attribute the entertainment and informational value of both to the contributions of Greg Bear. The noted author is a wealth of knowledge and anecdote. If we are playing the “degrees of separation game” I am now much closer to winning, is what I’m saying.

In fact I had the honor of being invited by Astrid and Greg Bear to have dinner with them. That was a pleasure. When your life has been spent saturating in the works of Golden Age speculative fiction writers, hearing stories of them by a close friend (and/or relative) is manna.

If you’ll recall from my last post, I recently returned from Arizona. One of the spots I visited was Lowell Observatory, in Flagstaff. That place held a fascination for me because Percival Lowell’s observations of the channels of Mars (and enthusiastic misinterpretation thereof) helped inspire Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom books. And those books inspired my Under Strange Suns. Well, Lowell Observatory also employed Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto. To bring this full circle, Mr. Bear once met Clyde Tombaugh. Thus adding one more tenuous link to my insubstantial chain. Because it’s all about me. Right?

No, it is also about beer. A friend of mine (“Hi, Jack”) drove out to the con. We enjoyed a lunch of peanuts and beer tasters at Five Dons Brewing. A tiny place, nearly around the corner from the Ashtown Brewing, the place I visited last year. How convenient.

Now, time to trek back to Sandy. I’ve neglected MBW and the HA long enough.

 

Arizona

Writing this post gives me chance to rest from constant repetition of “wow.” MBW, the HA, and I are in Flagstaff, Arizona. We’ve been placing an unconscionable number of miles on our rental car, touring the state. Pardon me while I write, instead of utter, “wow.”

We’ve travelled through just about every sort of terrains short of coastal or tundra over the last few days. And given the snowfall in Flagstaff, we came near to tundra. The point is, the scenery is amazing.

I’m sure I don’t need to comment on the Grand Canyon. If you haven’t visited, you’ve certainly seen pictures. If you’ve only seen pictures, go visit. Enough said.

The red rock structures in and around Sedona are stunning. I’ve been lucky enough to travel extensively. I’ve seen natural beauty. I’m comfortable in asserting that the Sedona sights are on par with the steep sided, green tropical valleys of Hawaii; the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest, the western mountains (take your pick: Cascades, Grand Tetons, Rockies); Caribbean white sand beaches; or the azure waters of the Mediterranean viewed from Riviera cliff tops. I could go on, but the reminiscence is making me nostalgic.

The damming of the Colorado created a wonderful spectacle. Of course I imagine most of the course of the river is pretty spectacular. The price of boat tour is well worth it. I bet a summer week in a houseboat on Lake Powell would create some fond memories. Anyone done that?

I haven’t neglected the brewpubs. I’ve managed to visit a couple and sample the wares of others. Nor have I neglected my writing. I’ve made solid progress, writing every day.

The point is, I’m having a good time. Now, enough. We’re off to Phoenix to catch a Spring Training game. Royals versus Cubs, in case you were interested.

How about some more pictures?

Vacation, Ho!

I’m on the cusp of vacation and it couldn’t come soon enough.

Things are proceeding well enough, I suppose, they’re simply — incomplete. Case in point: I’ve got half the White Tree of Gondor on my bedroom wall. The right side, as you’re facing it, to be exact. See, many moons ago MBW expressed the desire to enhance the bedroom wall with some artwork. Fine with me. Though I admit some trepidation: What sort of artwork? As a purely precautionary measure, I found an image of the aforementioned tree online and showed it to MBW. She’s not particularly a genre fan, though she enjoyed LOTR (books and films.) To my relief she expressed immediate enthusiasm. (Take a look, it is a handsome bit of design.) Anyway, an attempt at a homemade projector, pencil tracing, and painting ended unsatisfactorily a few months back. We decided to try again with a large decal.

The decal arrived from China a couple of days ago. It came in two halves. The application involves use of a tacky (as in ‘mildly sticky,’ not ‘gauche’) sheet of plastic known as transfer paper (or tape.) Unfortunately the box included only one of said sheets. Now, perhaps an experienced and gifted DIY decorator could salvage and reuse the transfer paper. This, however, was our first attempt. So, as of this writing, my bedroom wall boasts half a tree.

Another example: I’d spoken with a local used bookstore (which shall remain nameless) back in November, hoping to set up a signing. At the owner’s request I brought in copies of my books for evaluation of quality and suitability for consignment. Several telephone conversations over the ensuing months failed to lead to a signing. As I have been invited, once again, to attend a small sci-fi convention at the end of March I decided I’d be better off taking these copies with me to sell at the con, rather than continue fruitless waiting. So I stopped by the shop the other day to pick up my books. Lo and behold, they’ve gone missing.

ECCC was a blast. Tiring, but fun. But, if I may further my theme, I’m still waiting for an ECCC sales bump. The point of the exercise remains incomplete.

And so it goes. One step forward, then a shuffle-slide back. Do the Limbo Half-step.

Vacation sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Enough negativity. I’m at roughly the halfway point on my work-in-progress. Halfway is better than any lesser fraction of completion. I hope to get some more work done, in the air and in the hotel. There: positivity. A slight case of the grumps never keeps me down for long.

Emerald City Comic Con 2018

And that’s ECCC 2018 in life’s rear view mirror.

I have been in the funny book business for over twenty years now. This year’s Emerald City Comic Con was my first comic book convention. Yeah, I don’t believe in dipping a toe in; I plunge head-first into the deep end.

The point of the visit wasn’t to buy comics or rub shoulders with the artists and writers. That’d be to much like work. I went, frankly, as a marketing exercise, hoping to interact with people who might be interested in my novels and stories. I did get a chance to introduce myself some artists and writers with whom I’ve dealt over the years but never met in person. I enjoyed that.

But I think I’m getting ahead of myself. Details, Ken. Fine. MBW, the HA, and I loaded up the family car and trekked north to Seattle Thursday morning. We should have arrived around noon. But a collision involving loaded logging trucks (probably a fatality, judging from the remains of the cab of one of the trucks) backed up traffic for about an hour south of Tacoma. Eventually we checked into our hotel across from Key Arena, which was bustling with the women’s PAC-12 basketball tournament.

MBW dropped me off at the Washington State Convention Center, then drove on south to deposit the HA with her grandfather for some quality time. Poor MBW, stuck for most of the rest of the afternoon in Seattle area traffic — one of Dante’s lesser known circles of Hell.

Meanwhile, I ventured into the dense throng of costumed humanity that stuffed five floor of convention hall space. And this was Thursday, what everyone informed me was the light day. Oh boy.

There was a section of the con set aside for writers: prose writers that is, not comic book scripters. Some heavy hitters signed autographs at the head of serpentine lines of autographs seekers. More lines of people waiting for a panel discussion wound down hallways. The panel descriptions sounded much like the panels I’ve sat on at sci-fi conventions, and with writers of similar status. But here ten-to-fifteen times as many people shoved into auditoriums to listen.

Gulp. Do I want to volunteer for a panel or two next year?

The convention had set up a beer garden on the first floor, the “League of Libations.” Thank all the boozy gods of Valhalla. I quite liked the Dark Heron from Fremont Brewing. Given the number of people, communal seating followed naturally. There, over the next few evenings, I was lucky enough to meet a variety of interesting and accomplished people — some costumed, some not. (Howdy to any of my new friends reading this. Keep in touch. Let’s do it again next year.)

I did have a couple of opportunities to escape — I mean, take a short break — from the convention and wander the relative openness of the streets. Seriously, though, getting down the escalators and out of the convention could take as long as getting in. It reminded me of trying to cross Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. (You may have guessed that I’m not tremendously fond of crowds.) But I digress. I wandered down toward the waterfront and stopped at the Elysian Bar. The Perseus Porter was excellent, and the Scottish Ale, Suck it Trebek, wasn’t bad. I had dinner at Ivars with MBW, revisiting the place where she had her first, fateful encounter with Clam Chowder and initiating a love affair with the soup that grows ever stronger.

Saturday I took the HA with me for an hour or so. To her Disney-soaked mind ECCC became a sort of antechamber to Paradise. I had to limit her to one purchase, which was tough for her since she wanted everything on display in the vast acreage of the dealers’ floor. But she seems happy with the little stuffed unicorn. Toting a heavy backpack while carrying a four-year old on your shoulders for what felt like several miles recalled certain ruck marches back in my army days. Though I’m probably just getting old and worn out.

So, will I do it again? Probably. Maybe not three days in a row. We’ll see what next year offers. 

Here a few bonus photos.