Richard Roberts's Blog, page 5
April 24, 2017
I Hate Wait
So, we have a delay. I've been sitting here, writing the next book, looking forward to posting chapters. I can't do that until Book Four is out, of course, because Spoilers. SO. MANY. SPOILERS. You people will shoot me in the face for all the spoilers.
And naturally, I get a message from my publisher that the publication date on Nemesis is getting moved back. My editing notes haven't even arrived yet, so it wouldn't be physically possible to publish on the 1st as planned. I'm going to hold it to within the month of May, and the specific offer I got was the 27th. Waiting another four weeks for you folks to get to read this awesomeness does not please me, but I have little choice.
Preorders, at least, should go up on the 1st.
Seriously, I am vexed more than anything because you folks will go nuts over Nemesis, and I can't wait to watch that. My alpha readers promise that the book gets better and better as it goes along.
And naturally, I get a message from my publisher that the publication date on Nemesis is getting moved back. My editing notes haven't even arrived yet, so it wouldn't be physically possible to publish on the 1st as planned. I'm going to hold it to within the month of May, and the specific offer I got was the 27th. Waiting another four weeks for you folks to get to read this awesomeness does not please me, but I have little choice.
Preorders, at least, should go up on the 1st.
Seriously, I am vexed more than anything because you folks will go nuts over Nemesis, and I can't wait to watch that. My alpha readers promise that the book gets better and better as it goes along.
March 14, 2017
Hooray For Complete!
Book Four, Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis, is complete. None of my alpha readers saw the ending coming, and said they're hooked for the final book, so that's a good sign.
My intent is to write the fifth and final Penny book next, although I can't post anything until this book is out because SO MANY SPOILERS.
Right now, I'm trying to remember who my beta readers were.
My intent is to write the fifth and final Penny book next, although I can't post anything until this book is out because SO MANY SPOILERS.
Right now, I'm trying to remember who my beta readers were.
February 27, 2017
Supervillains and Traditional Law Enforcement
Someone in the previous thread asked how local and federal government felt about superhumans. This was such a good question, I thought the answer deserved being moved to its own post.
Basically, the government is scared of superhumans and relieved to let them regulate each other. When one single person can have the power of a giant bomb, and there are thousands of these around the country, law enforcement becomes prickly. Conventional attempts to deal with them require you to either accept massive collateral damage, or go heavy on cruel and unusual punishment. When super powered communities fall into a relatively peaceful pattern, neither the government agencies nor the electorate want to interfere with that. An analogue is when organized crime takes root, and locations decide fighting them is more trouble than it's worth.
There are bad and unfair aspects to this. Superhumans are above the law in many ways. They're not going to get arrested for, say, reckless driving, or violating building codes. They don't have to face their bank accounts frozen for criminal acts, unless a superhero makes a point of dragging the villain in and revealing where the money went. The minor damage caused by breaking these laws, given the small number of people doing it, is considered a price easily worth paying to limit the gigantic damage that could be done if powers were used unrestrained and with malice aforethought. As long as heroes are willing to fight villains, and everybody is willing to keep damage to civilians to a minimum, the government is willing to limit themselves to doing the sweeping up afterwards. It is very convenient to let the hero take the blame when a villain is dragged off to jail.
Side note: It is extremely hard to keep supervillains locked up. People like Bull can walk through any wall you can build. Some mad scientists can create an escape tool out of a spoon and a mattress. If they don't break themselves out, they have friends who can do it easily. It's an unsolved problem.
No amount of superhumans the government can hire can come close to what's lurking in the 'civilian' population, and like conventional weapons, enough force to reliably stop someone like Lucyfar or Chimera (or Mech, who has broken a lot of laws in his vigilantism!) brings us back to neighborhoods destroyed and hundreds dead.
All of this is self-reinforcing. Government cracking down makes superhumans more violent, which forces the government to crack down harder. The government turning a blind eye makes it easier for self-regulating communities to maintain a peaceful tone. In LA in Penny's time, the hero and villain communities are actively friendly with each other, despite how seriously most of them take their roles.
This is far from a perfect system. For example, built into LA's friendliness is mob justice with execution as the penalty for breaking the rules. The superhuman community itself is weird, a separate culture from main society with a lot of social pressures. Both superhumans and the government cling to this system as a thousand times better than the alternatives.
(Added aside: There is an entire separate hero/villain community devoted to less obvious bureaucratic, financial, and cyber crimes. Beebee has dipped into it several times. I am unlikely to ever do more than hint about its existence in any book, but it might interest you to know it's there.)
Basically, the government is scared of superhumans and relieved to let them regulate each other. When one single person can have the power of a giant bomb, and there are thousands of these around the country, law enforcement becomes prickly. Conventional attempts to deal with them require you to either accept massive collateral damage, or go heavy on cruel and unusual punishment. When super powered communities fall into a relatively peaceful pattern, neither the government agencies nor the electorate want to interfere with that. An analogue is when organized crime takes root, and locations decide fighting them is more trouble than it's worth.
There are bad and unfair aspects to this. Superhumans are above the law in many ways. They're not going to get arrested for, say, reckless driving, or violating building codes. They don't have to face their bank accounts frozen for criminal acts, unless a superhero makes a point of dragging the villain in and revealing where the money went. The minor damage caused by breaking these laws, given the small number of people doing it, is considered a price easily worth paying to limit the gigantic damage that could be done if powers were used unrestrained and with malice aforethought. As long as heroes are willing to fight villains, and everybody is willing to keep damage to civilians to a minimum, the government is willing to limit themselves to doing the sweeping up afterwards. It is very convenient to let the hero take the blame when a villain is dragged off to jail.
Side note: It is extremely hard to keep supervillains locked up. People like Bull can walk through any wall you can build. Some mad scientists can create an escape tool out of a spoon and a mattress. If they don't break themselves out, they have friends who can do it easily. It's an unsolved problem.
No amount of superhumans the government can hire can come close to what's lurking in the 'civilian' population, and like conventional weapons, enough force to reliably stop someone like Lucyfar or Chimera (or Mech, who has broken a lot of laws in his vigilantism!) brings us back to neighborhoods destroyed and hundreds dead.
All of this is self-reinforcing. Government cracking down makes superhumans more violent, which forces the government to crack down harder. The government turning a blind eye makes it easier for self-regulating communities to maintain a peaceful tone. In LA in Penny's time, the hero and villain communities are actively friendly with each other, despite how seriously most of them take their roles.
This is far from a perfect system. For example, built into LA's friendliness is mob justice with execution as the penalty for breaking the rules. The superhuman community itself is weird, a separate culture from main society with a lot of social pressures. Both superhumans and the government cling to this system as a thousand times better than the alternatives.
(Added aside: There is an entire separate hero/villain community devoted to less obvious bureaucratic, financial, and cyber crimes. Beebee has dipped into it several times. I am unlikely to ever do more than hint about its existence in any book, but it might interest you to know it's there.)
January 11, 2017
One Final Taste!
I bring you your final teaser for the fourth book! I may have to take these down soon. I'm not sure how happy my publisher will be, and they're setting up some kind of... contest, or special membership program, or something. Access to chapters as they're written was discussed as an option.
EDIT - Wow, I goofed! I can't believe I was THREE chapters behind showing you guys stuff!
Chapter Four
Chapters Five and Six
Also, minor good news. The audiobooks have sold so well, the fourth book has already been contracted. That's actually unusual in a small press. It means the audiobook company thinks I'm a safe bet.
I'll try to write the rest as fast as I can! It really helps to know you folks are interested.
EDIT - Wow, I goofed! I can't believe I was THREE chapters behind showing you guys stuff!
Chapter Four
Chapters Five and Six
Also, minor good news. The audiobooks have sold so well, the fourth book has already been contracted. That's actually unusual in a small press. It means the audiobook company thinks I'm a safe bet.
I'll try to write the rest as fast as I can! It really helps to know you folks are interested.
December 1, 2016
This Will Be The Day We Waited For
Book is out! Book is OOOOUT!
For those of you who have been patiently waiting, because I don't THINK I handed out many beta read copies, you finally can read the rest of I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence!
If you have time after reading the latest chapter of Penny's continuing story. Chapter Three! I probably can't provide many more, but I'd like to at least give you Four.
EDIT - I just found out from my publisher, they now will give out epubs or pdfs for those people who use other ereaders beside a kindle. What you do is, you buy the Amazon kindle version, and email them the proof of purchase at marketing@curiosityquills.com
For those of you who have been patiently waiting, because I don't THINK I handed out many beta read copies, you finally can read the rest of I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence!
If you have time after reading the latest chapter of Penny's continuing story. Chapter Three! I probably can't provide many more, but I'd like to at least give you Four.
EDIT - I just found out from my publisher, they now will give out epubs or pdfs for those people who use other ereaders beside a kindle. What you do is, you buy the Amazon kindle version, and email them the proof of purchase at marketing@curiosityquills.com
November 20, 2016
When Old Books Get Too Weird
Okay, so, I just recently read Children's and Household Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. This would have been the perfect place for a review anyway, but it didn't occur to me until now. Now, I have no choice but to review it, because something is so weird it sticks in my craw.
To begin, I love fairy tales, and I've read a lot of old versions, especially of the famous ones. What I had never actually done was read the book by the Brothers Grimm itself. I picked one up off Project Gutenberg, and got about a tenth of the way through when I found out this version was heavily censored. See, the first release of the book was in 1812. With every release after that, Wilhelm cleaned up the stories, both to remove objectionable material like Rapunzel's adventures in fornication, and to make clunky or fragmented older stories more fun and readable. The versions everyone knows are from the very last version, in 1857. There have been very, very few translations of the 1812 into English, all of them recent. I couldn't stand reading an adulterated version, so I went and bought a copy of the first edition.
Man, is that book weird. The 1857 is already pretty weird, with gold-farting donkeys, the Virgin Mary kidnapping children, and chickens repeatedly building carriages. The 1812 is weirder. It contains a lot of story fragments, where the Brothers Grimm just had the start of a story and that's it. It also contains a lot of very short, depressing stories where everyone dies, which Wilhelm removed later because he didn't like the moral lesson involved. And it includes some truly surreal stuff like the 'story' - there really isn't any plot - where a blood sausage tries to murder a liver sausage.
Some of the most famous stories are very much like the famous modern versions. Red Riding Hood and Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) are almost identical, down to the love's first kiss in Briar Rose's case. I thought the Grimms had older, pre-woodsman, pre-kiss versions, but nope! Rapunzel is actually pretty similar, just, uh, well, it wasn't marriage the prince and Rapunzel were getting up to in that tower.
A couple were different in goofy, funny ways. The Frog King is not turned back to human by a kiss. He's turned back to human when the princess throws a bratty, ungrateful temper tantrum and throws him against a wall rather than letting him sleep on her pillow. The 1857 version adds a moral and leaves out the princess being quite happy with having a handsome man in her bed. All modern versions leave out that the story immediately veers away into an Act 2 where the princess is barely mentioned, and is all about the Frog King's faithful servant.
Hansel and Gretel is one of the 'almost identical' stories, but is much longer in the Grimm books than in modern tellings, mostly because of Hansel's tricks to keep from being ditched in the woods.
Some stories have multiple versions. There's a version of Rumplestiltskin with no weirdly named dwarf, but a princess who hates spinning using three ugly women to convince her father that spinning is bad for you
EDITED TO ADD - I forgot the old grey man! If you go into the woods on a quest, almost always there's an animal or an old grey man there to tell you how to accomplish it. If it's an animal, nine times out of ten it's a prince or princess under a curse. If it's the old grey man... I guess it's Gandalf getting in some wizard practice? He's never explained, but he hangs out in the woods giving advice.
One interesting bit of censorship between the 1812 and 1857 versions - all that 'wicked stepmother' stuff? In the original fairy tales, it's about half-and-half stepmothers and the child's actual mother, with a very few fathers trying to kill their kids. Wilhelm apparently felt motherhood was sacred, and changed it all to stepmothers.
I do recommend the 1812 version for the academic interest and for the fascinating bizarrity. Great inspiration there in the fragments and overall weirdness. The imagery is wonderfully random, and as a writer gave me a great sense of freedom.
OKAY SO THE THING.
One story stands out so much that it nags at me, and made me want to write this. A famous story whose 1812 interpretation is so strangely different that I just couldn't handle it, and I'm still going 'Dur!?'
Snow White is... different in the Brothers Grimm.
You'll recognize the main structure of the story, with Snow White's wicked mother (not stepmother) getting jealous and Snow White running off into the woods to live with dwarves and being poisoned. You've probably heard of the glass coffin. But some of the details are just... too weird, even for me.
The biggest one I choke on is...
Snow White is seven years old.
At the age of seven, Snow White surpasses her mother to become the most beautiful woman in the world. Her mom goes murderously nuts, and the rest of the story happens. It happens fast. Mom's magic mirror keeps her constantly updated on where Snow White is, and the state of Snow White's health. There is no lengthy happy living-with-dwarves period. After several murder attempts that show Snow White is appropriately clueless for a seven year old, the poisoned apple finally kills Snow White for more than a few hours.
And she's dead. The story drives that point home. The only weird thing is she doesn't rot.
So, while I'm going "Is this going to get romantic about a seven year old? Because that's messed up", Snow White kicks it up a notch. The handsome prince doesn't wake her up with a kiss. He's so obsessed with this beautiful dead seven year old girl that he buys her corpse and has his servants parade it around with him everywhere he goes. He can't stand to ever not be able to look at this fantastically beautiful cadaver.
Messed. Up.
And then, yes, the apple falls out and Snow White returns to life and he immediately marries her, and I'm like 'Seriously?!'
Look, I'm used to pre-modern standards of marriageable age. I write YA books and am aware that tweens are not exactly innocent and lust-free. I rolled my eyes at Rapunzel being 13, and Briar Rose being 15, but wasn't surprised. (Oddly, only those two and Snow White have specifically mentioned ages.) But seven is beyond anything I imagined, mainly because of the implication nobody thought this made a story weird. It creeps me out so much I'm having trouble letting go, and the corpse part just adds to it. They sure don't include either of those details in modern tellings, hoo boy!
So, uh... here is your review of the Brothers Grimm, with added rant about how Snow White makes my skin crawl!
To begin, I love fairy tales, and I've read a lot of old versions, especially of the famous ones. What I had never actually done was read the book by the Brothers Grimm itself. I picked one up off Project Gutenberg, and got about a tenth of the way through when I found out this version was heavily censored. See, the first release of the book was in 1812. With every release after that, Wilhelm cleaned up the stories, both to remove objectionable material like Rapunzel's adventures in fornication, and to make clunky or fragmented older stories more fun and readable. The versions everyone knows are from the very last version, in 1857. There have been very, very few translations of the 1812 into English, all of them recent. I couldn't stand reading an adulterated version, so I went and bought a copy of the first edition.
Man, is that book weird. The 1857 is already pretty weird, with gold-farting donkeys, the Virgin Mary kidnapping children, and chickens repeatedly building carriages. The 1812 is weirder. It contains a lot of story fragments, where the Brothers Grimm just had the start of a story and that's it. It also contains a lot of very short, depressing stories where everyone dies, which Wilhelm removed later because he didn't like the moral lesson involved. And it includes some truly surreal stuff like the 'story' - there really isn't any plot - where a blood sausage tries to murder a liver sausage.
Some of the most famous stories are very much like the famous modern versions. Red Riding Hood and Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) are almost identical, down to the love's first kiss in Briar Rose's case. I thought the Grimms had older, pre-woodsman, pre-kiss versions, but nope! Rapunzel is actually pretty similar, just, uh, well, it wasn't marriage the prince and Rapunzel were getting up to in that tower.
A couple were different in goofy, funny ways. The Frog King is not turned back to human by a kiss. He's turned back to human when the princess throws a bratty, ungrateful temper tantrum and throws him against a wall rather than letting him sleep on her pillow. The 1857 version adds a moral and leaves out the princess being quite happy with having a handsome man in her bed. All modern versions leave out that the story immediately veers away into an Act 2 where the princess is barely mentioned, and is all about the Frog King's faithful servant.
Hansel and Gretel is one of the 'almost identical' stories, but is much longer in the Grimm books than in modern tellings, mostly because of Hansel's tricks to keep from being ditched in the woods.
Some stories have multiple versions. There's a version of Rumplestiltskin with no weirdly named dwarf, but a princess who hates spinning using three ugly women to convince her father that spinning is bad for you
EDITED TO ADD - I forgot the old grey man! If you go into the woods on a quest, almost always there's an animal or an old grey man there to tell you how to accomplish it. If it's an animal, nine times out of ten it's a prince or princess under a curse. If it's the old grey man... I guess it's Gandalf getting in some wizard practice? He's never explained, but he hangs out in the woods giving advice.
One interesting bit of censorship between the 1812 and 1857 versions - all that 'wicked stepmother' stuff? In the original fairy tales, it's about half-and-half stepmothers and the child's actual mother, with a very few fathers trying to kill their kids. Wilhelm apparently felt motherhood was sacred, and changed it all to stepmothers.
I do recommend the 1812 version for the academic interest and for the fascinating bizarrity. Great inspiration there in the fragments and overall weirdness. The imagery is wonderfully random, and as a writer gave me a great sense of freedom.
OKAY SO THE THING.
One story stands out so much that it nags at me, and made me want to write this. A famous story whose 1812 interpretation is so strangely different that I just couldn't handle it, and I'm still going 'Dur!?'
Snow White is... different in the Brothers Grimm.
You'll recognize the main structure of the story, with Snow White's wicked mother (not stepmother) getting jealous and Snow White running off into the woods to live with dwarves and being poisoned. You've probably heard of the glass coffin. But some of the details are just... too weird, even for me.
The biggest one I choke on is...
Snow White is seven years old.
At the age of seven, Snow White surpasses her mother to become the most beautiful woman in the world. Her mom goes murderously nuts, and the rest of the story happens. It happens fast. Mom's magic mirror keeps her constantly updated on where Snow White is, and the state of Snow White's health. There is no lengthy happy living-with-dwarves period. After several murder attempts that show Snow White is appropriately clueless for a seven year old, the poisoned apple finally kills Snow White for more than a few hours.
And she's dead. The story drives that point home. The only weird thing is she doesn't rot.
So, while I'm going "Is this going to get romantic about a seven year old? Because that's messed up", Snow White kicks it up a notch. The handsome prince doesn't wake her up with a kiss. He's so obsessed with this beautiful dead seven year old girl that he buys her corpse and has his servants parade it around with him everywhere he goes. He can't stand to ever not be able to look at this fantastically beautiful cadaver.
Messed. Up.
And then, yes, the apple falls out and Snow White returns to life and he immediately marries her, and I'm like 'Seriously?!'
Look, I'm used to pre-modern standards of marriageable age. I write YA books and am aware that tweens are not exactly innocent and lust-free. I rolled my eyes at Rapunzel being 13, and Briar Rose being 15, but wasn't surprised. (Oddly, only those two and Snow White have specifically mentioned ages.) But seven is beyond anything I imagined, mainly because of the implication nobody thought this made a story weird. It creeps me out so much I'm having trouble letting go, and the corpse part just adds to it. They sure don't include either of those details in modern tellings, hoo boy!
So, uh... here is your review of the Brothers Grimm, with added rant about how Snow White makes my skin crawl!
November 16, 2016
Still Trudgin'
Things got rather... uh, interrupted there, for a bit. I haven't been able to do more than glance over your previous thread. Goodness, you people love discussing Penny's power. I don't mind that at all!
But I really thought you should have the sample of chapter two.
But I really thought you should have the sample of chapter two.
October 8, 2016
Why You Actually Come Here - Previews!
Iiiit's that TIME again, boys and girls! With a book finished, I start a new book, which means I get to post a couple of chapters before my publisher comes down on me like a bag of wet mice! Next up is book four of Penny's saga, and I'm callin' it Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis.
I hope Chapter One pleases...?
And while we're at this, I have been told something weird. Apparently Amazon Prime folks can download the first Superhero book for free. Now, everybody who reads this has probably read that book, but apparently if you download it that counts as a sale for me even though you don't get charged anything. So if anyone feels like throwing money at me without spending anything yourself, hey, I like money.
I hope Chapter One pleases...?
And while we're at this, I have been told something weird. Apparently Amazon Prime folks can download the first Superhero book for free. Now, everybody who reads this has probably read that book, but apparently if you download it that counts as a sale for me even though you don't get charged anything. So if anyone feels like throwing money at me without spending anything yourself, hey, I like money.
September 28, 2016
Preorders UUUUUUUUUP
My publisher did not wait around. Wow. Preorders for I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence are already on Amazon! Release date December 1st. Check out the cover!
They said they were going for a mix of my Supervillain covers and 1980s album art. I think that's genius. Also, I think the goofy blurb at the bottom suits the goofiness of the book.
Below the break is the cover blurb I came up with. What do you think?
Being a superhero should be fun. After all, a world of super powers is a world where amazonian juggernauts made of candy battle guys in spandex that drive talking cars. Irene loves that weirdness, loves the game of fighting, and loves being a four foot tall woman who still gets to drop big heavy objects on villains' heads.
In 1980, that fun is in danger. A mad scientist who murders people for his research has everyone afraid. Two of the friendliest super powered rivals around stop playing and go for the kill. If superheroes and villains aren't safe in their own homes, how can having powers be anything but a nightmare?
Irene will not let that happen. She wants to show her friends, one a ten year old grim reaper and the other a zombie mish-mosh of living and metal parts, that their lives don't have to be grim. With the help of a superintelligent spider, Team Tiny will make the world fun again. Except maybe it's the spider who's in charge after all...
They said they were going for a mix of my Supervillain covers and 1980s album art. I think that's genius. Also, I think the goofy blurb at the bottom suits the goofiness of the book.
Below the break is the cover blurb I came up with. What do you think?
Being a superhero should be fun. After all, a world of super powers is a world where amazonian juggernauts made of candy battle guys in spandex that drive talking cars. Irene loves that weirdness, loves the game of fighting, and loves being a four foot tall woman who still gets to drop big heavy objects on villains' heads.
In 1980, that fun is in danger. A mad scientist who murders people for his research has everyone afraid. Two of the friendliest super powered rivals around stop playing and go for the kill. If superheroes and villains aren't safe in their own homes, how can having powers be anything but a nightmare?
Irene will not let that happen. She wants to show her friends, one a ten year old grim reaper and the other a zombie mish-mosh of living and metal parts, that their lives don't have to be grim. With the help of a superintelligent spider, Team Tiny will make the world fun again. Except maybe it's the spider who's in charge after all...
September 24, 2016
So Many Distractions
So, the book is done, and I think prerelease is in December? I expect my official edits soon. You all reacted so favorably to Irene, I think it will be a winner, despite my being concerned by releasing a book in the Supervillain continuity without a child star.
I am about to start the fourth Penny book, Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis. I have a strong general outline, so it should go fast. I just need to work out some thematic stuff in my head before I can get to work. I will, of course, give you folks the first few chapters to check reception!
This is super sweet - a friend saw these in the library of 'Trefoil Academy', a kids' summer camp!
Oh, and I'm a few days late on this because I got unexpected editing notes. Heart of the Harvester is coming out in an anthology I had totally forgotten about.
I am about to start the fourth Penny book, Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis. I have a strong general outline, so it should go fast. I just need to work out some thematic stuff in my head before I can get to work. I will, of course, give you folks the first few chapters to check reception!
This is super sweet - a friend saw these in the library of 'Trefoil Academy', a kids' summer camp!
Oh, and I'm a few days late on this because I got unexpected editing notes. Heart of the Harvester is coming out in an anthology I had totally forgotten about.
