Brian Hagan's Blog, page 5

It’s a Giveaway!

I’ve decided to make “Insomnia: A Short Story” free for Kindle starting today and running through Sunday!

Some of you may wonder why I’m doing the giveaway this weekend, that is, Easter Weekend. Well, that’s coincidence… and what a great coincidence! What a better time to read a story told from beyond the grave than on the weekend celebrating a man who later would speak from beyond the grave? Also, it’ll make for a nice break from the palm leaves and colorful eggs for anyone inclined to shy away from the celebrations.

The chocolate & candy though… why could shy away from that?

SO! Head over to Amazon and give your free download of Insomnia now, and please be sure to leave a review!

New Short Story Available on Kindle

So, due to popular demand at Steel City Con, I’ve decided to make several of my short stories available on Kindle. These are stories that I’ve been selling at the convention as individual printouts (in a nifty little book format) for over a year there, and I figured it’s about time I made them widely available online. So I’m going to begin releasing some of them on Kindle, and possibly make a few print versions available off of Amazon.

The first short that I’ve released is Insomnia, a story about a man who can’t sleep and must pursue a cure. It’s a story of gothic, Victorian horror that will make any fans of Poe smile with terrible glee, and it’s only .99¢

You can purchase it from the Shop page or use the Amazon link below:

 

Please hassle your favorite author/artist today

Hello my name is the Stand-in Dan

This past weekend was the spring Steel City Comicon here in Pittsburgh. Because it was scheduled the same time as Tekko (the big anime convention in the region) a friend of mine, Dan, was in a tough spot: he relies on both conventions to earn enough money to get through the quarter, but he’s only one person and now he needed to be in two places. Since I was going to be at Steel City anyway selling my book, my wife Brandy and I worked out a solution: she would sell my book at my table, while I ran our friend’s booth in the dealers’ room. It wasn’t ideal, but it meant our friend could do both conventions and continue putting food on his table.

While I was selling Dan’s chainmail, Brandy worked hard on selling the book and many short stories that I print for the convention (more on that later). Apparently, at various points people would come up to her and ask when the next book with August Munch would be out, or how progress on Zombie Reaper was coming along.

Now first of all, thank you everyone who shared such wonderful feedback with Brandy so she could pass it along to me! She shared every single one, sometimes multiple times because she really wanted me to understand how much people were looking forward to my projects.

But, she noticed a common sentiment with a lot of the people she talked to. They kept saying that they were afraid to message me on Twitter or Facebook to ask for updates. They didn’t want to hassle me or make me feel bad about not being done yet. Well, while that’s very thoughtful of you, the result is that I’ve never received a message from a fan. Not one.

It’s been pretty disheartening.

Maybe if I were George RR Martin, getting thousands of messages from fans every day, I would feel hassled. Even then, talk about a good problem to have! I’d love to have that problem over the one I’ve got, and I imagine it’s a problem shared by a lot of… shall we say, ‘less famous’?… authors.

So, I decided to write this post to say that if you have an author or artist whose work you really enjoy, you should send them a message to say so! Even if you’re afraid they might feel hassled, do it anyway.

You might be the only one.

 

 

Making Windsmith City

Pittsburgh, PA

I live in Pittsburgh, PA, and there’s no denying that Windsmith City is based on my hometown. But, when I was writing I wanted to ensure that the city I was making would still be unique. I started by altering the geography and the economic history of the city.

I like to say that, sure, I changed up the geography a little bit. Pittsburgh is famous for its unique geography, formed by its three rivers (the Allegheny and the Monongahela, whose powers combine and create the Ohio River) and various mountain ranges that restrict its urban sprawl. The result is a city with lots forested land, wildlife, and more bridges than Venice. The city itself followed after the placement of Fort Duquesne (and then later Fort Pitt). Its position at the intersection of the three rivers, its view of the surrounding mountainsides, and a rare spot of exceptionally flat land made it the perfect spot.

For Windsmith City, I didn’t want three rivers. Instead, I took a single river that I called the Shannon River. Instead of having the “Triangle” (as Pittsburghers call it) operating as the downtown area, Windsmith City has an island where the Shannon River splits temporarily in two. There, the plateau rises sharply from the river banks, providing an unequivocally superior tactical advantage over anything in the river or on the opposing shores. As the area became settled, bridges were built and commerce along the river thrived, making the villages and towns along the banks of the Shannon a good place to be.

The real change came in the late 1800s when electricity was finding wide use in the area and around the world. It was in Windsmith City that a man named Danilo Radko Gert invented a way to generate large amounts of electricity using wind power, a method that was far superior to the coal-powered generators being used up to that point. Investors flocked to Danilo’s technology, and soon the first windmills were built on the mountains along the southern shore of the Shannon. Access to electricity was unfettered, and soon industries clamored to set up shop there. Thus, Windsmith City was born, named, and came blasting onto the world stage as the city that every city should want to be. Well, according to some world leaders, anyway.

Anyway, as far as a backdrop to a NaNoWriMo project goes, I thought I had it worked out pretty well. I could draw parallels when I needed to. For example, in the book Horace Pickle asks his applicants to make their deliveries to 412 Marrion Boulevard. Marrion Boulevard is in fact Fort Duquesne Boulevard, and my local fans will recognize 412 as the Pittsburgh area code. There are more examples, some of them more obvious than others, but you get the idea.

Windsmith, with its lock system visible on the bottom left.

At this point, every alteration to Windsmith City was intentional. The final alteration to Windsmith City came as a surprise to me, though. Shortly after the book was published in 2014, I commissioned Delofasht Buranasiri to do a large-scale digital painting of the city. We went back and forth on various design elements, as you do, but once he had the initial painting done I discovered something that I hadn’t noticed before: waterfalls. Delofasht had included waterfalls just before the two divides of the Shannon rejoin each other before hitting the delta and going out to sea. Obviously I had never mentioned waterfalls anywhere before, so their inclusion took me a moment to process… and I loved it. They added a whole extra layer to the geography that I never knew was missing!

There was a problem though. If you recall the history of the city that I outlined above, traffic on the river was a major factor in the development of the area. I was faced with abandoning a key aspect of the city’s history or the waterfalls, unless I could think of a solution. Which was kind of silly, because people thought of solutions to these things hundreds of years ago: locks. Need to go up a river and there’s impassible portions? Build some locks, those wonderful water elevators for boats. Problem solved.

And with that, Windsmith City was made.

I’m a ROBOTECH fan, can we please stop being jerks to each other?

***WARNING: FANBOY RANT INCOMING***

Somebody should write a space opera about a fandom caught in the stranglehold of a megalomaniacal Emperor who’s screwed the whole thing up and refuses to fix it or allow anyone else to fix it. The fandom remains loyal nonetheless, only becoming angry when the Emperor finally has a good idea but then fails to deliver in full. The story ends when a potential hero appears, but he’s too stupid to present himself in an unabrasive manner and the fandom attempts to destroy his spaceship before it can even take flight, causing him to flee and never return.

What title could we give this space opera? Let’s follow in the footsteps of the incompetent Emperor and just steal one from something else. I know, we’ll call it ROBOTECH.

If you’re not enthusiastic about this space opera I just wrote, maybe it’s just because writing space operas isn’t my forte. But, I think I’ve got allegory nailed down. You see, that story is just the latest chapter is the saga of the ROBOTECH franchise. More specifically, it’s the latest turn of events regarding the ROBOTECH tactical wargame and the failure of its producer, Palladium, to follow through on Wave 2 of their Kickstarter rewards.

“But, who’s this potential hero,” you ask? Well that would be the well-meaning Carmen Bellaire. Bellaire was involved in several past Palladium projects, including a small role in ROBOTECH Tactics, and is now running his own company Rogue Heroes which is attempting to raise money via Kickstarter to create another tabletop wargame using Palladium’s RIFTS property. That’s a pretty big deal for RIFTS fans, but it doesn’t have anything to do with ROBOTECH directly. So, how does Bellaire enter the picture?

Earlier today Bellaire made a post to the ROBOTECH Tactices Kickstarter to introduce himself and announce his own Kickstarter. He admits it has nothing to do with ROBOTECH directly, and proceeds to explain that, if his own Kickstarter succeeds, he may be in a position to help resolve the issues with Wave 2 of ROBOTECH Tactics. To this end, he asks the (rightfully) disgruntled supporters of the ROBOTECH Tactics Kickstarter to not attack and sink his Kickstarter for no reason.

Before I continue to what happens next, I want to dwell for just a second. Because, at this point, Bellaire sounds like a pretty upstanding guy. I mean, he’s literally asking these people to do nothing, and in return he’ll try to help them. That’s it.

I’d shake the guy’s hand.

Except, then he gives them a reason to mess with him. It’s not even a big reason, he just turns his own message up to eleven, saying that if his own Kickstarter fails then he hopes ROBOTECH Tactics “burns” and if it succeeds then he’ll do his “damnest [SIC] to fix these delays.”

That’s like going up to your neighbor and saying “Hey, if you don’t stop me from mowing my lawn then I’ll talk to the city about fixing that pothole in front of your driveway. But if you do stop me, I hope your dog dies.”

It’s not exactly a friendly statement, and it shouldn’t come as any surprise that people on the internet reacted negatively. And because we’re talking about people on the internet, you can guess what they’re doing now about Bellaire’s Kickstarter. Well, you did read the story at the start, right?

So what’s the message here? What’s the moral of our allegory? It might be “people are stupid and emotional, treat them gently.” It could be “when discussing business, be professional.” It very possibly could be “don’t refuse help from a jerk when you could really use the help, even if it’s from a jerk. Definitely don’t be a bigger jerk and attack him just for offering to help.”

Personally, I’m starting to wonder if the message is “this fandom is too damaged, it’s time to move on.” I mean, I’ve put up with decades of Harmony Gold. It’s always been frustrating, but at least they only attempted to destroy stuff that was directly related to ROBOTECH. The fans of ROBOTECH have always been a kind of bastion of sanity, hope, and well deserved cynicism. But they’ve gone off the rails, and sadly Carmen Bellaire has gone with them.

And I’m just sitting here like “geez guys, we could’a had Wave 2 sped up and all we had to do was nothing. I mean, this guy actually wants to go to bat for us. We just had to do nothing…”

And they say Millennials are lazy.

The good news is that it might not be too late. Somebody could say “sorry.” We could all chill out a bit and realize that some of the language getting thrown around is only making things worse. I can start.

Hey guys, Carmen specifically, I’m sorry I called you all stupid. You’re not. You’ve just made some mistakes today, and it’s frustrating.

OK, who’s next?

Unexpected thing on Facebook

So! Very last minute I was invited to participate in an Author Takeover, a sort of hour-long presentation/Q&A session, on Facebook. Honestly, I had no idea that was even a thing but I’m happy to get the chance to be in one! My turn is tonight from midnight to 1am (or, 9 to 10 PST) at https://www.facebook.com/events/76471...

Hopefully it goes well. If nothing else, I’m getting a lot of ideas for blog posts on this page while brainstorming what to talk about in the event!

NaNoWriMo 2016 Success!

It looks like I forgot to make a blog post about the end of NaNoWriMo. Well, suffice it to say that I was pretty exhausted & burned out. But, I did it! I crossed the finish line with 50,027 on Nov 28th.

NaNoWriMo is not known for producing the best work ever. Many people write their novel and then either just end up scrapping the entire thing or dramatically rewriting it later. My intention with The Horrible Plan of Horace Pickle when I wrote it back in 2008 was just to have fun, and if it was good maybe turn it into a screen play later.

This time I decided to take a concept that was originally intended to be a webcomic. The working title for the project is Zombie Reaper, and I wasn’t sure it would make a good novel. I’ve had the concept on back burner for probably four years now, and I thought it was time to take a break from the sequel to Horace Pickle and write something new & refreshing.

Well, now I’m convinced that this project is perfect for a novel. Zombie Reaper is turning out fantastic and I can’t wait to complete it! So, I’m going to continue working on it, NaNoWriMo style, through January. You can watch my progress here and see updates on Facebook.

Something I have to say, though, is this:

Everyone who supported and encouraged me during November: THANK YOU! The little comments, the questions, and even just clicking the Like button all helped me so much. I hope you’ll continue yours support coming into January as I try to finish this project.

Music Mondays: Tokyo Ghoul “Unravel” Erhu Cover

About two years ago I picked up, on a whim, an erhu. For those unfamiliar with the instrument, it’s most easily described as the Chinese two-string violin. The mechanics behind how the instrument works is pretty different than a violin, but the actual method of playing it is pretty much the same. I didn’t know much about it myself when I bought one (lots of Amazon gifts cards can create situations like this) so of course I hit up youTube hoping to find some videos of them being played. Of course I found lots, and one of my favorites has been this cover of “Unravel,” the opening theme to the anime Tokyo Ghoul.

If you are interested in the erhu, you can check out these on Amazon here:

Let NaNoWriMo 2016 Begin!

In about one hour it will be November 1st. In the writing world, that means it’s National Novel Writing Month!

If you’re unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it’s a non-profit organization that promotes writing by challenging people to write a whole novel in a single month. To be more specific, the challenge is to write 50,000 words (about the equivalent of a small novel). If you can do this by the end of November 30th, you’ve won! And what have you won? Well, you wrote a frikkin novel. Congrats!

That’s impossible, you might think. A novel written a single month is going to be terrible! Why bother? Well here’s the secret: it’s okay if it’s terrible. This is just the first draft, and first drafts aren’t meant to be perfect. This is the time when spelling actually doesn’t matter. When character names can be “TBD1” or cities can be called “citynamehere.” Flow? Grammar? Cohesion? Pacing? Not important! What matters is getting your story written. All the mistakes can be fixed later. Right time it’s time to write.

My first experience with NaNoWriMo was in 2008 when I wrote “The Horrible Plan of Horace Pickle.” Since then I’ve made some small attempts to use NaNoWriMo to help finish the sequel, but I’ve not made the 50k goal. This year, I’m taking a new approach.

I’m writing a whole new novel, a concept that I’ve been batting around for a number of years. I’m super excited about finally getting this concept out of my head and on to paper.

You can follow my progress with this year’s NaNoWriMo by looking at the side-bar on this website. It will automatically update every time I make an update to my NaNoWriMo profile.

Now, as much as I’ve talked about how little mistakes matter, that doesn’t mean this is easy. I have to write about 1,700 words every day for the next thirty days to hit the 50k goal. Thankfully I have help with a supportive family, but a little extra boost from you guys will be welcome too. So if at some point during November you think of me, please be sure to comment on this blog, post to my FB page, or send me a tweet. I’m going to need it.

Music Mondays: All’s Hell that Ends Well by Two Steps from Hell

Two Steps from Hell is one of my go-to places for great writing music, and the opening track to Skyworld is one of their best. All’s Hell that Ends Well is one of the first pieces of Epic Classical that really nails the use of dubstep style techno, mixed will mass choral and full orchestra.

Two Steps from Hell got their start by producing music for feature films and movie trailers, but has gained popularity releasing that music on albums. It’s hard to listen to an album like Skyworld and not begin forming your own movies in your head. In fact, All’s Hell that Ends Well has kind of become the trailer music for a zombie story I’ve been working on for a couple of years. It’s hard to listen to this song and not then immediately go to work on that project!

If you liked that, you can support this blog and Two Steps from Hell by using the affiliate link below to purchase the album!