Aaron Smith's Blog, page 4

Once I Get Started...

I recently started a new day job. While there, I’ve met a coworker who’s expressed a lot of curiosity about my writing career and shown some interest in doing some writing of her own. I’ve never before been in a situation where I’ve been asked for help or advice by anyone trying to get started writing. At first, I wasn’t sure how to react. For one thing, writing is an intensely personal and individual thing. Good writing comes from the writer’s unique personality and set of experiences, and I felt that maybe I didn’t have the right to advise anyone else on such matters, even if asked. Another thing is that I don’t often think of myself as a successful writer. This is simply because I want more: more money coming in from the work, higher profile writing jobs, more reviews, and higher sales. Of course I want those things. It’s not greed, but ambition. No matter what I do, I can always do better. I suppose I feel that the moment I get comfortable with what I’ve done so far, I’ll risk losing some of my drive to do more and more. It’s good to be motivated. In some ways, I felt that if I’m not more successful than I am, why should anyone else want help or advice from me?            But then I started thinking about it a little more and came to realize that in many ways, I am successful with this writing thing! No, I can’t support myself solely on my royalty checks, but I get royalties, which is more than many writers can say. I’ve had 32 stories published, with a few more to come out this year. I have four publishers who are always willing to read something new from me. I’ve been given opportunities to write some of my favorite fictional characters, including Sherlock Holmes! I get to create my own characters too. The vast majority of reviews of my work have been good (and only one story was ever called “a real stinker!”), and there are several readers who seem eager to know when my next vampire or spy novel is coming out. And, just as important as the money and reviews, I’ve made more friends than I can count over the past 5 years, all because of writing. Readers, editors, publishers, artists, and others: all of whom I met through my literary endeavors and the networking that goes with it. Taking all that into consideration, I suppose I am a successful writer in many respects. There’s always room to move up, but I’ve come a long way. Perhaps, then, I am in a position to offer advice to someone who wants to take some steps down the road of words and stories. If I can help at all, I’m glad to do so. Anyway, we writers love to talk about what we do, even if we won’t usually admit it! 
So this blog entry is an open letter to a friend, in which I’m about to speak very honestly about some of my thoughts on the subject of writing. Most of what I say isn’t going to be right or wrong, but will consist of my opinions. When my fellow writers read this, they may nod in agreement with some of what I say and shake their heads (or fists!) in vehement opposition to other statements. That’s what makes writing so great. Every writer is different, and so we end up with a beautiful variety of stories in the world.
Anyway, to the person who started me down this road of thought (and anyone else who wants to listen to my rant), I’ll tell you this:            Today at work, I overheard your little explosion over certain comments people had been making to you or about you. It’s not my business, but the back room is tight and it’s hard to not hear everything that gets said (and just for the record, don’t let their bullshit get to you), and I liked what I was hearing. Do you remember how it felt when you let out that long string of words, shoved all that frustration into the air and let everything that was on your mind flow out with no hesitation? There was good stuff in there, clever stuff. You were in a state of mind where you just had to get those thoughts out and give them life by turning them into words. You probably felt like you’d explode if you didn’t say those things. You had no choice. If you can find that feeling, that zone, again when you try to write, you’ll be just fine! And that doesn’t mean the writing has to be guided by anger or any other negative emotion, but it has to feel like it needs to come out. You’ll know when it happens, and you’ll love it.             And once you find that feeling, you’ll want to make it continue, maybe even need to make it continue. That’s where what we talked about in person today comes into the equation. You asked me about discipline, about how I manage to get the work done. I’ll repeat here what I said to you this morning: set a goal and stick with it. Personally, I write a minimum of 1,000 words a day, unless I’m editing a major project, in which case I put the story I’m currently writing on hold just for a little while. Other than those editing pauses, my thousand words are non-negotiable. It’s not what I do when I feel like writing. It’s what I must do to keep the guilt from hitting me too hard. I don’t feel like a real writer if I don’t produce material. If I feel great, I write a thousand (and more sometimes). If I feel like crap, I write a thousand. If I have a headache, I write a thousand. If I’m joyful or depressed or confused or exhausted or sentimental or angry or horny or hungry or not even sure how I feel at the time, I write a thousand. That doesn’t mean you have to write 1,000 words a day. It might be 500 or 1,500 or even just a few paragraphs, but what you have to do is set a goal and stick to it no matter what.             And it’s not easy. It only looks easy in the movies. Writing, if you really take it seriously, is not a leisure activity. Sure, you’re sitting in a chair at a desk and maybe the only thing anybody else sees moving are your fingers, but don’t make the mistake of thinking writing isn’t work. It is work, and it will have its effects on both your mind and your body. It will give you a glorious mental workout, it will make you tired at times, might cause you to literally break a sweat (remember Sean Connery in Finding Forrester telling his young student to “Punch the keys!” I wish I could type in his accent), will cause an occasional headache, cost you some sleep, and maybe even give you nightmares from time to time. Yes, writing is work, and it’s worth it if that’s what you really want to do. If that’s what you really need to do!             But what if you can’t make it happen? What if you get Writer’s Block?            I’ll tell you a secret. There’s no such thing as Writer’s Block. It’s an excuse. Either a person can write or they can’t. If your thoughts turn into stories and you feel the urge to express them in words, that’s a trait that doesn’t just stop. That doesn’t mean it’s always going to be easy. There will be times when you get stuck. My solution to that has always been to have two projects going at once. If you get hung up on a detail of one story and don’t know where to go next, switch channels and work on something else for a while. Don’t worry. The wheels will begin to turn again soon enough. Don’t ever give up. Inspiration strikes like lightning and you can never really predict when it will happen or what form it will take. For that matter, keep a pen and something to write on near you at all times (or your smart phone if you want to take notes that way), so you’ll be able to grab the gold before it slips through your fingers.             And speaking of inspiration, I have no definite answer about where it comes from. I can tell you all about the things that might intentionally bring it about, things like reading great books, watching great movies, or using your own memories as fuel for your work, but what nobody can ever anticipate are the little events in life that cause those wonderful bursts of sudden inspiration. Ideas explode like popcorn at the oddest times. A sentence in a news article can make you speculate about what the world would be like if events happened slightly differently and soon you have a science fiction story on your hands. A stray bit of conversation between strangers at the next table in a restaurant might have you making up entire life histories for characters who didn’t exist a moment ago (that’s how my detective character, Picard, came to be). My point is that anything you see or hear or feel might spark your next big idea, so keep your senses absorbing the world around you.             I mentioned reading great books a moment ago. By all means, read the bad ones too. Read as much as you can. Read the books you can’t live without reading and read some you think you’ll hate. I read a lot of horror and mystery because those are the genres I write most often, but sometimes I’ll scan through something I’m not the least bit interested in because it exposes me to different styles and subjects. I might even occasionally glance through a cheap romance novel (how many ways can they come up with to use the word “throbbing” anyway?) or a children’s book or revisit something I tried to read years ago but didn’t enjoy at the time. Words are our tools, so we need to see many different ways to use them.             Concerning those tools, the best way to learn to use them…is to use them! There are no shortcuts. Write a lot and you will get better. There’s no way around the fact that the more you cut with that sword, the sharper it becomes.             And please, don’t let worrying about writing get in the way of writing. Don’t over think it, and don’t make concrete rules that don’t have to be there at the beginning. If you look around the various writers’ forums on the internet, you’ll see a lot of experienced writers saying a lot of smart things, but you’ll also see a lot of inexperienced writers who aren’t getting any experience because they’re too busy worrying about how to do it right, which keeps them from doing it at all. You’ll get more out of writing 10,000 clumsy, fumbling words than you will out of spending a month planning how to write and fine-tuning your approach and memorizing some silly list of do’s and don’ts before you type the opening line.             You can have all the self-imposed rules you want, but the rules are yours to follow as you see fit, not limits with which you should restrict yourself from doing what’s best for the story.             On that note, I’m going to share the best piece of writing advice I’ve ever been given. Several years ago, I was working with a certain publisher for the first time. My first vampire novel was in the editing phase and the editor sent me an email that was one of the hardest to accept messages I’ve ever read. Basically, she felt that my storyline was excellent, but the way I’d written the book needed some major cutting and tightening and a lot of changes. It was a damn good spanking. For about an hour, I sat there in sadness. I was insulted. I loved that story, I was proud of it. Part of me wanted to tell that editor exactly where to stick her suggestions. Then I came to my senses. I really wanted that book to come out. But I wasn’t sure how to handle the situation. How could I adjust my point of view and edit so much of that story that it would feel like I was a doctor about to operate on his own child? Could I really cut that deeply and show so little mercy for the book I’d worked so hard to write in the first place? I needed advice. I contacted Ron Fortier, my first editor and a very good friend. Ron’s advice to me was so simple, but it made so much sense. He said, “Love the story, not the words.”            That was it. My whole mood lifted and everything was all right. I followed the other editor’s suggestions, reworked much of the book, and eliminated a lot of stylistic clutter. In the end, the finished product was far better than the original manuscript and the essence of the story I had set out to tell was still intact. “Love the story, not the words.”            Okay, so I’ve now been rambling on for several pages about the process of writing. But how, you might be wondering, do you know if it’s working properly? If you’re writing something that’s good or could eventually be good? I’m sure it’s different for every writer, but here’s how I know I’m on to something promising:                                            When it affects you as much as you hope it affects the reader. When your characters become as real to you as the people who live next door, when you can hear their voices and see the expressions on their faces and share their sorrows and joys. When they suddenly do things you’d never expect them to do, as if they’ve taken on a life of their own. When you feel remorse for the hellish things you put them through. When you nearly make yourself sick with just how twisted you can make a horror scene. When you write a sex scene so candidly that it turns you on and you’d be embarrassed if your mother read it. When you have to force yourself to kill off a character because you feel like you just can’t do that to them and it seems to you, at that moment, that it’s not just words on a page but a real life or death situation. That’s when I know I’m on the right track.             I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’ve made myself cry while writing. I’ve also made myself laugh out loud and scream in anger and pump my fist in victory. That’s when I know it’s working.            But guess what? I just lied. The truth is I amembarrassed by what I just admitted. And that’s a good thing. Writing should be embarrassing sometimes, because a part of it is being honest in the lies we tell. We make stuff up for a living, but we also use those stories to reflect what we really feel and think and how we react to ideas and events. If something gets to us, makes us cry or scream or smile or laugh or shake in fear or fall in love, we owe it to our readers to use it to make our stories stronger, because if those things bring out those emotions in us, chances are they’ll do it to the readers too.     
Writing is a wonderful and terrible thing at the same time. It can be magnificently rewarding or dreadfully disappointing. One day it will lift your spirit above the highest cloud and the next it will break your heart and stomp the pieces into the dirt. Is it worth it? I think it is, but I can’t make that decision for anybody else.  Not everyone can write, but some of those who can have no choice. Some of us have to do it. If you’ve managed to read everything I just wrote about the good and the bad of writing and you still want to try to do it, you’re in for quite an experience and I’ll be happy to help if I can. 
See what happens when you ask me to talk about my work?  

It Came From the Eighties!

I've always been fascinated by different periods of history and also by how those different times look to our minds' eyes as we think about them, whether we were there or have only read about them in history books or seen movies set in those years. Each decade seems to have certain elements that end up as archetypes that define, in the minds of many people, that particular series of years. When I think about my own life and the different decades I've lived through, I realize that the 1980s had a very strong impact on my development as a person and, years later, as a writer. Of course the 80s did, for that was the decade that contained most of my childhood. I was 3 in 1980 and 12 in 1989, and that's the part of life where the imagination really forms and certain images and themes embed themselves in the mind of a creative person. So I find myself considering which things that could only have happened in the Eighties really stuck in my head and had something to do with the person and writer I turned out to be. Here are some that come to mind.  

THE STAR WARS PHENOMENON 
Yes, I realize the first Star Wars movie came out in the late 70s, but the two sequels were in the 80s and the cultural craze those movies prompted lasted well into my childhood. I don't know if any other series of movies has ever had such an impact on so many children as Star Wars. The movies, its characters, the action figures, comic books, and everything else that had anything to do with George Lucas's science-fantasy saga surrounded us, penetrated us, and bound us all together just as the Force did in his movies. And for any kid who grew up wanting to be Luke or Han or Leia or even Darth Vader, the Force is still with us now.


IRON MAIDEN T-SHIRTS
This had nothing to do with music. When I was a very young kid in the early 80s, I had no idea that Iron Maiden was a band. I had never heard one of their songs. But those shirts seemed to be everywhere. You couldn't walk through the local mall without seeing at least one teenager wearing one of those shirts with their gruesome designs. They were scary! And that fascinated me. Seeing one of those shirts was like catching a brief glimpse into a strange nightmare world, and I loved the mystery of that feeling.


EARLY VIDEO GAMES
While I'm all for advances in technology and I think today's video games are wonderful to look at in all their realistic, precise detail (although I don't play them often), I'm glad I grew up at a time when the graphics were simpler and didn't look so much like perfect pictures of what they were supposed to be. Why? Because seeing what was on the screen and simultaneously seeing what you imagined the little colorful blips would really look like gave the imagination quite a workout! As I thrilled to The Legend of Zelda or Castlevania, I was seeing both the fuzzy little monsters on the TV and the frightful things they would have been if those images had been able to replicate what the story told me they were.


MTV WHEN IT SHOWED VIDEOS
There were some really weird looking rock stars in the 80s, and they made some interesting little films to go with their songs. As a kid seeing the New Wave videos or Michael Jackson's "Thriller" or so many other videos, it really didn't matter too much to me if I liked the music or not. The images that went with the songs sometimes sent my mind in interesting directions in ways that a song alone or a regular movie couldn't.



JEREMY BRETT AS SHERLOCK HOLMES
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that Sherlock Holmes is my favorite fictional character. I was very, very lucky to have discovered the Great Detective at a time when the most faithful series of film adaptations was being produced. Beginning in 1984, Jeremy Brett played Holmes in a Grenada Television series that adapted over 40 of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's mysteries. They were as close to perfect as adaptations can be.



RONALD REAGAN
Putting him on my list has nothing to do with his specific politics, but rather his presence during the years in which I grew up. Having such a high-profile president in office at the time when I was first learning something about the history and government of my country made those subjects even more interesting to me. My opinions of what Reagan or any other president did or didn't do while in office are beyond the subject matter of this blog entry, but as a character in my early impressions of the world, Reagan deserves mention here.



PHOEBE CATES BY THE POOL
If you do the math, you'll realize that I was only 5 when Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out. No, I wasn't that precocious! But when it showed up on TV a few years later....let's just say it made quite an impression on me. As I later learned, it wasn't just me. When men of a certain age discuss certain things that had important impacts on their childhood, that movie (and especially that scene, with its soundtrack by The Cars) usually makes the list. 



If I thought about it for longer and really let my mind wander back through those years, I could probably come up with dozens, maybe hundreds of things from the 80s that influenced me then and still do today, but I've spent enough time in the past for one blog. Maybe I'll do a sequel some day.  

Four Non-Bonds

It's been a great week since the release of my spy novel, Nobody Dies For Free. The book's availability met with enthusiasm, I've had some good feedback from several readers so far, and I'm anxiously awaiting reviews. With the book getting attention, I've been thinking some about my favorite fictional spies and how they've influenced my work in general, and, in some cases, specifically the character of Richard Monroe, protagonist of Nobody Dies For Free. I got into that subject a little in my last entry where I talked about the influence of Ian Fleming and his James Bond stories as well as the movies based on his books. But 007 certainly isn't the be all and end all of fictional spies who have caught my attention over the years. So, today I thought I'd list a few espionage and thriller characters who I'm a big fan of.

George Smiley
Appearing in several novels by John le Carre, Smiley is not an action hero. He's a sly, scheming, intellectual agent. The most famous Smiley story is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which has been adapted to film several times. Smiley has been played by such extraordinary actors as James Mason (though the character's name was changed in that instance), Sir Alec Guinness, Denholm Eliot, and, most recently, Gary Oldman. 



Jack Ryan
Tom Clancy's character, Jack Ryan, might best be described as an unintentional hero. Ryan, a CIA analyst, often wants nothing to do with the violence and gritty intrigue of the espionage world, preferring a peaceful life as a father and husband while serving his country from behind a desk. But he usually finds himself in the thick of things. Clancy has written many Jack Ryan novels. There have also been four major movies, with a fifth coming soon. If asked to choose a favorite film version of the Jack Ryan stories, I'd be forced to give a double-sided answer. My favorite in terms of plot and delivery is The Hunt for Red October, in which Jack Ryan was played by Alec Baldwin, with a superb supporting cast that included James Earl Jones, Sean Connery, Sam Neill, Tim Curry, and Peter Firth. But my favorite portrayal of Jack Ryan was by Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and A Clear and Present Danger, which are both excellent.



Adam Carter
Of the characters I'm discussing today, Carter might be the one most unfamiliar to American audiences, but I think my British friends will know who I'm talking about. From 2002 until 2011, a magnificent espionage series called Spooks ran on British TV. Lasting for 86 excellent episodes, the show was a smoldering, suspenseful joyride of spy thrills. It was a powerful show and had the guts to very frequently kill off major, well-liked characters. Nobody was safe on this show, which sometimes made me want to hate it as much as I loved it.  
Spooks revolved around MI-5 supervisor Harry Pearce (played by Peter Firth) and the team of agents who worked under him. At any given time, the squad was led in the field by a Section Chief. There were five different Section Chiefs throughout the show's run and all were interesting characters. The one that makes my list today is Adam Carter (portrayed by Rupert Penry-Jones). The second character to hold the post, after Matthew McFadyen's Tom Quinn, Carter was a dynamic, energetic, courageous agent who worked hard to balance his obligations to his country with his responsibilities to his family, often with mixed results. Carter also lasted as Section Chief longer than any of those before or after him.
If anyone reading this has never seen Spooks, I highly recommend it. It's available for streaming on Netflix, but you'll have to look for it under the title it adopted for viewing in the U.S. Here, it's renamed MI-5.


Bryan Mills
You really, really, really do not want to mess with his family. It's not a good idea. Just remember, he has a very particular set of skills that makes him a nightmare for people like you. 
On paper, Taken sounds like a mediocre, possibly somewhat entertaining action flick that might star someone like Steven Segal. Simple plot: retired spy's daughter is kidnapped to be sold as a sex slave, so he goes to Europe to find her and get revenge on those who perpetrated the crime.
But if you take that premise and give it to producer Luc Besson and director Pierre Morel, and cast Liam Neeson in the lead role of former special operative Bryan Mills, you end up with what I think just might be the best spy/ action movie of the last few decades! I absolutely loved it. I rarely watch movies more than once within a span of just a few years, but I've seen Taken at least a half-dozen times since its release in 2008.
The sequel, Taken 2, was a very good action movie and well worth seeing, but not on the level of the first. I'm happy to have recently learned that there will be a third installment. As long as Liam Neeson wants to keep playing Bryan Mills, I'm willing to go to the theater and watch him teach some very bad people some very harsh lessons.

Nobody Dies For Free

I once commented that being a writer is like having a big box of action figures and getting paid to play with them. It's also a profession that makes dreams come true, in the sense that we can "do" all the things we've wanted, in our imaginations, to do by living through the characters we put onto the page. In the years since I began writing, I've had many opportunities to write things that relate to ideas and concepts that have been very important to the development of my imagination. I've written, and seen published, stories featuring some of my favorite fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes and Allan Quatermain. I've also had chances to create my own characters and throw them headfirst into interesting situations in books and stories in various genres. I've had the chance to play with vampires and detectives and zombies.

Today, I'm happy to announce that another writing dream has come true. I am now officially the author of a published spy novel, Nobody Dies for Free, just released by Pro Se Productions. Nobody Dies for Free is the story of Richard Monroe, a former CIA operative pulled back into the world of espionage and intrigue following a personal tragedy. I'll let the back cover copy speak for itself:



And I'll give everyone a good look at the front cover too:



So now that the book has officially been thrust out into public availability, maybe I should talk a bit about how it came to be that I'd write a book in that particular genre.

I first became aware of the spy genre, as I suspect many people did, through the James Bond movies. I must have been six or seven when I saw my first one. I became a big fan of those movies and eventually of Ian Fleming's Bond novels too. As the years went on, I came to enjoy other spy fiction as well, some as fun and occasionally over-the-top as Bond or Mission: Impossible, some much more serious, like the novels of John Le Carre, and some in-between the two extremes, stuff like the Jason Bourne movies. Having long had an interest in that type of story, I suppose it was inevitable that I'd eventually write my own. The several stories I've written featuring my pulp hero, Hound-Dog Harker, are sort of in the spy genre, but are period pieces with elements of horror and science-fiction thrown in too, so I'm not sure if they really count. As far as a contemporary spy story, which is what Nobody Dies for Free is, it was the accidental creation of the book's title that finally set things in motion.   

My wife and I were in the car one evening--I don't remember what the topic of conversation was--when I spoke that phrase for the first time: "nobody dies for free." My wife's immediate reaction was to point out that it sounds like it could be one of Ian Fleming's titles. Of course, Fleming is long gone and so he'll never use it, but I decided then and there to jot it down for future use of my own. Then I forgot about it for a while.

At some point after that, I got a great deal on DVDs of the James Bond movie series, everything from DR. NO to DIE ANOTHER DAY for under a hundred dollars. I watched them all in order for the first time (I'd seen them all before, some many times, but never in order of production). I had a blast revisiting the early installments with Sean Connery and George Lazenby, but then I got into the Roger Moore years and thought it would be a bit of a chore getting through that era, as the 1970s and early 80s Bond strayed far from Fleming's serious spy fiction and went too far with its gadgets and jokes. But as I got into those films, I began to notice something. While those movies are quite silly much of the time, there are moments scattered in there where Roger Moore plays Bond straight and is, for brief scenes, as ruthless and deadly as the Connery and Dalton versions. In The Man with the Golden Gun, he very brutally interrogates the character played by Maud Adams. In For Your Eyes Only, he kicks a car off a cliff with people inside it!

Seeing those scenes for the first time in years, my mind began to wander and I started to think what it might have been like if Roger Moore had been in darker, more serious Bond movies. That was the beginning of Nobody Dies for Free. 

Now that's not to suggest that Richard Monroe is directly based on Roger Moore and this hypothetical Bond he perhaps could have played. That meandering of my mind was just the first little seed of Monroe. My character quickly grew into someone else as I started to write the book.

He has certain similarities to James Bond and many other fictional spies: he's handsome, brave, sneaky, ruthless, and enjoys the company of beautiful women. But he's his own person too. He rarely uses clever gadgets and is more likely to rely on just his wits, his gun, his car, and a cell phone. He's American, though his personality has also been shaped by the time he's spent in many parts of the world. He doesn't work for a large organization like the CIA or FBI, although he used to. Now he's much more a solo agent, taking on missions too secret or sensitive for the more official agencies.

It wasn't just Bond and the other fictional spy worlds I mentioned earlier that had an impact on my writing the book. I wrote Nobody Dies for Free at roughly the same time as I was discovering what quickly became one of my favorite TV series of all-time, the British spy drama Spooks (retitled MI-5 when shown in the United States, presumably because while "spook" is slang for spy in the UK, it has, unfortunately, been used as a racial slur in the US). If you happen to be a fan of spy series, you must check out Spooks. But be warned: this is serious stuff and no one is safe! Characters die, brutally and often. It's a wild ride. 86 episodes of edge of your seat entertainment.

Anyway, back to Richard Monroe. I wrote the novel, was very happy with the result, and submitted it to a publisher I've worked with many times before, Pro Se Productions. They accepted it and here we are about a year later with the book now available to readers, and I'm thrilled!

As with any book, an author can't do it alone. I want to sincerely thank everyone involved in this book's birth: Tommy Hancock and Morgan Minor of Pro Se, Perry Constantine, who did the brilliant editing, and Ariane Soares, who created a cover that is exactly what I wanted for this book!

And, speaking of that cover, if Richard Monroe looks slightly familiar to anyone, his face is loosely based on that (in a younger version) of actor Iain Glen of Game of Thrones. The first time I saw Iain Glen on screen, he reminded me of a rougher, tougher Roger Moore, so a face somewhat modeled on his fits Monroe quite well, I think.

So that's how Nobody Dies for Free came into existence. I hope everyone has as much fun reading it as I did writing it. I look forward to hearing what readers have to say once they've met Richard Monroe!

Nobody Dies for Free is now available at Amazon in a print edition or as an e-book.      

Into the Jungle Again

Today, I'm absolutely thrilled to announce the release of a book that includes my latest story. QUATERMAIN: THE NEW ADVENTURES includes a pair of novellas featuring one of the most famous adventure characters of the 19th century, H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain!

Here's the official press release and the book's gorgeous cover.



ALLAN QUATERMAIN
Airship 27 Productions is extremely thrilled to announce the release of our newest pulp collection starring a classic adventure hero loved by millions.
British adventure writer H. Rider Haggard’s most popular fictional character was Allan Quatermain, the irascible African big game hunter.  As the hero of the classic KING SOLOMON’S MINES, Quatermain immediately fired up the imagination of readers across the world and created an instant demand for more of his adventures.
Now Airship 27 Productions answers that on-going demand by presenting two brand new Allan Quatermain novellas, each filled with plenty of suspense, action and exotic African locales.  When a French river boat pilot discovers elephant ivory suffused with gold, it sends the expert guide on a quest to find a fabled elephant’s graveyard to learn answer to the “GOLDEN IVORY” by Alan J. Porter.  
Next a naïve American lad follows Quatermain deep into the jungle to find eight missing English women only to uncover an ancient evil capable of possessing the bodies of its victims in Aaron Smith’s chilling “TEMPLE OF LOST SOULS.”
“We couldn’t ask for more fast paced, exciting yarns these two these,” beams Airship 27 Productions’ Managing Editor, Ron Fortier.  “The affection our writers hold for this character was obvious throughout their stories and we fully expect Quatermain fans to agree.  This is really old fashioned pulp fun.”
Here two are complete tales that will thrill veteran fans and introduce a whole new generation to one of the most famous adventure heroes of all time; H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quatermain.
AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTIONS – Pulps for a New Generation!
Now available from Amazon as a hard copy and soon on Kindle.

7 Books That Changed My Life

Early this morning, on my way to sit down and check my e-mail, I caught a glimpse of my bookshelves and something made me stop for a minute and look. Hundreds of books stared back at me, many I've read at least once, some I've read many times, and quite a few I just haven't gotten around to yet. But among those many volumes are a handful that, for one reason or another, had such an impact on my mind (and heart too, in some cases) that they literally changed who I am to one degree or another, either by introducing me to a new genre or interest or doing something to inspire my writing or maybe even changing the way I think about the world we live in, or the worlds we could live in if things were just different enough to shift reality into something other than our familiar realm of existence. In appreciation of those personally important works, here is a list of seven books that really had an impact on me. There are others too, but these are the ones that jumped out at me today.

THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I first "met" Sherlock Holmes when I was about 8, via the British TV series starring Jeremy Brett as the Great Detective. I was fascinated by everything: Holmes' brilliance and eccentricities, his colorful adversaries, his loyal companion Watson, and all the details that go to make up a mystery. My grandfather, noticing my interest in one of his favorite fictional characters, found his own copy of the complete Holmes canon, the one he'd owned since his boyhood in the 1930s, and gave it to me for Christmas. I still have it today and still refer to it anytime I need to double check something for the new Holmes stories that I've had the privilege to be allowed to write for Airship 27 Productions for the past few years. My love of detective stories began with Holmes, but certainly didn't end there. If not for Doyle's work, I wonder if I ever would have followed that fascination and found Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot or Peter Falk's brilliant portrayal of Lt. Columbo or countless other literary or film detectives.


CASINO ROYALE by Ian Fleming
The aforementioned Sherlock Holmes is probably my favorite fictional character, but also pretty high up on that list is James Bond. Like with Holmes, I knew Bond on screen before I ever met the literary version. To me, in my early childhood, Bond looked like Sean Connery or Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton or George Lazenby. When I did finally get to read Fleming's books, I began with the first one, Casino Royale. I'm glad that was the first one he wrote and the first one I read, because it had not, at the time, been made into a movie yet. Had I read, say, Goldfinger, first, I probably would have had images of Sean Connery and Gert Frobe running through my head the whole time. But because the first 007 story I read was not a movie yet, Fleming's words had their effect on me without cinematic memories getting in the way. Because of this, the Bond I see when I read Fleming is different than the guy in the movies, and hopefully closer to what Fleming intended. I like both Bonds now, the movie version and the one that comes in words on the page. My own first spy novel, coming soon, was inspired by both versions of Bond, as well as by all the spy fiction I read later after first discovering the genre because of Ian Fleming.


DRACULA by Bram Stoker
Forget every movie version of the famous vampire count. Forget the handsome face of Christopher Lee. Forget the romantic baggage added on to the character in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation. Let all that slide out of your mind and lose yourself in the novel upon which all those movies were not-quite-based. Don't get me wrong, I love some of those movies, especially the Hammer ones, but this is the real Dracula, and one of the best (worst?) villains in literature. Stoker's choice in telling the story as a series of letters and journal entries was particularly inspired, as it allows the story to unfold as the characters experience it, letting the reader know just slightly more than any individual character does at any given moment. Of course, the two characters who actually have a firm understanding of just how dangerous things are getting, Dracula himself, and Van Helsing, aren't included in the narration (except for one section by Van Helsing toward the very end). Dracula is a slow, chilling, crawling, deepening nightmare of a book that will drag you in and not let go until you've made it to the end. It reaches a point where you must know what will happen next. That's the book that really cemented my love of vampire fiction and what eventually led to my writing 100,000 Midnights, the first of my own vampire series.


THE OCTOBER COUNTRY by Ray Bradbury
 When I was a kid, reading books meant for kids, a story was often just a story and the words were just there to move it along from one event to the next and eventually to its conclusion. I knew that things had to happen in stories, but I don't recall, at a young age, giving much thought to how important it was for some writers (the best writers, maybe) to choose which words served the story best. And then I discovered Ray Bradbury. Words never looked quite the same to me after that. Bradbury used them to build atmosphere, alter mood, make a story so much more than just a series of words describing events. I don't know if I can explain it any better than that, but I do know that The October Country  is my favorite of Bradbury's books, a wonderful collection of short stories, including such classics of horror and speculative fiction as "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse," "Skeleton," "The Man Upstairs," and many more.

THE BEST OF H.P. LOVECRAFT: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre
I've since read almost all of Lovecraft's fiction and own many editions holding various stories in various orders under various groupings, but this sampler was my first taste of the absolutely unique sort of storytelling that we now call "Lovecraftian."
Lovecraft's work, so I've heard people say, isn't for everybody. Some people find it too thick with extravagant adjectives and antiquated phraseology and cyclopian....see? It's contagious!
But seriously, there's nothing else in the world like Lovecraft. Whether it's his Cthulhu stories or the Dream Cycle or anything in between, it's a unique, thrilling, often horrifying blend of myth, horror, and science fiction, a genre unto itself.


HYPERSPACE by Michio Kaku
As much as I love science-fiction, I'm also very interested in science fact. One of my favorite subjects is quantum physics. Although I'm fascinated by the concepts and theories, I'll come right out and honestly admit that I don't understand the complicated mathematics behind them. Dr. Kaku's book explains the amazing ideas of modern physics in an entertaining way that makes them clear, and even more interesting, to a mathematically-inept reader like me. You won't see your "reality" in the same way after reading this or any of his other books.


CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS by Roger Zelazny
This is my favorite novel in the world. A mind-altering blend of Egyptian mythology and science-fantasy told in a way that I don't think any other writer can ever replicate, I was never quite the same after reading this for the first time and, strangely and wonderfully, it seems just slightly different with each subsequent reading, as if there are always nuances that remain hidden until I'm ready to discover them.
It starts out with a unique present-tense third person narrative, drifts into poetry in unexpected places, and ends as a play! Zelazny, it seems, was willing to break any rule, stretch any boundary, and do anything to get this story told, and it works perfectly.
As I've been writing this blog entry, I've realized something. Perhaps the reason I love this novel so much is that it really includes, in some way or another, all the qualities that make the other books on this list so special to me. "Creatures" gives the reader the intellectual exercise of a Sherlock Holmes mystery, the suspense of Bond, villains as terrifying as Dracula, epic events as cosmic in scope as anything Lovecraft ever imagined, exquisitely crafted prose worthy of Bradbury, and mind-bending concepts that could very well have come from (or might even go beyond) the things discussed in Hyperspace.
"Creatures" is a short book. The edition I have here is only 190 pages, but it packs more punch than any other book I've ever read. I can't really say it's influenced my writing, because I could never be as bold as Roger Zelazny when it comes to finding a truly new way to tell a story, but it's certainly influenced my imagination, and I think that's even more important.      
 
 






   

When Good and Evil Wear the Same Face

A few hours from now, it will be May 26, 2013, a date I feel I should commemorate here because it happens to be the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of my favorite actors, the great Peter Cushing.

Those of us who love movies in the genres of horror, mystery, and science fiction should all be grateful to Cushing for his incredible body of work. Perhaps the most amazing thing about his work as an actor was his ability to play both sides of the game, switching from hero to villain and back again from film to film with what looked to viewers like flawless ease, though it was more likely hard-earned skill. While actors who usually play heroic characters, like Harrison Ford, for example, occasionally have a turn as an evil swine, and those who most often portray villains, like Bela Lugosi, have had some sympathetic roles, I have a hard time thinking of another actor who played both sides as well and as often as Peter Cushing.

To think about this in terms of just his most well-known roles, Cushing's version of Van Helsing was one of the best and most famous. He played Sherlock Holmes too, both in the Hammer version of The Hound of the Baskervilles and later in a BBC television series. He is among my favorite Holmes actors, right up there alongside Jeremy Brett and Basil Rathbone. And he also portrayed The Doctor in two Doctor Who movies. That's three massively important heroic characters.

On the evil side, who could forget his Dr. Frankenstein and, perhaps even more famously, his important role in a film that defined the childhoods of so many of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s, Star Wars? As far as I'm concerned, Cushing's Grand Moff Tarkin was the main villain in Star Wars. Looking back with hindsight after all the movies, people tend to think of Darth Vader as the big bad guy in George Lucas's trilogy, but Vader wasn't much more than a henchman in the first one, while Tarkin was obviously in control. He barked, "Vader, release him!" and Vader did.

Peter Cushing is one of a handful of actors whose work I always enjoy, whether in a classic like Star Wars or Horror of Dracula or The Hound of the Baskervilles, or in any of the lesser films he did over his long career. Like any prolific actor, Cushing was in his share of lousy movies too, but I don't think his performances were ever bad. He could rise above bad scripts, bad directing, and bad cinematography to shine even when the movie was covered in mud.

I wasn't always a big fan of Cushing. For years I thought of him as a minor character from Star Wars, but as I got older and saw more of his films, I grew to appreciate his work a lot more deeply. His Grand Moff Tarkin was incredibly important to that first Star Wars movie. His Van Helsing was a fit match for Christopher Lee's Dracula, and his Holmes, as I said before, is right up there with many other fine actors who sat in the rooms at Baker Street puffing that pipe while deep in thought.

Peter Cushing appeared in over 90 movies. Some of them are now among my favorite films of all time, while there are others I haven't yet seen. I'm glad I haven't seen them all. It gives me something to look forward to. Cushing's long, distinguished career on film lasted from 1939 to shortly before his death. He died in 1994 at the age of 81.

So it's been a hundred years since his birth. I suspect that in another century, the work of this fine actor will still be appreciated and those who love horror, mystery, and science fiction will still marvel at the work of a man who played both good and evil with so much skill.

Now comes the hard part. I have to decide which of his movies to watch for the the occasion!       

Return of the G-Man

Several years ago, as one of my very first jobs for Airship 27 Productions, I contributed a story to the first volume of an anthology series featuring the classic pulp character, Dan Fowler: G-Man.

I'm happy to announce that today marks the release of the second volume and I, once again, have a story included. My story, "Monkey Business," begins with the death of the head of Chicago's Polish crime gangs and we soon find FBI Agent Dan Fowler on the case.

The book also features stories by my pulp colleagues Derrick Ferguson, Joshua Reynolds, and B. C. Bell. I'm thrilled to share the book with those three excellent writers. Also involved were Neil Foster, creator of the book's magnificently noirish interior illustrations; Brian McCulloch, who designed the stunning cover; and, as always with Airship 27 books, editor Ron Fortier and art director Rob Davis.

DAN FOWLER: G-MAN Volume 2 is now available at Amazon. 

Here's a look at the cover:

 

   

Werewolves of.......Idaho????

On the thirteenth day after the end of the world, Byron was down to his last pill. Two weeks since the lights went out and there were no answers, no reassurance. Still they waited. The whole little town, except the fifteen men and twelve women who had gone off into daylight to look for information, now huddled in the high school, most of them in the gym, everyone from the mayor down to the newest infant to be born into a world suddenly very uncertain. The twenty-seven who had left had not been heard from again.
What you've just read is the first paragraph of the latest of my stories to be published. "The Librarian," in the new anthology of werewolf stories, Tails of the Pack, just released by Sky Warrior Books and edited by Steven E. Wedel. Tails of the Pack contains eleven brand new stories, including mine. The anthology is available as an e-book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. 
Here's a look at the cover, which I think is a wonderful piece of art:




Honestly, I'm a bit surprised to suddenly be the author of a werewolf story. I've never considered myself a big fan of werewolves. Sure, I like some fictional depictions of this particular type of supernatural beast. The original Lon Chaney Jr. film, The Wolfman is certainly one of Universal's monster movie classics, and I have to say I like the earlier Universal film, Werewolf of London even more. Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" has always been one of my favorite songs, guaranteed to make me smile every time I hear it.  But overall, werewolves have never appealed to me as much as vampires or Frankenstein's monster or even zombies. But when I heard, sometime last year, that an anthology was open for werewolf stories, I let the idea float around in my head for a while and, as they often do when I let them, a story popped into existence.
Byron Phelps, the librarian in the small town of Ramsey, Idaho, is enjoying a peaceful, quiet life despite a dark secret that no one else in town knows about. Then everything turns upside down and nobody is sure exactly what's happening. A once-normal town is suddenly cut off from the rest of the world and everyone is plunged into confusion, uncertainty, and fear. Then...

Sorry. I can't say anymore! 

But I'm glad I took advantage of the chance to write a werewolf story. It was fun and I hope those who buy the book will enjoy it. Will I write more about werewolves in the future? I don't know. Maybe next time I sit at my keyboard when the moon is full and the children of the night make music outside my door...
     






 

Count-ing to Five

It's no secret to anyone who reads my work or follows this blog that I'm a big fan of vampires. I've blogged about them before, written a vampire novel, 100,000 Midnights, which will be the first in a series, and long been addicted to vampire novels, movies, etc.

Of course, one of my favorite characters in fiction, and certainly my favorite in the vampire genre, is Dracula, created by Bram Stoker for his novel of the same name. Stoker's book is one of my favorite novels and I've read it many times and will probably find an excuse to read it again soon.

But what about other depictions of Dracula? The count has appeared in hundreds of other novels, movies, and comics over the years. So I was thinking it might be fun to try to narrow down all those post-Stoker Dracula appearances to my favorites. I've picked the number 5 for this little exercise, since any more would make for too long a blog post! Having whittled the candidates down like Van Helsing preparing a stake, here is my list of my five favorite Draculas outside the original novel. I look forward to hearing what others think, whether they agree or disagree with me.

5. DRACULA (1931 film)
I couldn't possibly leave Bela Lugosi off the list, could I? For many people, he's the first image that comes to mind when they hear the name "Dracula!" It's a good movie, even if it seems tame compared to many of the later Dracula films. Lugosi was an excellent actor who often doesn't get enough credit. The film's story strays very far from Stoker's novel, but it's still entertaining and has the classic charm of those glorious old Universal horror movies. I recently viewed the movie with the Phillip Glass score that was added to certain editions of the DVD not long ago. The new music made it seem like a different film and added something refreshingly eerie to a movie I'd watched a dozen times before. I'd recommend it with the Glass music or in its original version.


4. NOSFERATU (1922 silent film)
This German horror film, directed by FW Murnau and featuring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlock is, like the Lugosi version, loosely based on Stoker's novel. Nosferatu is one of the strangest, creepiest things ever put on film. It pulls you in and drags you through a black and white nightmare. In my opinion, the best way to watch this movie is late at night with the sound turned off. No music I've heard added to the film does it justice, but silence in the background adds to the eeriness of the experience.


3. HORROR OF DRACULA (1958 movie)
The first in the classic Hammer Productions series of Dracula movies, this is the best. Christopher Lee as Dracula, the great Peter Cushing (possibly my favorite actor ever) as Van Helsing, this is a good one. There's a certain atmosphere and look that was specific to the Hammer horror movies and this is perhaps the best example. Like the last two movies I mentioned, this one goes way off track from being a real adaptation of the novel it was supposedly based on, but that doesn't make it any less worth watching.


2. COUNT DRACULA (1977 TV movie)
In 1977, British television aired this two and a half hour adaptation of Stoker's novel and this time it really was an adaptation! I saw this for the first time about a year ago and was completely blown away! This is Stoker's novel brought to bloody, creepy life. Louis Jourdan (who deserves a villain of the century award for playing not only Dracula, but a Bond villain and a murderer matching wits with Lt. Columbo) plays Dracula and does an admirable job. Van Helsing is played by Frank Finley.
The movie made a few minor changes from the novel. Lucy and Mina are sisters instead of friends, Quincey and Arthur are combined into one character, and the final fight sequence is slightly altered (but I'm not saying how, in case you haven't seen it yet). Other than that, this version hits all the stakes on the head and is, finally, a very good adaptation of the book. The special effects, despite the limitations of 70s TV, are chilling and work well because they don't try to go too far.
I highly recommend this one!


1. TOMB OF DRACULA (Marvel Comics, 1972-1979)
This may surprise some people, but my Number One choice here is not a movie but a comic book series. This is also not an adaptation (tight or loose) of Bram Stoker's novel, but a continuation of the story of Dracula.
Running 70 issues, this series was brilliant from start to finish. Drawn for its entire run by Gene Colan, whose art style was perfect for the subject matter, and written, except for the first few issues, by Marv Wolfman (an appropriate name for a writer of horror comics), it began with Dracula's resurrection in the modern world and followed the count's activities, as well as the adventures of a group of vampire hunters pursuing him.
Interestingly, Gene Colan based the look of his Dracula on actor Jack Palance before Palance actually played the count in a 1973 movie!
The series is available in inexpensive reprint form as part of Marvel's Essentials series of books. Every fan of Dracula, even if not normally a comics enthusiast, owes it to him or herself to read Tomb of Dracula.    

So that's my countdown of favorite post-Stoker Dracula depictions. Of course, Dracula is just the tip of the vampire iceberg. I've enjoyed other vampires in many books, movies, and TV series, but that's a subject for another blog.
If you have any strong opinions on my choices, good or bad, I'd love to hear them.