Declan Finn's Blog, page 11

Setting up Urban Fantasy

When writing, one of the reasons I've stayed with the "Secret History" versions of Urban Fantasy is because New York City is alien enough to most people that I don't have to make up stuff to be particularly strange.

Also, I'm a historian. I like inserting monsters into historical events. Vampires and the French revolution in particular became a matter of fun.

And being Catholic, I come with my own "magic system." Strictly speaking, according to doctrine, I'm writing thrillers. Not horror. Not fantasy. I haven't yet come up against anything so egregious that would make it out of the realm of possibility.

So I guess you can say I cheat. I stole someone else's magic system. But you call it metaphysics, and you can be surprised what can escape copyright.

The nice thing about the location is that it's distinctive. Everything has its own history. In Hell Spawn, I used Creedmore and Riker's Island, each with decades of history. I used local neighborhoods that have never been seen on TV, and unless you were native TO THAT AREA, you'd never have heard of it. Trust me, I know. I tell people where I live and no one can find it on a map. Even areas that are fictionalized in literature, no one can figure out -- because how many people looked up Big Egg and Little Egg from the Great Gatsby and discovered they were real places?

Welcome to New York City, where everything is alien to anyone who doesn't live there.

One of the reasons I don't use Manhattan is that most of Manhattan is for tourists. Those who work there don't want to stay there any longer than they have to. Those who live there are alien to me and my area.

Trust me, if you think you hate New York City, or Manhattan, ask the people out in the Hamptons what they think of "city people." They hate them more because they've MET them. Not even Revenge or Royal Pains (set in the Hamptons) really covered much of City versus Locals.

It's one of the reasons I try to keep Tommy out of the area as much as possible. Not to mention that, in real life, if anyone burned down Eastern Queens, or parts of Long Island, no one within the five boroughs would even notice. There would be no media coverage, except for Long Island News stations.

In short, I don't need to recreate the world. The world is strange enough as it is.

Coven: Upping the Ante

One of the fun things about writing Coven was an idea that Hans Schantz suggested. He probably doesn't even recognize his original idea, given what I'd done to it. 
The idea? Take away Tommy's charisms.

Granted, but this point in the series, I'd given him two other major weapons that increased his chances of survival. Some people think that there's no way I can threaten Tommy anymore.

Challenge accepted. Time to bring out a bigger hammer.

Yeah, I know. How can I bring out a bigger hammer after the end of #6, Deus Vult?

What? You didn't think Tommy would be allowed to KEEP that particular weapon, did you?

Not to mention, by the end of DV, Tommy is well and truly battered, beaten, and knocked around. Every tool in his arsenal had been pushed to the limit, drained, damaged, and broken.

For Coven, I was going to bring him back home. Then I was going to hurt him.

For those who haven't read my previous novels, I get interesting results when I hurt my characters. Usually, more stuff blows up.

Let's knock around his partner. Yeah. Alex has been a little TOO lucky. In every novel, Tommy has thrown himself on every threat that could have killed Alex -- and not because Tommy thinks he's going to survive, but he thinks he has a better chance of surviving than his older partner.

And, as you can see in the description of the book, we're going to target Tommy's children. Because that will not create ANY problems for the poor dumb SOB who thinks that's a good idea.

See, there are always multiple ways to juggle threats. Previous novels have mostly used one massive threats, compiled of multiple layers and parts.

Another option is simply taking "smaller" threats and throwing them at our hero, and where he's weakest. I get to explore more sides to our hero, and develop the people around him better.

Granted, given everything that his family has been through, calling them "the weak spot" might be misleading.

And of course, the ultimate threat is ... well, it's a little bit of Jim Butcher, and a little bit of J. Michael Straczynski.

[Yes, I know that JMS has gone a little bit off the rails, letting politics into his brain like a poison. Apparently, he broke up with his wife ("By any means necessary" script writer Kathryn Drennen) and shacked up with Patricia Tallman. Tallman is an ultra-lefty. Apparently, banging a redhead with that level of dementia turns politics into an STD. This doesn't mean his previous writing advice sucks]

From Butcher, I stole the idea that, well, when in doubt, just increase the threat level.

From JMS, I took his Amazing Spider Man concept that supervillains are mirrors of our hero. Black mirrors, false mirrors. Want to be mirrors. That sort of thing. (Red Skull is a false patriot, caring nothing for country, but only himself. Spider-Man's enemies were largely other animal themes)

So, what do I do to Tommy? Who's his Moriarty? Well, that was book 6's villain. So we need a Sebastian Moran-- someone who can match Tommy in the street.

We needed another true believer.

Heh heh heh

Buy it on Amazon.

Or buy from the Publisher

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is interesting.


Because I forgive you doesn't mean that I need to trust you.


One lying SOB in particular, who I've blocked and muted, apologized for the one behavior I didn't care about, but didn't seem to think his slander and libel of honest, genuine people was worth apologizing for. And this prick has lied about me. He's lied about friends of mine. He's lied about people who actually helped prop him up and aided him along the way.


In fact, said lying sack of crap didn't acknowledge that he is a liar. So, technically, his apology itself is untrustworthy.


Despite having my email and my phone number, he has harassed my wife, my fans, my friends, and my followers, whining to anyone who will listen that I'm being mean to him by blocking him.


Some people don't seem to understand that they are blocked for their protection. If I have blocked you, I avoid temptation to hurl rocks. If I work hard to forget you, I can't wish you harm, or spend time disemboweling you.


Besides, I've learned my lesson once already.


Many, many moons ago, I had a lady friend who needed me to pick her from from a police precinct. She'd been arrested for shop lifting. Even though she'd told me she'd shoplifted before, this time she was supposedly set up by an acquaintance.


It was a lie, of course. I was stupid enough to believe that I was special. That she wouldn't lie to me. Or if she did, she'd retract it soon enough. It took her three days, and by then, I figured she'd been honest with me about having been set up.


I cut her off. Angrily. Loudly. Over the phone.


Four months later, I forgave her.


The mistake I made was associating with her again afterwards. Just to hang out and talk, just like before.


Why a mistake? Six months later, she drugged me. With something to make me loosen up so I would finally sleep with her-- a goal she'd been trying to attain for the previous five years.


We won't go into the lies she told after that in an attempt to tie me to her further.


So now, when a lying prick complains to anyone who will listen about how mean I'm being to him, because I "won't forgive him," he misunderstands.


Forgiveness doesn't mean I get to be used as a prop in someone else's sideshow. Forgiveness doesn't mean I get to put up with your BS on a daily basis so I can be aggravated for your entertainment.


Forgiveness does not mean that I trust you. I especially cannot trust a proven liar. When I see what they will lie about -- WHO they will lie about -- trust is gone. Poof. It's never coming back.


In this particular instance, it's hard to figure out what I hate about this jerk more: that he lied about me, or that he lied about my friends.


It's a cliche, but broken trust doesn't get fixed. Especially when one thinks its funny to burn bridges with your friends and allies are still on it.


At the end of the day, I've learned my lesson. I forgive, but never forget.

Review: Hired Luck, by Mel Todd

I've reviewed the main story arc of the Kaylid Chronicles.  And I reviewed book one of this series, My Luck.

My Luck was about Cori Catastrophe as she received her triple Associates degree.

Hired Luck.

New city, new job, new threat?

With my best friend going to college to learn how to use her magic, I'm job hunting in Atlanta. We're sharing an apartment and I've never been happier. The last thing I needed was to be involved in a murder investigation. Now the police are sure I had something to do with it. News alert: I don't. I've got a job, Jo's going school. I finally am on the track to have my own life.

Working as an EMT is great, but something weird happened at work. Something I can't explain. What if I'm wrong and I am a mage? The last thing I want is to be a mage, it would mean I'd lose everything I've been working for. Even if I am a mage, I'd be a low ranking one, a hedgemage, something that means I can keep my current life.

But I can't get the dead girl out of my mind. Who was she and why did she die? What good are my skills if all I do is keep finding dead people? With a serial killer out there, the police and FBI stepping in, I might lose more than the life I had planned. I might lose my life. Once again my luck holds true and I'm in the middle of something I don't know how to deal with.

This one opens with a nice omage to the opening of book one, and this time, it's the inciting incident of the plot ... however, Mel takes her time before springing that on you. From there, we get a less-than-stellar view of Atlanta. If this is what it's like to live there, cross Georgia of my list of states to move to. And, this being SFF in Atlanta, we have DragonWorldCon ... I wonder how many puppy kickers will object.
Mel has finally gotten around to the serial killer plot she hinted about back at least one series ago. And of course, Cori is going to be sucked into it.

The damn thing of it is that I can't tell you most of the plot because at the one third mark, we can throw out this entire above description of the plot right out the window, and the plot takes a breakneck one-eighty. 

Many of the revelations will be nothing surprising to the careful reader of book one.

However, once we explain all of those conclusions to Cori, that's where things go off the rails for her, and the real plot begins.

This one will be a 4/5. I had hoped this would be my Dragon Award nomination for fantasy for next year. But something about this held it back for me. I can't put my finger on why. Perhaps Mel tried to do too much with this novel? Perhaps she should have pushed this plot to book three after doing a book on the job Cori has been trained for? Again, I'm not entirely certain. Book 1 was carried entirely on character and world building. This has more of an emphasis on plot-- but like every murder mystery, it helps build the world on the order of How Things Work.

Not to mention that we spent a good chunk of the middle novel introducing us to new characters ... after spending the first third of the novel introducing us to new characters. We don't get many calls for Cori as an EMT, which made me a little sad. And I think that might be what held this one back--the tonal whiplash at the 30% mark. As I read through my notes, there are tonal shifts all over the place.

There are, as usual, a bunch of nice little touches. The magical crime family Rasputin, for example. Or the Merlin Arthur Conan-Doyle. Or that the FBI never changes... nor does public school. Or academic politics.

And unlike a certain magical universe, Cori contributes to the plot BECAUSE she has no assumptions, and all of her basic knowledge is fresh in her mind. There's a nice bit about biases, against her and for her, and how certain changes in her life change her--in ways she doesn't like. Then we take basic knowledge of the world, and throw it right out the window, heh heh heh.

Also, frigging magical tree cats. Also, unicorns can be scary.

A major plot issue to be addressed (not a problem to be fixed) is the conclusion. It's very much like Black Sunday meets an Indiana Jones movie, but not quite as satisfying. Yes, that is particularly vague. But I suspect you'll figure it out when you finish it. But it left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. It was also heavy into sequel baiting, where the resolution to this was the creation of a whole new set of problems.

My biggest quibble? The casual, arbitrary and capricious dismissal of all religion... well, all Christians. And Jews. Apparently, no priest who has magic abilities wanted to be a healer? No Rabbinic scholars went into the field of doing a deep dive into magic? Somehow, all of the meditations, focusing exercises and mental disciplines of Christianity are instantly useless in this world of magic. Why? Because magic... That's it... Seriously? It's not even magic, it's matter to energy conversion, like the transporter or replicator on Star Trek. 

But Druid and Wicca are on the rise! Yeah. Sure. How many other human-sacrifice cults would you like to bring back? Because human-sacrifice is literally a massive plot point of this novel. So that strikes me as six kinds of Really Bad Idea. 

And it's infuriating because it's two throwaway lines in chapter openings that usually contribute to world building. And it was mentioned twice, without having a single ramification in this storyline.

But "Oh yeah, that guy in Rome is just a figurehead of an empty church." Right. It knocked me right out of the narrative and just plain irked me.

As I said, 4/5. 3/5 if I'm feeling pissy.

Anyway, buy a copy here.

LIVE FROM THE BUNKER #122: Declan Finn, the Pius Geek

New interview this week. Thought you'd be amused.

On editing

One of the things about editing your own work is distance.

When I was working strictly on my own, without editors, without publishers, without anyone, I needed to finish a project, then put it aside for weeks if not MONTHS, just so I could come back to it.

Granted, at the time I wrote it, I just wanted to get it all out of my head. So when I came back to it later, my first thought was "Who wrote this s***?"

Nowadays, I need a lot less of it. Because I have a better handle of what I people to feel and how to get that result.

Of course, some days are better than others.

Right now, I'm working on my third Williams and Miller book. If you don't know that series, it's more self-pubbed thrillers. The books were so large, I've broken up books one and two into three and two parts, respectively.

Why were they so big? Well, I had a general notion that books had to be 300-400 pages. So, I did that....

With 8.5 x 11 inch pages....

Single spaced....

Which is how I ended up with my current editing project, a monster of 156,000 words.

After two days of editing, it's not 146,000 words. Oy. Trust me, if you thought I like long sentences now, you should have seen the Ciceronian chunks of text I churned out back then.

Keep in mind, "Back then" was 20 years ago. When people are commenting on how much my writing has matured and use the previous two novels as proof... well, that's less the writing, and more the editing. The previous two novels were edited to within an inch of their life, until the point where I couldn't even read them anymore.

My current one... eh. Not so much. There will be a lot of "kill it with fire" going on. Keep in mind, in 2000, I thought one of the bigger stories twenty years from t hen would be sending UN peacekeepers to Belfast.

Current story in Belfast... all medical related.

[Head desk]

So I'll hit this one with a machete until the edits on Lightbringer come back, then I'll switch off again and see what happens when I come back to it again.

Fun fun fun.

NEW RELEASE (Sort of) Coven is now on Amazon

 Yes, you read that right. Saint Tommy book #8, Coven, has released on Amazon. 

https://amzn.to/3170afE 

After months of being Silver Empire exclusive, it's live and in the wild. 

So, for those of you who couldn't, for whatever reason, buy it from Silver Empire, you can now get it on Amazon. 

For those of you who have already reviewed it on Silver Empire, now would be a good time to review it on Amazon. 

Hint hint. Wink wink. Know what I mean?

I'd make a comment about the book, but I've been working on book #10, and I'm about to start on book #11 soon. So I'm playing bingo with about five dozen cards and trying to track them, only the cards are the events and activities of my own life.

Fun fun fun.

Coven is a return to New York. After an arrest goes sideways, Tommy is given yet another murder case. And no one wants to cooperate with him. the bodies start piling up. Tommy's charisms have stopped working, and worse of all, people are after his children.

So grab Coven here if you haven't already.

Jennie Posthumous on Supernatural Streets (Now, only $0.99)

Jennie Posthumous on Supernatural Streets (Now, only $0.99), and the origin story for her tale in the anthology.  

A Hunting We will Go

Staunton, Virginia is known as a historic city. From the architecture to being the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson. There are also cemeteries dating back to the 1700s. One of those is Thornrose Cemetery, dating back to around 1750. 

Thonrose was used in my first Lady of Death novel, The Fae's Amulet. It's a gorgeous place where people still go to walk around. There are even benches, flowers, and wildlife. (Disclaimer: I also have family buried there, though not in any of the mausoleums.)

There's also Pokemon Go stops.

The husband and I enjoy playing Pokemon Go. It's a fun game. While driving through the cemetery to get stops, we stumbled across some local police officers near a large pile of red clay mud. (It's Virginia, red clay is the thing here.) I guess it's where they dump the extra dirt and mud. Anyway, these poor officers are standing around the edge looking at something. One is talking on his handset and the other's body language said he was uneasy about something. Since that pile of dirt is a good ways from the single-car road, we found another route and left them to their business.

That did not stop the husband and myself from joking about what they were looking at. The conversation went something along the lines of:

Husband: They found a bone.

Me: Well, duh. It is a cemetery. Maybe they found a femur! (Anyone who has kids will recognize the Disney COCO reference.)

Husband: But there's no graves over there. 

Me: It's a really big femur. Dragon, maybe?

Husband: That’s too obvious. It would have to be something more unusual.

And that got us to talking, and joking, about what type of bone it would be. Some other references to movies and such were also thrown in, because we have kids and are nerds/geeks.

And then came the call for short stories for the Supernatural Streets anthology. It seemed all the pieces were falling into place for a story about a griffin femur found at Thornrose. Of course it had to be set in the Lady of Death universe!

A Hunting We Will Go features Chris and Curtis, a pair of best friends who work at Fellhaven Restaurant and Tavern (a fictional restaurant in the nearby city of Waynesboro). Close enough to be brothers, the pair go hunting for a creature from another realm and find something more than they bargained for.

A fun story to right, it gives a little more insight into some fun side characters.

Julie Frost on The Genesis of “Brave Day Sunk in Hideous Night” for Supernatural Streets

Another guest post on Supernatural Streets. This time, from Julie Frost 

The Genesis of “Brave Day Sunk in Hideous Night”

Julie Frost 

The origin of the whole “Pack
Dynamics” universe is a bit weird and a lot convoluted.

When
the first “Iron Man” movie came out, I got a little obsessed.
Scratch that. Wholly obsessed. Tony was so messed up, and Pepper so
long-suffering, that they were just... irresistible. Yeah, I shipped
that, and shipped it hard. So I sat down and bashed out a novelette
starring two characters that totally were not them in any way, shape,
manner, or form. Ha. It was the first story I’d ever written
without any speculative elements whatsoever. It was basically a
romance (I don’t write romance, by the way) with a lot of torture,
as Not-Tony and Not-Pepper get in a plane crash in Bosnia and are
captured by terrorists. I loved it to itty-bitty pieces.

And
it was completely unsalable. Short romance was not a Thing in 2007.

I
lamented to my Writing Buddy about how I needed to add a spec element
so I could actually make some beer money with the thing. He mused for
a minute and said, “Make her a werewolf. She’s hiding her
condition from him. Wackiness, as we say, ensues.”

So
I did. The length doubled. I never did place it (werewolf romance
novellas are a hard sell, who knew?), but I eventually self-pubbed it
because I could and because by then I had a novel series to hang it
on. One publisher rejected it but said that it was the best title
they’d seen all year. I’m rather fond of “Piles of Cash and
Killer Benefits” myself. I am pretty sure my Writing Buddy came up
with that too.

A
year later, give or take, the Iron Man Train was still chugging
merrily along, and I was basically devouring every movie Robert
Downey, Jr., has ever been in. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” crossed my
radar, and I thought it was the best movie I’ve ever seen that only
twelve people have even heard of, let alone watched. And I got to
thinking, double the Downey, double the fun, what if I mash KKBB and
Iron Man together, Tony hires Harry and Perry to look into some
industrial espionage for him, whee.

My issue with that was that I
didn’t want to write fanfiction anymore. But I was three thousand
words into it, madly scribbling when I got a spare minute at
Denvention 3 (the 2008 Denver WorldCon), and also lamenting to high
Heaven and anyone who would listen about ARGH FANFIC MAKE IT STOP BUT
ALSO I LOVE THIS.

A kind soul tapped me on the
shoulder and said, “Don’t you have a universe you can drop
characters like this into?”

I blinked. Why, yes. Yes, I
did.

Long
story short, “Pack Dynamics” turned into a prequel of “Piles of
Cash,” and I sold it seven years later to WordFire Press.

Ben
is nothing like Harry. Harry is a clueless, incompetent doofus. We
love him because he’s got a good heart and he tries hard. While Ben
is Damaged with a capital D, he is actually skilled at his job. I
imported Harry’s White Knight Syndrome, and--like Harry--he gets
kidnapped and beaten up a lot,
but that’s where the resemblance ends. We love him (hopefully)
because he fights for the things he believes in, doesn’t see
himself as a victim, and is almost painfully self-aware.

Now,
I’m a short story writer at heart. Novels are hard. In the six
years between the time I wrote “Pack Dynamics” and its sale, I
managed to scribble several short stories and novelettes set in the
universe, including this one. Ben is a favorite creation of mine, and
I love tossing him face-first into a situation and seeing how he’ll
react to it.

When
I sat down and started outlining projects for a short-story NaNo
endeavor in 2013, I knew I had to write a Ben story. So I started
poking through private eye websites to see what sort of job I could
hang some fiction on, and decided to combine a repo with a skip
trace. But a normal repo would be boring, so I decided to mix it up a
little and have my brand of fun with it while also traumatizing Ben.
Again.

It’s
what I do. 

Buy Supernatural Streets here

Home Chemistry and Supernatural Streets.

So, what bat guano insane environment did I have to grow up in to be a writer?

Well, in the age old argument of nature versus nurture, I must say that I was always like this.

In 8th grade, my science project was "Bombs from Bisquick." Fans of the 1994 film Blown away should recognize the quote. That film was my introduction to Forest Whittaker, U2, and creative chemistry.

Experiments I did for this science project involved amonium iodide (pressure sensitive little green crystals), as well as a "magic trick" watching colored water shift, etc.

This of course, doesn't even include the things that I didn't do because it was ... inadvisable. 

Though I now regret not having mixed ammonia and bleach... outside... in a sealed jar. I figure they might be good for crowd control these days.

In short, if someone had handed me the anarchist cookbook in grammar school, that would have been an interesting month.

Nowadays, I have like-minded individuals on social media who have helped with research for books, such as chlorine fluoride (used to great effect on Infernal Affairs). And my own, lesser research for homemade thermite, which appears in Supernatural Streets...

Because when you're writing fantasy, and you need to hit a Terminator-level threat with something heavy, and you don't have superpowers, chemistry is a great second option.

... Assuming you don't think that's a superpower to start with.

Anyway, you can get your copy of Supernatural Streets here -- now out in Kindle Unlimited and hard copy. Just to see how to weaponize chemistry 101.