Paul Briggs's Blog, page 4
November 7, 2016
NaNoWriMo: The First Week
NaNoWriMo is going well for a change. I've written 12,000 words already. The secret, I think, is having lots of writing buddies, some of whom are fans of your work. There's still going to be a gap in my writing time around Thanksgiving, and there's no way to avoid that (seriously, why November?) but in spite of it I think I'm going to succeed.
As always, this means carrying a notebook and pencil around whenever I'm away from my computer (in the greenroom during a play, for instance) which makes me look even less sociable than usual. I've noticed that I'm a lot more sparing with words when I have to write them by hand.
The surprising thing is that I've also found time to do a little more work on Altered Seasons. And that the publisher who asked me to write it hasn't given up hope after all this time.
While you're all waiting for me to finish some of these books, here's an announcement from Debbie Manber Kupfer, author of P.A.W.S., which I swear I'll get around to writing a review of when I have the time. (Hint: It's good.)
As always, this means carrying a notebook and pencil around whenever I'm away from my computer (in the greenroom during a play, for instance) which makes me look even less sociable than usual. I've noticed that I'm a lot more sparing with words when I have to write them by hand.
The surprising thing is that I've also found time to do a little more work on Altered Seasons. And that the publisher who asked me to write it hasn't given up hope after all this time.
While you're all waiting for me to finish some of these books, here's an announcement from Debbie Manber Kupfer, author of P.A.W.S., which I swear I'll get around to writing a review of when I have the time. (Hint: It's good.)
It's here - the brand new cover for Argentum!
Created by the always awesome Rachel Bostwick.
And there's more - I'll be rereleasing Argentum on December 1st and you can
preorder today.
Argentum is the threat that binds all magic …
The silver of Miri’s cat charm passed on through the generations.
The silver of Jessamyn’s scepter, the source of her illusions.
The silver of Quentin’s scrying bowl, forged by Merlin.
All intertwine in Argentum.
With Alistair gone a measure of peace returns to P.A.W.S., but Miri is tormented by nightmares. The silver charm that had recently hung around Alistair’s neck is now in Miri’s possession and seems to have taken on a life of its own. And then it mysteriously disappears.
Jessamyn seeks help from Quentin, who claims to have repented his past association with Alistair, but can he be trusted?
And what of Jenna? The young girl rescued from Alistair’s pack house holds a terrible secret. One that could determine the future of P.A.W.S.
Coming soon - a brand new paperback. Stay tuned for details.
October 31, 2016
NaNoWriMo 2016
I’ve made a lot of progress on Altered Seasons over the past month. I’ve finished Year 3 and given a lot of shape to the remaining sections of the novel. I’ve also wiped Anchorage and Pyongyang off the map. I’ll put them right back, I swear.
But now it’s time to temporarily part company with Isabel Bradshaw, Carolyn Camberg, Jerome Ross, Holbrooke Morgan, Sandra Symcox, Walter Yuschak, Henry Pratt, Jae-oh Ahn, Muhammad al-Harrak and the rest of the inhabitants of that troubled near future. For the month of November, I’m going to be trying to bring Locksmith’s War 50,000 words closer to completion. I didn’t quite succeed last year, but I got enough done on Locksmith’s Journeys that I was able to finish the book and publish it this year.
I think people are going to like Locksmith’s War. It’s going to be much more action-oriented than the other two books of the series, full of paranoid situations, complicated plots and impossible odds. My reluctant hero is going to outdo himself in terms of the things he does and the dangers he faces. Locksmith will break the awesometer, and then he’ll break the replacement awesometer. He will be so metal they’ll have to seat him at the periodic table.
I’ve made a schedule for myself so I can balance National Novel Writing Month, my own ghostwriting duties and various other things I need to do. I’ve decided to try to write 2,000 or more words on a certain number of days, so as to balance out the inevitable days when I fall short.
I just hope the sea ice doesn't disappear from the Arctic Ocean before I can return to Altered Seasons. That would be annoying.
But now it’s time to temporarily part company with Isabel Bradshaw, Carolyn Camberg, Jerome Ross, Holbrooke Morgan, Sandra Symcox, Walter Yuschak, Henry Pratt, Jae-oh Ahn, Muhammad al-Harrak and the rest of the inhabitants of that troubled near future. For the month of November, I’m going to be trying to bring Locksmith’s War 50,000 words closer to completion. I didn’t quite succeed last year, but I got enough done on Locksmith’s Journeys that I was able to finish the book and publish it this year.
I think people are going to like Locksmith’s War. It’s going to be much more action-oriented than the other two books of the series, full of paranoid situations, complicated plots and impossible odds. My reluctant hero is going to outdo himself in terms of the things he does and the dangers he faces. Locksmith will break the awesometer, and then he’ll break the replacement awesometer. He will be so metal they’ll have to seat him at the periodic table.
I’ve made a schedule for myself so I can balance National Novel Writing Month, my own ghostwriting duties and various other things I need to do. I’ve decided to try to write 2,000 or more words on a certain number of days, so as to balance out the inevitable days when I fall short.
I just hope the sea ice doesn't disappear from the Arctic Ocean before I can return to Altered Seasons. That would be annoying.
October 16, 2016
Conservation of Weirdness
"Generally in science fiction, you have one impossible thing, and then you surround it with believability in the hopes that it will allow the audience to accept the impossible thing too."
--Chuck Sonnenberg, reviewing “Torchwood: Miracle Day”
One character I’ve written a number of stories about is Irene J. Harris, a.k.a. “Big Reenie” or “Reenie the Giant.”
Reenie is an intelligent, good-natured and athletic woman — and she needs to be athletic just to stand and walk. She makes her own clothes — and, again, she needs to. Because Reenie is 7’9,” and while she doesn’t talk about her weight, she never lets it get above 400 pounds and it’s usually a little less. If she actually existed, she’d be one of the tallest women in the world. Possibly the tallest — I’ve tried looking it up and gotten some inconsistent reports.
These stories have been very popular in writing groups I’ve shared them with, but I have to admit that in most of them, she isn’t doing anything particularly remarkable. The stories are mostly about her adventures in navigating the built environment (which was not built with her in mind) and coping with the reactions of others (admiration, pity, resentment, mortal terror, etc.), which she does with good humor. People seem to like Reenie. I think she hits the right balance — normal enough to relate to, strange enough to be interesting.
So… why am I not giving Reenie the Giant an appearance in the Locksmith Trilogy? Or in Altered Seasons?
For one thing, I’m not sure what she’d do there that my other characters couldn’t. Lachlan Smith and Isabel Bradshaw are like Reenie — not in stature or sociability, but in being practical and level-headed people of above-average intelligence who don’t panic in a crisis. You can only put so many people like that in a story before problems start solving themselves.
More importantly, I think that in both these stories there’s a central weirdness from which all other weirdness flows. The weirdness of the Locksmith Trilogy is that there exists a portal from the present to the future — oh, and at some point between now and then the human race goes extinct. The weirdness of Altered Seasons is that the loss of Arctic Ocean sea ice for a few weeks in September triggers a chain reaction which throws the climate of the Northern Hemisphere into chaos over the course of several years. Neither of these things is connected to whatever genetic or developmental mishap turned Reenie into the human equivalent of a St. Bernard. If I put her in the story, it would seem like I was piling more and more random weirdness on the reader’s head that had nothing to do with the plot just to prove how imaginative I was.
I think this is why Harry Potter is such a normal guy, in spite of having been raised in an abusive household with an violent cousin and guardians who are neurotically obsessed with keeping up appearances. He’s normal because readers need him to be normal. When you’re exploring a strange new world, you want to see it through as clear a glass as possible.
October 3, 2016
Urban Dictionary: Altered Seasons Edition
My goal with Altered Seasons in October is to get 1,000 words a day written. So far I’m on track. Part of the problem with writing near-future but not quite Next-Sunday-AD science fiction is having to invent not only your own tech, but your own slang. Here’s a glossary of some terms, technical and otherwise, that will be coming up in Altered Seasons. I hope they don’t sound too silly.
armphone: A smartphone that goes on your arm, leaving you with one hand free.
bag of hair: A useless and unpleasant person, especially one who makes empty promises or threats.
bargain produce: A section of the supermarket dedicated to wholesome but physically unattractive fruits and vegetables. Also, a sexual partner who in someone’s opinion is below your usual standard in terms of looks or money.
birdseed (Adj.): Upscale, hip, urban and somewhat snobbish. A reference to pearl millet, tef and wattleseeds, which are now considered fashionable foodstuffs — sort of the new arugula — mostly because they’ll still grow well in California.
bluelining: The act of declaring a property unmortgageable as a result of expected sea level rise or water supply loss.
chyq: Pronounced “chick.” Genetically modified chicory, high in caffeine. Created in response to a decline in the coffee crop. Definitely not chic (or birdseed).
crashingly: Blatantly, as in “crashingly obvious” or “crashingly stupid.”
grow a/sprout a ____________: To begin showing signs of some quality which has hitherto not been much in evidence, as in “grow a common sense” or “sprout an empathy.”
Jellicoed: Given the "Jellicoe treatment," a form of addiction therapy which is highly effective but often has unusual and permanent side effects.
make a bonfire: To destroy or cast aside something that until now has been important to oneself. To "make a merry bonfire" is to do so with no regret at all.
oke-: Cultured meat, fish or other animal products. Pronounced “okay,” although not everyone would call it this.
OOP: Out of proportion — happier, sadder or (most often) angrier than circumstances would warrant.
rhust: A subgenre of metal characterized by guitar/bass duos in place of solos, new forms of distortion and complex lyrics, sometimes inspired by art or literature. Rhust bands include Rodomontade, Dark Incentive and The Coming Autopsy.
rune: An image stored on a thumb drive or other external device and used in place of a password.
sadakode: A code buried in a hi-res image that causes a computer or armphone to ping a certain address, such as the FBI. Invented to fight child pornography, but often used to track copyright violators.
spiny: Needlessly defensive.
swee: Suiamor, a drug prescribed to combat neurotic guilt and social anxiety but often abused for other purposes.
tarpie: A resident of a FEMA emergency housing center.
toilet (Adj.): Bad, but not in an interesting or memorable way. One or two grades below “meh.”
tug-F: Temporary Untranslatable Graphics Format. A type of image that can’t be converted directly into a jpeg or png, and in which all pixels revert to black after a set length of time. As a secrecy measure, this can obviously be defeated easily. It requires that both the sender and the receiver be trustworthy, and that they not get hacked before the image self-destructs.
armphone: A smartphone that goes on your arm, leaving you with one hand free.
bag of hair: A useless and unpleasant person, especially one who makes empty promises or threats.
bargain produce: A section of the supermarket dedicated to wholesome but physically unattractive fruits and vegetables. Also, a sexual partner who in someone’s opinion is below your usual standard in terms of looks or money.
birdseed (Adj.): Upscale, hip, urban and somewhat snobbish. A reference to pearl millet, tef and wattleseeds, which are now considered fashionable foodstuffs — sort of the new arugula — mostly because they’ll still grow well in California.
bluelining: The act of declaring a property unmortgageable as a result of expected sea level rise or water supply loss.
chyq: Pronounced “chick.” Genetically modified chicory, high in caffeine. Created in response to a decline in the coffee crop. Definitely not chic (or birdseed).
crashingly: Blatantly, as in “crashingly obvious” or “crashingly stupid.”
grow a/sprout a ____________: To begin showing signs of some quality which has hitherto not been much in evidence, as in “grow a common sense” or “sprout an empathy.”
Jellicoed: Given the "Jellicoe treatment," a form of addiction therapy which is highly effective but often has unusual and permanent side effects.
make a bonfire: To destroy or cast aside something that until now has been important to oneself. To "make a merry bonfire" is to do so with no regret at all.
oke-: Cultured meat, fish or other animal products. Pronounced “okay,” although not everyone would call it this.
OOP: Out of proportion — happier, sadder or (most often) angrier than circumstances would warrant.
rhust: A subgenre of metal characterized by guitar/bass duos in place of solos, new forms of distortion and complex lyrics, sometimes inspired by art or literature. Rhust bands include Rodomontade, Dark Incentive and The Coming Autopsy.
rune: An image stored on a thumb drive or other external device and used in place of a password.
sadakode: A code buried in a hi-res image that causes a computer or armphone to ping a certain address, such as the FBI. Invented to fight child pornography, but often used to track copyright violators.
spiny: Needlessly defensive.
swee: Suiamor, a drug prescribed to combat neurotic guilt and social anxiety but often abused for other purposes.
tarpie: A resident of a FEMA emergency housing center.
toilet (Adj.): Bad, but not in an interesting or memorable way. One or two grades below “meh.”
tug-F: Temporary Untranslatable Graphics Format. A type of image that can’t be converted directly into a jpeg or png, and in which all pixels revert to black after a set length of time. As a secrecy measure, this can obviously be defeated easily. It requires that both the sender and the receiver be trustworthy, and that they not get hacked before the image self-destructs.
September 11, 2016
That Is Not Dead Which Can Eternal Be Updated
I’m making plans for the rest of the year. October will be my personal NaNoWriMo, in which I try to finish Altered Seasons, or at least bring it a lot closer to completion. I’ve kept that nice publisher waiting long enough. (I actually think October is a better month for this than November — it’s 31 days instead of 30, and you’re not spending several of those days on the road or visiting with relatives.) But I’ll also be taking part in the official NaNoWriMo, and using it to try putting a 50,000-word dent in Locksmith’s War. I am not keeping my fans waiting another three years.
So what am I doing this month?
Trying to catch up on The Dead Skunk. That’s the timeline I’m doing for alternatehistory.com. I haven’t updated it in a while, what with one thing and another, but it’s still technically alive. This has meant, among other things, trying to research the history of Xinjiang. Never try to research the history of Xinjiang. That is all. And here’s a slightly distorted map of the mighty and glorious and totally-not-a-British-puppet Republic of Louisiana.
Rereading the whole thing to bring myself up to speed, I’ve realized that The Dead Skunk is comparable in length to what I’ve already written of the Locksmith Trilogy. I don’t know how many people realize this, but we’re living in a Golden Age of super-mega-epic novels, which we don’t even think of as such because they’re posted online and parceled out in small, easily digestible chunks. This includes fanfiction like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and original works like Worm. There are a number of these giants on alternatehistory.com, including Look to the West (Volume 1 of which, Diverge and Conquer, is now available as an e-book), Now Blooms the Tudor Rose (this is the one I most recommend for sheer reading pleasure) and A Shift in Priorities.
My one piece of advice, if you're feeling ambitious enough to start something like this, is to know when to end it. Timelines are usually either abandoned or work their way up to the present day.
So what am I doing this month?
Trying to catch up on The Dead Skunk. That’s the timeline I’m doing for alternatehistory.com. I haven’t updated it in a while, what with one thing and another, but it’s still technically alive. This has meant, among other things, trying to research the history of Xinjiang. Never try to research the history of Xinjiang. That is all. And here’s a slightly distorted map of the mighty and glorious and totally-not-a-British-puppet Republic of Louisiana.
Rereading the whole thing to bring myself up to speed, I’ve realized that The Dead Skunk is comparable in length to what I’ve already written of the Locksmith Trilogy. I don’t know how many people realize this, but we’re living in a Golden Age of super-mega-epic novels, which we don’t even think of as such because they’re posted online and parceled out in small, easily digestible chunks. This includes fanfiction like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and original works like Worm. There are a number of these giants on alternatehistory.com, including Look to the West (Volume 1 of which, Diverge and Conquer, is now available as an e-book), Now Blooms the Tudor Rose (this is the one I most recommend for sheer reading pleasure) and A Shift in Priorities.
My one piece of advice, if you're feeling ambitious enough to start something like this, is to know when to end it. Timelines are usually either abandoned or work their way up to the present day.
August 30, 2016
That Odyssey Online Interview
I don't normally post twice in one week, but this is a special occasion. That interview I mentioned in yesterday's post? It's live.
You can find it here.
I really recommend you check out the interview if you're at all curious about my writing. While I was answering Alexander Wallace's questions, I had some insights about the Locksmith Trilogy that I'd never had before. As an example:
Read the whole thing.
You can find it here.
I really recommend you check out the interview if you're at all curious about my writing. While I was answering Alexander Wallace's questions, I had some insights about the Locksmith Trilogy that I'd never had before. As an example:
It hadn't occurred to me until just now, but I think in both the Narnia series and my series, the worlds are matched to the characters. The Pevensies, four extraverted and adventurous children, have been taken away from all their friends and shut up in an old house where all they can do is try not to break anything. They escape into a world where they make new friends and have adventures. Locksmith is introverted, solitary and secretive. He wants to get away from his mom and older brother, but also to be useful. He escapes into a world where he is completely alone (except when he brings Gary along) but one where he has something very important to do.
Read the whole thing.
August 29, 2016
It’s Been a Quiet Book Release in Lake Woebegone
There are moments in the life of a writer that make it all worthwhile — moments when you discover that you’ve touched the life of another human being, that your writing has let someone know they’re not alone, their problems are neither unique nor intractable, and there really is hope for them. I could use one of those moments right now. This past week has been kind of rough.
Okay, it wasn’t all bad. I got a mention in Renee Writes. I was also interviewed for Odyssey Online, and I’m told the article will see print at some point.
As for sales, I sold four, count ‘em, four copies of Locksmith’s Journeys, and one of them was to myself. I bought it along with Kayla Howarth’s Losing Nuka in the hopes of getting the book on Amazon’s “also bought” list. This probably didn’t work.
It was mostly my fault. I didn’t have time or money to arrange the kind of media blitz that I’ve done before. I also didn’t bother advertising with Amazon — they don’t let you mention the price of your book or any discounts you’re offering. Joining BookBub took longer than I thought it would, so I didn't have time to arrange an ad with them (assuming they'd accept it). Next time.
And I learned some things. Tracking the sales figures with Kindle Direct Publishing confirmed something I’d suspected from the beginning — if you try to sell Book 2 of a series to an audience that didn’t know there was a Book 1, you’re more likely to boost the sales of Book 1 than Book 2. Especially if Book 1 happens to be available at a discount, which it was. (I do occasionally manage to do something right.) Other writers I’ve spoken to have said that yes, I should concentrate my advertising on Closet and let that one sell the others.
I'm not sure whether I should recommend advertising on YouTube or not. On the one hand, nobody looked at my ad. On the other, because nobody looked at it, I didn't have to pay for it. I've had worse deals.
Now I’ve moved on from an unhealthy obsession with sales figures to an unhealthy obsession with pages read. Yes, Kindle Direct Publishing lets me monitor how many pages of which book were read on any given day. It may seem kinda stalkerish for me to know this, but I have no way of knowing who did the reading. So this is Objectively Not Creepy, and if you feel at all creeped out, your feelings are wrong. And if 150 pages of Closet have been read in one day, I like to think it was one person really getting into it, not five people reading thirty pages and giving up.
Anyway, at least one person has been binge-reading Closet while somebody else has been binge-reading Journeys. This is as close as I’ve come, lately, to see that I’m making a difference.
The downside of all that is that soon, very soon now, somebody’s going to get to the last chapter of Journeys.
I’m almost looking forward to the angry emails about that.
Almost.
Okay, it wasn’t all bad. I got a mention in Renee Writes. I was also interviewed for Odyssey Online, and I’m told the article will see print at some point.
As for sales, I sold four, count ‘em, four copies of Locksmith’s Journeys, and one of them was to myself. I bought it along with Kayla Howarth’s Losing Nuka in the hopes of getting the book on Amazon’s “also bought” list. This probably didn’t work.
It was mostly my fault. I didn’t have time or money to arrange the kind of media blitz that I’ve done before. I also didn’t bother advertising with Amazon — they don’t let you mention the price of your book or any discounts you’re offering. Joining BookBub took longer than I thought it would, so I didn't have time to arrange an ad with them (assuming they'd accept it). Next time.
And I learned some things. Tracking the sales figures with Kindle Direct Publishing confirmed something I’d suspected from the beginning — if you try to sell Book 2 of a series to an audience that didn’t know there was a Book 1, you’re more likely to boost the sales of Book 1 than Book 2. Especially if Book 1 happens to be available at a discount, which it was. (I do occasionally manage to do something right.) Other writers I’ve spoken to have said that yes, I should concentrate my advertising on Closet and let that one sell the others.
I'm not sure whether I should recommend advertising on YouTube or not. On the one hand, nobody looked at my ad. On the other, because nobody looked at it, I didn't have to pay for it. I've had worse deals.
Now I’ve moved on from an unhealthy obsession with sales figures to an unhealthy obsession with pages read. Yes, Kindle Direct Publishing lets me monitor how many pages of which book were read on any given day. It may seem kinda stalkerish for me to know this, but I have no way of knowing who did the reading. So this is Objectively Not Creepy, and if you feel at all creeped out, your feelings are wrong. And if 150 pages of Closet have been read in one day, I like to think it was one person really getting into it, not five people reading thirty pages and giving up.
Anyway, at least one person has been binge-reading Closet while somebody else has been binge-reading Journeys. This is as close as I’ve come, lately, to see that I’m making a difference.
The downside of all that is that soon, very soon now, somebody’s going to get to the last chapter of Journeys.
I’m almost looking forward to the angry emails about that.
Almost.
August 15, 2016
Locksmith’s Journeys: Progress Report
I've trimmed Locksmith's Journeys down until it's slightly shorter than Locksmith's Closet. It meant getting rid of a major angst-filled scene, not to mention some key moments of Rikki being Rikki, but the scene didn't have enough relevance to the larger plot, so it had to go. You can find my deleted scenes here, here and here.
It looks like I joined BookBub a little too late to get Locksmith's Closet accepted in time for the next sale. But there's always another one coming up after that.
It'll be nice to just get the book published and catch a breath… for about two days before I have to start working on Altered Seasons and Locksmith's War.
It looks like I joined BookBub a little too late to get Locksmith's Closet accepted in time for the next sale. But there's always another one coming up after that.
It'll be nice to just get the book published and catch a breath… for about two days before I have to start working on Altered Seasons and Locksmith's War.
August 1, 2016
The Worst Play Ever Written (I Hope)
I’ve neglected this blog for much too long. Writing, ghostwriting and editing duties have combined to take me away from it for a lot longer than I intended, and I intended to update it only once every two weeks. Just to make up for it, let me brighten your day with the story of Me Vs. What I Sincerely Hope is the Worst Play Ever Written.
I’d read about The Black Crook. It was a lowbrow, big-budget theatrical production and possibly the first modern musical. Written by Charles M. Barras, it made its debut in New York City in 1866. With its heavy emphasis on stage effects and scantily clad chorus girls, it seemed to be a sort of 19th-century version of a summer blockbuster — one of the louder and dumber ones, directed by Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich. I believe you can learn a lot about a society by what it uses to entertain the masses, so I was curious about The Black Crook.
I’d love to invent a story about how I found the script — something involving a weird little bookshop that wasn’t there yesterday — but the truth is, I found it in the Washington College library. So here we go:
The setting is Germany. Our hero, Rodolphe, is in love with Amina, but she has been kidnapped by the evil Count Wolfenstein. So Rodolphe turns to the evil sorcerer Hertzog, who sends him off to fetch a hidden treasure. Little does he know that the elderly Hertzog has made a deal with a demon named Zamiel, in which Hertzog’s life will be extended indefinitely in exchange for getting one soul sent to Hell every year. So Hertzog sends Rodolphe on his way, hoping the hero will do something greedy or vengeful enough to get himself damned, and then get himself killed. (What is it with evil wizards making plans where they do maybe one thing and leave everything else to chance?)
But on his journey, Rodolphe saves the life of the Fairy Queen, who immediately gives him a magic ring. He can use this ring to call upon her for aid at any time… and he does. Oh God, does he ever. Usually these things have a time limit or a set number of wishes, but not this one. Every single time he runs into a piddling little obstacle, Rodolphe whips out his ring and out come the Fairy Queen and her minions (by which I mean girls in skimpy fairy costumes) in a burst of stage effects. The fourth or fifth time he did this, I was like "AGAIN?!?"
So Rodolphe gets the treasure and the girl, and everybody lives happily ever after except for Hertzog, who ends the year without having fulfilled his end of that soul bargain. Zamiel signs him up for a refinancing plan which consists of having him dragged bodily into the Fiery Pit of Special Effects. Then the play is over.
I almost forgot about the (for want of a better word) subplot, in which Odious Comic Relief characters Von Puffengruntz and his wife show up, do nothing to advance the story, and then go away again. They’re kind of like the kissing couple in "Manos" the Hands of Fate, only their scenes are longer and more frequent, and they’re annoying to the point of physical pain. Their schtick is that Von Puffengruntz is morbidly obese (I think this was the production team showing off their fat suit) and his wife is extremely whiny. Also, Von Puffengruntz is drunk. Or maybe his wife is drunk. Or both of them are drunk. I’m not reading it again to find out.
If I haven’t made it clear, The Black Crook is something beyond what we normally think of as a bad play. It’s a fifteen-course feast of fail. It blows goats that have never been blown before or since. It’s a trainwreck made of dumpster fires, and it burns with a hard, gemlike flame of pure suck. In a one-to-five-star rating system, The Black Crook would get a black hole.
So why am I telling you about it?
Just in case you need cheering up about the state of modern popular culture.
I mentioned earlier that it was the 19th-century equivalent of a Michael Bay movie. But if you tried to shop around The Black Crook to directors as a big-budget film production today, not only would they slam the door in your face, you’d probably be evicted from Hollywood by court order. Even the worst hacks in the movie industry understand concepts like pacing and tension-building which are completely absent from this play. Michael Bay wouldn’t wipe his ass with the script. Roland Emmerich probably would wipe his ass with it. Even Uwe Boll would look at it and realize that he does have standards after all, and The Black Crook does not meet those standards.
So if ever you start to despair of modern culture, remember — we judge the past more kindly than the present, because only the good stuff survives. The rest gathers dust in odd corners of campus libraries.
I’d read about The Black Crook. It was a lowbrow, big-budget theatrical production and possibly the first modern musical. Written by Charles M. Barras, it made its debut in New York City in 1866. With its heavy emphasis on stage effects and scantily clad chorus girls, it seemed to be a sort of 19th-century version of a summer blockbuster — one of the louder and dumber ones, directed by Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich. I believe you can learn a lot about a society by what it uses to entertain the masses, so I was curious about The Black Crook.
I’d love to invent a story about how I found the script — something involving a weird little bookshop that wasn’t there yesterday — but the truth is, I found it in the Washington College library. So here we go:
The setting is Germany. Our hero, Rodolphe, is in love with Amina, but she has been kidnapped by the evil Count Wolfenstein. So Rodolphe turns to the evil sorcerer Hertzog, who sends him off to fetch a hidden treasure. Little does he know that the elderly Hertzog has made a deal with a demon named Zamiel, in which Hertzog’s life will be extended indefinitely in exchange for getting one soul sent to Hell every year. So Hertzog sends Rodolphe on his way, hoping the hero will do something greedy or vengeful enough to get himself damned, and then get himself killed. (What is it with evil wizards making plans where they do maybe one thing and leave everything else to chance?)
But on his journey, Rodolphe saves the life of the Fairy Queen, who immediately gives him a magic ring. He can use this ring to call upon her for aid at any time… and he does. Oh God, does he ever. Usually these things have a time limit or a set number of wishes, but not this one. Every single time he runs into a piddling little obstacle, Rodolphe whips out his ring and out come the Fairy Queen and her minions (by which I mean girls in skimpy fairy costumes) in a burst of stage effects. The fourth or fifth time he did this, I was like "AGAIN?!?"
So Rodolphe gets the treasure and the girl, and everybody lives happily ever after except for Hertzog, who ends the year without having fulfilled his end of that soul bargain. Zamiel signs him up for a refinancing plan which consists of having him dragged bodily into the Fiery Pit of Special Effects. Then the play is over.
I almost forgot about the (for want of a better word) subplot, in which Odious Comic Relief characters Von Puffengruntz and his wife show up, do nothing to advance the story, and then go away again. They’re kind of like the kissing couple in "Manos" the Hands of Fate, only their scenes are longer and more frequent, and they’re annoying to the point of physical pain. Their schtick is that Von Puffengruntz is morbidly obese (I think this was the production team showing off their fat suit) and his wife is extremely whiny. Also, Von Puffengruntz is drunk. Or maybe his wife is drunk. Or both of them are drunk. I’m not reading it again to find out.
If I haven’t made it clear, The Black Crook is something beyond what we normally think of as a bad play. It’s a fifteen-course feast of fail. It blows goats that have never been blown before or since. It’s a trainwreck made of dumpster fires, and it burns with a hard, gemlike flame of pure suck. In a one-to-five-star rating system, The Black Crook would get a black hole.
So why am I telling you about it?
Just in case you need cheering up about the state of modern popular culture.
I mentioned earlier that it was the 19th-century equivalent of a Michael Bay movie. But if you tried to shop around The Black Crook to directors as a big-budget film production today, not only would they slam the door in your face, you’d probably be evicted from Hollywood by court order. Even the worst hacks in the movie industry understand concepts like pacing and tension-building which are completely absent from this play. Michael Bay wouldn’t wipe his ass with the script. Roland Emmerich probably would wipe his ass with it. Even Uwe Boll would look at it and realize that he does have standards after all, and The Black Crook does not meet those standards.
So if ever you start to despair of modern culture, remember — we judge the past more kindly than the present, because only the good stuff survives. The rest gathers dust in odd corners of campus libraries.
June 22, 2016
Locksmith’s Journeys
If this week’s post is a little late, it’s because I was saving it for this announcement.
The first draft of Locksmith’s Journeys is complete.
It has the usual problems of the middle story in a trilogy. It begins with a recapitulation of the previous book, goes in several different directions in the middle while filling in a lot of backstory and ends in a cliffhanger.
Right now it’s 108,548 words long. Which, yes, is too long for a middle-grade/YA novel. There are probably some scenes that can be cut. I’m going to try to trim away about 5,500 words, so as to get it down to about the same length as Locksmith’s Closet (which started out at 125,000 words, so I'm definitely getting better at this).
Still, I’m pleased with it. Like a good sequel, it broadens the story and takes it to the next level, introducing new characters and expanding on the old ones. And it sets everything up for the action-packed climax that will be Locksmith’s War, coming next year.
And now, enjoy this book trailer.
The first draft of Locksmith’s Journeys is complete.
It has the usual problems of the middle story in a trilogy. It begins with a recapitulation of the previous book, goes in several different directions in the middle while filling in a lot of backstory and ends in a cliffhanger.
Right now it’s 108,548 words long. Which, yes, is too long for a middle-grade/YA novel. There are probably some scenes that can be cut. I’m going to try to trim away about 5,500 words, so as to get it down to about the same length as Locksmith’s Closet (which started out at 125,000 words, so I'm definitely getting better at this).
Still, I’m pleased with it. Like a good sequel, it broadens the story and takes it to the next level, introducing new characters and expanding on the old ones. And it sets everything up for the action-packed climax that will be Locksmith’s War, coming next year.
And now, enjoy this book trailer.
