Pat Griffith's Blog, page 12

Origin Story: The Kids

[There are two sentences that could be considered spoilers if you haven’t read Trespassing. I colored them in purple so it's hard to read. If you DO want to read it, just highlight it.]

In Trespassing you meet Brendan, Kristy, Matt, and Derek as adults. In Fallout they are teenagers. But age is not the only thing that changed.

The summer before middle school I wrote my first story. The kind you write for yourself. For fun, not for class. It was about a group of five friends who find an island of dinosaurs. (At the time I wanted to be a paleontologist.) Those five friends were Brenda, Jenny, Christy, Matt, and Derek. They have been living in my head for over twenty years.

Through middle school and high school these were the humans in my Transformers fan fiction. So they have had many adventures together. Hopefully they seem well rendered. And if they do, it is because I have been putting through quite a bit with giant robots before they ever met the Elbie. In Trespassing I have swapped out robotic life forms for energy ones.

If you look at the two lists of names you are going to see three differences:
                Brenda versus Brendan
                Jenny is missing from the second list
                Lysandra is missing from first the list

Brenda and Jenny were the core of the group as BFFs. In 2001 when I wrote my first draft of Fallout Jenny became Jake. Jenny never made it into the Elbie reality. I wanted the BFFs to be opposite sex because that was more of my experience and I had lots of these in my circle of friends at the time.

In 2006 I gave up on Fallout and I moved the timeline up, after the establishment of the Elbie in our world, Trespassing. This is when I brought in Lysandra. Lysandra had been a part of my Transformers fan fiction as well, in the post original movie reality. I really liked having Brenda and Lysandra as identical twins because it meant lots of messing around with identity and switching them out for each other but the story line still wasn’t panning out.

Finally, in 2010 I made a drastic change.

Brenda became BrendaN. The hobbies and interests of Jake became Brendan’s thus eliminating Jake and making Kristy the new BFF since she was now the only female in the group. Then it all came together. It seems so strange that something like that made the difference. While I don’t really know why it worked I can give you one theory.

The most interesting part about changing Brenda to BrendaN was their relationship to Lysandra. I say “they” because in a writerly way Brenda still exists on her own outside of Brendan but she is very different from her male counterpart.

One attitude Brenda/Brendan share is their hate for Elbie and specifically Esben. But for Brenda, the appearance of Lysandra meant she now had a method for carrying out the revenge she had wanted for years. Her feelings toward her identical sister were practically null. She was distant and calculated in the way she related to Lysandra.

**SPOILER** Brendan on the other hand, revenge is a thought only after Elbie have harmed his sister. Rather than becoming less human at Lysandra’s appearance, he becomes more human than he has in years.

This was not something I planned. Most of my characters are self-actuating. They tell me who they  want to be. I did not create Brenda to be cold toward her sister any more than I made Brendan to be gushing over her. That is just how they are. One worked and the other didn’t. Pure and simple. It is one of the mysteries of creating.

If I ever decide to release Fallout it will need some major overhauling because of the changes I’ve made to the character line up. I still write the kind of stories I want to, for myself, for fun, but it makes me happy to know that other people

If you have any questions feel free to e-mail or Tweet me.

Origin Story: The DPA

The Department of Planetary Affairs is a necessary evil, like most government agencies. Its creation is actually in the years between Fallout and Trespassing. In Fallout it’s the FBI dealing with the situation, this is a time before Homeland Security existed. Once the existence of Elbie goes public it is decided that there needs to be a specialized task force to deal with Elbie specifically but also to speak for the government to the public as liaisons. In the beginning, hosts are thought of as victims. So there is a feeling that the Elbie are a threat. A dangerous thing to be dealt with similar to terrorism. The DPA is meant to be the advocates for both human and Elbie.

A factor working against the DPA that I tried to bring out in the book is the idea of transparency. Because the initial response of the government was to hide the existence of Elbie when the Arcadia cluster arrived, the DPA has had to work hard to regain public trust.

At its inception leadership of the DPA is the same as you see it in the book. Two co-commanders, one a host and one not. Draegg is the same Elbie from the start, his host was Miranda C. Grant. Miranda was an FBI agent and Alexander Eriksson’s partner. They were the primary agents dealing with the kids and the Elbie so it was felt that they were the best choice to be the head of this new agency. The third agent involved was Ian Reynolds, a newbie to the FBI at the time of Fallout.

Miranda was well liked and a people person, unlike Eriksson, so she was usually the one who dealt with the media and the public in general. We do not see Miranda in Trespassing because she has been killed in the line of duty. Justin Meyers, Draegg’s current host, was a colleague of Miranda’s and took her position as co-commander as a way to honor her dedication and vision of the DPA.

Origin Story: Elbie

People sometimes want to know where I got my idea for the Elbie. It’s simple really. I wanted a totally non-carbon based life form. Pure energy. And I mean pure. When I tell people this they say, “What about the Drej from Titan A.E.?” While the Drej display a level of fluidity they still have bodies and need machines. While the movie never goes into it, they definitely have a sense of government and culture, otherwise they couldn’t be as organized as they are. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Drej, but pure energy they are not.

Seeing in how these aliens (soon to be Elbie) are made of pure energy, energy has rules. The most famous of all is: Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. I think this familiar mantra is what gave me the idea of Elbie transferability. First thing I did; took out a piece of paper and wrote down what those rules were.

With about ten of these rules, I took my first run at this world in 2001. After thirty or so versions I have got it pretty refined now how the Elbie work and what they are like. Then again, with the second draft of book two about to be wrapped up, I am discovering new ways to experience Elbie.

A lot of the Elbie attributes and how they operate in our world are written out on the DPA website and Twitter feed. I had one friend ask if we could send people into space to harvest more Elbie for commercial purposes. I told him I didn't see why not, but since we can barely break orbit, that story will have to wait. If you have questions about Elbie and how they work send me an e-mail or Tweet me.

Fortune Cookie

I was doing some cleaning and I found this fortune in a box. Totally random. But it is a good reminder that excellence speaks for itself.

Last year I went to a convention and one of the workshops was about self publishing. And one of the writer's there said that if you aren't a professional, then hire one. I am a terrible proof reader and I don't think any writer should edit their own stuff, you're too close to it. You have to have a new set of eyes to do it right. So I made the effort to get a professional editor and I professional graphic artist for my cover and I do not regret it.

Fortune Cookie

PROSPERITY: a successful, flourishing, or thriving condition, especially in financial respects; good fortune. (From Dictionary.com)

It's funny that whenever I'm feeling discouraged something comes along to improve my attitude. I wasn't sure about the prosperity thing but to be thriving and flourishing in all areas of my life, not just financial, is something I would like to have. I write for the love of my characters and if they flourish and thrive in the minds of the reader I will consider myself successful.

Formatting Demystified

Everywhere I read and heard was that formatting for an ebook is so complicated. I was going to pay someone do it for me but I didn’t want to wait four weeks for it to be completed so I downloaded the instructions, even though I had reading instructions. (I can’t wait for the day when that kind of stuff can just be directly downloaded into my brain.) Anyhow, I read most of the 103 page style guide from Smashwords  and here are my quick tips.

                -Keep it simple
                -Tabs are evil
                -Don’t forget to reformat bold and italics

If your book has lot of graphics, tables, charts, etc. then definitely pay someone. But if all you have is straight text and a basic working knowledge of Word then all you need is a couple of hours and some patience. I did not read the Kindle formatting guide, it could say exactly everything the Smashwords one says, but when I think about the overall idea it’s a pretty simple concept.
Step 1
-What to do: Select all and copy every word into a notepad document.
-Why you do it: This clears out all fonts and formatting. This way no way no formatting can sneak up on you.
Step 2
-What to do: See that image of image of the backwards p up there at the top. That will show where all the formatting is. Turn that on.
-Why you do it: Turn this on now so nothing can hide from you.
Step 3
-What to do: Open new word document. Set universal rules to 1-justify left, 2-Indent first line, 3-Turn off all auto correct commands. Now take everything from notepad doc and put it here. YES, justify left, not center.
-Why you do it: This allows you to have total control of the text and to eliminate tabs. And with the commands universal throughout the whole document, then any e-reader knows how to treat it.
Step 4
-What to do: Search the entire document and take out any tabs or extra spaces or too many hard returns. *REMEMBER: Tabs are evil. If you find any tabs take them out.
-Why you do it: Uniformity is the key to making your document work in any DRM.

Once you have eliminated all the hidden formatting you have to go back and add in all the formatting you wanted.
Step 5
-What to do: Reformat. Italics, bold, underline. All of that will need to be added back in. ALSO, if you had any paragraph dividers and titles will need to re-center those. Justify center BUT because of the universal first line indented you will have to manually change each of those.
-Why you do it: Because you wiped all that stuff out in step 1.
Step 6
-What to do: If you do have pictures. (Can’t speak to charts and graphs.) When you insert them make sure to use the justify and wrap text commands. No tabs.
-Why you do it: Using the commands locks it in place. If you try to position it “just right” using tabs and space bar it will float and wreak havoc on all sorts of readers.
IN CONCLUSION- that should get you through. Is it tedious? Yes. Can it be annoying? Absolutely. But again, as long as your format is plain old boring text - easy. So to reiterate, these rules apply only to the most basic of layouts. I guarantee nothing if you have graphs and charts.

Just decide right now, ebook formatting is easy. Go ahead, say it out loud. I’ve said it before and I will say it again. You create the reality you live in. If you’ve decided something is hard than it will be. If you decide to kick its ass, you will.

Credit Due

I just want to take a few moments and give credit where credit is due to Sven Geier, the artist behind the banner I am using here on my website. Sven's website is full beautiful and cool digital images that he offers all for free simply because he loves to create them. Over ten years of his creative life all there for you admire and download if you find something you like. Check out his work here.

Eye of the Beholder

I have often been disappointed that pictures I take aren’t as amazing as I remember at the time I took the photograph. This could be because of the quality of my camera and/or my imagination remembering the image more vividly than it actually was. Probably a little of both.

Naturally I have wondered that if the purple I see, is the same purple you see when we are looking at the same flower. Obviously we can both agree that the flower is purple, but the complexity of something like the eye and the brain working in tandem to create an image in my mind makes me think that there has to be variation from person to person on the hue, tone, and quality of color of the same flower. Turns out I am not the only person to contemplate this.

Radiolab (a.k.a. my 2nd favorite radio show) did a whole episode on color. They talk about that very thing. Is color something created by our perception and interpreted by our brains or is it something independent and outside of us? Turns out it’s both.

Fun Facts:
    dogs – 2 cones
    humans – 3 cones
    butterflies – 5-6 cones
    mantis shrimp – 16 cones

I really wish I could see what the mantis shrimp sees, at least for a few minutes.

They also discuss the evolution of color through literature starting with the Odyssey.  It’s freaking cool. But I won’t say any more, you have to check it for yourself. LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE here. You're welcome.

REVIEW - Pacific Rim

I was on the fence with this one. Michael Bay has made me hate over the top, explosion fests. Vapid. BUT this is
This movie is exactly what you think it is. I love that there was no pretending it's the movie of the year. The taglines touts with childlike enthusiasm- "Go big or go extinct" and "To fight monsters we created monsters." I chose this image to the right because it's a nod to Jaws, the first summer blockbuster. Summer blockbusters are meant to be fantastical and out of this world and I think that Pacific Rim does exactly that.

Quotables

Have you ever thought:
"I don't want to be a corporate junkie for the dead." That was the response I got when I asked PBG if she still had plans on being a mortician.

Somehow I get the feeling this line could be used in other situations. I wait for the day....