David A. Tatum's Blog, page 7

Cover Reveal: The Merrimack Event

Okay, so I’m behind on my “Ravencon Panels (I DID do)” series.  I get it.  Maybe I’ll be able to get back to that, soon (hopefully I’ll finish the Ravencon Panels series before my next convention.  Heh).  But, in the meantime, I’ve got something else to discuss:

Today’s blog post is to announce that I FINALLY HAVE A (BLEEP)ING COVER FOR THE MERRIMACK EVENT!

The cover artist mentioned in my last blog post, Joel Christopher Payne, came through for me, providing me with the fantastic piece you see above.

This means that I can finally finish building the book and release it.  Now, I had an outside hope of getting that done by today (which would have made this blog post an announcement that the eBook, at least, had been released, and not merely a cover reveal), but between thunderstorms, a convention I’m scheduled to guest at asking me to pick the panels I want to be on (this will be the subject of its own blog post in a couple weeks; I’m finally listed on their web page), and a few other odds and ends, I haven’t had any time to work on it since I got the cover.  I should be able to get to work on it by tomorrow.  My next Sunday Blog Post (which I’m hoping will be next weekend, but shouldn’t be more than the weekend after that even in a worst case scenario) should be to announce said book release.

I have one last decision to make on the book, however.  Do I make it a wide release, as I have all my other books to date, or do I experiment with a Kindle Select listing (which requires Amazon exclusivity)?  I’m leaning towards setting it up for one round as an Amazon exclusive, just to see what the service is like from the inside (as opposed to my more vicarious observations of other authors’ experiences), but it seems every time I’m about to release a book, I start hearing of bad things happening with Kindle Select.  (Note:  This decision will have NO impact on the print edition, for those five or six of you who prefer to buy my print books).  Regardless of what I decide, it will ONLY be for the one 90 day period, and then (if I haven’t already) I will open it up to the wider release.

Stay tuned.  The book release will be coming here, soon.

So, About that Merrimack Event Cover Art…

I wasn’t planning to do a blog this week, but some news came in that I had to share…

As I said in my last blog (and have talked about on Facebook a time or three over the past couple weeks), I’ve finally found a cover artist for The Merrimack Event. If things go according to plan, the book will FINALLY go out the door once that art is completed. The artist says he’ll get it back to me in August or September, so… soonish?

The artist I hired is not a career cover designer.  Technically, I suppose that applies to all of the artists I’ve hired for covers; even though they’ve all had past experience designing book covers (one of which is on retainer to a small press as their official cover designer), cover design is not their specialty.  In the past, I’ve worked with student artists (for concept designs, not covers), webcomic artists, and an illustrator, but none of them have primarily worked in cover art.  This guy follows that trend, it seems.

So, if you want to be technical, the artist I hired isn’t a cover artist.  But let me tell you what he is:

He started his artistic career at age 20, doing concept art for the Heroes of Might and Magic franchise.

He has been working for Disney since 1996.

He was named a Corel Painter Master in 2016.

He’s done background art for several video games, including some entries of the Mortal Kombat, Silent Hill, and Baldur’s Gate franchises.

He’s worked extensively on the animated Starship Troopers: Roughnecks series.

Oh, and he’s done some artwork for a small franchise — not sure if you know it — called Star Wars.

Now, I’m not sure if you’ll recognize the name of Joel Christopher Payne right away, and “cover artist” hasn’t yet shown up on that list (though he assures me he has done book covers, before), but I think his resumé is good enough to do the cover for The Merrimack Event.  What do you think?

A Few Things to Tide You Over….

Things have just been too busy for my next “Ravencon Panels (I actually DID do)” to be ready even by next week, and I’m over a week late already, so I figured I’d post something a little less labour-intensive to tide any regular readers of this blog over.  I need a longer block of time for those series posts, but I can block out five or ten minutes of time here and there to work on the blog.  If I manage that, I bet I can cover a potpourri of topics that wind up being longer than my average blog series post.

I. To start with, I may have FINALLY found a cover artist for The Merrimack Event.  He gave me some homework to do, first (which has partly been why I’ve been too busy for the blog, lately), but that’s finally complete and things are moving forward. Getting him has been a bit of a coup, given his pedigree. I’m still waiting on some paperwork to be completed before I announce just who it is, however.

II.  I’ve been seeing a lot of odd writer’s or sci-fi\fantasy focused events, lately. Things like An Evening With Neil Gaiman at the Wolf Trap Theater (I was hoping to attend this, but as of when I’m typing this, it doesn’t look like I’ll make it), Dune: The Ballet (seriously? This really exists?), a comicon-style cosplay event at a local bar (which was last week, which is why I haven’t included a link; I missed it), and a Harry Potter for Night for Adults from our local library (we’ll see if I do that).  No real point here — just an observation.

III.  Something that nearly inspired another part in my Weird Research blog post series:  I saw an ad for a booklet, 10 B.S. Medical Tropes that Need to Die TODAY,  on Facebook.  It was free at the time (regularly $0.99), so I picked it up.  It was very informative, and quite useful for certain genre, but it didn’t address my main concern with medicine in stories:  Useful medical treatment in a fantasy setting.  So, if that’s what you’re looking for, I’ve been able to pull a lot of medical research from the following sources:

For medication, I found an easy-to-understand compilation of modern-science studies on the effectiveness of herbs, botanicals, and similar products thanks to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

For surgery or other medical treatment… I suggest that you read the sports pages regularly.  Search through them long enough and you’ll find a lot of discussion of treatments, healing rates, and the long-term effects of various injuries, and it’s all in layman’s terms — you don’t need to learn too much jargon to figure it out.  Of course, if you want something more in-depth, I still note that when it comes to broken bones, separated shoulders, muscle tears, and (increasingly) concussions, it’s the field of sports medicine that is generating the most studies.

IV.  I rarely talk about my novelette, To the Rink of War.  It’s been a big disappointment for me — I originally intended for it to be a series of connected shorts (the first of which being the one I released) that would expand into a larger universe, which I would then start opening up for a multi-author shared-universe anthology.  I have Part I published, and in rough form I also have parts III and IV complete (in need of editing), with V mostly finished and II… well part II needed a complete re-write, but I figured I could get that done well before I was projecting its release.

But that, obviously, never happened.  The initial release of To the Rink of War was disappointing — I had no budget for a cover, and what I was able to cobble together without a budget was underwhelming; it was very short, but at the time of the release the lowest price I could set for it on Amazon ($0.99) was the most popular price point for much larger self-published novels (while that price point still exists, I’ve noticed fewer and fewer indie writers charging that low), so it was no bargain.  And it’s been a while since I published, but I seem to recall I managed to (unintentionally) time its release to the lowest-selling week of the year for me (and several other indie writers of my acquaintance).

The failure taught me several lessons, but I was saddened.  I was really invested in that world.  It had the development of a new sport, Microgravity Hockey.  It had interesting characters (and I do mean characters) like Emperor Norton II (yes, based on the guy I linked to), who may not be quite as crazy as he is letting you believe.  It had a mining asteroid colony setting (sort of like the popular Expanse series, but I like my stories a little less dreary than that).  On the other hand, it was kind of labor intensive to write, requiring me to do things like plot a course between asteroids using Celestia, and then using math in ways I haven’t since my high school days to figure out the actual travel times between the asteroids my characters were inhabiting.

The horrifically poor sales and math-heavy worldbuilding weren’t the only things working against its sequel.  My release schedule was utterly wrecked when first The Kitsune Stratagem was released late, and then The Merrimack Event’s initial “development hell” moment pushed back several of my other books (a small part of the long delay between In Treachery Forged and In Forgery Divided can be attributed to my attempts to get this… situation, if you will, resolved).  Re-writing Part II for a story with such horrifically anemic sales as the Rink of War had seemed like a waste of time better put into getting the rest of my books out there.  It worked fine as a stand-alone (it was initially conceived as such), so if I never got out part II it would be fine.

Lately, though, I’ve been giving thought to reviving the story, revamping Part I and re-tooling parts II-V so that I wound up with something more resembling a novel.  Still thinking of exactly how to do that, but depending how things go with The Merrimack Event’s eventual release (please, let me FINALLY get that thing out the door!) and the completion of In Division Imperiled (Book III of the Law of Swords series) I might be able to find time to look into that some more.  Though I also want to get By Claw and Arrow (the sequel to The Kitsune Stratagem) started, soon, so… we’ll see how things go.

V.  Speaking of In Division Imperiled, I’m thinking of returning its title to “In Division Deceived.”  Or maybe even changing that third word to something else altogether.  For those who weren’t here, or don’t remember the story, the Law of Swords series was conceived as a five book series.  In my efforts to better position my book for a Trad-Pub contract, I revised the outline to make it a four book series.  The title change was a result of the outline change, blending the title of book III and IV together.  Well, now that I’m self-publishing, I’m back to a 5-book outline.

But the outline has also changed significantly, as well, and the titles of the remaining books no longer fit the storylines explored as well as they had under the original outline.  At this point, the only thing I am certain of is that book three will have a three word title beginning with “In Division.”  I’ll see how the final word of the title fits once I’m done writing the darned thing.

VI.  My local library may or may not be hosting an event for local authors in October.  I may or may not be interested in attending, or even participating.  But the library is giving so little information about it (other than that it might be what they’re having this year as a substitute for Indie Author Day) that I have no idea what, exactly, the event is.  Or rather, they’re giving me the when, the where, the who, the how, but not the what or the why.  I may or may not revisit this topic once I know more.  You may or may not be interested.

VII.  I went from binge-watching the Guy Williams-led Zorro (1957) to binge-watching the Richard Greene-led Robin Hood (1955) to binge-watching the Raymond Burr-led Perry Mason (1957).  All of these shows were some I had seen before.  All of these shows were made well before I was born.  Somehow, however, I enjoy re-watching these shows a lot more than the bulk of my more modern favorites.  I don’t know if that’s from a subconscious bias towards the “classics,” or if the TV storytelling of the era just fits my interests more.  Something to ponder.

VIII. The point of a multi-author anthology like Worlds Enough: Fantastic Defenders is to introduce the existing audiences of each of the contributing writers to the works of all of the other writers.  I don’t know how successful that has been, so far.  On the other hand, it’s also the sort of thing that might have more long-term marketing effects.  Now, any time any of the writers in the anthology have a new release, that author’s new readers — exploring the writer’s other works — will see, and may purchase, the anthology… and be introduced to us other authors, as well.  It would help encourage those introductions, though, if the book had more reviews, so if any of my regular readers are willing to review that book it would be quite helpful.  (mentioning my story in the review would be nice, too)

IX.  I will need to update all of my Kindle eBooks, soon.  Apparently, something was changed in how Kindle interprets eBook files, so most of my scene separations are gone.  I’ll be introducing fleurons to restore those separations, so I’m open to making minor revisions in the files.  If anyone knows of or has found any typos in my books, lately, now is the time to let me know so I can make corrections.

X.  I may have mentioned this a few weeks ago, but I received an invite to be a guest at another convention (I haven’t announced which one, yet, and it feels like such an announcement deserves more prominent placement than as the tenth item of this slot).  I keep hoping for my name to appear on that convention’s website before saying anything, but it hasn’t yet.  It didn’t for the Ravencon convention I was a guest at earlier this year, either, until a couple months after I got the invite.  I guess this is a standard practice?

XI.  (written several days after topic VI, above, but not related to it) My local library had a “minicon” yesterday (Saturday).  It might have been an event that I would have been interested in, but I only found out about it after it was long over.  I keep myself tuned in to the library’s social media pages as much as is reasonable, but this isn’t the first time I’ve missed an event I might have serious interest in; in fact, I’d say it’s the tenth or eleventh… this year.  I wouldn’t even know about the October event from topic VI if I hadn’t queried them about Indie Author Day.  I’ve frequently found my library to be very supportive, but I really have to wonder what I need to do to be kept informed about their events.

XII.  As someone else said they had in the comments section of this article (which inspired this part of the post), I “broke my teeth” in writing with fanfiction.  I stopped posting fanfiction in 2005, but I didn’t entirely stop writing it.  I posted an update to one of my fanfics shortly after publishing my first book, trying to encourage my fanfic audience to seek my professional fiction, but that proved too ineffective to resume my fanfic career (even as a marketing gimmick for my professional fiction).

But I do have quite a bit of fanfiction stored… well, somewhere in my hard drive.  None of it is edited (not all that significant; my fanfiction rarely, if ever, got anything more than a spellcheck in the first place.  I was creating fanfics as a writing exercise, not as an editing exercise, and I never had enough constructive feedback to make effective revisions anyway).  Few, if any of them are finished.  But still, I probably have hundreds of thousands of words worth of various unposted fanfics just sitting there, gathering dust.

That article had me thinking back to those unfinished, long forgotten fanfics, and wondering if I should do something with them.  I considered “filing the serial numbers” off a few of them to try and make them publishable, but I believe my fanfics are too tightly wound into the original source for that to work.  It wouldn’t take much time for me to upload them to fanfiction.net and put them out there for people to read, but I have no intention of finishing any of them, and that might annoy people.

Still thinking about it all.

XIII.  Still undecided about what to do with my old convention calendar.  I thought writers and fans might find it a valuable resource, but it gets little traffic and almost no-one says anything about it.  It takes a great deal of effort to update and maintain, so if no-one’s using it there doesn’t seem to be any point.  Ah, well.

XIV.  And it’s time to post.  Hope you found something here to interest you….

Ravencon Panels (I actually DID do): Using Tropes to Tell Stories

Of note:  I am aware this blog is running late, even with the planned week off last weekend.  I’ve decided to officially reduce the posting rate for this blog to every other week (which is probably closer to how often I’ve really been posting my blogs, anyway), so my next blog won’t be until July 2nd, at the earliest.  Now, on to the interesting stuff….

As part of the promotion for the new World’s Enough: Fantastic Defenders anthology (which, contrary to my post last time, is still at the $2.99 “Balticon Special” eBook price; I’m not sure why it hasn’t gone up, but if you don’t have a copy yet that means you’re in luck), I participated in an interview with my fellow author Martin Wilsey. One of his questions asked about my favorite websites, and I just had to mention TVTropes.  I really do enjoy looking through it at times, and I’ve discovered a fun story or three I’ve never read, before, thanks to it… (but boy is it a time sink).

There are lots of ways to define tropes, but I think most people think of them, from a literary perspective, as a non-pejorative form of ‘cliché’.  In other words, they are a literary device that is observed in enough works as to be recognizable.  Or, rather, these could be seen as the “building blocks” for story construction.  I think it’s more that a when executed badly, this sort of thing gets seen as a cliché, but if executed well it is recognized merely as a trope.

As a writer, I think other writers should study the various tropes enough to be familiar with them.  Not only can it help you recognize the signals you’re sending your readers (you don’t necessarily need to follow the tropes, but you might want to find a way to tell your audience that you aren’t going that way), but they can give you a great frame of reference when trying to strengthen story points, or to figure out the important things to tell your readers when marketing your book.

Suppose, for example, you are trying to plot out what your villain (or even your hero, if you’re writing so-called “competency porn”) is planning to do.  You want to come up with a complex plan for them, but you’re just not quite sure you know what kind of plan to enact.  Well, tropes might give you an idea of what your villain is capable of.  Perhaps your villain knows your main characters very well — they might be capable of enacting a Batman Gambit.  Or perhaps your villain is very competent and would rather die than lose; he might create a Xanatos Gambit, so that no matter what happens he wins in some way… (though some ways might be preferable than others).  Do they make it all up as they’re going along?  It might seem like an Indy Ploy.

And then, when the book is done, knowing what a Batman Gambit is can help you in your marketing; you can explain the similarities between your villain and the oft-admired Batman-Gambit-using Star Wars villain, Thrawn, if you know what you (and your villains) are doing.

There’s a lot more I could say on the subject of tropes, but I think I’ll save that for the next time I’m speaking at a convention on the topic.  Speaking of which, I just got a guest invite to another convention; I’ll give the name of the convention and other details about this, soon, once certain things are taken care of.  Talk to you all again in TWO weeks.

I Promised a Post This Week…

So, I promised a blog post this week, and here it is.  Unfortunately, it’s not the one I was hoping for — namely, a blog on the panel topic, “Mythology as the Basis for Speculative Fiction.”

It’s already a week and several days late, and it really isn’t moving as well as I was hoping.  I have a lot of things to say on the topic, but my views seem… disconnected, somehow.  I’m having trouble finding ways to transition from point to point.

If these posts on the panel topics were REAL panels, there would be no issue.  I’d be led by a moderator through his questions.  Or if I were the moderator, I would be asking different questions — ones which regular followers of this blog would have already heard my answers to several times.

I mean, if you don’t know (for example) that, when confronted by an editor who insisted that Elves and Dwarves and Dragons were played out, I drew from the mythologies of Japan, Finland, aboriginal Australia, Inuit, and Shetland Island folklore to fill out a replacement set of mythological creatures (Kitsune and Wulvers and Bunyips, among others) as I constructed the world for The Kitsune Stratagem, then you haven’t been reading here very long — I’ve certainly mentioned it often enough.  In front of a new audience like a convention panel, however, I could expound on that and, for them, it would be fresh material.

Again, though, I still had a number of points to discuss; things on mythological allegory, things on the different types of Elf you can find in mythology (High Elves from the Norse, brownie-like Elves from Wales and Elizabethan England, etc.), a discussion of the different mythologies that were brought together for Tolkien (he drew from Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Arthurian myths, among others, while putting together what he considered a “British” mythology.  Finally, I wanted to talk about how the fiction popular in modern geek culture was re-interpreting or forming mythologies of its own, citing fiction like Dragonball, Superman, and Star Wars in the process.

But… none of those points seemed to fit together.  I’m not happy with what I have, either in the structure or in the depth of my content.  I’ve been working on it for two weeks, and it’s not worth posting.  It’s been distracting me from my other writing projects, and it’s already too late to start a different blog to be ready Sunday.

So… this is it for a blog this week, no blog will be available next week, and if I do continue this series I’ll be skipping this panel and moving on to “Using Tropes to Tell Stories.”

Finally, some business:  I just learned that the current ebook price of the new anthology I’m in, Worlds Enough: Fantastic Defenders, is a special introductory price.  It’s expected to go up THIS THURSDAY, first to a (still discounted) $3.99 and ultimately up to $4.99 in another few weeks’ time.  So, if you haven’t bought it yet, NOW is the time to get your ebook copy.  (Or you could go ahead and get it in print, but any discounts of that will be Amazon’s call)

Ravencon Panels (I actually DID do): Swords Not Required

Note:  As I was writing this blog last night, I learned that the print edition for the anthology World’s Enough, Fantastic Defenders, in which my story “A Gun for Shalla” appears, had appeared in print on Amazon.  This was a bit of a surprise for me, even if I knew it was SUPPOSED to be released soon (I was told the book launch would be at Balticon, which is next weekend), because I was expecting at least one more communication requiring my response before it was released.  But, hey, it’s out!  There are several good stories in this anthology in addition to my own, so buy your copy, today!

And now on to the regularly scheduled (and delayed for an evening) blog….

When I saw this panel on the long list of possible Ravencon panels, I was quick to pick it.  And, it turns out, it became my first panel (as a pro) ever.

Now, if you haven’t read my books you might not guess it (after all, I have a series I’ve called the “Law of Swords” series), but I frequently use weapons other than swords in my fiction.  So I was quite ready to discuss the topic…

And then I was made moderator.  While I could pick which questions to ask the panel, time management issues meant I couldn’t answer them.  I wasn’t really disappointed (I got all kinds of interesting discussion based on the questions I posed), but I do want to give my own answers to my “questions for the panel”:

I.  Why are Swords so compelling in fantasy fiction, and which of those characteristics would you recommend when considering a different type of weapon for your main character?

There are many reasons swords are a great weapon for the main character of a sword-and-sorcery style fantasy series (beyond just, well, the word “sword” is used in the genre name).

1. For one thing, it is the iconic weapon of the middle ages (though it probably shouldn’t be; the iconic weapon SHOULD be the English Longbow, or the horse-mounted pike, or… well, several other options which would have been more commonly and effectively used by the warriors of the middle ages, but because they were the weapon of choice for symbolical reasons during the crusades; after all, the cross guards used in the swords of the time made them look like crosses).  Most sword-and-sorcery fantasies are set in the middle ages.  So, it just makes sense.

2. Tactically, swords are equally good offensively and defensively.  My fellow panelist (and Ravencon Literary Guest of Honor) Chuck Gannon brought this up and discussed it extensively.

3. Swords have been used (are still used, though mostly ceremonially, today) for thousands of years, though for long stretches of time they were more of a secondary weapon.   Outside of some style differences, a “sword” is a fairly universal thing; if you are writing a fantasy, it doesn’t matter where in the technological timeframe you set your fiction, a sword of some sort would be available.  This wouldn’t necessarily be true (for example) of a handheld crossbow, or many types of throwing weapons used (theoretically) by ninja, or other more exotic types of weaponry.  And we know they have really be used in combat, unlike, say, the military flail.

4. Now, this is a bit of a “chicken or the egg” thing, but swords are popular for writers (or movie people) to use as a weapon because their use is already popular enough that people can easily visualize how swords work.  It’s almost impossible to grow up without being exposed to some sort of sword fight in movies or television, and while I’ve heard on occasion that the style of sword fighting used in movies isn’t historically accurate, people will be able to picture SOME kind of sword fighting as you write your fight scene.

So, to sum up, some of the characteristics that might be useful for you to consider when choosing a weapon for your character are:  Symbolism, effectiveness both offensive and defensive, does not appear out of place in the technological timeframe of your fantasy, and the audience understanding how it works.  We’ll touch a bit on some of these in the next few questions, so let’s leave it there for now.

II.  Different weapons have different “best use” characteristics — bows and arrows are better used at range, ninja tools are best used for the assassin type, spear-and-shield are best used in group tactics, and so forth. Does the choice of weapon you give your main character affect their personality, and if so how?

I really should have asked whether the weapon “affects or is affected by” their personality when I asked this at the convention, because you might not decide on a weapon until after you’ve finished designing all the other aspects of your character.  Regardless, the weapon you choose to arm your character with can easily shape or be shaped by the character’s personality.

If your character is a pikeman (spearman, part of the shield wall, whatever), you had better be able to get along with your fellow soldier or you aren’t going to live very long; while you can apply some other polearm styles to a spear and use it successfully, they really aren’t intended for one on one fighting.

If your character is using assassins’ tools, they (or their trainer, if they’re still learning how to use them) probably have some significant secrets in their background.

If your character is using a bow and arrow… well, they either need a secondary weapon for close in fighting (most commonly a sword or dagger, as seen by Legolas in the Lord of the Rings and Robin Hood in most versions of his tale.  It doesn’t have to be a sword, however; in The Kitsune Stratagem, I gave my male lead a bow and arrow with a modified version of a ninja tool for close range fighting) or they need to hang back from the center of the action.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  The tactics required to use the weapon, the style of combat suggested by the weapon, the range of the weapon, and so forth all make differences in how you expect the character to behave.  If they break the expected behavior, you have to justify that.  So, if you have an anti-social spearman, you’re going to have to justify that.  If your character is an assassin who blabs out everything about his life at the bar every week, you’re going to have to justify that.  Well… you get the idea.

III.  Certain archetypal fantasy races have weapons they’re expected to carry — a significant plotline in my Law of Swords series came about because of an argument I had over whether Dwarven Axemen made tactical sense or not. If you give an atypical weapon to your fantasy race character — for example, a heavy warhammer wielded by a stereotypical high fantasy elf — how much explanation do you think is necessary?

You know, I spent a lot of time answering OTHER moderator’s questions with “it depends,” it is fitting I need to give that answer to one of my own questions.

If all you’re doing is giving your Dwarf a nice sword, or some kind of ranged weapon, or something of that ilk — something that you would expect them to be able to handle, even if you were expecting them to have an axe or a warhammer — you don’t really need to give any explanation.  On the other hand, if you’re giving, say, a zanbatou to a hobbit, you need more of an explanation than the Rule of Cool.

But you might WANT to explain why your characters are being armed with atypical weapons.  There’s a reason you picked those weapons, right?  If it’s anything more than a whim, don’t you think your audience might also be interested?

IV.  No-one thinks twice if your magically-inclined characters decide to use a small twig — also known as a wand — in battle, even if small twigs were never used that way in real life combat. Do you think — IN FANTASY — that you can get away with inventing a completely original type of weapon for your non-magical characters?  If so, what cautions would you suggest authors consider when inventing these weapons?

An admission:  I asked this question because I did this, myself (sort of) in The Kitsune Stratagem.  I took a real life weapon, a ninja tool (though a variation that was typical of the legend rather than the accepted historical form), and altered it to be a little more portable.

So, obviously my answer to this question is “yes,” I do think writers can get away with inventing original fantasy weapons.  But I think they need to be careful:  Don’t throw your readers out of your universe by making too complicated a weapon, or something too anacronistic.  If no other society in your world is using gears, having someone carry around a clockwork-powered repeating crossbow would throw your reader out of place.

And that’s how I WOULD have answered my own questions.

Edit:  Comments closed due to too many spam attempts.  If you would like them re-opened, please contact me.