Alison Sky Richards's Blog, page 2

Book Review – Mercy Kill

The only reason it took me five days to read this book was based just on the fact I’ve been sick and haven’t had the ability to focus on anything but my television (and don’t even ask me what I watched because I don’t remember).

However, now that I’ve finished the next book in what is probably my most favorite series of books ever published, you are welcome to read my review of Star Wars: X-Wing – Mercy Kill by Aaron Allston.  Be warned that there are a bunch of spoilers in this review, so you don’t want to read it unless you want to be spoiled.

If you want the spoiler free version of this review, it’s available here on Goodreads.

Thank you, Aaron, for once again giving me something to squeal about.

 

Swordfighting 101: Frying Pans

One of the very first weapons that I learned in my combat classes in college was how to wield a frying pan.  It was dubbed “clown fighting” because of the ridiculousness you feel using a frying pan as a weapon.  However, any chef worth their weight in hummus can tell you just how deadly these seemingly useless pans can be.

Depending on what kind of pan your character happens to grab in their kitchen while being attacked will greatly depend on what that pan can do.  We’ll look at three specific sizes: the “one egg” pan, then normal skillet, and the wok.

First, start with the size and weight of the pan.  A lot of this will also depend on the type of pan you have.  Cast iron pans can cause a lot more weight damage, but they will also be a lot heavier to wield.  The newer Teflon pans will be lighter, but they will also break easily.  You will also need to look at the handle.  Is it welded on, or have a tiny screw that keeps it in place?  Ones that are screwed on will break off on a solid hit to someone, whereas welded ones have a bit more resistance.

Next, you will want to look at the size of the base of the frying pan.  This is going to be your impact area.  The wider the base, the more of the body it can hit.  The larger the pan is will also make it a bit less wind-resistant when swinging – stupid physics.  Let’s say you’re aiming for the head – the “one egg” one will probably break a jaw with a good swing because it will be able to impact all your energy into a small area.  The wok and regular pan will hit the entire face, but the impact will also spread over it.  This will more than likely  cause a headache with a regular pan, but could rattle the brain and knock out the victim on a cast iron pan.

You can also “stab” with a frying pan.  Holding onto the handle of a regular pan and thrust into the stomach of the attacker can knock the wind out of them (and then follow up with an uppercut of the pan to their chin to knock their head backwards and out cold!).  This won’t work as well with a “one egg” as it’s a smaller circumference around the pan, however it is better suited for swinging at hands to disarm knives.

The wok is awkward for stabbing motions as the top of the wok is wider than the base and will lose the force from the handle due to the shape of it.   Woks are great, though, for using it’s special bowl-like design to cup a shoulder or a head to make the person move and throw them off balance.

Never use the handle of a frying pan as a weapon.  They are fragile and it is awkward to hold onto the pan side and use it to fight.

There are other things that you can add to a fight scene using a frying pan in a kitchen fight:

Heat: having the pan sitting on the stove waiting to be used would have the base of the pan nice and hot. Remember that some pans have a spiral design on the bottom, so if they get hit with that on flesh, it will leave behind a burn in the design.

Cooking: was the person already cooking something?  They can fling the food at the person attacking them, and then fight with a hot pan.  Bonus if there is hot oil or grease in the pan – that could end the fight right there.

Also, remember the realism for frying pan scenes: a regular frying pan will only last a few good hits before it’s dented or the handle breaks. If it’s a colored pan, chances are that the color has flaked off.  Also, ones that are treated to be non-stick have a coating that will break off into white flakes when dented as well.  The wielder’s arm will get tired fast swinging around a cast iron pan if they are not used to using their arm muscles for prolonged periods of time.

The best advice I can give on choosing the weapon for your character comes down to have you have in your house so that you can understand your weapon as your character uses it. Frying pans can be a fun weapon to wield in any story, as long as you keep the believability of it to the scene.  Enjoy finding a way to bring this into your next novel!

 

Image from Tangled © Walt Disney Pictures.

Free RPG Day 2012

One of the things I love about being a writer is experiencing the worlds that other people create.  You can do this in many ways, but one of my favorite ways is through role-playing games (RPG’s). If you’ve never played one before, check out Meetup.com and see if there are people playing in your area that you can get involved in.  Or, you can just wait until next year and attend the 2013 Free RPG Day.

I attended this year’s event at a local gaming store called The Game Keep in Hermitage, TN and met up with some members of the Nashville RPG Gamers group.

Rule #1 to RPG’ing – if you’re going to have fun with the game, surround yourself with fun people.

The group was very well organized, planning on having five different games running in 2 hour slots from the opening of the door to when the store closed.  I was very apprehensive walking into a new group, but I was immediately swept up into a game and started to make friends.  Everyone was very friendly and enjoyable to play with.

The first game was a NeoExodus Pathfinder Adventure by LPJ Design.  I’ve never played in this world, but it was easy to see how the characters were created with the pre-generated characters that were available.  Now, the group spent the first hour of the game chit chatting, building characterization and just having fun, but the second half was straight adventure.  The premise had us six adventures heading down a river where we got attacked by three bad guys and their boss – or that’s really how far we got anyway.

The characters that were generated for the world were pretty complete.  You had your standard stats which let you know how graceful, smart and charming that you are – but the sheets also included a brief history of the character’s home world, their caste and position in it, and even a bit on the religion that they followed (or in my character’s case, pretended to follow).  When playing on the spot, I felt it was an amazing way to give the player a tiny piece of the history that they can build off of.

I also liked how you didn’t have the normal “types” of races in this game.  There were humanoids, but we also had a brain-eating creature, a mutated ape, a metal man, and in our journey we talked to scorpion people.  There is a lot of creativity in this just in the world and the character building aspects that I can’t wait to get my hands on a purchasable module of this game.  Alas I missed getting myself a free copy.

The second game was from the Castles & Crusades adventure series from Troll Lord Games.  Again, another series I never played in, but was equally amused at the module this game presented.  The pre-generated character didn’t have as much back-story as the first game, but it gave a good sense on the personality that they created for this character.  We were back to the normal race types you find the the standard D&D type worlds, but the game left for a lot of character role-playing as opposed to the hack-and-slash type battles.  I love these types of games because I’m a big character RP’er, and getting to solve the adventures with our wits as opposed to our swords makes for a better adventure.  Also, in homage to Dorkness Rising, I did get to seduce one of my attackers.  Just because I could.

I had to leave early, or I would have joined a third game – Conspiracy X – from Eden Studios.  I did get to grab a sample kit though, and will try to run the adventure with my little group of RP friends on another day.  This one looks like a mix between Men In Black and your typical government coverup gone wrong mission movie.  I’ll report back more on this when I get to play it.

For me, playing an RPG is a great way to learn about character building.  It allows you to have both the good and the bad in each character.  I’ll admit that I sometimes will use the old D&D style of rolling a character to create the minor characters in my fantasy novels as a base to allow them to start growing into who they will eventually be.  My soon to be released novella, A Fine Line: Herrick’s Tale, in fact, has a few of those in there.

If you really want to experience true character building that you can see, just go to one game and try it out.  Just remember not to get too sucked in, or you will lose whatever writing time you may have left in your day!

Swordfighting 101: Knives

I received an e-mail from MACE reminding me that June is Knife Fighting Awareness Month, and felt that it was my duty to pass along a good set of information to my readers about this deadly weapon and how your characters can wield it.

Everyone knows what a knife looks like – you have some right in your kitchen.  In combat terms, it’s defined as a metal or stone blade, extending from a handle.  There is no set “length” when a knife becomes classified as a sword, but it’s more on the style of the blade.  The average changeover though can be around 12-18 inches when it becomes classified as a sword.  In the USA, the police are given the distinction on being able to classify whether the blade is a sword or knife in arrests.

There are many different kinds of knifes which are variations of the style of blade and the handle.  Some other names you may have heard of would include switchblades, balisongs, daggers, poignard, dirks, bayonets,  stilettos (not the shoes), machetes, bowies, and countless others in many languages.  You can also put a shiv into this classification, but they are “knife like” weapons that are usually handmade by someone (i.e. a prisoner in jail) and can contain multiple pieces, uneven edges, and break easily.

When you’re choosing a knife for your character, you will want to look very closely at the time period you’re writing in, the country the character originated in, and if they are in the military, the history of the types of weapon that specific branch had.  A common place reader may not know the difference between blades, but if you are writing military fiction, you will want to be as exact as you can in the description, even if you never name the blade itself.

Obviously, if your character has a history where they got their blades from a gunrunner, then you can have fun finding the deadliest looking knife that would capture their eye.  Weapons have histories, though, so you would want to respect it if you’re going to make your character use the knife more than just cutting his steak or something he grabbed from the pawn shop.  You can have fun creating a glorious family history for a weapon, and will find that your audience may make the weapon a “character” in your story if you do it right.

Depending on what kind of genre you’re writing in, you can also create your own knife design for your character.  However, unless you plan to include a picture of the weapon in your novel or a rendition of it on your website, you will want to use a knife that already exists in our world somewhere and then build off it.  That way the reader can have an image in their head to start off with.

 

Now onto the combat itself – knife on knife fights are very rare in the real world.  There is the phrase from The Untouchables about bringing a knife to a gun fight… now those kinds of fights are a lot more common in the real world, with hand vs. hand, and gun vs. gun being the most common.  Your character would have to have a reason to have the knife on them as opposed to other weapons, and hope that their opponent doesn’t carry something that has a bang to it.

A knife fight is very personal, as you have to be up close to your opponent to attack them (unless you’re throwing the knife)

There are four ways to grip a normal knife, and they are best described by where your thumb is while holding it.I’ve linked a video below that will show you visually each of the grips described.

The first position is the one people use every day.  The knife is held in your hand with the thumb on the handle right before the blade starts.  This is a good “cutting” position. It is called the forward saber grip in Jujutsu. It extends the blade out in front of you the longest distance from your body, and allows you to attack objects that are coming at you from any direction.  If you are swiping the blade across, you can put your thumb on the back of the blade if it has a dull side, and that will add force and pressure to your blade if you hit an object.  It does not help, though, if you have a double-sided blade since you risk cutting into your own thumb when you hit resistance.

The second position is where the thumb is tucked under the handle, similar to how you hold a hammer, and the blade is pointing up.  This is the forward hammer grip in Jujutsu.  Your hand will have a stronger grip on the knife, but you lose distance with this grip since the blade isn’t able to extend as far.  This grip is better for this up close knife fights where you are thrusting the knife upwards and into body parts.

The third is the reverse hammer grip.  Basically it is the same as above, but it is with the blade pointing down.  It’s commonly known as the “Psycho” grip, being made famous in the movie when used by the character Normal Bates.  It’s a grip that has you stabbing downwards, but you can also use it to slash since your arm will follow along with the blade, bringing your arm to protect your body as well as using your elbow to follow up with hits.

And the fourth is reverse saber grip, in which the blade rests against your forearm and your thumb is along the bottom of the handle.  It’s really a defensive grip, in which you can hide the blade and attack only if needed.  It’s not a cutting or a stabbing grip, but can be used to slash at an enemy if they get too close.

Most straight knives, like early swords, lack a fuller (the blood groove) from later swords.  Because of this, there is always a good chance that a blade can get stuck inside of the body when stabbed because of the suction.  It can also become stuck in ribs and the spine if aimed there.  The longer the blade is, the more likely it is to happen.

There are also knifes with serrated edges that will allow the person to cut through bone.  These are found on many hunter knives, as well as some military knifes.

 

Like always, before you start to write out a fight scene, watch a few movies that have good scenes in them to see how the body moves with the weapon. Don’t know where to start?  Independent File Channel put together a list of their 15 Favorite Movie Knife Scenes that can start you off.  I recommend the one for The Hunted.

And remember: You don’t need to be too detailed in each swing of the weapon, but it will help you choreograph the fight in your head so you know what happens and can decide what to describe, and what to just imply.  Don’t bore the reader since they will want to imagine the scene in their own heads.  Just give them enough to go off of that can make them see what you want them too.

Enjoy writing that knife fight!

 

Other Resources:

10 Deadliest Combat Knifes / Daggers : In you are in need of picking a knife for your villain, here is a nice list to shop off of.

Knife Fighting Basics – The Grip : This video from Jujutsu.org will show you visually the four grips.

How to Throw a Knife: There are a lot of YouTube videos on knife throwing.  This gentleman breaks it down really well.

Supernatural: Coyote’s Kiss

I am a sucker for a good tie-in novel, especially one that involves a TV show that I have been following for 7 years now.  What makes me even happier is when one of the novels captures the characters perfectly and you can’t tell that it’s in a book and not on the screen.

Also, I should point out that I’m not the only one who enjoyed this book, since it’s up for a 2012 Scribe Award.  Those are the awards given to Tie-In novels every year, if you didn’t know.

Coyote’s Kiss, by Christa Faust, is an insert adventure during the sixth season of the hit CW series SUPERNATURAL.  In the novel, the Winchester boys are on the hunt of a Borderwalker who is killing anything between her and the men from the border patrol who were involved with a murder 15 years before the book starts.  Sam Winchester is still without a soul, and Dean Winchester is coming just from when he and Lisa Braeden have parted ways on not so good terms.  This adventure takes then down into Arizona, and then across the border into Mexico city into a world they have never been before with Xochi Cazadora, a female from Mexico who knows all about this “family business” of being a hunter.

What really sticks out in this book to me is the character relationships.  Any fan of the show will tell you that is the core of the series – the relationships between the boys and the people in their world.  Those are the stories that keep people coming back for more, because you are invested in them, and is what kept the show on the air as their “different monster a week” episode style keeps the storyline fresh.

In Coyote’s Kiss, we get to see how Dean being in Soulless!Sam’s life is starting to stable him out from how he was traveling with their grandfather earlier in the season.  Dean is trying his best to find his brother in the shell that is next to him, hoping for signs that he can save his little brother once again.  When they get to Choulic, AZ, however, they find out this hunt is a bit over their heads as what was once stopping a monster from killing turns into a mission to keep Aztec gods from returning to the world with their zombie hoards are taking over.

The relationship aspect comes into play beyond Dean and Sam.  Xochi forms her own relationships with both Sam and Dean, and both she and the Alpha Borderwalker test his ties to Lisa and how dedicated he still is even after she has pushed him away.  Then there is 15 year old Claudia who the boys rescue and is discovered to being the key that the gods have been looking for to control the damaged Borderwalker.  Dean has a streak of being protective of any children they ever come across in the series, and it’s no different now, even if Claudia has a crush forming on her handsome protector.  On top of that, you have Xochi’s sister, Teo, who is on the wrong side of this war between humans and gods, and Claudia has a very paranormal relationship with the Borderwalker the boys came down to the desert to hunt for.

The myth side of the book is not only very good, but explained in enough detail that you don’t need to look it up to understand what is going on.  Now, I can’t find any myths online about the Borderwalker, but the lead up to the goddess Itzpapalotl that is very deep in the Aztec mythology and can be found in numerous sources.  You are also exposed to: Huehuecoyotl who is considered the grandfather of the Borderwalkers in this novel; the Tzitzimimeh, the deities/demons that Itzpapalotl rules over; and the Nagual, or the Aztecan version of shapeshifters.  Studying mythology is a hobby of mine, and while I haven’t reached the Aztecs just yet, this was a great way to be introduced to some of the gods in the folklore.  It shows that Christa not only did her research on these characters, but has a fondness for these myths with the personalization she gave to each of the gods that you meet.  These gods aren’t cookie-cutter monsters, but have their own faces, stories, intentions and voices that make you see the depth in their characterizations.

And of course, there’s the storyline.  Like any SUPERNATURAL episode, there are twists and turns every few chapters that keep you guessing as to where this whole storyline is going.  What I really like is that the book touches on the same underlying arc that the season 6 arc had, and talks about the power of a soul.  It plays out with both Dean, who gets cut with a knife that cuts and kills the soul, and Sam, who is needed to be in his soulless state to save the world “this week” because it gives him an advantage over the Tzitzimimeh.  It’s very tight story that doesn’t stray off into too many side adventures, and brings a colorful set of characters from below the border that has yet to be shown on any episode of the tv series, including a souped up June bug green version of the Impala – complete with hydraulics and fake-fur interior – that would have brought Dean to tears if he wasn’t dying at the time.

If you are a fan of the series, this is definitely worth picking up.  The voices for the boys are spot on, and it really does feel as if this was a story plucked out of the season and put into book form.  There is no problems with being able to visualize the story as Christa is very detailed with her descriptions, and the dialogue is imperfect and bleeds to realistic as opposed to the “proper” dialogue regular books tend to lean towards.  The relationships are built naturally and don’t feel forced, and even Bobby has a guest appearance via cellphone to give the boys that little bit of advice or information that helps them along.

The book is available at bookstores and on Amazon.com, and please check out Christa’s website/blog and get to know her better and support this great Scribe Award nominee.

Using Light to Create Emotion

When I was learning to write, the biggest lesson that was drilled into my head was the concept of “Show, Don’t Tell”.  It’s the idea of using your words – and as a writer, you have lots of those – to create a scene to show someone and not just having it told to you.  For this, you need to learn about how to really focus your setting in both the physical sense – where is this taking place – as well as the emotional sense – how does this feel – to create a full picture.

Most people, when they think of setting, think of the physical pieces that go into the scene.  You want to know where everything is, and how you can move your characters around within it.  You will go through the mental checklist to verify all the tiny props that will be used have been set.  In some scenes, so much attention is paid to the physical pieces, that the parts of the setting that effect the physical and emotional responses are left as an afterthought, if not omitted.

One of those pieces is proper lighting.

I will admit, my research about light and how it can be used to create a response started in college when I was taking a class through the theatre department on how to light scenes.  It is a lot more than just throwing up a bunch of lights and flipping switches, as anyone who regularly goes to the theatre can tell you. You have to learn levels, colors, and how where you aim it can make a big difference on if the audience will walk away crying or indifferent at the end of a dramatic scene.

It was cemented more when, years later, I watched the movie The Christmas Cottage and learned about the life of Thomas Kinkade and how his mentor taught him to paint the light since it lasts forever.  If anyone could have been a true source on the inspiration light brings, it was Thomas.  If you really want to delve into how to use light, give it a watch.

It is amazing how this one aspect can really affect your entire work is used properly.  For the rest of this article, I’m going to go through a few of the easiest ways to look at adding light to your setting along with examples of scenes that you can accomplish this in.  Mind you, there are probably a few hundred more ways that light can be used, but this is just a sampling to get you thinking and looking at your own work and how to implement it in.

 

Light is used to illuminate the setting.  Duh, I know.  Basically, is your characters able to see where they are going, or are they stumbling around in the dark?  Where are the shadows?  Is the light being hidden behind thick curtains that someone can pull aside to banish nightmares or vampires?  Think about the sun cycle in the area you’re writing and how is affects the day to day business – if you’re in Alaska in the summer, there is no real “night” and in the winter there is no real “daylight”.  If your character is in the jungle, how thick the trees are will alter how much light filters down, and how fast it will get dark after the sun sets.

 

The type of lighting can suggest time, age, and wealth.  How is your setting lit? Older buildings, abandoned shacks, forests… most of them do not have their own light source beyond what the sun and moon gives them.  How are your characters getting their light to see?  If they are in a modern day setting, how is their light obtained?  Does the home have little antique lamps in every room, or florescent lights?  Does the butler give you a candle for you to carry to light your room as you enter for the night?  Or is the only source of light in the room the same fire that gives the room heat?

 

The source of light, or absence of, can be altered to inflict a mood.  You’re character arrives for a dinner date and they enter the dining room – how different is the scene if the room is lit by an overhead light, a set of two perfect candles, or a glowing chandelier above them?  Most romantic scenes on screen will usually involve a candle, of not multiple ones lighting up the room with a soft glow.  A dark night in a bedroom can become scary with the flash of lightning outside the window at the right moment, or even to foreshadow a growing danger.  Fireflies on a field, both a creature and a use of light, can create a magical or innocent feel.  The sudden absence of light – like a power outage – can bring a moment of confusion and fear.

 

The color of light can add to a setting.  A green sky in Oklahoma will send people running for shelter from a tornado.  The yellow and orange flames from a fire can add urgency or relaxation – all depending on the fire!  Blue filtered light tends to be calming, where red can raise anger – the “seeing red” effect.  Florescent lights give off a more hospital type sterile light that sees everything which is different from lamplight, and LED rights can be blinding for a moment.  Smoke and fog can steal away the light, or alter it.  While it doesn’t work in every situation, having a emotion color wheel and knowing what colors bring about certain feels works to help you in describing the light and what it reveals to bring out an unconscious emotional response from the reader.

 

Light can also be used as a prop.  I’ve personally used a beam of sunlight as a method for a god to guide someone through a forest to safety.  Fires have been habitually used to guide people who are lost to the light which provides safety.  Someone trapped in the darkness can pull out a box of matches, and they have twelve little moments of light to guide them somewhere before they are trapped in the dark again with burnt fingertips.   Anything that creates light can be used not only as a way to bring it in, but their presence can play with all of the above ways I’ve shown how they can set up a scene or emotion.

 

What other ways have you thought about using light in your work?  What have you seen in your own reading that works.  Also remember that while you want to bring in the light, make it subtle.  You don’t want to overdo it and make it take over the description that is just one part of the full setting.  Keeping everything in balance will help you create the perfect setting for your reader to get lost in.

 

Blogged in memory of Thomas Kinkade: January 19, 1958 – April 6, 2012.  Rest in peace and thank you.