Robert Schell's Blog

Caroline and Tony ride again

Yes, Book II of Temporal Affairs, 'The Mariner King' is finally out. At this point a few of you have been given the opportunity to read it, and I appreciate all reviews and feedback I've received.

Those of you familiar with Book I, 'The Foster Children of Time' may be surprised by some developments in this current installment of Temporal Affairs. When I set out to write 'The Mariner King,' I was never thinking to myself, "Tony and Caroline get back on the time-bus and cruise to another adventure." I wanted to challenge the reader, play against expectations and basically write an entirely different story.

I'll admit some trepidation in going in a somewhat darker direction with my cast of characters, even though this was always my intention. Both Caroline and Tony make choices that you would not expect of heroic characters. But human beings in general do not always make the wisest or best choices in life, and I felt that I would be doing my readers a disservice if I presented infallible protagonists.

New book: Cosmic Play

Hey folks, I've spent the last few months finishing up an entirely new comedy sci-fi adventure, which I am publishing in edited form on Wattpad. Even though I am still committed to my sequel to 'The Foster Children of Time,' I was suddenly struck with inspiration and had to follow my muse. The new story is called 'Cosmic Play' and it features a comic book writer and cosplayers among the cast of characters. It's a seriously offbeat story featuring a ton of pop culture references and parodies, and might have zero commercial prospects. Regardless, I think it's a fun story and I truly enjoyed writing it. Please come by Wattpad and read the first chapter.

http://www.wattpad.com/myworks/329168...

The Foster Children of Time on Wattpad

I have decided to make 'The Foster Children of Time' available in serialized form at Wattpad in order to increase its visibility and get more readers tuned into the 'Temporal Affairs' series.

Please take the time to give 'The Foster Children of Time' a read, and, if you enjoy it, leave a positive comment or vote. It's super easy to register for Wattpad and it's absolutely free.

Link here:

http://www.wattpad.com/myworks/297049...


A big announcement on my next project is coming soon!

The Mariner King is coming

What is the strange illness affecting Caroline? Why was Paz hiding out in the Wolf King's Temporal Proprietary? Why did Gaudet happen to arrive just in time to save Vanaya when she was a starving little girl in Norway? What was the thing that Tony forgot when he looked into the obelisk? Why didn't Neon Sparrow tell the Wolf King that Tony had been on the Time Station? What was all that nonsense about a Time Confederation, a Temporal Summoning, and a pituitary gland mutation in Nepalese poultry in the intro to 'The Foster Children of Time' all about? Huh? Find out in 'The Mariner King,' Book II of Temporal Affairs.

Coming soon.

Folklore in The Foster Children of Time

Those of you who have read my book will recall the character Tegwyn's obsession with the Tylwyth Teg, the fairies of Welsh folklore. I did a fair amount of research into fairy folklore and incorporated it into my story. Her insistence that the Tylwyth Teg claim things dropped on the floor was my own invention, however. The idea was that Tegwyn, being an imaginative girl growing up in a world where she takes the existence of magical creatures for granted, has invented her own mythology. This served my own story purposes but also mirrors the way folklore and mythology travels and evolves across societies in real life.

Computer hacking

The problem with scenes involving computer hacking is that few authors have the ability to write about this process with sufficient detail to convey any sense of the complexity of the problem or to otherwise convey any drama. If a character is a computer wiz and it falls on this character's shoulders to hack into the mainframe, you can count on the mainframe being hacked. As such, it's just a convenient solution to protagonists' problems as unsatisfying as "if we use the deflector dish to emit a field of reverse tachyons"-type pseudo babble in Star Trek: TNG episodes which (conveniently) resolve whatever technical issue is facing the crew of the Enterprise that week.

Prophecies

As I mentioned in my first blog post, there are certain clichés I wanted to avoid in my 'Temporal Affairs' series. Here are thoughts on some of these, in what I expect to be continuing series:

Prophecies: I can understand why writers (especially in the Fantasy genre) use this one. It lends a sense of destiny and importance to the character it pertains to, giving the sense that the entire universe is structured to make a certain event happen. The drawback is, if you've named a character as a "chosen one" who is going to conquer evil and bring happy days here once again, you've taken suspense out of the story somewhat, unless you find a clever way for the prophecy to play out in a way that is literally true, but not in a way that was expected. Nitpickers might point out that I have Tony Marco experience prophetic dreams or visions at various points in 'The Foster Children of Time.' I could say that I used this device for foreshadowing purposes and explained it in the context of my rules of time travel (which is true). But, after all 'The Foster Children of Time' is supposed to be an homage to classic fantasy (from a sci-fi perspective), so I didn't entirely shy from using some of the tropes of the genre.

Dialogue and realism

I was perusing the webpage of a literary agent group recently, and one of the criteria they stressed for submissions was the use of natural and believable dialogue for the characters that would be age-appropriate. Now, I am not a fan of hyper-stylized "cool" banter you hear in movies and t.v. shows with teen characters these days; I think it's become a bit of a cliche to be honest. Nevertheless, I had a problem when preparing my first draft of "The Foster Children of Time." The first extended conversation was an exchange between Tony and some school buddies, and it was all "dude" talk, every sentence punctuated with "bro" and "homes" and the like. Reading it back to myself, it was absolutely mind-numbing. Around that time I had just watched a mid 60's era flick called "The Defilers." This movie featured the characters speaking in hip/beatnik 60's lingo (the kind you suspect real people never went in for much in real life) and in that aspect was fun and engaging (even if the movie was otherwise somewhat repulsive). So that inspired me to give the character "Carson" his particular voice -- perhaps a bit of a hybrid between Stan Lee banter updated with a touch of post-"Mean Girls" jive. It might not seem terribly realistic, but I think it's more distinctive -- and fun.

Welcome to Temporal Affairs

Hello, and welcome to my blog. I’d like to use this forum to set out what ‘Temporal Affairs’ is all about. First of all, maybe I should tell you what it is not. ‘Temporal Affairs’ is not “hard” science fiction. The two fathers of modern science fiction, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells established a dichotomy from the dawn of the genre. Jules Verne wrote speculative stories based upon what was known about science and technology and projected it into the future, often achieving startlingly accurate predictions of technology decades beyond the era he wrote in. H.G. Wells, by contrast, seemed to start his stories with the question “what if?” and proceeded to tell his tales without undue contemplation of their scientific plausibility. I, as a lifelong science fiction fan, have always felt that the best sci-fi stories start with “what if?” Perhaps there should be a genre called “science fantasy.” If such a classification existed, ‘Temporal Affairs’ would comfortably fit that tag.

Being the author of a time travel adventure, perhaps it’s no surprise that I’m in the Wells camp. Having chosen to write a story with this subject matter, I was acutely aware of the various clichés that have grown up around time travel tales, and set out to avoid them in my own story. So, there will be no going into the past and changing history, no casually running into famous historical figures (or worse, helping them achieve what they are famous for), and no meeting oneself. Basically, I had to rewrite the laws of time travel for my own story purposes. I also felt that it was important to acknowledge that a lot of historical episodes are really quite horrible, so don’t expect something like “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

So to get back to my original point (sorry for the long-windedness, by the way), I have striven to make ‘Temporal Affairs’ a slightly offbeat adventure story populated with an expanding cast of relatable male and female characters that avoids or gently winks at the clichés of time travel and young adult fiction in general and provides the occasional (hopefully) pithy observations on life, the universe, and everything. There will be adventure, laughs, and yes, romance, but don’t go in expecting stories of torrid affairs and obsessive love. (Fans of supernatural and fantasy romance: sorry if I misled you with the title.) Some serious drama and tragedy will also await you in the pages of my books, and the story will take some dark turns. Characters will be introduced and reintroduced in surprising new contexts. It will be a grand ride by the time it’s over, and I invite you to take the ride along with my two main protagonists, Tony Marco and Caroline Montano. Prepare for jump!