Dead Stop Extra

I spent a little free time using Paint to draw up a floorplan of the Textro Truckstop featured in Dead Stop. It's scale is off, but it's effectively free hand so it's not too bad. While I thought the layout as described in the book was fairly intuitive, that was as the writer which means I KNEW what it looked like before setting finger to keyboards. I noticed in a couple of reviews that some readers were a little confused, so I figured that made it my duty to draw up something to help.

I'm not sure how I will make it available. Maybe I'll create a Blogspot site for Dead Stop, just like I did for The Ways of Khrem, and put it there. I suppose I could always look into trying to figure out how to insert graphics into manuscripts again, although I still find that idea a little intimidating.

Oh well, just keeping busy.

Edit: Remember, this is a rough draft. The back door should be more in front of the closet, and the Men's restroom should be a little longer.

Building a Better Monster

Writing Dead Stop was a very involved project for me, in more ways than one. I knew when I started it that I would be writing for a sub genre that had become incredibly crowded as of late. Zombies were big…still are…and it was going to take some real doing to write a story that had a chance of standing out in that crowd.

And of all the different elements that went into that story, I think one of the most important things I did was rewriting the monster in order for it to make sense.

The problem with a lot of monster movies is that it seems they are written with the idea that the audience will just accept the existence of the monster…just because. There is often a little bit of origin involved in the story, but just as often it’s paper thin and doesn’t go to much effort to make sense, or have the monster behave in a manner logical to the nature that has been created for it.

So when I decided to write Dead Stop, I read a bunch of zombie books, watched some zombie flicks, and even checked out a couple of zombie websites. Then I sat back and gave it some real thought, and worked to rebuild the monster from the ground up. After careful consideration, and some research, I chose to go with the graveyard variety of zombie. Then I worked out the most likely (if still impossible) scenario that such a creature could actually come into existence…and more importantly, how it would perform and behave if such a thing really existed.

I have learned that is very important in writing monster stories in these days of more sophisticated readers. To be really frightening, a monster needs to feel…possible. It needs to be grounded in a plausible scenario that makes sense to the audience, and behave in a way that realistically adheres to the logic such a creature would follow. Make it feel real.

I find myself employing that strategy once again, with a current short story/novelette I’m writing. Taking a monster commonly understood to be one thing, then breaking it down and looking at how such a creature could make sense to a modern reader, while at the same time projecting how such a creature would act, react, and otherwise behave in the world. You can even do this with a supernatural creature, which is what I’m doing now. The creature in the story is a succubus, and now that I’ve researched and come up with a plausible angle for such an entity, the story that has formed around her is not what I thought it would be…it’s better. I love it when that happens.

So that’s my thoughts on writing monster stories at the moment. It’s something I didn’t start out knowing (you can tell by my early monster stories) but it’s a lesson well taken.

2013

It's a new year, with all the challenges and opportunities that come with it.

2012 was kind to me, in that I  published one novel and one novel sized anthology of stories. The novel even turned out to be a moderate success. I learned how to time and target marketing a little bit, and I hope to apply some of those lessons with my next release. But that success also came with a "learning opportunity" as I ended up spending the entire autumn marketing, tracking sales, following reviews, etc...and not getting hardly any writing done.

So resolution number one for 2013 is that I will only check on that kind of stuff once a week. Friday will be my day for that. Other than that, my job is to try and put that stuff out of my mind so I can get back into the mindset needed for writing.

One of these days some enterprising small publisher may try adding a marketing branch for indie writers who already take care of the other stuff, but that's an idea for a future post.

But back to 2013.

Anyways. My resolutions this year amount to more reading, more writing, less internet. More proteins, about the same fats, less carbs, and hopefully less me. More kiddo time, more meditation time, getting back to cooking real food (start watching the food channel again) and getting out of the house a little more often..

That oughta about do it.

Merry Christmas, Folks

Another year is coming to an end, and a new one is just around the corner. May all of you find contentment in the year that has been, and joy in the one that approaches.

Merry Christmas,

Nate

Book Review; Stephen King's "11/22/63"

But one quick thing first... I got another review for Dead Stop over at Jimmy Blue's Zombie Review. It seems he liked it :)

Anyway, since I haven't been writing much lately, I've been reading instead and so I thought I would do a book review of my own. I used to be a big Stephen King fan, but then his work started disappointing me and I quit reading him. But I've been hearing good things about him lately again, so I bought one of his latest books, 11/22/63 and gave it a try.

Here is the review I put on Goodreads...

Stephen King is one of those rare writers that is worth reading merely for learning the art of writing. While his prose is rather ordinary, his ability to build characters, situations, and moods as he progresses through his stories is unrivaled.

Having said that, I have always felt that King sort of peaked a long time ago with the book, “It” and it seemed his work took a sharp downward turn following that. After “Desperation” and “The Regulators”, I pretty much quit reading him. They were well written, but they just weren’t very good stories. It seemed like he had lost inspiration and had fallen back on contrivance.

So it was with some trepidation that I laid down the money to pick up a copy of 11/22/63.

Now, after finishing it, I can at least be content it was money well spent.

11/22/63 is a big book, and it meanders in places, but it is a great example of a master writer building a world and characters, and introducing them to the reader. It’s about time travel, and a man who goes back to try and stop the Kennedy assassination. And while this is a plotline that has been done several times before, King does it in a fresh new way and far more skillfully than most.

Jake Epping finds himself confronted with a time portal, one that seems to have spontaneously appeared due to some natural phenomenon.  His friend, has been using it for a long time but is now dying and wishes Jake to undertake a task he failed to finish. Stop the Kennedy assassination.

The problem is that the portal only goes to one date in time…about five years before the assassination…and the future end of the portal is most likely about to be destroyed. So Jake has to go back to 1958 with little preparation and build a life in the past as he waits for the day of the assassination to arrive. He makes one trial run into the past to prevent a different murder, just to assure himself that he can indeed change it, then goes all in.

Much of what this book is really about is the life that Jake (now George Amberson) builds for himself, and the conflict that arises between that life and the mission he has taken on to investigate Lee Harvey Oswald and stop him. What happens when you build something good, but your efforts to change the world is throwing all that in jeopardy?  The past doesn’t like to be changed, and it has a nasty way of fighting back.

In the end, this is a good book.

It’s not like his tighter, more focused works from the “before It” period, but it is a huge step up from some of the things King wrote immediately after that. It tends to meander, which dilutes the tension of the story, but at the same time it helps develop the characters. I definitely got the feeling this book was about more than just stopping the assassination and changing the past.

King also does a great job of putting the reader back in the late fifties and early sixties, with all their beauties and blemishes. It was a very different world, and he does a good job of demonstrating that.

My only complaint was he had a rather nasty view of Dallas in that period. And while he defends that in his afterward, as somebody who grew up in sixties and early seventies Texas I felt that his take was sadly two dimensional and rather unfair. It also felt like he tried to balance that out with a rather bucolic view of small town Texas, which seemed at times rather condescending as well. But that’s a personal gripe on my part and I’m not going to savage the book for that.

So I do recommend 11/22/63. It is an engrossing read…an eight hundred page novel that I finished in two days. It’s not exactly King returning to his old form, but more of him bringing his skills to a different form and for the most part succeeding. 

Yep. It's not really a horror novel, although it does have a couple of horrific scenes, but overall it was good.

Oh well, that's it for now.

Hmmmm...

Maybe I missed my calling.

Maybe I drifted into being a horror writer because deep down I knew I was supposed to be a super-villain.

I think I could have been a pretty good super-villain. I would have dressed nice for the part, and always carried the role with dignity. I would have avoided excessive monologueing, kept my airducts small and uncrawlable, an never allowed a self-destruct button within a thousand miles of me.

But I would have insisted on a shark tank.

Because if you're going to have evil henchmen, you've gotta have a shark tank. Nothing says, "You have failed me for the last time," like a short, exciting swim with the sharks. And it's a great motivator too.

Or maybe I really wasn't cut out to be a super villain.

Maybe I just wanted a shark tank.

Sequels Can Be Hard

     I have been getting a lot of positive feedback regarding Dead Stop lately, and naturally that feels really great. But a lot of that feedback is coming with a question that is starting to feel inevitable…

     “When is the sequel?”

     I wish I had a good answer for that. At the moment I’m working on another novel, and trying to focus on it, but I obviously can’t ignore a question that keeps coming up this often. So I admit that while I’m working on Argiope again, I do take a little time here and there to think about a potential sequel to Dead Stop.

     I did leave things where a sequel was possible. But just because I left a group of characters alive in a situation of temporary safety, does not mean that a sequel is easily written. If a sequel is going to be any good, there has to be several issues addressed or it’s going to be subpar. And as a fan of horror movies, I have seen far to many subpar sequels.

     The first problem a writer has to grapple with is character arcs.

     In a well written story, the character has gone through an experience that has changed them to some degree, and the character at the end is not exactly the same one you started out with. So in a sequel, you have to evaluate where you character currently is and what kind of character arc you are going to implement.

A good example of this would be the character Ripley from the Alien series. In the first movie she goes from a somewhat by the book third officer to badly frightened final survivor who is fighting for her life. In the second movie she goes from a frightened survivor trying to get her life back to a woman who is now fighting back and even performing the rescue of a child in the clutches of the monster. After that the series starts to fall apart, and one of the reasons is they had pretty much taken the character of Ripley as far as they reasonably could. There were other problems too, but character was a big one.

     I’m going to use Alien and Aliens again for the second problem as well. And that is the overall tone of the book. Alien was a creepy, claustrophobic, haunted house in space. It was original, and it was very successful, so one would almost expect the sequel to try and recreate that atmosphere. But the sequel had James Cameron in charge, who was wise enough to take things in a direction that was new, but also made sense considering the situation. The second became a run and gun shoot’em up with strong elements of horror. And while I didn’t agree with everything Cameron did, I admit it was effective.

So a writer has to consider the tone of a sequel as well. Can he recreate the feel of the first book? SHOULD he recreate the feel of the first book? What other tone could be reasonably struck with the characters and situation at hand. These things have to be considered.

     Yes, anybody can write a sequel. The question is whether or not it can be a good one that is worthy of the first book. 

     That’s a whole different story.

I'm Giving It Away!

Over at Goodreads, I'm giving away three free copies of Dead Stop. These will be signed copies of the paperback version. I guess I'm in the Christmas spirit since all the stores are already decorating for it. And nothing says Yuletide joy like a bunch of carnivorous dead people trying to munch on a group of victims they have trapped in a truck stop!

(yeah, I better get to writing a new book or the jokes are just going to get worse)

The contest will run until December 10th, so feel free to enter!

A Little More Horn Tooting

Just a little more horn tootin' to get the morning off right :)

Bricks of the Dead, a rather unique blog dedicated to Lego's and zombies, has a a review of Dead Stop. The author of this blog enjoys looking at common situations and cliches in the zombie genre and representing them with Lego scenarios. Check out the rest of his blog.

Headshot Heather over at Doubleshot Reviews has also written a positive review. Doubleshot Reviews examines books and reports on them with a coffee shop flavor...a really cool way to present things.

Other than that, not much to report at the moment. I'm still kind of spinning my wheels, and now trying to excavate my house from under the many layers of kid induced junk in order to try and get it ready for company on Thanksgiving. This is turning out to be quite a tall order...as it seems to buried deeper than normal this year. But I know it's under here somewhere, and I shall keep digging until I find it!