The week in the Blog. Halo 4, Discworld, JMS, Thor, Love, and Music

This week was rather eventful. Eight blogs, no waiting. A little review.

Monday: The first major music blog went over rather well, if the blog stats are to be believed. With Winterborn, March of Cambreadth, a little Nightwish, and a historical military tune, it had a good reception.  Monday also had the first "Inspiring Authors" article with J. Michael Straczynski, the man behind the story of the film Thor, and one of the best authors that Marvel ever screwed over.



And, for a follow up, the day ended with Spoiler Alert ... for a Video game? where we had a very brief discussion of the awesome and epic writing ever seen in a first person shooter video game -- the story arc of Halo. It was mostly in celebration of the release of the new teaser-trailer for the upcoming Halo 4 video game.



Tuesday was a brief discussion about writing a love story, using an example from, of all things, my own love life. Lord help us all.



Tuesday also saw the next music blog. Which just proves that my taste in music is deeply, deeply schizophrenic. It had the Our Father in German, This is War, by 30 Seconds to Mars, and Dragonforce's Through the Fire and the Flames, a favorite of Guitar Hero fans.



Wednesday had a small sample of the works of Terry Pratchett -- and I mean a very small sample. Oh, and some Neil Gaiman too.



The music selection was one part Doctor Who (sort of), another part Nightwish, and how to condense Greek Mythology into five minutes of music.



And Thursday ... Thursday, I got lazy. I didn't feel like doing more than posting the theme to Halo, Final Fantasy VII's One Winged Angel for orchestra, and some epic commercial music from Two Steps from Hell.



Next week, I hope to do a little better. To start with, I have a new job that involves teaching you how to kick ass and take names .... okay, basic self-defense maneuvers.  I suspect it's going to turn into a weekly roundup of interesting stuff on this blog. Once I figure out the mechanics.

Inspiring Authors: J. Michael Straczynski

Every once in a while, I look over my writing style, and I look at what I've taken away from the authors I've been exposed to.


The first, and most important writing influence is someone named J. Michael Straczynski (JMS).

JMS, who I have mentioned once or twice, was an executive producer on Murder, She wrote, created Babylon 5, and writes almost anything else he can get his hands on. He's written comics, TV, novels, science fiction, battling demons....

Just look him up on amazon, buy everything except for “Rising Stars” and “Supreme Power.”

I'm not joking. Go now.

If you saw Thor -- and who didn't? You didn't? Go see it. I'll wait..... Back now? You liked it? Good. -- JMS had a cameo in the film as the first fellow to find Thor's hammer, and organized that big sequence with trying to drag out the hammer with a truck.

There is Tribulations, a book about demonic possession in modern LA. Surprisingly well put together and very religious ... And he's an atheist. So, he at least knows how to appreciate religion, even if it's only for use as fantasy fodder.

I first experienced the writing of JMS a very long time ago, before I even knew who the man was. Originally an author for television, he worked his way up from cartoons and into prime time. He penned the only episode of The Real Ghostbusters that I can remember.  Twenty years after the original airing of Murder, She Wrote, all of the episodes I knew off the top of my head happened to be written by him (if you remember an episode in the Psycho house, that would be Joe).

I first became aware of Joe Straczynski with his television show Babylon 5; at the time, it seemed to be a rip-off of a Star Trek program that had just come on called Deep Space 9. Then odd things started happening. To start with, the show had character. The characters on the show had personalities. They had backgrounds. They had character flaws. When there was fighting, there were actual military tactics, and the science fiction .... had science.

If you are not a follower of science fiction, you may not be aware of this, but to find military tactics in most science fiction filmed media is almost as rare as finding science in a Star Trek film. As mentioned during our week of Infinite Space, Infinite God II, most sci-fi will resort to technobabble before using actual science. Babylon 5 is the first science fiction television show that ever explained how their artificial gravity worked.

With military tactics -- how much in the way of tactics did anyone see in Star Wars or Star Trek that did not amount to "Watch two armies. See them ram into each other. See them ignore that space is three dimensional."

With Babylon 5, NASA has asked permission to use some of their designs, because they can't come up with better ideas.  If you ever hear about a NASA space construction craft called a "Star Fury," it's because JMS allowed them to use it on the condition that it shared the name it had on the tv show....

Constant readers of this blog will see the fingerprints of JMS all over it. The most popular blog post Disasters to Marvel At was made possible by Joe Straczynski. After Babylon 5, JMS went on to writing comic books; in particular, Amazing Spider Man (ASM). Being a fan of Straczynski's, I followed. It was the first time I had picked up a comic book in about five years. At least.

And it was a gloriously enjoyable run. If you ever saw an issue of ASM that involved Spider-Man dealing with the 9-11 attacks, that was JMS' doing. It was a throwaway issue in a grand story arc that had Peter Parker questioning his own origins, pondering whether or not he was part of a larger plan, and finding himself embroiled more and more with supernatural problems. The solutions became more cerebral and scientific than requiring an ability to pound someone into dust.

Also, in pure JMS fashion, he took the marriage of Peter Parker and made it work -- after all, Straczynski's strong suit is having two people interact with each other. And it's nothing like having a reconciliation in the middle of a super-powered smackdown at Denver airport.

And then there was the surprisingly epic ASM 500, where JMS managed to condense the entire 500 isues before into one, simple question.

Which is why I was somewhat enraged when editorial mandate came down from a clear blue sky and decreed that every Marvel comic would be dragooned into the Event of the Week. The story arc for Straczynski's Spider-Man run was stomped on by the far inferior Civil War. And, while I liked what JMS managed to do with it, despite editorial mandate (it was the only part of the Civil War I remotely enjoyed), and he managed to make the follow-up Back in Black, a fun read, at the end of the day, management came down and destroyed, literally, every achievement JMS wrote over the course of his six-year run.

When I saw JMS at New York Comic Con, he had a running phrase: "Joe, you suck." He even had the audience repeat it back to him.  However, between the links above, there's a reason why I think it should be "Joe (Quesada), you suck."

JMS would also take over duties on Thor, where he placed the Norse deity in the middle of New Mexico (Thor movie fans, sound familiar?)

After Marvel and he had a falling out, he went direct to DC. He did some spectacular Team-ups of the Brave and the Bold, tried to work on a new arc for Wonder Woman, and even a Superman arc called Grounded. Right now, he's heading the bestseller list with his graphic novel Superman: Earth One.  If Warner Brothers is smart, they'll reboot the Superman movie franchise with Earth one as a model.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM JMS.

I learned how to write people. Taking a cue from Rod Serling, JMS knew how to make a conversation be dramatic with just two people in a room, no ticking bomb required. He knew how to work dynamics with different characters for different results. He even went so far to lock two people in a room together, he literally trapped two characters in an elevator.

If you wondered why my short story One Way to Stay out of Jail consisted mostly of two people in a room just talking to each other, you can probably guess. It's the joy of having characters (some of whom are deeply flawed) interacting with each other.

Another thing I got from JMS -- how to take cliche's and turn them inside out.

For example...

Situation: Two people who hate each other are trapped in an elevator; fires are burning outside. If they don't work together, they will die.
Hollywood standard procedure: The trapped duo will overcome their grievances in order to stay alive.
JMS: One character says to another "I'm not going to help. This way, I can watch you die and I won't be prosecuted."

It's fun.

In A Pius Man, there is a reason that the book has plenty of deep, in-depth conversations between people who have some obvious flaws .... although a lot of it revolves around Sean Ryan, who is, himself, really weird.

Further Reading.

Other works by JMS include.

Demon Night (I haven't read it yet, but it should be fun)



Othersyde: Another book I loved. High school, meet demonology 101.

Two high school nerds, "losers," tormented and tortured on a routine basis, buy curiosities -- two telegraph signal senders.

And then, the devices start tapping out Morse code on their own.

It was elegantly written, and even made the angst of high school tolerable. And, no, there is no Twilight level, whiny-angsty BS. I would take a power drill to my head before I even read anything remotely like it, to heck with recommending it.

Book of Lost Souls: A late, lamented comic book series JMS wrote while at Marvel. While there were only five issues of this run, I think it has a good, solid story arc. that reads well even though Marvel pulled the plug on it early on.

 Straczynski Unplugged: A collection of short stories, mostly novelized versions of screenplays JMS did for The New Twilight Zone back in the 80s. I can only assume these few were all he did, otherwise the show would have done much, much better. These were all awesome.

Under the heading of both "touching" and "I never saw this coming," was Silver Surfer: Requiem. The premise: the Silver Surfer originally made a devil's bargain to save his home planet, becoming the Surfer, herald to a planet-eating being called Galactus. Years later, the Silver Surfer's own body is turning against him. Everything that makes him the Surfer is breaking down. The story arc is broken down into four parts. Benedictus, Sanctus, Kyrie, and Agnus Dei. All parts of the funeral mass.

Let's put it this way: I never liked Silver Surfer, and this brought me to tears ... yes, I'm a nerd.

Bullet Points: Another Marvel project. A simple "What if?" If the assassin who killed Captain America's creator completed his task 24 hours earlier, and, at the same time, killing one of the bodyguards, a Ben Parker, what would the world look like. The only thing that I've read that compares to it in comics is the ASM 9-11 issue ... also by JMS.

Midnight Nation-- Okay, this was pure, unadulterated awesome. An LA cop finds himself caught in the crossfire between Heaven and Hell, and loses his soul, becoming one of the lost people of the Midnight Nation.

In order to get his soul back, he has to cross all of America to New York City to face the Devil himself.

Squadron Supreme and Rising Stars -- the only works I can honestly not endorse. Even JMS has complaints about Squadron Supreme.

Update: Sorry, I'm from New York, the Midwest, unfortunately, does look alike to me -- New Mexico or Oklahoma. Especially since the artwork in the JMS Thor comic and the images in the Thor movie looked the same to me. I suspect Kenneth Branaugh looked at the comic and said "This doesn't match Oklahoma, where does it match? Nex Mexico? We're there."

Music to Write To: Winterborn, Cambreadth, and Over the Hills....

Sometimes your friends know best.



After months of doing non-fiction, "high-intellect" blog posts, some of my friends could see what it was doing to me better than I could. Let's just say that they could tell I was under a strain. Also, they found the posts boring.


So, time for something fun.

It's been a while since I posted on this blog, and I really think I should get back into the swing of posting whatever I like. Which include history, blowing stuff up on paper, and doing it to really cool music.

Here's some more stuff that I enjoy writing to.


"Winterborn," by the Cruxshadows. I never know what to do with this band. They are nominally "Goth,"  but they tend to use a lot of classical imagery. I first encountered from in a John Ringo novel called Ghost.(A book I will talk about at a later date, with a few cautionary notes ... it's not that bad, but there is one section that should carry a warning label)  I had no idea what the song was about, so I looked it up on YouTube. The title is taken from something that could be from the original Illiad -- that the bravest of those who died were born in winter.

In this case, the visuals are taken from the video game "Halo 2."




"March of Cambreadth," by Heath Alexander. I first discovered this song in a John Ringo novel called When the Devil Dances, a scifi military novel about a cannibalistic Mongol horde spreading through the galaxy, with only humans to stand in the way. While the author himself refers to it as carnography (which I can only presume means "carnage porn"), it's well designed, the characters fully developed, and there's enough scheming and political intrigue to fully screw up a war.... the images are from the tv show Babylong 5, which happens to also be a scifi war epic. I know this because I assembled the video myself.






"Over the Hills and Far Away."  It's an army song from the Napoleonic wars, and was first introduced to most people through the British tv movie series "Sharpe's Rifles." Richard Sharpe, the main character, was played by Sean Bean.... coincidentally the one who played Boromir in the video below.





"Over the Hills and Far Away," by Nightwish.  I found this one song while looking for the it's partner above. And, wow, was I in for a surprise.







And, a final one for today.  Remember all of those movie trailers, when you listen to the awesome soundtrack, and you expect to hear it in the movie... only to discover that it's not there, only in the trailer?

Odds are, it's Two Steps from Hell.

FAQ: Where do you get your ideas?

I've been doing a bit of writing, and I've touched on this briefly during the series on how I created A Pius Man, but, apparently, the question many authors are besieged with is “How do you come up with your ideas?”

Short answer: formal viewpoint. Or a functional mentality.

For example, last year, I saw Forbes Magazine with cover article about how al-Qaeda was losing money, and it suggested that Osama "needed a new business model."

I can not make this stuff up.

The point is, people look at things from a “formal viewpoint.” I would look at a large pile of money and think of where a character would hide it. An accountant would probably count it all. A pyromaniac would look at it as stuff to burn.

[More below the break]

Neil Gaiman, Minnesota, and Writer's Mistakes.

Writers make mistakes.

This is probably not a good topic to discuss on a writer's blog, but it's the truth. And I try to serve the truth as often as possible without getting myself into even more trouble than I find naturally. People can learn from mistakes, even if those mistakes are performed by other people.

Neil Gaiman is a British author with a couple of novels to his name, and several tv episodes. I only enjoyed two works by him – Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. The one other book of his I truly enjoyed is called Good Omens, and there is nothing he can say or do to prove to me that Terry Prachett didn't take over the book entirely.

Recently, Mr. Gaiman (I prefer to pronounce it Guy-mun, not “Gay-man”) spoke at a Minnesota public library. He made a four-hour public appearance, for which he was paid $45,000 dollars.

Yes, he made over $10,000 per hour.

Harlan Ellison, an author who has been writing since the dawn of time … or at least the dawn of modern science fiction … makes $10,000 for an entire convention appearance, and Gaiman isn't half as interesting as Ellison. Trust me, I've met Ellison, and I've seen Gaiman.

A Minnesota politician has referred to Gaiman as a “pencil-necked weasel-thief” for walking off with that much money for a measely four hours.

Gaiman, in his defense, has said that he wanted to charge far less. The library claimed that the money was earmarked for library events, and the earmark expiration date was almost up. They could either use the money, or lose it. So, he took the money, and gave some to charity, some to his agent, etc.

Now, after the politician made noise, Gaiman has turned around, and started exchanging insults with Minnesota, at least on his Facebook page, as he tries to defend his honor (or honour, if you wish to go British). And he's whining that he's being put on a Republican “hate list”....

Now, I don't know about you, but there's something wrong about the whole thing.

For instance, should I ever become interesting enough to be invited anywhere to speak, I'm going to wonder at being offer forty-five grand.

I can imagine the conversation going as follows.

“Hey, we really liked your book, A Pius Man. We want you to come speak here. We'll give you $10,000 an hour. Please?”
Me: [Blink, blink, blink.] “How much?”
“About $45K. Is that not enough?”
Me: “I didn't think I was that interesting. Why $45K?”
“Because that's our event budget. We have to use it, or we're going to lose it.”
Me: “By 'lose it,' do you mean it will spontaneously combust? Fall down a rabbit hole and disappear? Turn to ash?”
“No, the state will just take it back.”
Me: “So, gee, you can either give me all of the taxpayer's money that you still have in your budget, or you can actually let the taxpayers actually have it back? Gee, I'm so happy I can give you an excuse to spend money for the sole purpose of spending money, in the middle of a major recession. How about this: get stuffed. I want nothing to do with you idiots.”

But, now, Neil Gaiman is the persecuted one. Huh. Really? One, it's Minnesota, how many people would know anything was up if it weren't for Gaiman's replies? I know I wouldn't. Two, this sounds like the library wanted to burn through the cash it had, and claim "We used our event budget this year, give us the same next year."

So, an open letter to Neil ....

Dear Mr. Gaiman.

I know you're not from the United States, so let me give you some pertinent information about Minnesota.

Number one: Minnesota is odd. This is a state that gave the position of governor to a former pro-wrestler named Jesse Ventura. It also made a clown one of their senators – a man named Al Franken.

In terms you can understand: Politically, Minnesota is Lewis Carroll country. They have fallen down a rabbit hole, and they have have yet to come out again. These people make Wonderland seem reasonable.

Number two: You took the money. I don't care what you did with it, you took taxpayer money. In the middle of a recession. You claim you would have attended the event for far, far less. Did they make you take it? Did they hold you up at gunpoint and force a check on you? I don't care how you redistributed the cash, this was taxpayer money. If the public library couldn't burn through it in the time allotted, that was their problem.

Didn't you think it odd that a public library paid you more money than bigger talents would get for an entire science fiction convention? They used you to aid and abet government waste in a recession. You were an excuse to burn cash. Why? Best guess: In all likelihood, if the public library didn't spend the money, their budget next year would have been cut to match what they spent this year.

Number three: You're Neil Gaiman. Why are you getting into the muck and mire with hacks from Minnesota? Why? You did nothing illegal. Some Minnesotan called you names … highly unoriginal names … and you, you poor widdle baby, are up in arms over it. You declare yourself on a Republican “hate list.” Really? You're going to play the Nixon card? Let's avoid the fact that there must be more than one person for there to be a list. Also, just because the politician is a Republican, you're not a target of the Republican National committee. You're not Bill Clinton; there is no vast, right wing conspiracy out to get you. As far as I can tell, there's just one guy – one guy who you have decided to make far more interesting by engaging with him.

You, sir, are a writer. You should have a thicker skin than this.

In conclusion … What the hell are you doing? While I question the wisdom of taking the cash, and thus exposing yourself to this idiocy, you are now actively diving into the muck and mire that is the cesspool of Minnesota politics. Do you think that a guy from Minnesota will affect your popularity in any way? If you hadn't decided to engage, I probably would have never heard of the quote, the politician, and I might have been safe from hearing anything about Minnesota until the next time Al Franken ran for political office.

This isn't your problem. Whoever paid you the money “just to get rid of it” shouldn't have burned through the money because it was there. That person should be fired. While I question your wisdom in taking the cash, you did nothing against the law. Why are you defending yourself against a gnat?

Stop playing silly buggers with rejects from the madhouse. Just tell these idiots that you didn't set the price, and if they're going to insult you, tell them to hire Terry Prachett as their speechwriter.

Thank you.

PS: The only Republican I know who may have an opinion on you is President George W. Bush -- and that's only because he liked Babylon 5: a show you wrote for.