What Happened To A Pius Man?

So, I mentioned the book I'm about to publish, called It Was Only On Stun.  As I said, it's a murder mystery / comedy with bullets thrown in.

After pushing A Pius Man here for years, you would think I would want to publish that first, no?

No.

You see, I'm going to bounce A Pius Man off of one or two more people while I'm at it. There's a small Canadian publishing company with an editor who really wants me to submit it to her.  My first agent (no contract), Joshua Getzler, wanted to use my book to graduate from his apprenticeship (but was too bogged down to follow through) now has his own agency. So I want to see what Josh wants to do, if anything, then try the other publishing company, and then self publish it.  I liked Josh enough back then that I want to see if he's still interested now.

Why self-publish It Was Only On Stun then? Why not wait?  Simple answer: the wait was killing me.

Let me put it this way -- I have been writing since I was 16. I have written, rewritten, spiked, and reconstructed 17 books to the level where I would unleash them on the general public.  Problems include how many are sequels to other books, etc.

In 2007, I started looking for an agent for my best novel -- it was historically accurate, edifying, educational, filled with character and story and explosions and fight scenes .... A Pius Man/ I had Josh by April, 2007; he became "too busy" by that September, and 12 months later, in 2008, told me to move along. 

By March of 2009, I had another agent.. I let him go this month, as I mentioned earlier.

Every book and every author and everyone at every convention I've ever been to have told me that if I have an agent, I have a foot in the door. It's only a matter of time. Be patient. And I did everything that everyone told me to do.

And, following those guidelines, I waited 5 years to publish one book. Playing by the rules, I got absolutely nothing.

I know that other authors have been rejected 27 times by other publishers.  I know that "it's been tough" on publishers. I know that  

Will I try small presses in the future? Certainly. I have other books. I could (self) publish a book a month for the next year and a half before I can slow down. But I'm going to dedicate at least six months per book, possibly more (since IT WAS ONLY ON STUN! is a mystery at a science fiction convention, I'm going to

try visiting DragonCon, New York Comic-Con, and I-Con, a major local convention in April).

But, short of someone telling me they want to buy my book with a full publishing contract, I am not going to put my livelihood in the hands of anyone else so I can be whipsawed for another half a decade.

Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. And through the Holy Spirit, patience is probably infinite. But I am 30 years old, unemployed (except for my Ambit Business), and due to some bad educational decisions (degrees in European history when no one is hiring in that field), I am probably unemployable.

Prudence is telling me that patience is going to kill me.

Spoiler Alert for ... a video game? Halo.

Some people may have noticed that I'm a little wierd. I'm also a bit of a nerd, as my DragonCon reports and my JMS blog of today might tell you.



However, I want to discuss a little bit about one of the most epic bits of science fiction storytelling I've seen outside of Baen publishing.



The Halo video game franchise.



Yup. Video games can have epic writing.



If most of you are thinking "Thanks. We've seen Super Mario Brothers, there is no writing," I respectfully suggest you get your head out of the 80s. And parts of the 90s.



I've only recently been brought back into the world of video games by my friend Jason. He started by giving me a video game called Halo. It was a "first person shooter," which I always figured was short for "a game with no plot, but you get to shoot up anyhthing that gets in your way, or blow them up if you have grenades."



Then I started playing it.



It had a story. It had supporting characters with personalities. It had witty chapter titles and sarcastic one-liners. It was a space-sprawling epic played out on something that resembled Larry Niven's Ringworld -- an artificially designed planet called Halo.



The premise was simple enough: alien jihadists called the Covenant have discovered humans, and they really, really don't like us. The game starts with the player's ship on the run from an alien armada, and runs into Halo, a world that turns out to be a sacred artifact to the jihadists. The player's character is a bioengineered super soldier called a Spartan-II, and wears a Mjolnir battle suit (yes, it's named after the hammer of Thor). The humans get the bright idea to take over Halo before the Covenant do -- this artificial ring world is a moon-sized weapon, after all.



And then, the humans wake something up. Not quite an eldritch horror from beyond time and space, but good enough for government work. Let's just say that they're called The Flood and leave it there. They have a tendency to devour, well, everything.



After waking up said horror, another side to this little war comes up. The artificial intelligence of the Halo ring discovers that, "Hmm, the Flood creatures have been let loose. We have to stop them."



It turns out that the eldritch horror isn't from beyond time and space, but from one hundred million years ago. The Halo rings were built to stop them. But, the people fighting the flood back then decided to hold on to a few samples for research, and so the species wouldn't die out (I always knew rabid environmentalists would be the ruin of us).



All goes perfectly well until the player discovers how the Halo rings kill the flood-- by erradicating all life bigger than a microbe. The flood starve. End of problem. When the Spartan-II and his sidekick object to this plan, the AI that has been chattering at you for a whole level of the game turns nasty.



Did I mention that the AI is insane?



Soon, the game becomes a four-sided battle. Alien jihadists are still trying to kill you. The flood are trying to kill everyone. And the AI that you've pissed off has his own army of flying, laser-wielding drones who are also out to kill you, the flood, the jihadists, and everything else in its way.



And that's just the first game.



The Halo universe is so dense in background and in story, they've written at least half a dozen novels worth of material, and they're making more.  Comic book and Star Trek favorite Peter David has written a comic book volume from the Halo-verse, as has William C. Dietz, another author with his own writing credits -- though the first author to be offered the job was Timothy Zahn.

SPOILER ALERT.

There might be one or two people upset by the end of Halo 3.  The third game sought to wipe out the Flood, end the war with the alien jihadists, and  finally end the threat of the Halo rings.   By and large, they succeeded.

However, the character you play, the Spartan-II, is last seen drifting in space in half a starship -- bad things happen when a wormhole closes and the ship is only halfway through it.

Since Halo 3, several Halo games have been released -- prequels, side-stories, and tales that never answered the simple question: Whatever happened to Master Chief, Spartan 117

Halo Fans will be happy to know that the trail for Halo 4 starts where Halo 3 leaves off.

Guest Blog: Karina Fabian on Writing Science Fiction.

Once upon a time, very long ago (okay, April), we had a guest blogger -- Karina Fabian, author of .... a whole lot of novels, and editor of Infinite Space, Infinite God II.

Guess what: she's back, with a new book, Mind Over Mind, a science fiction / fantasy piece (and there are reasons it's a bit of both), so I decided to keep her blog topic simple.

I asked her to blog "On the joys and wonders of writing SF."

She gave me a top ten list.

Here we go.....

Top Ten Reasons to Love Reading or
Writing Science Fiction

From the Home Office in FabianSpace

1. Explore Strange New Worlds.

Whether it's traveling to another planet, exploring the future, or
even seeing how the past would change if you altered some aspect
like, say sticking a small West Virginia town in the middle of the
Black Forest in 1632, you will find something completely new.

2. To seek out new life. This doesn't have to mean alien life, either. A science fiction setting can give
new life to an old plot, or a new way at looking at our own society.
Recently, I revisited an old favorite, ALIEN NATION. A sci-fi cop
show from the 90s, it was really more about racial issues in a big
city.

3. To boldly go! It's sometimes easier as a writer to explore a controversial issue in a way that
will make people think when you put it in a setting that's removed
from the present day society. Science fiction also gives you a means
to take chances. Nichelle Nicols (Uhura from Star Trek) was one of
the first black women on television to have a substantial role, and
was as a result a role model for thousands of women and Blacks.

4. Because it's part of our culture.
How many of you recognized the lines from the first three reasons?
We know without an explanation what someone means by warp speed. Ray
guns, transporters, aliens, time travel--none of these are unknown
concepts, even when they aren't everyday objects.

5. To explore the impossible. Or at least the impossible right now. Did you know a lot of technology we
take for granted and are developing right now was first suggested in
science fiction? We have 3-D faxes--replicators! Arthur C. Clark
first talked about satellite communications years before we launched
our satellites. NASA is working on VASIMR drives for spaceships, and
Japan recently launched its first solar sail craft--ideas made known
in science fiction stories while still far-off theories in scientific
journals.

6. To explore ideas. How would humans act if a plague knocked out 90 percent of the population? What if we always fought wars through computers? What if humans could live forever? What if you could go back in time--but only for eleven minutes a shot? Some ideas can only be examined in a science fiction setting.

7. You can learn a lot while enjoying the adventure. Science fiction writers often have to do a lot of
research into everything from physics to genetics to animal sciences in order to craft convincing stories. Writing is a great way to learn things--but many times, much of that information comes out in the text, too, and not in a boring "just the facts" manner of a textbook.

8. We are a technological, forward-thinking society. Why shouldn't our literature reflect that?

9. Resistance is futile. You will be
assimilated. Science fiction and fantasy are a big genre. Eighty
percent of the top grossing movies in the US are science fiction or
fantasy (source: http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10131),
and the number of books--and readers-continues to grow.

10. It's sheer escapist fun. 'Nuff said! 

****************************

About the Author: Karina Fabian

After being a straight-A student, Karina now cultivates Fs: Family, Faith, Fiction and Fun. From an order of nuns working in space to a down-and-out faerie dragon working off a geas from St. George, her stories surprise with their twists of clichés and incorporation of modern day foibles in an otherworld setting. Her quirky twists and crazy characters have won awards, including the INDIE book award for best fantasy (Magic, Mensa and Mayhem), and a Mensa Owl for best fiction (World Gathering). In May 2010, her writing took a right turn with a devotional, Why God Matters, which she co-wrote with her father. Mrs. Fabian is former President of the Catholic Writer’s Guild and also teaches writing and book marketing seminars online.

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.

DragonCon 2010, Day 1 Report.

Dragoncon Report 2010, Day 1

From Comic books readers and Scifi fans, to James Patterson and back. Why anyone can enjoy a Pius Man

[Author's note: this was originally going to be a note on Marketing. It didn't turn out that way.]

What do you call a book chock full of hundred year old conspiracies, dangerous priests, psychotic mercenaries, operatives trained to kill practically from birth, international political intrigue, a terrorist plot, and a wide ranging collection of protagonists the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the team that took out Dracula?

You call it my book A Pius Man.

Now, who should read it? On the face of it, it seems like yet another in a long line of bad Da Vinci Code ripoffs that have come out in legion since Dan Brown's super-hyped novel hit the scene an interminable amount of time ago. However, while my book has conspiracies and religion, that's more or less where the similarities end. There will be no puzzles, the French will not be a threat, and no one will spend dozens of pages finding their way out of an art museum.

That said, there are some people who just don't read thrillers. Understandable, it's a term so generic you can toss a net over a whole host of authors... some of whom probably should have a net thrown over them anyway, just to be safe. However, when a field is as vast as the comic-bookish feel of Clive Cussler's NUMA novels, to the theoretical science of James Rollins, to a Barry Eisler novel, half of which takes place in the head of his protagonist, assassin John Rain. It's almost as diverse a group as public Catholic figures—as Oscar Wilde used to say: Here Comes Everybody. Can't call it a historical thriller, because then it will be mistaken for a period peace like the Sharpe's novels of Bernard Cornwell—I wouldn't mind having his audience, but they might feel gypped to find it set in the 21st century.

So, who the hell should read this book?

Comic book fans: My first agent drew parallels between the team of protagonists and the Justice League—possibly since this is the most international team since the original Dracula. One character has already been compared to Deadpool—of the comic, not the film. Throw in adversaries who seem preternaturally strong, fast, and trained... well, it's not like fighting the Hordes of Hydra, but my villain isn't exactly the Red Skull. Some are as serious as a police procedural, and some might as well have wanted to be Doc Savage when they grew up. One of them even works with “Middle Earth's Most Wanted Elven Assassin,” and no, I'm not kidding.

Science Fiction fans—who will hopefully forgive me for calling it “SciFi” above: Key pieces of this story involve NLW technology. Or, in standard English, non-lethal weaponry. Microwave cannons that emit plasma beams, tazer beam weapons, gases, explosives; if it's been mentioned, or appeared in a semi-realistic video game, it's probably in there. Throw in the laser-keyboards and the microwave microphones, you can outfit a small Sharper Image store.

Spy fans: International intrigue? Got it. Shadowy figures? Check. Conspiracy theories? At least five of them, and three are right. We also have: the obligatory evil Cardinal; a pale, silver haired priest with commando training (not to be confused with an albino, of course); the Jesuits, the Opus Dei, and the Knights Templar all show up, just so I can play with some of the old cliches

Readers of history: Yes, A Pius Man actually has historical facts. Literally, they happened. This is a book where the history presented in its pages can be footnoted. I know this because the original draft had footnotes. It was suggested that I take them out... however, I still have the bibliography in the back.

People who like intelligent destruction: There's an assassination on page two, an explosion on page three, a wrecked car by page seven, and a mercenary with a resume that reads like scripts of the A-Team. We'll ignore the shootout on the Spanish Steps in the armored SUV. Death, property damage, and utter ruination are always good for an audience. It worked for four Die Hard films.

Political folk: As much as I loathe to admit it, there's politics in this novel. It goes to motivation for the various and sundry parties. Besides: how do you negotiate being a Catholic—universal—Church? Unlike being a superpower, like the United States, you can't pick and choose who you associate with just because they're valuable to you. If that were the case, I wouldn't have a friend whose uncle is a missionary in China. And what happens when you put an African Pope who's to the right of Attila the Hun into the middle of this particular hurricane?

At the end of the day, the only people who should probably NOT read A Pius Man are those who expect a novel by way of Mitchner, or Clavell. Half of the book is filled with thoughtful, drawn out characters who are trying to think their way through the problem at hand. The other half of the book is filled with various and sundry creative ways to lay waste to large parts of Rome—from shooting up the Spanish Steps to trashing Leonardo Da Vinci airport.

Oh, and there's a love story in there, too.

And this is just the first book. Book two is the fallout, and countermoves by those bad guys who survive book one. Book three is where I recreate the Battle of Thermopylae.... if the 300 had possessed remote-detonated landmines.

Anyway, if you or any of your friends might enjoy anything listed above, you might want to join the fan page, or invite them to tag along. Or both.