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LONG STORIES/a pulp circum vitae
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| | Subject: | Twee challenge! | | Time: | 10:42 am |
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| Right, I'm throwing down to gauntlet for world's twee-est song, and I'm starting with the winner. I can't even think of anything that comes close, but perhaps you can...
If you don't know what twee means, here's a definition from Webster: affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint.
And here's the song - David Bowie's "Come and Buy my Toys," from his unfortunate 1967 Anthony Newley period. Wins just for the line "...and you shall own a cambric shirt."
Challenge me if you dare! | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| | Subject: | The stories I want to tell | | Time: | 12:27 pm |
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| Just now I was reading the introduction I wrote to the Blackhearts Omnibus (oh, the vanity) and when I had finished it, I realized that nowhere else had I ever defined so precisely the kinds of heroes and stories I want to write about, so I thought I'd share it here.
If you don't know much about Warhammer or the Blackhearts, not to worry, it should still make sense.
A Finger In The Eye
from
Nathan Long
When I moved out to Hollywood twenty years ago, my “big idea” was to write traditional action movies with non-traditional heroes. I loved action movies - still do - but I got tired of the heroes. Too many of them were big, square-jawed white guys who ran around like they owned the place and solved all their problems with their fists or their guns - James Bond, Dirty Harry, Commando, Rambo, Batman, Robo-Cop. They were always the biggest, toughest - and here’s the important one - the least human characters in the movie.
True, there were exceptions, and it was the exceptions that I loved the best. Aliens, Indiana Jones, Die Hard, The Road Warrior, Southern Comfort - all starred heroes that had at least some flaws and a few scraps of humanity.
I wanted to take that notion further. I wanted my heroes to be people of average ability but above-average heart - working men, house wives, punk rockers, beat cops, common soldiers, small time hoods - who were swept up in an extraordinary situation and, because they weren’t the best fighters or athletes, and because they didn’t have the biggest guns or biceps, had to use their guts and their brains to stay alive and save the day.
Needless to say, I didn’t sell too many scripts, but when Black Library asked me to write a novel for them... well, I thought I’d give my ‘big idea’ another shot.
In his introduction to The Founding, the first Gaunt’s Ghosts omnibus, Dan Abnett talks about choosing to write about the grunts of the Imperial Guard because he couldn’t relate to the ‘too perfect’ space marines. I had the same problem with Warhammer Fantasy. I loved the grim horror and grimy patina of the Old World, but I didn’t want to write about the noble knights of the Empire. I couldn’t get inside their heads. To me, they were the same big, square-jawed white guys who bored me to tears in the movies.
How can anyone care about men so brave, and so certain in their beliefs that they never have a moment of fear or doubt. I don’t believe these people exist, and if they do, I don’t want to know them. They’re dangerous to be around, and they’re boring to talk to at parties. If you have no fear of the enemy and don’t think twice about running into burning buildings to save dewy-eyed children you’re not a hero, you’re an idiot. A hero, at least in my mind, is the guy who pees his pants when he thinks about the enemy, and is terrified of burning, yet, when faced with the choice of fleeing or doing the right thing, overcomes his fears and runs into the fire.
So I asked Lindsey Priestley, my sainted editor, if the Black Library would let me write about that kind of hero and that kind of heroism - about the Old World equivalents of my working men, house wives, punk rockers, beat cops, common soldiers and small time hoods, and tell a story about how they conquered their fears and their natural self-centered cowardice to battle and beat the bullies on both sides of the never-ending war. Wonder of wonders, she said yes.
Valnir’s Bane, the book that resulted from this meeting of minds, starts off with the oldest cliché in the writer’s handy guide to plots - a group of convicts are let out of prison to go on a suicide mission, with the promise of freedom if they succeed. As quite a few people have pointed out to me, it’s “The Dirty Dozen” Warhammer-style. Yes, I did know. Thank you.
So what? It was the perfect structure on which to hang my kind of story, and feature my kind of people.
Who are the Blackhearts? Over the course of the three books contained in this omnibus edition we meet a noble second son turned failed student and professional gambler, a pair of sly farm boys, a field surgeon with nasty habits, a larcenous mercenary, a construction engineer, a fencing instructor, a quartermaster, a student of botany, and a handful of low ranking professional soldiers, and many others. There’s not a square-jawed hero among them. Of course they have the occasional heroic impulse, but these are surrounded by episodes of villainy, cowardice, self-doubt, self-loathing, self-interest, and plain old stupidity. And they rarely win with their swords. They win with guts, determination and brains - crapping themselves all the while.
There is a precedent for this sort of hero. There was a time in popular culture when the big guy with the big muscles and the big gun who beat everybody up was the bad guy, and the little guy who stood up to him and fought back with brains and heart and guts was the good guy. Those little guys are my idols - Charlie Chaplin outwitting the Keystone Kops, Robin Hood tricking the Sheriff of Nottingham, Bugs Bunny getting the better of Elmer Fudd, Jackie Chan running circles around an army of gangsters, the Marx Brothers talking circles around an army of bureaucrats, David knocking out Goliath with nothing but a rock and a leather strap.
The Blackhearts are the scrappy descendants of these little guys - a band of hard-luck losers caught in a war between monolithic armor-clad behemoths that care not one whit for the survival of the mere mortals scrambling desperately to stay alive beneath their enormous, iron-shod feet. I wanted their stories to be a reminder that, no matter what insignia the behemoths may wear, or what philosophy they may spout, a bully is a bully, and no matter how much they beat you down, as long as you’ve got one finger left, you can still poke the bastards in the eye. | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | The Thousand Thrones | | Time: | 11:09 am |
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| Last Friday I got my contributer copies of this, my first ever published RPG writing! Very exciting!
It was a strange and convoluted process doing this work, and I take my hat off to those of you who do it on a regular basis. It was HARD! Much harder, at least in my mind, than writing a novel. Trying to deal with player choice, linking all the parts together smoothly, formatting things properly, all were new and intimidating to me.
Someone else is going to have to tell me if it's good or not. I'm going to read it, but don't think I'll ever have time to sit down and play through it with people, which would be the only true test.
I'd like to thank Rob Schwalb for inviting me to be a part of this, as well as all the other writers on the project for their help and guidance during the making of. I was all at sea at the beginning, and they helped me find my way. I'd also like the thank Ralph Horsley for the cover and Andy Law for the excellent maps throughout. It's a great looking book because of you guys. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Kamen Rider Dragon Knight trailer... | | Time: | 12:27 pm |
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| So, if you want to see what I've been working so hard on for the past year, the first official trailer is up, here...
Pretty nice, huh?
No news as yet as to when or where this will be out in the states. Negotiations, as they say, are on going. | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Foo... | | Time: | 01:58 pm |
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| I get the feeling not many people got my animal picture joke. Or maybe it's just not funny. Just in case, here's a clue.
Lovin' would be easy if your colors were like his dream. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Forbidden Kingdom | | Time: | 08:45 pm |
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| Consider me pleasantly surprised.
I went in expecting a stinker, and it wasn't that bad. Despite having an embarrassing Ralph Macchio wannabe with bad eighties hair for the lead, this was a fun movie. Mostly because they kept the lead's part to a minimum and let Jackie and Jet (and Yuen Wu Ping!) do what they do best.
The fights are great, with little nods to both stars' earlier films sprinkled throughout. The production design is beautiful. The story is a little old hat, but has some nice touches here and there, and they don't let it get in the way of what's important - the character interplay and the martial arts. It is by no means the best martial arts movie ever made, but it's not an embarrassment, which is what I was expecting, so I am, as I said, pleasantly surprised. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Swords Against Crap | | Time: | 09:44 pm |
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| Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser have never caught a break as far as cover art goes. It seems to be some sort of curse.
Even the first paperbacks aren't great. Jeff Jones is an excellent artist, and the paintings are terrific, but I never thought they were a good indicator of the kind of story a reader would find inside. Too anonymous. The best was the Michael Whelan cover for Swords and Ice Magic, but even it doesn't thrill me. It's a bit bland. There is also Chaykin and Mike Mignola's comic version, which isn't bad, but which lacks enough detail in the faces to get the characters' personalities across. At least it's better than the version Chaykin did on his own about ten years before, which featured, if I remember correctly, the boys in bell-bottoms. The worst, for me, was always the cover to The Knight and Knave of Swords, which was painted by Darrell K. Sweet, my least favorite cover artist ever. It's stinky.
Now however, even that nadir has been trumped. The new editions put out by Dark Horse's book line are just staggeringly bad. It really looks like they are trying to NOT sell any books. Here are their crimes:
1 - There is no figurative art at all. For a series with two of the most distinctive heroes in fantasy, not to depict them on the cover seems insane. They are the selling point.
2 - The art is cheesy "one from column A, one from column B" fantasy iconography - swords, snakes, skulls, and what looks like celtic knot-work. Celtic knot-work???!!!! It also doesn't represent what's in the books. The city on the cover of Swords of Lankhmar looks like something Brian Froud copied from Roger Dean.
3 - The art is bad. It really looks like they went to the mall and asked the guy who custom air-brushes t-shirts with Metallica logos to do the covers.
Isn't Dark Horse a comic book company? Don't they know a lot of talented artists? Don't they know that if you want to sell a comic book you put the heroes on the cover? Why isn't Justin Sweet doing these covers? Or Jon Foster or Dan Dos Santos? There are so many amazing artists out there these days, there is just no excuse for this.
Please click to enlarge the awfulness. | | comments: 16 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | And, we're off! | | Time: | 02:23 pm |
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| Lindsey finally pulled the trigger. Gotrek and Felix 10 is a go. Woo hoo!
And now to work. | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | World Building is Hard | | Time: | 09:48 am |
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| I don't know how old whatsisname did it in seven days.
My imagination is failing me. I've been building a world in which to set a series of fantasy novels, and it's mostly been a lot of fun. I enjoy getting into the details of geography and religion and culture and all that stuff, and I like a lot of what I've done, but I'm becoming frustrated with my inability to come up with truly new cultures. What I have now is MY version of China, or MY version of Italy, or India, or Teaneck, New Jersey. It's just a new coat of paint and a few decals changed on something that already exists. I'm having the same trouble with races. It's an all human world, and I have whites and blacks and asians and indians, etc. I haven't really imagined anything new. I don't even know if I should.
I mean, a lot of that stuff you just want to get out of the way so you can get to the story. You don't want to have to explain what people look like. You want the reader to KNOW what people look like with just a word or two. This goes for the cultures too. You want to create a sense of a culture with a few words, rather than go on for pages about their history and what their hats and their cookware look like, and a lot of that is done by short-handing. Silk+Ancestor Worship+high-flying swordplay+words that end in 'ang' and 'ong' = generic Asian culture. Doublets+rapiers+warring city states+words that end in 'a', 'o' and 'i' = generic Mediterranean renaissance culture. Is that enough? Am I guilty of engaging in base cultural stereotypes? Am I guilty of being boring? Should I make the Chinese the Vikings? Should I make the Norse the Zulus?
Maybe I shouldn't bother. I read a fantasy book last year - an AWARD WINNING fantasy book - where all the people of the "medieval" kingdoms spoke like they were middle managers from Cleveland, the governments made no political sense whatsoever, and the one black character acted like a happy go lucky Caribbean from a fifties musical.
Whoops. Sorry. Different rant. Back on target.
So anyway, I want to take it all one more step, but I'm not sure how, or even which way to step. I want it to be new, but not so foreign that there are no hooks for the reader. I want it to be fresh and interesting, but not so much that the background outshines the stories.
Arrgh!
Where's Slartibartfast when I need him? | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Mr. Poker Face | | Time: | 10:47 am |
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| So I went to Las Vegas last weekend with my friend Paul for a little rest and relaxation - and a lot of poker.
I was in a game at the Mandalay Bay poker room, and got into a showdown with the guy directly to my left. He was a tough looking s.o.b, with the jailhouse walrus moustache and a lot of tattoos, and he'd been muttering complaints under his breath about all the other players. I had a good hand, an ace high flush, and I was pretty excited. So, when everybody else drops out of the hand except me and him, tough guy looks at me dead-eyed and says, "Do you have it?"
I tried to stone-face it, I really did, but instead I busted up in girlish giggles and couldn't look at him. He stared at me for a second, then chuckled and threw in his hand. We were buddies from there on in. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Straight outta Compton... 1958 | | Time: | 05:36 pm |
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| For all y'all who think nobody rocked before you were born...
Larry is about 10 here. Lorrie is 14 or 15. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Whew! | | Time: | 06:07 pm |
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| Well, it's not quite done -I will still have plenty of rewriting to do in the coming weeks - but I just turned in the final scripts of the biggest, craziest writing project of my career.
In the last five days I wrote the last five Kamen Rider - Dragon Knight scripts - the last five out of a total of 40.
Over the past year I:
-Plotted the series from start to finish.
-Replotted it several times when budget or time constraints forced changes.
-Wrote 17 of the 40 episodes.
-Polished all the rest.
-Rewrote them all several times when budget or time constraints forced changes.
-Generally felt like a puppet in a high wind.
Yes I am bragging. I'm proud of having been able to do the work and live up to the responsibility (I hope I did) that the producers gave me. I am also quite ready to never do it again. I am looking forward to going back to writing nice, tidy little novels that don't have to be rewritten because, "We can't afford to have four motorcycles in the same shot."
Next week, I'll be getting down to plotting out my next Warhammer books and taking a bit of a rest. It will be so nice to see the outside of my apartment again. | | comments: 16 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | More sharp-edged goodness | | Time: | 02:53 pm |
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| Jake Powning has a new sword up on his site. It went up yesterday.
Doh, I was going to say you should buy it quick, as at only $9500 Canadian it was going to go fast, but... too late. It sold already.
Ah well, we can still look, right? | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Goodbye Mr. Fraser | | Time: | 03:31 pm |
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| One of my heroes, George MacDonald Fraser has died. He was the author of the Flashman novels and many other excellent books.
The world has lost a great writer and one of it's finest curmudgeons. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Happy Holidays | | Time: | 02:15 pm |
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| | 2007 was a good if busy year for me, and I am thankful for the work and all my friends, who listened with patience as I fretted about it all year long. Happy holidays to you all, and a fulfilling, stressless new year as well! | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Elfslayed II | | Time: | 02:40 am |
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| Four days late, and a bit too long, but it's done. I have no idea at this point if it's good, bad, or just strange. A few weeks away from it and some feedback will probably help.
Time to go collapse. | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
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LONG STORIES/a pulp circum vitae
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