Category Archives: Entertainment

Entertainment, Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

Free Space Opera / SF Novella

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For a limited time, I’m giving away free copies of the first novella of my Renegades series. For the next five days, if you use the coupon code MG57A when you check out, you can get Renegades: Deserter’s Redemption for free from Smashwords (link).

Mike doesn’t want to be anyone’s friend. He doesn’t want to be a leader. He sure doesn’t want to be a hero. He’s tried all of that before; it didn’t work out then and he knows it wouldn’t work out now.

He doesn’t have a choice.

Caught by an invading alien race and shipped off to a prison station as (expendable) labor, Mike will have to become all of those things in order to escape. More, he’ll have to turn a band of misfits into a group that can not only survive… but escape from a place where survival is measured in hours. In the doing, he may have to do the one thing he knows will get him killed: learn how to trust.

Entertainment, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Society

Thor: Dark World Review

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I’ll preface this by commenting that I grew up on action and even a few comic book movies… but I never read comic books. So while I’m sure there are some diehard comic book fans who know far more about Thor than me, well, that’s fine. I’m reviewing this as a movie, and also as part of the series of movies that Marvel has done.

Disclaimer aside, I really enjoyed Thor: The Dark World. It was fun, exciting and adventurous. Better yet, the previews, for once, didn’t give the whole movie away. The movie had an irreverent sense of humor, epic scope and felt almost more like space opera than a comic book movie. Which is good, because I’m awful sick of the ‘dark gritty’ feel I’ve gotten from some comic book movies of late (Batman and Superman, I’m looking at you).

I’ll do a quick rundown of things I liked first, and I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers. First off, the characters. We got to see a different side of Thor, Loki, and the ‘mere’ mortals who run around in their circles. We got to see Thor planning and thinking, rather than just smashing. We saw Loki and some of his other motivations… and just how twisted his brain can be. There was some character development for Jane Foster, we got to see the long term effects of Loki’s mind control of Doctor Selvig, and we even got to see the indomitable Odin affected by events.

As far as the plot, things worked along at a pretty reasonable pace. There were plot twists, and changes and all manner of transitions. Thankfully, the movie didn’t try to overwhelm. I would say the best plot twists are those used in marketing. The trailers often suggested certain things to happen, yet they didn’t happen quite the way you might expect. In fact, some of the trailers set up false expectations which I really enjoyed during the movie, because when I got to those points, I had context and I realized that I didn’t know what was going to happen from the trailers. In fact, I had to figure things out during the movie.

As far as the actual effects and visuals… I found it interesting. I would not watch it in 3D if I saw it again (which I might). The 3D graphics were sort of meh. The overal visual effects were pretty good, though I would say that they made some parts of Asgard less grand in scale and other parts much bigger. I thought the overall looks of the movie were very impressive, and I never felt like the plot or any particular scenes happened just to show of some new special effect.

As far as the emotional impact, this movie managed to generate excitement, happiness, laughter, sadness, and even a sense of wonder. That’s pretty good for a superhero movie. In fact, they managed a couple scenes that were both beautiful and sad, which I found impressive. I’ve heard some complaints about the humor being buffonery of certain characters, but I’d disagree. In the context of how they presented the characters, it was at least internally consistant. Besides, they managed to produce the humor without undercutting the principle characteristics of those characters. The humor, the irreverence, kept this movie from feeling pretentious, and showed the audience that it wasn’t afraid to laugh at itself a little.

I continue to be impressed by how Marvel has both handled the individual movies of their series and also how they have continued to build the franchise. They’ve planned how these movies connect and yet managed to make them stand effectively alone. They’re big, blockbuster movies, but they’re fun, and they go into all of them with goals and plans of what they want to attain. It’s a refreshing change for movies, rather than how most sequels are “quick, milk the franchise for all the money we can!”

Entertainment, Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

My National Write a Novel Month Writing Goals

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Just a quick update on my National Write a Novel Month Writing Goals, or since the whole endeavor seems rather enamored of acronyms: NaNoWriMoWriGo.  And if you can say that out loud without giggling, you might have something wrong with you.

My goals for this coming month are to complete four stories.  The first is a novella in the Renegades series, Out of the Cold.  It covers the arrival of the crew to inhabited human space… and some of their misadventures.  The next one is Renegades: Assassin.  The one after that is an as-yet untitled Renegades story from Pixel’s perspective.  Last, I want to complete Renegades: Privateer.  All told, the writing goal for November is around 130k words.

On top of this, I’m continuing to edit several novels and novellas for self-publishing.  Next one to come is another Renegades novella, with (hopefully) The Fallen Race, my first full length self-published novel, to come before December.  We shall see.  I’ll also have a bit more free fiction available, to include a background short story of one of the more interesting characters from Renegades: Run the Chxor.  That one will be out in the next few days.

Thanks for reading!

Entertainment, Fantasy, Reading, Science Fiction, Society, Writing

Urban Fantasy

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It's easy to imagine the extraordinary when superimposed on the ordinary...
It’s easy to imagine the extraordinary when superimposed on the ordinary…

Urban fantasy is, at its root, a mishmash of a variety of genres.  The typical urban fantasy author often combines one or more genres of fiction with fantasy in their story.  The fun of urban fantasy stories often lies in the contrast between the ordinary and the extraordinary.  Wizards duke it out with magic and bullets, Police investigate supernatural crimes, and elves drink Miller Lite and watch Nascar.   The possibilites are limitless, especially when the stories can be told in so many ways.  Supernatural Romance, Paranormal Investigation, Zombie Apocalpyse, even Superpower Crime Noir novels are all under the broad catagory of Urban Fantasy.  As a market, the genre has been extremely successful, from the Harry Potter series to Twilight, there has been far more mainstream appeal to Urban Fantasy than other aspects of Science Fiction or Fantasy.

Why is that?  Well, there’s a number of reasons.  Honestly, one of the big ones is that it’s easier for the average person to get into.  They don’t have to try to memorize funny names for people or places, they don’t have to figure out some other world.  The setting is someplace they’ve heard of, maybe even lived in.  The events and history, while different in the particulars, are the same history that they learned in school.  Sure, magic might be a smaller or greater effect in that history, but these little changes often are part of the charm.  What if the Kaiser used necromancers in World War I to raise zombie hordes such as in Larry Correia’s Grimnoir Chronicles?  What if the Red Vampires secretly seduce and abduct thousands of people across the country as in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files?  It doesn’t change how the main course of history went, and society, places, and events are still the same.  This makes it easy for the average person to pick up a book for casual reading.

Another reason that Urban Fantasy novels tend to be so popular is that they’ve gotten their hooks into this generation.  Many kids grew up with Harry Potter, and now that they’re adults, urban fantasy seems relatively mainstream.  They read these types of books, they’ve seen the movies, they are ready to suspend their disbelief that magic exists in secret.  The resurgence of general media such as Warehouse 13, Doctor Who, and others has also encouraged this.  These are shows that amplify the paranormal, and put out logical reasons for the existance of the supernatural.  These shows are also extremely popular because they encourage such imagination and questions of ‘what if.’

Another reason for the popularity, urban fantasy stories often provide characters that the readers can easily identify with.  A soccer mom makes an easy person to relate to, she drives a minivan, picks her kids up from school, films her daughter’s softball game, and happens to channel the powers of light to slay demons such as in John Ringo’s Princess of Wands.  It is an easy buy-in for a reader.  A private investigator who helps out the police now and again could be the character in almost any standard fiction story.  When that story’s character happens to be best friends with a twenty thousand year old vampire who is the lone survivor of Atlantis such as Ryk Spoor’s Digital Knight, the story becomes interesting to say the least.  Yet everyone has the odd friend or two, so this isn’t something that would totally confuse a new reader.

Of interest to me, both as an author and a reader, urban fantasy often acts as a gateway genre to more traditional fantasy books.  Readers sometimes really like the ideas and concepts and so they’ll dive a little deeper into the overall broader fantasy genre.  Also, writers who have made their break in urban fantasy often branch out into other areas, such as Jim Butcher with his Codex Alera series.  Sometimes it works the otherway, such as with John Ringo, who wrote Princess of Wands after he established an extensive science fiction bibliography.

Overall, there are a number of excellent books that I’d recommend.  Urban Fantasy is an exciting and fun genre of books to read, and there are plenty of books to check out.  Off hand, I recommend: Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series, John Ringo’s Princess of Wands, and a few others in the Books I’d Recommend section.

  

Entertainment, Reading, Science, Science Fiction, Writing

Characterization Case Study: Gravity

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originalThe best way to study characterization and plot is to look at examples, both good and bad, and to note what worked and what didn’t.  I’m going to do a quick case study of the recent movie Gravity.  It’s an interesting movie that (due to a very small cast and a rather linear plot) can be analyzed with relative ease.  As a quick disclaimer: this is not a movie review and it will hold some spoilers.  As a secondary disclaimer: I enjoyed the movie, the music, special effects, science and plot were all relatively well grounded and a lot of fun… but I’m going to dissect the characters in the movie as examples of good and bad characterization. 

First things first, a look at characterization.  There are really only two characters in the movie: Stone and Kowalski.  The movie does an excellent job right away to establish Kowalski as a cowboy, right down to his music selection as he bounces around the hubble telescope on his EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit).  He’s excited to be where he is, cocky, and clearly knows what he’s doing.  Throughout the rest of his (brief) stint in opening part of the movie, this is all we really see of Kowalski.  Stone on the other hand, is more difficult to characterize.  At first, she is totally focused on her work.  Later when things begin to go wrong, she panics.  We learn that she doesn’t want to die, that she is afraid, and that she really doesn’t seem to like space.

This last was the part that broke characterization for me.  The way things are now, if someone isn’t totally dedicated and driven to become an astronaut, they won’t even stand a chance.  It doesn’t matter what your background is or how important your mission, you can always train someone else.  There are millions of applicants and countless intelligent people willing to learn whatever skills it takes to go to space, they won’t want someone who doesn’t want to be there.

But then Kowalski shows up to save Stone.  The two learn that they are the only survivors from the shuttle and both deal with it in their own ways.  Kowalski becomes professional and reverts to an almost military mode.  From the perspective of characterization, this is excellent.  We see the other side of a character, and we see that his cowboy persona is just one facet of a more complex person.  Stone just sort of shuts down.  She says that she’s low on oxygen, she doesn’t volunteer any information, and at several points, tells Kowalski that he should leave her, that she’s slowing him down.  This, frankly, makes her character seem rather dull.  In the initial panic and worry of the disaster, we are immediately sympathetic to her character.  She is adrift and struggles to survive, we want to root for her.  Her giving up after being found and rescued by Kowalski gives away a lot of that initial viewer sympathy.  No one likes a quitter, and the apathy that she begins to show about her own death makes her character seem very bland and hard to identify with.

Then, in typical survival mode, Kowalski asks Stone about where she is from, if she has anyone who waits for her back home, if she likes her job and what she does after work.  This is the perfect moment in a book for the viewer to identify with a character.  You learn about the details of their life, the things that guided them and shaped them.  The scene could not have been framed better, with only the two characters, tethered by a single cable and with the entire Earth as a backdrop.  Literally, they’re the only two people who exist, with no other distractions… and Stone takes a right turn to depression.  Stone doesn’t have a family, she had a daughter who died in an accident.  She apparently doesn’t have parents, siblings, or any romantic interest at all either.  In fact she seems to have no reason to go on living.  She concludes her brief explanation with a statement that she ‘just drives.’  She seems to be a woman with no reason left to live… so why exactly is she in space?  Please, tell me that her device would prevent future falling accidents such as the one that killed her daughter or cure cancer or at least give her some goal or drive to base her life upon.  Give me something, I want to root for these characters.  They’re in a disaster with miniscule odds of survival, I want to think that their lives mean something.

The two characters reach their destination, but in true movie fashion, the EMU (rather like a jetpack) runs out of fuel in the last seconds.  The two tumble and scramble for a hold, and in the end, Stone is tangled in some line attached to the station and Kowalski is attached to Stone by the tether.  Of course, the cables are slipping and there is too much mass for the friction of the cables to overcome.  Kowalski says that he’s going to cut himself loose, and explains to Stone what she’ll have to do to survive.  This is a pivotal moment in both character’s story arcs.  The cowboy/professional mission commander sacrifices himself (showing yet another side of himself) while the frightened and confused Doctor Stone has to come out and shine, to find her internal strength and succeed despite the odds.  Frankly, I think it was a bit heavy-handed.  The scene could have played out more true to Kowalski’s character if done in a split-second decision, rather than as it played out… a long and agonizing moment for Stone.  They did it more for plot reasons than characterization, I think.  They set up Stone without the tools to survive so they wanted Kowalski to give her those.  Given the amount of time they had, and the way they established Kowalski’s character, I think it more likely he would have attempted something dramatic to save them both.  However, clearly the story they wanted to explore was Stone’s growth, even if Kowalski was the more interesting character.

Stone then follows Kowalski’s guidance.  As an added threat, besides the debris that moves faster than any Earth-bound bullet, the station catches fire.  Because, really, Stone needed something to get her to get moving again.  Stone begins step two of three towards her return to earth and then discovers that her ride to the next stop is out of fuel.  This would be a perfect time for her to show her internal strength and that drive to survive.  Instead, she tries to reach someone, anyone, for help.  In the end, after a tearful conversation with some chinese guy with a dog and a baby, she decides that she doesn’t want to wait another ninety minutes for the debris to hit her yet again, she’ll just turn down the air and go to sleep.

Okay, I’m sorry, but while the plot of the movie had me hooked, at this point I just stopped caring about the character of Doctor Stone.  She has no family, no goals, no dreams, no ambition… she’s survived to this point because she doesn’t want to die and because someone we did care about sacrificed himself so that she would have a chance.  Honestly, I come back to the whole question: why is Doctor Ryan Stone here in space and who chose the hardest person in the world to identify with to be the survivor?

Cue the return of Mission Commander Kowalski.  His snarky comments and upbeat words breathe some life into Stone just before the obvious reveal that he was a figment of her subconscious as her brain shut down from lack of oxygen.  Luckily, she realizes she does have a way to survive after all, and goes about it.  She seems to have decided to live because Kowalski wanted her to, which in itself is something, at least.  Do it for the dead guy, it works in sports movies for a reason, and it at least gives us a reason why the lone survivor doesn’t just die.

As far as characterization, that concludes the entire movie.  We get a brief moment at the end where Stone stands up on the beach, somewhere on Earth and walks away.  This seems more a statement of survival than anything more profound.  In fact, the character of Doctor Stone doesn’t really seem to draw any closure.  She survives, which closes out the plot, but we don’t have any way to see what she has become, or even if she has changed at all.  What will drive her, after her survival, what will she do and who will she become afterwards?  These question remain unanswered, which, as a viewer I would find supremely irritating… except I really didn’t care at that point.  Stone was just the point of view for the ride, and I could walk away without any of those questions being answered.

Hopefully my fellow writers can take away some lessons from this.  I know I did, the biggest being that if you create a character that doesn’t care about themselves… your audience wont either.  That doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a disaster, but the rest of your product, book, movie or game, will have to make up for that in other areas.

Entertainment, Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

Renegades: The Gentle One now available on Amazon!

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RGO Cover

My new Novella, Renegades: The Gentle One is now available from Amazon and coming soon to Smashwords (and then to various other outlets).    Renegades: The Gentle One is a 35,000 word novella and is the sequel to Renegades: Deserter’s Redemption and the continuation of the Renegades serial.  Read below for the description.

Ariadne has built her life around being a good person. She thinks positive, she tries to help people, and she never gets angry. The last is especially important, because Ariadne is a psychic, and bad things can happen if a psychic loses control of her emotions. 

The problem is, Ariadne and her friends are on the run from an expansionist alien race. As an escapee from a prison station, she’s been marked for death, and the only way out of the star system is to hijack a ship. With limited supplies, powerful enemies, and companions whose trustworthiness is questionable, her enemies seem almost assured of victory. Ariadne is going to have to do the one thing she’s sworn never to do again… 

She’s got to get angry.

Get it here from Amazon

Get it here from Smashwords, and coming soon to other outlets.

Entertainment, Fantasy, Reading, Writing

The Evolution of Fantasy

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Fantasy as a genre has its origins in the myths and legends of ancient times.  These myths are often seen as primitive man’s attempts to explain the unexplainable.  Yet in modern times, we have explainations for almost everything… so why the interest in such things?  Personally, I think it is some attempt by us to recreate some of the mystery.  Some people turn to tabloids and conspiracy theories to spin wild tales… and the more mentally stable of us look to spin wild stories in other worlds.  But… I digress.  For this entry, I’ll go into a brief history of the genre of fantasy, talk a bit about some of the current trends of Epic Fantasy I’ve seen as a reader and a writer, and then write a bit about where I see the genre is headed.  I’ll also recommend some authors whose works I think are worthy of checking out.

The first ‘real’ fantasy authors included Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs who pioneered the field.  Tolkien and Robert E Howard’s many stories broadened it and yet opened it out into two very different areas.   Tolkien’s works gained more wide-stream attention, for a number of reasons, but Robert Howard’s various works still maintain a substantial following.  Other authors like C.S. Lewis and Lloyd Alexander also had their parts.  These earlier authors often featured themes of good versus evil and heroes whose journeys and quests caused profound changes upon their worlds.  The overall themes and concepts tended to be heroes doing good things (or in the case of Conan, living by a barbarian code) as well as the tendency to reject technology and industrialism.  This was the general theme for the more popular and lasting epic and high fantasy for a while.  This changed somewhat with authors like Terry Brooks and David Eddings, who wrote less idealized stories, and more morally ambiguous characters.  Terry Goodkind, George RR Martin, Harry Turtledove and Robert Jordan led the way in the 1990’s with a host of epic fantasy series.  Fantasy became mainstream almost overnight, and the current round of epic fantasy began.  These authors virtually cast the mold for the ‘ideal’ Epic Fantasy series, with overnight blockbusters that continue to sell twenty plus years later.

That leads us into the current setting for Epic Fantasy, with my topic being about the current trends.  The changes brought on by the surge in readership in the 1990’s is still seen.  Authors like George RR Martin continue to sell books in the millions, have TV shows or movies, and have a massive fan base.  Their writing often includes morally ambiguous characters, convoluted plots, and severe, often drastic consequences for the characters as a consequence of their actions.  The pioneers of these types of books are often extremely proficient at both storytelling and manipulation of the reader’s emotions.  A disturbing trend, as I see it, is flood of books and authors who are not up to those standards.  The Epic Fantasy surge has led to dozens of series that come across as formulaic or rote.  There are a wide variety that follows the Campbellian Monomyth to the letter.  They have the main character on the Hero’s Journey.  They have the love interest.  They have the morally ambiguous companion/guide.  They have the mentor.  These stories check off all of the boxes, but they lack the passion and creativity of their predecessors.  Some authors have tried to replace that passion with grittiness or realism.  They often use anti-heroes or simply use lesser villains as the heroes (which can work, if done well) who turn the theme still darker and more ponderous.  In the rush to make money, fantasy has become exactly what we seek to avoid in real life: boring.  Other writers have sought to do something new or bold by changing the rules: fantasy worlds without magic or magic systems that work in some new or innovative way.  Yet I think in the roots, Fantasy started as escapism, a rejection of the world, if only for a short time, and a means to explore the imagination.  The trend of books that I’ve seen are book after book churned out by the big publishing houses, each looking for that next Robert Jordan or George RR Martin.  To me, at least as a reader, that gets old.  Fantasy, by its nature, is something that thrives on new and interesting, which is one reason we’ve seen the shift to urban fantasy around the turn of the century and more recently the expansion of steampunk.  Epic Fantasy has become too dark and too boring to be the inspiration to imagination it once was.

So what do I see in the future of epic fantasy?  As a genre, I think it hasn’t changed enough in recent times.  I think that new authors and new ideas will soon force it to change.   Evolution is a natural thing and something that will help that evolution along is the self-publishing market.  The variety of books that have become available means that new ideas and new blood is bound to shake things up.  Traditional publishing has stuck to what worked (which makes sense, they’re in the business of making money), but individuals, if they want to stand out, can’t afford to do that.  As a whole, I think we’ll see a lot of new ideas and concepts and hopefully some big changes overall in the market.

As a reference, here’s some authors and their books, both old and new, that are worth looking into for Epic Fantasy:

Robert Howard’s Conan series

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

David Eddings’ Belgariad

Terry Brooks’s Sword of Shannara

Ryk Spoor’s Phoenix Rising

Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time

Lloyd Alexander’s Prydan series

David Weber’s Oath of Swords

Entertainment, Reading, Science Fiction, Writing

Building Strong Characters

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One of my goals for writing characters is to develop them to the point that they feel real to the reader. Story can be interesting, but strong characters are what the reader ends up caring about. An excellent character will keep a reader coming back, again and again… and the victories and defeats of those characters are what bring out the most emotion in the reader. Flat characters are a crime that few authors can redeem themselves from. Flat characters are boring, trite, and often cliché. So how does one develop strong characters?

Strong characters feel like real people, sometimes more real that people we might interact with or deal with on a daily basis (trust me, I’ve had roommates with less personality than Master Harper Robinton from Anne McCaffery’s Pern series or Polgara from David Eddings’ Belgariad). What exactly does feeling real entail, though? I define it by several areas. First off, they typically have some defining character traits. Second, strong characters have a history, a place where they come from. Third, they have a morality (or lack thereof) that is coherent and based upon their origins. Fourth, strong characters experience joy, anger, love, and heartache just like real people. Last and most important strong characters make decisions based off of their emotions, experiences, and morality.

Character traits are often what define a character to the reader at first glance. These are often the most memorable things about them, and are often the things that pop into mind. Han Solo was a cocky and self centered rogue (he shot first!). Doc, from ‘Back to the Future’, was absent minded and excitable. Character traits are often established early on, typically in the first time the reader meets the character. It helps to make these traits memorable, as a writer, because this makes the character stand out in their mind more. Traits, however, are just a starting point. They create a character that has some resonance to them, but if that isn’t followed through, the character will seem hollow. A hollow character might be better than a flat one, but it robs the reader of the pay off of emotions as the character fails to grow over time and their experiences.

History and past play a huge role in our lives as people. It should be no less important for characters. As a writer, often I develop characters based off of the setting and their place in it. From the society and their place in it, I can develop what things they will find important, what their areas of expertise and knowledge might be. A character raised in the slums of a dystopian future might well view morality through a different lens than your typical 21st Century American. Beyond there, I typically dive into family (or lack thereof), which is often more important than society, and indeed, can alter things significantly. That same character raised in the slums might be the son of a missionary, who grew up treating the sick and injured…. Suddenly he might not be the callus killer. Throw in some life events, such as the death of his mother or the discovery that he was adopted and his adoptive parents never told him. These experiences change who he is, and will have effects upon how he acts.

Morality is often based upon the experiences of people. Morally upright characters can be vastly complicated or totally boring, whereas morally bankrupt characters can be highly entertaining or nauseating. Part of this is perspective and experience. A character who has a twisted sense of morals because of hi s experiences is understandable. He or she may frustrate a reader, but the moral code they follow will at least make sense. The same follows for a character with a comprehensive and solid code of ethics. What will drive me as a reader absolutely crazy is when there is a character whose morality doesn’t make sense. Characters who are bad because it’s cool or fun or the honorable street urchin are anomalies… and unless an author has a legitimate reason why, they quickly become an irritation. Even worse are characters with no defined or inconsistent morality. A character who will shoot a man in the back in one scene and yet fights an honorable duel in another would be incoherent without some background or logic behind his actions. A writer has a burden to show the reasoning and logic behind the characters’ decisions.

Emotion is the next crucial part of a strong character. A character who doesn’t experience emotion is boring, regardless of how many explosions or how interesting the setting might be. One of the best examples of this is from the movie Red Sonya. The main character’s sister — her only surviving family – dies in her arms in the opening part of the movie. Red Sonya then says something to the effect of “This is terrible, drops her sister’s corpse, and stalks off to exact her revenge. For a close knit family, the death of a family member is a powerfully emotional event. This event was supposed to drive Red Sonya to exact her revenge. This isn’t to say that the character should have fallen to pieces, but some small signs can go a long way to establishing the emotional toll of such an event. An excellent positive example of this is from Saving Private Ryan, where Tom Hank’s character, after the Invasion of Normandy, goes to open a canteen and his hands are shaking so much as to make it nearly impossible. This shows that, despite his calm demeanor, he is barely holding it together, and mostly doing so for his men. A show of such emotional turmoil and yet strength immediately establishes his character as someone who feels real. Later on, when he makes decisions for his men, you can see that emotional turmoil is there behind those decisions, at war with his moral code and his defining character traits.

The last crucial part of strong characters is the decisions they make and, as a writer, ensuring those decisions are in line with the character. A character who makes decisions out of line with his morality, emotions and experiences is not a strong character. A character who has his emotions and experiences at odds with his morality is complex and interesting. Difficult decisions are what life is about, and the important decisions are always complex. An important thing to note here is that sometimes the characters don’t make the right decisions. Sometimes their morality or emotions or experiences drive them to make the wrong decision. In those cases, it is often a flaw, sometimes a tragic flaw. This should not be the norm, in my opinion. Authors like George R. Martin make their living by having characters make bad decisions on an almost constant basis. Don’t get me wrong, it’s interesting reading, but as a reader, it frustrates me to the point that I give up. Good people make bad decisions sometimes, it happens in real life, and it happens in stories. Bad people make good decisions too, sometimes, which I find far more interesting.

The decisions that characters make often define them. These cause new experiences and produce new emotions that in turn, drive character growth and development. And the next step past making a strong character is to make that character grow as he progresses through the story. That’s a topic for another day. In the meantime, what is a strong character that you really liked and what were their defining traits?

Entertainment, Writing

‘The Shark Boats’ snippet

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This is a snippet from my new novel ‘The Shark Boats’, available in full from Amazon.com . Enjoy…

The Chang Kai-Shek and the Franco rounded the stubby cape on their starboard, and John deKuyper gazed into hell. No more than two miles away, the heavy cruiser and a light cruiser sat bombarding the shore. Their guns were raised – it’ll take time to lower them, thank God – but they were surrounded by three escort ships, arranged in a rough triangle. The escorts were firing their own guns up at wherever Reiner was.

So many guns were firing so continuously that, now the noise barrier of the cape was gone, the roar was deafening. The whole area was shrouded in dull grey smoke, and every couple of seconds a flaming red burst erupted from one or another of the ships’ guns.

Holy hell, deKuyper thought. And Reiner’s in the middle of that, along with Quintillian and the others.

That thought made what he was about to do seem rational.

“Go! Go! Go!” he yelled into the radio mike for Fordham’s benefit.

The Chang’s RPM needle hit the far side of the dial as the boat surged forwards. To his right, the Franco was doing the same thing.

“Go for the big one,” deKuyper ordered. Shaking hard. “Kill it!”

I can’t do this. This is insane. This is bugfuck nuts. They must collectively have five hundred times our tonnage. A thousand times.

Orders were orders. Duty was duty. And they were already rocketing toward the heavy cruiser at what the gauge said was forty-eight knots.

Ahead, the enemy ships had noticed their presence. The big cruiser was starting to move, well within a mile and a half’s distance now. Guns were starting to swivel down.

Instinct, not thought, singled out the nearest destroyer as the worst threat. Smaller guns would de-elevate faster and they’d have to pass right by the thing. But couldn’t waste torpedoes on it. Facing the broad side of the cruiser, but the stern of the destroyer at about a twenty degree angle. About half a mile from the big cruiser – barely more than a mile from the two shark boats, and getting closer.

Can’t do anything. No. Can.

“Guns fire on the nearest destroyer! Distract and cripple her!” deKuyper shouted.

The fore gun crew began to aim. A burst of gunfire, over the still-deafening noise of the shore bombardment; deKuyper’s head whirled to the right. One of the Franco’s machine-gunners must have fired prematurely. Nerves, probably. Couldn’t blame him.

The destroyer’s stern guns were lowering.

They fired.

Boom. Boom, went explosions somewhere between deKuyper’s and Fordham’s boat. Huge noise. Waterspouts.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The corvette opened up. More gunfire.

They have shark boats of their own around here somewhere. How do we deal with those?

That’s what machine-guns are for. When we’ve finished raking the destroyer.

More waterspouts and explosions, all around the area.

BOOM.

One of the big cruiser’s fore guns fired. A huge waterspout rocked the Chang, a hundred yards ahead of it. deKuyper absently noticed that he was drenched. It didn’t matter.

“Oh God oh God oh God,” Kaye was muttering. He held on for dear life.

“Yee-haw!” Fordham’s voice came over the radio. “Ride `em, cowboy!”

Water everywhere. Waterspouts everywhere. Blazing muzzle-flashes. Thrumming engines. For a moment deKuyper’s view coalesced into a burning conceptual gestalt of fire and noise.

Get out of it, John!

It was hard. It was easier to view the spectacle absently.

Snap the fuck out of it or you’re going to die!

Groggily, he fought himself back to his senses. Gripped the wheel again. Kaye had leaned over in the meantime – how long had it been? A few seconds, probably – to hold the boat steady.

He nodded a thanks without looking up at the young officer.

They were within probably four hundred yards of the destroyer. The Franco fired its cannon, and deKuyper realized he had one of his own.

“Fire, damnit!” he shouted. Somehow the two-man crew heard him above the roaring of the engines and the constant rolling thunder of the big ships’ guns. Above the clattering din of heavy-caliber machine-gun fire, both incoming and outgoing now.

His lead gunner made a final calibration and fired. An explosion bloomed amidst the aft battery of the destroyer.

Somebody cheered.

The aft battery fired as though nothing had happened.

This one’s dead on, thought deKuyper. Swerved the boat – realizing that he could swerve the boat.

The destroyer’s shell exploded within ten yards of the Franco. The blast rocked the boat sideways, almost throwing Kaye out of the cockpit. The second lieutenant had drawn his pistol and was holding on with only his left hand. He fired the pistol at the destroyer. The noise was unnoticeable amongst the massive general din of guns and engines and exploding shells, but the hot brass casing landed squarely on deKuyper’s bare forearm. Minor stinging pain.

The engines of the boat, pushed past their redlined maximum, kicked deKuyper’s backside like the mechanical bull he’d once tried riding on a dare.

They began to pass the destroyer. The Franco swerved right, the Chang Kai-Shek to the left.

“Eat lead, you commie sons of bitches!” Fordham yelled, as both shark boats’ quad fifties raked the destroyer’s decks. The Franco’s cannon boomed, the shell punching a hole clean through the side of the destroyer, which was turning, turning so that both fore and aft guns could go into action.

Incoming fire. A bullet scored a deep line along the top of the control panel, missing deKuyper by inches. Other rounds were striking home on the deck, punching right through the light wood surface. One of the Chang’s gun crew was wounded but trying to load a shell anyway, right arm clasped to an obviously hurting side while he helped his partner manhandle the three-inch shell into the breech.

A triple array of explosions followed by waterspouts. Three of the big eight-inchers firing nearly simultaneously and landing at about the same place, seventy or eighty yards ahead of the two zigagging shark boats. The destroyer was behind them, now – chasing them, it looked like to deKuyper when he glanced back.

No damn time to worry about the destroyer. The cruiser was their objective. Easily within a mile now. Slowly picking up speed.

Wasn’t sure how much range these torpedoes had. Theoretically they were good for up to five miles. deKuyper had heard the same rumors everyone else had heard about that.

Now? Then we can break away?

No. He only had one run at this. Better make it count.

“Stop zagging at half a mile when I do,” he told Fordham. “Straight run and fire when I give the signal.”

“Straight run? They’ll zero in on us and blow us to pieces!”

“They’ll probably do that anyway,” deKuyper yelled back without thinking. “You want it to count or not?”

More shells. Waterspouts. Three quarters of a mile. Five eighths.

Half a mile.

The Franco exploded like a matchbox stuffed with gelignite. Splinters of wood and metal flew everywhere, propelled outwards by a big blazing fireball.

Oh, fuck.

No chance to run now, even if he wanted to. Maybe there’d never been a chance.

“Ready torpedoes!”

They’d just have to do the job with two rather than four. He aimed the Chang amidships of the cruiser.

Kaye fired his pistol again, and again. Another bit of hot brass stung deKuyper’s left forearm. He flinched, and the boat swerved to the starboard a fraction.

“Will you fucking quit that?” he yelled at Kaye.

Kaye nodded, shouted something inaudible of his own, and emptied the rest of his pistol’s magazine at the cruiser.

The torpedomen probably couldn’t hear deKuyper either. Oh, shit. They were readying their torpedoes anyway. They knew from training what going dead straight, this close to a target, meant.

He just hoped they’d know when to fire.

They did. Fifty feet into the run the torpedoes slipped off their racks and slid into the water. deKuyper saw their trails begin to lance towards the big cruiser, but he didn’t have time for more than a glance. He was swinging the Chang away, turning her in a wide arc to get as far the hell from the rest of the fleet as possible. One of the destroyers was coming around the bow of the big cruiser.

The second destroyer’s guns fired. Waterspouts close, so close that they rocked the Chang hard, tipping forty-five degrees to port. Kaye was thrown loose and his .45 went flying overboard. The fore gun crew lost the shell they’d been reloading.

Bullets raked the Chang from somewhere – a lucky burst, deKuyper hoped, and no more than that. Through the din of the gunfire he heard someone scream.

Zig-zagging away. Then an explosion. A big one, with an overpressure wave. He turned his head for a moment – saw a fireball blooming above the aft section of the cruiser. Secondary explosions seemed to be happening.

They have shark boats around. Time to get the hell out before they arrive. Surprising they haven’t already.

He hit the throttle harder.

If you like what you’ve read here, you can get the full thing at http://www.amazon.com/The-Shark-Boats-ebook/dp/B00EZHY8S4 .