You can hop on over to my Figment page and read the beginning of Summer's End right now. Click the cover to go see it!
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Summer's End Preview
The release of Summer's End is still a couple of weeks away, but because I think you're just so damned great, I'm going to give you a preview of what's coming!
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Pre-Order Summer's End Now! Right now!
Time for an exciting announcement!
My new book, Summer's End is available for pre-order right now!
My new book, Summer's End is available for pre-order right now!
Summer's End is a detective novella. Writing a detective story is something I have wanted to do for years and has always been a difficult task for me. But I finally managed it and it will be coming to an e-reader type device near your face very soon!
I'll now take questions from the audience.
Can I buy this right now?
Yes you can! But you can't read it yet. Summer's End is currently available for pre-order and will be officially released on September 5. That's the first Monday in September and is approximately two weeks away.
Why pre-order?
Because they're fashionable? No, really, the reason is mostly technical. Right now you can pre-order Summer's End from Amazon and from Smashwords (links at the bottom) and it will be available from other ebook stores progressively.
You called it a novella. What's a novella?
A novella is a short novel. Summer's End is about 20,000 words, which is too big to be called a short story but is only about a quarter or less the length of your average novel. It's comparable in length to something like Animal Farm. It's an underrated story telling format that I personally adore.
How much does it cost?
Right now, Summer's End will cost you $0.99. It will remain that price for about a week after release, then the price will go up. Right now it's super low because I'm a nice guy who wants you to give you a discount just for being awesome and reading my blog. Get in early!
What's it about?
Jonathan King is an aging Seattle private detective looking for a little rest and relaxation in the country. He wasn't looking for love, but on his first night in the small farming town of Madison he meets Summer Bell, the first woman to make Jonathan's heart beat in an age. But the next morning, Summer is found dead in her home.
An outsider and the last person seen with Summer alive, Jonathan is the prime suspect. Jonathan knows he can prove his innocence, but can he triumph over fear and corruption while dodging a hot headed deputy sheriff and a hard line FBI agent? With nothing but his cunning and the shirt on his back, time is running out for Jonathan to bring Summer's killer to justice and clear his name.
Where can I get it?
What's next?
If you click the Amazon link (and hey, why not pre-order while you're there?) you will no doubt notice that Summer's End is labeled as book 1 of the "Jonathan King mysteries." I already have two more novellas written to follow this one. They both need a lot of polish but I'm not done writing mysteries, just yet! I'm also not done with fantasy! In short, keep watching this space!
Saturday, August 20, 2016
But What About The Poor Unrepresented Majority
This is a quick follow-up to my last blog.
Last week we talked about representation, the importance of fiction and what sort of world we, as creators, want to present to the world. I've written about this a few times in recent memory, about people with special needs, about the spectrum of gender and people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. This stuff is important to me and it should be important to you.
But something that is raised whenever I board this train of thought is, well, what about real world demographics? What about actual population statistics. Say that I'm writing a story set in Australia, in the area I live, which I mentioned is mostly white, with a large number of people from Chinese descent, as well as Korean and Indian but very few people of African descent or South American descent represented in the local population. Shouldn't the story set in this area have a cast that represents that ethnic makeup of the population? Shouldn't my cast be mostly white and maybe a couple of Chinese characters? Isn't it conceivable that my story wouldn't include the full diverseity of the area?
What about people with mental illness? Special needs? Diverse gender and sexuality? What if my story is about lawyers? Most lawyers are men, so isn't it being realistic to have a cast mostly made up of men?
In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to have this conversation. In a perfect world, the great diversity of humanity in our world would be equally represented in the heroes of our fiction. The only reason we have to make a fuss and a focused effort to write better female (for example) characters in leading roles is because there is a historical absence of such characters. There's a lot of catching up to do. The women of the world deserve a representation they're not getting.
And not every story needs to be a rainbow of representation. Not every story needs to tick off a list of characters: Black, White, East Asian, Homosexual, Transgender, Woman in the cast. In fact, when you try do that, you often end up with token characters and that isn't as helpful as you might think. You might argue it's better than nothing, but we can do better than tokens and we should.
When we talk about better representation and more diversity, we're talking about across a larger body of work. If you want the main character of this story to be a straight white dude, cool, fine, there are straight white dudes in the world and nobody is asking them to be deprived of representation. But if you have written ten stories and each one has a straight white dude as a main character and a supporting cast mostly made up of other straight white dudes and maybe some straight white women from time to time, then there's a problem. You're not challenging your default thinking and you're creating worlds in which people are excluded.
And finally, reality is no reason to under-represent people. We're writing fiction. Anything is possible. Your world, your story, the characters - and anything speculative and beyond the normal like laser guns and werewolves - don't exist in reality. It's not the (fiction) writer's job to paint a realistic portrait of the world.
Like I always say: Truth should never get in the way of a good story.
Addendum:
So after I uploaded this blog, a good friend of mine asked me "What right do I have, as a straight while male, to try and tell the stories of people of colour or women?"
It is an excellent question. The short answer is that you don't have a right, you have a responsibility. I said that. But that short answer doesn't rally address the issue in question.
All of us, as creators, even the women and people of colour amongst us, have a responsibility to represent diversity in fiction. However, we also have a responsibility to be sensitive and respectful. Sometimes that is going to mean not writing from the perspective of a character you can't represent. I have no idea what it's like to be homosexual, growing up in the bible belt of America and I would not feel comfortable writing about that life experience. That is just too far outside my experience for me to approach the topic with the necessary sensitivity. Even though I am writing about an under-represented person, I'd be doing more harm than good.
But it's also possible to over-think it. You don't need to write a minority character in which their being a minority is the point of the story. There's room for that on the bookshelf, but there's room for so much more. Think about this: If you took the character of John McClane from Die Hard and made him Chinese-American but otherwise kept the movie and the character exactly the same, would Die Hard lose anything? Hell no. Would you need to add something more Chinese American about the character to justify the racial choice? Of course not, that's stupid. John McClane doesn't make a point of bringing up his Scottish ancestry through the film, he just kicks arse and takes names.
In my opinion, this is the simplest and maybe the best way to write diversity for most authors. Tell the same stories you love to tell, but diversify your characters.
Last week we talked about representation, the importance of fiction and what sort of world we, as creators, want to present to the world. I've written about this a few times in recent memory, about people with special needs, about the spectrum of gender and people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. This stuff is important to me and it should be important to you.
But something that is raised whenever I board this train of thought is, well, what about real world demographics? What about actual population statistics. Say that I'm writing a story set in Australia, in the area I live, which I mentioned is mostly white, with a large number of people from Chinese descent, as well as Korean and Indian but very few people of African descent or South American descent represented in the local population. Shouldn't the story set in this area have a cast that represents that ethnic makeup of the population? Shouldn't my cast be mostly white and maybe a couple of Chinese characters? Isn't it conceivable that my story wouldn't include the full diverseity of the area?
What about people with mental illness? Special needs? Diverse gender and sexuality? What if my story is about lawyers? Most lawyers are men, so isn't it being realistic to have a cast mostly made up of men?
In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to have this conversation. In a perfect world, the great diversity of humanity in our world would be equally represented in the heroes of our fiction. The only reason we have to make a fuss and a focused effort to write better female (for example) characters in leading roles is because there is a historical absence of such characters. There's a lot of catching up to do. The women of the world deserve a representation they're not getting.
And not every story needs to be a rainbow of representation. Not every story needs to tick off a list of characters: Black, White, East Asian, Homosexual, Transgender, Woman in the cast. In fact, when you try do that, you often end up with token characters and that isn't as helpful as you might think. You might argue it's better than nothing, but we can do better than tokens and we should.
When we talk about better representation and more diversity, we're talking about across a larger body of work. If you want the main character of this story to be a straight white dude, cool, fine, there are straight white dudes in the world and nobody is asking them to be deprived of representation. But if you have written ten stories and each one has a straight white dude as a main character and a supporting cast mostly made up of other straight white dudes and maybe some straight white women from time to time, then there's a problem. You're not challenging your default thinking and you're creating worlds in which people are excluded.
And finally, reality is no reason to under-represent people. We're writing fiction. Anything is possible. Your world, your story, the characters - and anything speculative and beyond the normal like laser guns and werewolves - don't exist in reality. It's not the (fiction) writer's job to paint a realistic portrait of the world.
Like I always say: Truth should never get in the way of a good story.
Addendum:
So after I uploaded this blog, a good friend of mine asked me "What right do I have, as a straight while male, to try and tell the stories of people of colour or women?"
It is an excellent question. The short answer is that you don't have a right, you have a responsibility. I said that. But that short answer doesn't rally address the issue in question.
All of us, as creators, even the women and people of colour amongst us, have a responsibility to represent diversity in fiction. However, we also have a responsibility to be sensitive and respectful. Sometimes that is going to mean not writing from the perspective of a character you can't represent. I have no idea what it's like to be homosexual, growing up in the bible belt of America and I would not feel comfortable writing about that life experience. That is just too far outside my experience for me to approach the topic with the necessary sensitivity. Even though I am writing about an under-represented person, I'd be doing more harm than good.
But it's also possible to over-think it. You don't need to write a minority character in which their being a minority is the point of the story. There's room for that on the bookshelf, but there's room for so much more. Think about this: If you took the character of John McClane from Die Hard and made him Chinese-American but otherwise kept the movie and the character exactly the same, would Die Hard lose anything? Hell no. Would you need to add something more Chinese American about the character to justify the racial choice? Of course not, that's stupid. John McClane doesn't make a point of bringing up his Scottish ancestry through the film, he just kicks arse and takes names.
In my opinion, this is the simplest and maybe the best way to write diversity for most authors. Tell the same stories you love to tell, but diversify your characters.
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Rethinking Your Natural Defaults
Fiction matters. Media matters.
There was some controversy recently about Matt Damon appearing as the hero in a film set in China during the Song dynasty. That's around the 10th century, a time when there was a historically notable absence of white Americans in China. Now there's a big conversation to be had about a film set in China about Chinese things having a white American hero. It's not a simple thing and it's a conversation that needs to be had.
And anybody who says "Relax, it's just a movie, it's not like it matters" is full of shit.
Full.
Of.
Shit.
I'm not here to talk about The Great Wall or the racial controversy around it.
I want to talk about some writing I was doing recently. Actually, it was world building. I was writing up some notes for a role-playing game. Setting details, plot hooks, important and interesting NPCs. Exciting stuff to you, I'm sure. I had grouped my important NPCs by categories like Business, Politics, Law Enforcement, Crime and so on. Within those categories, I wrote some notes on all the important people within the world. As I was working, I began to notice something a little off about my notes. I scrolled through all my important NPCs that I'd written up so far - organised crime bosses, police commissioner, two mayors, a business tycoon. After skimming over what I'd read, I noticed the problem.
All my important people were men.
All of them.
And with only a couple of exceptions, they had very white sounding names. The exceptions were a couple of characters of Chinese.
This happens a lot, regardless of whether I'm working on a role-playing game, a short story, a novel or whatever else. I have default modes of thinking that guide my creative endeavours. You don't need to be a genius to figure out where these come from, either. I live in a part of the world that is overwhelmingly white and if you live in this area and you're not white, you're statistically likely to be of Chinese descent.
This ethnic mix is my day to day reality. This is the world I see when I go outside.
But I also default to male and that's a little weirder. The world I see is not 90% male. I don't walk down the street and see a noticeable absence of women around me. And yet, male is my default. If I'm thinking up a character, I will automatically write them as male. Is it because I'm male? Does that tip the scales?
Let's go back to my game notes. I was writing about important non-player characters. These were the movers and shakers, the people with influence, the people who matter in my fictional world. They were 100% male. Not let's compare that to my day to day reality, the world that I see whenever I open my eyes, go outside, turn on the TV, listen to music. It should come as no surprise to you that I see a lot of men. Business leaders, political leaders, sports stars, popular musicians*, even criminals who make the news are largely male.** The people who shape the world are men. That's a pretty weird dissonance between population and power.
Well, yeah, obvious, right? Everybody knows that.
Right. So let's go back to fiction. Like I said before, fiction matters. We consume fiction in all kinds of media for a variety of reasons but there's always an element of escapism. Fiction offers us something we can't experience in our life. That might be adventure and excitement, it might be drama and romance, it might be sorrow. Whatever the case, we're stepping out of our life and into another life in another place to gain some form of fulfillment.
Now imagine that when you look around the world and see all the important and special people are, I don't know, foxes. Red foxes. You're not a red fox and maybe you can never be a red fox and, even if you could, you don't want to be a red fox. Now imagine that when you read a book or watch a movie, all the best characters are red foxes. Heroes and villains and even most of the supporting cast are all red foxes. You might get it into your head that unless you're a red fox, you can't be special or important. This is why fiction matters.
Yes, okay, we get that. This is nothing new. Hell, this isn't even new for me. I wrote about the importance of representation ages ago. Why are we here?
Well we've talked about the world, and my role-playing game notes. We've talked about why we consume fiction, why fiction is important and we've talked about red foxes. Now let's talk about you.
Just like me, you're going to have default ways of thinking. There's a good chance that your defaults are similar to or the same as mine. When you're being creative, those default ways of thinking are going to shape how you create. Your fictional world will automatically reflect your defaults. That wouldn't be a surprise. It is a problem, though.
It's not your fault, of course. It's the world around you and the life you live that shapes your defaults. You don't get to choose them. But you're still responsible for them. In fact, you're responsible for a lot. Fiction is important, remember? If you create fiction, then you're creating something important. You're taking on a responsibility, here. You've got to be aware of what you're saying with your fiction without actually saying it.
Are you reinforcing an inequality? Are you shutting people out? Are you creating a world where certain people don't exist and aren't welcome to exist?
You might not be. You might be. Maybe you don't know. If you don't know, then it's probably time you took a moment to stop and think about your defaults and, if those defaults aren't living up to your responsibility as a creator of fiction, start changing them.***
Fiction matters.
*Fun fact about me: I love glam metal. Take a look at the glam metal page on Wikipedia and count how many glam metal bands it talks about that are all men vs the ones that are all female. After you've done that, go listen to a Vixen album. Not to prove a point or anything, just because Vixen is awesome.
**Do you know where women do turn up in media? As victims, as wives to important men, as reporters talking to and about men, as co-stars, supporting cast and love interests to me.
***I'm happy to say that my game notes - which are a work in progress - now have a much better mix of gender and ethnicity. Also werewolves because werewolves, like Vixen, are awesome.
There was some controversy recently about Matt Damon appearing as the hero in a film set in China during the Song dynasty. That's around the 10th century, a time when there was a historically notable absence of white Americans in China. Now there's a big conversation to be had about a film set in China about Chinese things having a white American hero. It's not a simple thing and it's a conversation that needs to be had.
And anybody who says "Relax, it's just a movie, it's not like it matters" is full of shit.
Full.
Of.
Shit.
I'm not here to talk about The Great Wall or the racial controversy around it.
I want to talk about some writing I was doing recently. Actually, it was world building. I was writing up some notes for a role-playing game. Setting details, plot hooks, important and interesting NPCs. Exciting stuff to you, I'm sure. I had grouped my important NPCs by categories like Business, Politics, Law Enforcement, Crime and so on. Within those categories, I wrote some notes on all the important people within the world. As I was working, I began to notice something a little off about my notes. I scrolled through all my important NPCs that I'd written up so far - organised crime bosses, police commissioner, two mayors, a business tycoon. After skimming over what I'd read, I noticed the problem.
All my important people were men.
All of them.
And with only a couple of exceptions, they had very white sounding names. The exceptions were a couple of characters of Chinese.
This happens a lot, regardless of whether I'm working on a role-playing game, a short story, a novel or whatever else. I have default modes of thinking that guide my creative endeavours. You don't need to be a genius to figure out where these come from, either. I live in a part of the world that is overwhelmingly white and if you live in this area and you're not white, you're statistically likely to be of Chinese descent.
This ethnic mix is my day to day reality. This is the world I see when I go outside.
But I also default to male and that's a little weirder. The world I see is not 90% male. I don't walk down the street and see a noticeable absence of women around me. And yet, male is my default. If I'm thinking up a character, I will automatically write them as male. Is it because I'm male? Does that tip the scales?
Let's go back to my game notes. I was writing about important non-player characters. These were the movers and shakers, the people with influence, the people who matter in my fictional world. They were 100% male. Not let's compare that to my day to day reality, the world that I see whenever I open my eyes, go outside, turn on the TV, listen to music. It should come as no surprise to you that I see a lot of men. Business leaders, political leaders, sports stars, popular musicians*, even criminals who make the news are largely male.** The people who shape the world are men. That's a pretty weird dissonance between population and power.
Well, yeah, obvious, right? Everybody knows that.
Right. So let's go back to fiction. Like I said before, fiction matters. We consume fiction in all kinds of media for a variety of reasons but there's always an element of escapism. Fiction offers us something we can't experience in our life. That might be adventure and excitement, it might be drama and romance, it might be sorrow. Whatever the case, we're stepping out of our life and into another life in another place to gain some form of fulfillment.
Now imagine that when you look around the world and see all the important and special people are, I don't know, foxes. Red foxes. You're not a red fox and maybe you can never be a red fox and, even if you could, you don't want to be a red fox. Now imagine that when you read a book or watch a movie, all the best characters are red foxes. Heroes and villains and even most of the supporting cast are all red foxes. You might get it into your head that unless you're a red fox, you can't be special or important. This is why fiction matters.
Yes, okay, we get that. This is nothing new. Hell, this isn't even new for me. I wrote about the importance of representation ages ago. Why are we here?
Well we've talked about the world, and my role-playing game notes. We've talked about why we consume fiction, why fiction is important and we've talked about red foxes. Now let's talk about you.
Just like me, you're going to have default ways of thinking. There's a good chance that your defaults are similar to or the same as mine. When you're being creative, those default ways of thinking are going to shape how you create. Your fictional world will automatically reflect your defaults. That wouldn't be a surprise. It is a problem, though.
It's not your fault, of course. It's the world around you and the life you live that shapes your defaults. You don't get to choose them. But you're still responsible for them. In fact, you're responsible for a lot. Fiction is important, remember? If you create fiction, then you're creating something important. You're taking on a responsibility, here. You've got to be aware of what you're saying with your fiction without actually saying it.
Are you reinforcing an inequality? Are you shutting people out? Are you creating a world where certain people don't exist and aren't welcome to exist?
You might not be. You might be. Maybe you don't know. If you don't know, then it's probably time you took a moment to stop and think about your defaults and, if those defaults aren't living up to your responsibility as a creator of fiction, start changing them.***
Fiction matters.
*Fun fact about me: I love glam metal. Take a look at the glam metal page on Wikipedia and count how many glam metal bands it talks about that are all men vs the ones that are all female. After you've done that, go listen to a Vixen album. Not to prove a point or anything, just because Vixen is awesome.
**Do you know where women do turn up in media? As victims, as wives to important men, as reporters talking to and about men, as co-stars, supporting cast and love interests to me.
***I'm happy to say that my game notes - which are a work in progress - now have a much better mix of gender and ethnicity. Also werewolves because werewolves, like Vixen, are awesome.
Friday, July 1, 2016
The Anatomy of The Action Scene
I was going to call this post "Five Tips To Write Action Scenes That Will Melt Your Face... And You Won't Believe What Happens Next! What He Does Is So Perfect"but then I remembered I am not the scum of the earth. So no listacles and no clickbait titles here. Just some good old fashioned advice on something near and dear to my heart.
Writing action scenes.
So, I present to you a list of important ideas to keep in mind writing an action scene. You'll never guess number five!
1. Characters
No brainer right? You have to have some characters. Quite often this is a protagonist and an antagonist. Could be your main character and a main villain, or your main character and some villainous henchmen. But, hey, it could be two of your protagonists duking it out over something. But the characters in an action scene might also be a collapsing building, cars on a busy street or your protagonists demon possessed left hand.
You dirty bastards. Give him back his hand!
A character in an action scene is any force that is active, has some independence and is a danger to other characters. If an evil wizard and a stalwart hero are fighting and the wizard casts a spell to bring down huge slabs of stone from the temple ceiling to crush the hero, the ceiling isn't independent. It is being used by the evil wizard. It's a weapon. Is the temple old and the hero's pet zebra has set C4 around its foundations and not its collapsing around everybody? Then it's independent. It isn't aiming at anybody, it's just coming down everywhere and on everyone. It's active in the scene and a threat. The falling temple is a character.
When it comes to using characters in an action scene, there's two things you need to do. Firstly, give them a name. Especially if you've got Zack McHeroPants, the stalwart hero of your story, fighting nameless, throw away gangsters wielding blackjacks. Writing Zack McHeroPants kicks the "gangster in his nads" three times is going to get confusing and dull. So even for throw away goons like these, give them names. They don't have to be actual names. In fact, I'd say it's better if the name is some brief descriptor of that character. Maybe Zack McHeroPants looks at them and they're described as one rotund gangster, one gangster thin as a twig and the other with a nose like a pig's arse. Zack McHero might even remark with a laugh "Okay, so it's Fatso, Twiggy and Pig-Face. Bring it on. I'll beat you all with one eye tied behind my back and my laser gun in my mouth." Or he might not. Either way, you can now refer to Fatso, Twiggy and Pig-Face through the scene and the readers will know who you mean and where everybody is. Also, you've just made it that little bit more vivid for the audience. Go you!
Finally, remember that everybody moves differently. A fighter trained in Muay Thai is not going to fight the same way as somebody trained in Krav Maga, or somebody trained in Ying Jow Pai. A body builder and a couch potato and an Olympic sprinter have different body types and in the heat of the moment, they will move in ways most comfortable and natural to them. By creating a consistent and vivid sense of how a character moves in an action scene, how he faces a physical opposition of some kind, you develop that character further in the reader's mind. This way, an action beat isn't just about page turning, edge of the seat excitement, it says something about the character.
2. Terrain
Sometimes the terrain will be a character, as I said. Sometimes, however, it won't. But that doesn't mean it isn't there and you can't use it. Don't treat you action scenes as though they're happening in an empty white box between a bunch of naked people. While the characters fight, run, climb, shoot, tango, aggressively throw down their poker cards and swig their whiskey, there are things around them, there are doors and tables and walls and chairs and whiskey bottles.
As a very basic example, let's pretend that Zack McHeroPants is asleep in his bed and five red suited ninjas break into his house. Red is the best camouflage, of course, and it helps to distinguish them from the turquoise ninjas he fought in chapter 325. Ooo, too bands of ninjas after Zack McHeroPants? The plot thickens!
Now obviously Zack McHeroPants is going to win. He is faster, stronger, better looking and sleeps in black stealth pyjamas. Now Zack McHeroPants, on hearing the ninjas break in, could stand up and go one by one through the ninjas and punch them in the throat and then go back to sleep. Efficient, but not the most exciting. Or he could wait beside the kitchen door, wait for a ninja to step through, then use his leather belt to grab the ninja around the neck, then kick his legs out so he can't stand and choke the ninja into submission. A silent take down! The next ninja comes through swinging his sword and Zack McHero Pants dodges out of the way behind a chair. Of course! Ninjas are powerless against chairs! While that ninja struggles to overcome the chair, another bursts into the room and throws some shuriken. Zack McHeroPants leaps over his table and upturns it to shield him from the shurkien. Then he uses his Super-Blazing-Phoenix-Kick to slide the upturned table across the room and slam the shurkien ninja into the wall, sandwiched between it and the table. That's two down and one stuck behind a chair, but still two more somewhere. Zack McHeroPants knows that if he fights for too long, he won't be able to make it to the Waffle House by breakfast and without bacon, his heart will stop. (That's right, WITHOUT bacon, Zack McHeroPants has a heart attack and dies. Amazing!) Zack McHeroPants isn't sure where the others are hiding, though, so he grabs the chair stuck ninja by his neck and his crotch, thrusts him high into the air and throws him through the kitchen window. This sets off the alarm and immediately police sirens can be heard in the distance. The police never respond faster than when local legend Zack McHeroPants needs help! Plus, he can now escape through the window and rush to the waffle house for his life saving bacon treatment.
Using the environment to hide, to protect, to attack makes your action scene more interesting and, again, gives the reader a better image of where the characters are and what they're doing.
3. Stakes
A basic action scene will be something like this. Party A wants a thing, Party B wants to keep the thing from Party A. This thing is what is at stake. Now Party A might be the Cult of Mr Whippy, Party B might be Zack McHeroPants and the thing might be Zack's life. Simple. But problematically, this results in a pretty binary result. Either Zack lives or dies. Now binary sometimes works and more often than not you can still use a binary result like that to progress things. Is the story about Zack McHeroPant's escape from the afterlife back to Earth to stop the Cult of Mr Whippy? The the villains winning in this fight and Zack McHeroPants dying is a failure, but it works. Or perhaps this is the first time we've seen the Cult of Mr Whippy. Zack wins and lives but this new knowledge of dangerous ice cream zealots pushes the plot forward. Exposition, new goals, new threats, new mystery.
But what if Zack only thinks they're after his life? What if what they really want is his pet zebras's third tooth from the right? What if the zebra's tooth is the key to the Fountain Of Youth? While Zack fights to save his life, one Mr Whippy cultist sneaks around him, sedates his zebra and steals its tooth. Zack still wins the fight but he was fighting for the wrong thing and now the cult has the zebra tooth!
Zack's life sure is weird.
Every group in an action scene or (or any scene with conflict, which is the vast majority of scenes) has a goal which is in opposition to one or all other groups in the scene. By making those goals unclear to the POV character (and thus the reader,) by making those goals multitude, by making them farther reaching than that scene and by giving those goals more than one outcome, you open your scene up to more interesting and variable resolutions. What if the cultists got the wrong tooth but nobody knew? What if they couldn't get the tooth out and took the whole zebra? These answers to the scene have potential drama and twists further down the line that you can and should exploit.
4. Escalation
Finally, escalation. Escalation comes in two forms.
First is an escalation of stakes. Why does the Cult of My Whippy want the zebra tooth? To open the gates to the Fountain of Youth so their leader can drink it and become immortal and begin his conquest of all ice cream across the world, soft serve or otherwise. But Zack doesn't know that. When the cult attacks him, the stakes are his life. It sounds big but, honestly, Zack McHeroPants is fighting for his life every other hour. Plus, we know he's usually fine. For this kind of story, the drama is on the low end of the scale. But once the cult takes his zebra buddy so they can extract his tooth, in the following action scenes he is fighting for the life of his best friend in the whole world. Stakes escalated! As we get closer to the story's climax, Zack fights to keep the Fountain of Youth out of the hands of evil. Then, finally, in the ultimate battle of good and evil, Zack McHeroPants fights an immortal cult leader for the very soul of the world's ice cream supply.
This is an escalation of the stakes. It happens with each significant turning point in the story. It creates excitement and gives the reader a growing and changing investment in each action beat. It remains interesting to read when there is more to fight for.
Finally, there's escalation of the action itself. If your story begins with a few guys brawling in a bar, it had damn well better end with a big fiery explosion! The scope of the action should not stay where it is. It should build.
Zack's first fight against the Mr Whippy cultists in his home escalates to a car chase in the next scene, and then to a dog fight above a lake full of crocodiles, and then to a fight against the biggest and meanest cultist of them all, while surrounded by watching cultists ready to pounce the moment things go badly for the big mean friend, then to fighting a dragon, then to fighting a crocodile on the back of a dragon while it flies over a lake full of the biggest meanest cultists and finally, at the end, Zack McHeroPants must fight the biggest meanest half-cultist half-crocodile leader of the cult who has achieved immortality and is using his evil magic to bring down the underwater temple in which they're fighting while his zebra friend uses C4 to destroy the dragon because it will arrive any second now with an army of red ninjas and Zack is armed only with his leather belt which means his pants are falling down, plus if doesn't eat bacon in 3.25 seconds he will have a heart attack and all the world's ice cream will be lost!
Wow.
WOW.
That is some fucking escalation right there!
Now, as a caveat, escalating action can have peaks and valleys. In fact, in a full length novel or series, it has to. Escalation that is always going up is hard to sustain as a writer and can be hard to comprehend as a reader. It risks getting farcical. So escalate and escalate until you reach a big scene, an important turning point in the plot, then let it fall again. Take a break from the action, have some low key scenes and then begin to build again with your next action scene. This time peak a little higher, then drop. Do this until you reach the story's climax when you have the highest peak.
And that, my friends, is what you need to know about writing an action scene.
Take care.
See you next time.
I need to go lie down after that...
Writing action scenes.
So, I present to you a list of important ideas to keep in mind writing an action scene. You'll never guess number five!
1. Characters
No brainer right? You have to have some characters. Quite often this is a protagonist and an antagonist. Could be your main character and a main villain, or your main character and some villainous henchmen. But, hey, it could be two of your protagonists duking it out over something. But the characters in an action scene might also be a collapsing building, cars on a busy street or your protagonists demon possessed left hand.
You dirty bastards. Give him back his hand!
A character in an action scene is any force that is active, has some independence and is a danger to other characters. If an evil wizard and a stalwart hero are fighting and the wizard casts a spell to bring down huge slabs of stone from the temple ceiling to crush the hero, the ceiling isn't independent. It is being used by the evil wizard. It's a weapon. Is the temple old and the hero's pet zebra has set C4 around its foundations and not its collapsing around everybody? Then it's independent. It isn't aiming at anybody, it's just coming down everywhere and on everyone. It's active in the scene and a threat. The falling temple is a character.
When it comes to using characters in an action scene, there's two things you need to do. Firstly, give them a name. Especially if you've got Zack McHeroPants, the stalwart hero of your story, fighting nameless, throw away gangsters wielding blackjacks. Writing Zack McHeroPants kicks the "gangster in his nads" three times is going to get confusing and dull. So even for throw away goons like these, give them names. They don't have to be actual names. In fact, I'd say it's better if the name is some brief descriptor of that character. Maybe Zack McHeroPants looks at them and they're described as one rotund gangster, one gangster thin as a twig and the other with a nose like a pig's arse. Zack McHero might even remark with a laugh "Okay, so it's Fatso, Twiggy and Pig-Face. Bring it on. I'll beat you all with one eye tied behind my back and my laser gun in my mouth." Or he might not. Either way, you can now refer to Fatso, Twiggy and Pig-Face through the scene and the readers will know who you mean and where everybody is. Also, you've just made it that little bit more vivid for the audience. Go you!
Finally, remember that everybody moves differently. A fighter trained in Muay Thai is not going to fight the same way as somebody trained in Krav Maga, or somebody trained in Ying Jow Pai. A body builder and a couch potato and an Olympic sprinter have different body types and in the heat of the moment, they will move in ways most comfortable and natural to them. By creating a consistent and vivid sense of how a character moves in an action scene, how he faces a physical opposition of some kind, you develop that character further in the reader's mind. This way, an action beat isn't just about page turning, edge of the seat excitement, it says something about the character.
2. Terrain
Sometimes the terrain will be a character, as I said. Sometimes, however, it won't. But that doesn't mean it isn't there and you can't use it. Don't treat you action scenes as though they're happening in an empty white box between a bunch of naked people. While the characters fight, run, climb, shoot, tango, aggressively throw down their poker cards and swig their whiskey, there are things around them, there are doors and tables and walls and chairs and whiskey bottles.
As a very basic example, let's pretend that Zack McHeroPants is asleep in his bed and five red suited ninjas break into his house. Red is the best camouflage, of course, and it helps to distinguish them from the turquoise ninjas he fought in chapter 325. Ooo, too bands of ninjas after Zack McHeroPants? The plot thickens!
Now obviously Zack McHeroPants is going to win. He is faster, stronger, better looking and sleeps in black stealth pyjamas. Now Zack McHeroPants, on hearing the ninjas break in, could stand up and go one by one through the ninjas and punch them in the throat and then go back to sleep. Efficient, but not the most exciting. Or he could wait beside the kitchen door, wait for a ninja to step through, then use his leather belt to grab the ninja around the neck, then kick his legs out so he can't stand and choke the ninja into submission. A silent take down! The next ninja comes through swinging his sword and Zack McHero Pants dodges out of the way behind a chair. Of course! Ninjas are powerless against chairs! While that ninja struggles to overcome the chair, another bursts into the room and throws some shuriken. Zack McHeroPants leaps over his table and upturns it to shield him from the shurkien. Then he uses his Super-Blazing-Phoenix-Kick to slide the upturned table across the room and slam the shurkien ninja into the wall, sandwiched between it and the table. That's two down and one stuck behind a chair, but still two more somewhere. Zack McHeroPants knows that if he fights for too long, he won't be able to make it to the Waffle House by breakfast and without bacon, his heart will stop. (That's right, WITHOUT bacon, Zack McHeroPants has a heart attack and dies. Amazing!) Zack McHeroPants isn't sure where the others are hiding, though, so he grabs the chair stuck ninja by his neck and his crotch, thrusts him high into the air and throws him through the kitchen window. This sets off the alarm and immediately police sirens can be heard in the distance. The police never respond faster than when local legend Zack McHeroPants needs help! Plus, he can now escape through the window and rush to the waffle house for his life saving bacon treatment.
Using the environment to hide, to protect, to attack makes your action scene more interesting and, again, gives the reader a better image of where the characters are and what they're doing.
3. Stakes
A basic action scene will be something like this. Party A wants a thing, Party B wants to keep the thing from Party A. This thing is what is at stake. Now Party A might be the Cult of Mr Whippy, Party B might be Zack McHeroPants and the thing might be Zack's life. Simple. But problematically, this results in a pretty binary result. Either Zack lives or dies. Now binary sometimes works and more often than not you can still use a binary result like that to progress things. Is the story about Zack McHeroPant's escape from the afterlife back to Earth to stop the Cult of Mr Whippy? The the villains winning in this fight and Zack McHeroPants dying is a failure, but it works. Or perhaps this is the first time we've seen the Cult of Mr Whippy. Zack wins and lives but this new knowledge of dangerous ice cream zealots pushes the plot forward. Exposition, new goals, new threats, new mystery.
But what if Zack only thinks they're after his life? What if what they really want is his pet zebras's third tooth from the right? What if the zebra's tooth is the key to the Fountain Of Youth? While Zack fights to save his life, one Mr Whippy cultist sneaks around him, sedates his zebra and steals its tooth. Zack still wins the fight but he was fighting for the wrong thing and now the cult has the zebra tooth!
Zack's life sure is weird.
Every group in an action scene or (or any scene with conflict, which is the vast majority of scenes) has a goal which is in opposition to one or all other groups in the scene. By making those goals unclear to the POV character (and thus the reader,) by making those goals multitude, by making them farther reaching than that scene and by giving those goals more than one outcome, you open your scene up to more interesting and variable resolutions. What if the cultists got the wrong tooth but nobody knew? What if they couldn't get the tooth out and took the whole zebra? These answers to the scene have potential drama and twists further down the line that you can and should exploit.
4. Escalation
Finally, escalation. Escalation comes in two forms.
First is an escalation of stakes. Why does the Cult of My Whippy want the zebra tooth? To open the gates to the Fountain of Youth so their leader can drink it and become immortal and begin his conquest of all ice cream across the world, soft serve or otherwise. But Zack doesn't know that. When the cult attacks him, the stakes are his life. It sounds big but, honestly, Zack McHeroPants is fighting for his life every other hour. Plus, we know he's usually fine. For this kind of story, the drama is on the low end of the scale. But once the cult takes his zebra buddy so they can extract his tooth, in the following action scenes he is fighting for the life of his best friend in the whole world. Stakes escalated! As we get closer to the story's climax, Zack fights to keep the Fountain of Youth out of the hands of evil. Then, finally, in the ultimate battle of good and evil, Zack McHeroPants fights an immortal cult leader for the very soul of the world's ice cream supply.
This is an escalation of the stakes. It happens with each significant turning point in the story. It creates excitement and gives the reader a growing and changing investment in each action beat. It remains interesting to read when there is more to fight for.
Finally, there's escalation of the action itself. If your story begins with a few guys brawling in a bar, it had damn well better end with a big fiery explosion! The scope of the action should not stay where it is. It should build.
Zack's first fight against the Mr Whippy cultists in his home escalates to a car chase in the next scene, and then to a dog fight above a lake full of crocodiles, and then to a fight against the biggest and meanest cultist of them all, while surrounded by watching cultists ready to pounce the moment things go badly for the big mean friend, then to fighting a dragon, then to fighting a crocodile on the back of a dragon while it flies over a lake full of the biggest meanest cultists and finally, at the end, Zack McHeroPants must fight the biggest meanest half-cultist half-crocodile leader of the cult who has achieved immortality and is using his evil magic to bring down the underwater temple in which they're fighting while his zebra friend uses C4 to destroy the dragon because it will arrive any second now with an army of red ninjas and Zack is armed only with his leather belt which means his pants are falling down, plus if doesn't eat bacon in 3.25 seconds he will have a heart attack and all the world's ice cream will be lost!
Wow.
WOW.
That is some fucking escalation right there!
Now, as a caveat, escalating action can have peaks and valleys. In fact, in a full length novel or series, it has to. Escalation that is always going up is hard to sustain as a writer and can be hard to comprehend as a reader. It risks getting farcical. So escalate and escalate until you reach a big scene, an important turning point in the plot, then let it fall again. Take a break from the action, have some low key scenes and then begin to build again with your next action scene. This time peak a little higher, then drop. Do this until you reach the story's climax when you have the highest peak.
And that, my friends, is what you need to know about writing an action scene.
Take care.
See you next time.
I need to go lie down after that...
Friday, June 24, 2016
For those Who Came In Late
Hello all!
Every now and then I like to put a hold on the usual blogs and reintroduce myself for anybody who might be joining us recently. New friends who might have stumbled onto my books or my twitter or my blog and decided to take a seat and join the fun.
So a very friendly hello to you!
My name is Carl, I'm an author of fantasy and mystery, of novels and comics and short stories, and of rambling blogs like this very one you're reading. If you're ever wondering what you should read, might I recommend my last novel, Pilgrimage. It's a lot of fun and excitement with a touch of drama and plenty of fantasy, magic and monsters, all set in modern rural Australia. Come on, when's the last time you read a fantasy novel set in modern rural Australia? Try it out.
If you'd like to try that book or any other, there are links at the side of the blog to their Amazon page or if you scroll up and click on that box that says 'Books by Carl' you can find blurbs for each book and a couple of other links to purchase my books in your preferred store and format. If you're the kind of folk who like to try before you buy, you can click on 'Free Stories N' Stuff'' to find some short stories and some sample chapters from my novels.
Otherwise, feel free to pull up a chair and listen to my random musings and ramblings. My blog is mostly about my thoughts and experience as a writer. I'm sure you'll find it helpful, interesting, or both.
And now, there's something I've been promising to announce on Twitter and Facebook and here it is...
I have a new book coming out!
Summer's End is a hard boiled detective story set in a small Washington town. It has mystery, intrigue, drama, action, excitement and even romance! I am positive that you'll enjoy it!
No release date yet, other than soon. Very soon. Keep watching this space for updates! I'll be bringing you blurbs, samples and proper release dates in the coming weeks.
Until then, friends, I've got plenty of work to do, so I'll see you next time!
Every now and then I like to put a hold on the usual blogs and reintroduce myself for anybody who might be joining us recently. New friends who might have stumbled onto my books or my twitter or my blog and decided to take a seat and join the fun.
So a very friendly hello to you!
My name is Carl, I'm an author of fantasy and mystery, of novels and comics and short stories, and of rambling blogs like this very one you're reading. If you're ever wondering what you should read, might I recommend my last novel, Pilgrimage. It's a lot of fun and excitement with a touch of drama and plenty of fantasy, magic and monsters, all set in modern rural Australia. Come on, when's the last time you read a fantasy novel set in modern rural Australia? Try it out.
If you'd like to try that book or any other, there are links at the side of the blog to their Amazon page or if you scroll up and click on that box that says 'Books by Carl' you can find blurbs for each book and a couple of other links to purchase my books in your preferred store and format. If you're the kind of folk who like to try before you buy, you can click on 'Free Stories N' Stuff'' to find some short stories and some sample chapters from my novels.
Otherwise, feel free to pull up a chair and listen to my random musings and ramblings. My blog is mostly about my thoughts and experience as a writer. I'm sure you'll find it helpful, interesting, or both.
And now, there's something I've been promising to announce on Twitter and Facebook and here it is...
I have a new book coming out!
Summer's End is a hard boiled detective story set in a small Washington town. It has mystery, intrigue, drama, action, excitement and even romance! I am positive that you'll enjoy it!
No release date yet, other than soon. Very soon. Keep watching this space for updates! I'll be bringing you blurbs, samples and proper release dates in the coming weeks.
Until then, friends, I've got plenty of work to do, so I'll see you next time!
Saturday, June 18, 2016
How I Published A Short Story
This month a short story I wrote was published in the Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine, Aurealis. I thought it might be interesting to talk about how that happened so, here we are, and here's my story about getting a short story published.
About two years ago now I decided to sell a short story. The wording of that is important. I didn't wake up and say "I'd like to try and sell a short story." I said "I am going to sell a short story." And yes, I more or less did just wake up and make the decision. That decision was birthed from the same thinking that has been responsible for many decisions I've made. I hadn't done it before, I figured I should.
So that's the decision I made. Almost two years ago. It wasn't exactly a quick process.
The first thing I did was look up magazines taking submissions. If you've never done this, let me tell you there are a lot of them. The vast majority are now digital publications and the vast majority are for fantasy and science fiction, with a few for literary, young adult and mystery. Well I'm a fantasy author so no problems there. But I also discovered something else. Most of them don't pay.
If you're going to try and publish a short story in magazine or similar collection, you'll have to face the same kind of decisions I made. The two big questions for me were: Will I give a publication a short story for free? Will I pay for the privilege to submit? My answer to both was no. If I want to give stories away for free, I'll do it here on my blog. I already do that. I also wasn't going to pay to submit. I understand why some publications might charge, but I expected to get a lot of rejections and plenty of editors were willing to reject me for free.
So with this criteria, I collected a list of magazines that had large submissions windows totalling about 10, put them into a spread sheet and went onto the next phase of my master plan.
To sell a short story, I needed to write a short story. If you've been keeping up with me since those long ago days when I was a member of Deviant Art, you'll know I used to write a lot of short stories. But like so many a working author, I realised somewhere along the way and that short stories don't make money. My time is more is better spent writing novels. Yeah, that's mercenary, but a guy has got to eat. So I needed a short story and all I had were old, old, old. I've improved my writing by leaps and bounds since those days and I had to put my best foot forward.
So I sat down and started writing and what I found was... I had forgotten how to write a short story. Well, fortunately, the solution to that was easy. I began reading a lot of short stories. When you want to learn to write anything, the first thing to do is read. The success of others is often the best lesson. So I found myself a bunch of short story magazines and I read them. This not only reminded me how a short story is meant to be written, it gave me a better idea of what the magazines I was submitting to were interested in. My goal was to have three compete and ready to sell stories at any one time that could make the rounds. After a few months I achieved this.
But, to be perfectly honest, I kind of cheated. I had two stories done and ready to go around but I was floundering on getting that third. So I dove back into my most recent (and by recent I mean 12 months+) short stories to see which one sucked the least. I found one that hadn't made it online and wasn't complete pants and I edited the shit out of it. So I had three. Two completely new and one mostly new story ready to go.
And then came the waiting. I had become one of hundreds of hopefuls sending their short stories to editors. I was in the big slush pile and some of those slush piles are three months long. Rejections came in. Mostly form letters, occasionally a personalised comment, occasionally some critique. I checked me e-mails obsessively, I started and scrapped a couple more short stories and then remembered I had a novel I really, desperately needed to finish.
And after about six months, I kind of forgot. I just forgot that I was doing the short story thing and the last few rejections came in and I filed them away in my rejections folder (because all writers have one, right?) and kept on keeping on with my other projects. And I did that for almost a year.
And then one day late last year or early this year - I forget exactly when - I woke up and decided I was going to publish a short story. But, wait a moment, didn't I make that decision already? Oh yeah. Whoops...
Back to step one. I went through and checked the magazines on my list. A couple had folded in that time, a couple had gone on indefinite hiatus from taking submissions. So I dove back into the Googles and found some replacements to pad out my list. I wrote a couple more short stories and I started the process again. But I had a decision to make about those earlier stories. Do I keep sending them around? They never did quite complete the list. It's over a year since I wrote them, it's several years for one of them. I'm better now. Are they worth it?
And then, ladies and gents, I said those two magical words.
Fuck it.
And I sent them off again, along with the new stories. And the rejections started coming in again, like they did before, like I expected.
But then something magical happened. An editor at Aurealis said "Hey, that one. We like it. We'll publish it." And soon after that I had a contract. And soon after that I had some copy editing to approve. And soon after that it was published and there was excitement and rejoicing.
And the story that made it? The story titled 'Why I Hate Tuesday.' It's that oldest story that I almost gave up on. That story that I almost didn't sent out at all. It's that little story from an era and a skill I'd since surpassed. But I rewrote it, and I worked on it again and again to make it the best I could. Because, age aside, it's a fine little story.
And that's my story. It's not an unusual story. I did the work, I followed the rules, I played the game, I received rejection after rejection. And in the end, it all worked out.
So the message? The lesson? The take away from this adventure?
Fuck it. Just do it.
About two years ago now I decided to sell a short story. The wording of that is important. I didn't wake up and say "I'd like to try and sell a short story." I said "I am going to sell a short story." And yes, I more or less did just wake up and make the decision. That decision was birthed from the same thinking that has been responsible for many decisions I've made. I hadn't done it before, I figured I should.
So that's the decision I made. Almost two years ago. It wasn't exactly a quick process.
The first thing I did was look up magazines taking submissions. If you've never done this, let me tell you there are a lot of them. The vast majority are now digital publications and the vast majority are for fantasy and science fiction, with a few for literary, young adult and mystery. Well I'm a fantasy author so no problems there. But I also discovered something else. Most of them don't pay.
If you're going to try and publish a short story in magazine or similar collection, you'll have to face the same kind of decisions I made. The two big questions for me were: Will I give a publication a short story for free? Will I pay for the privilege to submit? My answer to both was no. If I want to give stories away for free, I'll do it here on my blog. I already do that. I also wasn't going to pay to submit. I understand why some publications might charge, but I expected to get a lot of rejections and plenty of editors were willing to reject me for free.
So with this criteria, I collected a list of magazines that had large submissions windows totalling about 10, put them into a spread sheet and went onto the next phase of my master plan.
To sell a short story, I needed to write a short story. If you've been keeping up with me since those long ago days when I was a member of Deviant Art, you'll know I used to write a lot of short stories. But like so many a working author, I realised somewhere along the way and that short stories don't make money. My time is more is better spent writing novels. Yeah, that's mercenary, but a guy has got to eat. So I needed a short story and all I had were old, old, old. I've improved my writing by leaps and bounds since those days and I had to put my best foot forward.
So I sat down and started writing and what I found was... I had forgotten how to write a short story. Well, fortunately, the solution to that was easy. I began reading a lot of short stories. When you want to learn to write anything, the first thing to do is read. The success of others is often the best lesson. So I found myself a bunch of short story magazines and I read them. This not only reminded me how a short story is meant to be written, it gave me a better idea of what the magazines I was submitting to were interested in. My goal was to have three compete and ready to sell stories at any one time that could make the rounds. After a few months I achieved this.
But, to be perfectly honest, I kind of cheated. I had two stories done and ready to go around but I was floundering on getting that third. So I dove back into my most recent (and by recent I mean 12 months+) short stories to see which one sucked the least. I found one that hadn't made it online and wasn't complete pants and I edited the shit out of it. So I had three. Two completely new and one mostly new story ready to go.
And then came the waiting. I had become one of hundreds of hopefuls sending their short stories to editors. I was in the big slush pile and some of those slush piles are three months long. Rejections came in. Mostly form letters, occasionally a personalised comment, occasionally some critique. I checked me e-mails obsessively, I started and scrapped a couple more short stories and then remembered I had a novel I really, desperately needed to finish.
And after about six months, I kind of forgot. I just forgot that I was doing the short story thing and the last few rejections came in and I filed them away in my rejections folder (because all writers have one, right?) and kept on keeping on with my other projects. And I did that for almost a year.
And then one day late last year or early this year - I forget exactly when - I woke up and decided I was going to publish a short story. But, wait a moment, didn't I make that decision already? Oh yeah. Whoops...
Back to step one. I went through and checked the magazines on my list. A couple had folded in that time, a couple had gone on indefinite hiatus from taking submissions. So I dove back into the Googles and found some replacements to pad out my list. I wrote a couple more short stories and I started the process again. But I had a decision to make about those earlier stories. Do I keep sending them around? They never did quite complete the list. It's over a year since I wrote them, it's several years for one of them. I'm better now. Are they worth it?
And then, ladies and gents, I said those two magical words.
Fuck it.
And I sent them off again, along with the new stories. And the rejections started coming in again, like they did before, like I expected.
But then something magical happened. An editor at Aurealis said "Hey, that one. We like it. We'll publish it." And soon after that I had a contract. And soon after that I had some copy editing to approve. And soon after that it was published and there was excitement and rejoicing.
And the story that made it? The story titled 'Why I Hate Tuesday.' It's that oldest story that I almost gave up on. That story that I almost didn't sent out at all. It's that little story from an era and a skill I'd since surpassed. But I rewrote it, and I worked on it again and again to make it the best I could. Because, age aside, it's a fine little story.
And that's my story. It's not an unusual story. I did the work, I followed the rules, I played the game, I received rejection after rejection. And in the end, it all worked out.
So the message? The lesson? The take away from this adventure?
Fuck it. Just do it.
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