Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Literateur: "The Mask of Jason Voorhees" and Fan Fiction

This is technically the fifth "Camp Crystal Lake" book. I reviewed the other four here and here.

It's self-published by the author and available on his personal website.

"The Mask of Jason Voorhees" is admittedly fan fiction. I've never read fan fiction before.1 But this is an interesting place to start, since it's by a previously licensed franchise fiction writer. And he takes it very seriously.

It cleverly ties together the "Friday the 13th" films with the totally unrelated "Friday the 13th" TV series,2 with the author's own "Camp Crystal Lake" novels as a bridge between them. He throws some Lovecraftian mythos stuff in there for flavor, too.

So how is it? Well...

It needs an editor- LOTS of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.3 There are also some really dumb phrases that a little revision could have filtered out. Behold these zingers:

"But, Steven, you helped Jessica Voorhees send Jason to hell, or supposedly, if you want us to believe such a way out thing." Carol said chidingly.

It wasn't so much the fear that something would happen. It was more the remembered fear of what had occurred before.

Then she noticed the hole, which was nearby the jungle gym. Though it didn't look recent it still struck her interest.

At that moment Phil had wished he could say something because he wanted to inform Lewis it wasn't by choice that he was now a easier target to shoot at.

Micki gave Ryan and the sheriff a dagger stare but kept quiet.4

It's a wild ride nonetheless. Reads like an ambitious low-budget horror film in print. The story picks up right after the end of Morse's last "Crystal Lake" book with the cops cleaning up the carnage from the last guy possessed by Jason's mask. Meanwhile, the media finally notices the town's mysteriously high death rate, resulting in a flock of new arrivals on the scene as new spooky stuff ensues. The hunt for Jason's mask is led by the two leads from the "Friday the 13th" TV show.5

There are too many plots, that's for sure. The documentary crew coming to town is a bridge too far. When you've also got layered flashbacks, complex origin stories, family conflicts, multiple McGuffin chases, Lovecraftian elder gods, a slasher story, multiple possessed people,6 the documentary crew subplot just feels like too many cooks.

But hey, having too much going on is a good problem to have. Flawed as it is, this book is never boring.7

And worth noting- it ties together Jason's antics from every film, including "Freddy Vs. Jason," "Jason X," and even the remake, explaining them all with Jason's mythological and eternal status. This adds a unifying cosmic layer to the proceedings that makes the sum of the films greater than its parts.

Oh, and we're not in YA land anymore. With no restraints, the author really lets the pottymouth and violence rip. This stuff was more fun when it was in a kid's book. It felt subversive and naughty there. Here- eh, it's all just gratuitous.8

It's a bit fuzzy on Lovecraft, too. Characters discuss the man's work, especially the Necronomicon, but it looks more like they're using the Necronomicon from the "Evil Dead" films rather than Lovecraft's. Morse changes the names of Lovecraft's pantheon slightly- "Azagthoth" instead of "Azathoth" and "Cythulu" instead of "Cthulhu," etc.- but we know who he's talking about. So it rings false when characters perform blood rituals and say, essentially, "By the power of Cthulhu, bring this dead boy back to life!"

That's not how that works. Cthulhu cares nothing for blood sacrifices and he has no interest in serving or helping any of us. We're bugs to him. Always have been, always will be. Since the evil forces in this book are trying to sow chaos, it would have at least made sense for the characters to conjure evil up in the name of Nyarlathotep, A.K.A. The Crawling Chaos. Missed opportunity there!

It does manage to wrap up several threads from Morse's previous books. I was happy to find out the origin of the "Hell worms," the mystery behind the Jason altar in the cave, the nature of the town's evil, and the truth about the severed head in the first book. These things matter!

And let's talk about author Eric Morse- A.K.A. William Pattison. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, he's got a blog on his website where he's constantly ranting. He's also on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and does a regular podcast. He's not a hermit.

Online, he primarily complains about getting dissed at conventions, rants about his Wikipedia page being defiled by a vast conspiracy of haters, argues with fans and detractors, and, once in a while, mentions his more recent self-published books. He harps a lot on his four "Camp Crystal Lake" books and says they somehow prove he's the "King of Splatterpunk."9 He has a long, rambling letter on the front of his website where he asks fans to write letters to publishers requesting that his "Camp Crystal Lake" books go back in print.

On that last one- what Pattison fails to realize is that even if his books sold really well and were really popular on their initial release- they're still franchise fiction. A disposable genre, 99.999% of which is just hurled out into the market for a quick buck. Franchise fiction does not stay in print. And it does not get reprints, especially years later.9.5

He's like Uncle Rico in "Napoleon Dynamite," forever fixating on his high school football achievements. It feels like Pattison just never moved on and found something else to do.

If you're like me, you wondered how Pattison ever came to write those four books in the first place. Well, according to this book's introduction, he was working at Kmart and a co-worker had a brother at Berkley Books who wanted to publish some "Friday the 13th" books for kids. So Pattison applied for the job and got it. Right place, right time!

As it turns out, he signed his contract without reading it. The author's mother pointed out to him that the contract specified he had to write all four books in one year. He thought he'd have a year for each book. Oops.

He wrote the four books full-time for a year, doing multiple rewrites, and the stress sent him to the hospital multiple times.

So how much did he get paid to write these books?

$1500.10

They promised him a share of the sales but then they never sold. With no marketing and no publicity, none of them even had a second printing.

And that was that.

But these books have a strong voice and there's no obvious reason the writer shouldn't find more writing work.

So what went wrong?

I'm guessing his temper and ego pushed people away. He whines a lot about how the books' editors cut all references to the "Friday" films from the books. He also complains that they made him severely tone down the violence.11 And that he repeatedly tried to lecture his bosses about how wrong they were about everything but that they never returned his calls. So it sounds like he had some social awkwardness issues. Bad communication can kill a career.

The most revealing personal detail in this book, in his words:

"The next day I made the biggest mistake of my life. I asked a lady I'd known from work (I will not mention her name) for three years and asked her out for an Italian dinner to celebrate my book deal. Anyway to make a long story short, three weeks later I was charged with sexual harassment and lost my job...fun...Anyway, as I was looking for a job..."

Wha-WHAT? "Long story short"? Um- no, you need to keep that story long. What was that about? Asking someone on a date doesn't just naturally lead to a sexual harassment lawsuit. Details, please.

The lack of self-awareness and downright creepiness in the way he tells that anecdote is telling.12 But I'll let you draw your own conclusions rather than psychoanalyzing him any more than I already have.

Bottom line- he's a fascinating, odd individual. A tragic figure worthy of Shakespeare.13

I liked his pulpy horror books, warts and all. He wrote the "Camp Crystal Lake" books as a fan- he sure didn't write them for the money!- and he wrote this follow-up book as a fan, as well. All of this was fan fiction, even the stuff he got paid $375 per book on.

William Pattison cared. And that's something.

* * *

1. Unless you count "Fifty Shades of Grey," which started as "Twilight" fan fiction. I read the first ten pages- the pre-sexytime stuff- out loud to my wife and sister-in-law and we laughed so hard we had to stop. We weren't offended, we'd just had enough.

2. How he does this is interesting- the lead actor from the TV show played a different character in the film "Jason Goes to Hell," so the author says this was actually the same person, with occult-induced memory loss. I normally abhor any plot involving amnesia- lookin' at you, season 2 of "Grimm"!- but here it works. It's totally unexpected.

3. He relentlessly uses "it's" instead of "its" and then, as if to troll us, he correctly uses "its" EXACTLY ONCE near the end of the book.

4. And this one: "He wasn't the brightest crayon in the box." This is bizarre. Since when has a crayon's worth been measured by its brightness?

5. Oh, and about that "Friday the 13th" show- it's about a cursed antique shop and each episode has the two leads trying to track down and lock up one of their cursed antiques. "Warehouse 13" took this idea and set it in a warehouse. The Peter Pan episode freaked me out when I was a kid. The rest I saw as an adult and wasn't impressed. David Cronenberg's "Faith Healer" episode was alright, though.

6. One dude gets possessed by the mask just by being NEAR it. Things are cranking up here!

7. Though at 368 pages, it overstays its welcome. His previous "Friday" books were maybe 180 pages each. That's the right length for this kind of story.

8. He even throws in a scene where the Jason-possessee attacks a crowd in a street and more bodies pile up than in several "Friday" films combined. Morse doesn't skimp on the ketchup.

9. Technically, he says a fan gave him this name. I want proof.

9.5. I looked around and found one exception: a 1978 "Star Wars" novel titled "Splinter of the Mind's Eye." But even that one got re-released in 1986, a mere 8 years after its astronomically popular debut. And both releases were timed when the general public was desperately hungry for more stories in that world. Did the general public really have such an appetite for Jason Voorhees yarns? "Friday the 13th" films always seemed like more of a guilty pleasure than something an average person would like to further explore across media platforms.

10. You read that right. Not even $1500 per book. $1500 for all four. A year's work. How much did you make at work last year?

11. They're still more than violent enough, so I'd side with the editors on that one!

12. Not to mention the awkward phrasing and the fact that there's a repetition on "asked."

13. Worthy of "Titus Andronicus," at least.


-Phony McFakename

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Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

"Collateral Damage" and "Louie": Pointless Comparisons

What Are They?

"Louie" needs no introduction, it's Louis C.K.'s relentlessly dark and brilliant sitcom where he addresses every aspect of modern life, love, and fatherhood.

"Collateral Damage" is a generic Schwarzenegger action flick about fighting terrorists that would have been totally forgotten if it weren't for its unfortunate timing.

It was scheduled to come out right after 9/11. Oops.1

So What's the Connection?

Both are about men past their prime seeking redemption and finding ways to get through the day when everything has fallen apart.

The Schwarz is proactive. After losing his wife and son in a terrorist bombing- they're the "collateral damage"- he travels to Colombia to hunt down the people responsible for the bombing. And he wrecks their faces real good.

Louie just loses himself in life. Finding himself divorced and stuck as a part-time father to two girls he loves but doesn't always like, he puts on a stiff upper lip and does his duty. On the side, he shares his insights, vents his outrage, and creates a consensus reality for himself via stand-up comedy. He also makes a lot of very bad decisions regarding love.2

Are They Any Good?

"Collateral Damage" is a braindead shoot 'em up.3 Everything about it is formulaic and predictable. It has a few decent action sequences marred by bad CGI. I didn't hate myself every second that I watched it, but it made me wonder why I ever cared for Schwarzenegger's films.4

This is a late career film for the action star, when he was playing more vulnerable roles. He repeatedly loses fights and gets thrown around in the late 90's and early 00's, including getting beaten up by Satan himself in the well-intentioned but absurd "End of Days."5

Now there's nothing wrong with changing up your persona. Looking back on "Commando," it's not terribly interesting to watch Arnie experience a flawless victory as he mows through army after army of bad guys. Heroes are only as interesting as their limitations, after all. But making his roles more realistic doesn't necessarily improve the movie.6

A decade or so after 9/11, it's still a bit creepy to see the buildings blown up by terrorists, but not as trigger warning-y as it would have been at the time.7 This film just isn't very special and its release date coinciding with a national tragedy amounts to an odd historical footnote.8

And of course "Louie" is good. It's full of brutal truth and he has an engaging and original perspective on almost every social issue. Even when you don't agree with him, he makes a great case for his point of view and helps you understand it. And he's funny. Very sad and very funny, sometimes in the same scene. It deserves all the acclaim it gets.

And it shows a performer late in his career continuing to take risks and push himself, something Arnie failed to do in "Collateral Damage."

There. Compared.

* * *

1. "24" started at the same time, too, but it got a pass, probably because it was amazing.

2. One multi-episode arc has him dating a woman who doesn't speak English and whose language he doesn't speak. I never understood how he ever expected that to work.

3. If it weren't for the mediocre-but-successful "Terminator 3" that came out the next year and gave him the juice and renewed public attention that led to him becoming The Governator, this would probably have been his career killer.

4. That's always a bad sign when a thing makes you wonder why you ever liked that thing.

5. He also wasn't much into catch phrases anymore. Despite the presence of multiple helicopters in this film, he never once advises anyone to get to any choppa.

6. I haven't kept up completely with his recent films, but "The Last Stand" indicates he's still playing human beings and not superhuman killing machines of the human and cyborg varieties. His role in "Expendables 2" was dumb and drove his catch phrases into the ground. Bad move, that one.

7. I would have been much more impressed if they hadn't deleted the scene with Sofia Vergera- the feisty Latina from "Modern Family"- hijacking a plane. That would still be offensive after all these years.

8. A footnote much like this.


-Phony McFakename

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Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Literateur: "Mother's Day" and "The Carnival"

Well, I did it. After reviewing two of the YA "Friday the 13th" books, I read the other two.1


So the first one, "Mother's Day," picks up right after the ninth "Friday" film, "Jason Goes to Hell."

Good news: Jason's been dragged down to Hell. Bad news: His mask didn't make it all the way with him.

So a hunter's dog digs up the mask, the hunter puts it on, and boom- he's possessed and running around and mayhem ensues.

I'm pleased to report that it's creepy and intense. There are giant slimy white worms crawling all over the place,2 setting the stage for the second book's leeches and the fourth book's bats. Everything and everyone in Camp Crystal Lake is trying to kill you.

I'm displeased to report that the teens are all generic dominoes. And there are way too many fake-out jump-scares and the book pulls its punches until the final act, when things get mucho messy.

The third book in the series, "The Carnival," is pretty great. It expands on Crystal Lake's mythos, establishing that even short-term exposure to the town's air can turn people bad. Everything that was great and ominous about "Jason's Curse" is greater and ominouser here.

So the core story is: a carnival comes to town and a carny finds Jason's mask and off he goes with the possession and the mayhem.

That would have been enough, but we've also got the entire carnival getting possessed by the town's evil! The horses on the carousel start biting people. Things in the fun house come to life and attack.The rides collapse or go so fast, they fall apart. The front gate gets locked and the carnival burns down as its enclosed electric fence cooks anyone who climbs it to escape. It's a cavalcade of horror that will leave you exclaiming "HOW did this make it into a book aimed at kids?!?"

"Jason's Curse" remains the only book in this series where everyone dies. But these other books are more than grim enough. If you're the type of person who cares enough to track these books down, you will not be disappointed.

* * *

1. Technically, there's a fifth one and I read it, too. But that's such a tangled web, I'll probably write a whole new blog on it someday.

2. The worms bite folks here and there, but the only time they do serious damage is when they eat a guy's legs down to the bones...but then that ends up being only a dream. Watch out for the spoiler in the previous sentence.

3. Bonus: in this scene, the mechanical vampire bats come to life, Pinocchio-style, then fly off to the darkness, thus explaining their presence in the next book, "Road Trip." I deeply apologize for complaining about those bats in in my uninformed review of that book. Author Eric Morse, if you're reading this- my bad!


-Phony McFakename

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Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Cinemasterworks: In Defense of "Left Behind"

This movie is universally despised. It has a 2% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The dialogue often feels like Tommy Wiseau wrote it.

Even an organization that agrees with its basic premisekicked the film to the curb. I mean, this is too good for a footnote: "Most Christians within the world of the movie...are portrayed as insistent, crazy, delusional, or at the very least just really annoying. They want churches to book whole theaters and take their congregations, want it to be a Youth Group event...want the system to churn away, all the while netting them cash, without [caring] a shred about actual Christian belief. They want to trick you into caring about the movie. Don't."

Ouch.

So we're agreed, yes? This movie sucks, yes?2

Okay.

Now let's talk about the parts of "Left Behind" that were actually kind of good!

The Disappearing Kid

Okay, the opening drags on and on. Bad characters are badly established and a bunch of pointless stuff happens, and right when you find yourself thinking "Jeez, when is something gonna happ-"

BOOM.

A little boy hugging his sister dissolves into empty clothes.

I admit- they got me there. I gasped. It makes the clunky, overlong first act feel like clever plotting- turning the slow pace into a bait-and-switch that ends with an unnerving jolt.

And focusing on one disappearance was clever. Sure, there's chaos everywhere in the next scene as we see that people disappeared worldwide. But the Rapture's strike is kept intimate and personal by hitting a character we know. Large-scale disaster scenes, no matter how good the CGI, tend to lack oomph because a huge number of stranger deaths is never gonna have the impact of a single acquaintance death.

Freaky Flyers

Most of the movie takes place on a plane where one-note stereotype characters argue or panic. Now that's not good, but what is good is that they come up with multiple theories about what happened.

They discuss the possibility of an advanced weapons test making people disappear, alien abductions, and one woman even loses her mind and comes up with an elaborate conspiracy about her ex-husband faking the whole thing to steal her child.

These are great because the characters don't just saw "OMG it's the Rapture!" or "If only I'd confessed my faith in Jesus I would have been taken up, as well!" They actually discuss several possibilities and have believable conversations that ultimately make it more effective and credible when someone finally throws out the idea that maybe God was involved.

You can't expect nuance from a movie about the Rapture, but delaying the divine revelation in a group of unbelievers was a very wise move.

Nicolas Cage's Best Performance in Decades

I'm not kidding.

Cage plays his role with subtlety and a lot of heart. Try to say that about any other movie he's done since "Leaving Las Vegas."

There are a few glitches in his delivery here and there, but at no point does he do any classic Nicolas Cage tomfoolery like bug-eyes, sneering, throwing his head back, gesticulating wildly, or even shouting. He keeps his cool and makes this entire film seem more professional as a result.

Slick Visuals

It looks good, too!

If you freeze-frame almost any shot in this film, it looks like a real movie.3

Even most of the computer effects are okay-looking. Better than your average TV show, at least. The film's budget isn't huge- $16 million- but every dollar is on the screen. That's a respectable achievement.

Various Terrifying Bits

-There's a sign on the street next to a Raptured dude that said "The End is Near" with the "Near" crossed out in blood so now it says "The End is Here."

-A looter gets blasted by a shotgun point-blank and our leading lady comes face to face with the gun-wielding shopkeeper, who stares blank and wide-eyed at her in an oddly affecting slo-mo scene.

-The balloons. Oh, the balloons. At the mall right after the Rapture hits, there's a shot of multiple balloons floating up into the air, the children who once held them being gone. There's also some intense shots of parents freaking out about their kids being gone, but the balloons are much more effective and eloquent.

-The abandoned cars. I don't think the previous "Left Behind" movies did this,4 but there are some hard-hitting scenes of abandoned cars crashing into malls, slamming into other cars in parking lots, and one bus that flies off the edge of a bridge.5

Conclusion

It's still not good.

But these cool bits show what it could have been if they'd taken some time and effort with the script and the details.

They're threatening to make a sequel, so if the people who made this film are reading this,6 here's a piece of advice- get an atheist to direct the next one.

Yes, I'm serious, and don't call me "Shirley." William Peter Blatty chose atheist William Friedkin to direct the adaptation of Blatty's novel, "The Exorcist." He wanted an objective viewpoint to keep the film grounded and thus scarier. If it's good enough for "The Exorcist," it's good enough for you.

"Left Behind" is at its best when it's intense and playing out like a standard sf/ horror thriller. Whenever it gets preachy or overly melodramatic, it falls flat. Yes, it's a movie with an agenda- warning people- but your religious message belongs in the subtext. Don't spell it out. When you do, you'll always come off as condescending or insulting.

Make a scary movie and keep your theological axe behind your back next time. If people want to seek out your axe, they'll do it on their own.


* * *


1. Full disclosure: I don't. If you do, that's fine. I believe crazy things, too.

2. We don't need to talk about the "Left Behind" books or the previous movies, do we? We do? Okay, real quick: I read the first five pages of "Left Behind" and found the prose unbearably bad and insultingly heavy-handed. I saw the first two movies. They were ugh, didn't even work on a so-bad-it's-good level. I skipped the third one, "Left Behind: World at War." I suspect I didn't miss anything. Was Kirk Cameron in that one, too? I'm too lazy to look that up. Also I heard that when Jesus appears in the 12th book, he says something like "My beloved people, gather on my right hand. Your left." That's hilarious, but I wonder if it was intended that way.

3. That sounds like damning it with faint praise, but if you saw the original 1999 "Left Behind," you know that's a legitimate achievement for this franchise.

4. They may have, I'm not going back to check.

5. This last one happened almost an hour after the Rapture hit, so you have to wonder what kind of vacant roads that abandoned bus had been cruising on to get a clear path for so long. Also I didn't see any "In Case of Rapture, This Vehicle Will Be Driverless" bumper stickers on any of the cars. Those peeps all dropped the ball there.

6. And they might be, because this is probably the only place on the internet with anything nice to say about their movie!


-Phony McFakename

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Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Literateur: All the John Scalzi

I discover a writer I like, I read everything they wrote. It's a thing I do.1

John Scalzi pretty much owns the internet,2 so there's not a lot to add to his accolades here.

I'll do so anyway.

He's funny, engaging, and his characterization and plotting skills are stupendous.














"Old Man's War" Trilogy...and Ongoing Series

The first two books, "Old Man's War" and "Ghost Brigades," are rocket-fueled romps through a world where the elderly become our greatest military asset against a universe full of hostile, and sometimes just politically disagreeable, aliens.The third book, "The Last Colony," was also quite good, zeroing in on a family trying to make life work in this crazy new 'verse. Then Scalzi lost me. There were two plot points in the third book I was unclear on,and the fourth book, "Zoe's Tale," manages to clear them up. But other than those two brief clarifying sections, all it does is re-tell the third book from a different perspective. And it didn't really add anything.5 The fifth book was a scatterbrained collection of stories in the "Old Man's" 'verse that are...fine, I guess, but leave you wishing they more connected and conclusive.6

"Agent to the Stars"

This is hilarious from beginning to end. Scalzi mixes Hollywood politics and satire with a terrific, twisty tale of alien first contact.

"The Android's Dream"

The man knows how to hook ya. Opening line: "Dirk Moeller didn't know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident. But he was ready to find out." It's a mixed bag from there. LOTS of rambling tangents and a too-large cast of characters. It veers wildly between total farce and futuristic thriller and ends up accomplishing neither.7 Lots of good bits and clever ideas, though. Hard to stay mad at a book that manages to build an entire story around a fart joke.

"Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded"

Scalzi has other non-fiction collections8 but this one snagged a Hugo Award, so this is the one I read. The man is funny and smart, no doubt. And there are some CLASSIC articles in here. But this definitely could have been edited down a bit. He makes the same points over and over and over again and his politics are preachy. Even when I agree with him, I'm like "Jeez, crack a walnut with a sledgehammer much?"

"Fuzzy Nation"

This is an odd one- a literary reboot of a book I'd never heard of- H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzy." Tangled origin story aside, it's a twisty, compelling, and ultimately sweet and satisfying tale of a boy and his fuzzy creature. With lots of hard sf detail and thrilling courtroom battles. This and "Zoe's Tale" are the only two Scalzi books that are all-ages appropriate. If your sensibilities are more delicate, this is definitely the one you want to start with.9

"Redshirts"

This also has a tangled background- it's basically set in a world where "Star Trek" is real. It exists as a seemingly-fictional TV show from our reality, but the events on the show are actually happening. Like when a character on the show says something dramatic before a commercial break, everyone in that world freezes and then kind of stands around awkwardly for a few minutes before the "show" starts again, then they start walking and talking again. That's interesting enough, but this tale is told from the perspective of the show's disposable "redshirt" characters. They're tired of getting killed off all the time and decide to take action. And from there- we're off on a wild adventure through space and dimensions!

"Lock In"

Great sf, great thriller. A future disease causes "lock-in," where people are still fully aware, but unable to move their bodies. So a company makes a fortune with a robot system for lock-in victims with which they can move around and interact in our world. And then a robot murder mystery happens. I'm not a fan of murder mysteries, but this one grabbed me and kept its grip tight all the way through.

* * *

1. It's probably OCD. And that's AOK.

2. And he has the most-updated blog in the world, which I've long since given up on trying to follow: http://whatever.scalzi.com/

3. It's fair to call it "Ender's Game" in reverse. The age, instead of the youth, is the soldiers' strength. However, the book's big "twist"- regarding how the elderly are turned into soldiers- is revealed in the first act, as opposed to the final "Ender's" twist.

4. So were his readers, apparently- Scalzi admits in the foreword to the fourth book that it was writing it to pacify all the folks that cried foul on those two narrative leaps.

5. Now Orson Scott Card did the same thing with "Ender's Shadow," but he told a TOTALLY DIFFERENT story there from the one in its parallel book, which I seem to be referencing a lot in these footnotes. I've read other stuff, too, I assure you. Heinlein. There you go. That's another thing I've read that's relevant to these books.

6. I understand there's another collection coming out this year that will have more closure-"The End of All Things"- and that this book was a setup for that one. Meh. If your book isn't gonna be self-contained, give us an advance warning.

7. The book's title is a reference to Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" but the book isn't very Dick-ish. It's more Douglas Adams-y, with all the lengthy satiric background descriptions interrupting the narrative while providing context and setting up punchlines.

8. Too many for someone late to the game like me- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scalzi#Non-fiction_books

9. And possibly end on- he's pretty salty with the language in his other works.


-Phony McFakename

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Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.

Friday, May 8, 2015

Orphaned Books: "Flesh Mob"

All writers have these things. Projects you drop cold in the planning phase, or you write 10-20 pages and realize you don't care enough to keep going.

I'm no different. So I thought it would be fun to share the details on one of these because why not?

Context

Multiple choice- The year 2010 was:

a) the best of times
b) the worst of times
c) all of the above

Answer- You guessed it. c)

My personal life hit a wall and I was left in an existential void trying to sort out who I was and what was real and what (if anything) mattered.

Now I also made a bunch of new friends and I was getting out there and doing and trying a lot of new things. I was learning to articulate myself and see different possibilities and that was all great, too.

One of the things I tried was writing novels. I'd always loved horror, so I wrote that.1 Over several months of intense, Monster Energy-fueled writing binges, I cranked out three horror novels.2 They're flawed and have obvious rookie mistakes, but dangit- I finished them!

I was right about to start this next book, "Flesh Mob," when my personal life hit ANOTHER wall. And this wall was so hard, it made the first one seem like a gentle, silk-coated, softly-padded cushion.

So thanks to a months-long psyche-shattering nervous breakdown, I never wrote it.

I've written a little of this and a little of that since then,3 but I've never done a full-on horror book since. And even if I did return to that genre, I have other ideas that are way cooler than this novel, fun as it is. Enjoy that which never was and never will be!

Intro4

Jeremiah decided that he needed to get closer to God. The inspiration came from one of the passages in the Old Testament that he actually paid attention to while running his eyes over it. One of the ancient prophets, he couldn’t remember who, had eaten some scripture pages and found that they were sweet as honey. Jeremiah thought that sounded like a good idea.

He tallied up the length of his Bible and, subtracting the Topical Index and Bible Dictionary, found it totaled 1,152 pages. He estimated that if he ate 3 pages per day, one with each meal, he would finish the Good Book in less than a year.

He was dismayed to find that it didn’t taste like honey at all. His ex-mother’s 1958 edition tasted more like glue and fiber. And no matter how he tried, he couldn’t break any of the pages into chunks smaller than a piece of chewing gum. He chewed page 6 for 10 minutes and still made no progress. As always, it went down as a lump.

On the third day, disillusioned by the digestive process, he changed his focus. He sought to minimize the unpleasant taste by pouring an ounce of honey on each page before eating. He remembered the paper-eating prophet’s name when he did that, it was Ezekiel. The honey briefly made the paper more appetizing, but after about 30 seconds of chewing, the sweetness always wore off and he was stuck with that plain glue-and-fiber taste again. He resigned himself to swallowing a tasteless lump thrice a day.

By the second week, he sought to ease his burden by mixing the paper in with water and sugar and putting it in a blender. But somehow shredding the Word of God just seemed wrong, so he reconsidered. He couldn’t blaspheme what his ex-father worked a lifetime to honor.

The customers and co-workers at his job politely ignored the strange rumbling and gurgling noises that emerged from his belly. And Jeremiah ignored the discoloration and strange texture of his feces. He had a divine errand to run, and he would not be sidetracked by some temporary gastrointestinal setbacks. No matter how much they hurt.

At the end of the first month, Jeremiah found himself no longer eating food along with his breakfast and lunch Scripture feasts. He rarely felt hungry until dinner anyway, and he felt he had a few pounds to spare.

He soon found he had overestimated his expendable poundage. By the second month’s end, he had lost 25 pounds and his elbow bones were jutting out of their skin. He noticed that all of his ribs were visible and straining against his chest whenever he showered. He felt betrayed by his bones.

When he grew too weak to stand behind his register for more than 10 minutes at a time, he started to eat lunch and breakfast along with the pages. He regurgitated regularly and he couldn’t completely ignore its red color.

The voices started when he reached Isaiah. He heard his ex-brother plead with him to stop his quest. He couldn’t, though. He was too far along the way. One does not look back at Sodom and Gomorrah.

The ex-brother begged him to let him out of the trunk. Jeremiah knew the voice could not be real. The voices from the trunk always stopped after three days. Always. So he dismissed the voice as an abomination, a temptation from Satan to abandon his sanctification.

There was hesitation in his commitment when the ex-mother and ex-father joined in a chorus whenever he lay down at night. They pleaded with him to end his feast. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Love them he did, but he had to forsake ex-mother and ex-father to honor the Lord. He remembered when they were just mother and father. Then they fell. It wasn’t his fault. Jeremiah knew that in his heart. He only wished the ex-brother understood, as well. He had been brother then. But he had to fall, as well.

The purification was nearing completion. He needed no food but the pages as he approached Malachi. The promises and covenants would be fulfilled. He would be clean again. He wondered if Heavenly Father would forgive him if he only ate the Old Testament and not the entire Bible. He dismissed such thoughts as temptation. He would not succumb.

The trunk spoke to him every time he walked in the front door. He considered moving it to the basement. He feared a visitor to the house would overhear it. Sometimes he forgot that the voice was only an evil spirit and not a true voice. If only ex-mother hadn’t heard the true voice…

She had told him and told him that ex-father had hurt her. He didn’t know what else to do but to help her. Why did ex-mother run away from his help? She could have stayed mother.

Jeremiah tried to avoid dwelling on such things. He couldn’t change the past. He could only prepare for the Change. He knew now, beyond any shadow of doubt, that he was Becoming. He knew that God had a special mission for him. He knew that once he had completed his quest, he would bring about great things. He knew. Conviction never faded as weeks passed.

He devoured Revelation. He only had a few pages left when the shakes became more persistent. He could make it. He knew he could. He had to Become, he had to cleanse himself. At times he had trouble recalling what dirtied him. He couldn’t remember what had gone wrong. He slipped and drifted and found himself driving home with no memory of working.

He ate the final page on his lunch break and fought the spasms. He waited for the Change. He knew it was coming. He waited to feel different. He had done the deed and marked himself Chosen. He waited for the Blessing to descend upon him. He sat.

Waiting.

Details

So that opening5 was an origin story for one of three new bizarro religions popping up in a thinly-disguised version of my hometown.

A mildly clairvoyant outsider drifts into town and gets wrapped up in a murder mystery involving a Bible-eating religion, a militant-pacifism religion, and a blindness-worshipping religion. There's also a sweat lodge pyramid scheme,6 a corrupt vision quest company, and a combination brothel/ juice manufacturing facility that protests the IRS.

Thanks to all the weird clubs and services, the town's economy depends on discreet debauchery for an elite clientele. So our main character's digging puts the entire place at risk.

A wild cast of characters- all hiding from their chaotic pasts and seeking redemption of one sort or another- guide him along the way, yank his chain, or fight him. Sometimes all at the same time.

This also ties in to another book I wrote,7 as that other book's main couple is drawn to this morbid place by an evil dude with a sentient stomach tumor who's using the town's chaos to conceal his sinister reality-shattering plans.

So you've got cosmic horror stuff, down-to-Earth thriller stuff, religious satire, and lots of colorful descriptions of all the weird religious and non-religious buildings, gatherings, and rituals going on around town.

Here's a few lines from the manuscript that are kinda neat, out of context:8

-“Isn't there a conflict of interest there, like concern about someone else taking a slice of your fetish cheese?”
-“My skin is not my own, my house is not my own.”
-"Sheep in wolves’ clothing, my good man. Sheep in wolves’ clothing.”
-"The body attached to the face burst through the front door."

Why Doesn't It Work?

You know, it probably would have worked.9

But it would have had all the same problems as the other three books I wrote at the time because I was so busy writing, I didn't bother to study how to write.10

There are tricks and tropes that writers use not because they're mandatory, but because they work.11

At the same time, you can wig yourself out and get paralyzed if you fret too much about how you're doing everything wrong or that you're obviously forgetting something. You have to be free and let it flow with your first draft.12 The rules and guidelines are there for you, not the other way around.

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1. I was actually spurred by Leisure Horror's "Fresh Blood" contest where they'd publish your novel if you won. I conceived, wrote, edited, and submitted my first horror novel just in time for the deadline. I didn't win. But in a twist worthy of O. Henry, Leisure Horror went out of business before the winning novel got published.

2. I have two friends who actually read all three of them, though one of them was too grossed out by the third book to finish it. Pretty sure that's a rave review for a splatterpunk novel!

3. Maybe I'm even a best-selling author- you never know what pseudonym I might use...

4. You can tell I was reading a lot of Brian Evenson and J.G. Ballard at the time. Helpful hint- if you're ever depressed, DON'T READ THOSE GUYS!

5. This was a rewrite of a short story I had published in the Sonora Review titled "Feasting."

6. The fourth season of "Arrested Development" basically stole the idea I had here. Pretty sure I'll have to sue them.

7. You could even call this a sequel, if you wanted to. Go ahead. I'll allow it.

8. It was 10,000 words of rambly first draft and I was having a tough time getting to the point early on. So anything that works in the opening bits at all is fortuitous.

9. Though I notice that in the intro chapter, I used The Capital Letters to indicate how the viewpoint character viewed things and I have a friend who read my other books and she HATES The Capital Letters, so she might have dropped this book after the intro!

10. Ah, the arrogance of youth.

11. If you're interested, read Robert McKee's "Story," Christopher Vogler's "The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers," anything by Joseph Campbell, and if you wanna write horror, "Writer's Workshop of Horror" is a great resource.

12. Or when you're planning your outline, however you prefer to fly.


-Phony McFakename

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Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Literateur: "The Godmakers" & "The Green Brain" by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert is best known for "Dune,"so let's see how he handles planets without giant worms or spice!

"The Green Brain"2 is a bite-sized environmentalist sf novel that, short as it is, manages to be two books in one.

The first half has people in an overpopulated future South America exterminating insects to make room for more human settlements. The insects either die or mutate, sometimes to enormous and dangerous sizes.3

Now you're probably thinking what I'm thinking- why are they trying to kill all the insects? Don't they understand the fragility of ecosystems?

I have good news for you: that's the point.

This point is made by the titular "green brain," the insects' hive mind that evolves to defend against their pending extinction.4 It lectures the humans on environmental issues and explains the concept of intraplanetary interdependence.

It's cool that this finally happens,5 but this literally hits on the last two pages. After a ton of suspenseful action, confusion, and twists, you'd expect a cathartic climax of some sort, but nope- just an abrupt tell-don't-show info-dump and you're done.

There's enough other cool stuff going on,6 along with trademark Frank Herbert-y philosophizing to make it well worth the two hours or so of reading. And even if it is a bit preachy and obvious near the end, there are worse things than promoting environmental awareness and inter-species empathy.7

"The Godmakers"8 is the more intellectual of the two.

It's also fun and wacky. We've got a Chosen One who doesn't realize he's Chosen9 and he bumbles his way up the ladder of responsibility at an intergalactic company that specializes in...let's call it "urban pacification of alien populations." And one of these alien populations makes gods. It's a thing they do. So he gets chosen as a subject for their god-making and off we go.

Lots of mystical journeying and pontificating on the nature of deity and responsibility, all interesting.10 And like "Green Brain"- it's short. Like most great sf11 of its time, this one gets in and out of your life in about 200 pages.

And the other great thing is- these are both stand-alone books. Herbert was notorious for not letting the "Dune" series die,12 and he did another series or two that went on a bit long, but no commitment here.

You read either of these books and you're done. That's the complete experience. And that's great.

* * *
1. I've read it three times. I would not fight you for calling me a fan.

2. Originally titled "Greenslaves," a way less-cool title that only even makes sense in the context of its ending.

3. The second half has a handful of arguing, frequently irrational humans wandering around the war zone on a boat, sometimes getting chased by the insects through the searing jungle. Despite some cool hallucinatory sequences, it's not as interesting. So it only gets a footnote.

4. My favorite quote from the brain, in a command to its insect minions: "If all else fails, kill everything except their heads. Save and maintain their heads."

5. And it's cool how concise this book is- 160 pages!

6. Foam bombs! Jelly flames! Broadcast poisons! Blood roaches! Bandeirantes! Vibration weapons! Formic acid! Sonitoxics!

7. In fact, it even delves into the issue of consciousness in insects, so "Do Greenslaves Dream of Electric Sheep?" would be a passable title. Not "Greenslaves." Seriously- lame.

8. No relation to the ridiculous old anti-Mormon movie "The God Makers"- please find it on YouTube then contact me (because I'm Mormon) and say "Is that stuff REALLY what you believe?" so I can say "Nope" for the thousandth time. Shocking as this may be- sometimes propaganda films made by competing churches lie, kids.

9. These tropes weren't cliches yet at the time, so it's neat to see them used in an innocent and offhand way. There's nothing post-modern or reflexive about it and that's refreshing.

10. I really try not to judge a book by its cover, but this one has a really bizarre humdinger of a front illustration. A giant yellow dragon?! Despite the book's mystical themes, this is very much science fiction throughout, so I wondered what crackhead decided that dragon had anything to do with anything. Then our main character comes along and hallucinates a yellow dragon during his becoming-a-god ritual. And the description perfectly matches the cover drawing. I will reserve judgment on covers until the book is finished from here on!

11. I use "sf" in the Harlan Ellison-ian sense of "speculative fiction"- encompassing both fantasy and science fiction.

12. He lost me on the fifth one, and shame on his son and Kevin J. Anderson for continuing the never-ending stream of "Dune" cash-in books. Does anybody actually like those things? Like if you run out of posthumously-published ghostwritten V.C. Andrews books, do you read these faux "Dune" books next?

13. BONUS FOOTNOTE: For further reading- I just discovered this list, which includes "Godmakers": 5 Essential Frank Herbert Novels That Aren't About Dune


-Phony McFakename

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Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.