Finally! Finally! I can announce it! For the last six months I've been knee-deep in a project that will be my newest, grandest adventure yet. If you didn't read the title, allow me to announce that I will be going to China.
Not for a vacation. Not for a business trip. I will be living and working in China for the next two years. The interviews I've been sitting through have been with various schools throughout the country from Shenzhen to Beijing and my wife and I have finally decided on one that we think best fits with our goals. So we're going to teach English in China. Ah! It's so exciting to finally announce it. I'll be dedicating part of my blog entries from here out to detailing our preparations, but I do have to make a sad announcement as well. I have been posting to this blog every day since it's inception. The trip to China will interfere in that. Once I officially move there I will be reducing my posts to one or two a week. This doesn't mean I'm not going to be working on The Paladin. I most certainly am. But with such a full schedule and being in place with less than reliable internet, I can't promise a daily upload. Expect to hear from me once or twice a week as I have something to report. Along with that I plan to keep a travel blog about my time and adventures in China which will be available on YouTube. Between now and our departure I will talk a little bit about what exactly I'll be doing over there and why we made this decision. For now, I'm just so excited to finally get it off my chest. I've accepted a job offer in China. I'm leaving soon. Guys... it was a hell of a trip here. It's going to be an even bigger one there. Be Excellent to Each Other
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We just got done with the final interview. It's time to finally relax for just a bit before I bring this project out to the greater public. I'm excited, but I'm also exhausted. I'm glad this part is, more or less, done.
But you're not here to listen to vague hints about my project for the eightieth time. Presumably, you're here for something literary, something related to The Paladin or maybe just writing in general. Well, allow me to oblige. On a recent episode of Writing Excuses, the crew was asked what level of cultural knowledge do you need to know to write a story. I feel like that's quite an interesting question. I didn't get to hear all of the crew's answers (I had to stop the podcast to do real life stuff, blegh...) but I think I can offer a few insights, at least as I see them. I love world building. Cultural knowledge is paramount if you're planning a longer story. I'm sure short stories or flash fiction you can get away without knowing the religion of the main characters or the political hierarchy in the larger world. But if you plan on writing anything with heft, anything with a larger word count, you need to know these things. Again, I've mentioned these in other entries, but this is not an invitation to do some exposition dumping. It's important to know what is going on in the background because those things influence your characters' decision. The more you write about, the more you need to know what's going on in the background. Sorry to cut this one short, I'm looking over contracts right now and really lost track of time. I'll try to have something a little meatier tomorrow. DFTBA! I am so exhausted today I almost forgot to do my blog. I hope that conveys to you the mental exhaustion this past week has been imparted on me. I've gone quite some time now without missing a single day, but this project, man... it's been taking a toll. A good one, though. I think it may be just a matter of days until the official announcement can be made. That said, I am far too out of it to make a coherent blog post about anything literary tonight. That won't stop me from delivering content, though. For anyone that comes here, you know that I bring something to the table day in and day out. Some of it is good, like my Carmen Sandiego Review you can read HERE and HERE. Others are a little more phoned in. Either way, I do try to provide something worth reading here. Tonight, I'm going to do one more Paladin Playlist. Usually I share something that I listen to while writing. Today, I want to share something that I'm just super excited about. You may remember that I shared the video "Die Young" back in Paladin Playlist 16 (Click Here!) specifically because the animation done by VivziePop was so great. Well... she's making an actual show now! Hazbin Hotel looks awesome. It's irreverent, musical, the animation is great, and best of all, it's filled with demons! Which, I mean... I'm writing The Paladin about demon hunting and whatnot, so it's only a natural fit for my tastes. Enough of my exhausted prattling. Watch the video. It's "Inside Every Demon is a Rainbow" from the new Vivziepop project Hazbin Hotel. Check it out! DFTBA I believe that last year on Women's Day I decided to talk about female characters and what I'd learned from better writers than myself about how to go about writing them. Simply put, treat them as a human first.
So, with that amazing and insightful writing advice out of the way, I want to recognize a few of the women in my life and their amazing contributions to not only making my life better, but making the world a better place as well. That means I absolutely have to start with my wonderful and beautiful wife, Elizabeth. She is absolutely my biggest fan. Even if I just restrict her contributions to my writing, she's been invaluable. She loves my characters and is constantly asking me what's going to happen next. She's my first alpha reader, going over things freshly written and is always there with suggestions and critiques. When I was working as a journalist in Las Vegas, writing whenever I had a scrap of free time, she was there to cheer me on. That job literally gave me white hair. I was always super stressed and never had enough time to devote to my book. Once I got it finished and I was more or less done with Las Vegas, it was my wife who not only suggested but insisted that I focus on my writing once we moved. I managed to get her to agree to letting me work part time at the University so I didn't feel like a total sponge, but she took on a full time job and insisted I devote the bulk of my time to writing and not working. She's helped me work out the most complicated tangles of plot that I thought would never go anywhere. Helped me develop interesting and intriguing characters. She is, without a doubt, the top reason that I'm able to do anything related to my book and I am so thankful for her. Because I want to spread the love around a little, I also want to mention my mother. She read every scrap of nonsense I ever cobbled together, but when she read my first draft of an early concept for The Paladin, she insisted I stop everything else and work on this. She cheered me every step of the way, made me confident about my work, and encouraged me to seek out ways to fulfill my dreams, however they presented themselves. My kohai, like a little sister, and mother to our god-daughter, Karlli. I give her grief for having too many consonants in her name, but she's a great influence in my life and I'm so thankful for her friendship and inspiration. And lastly, Ruth. When Elizabeth and I made plans to move to LA and they fell through, you were there to give us a place to stay. On top of that, you burned through my manuscript in about a day, ready with tons of feedback. You told me how much you love Giz (one of the characters) and how you enjoyed the characterization of all the people in my novel. Obviously there are other women in my life that I owe a lot to, friends and family, but there's only so much time and so much space on this blog. My deepest thanks to all of you for how positively you've affected my life. Thank you. Be Excellent to Each Other. Oh man... six interviews. I am exhausted. There's more on the horizon, but I at least can take a small respite. And man, I could use it. Between preparations and my day job, stuff like writing (and running a tabletop group) have had to take a back seat. I will say this, with great excitement and enthusiasm: I have some offers. This is going to be amazing.
But back on the subject of writing, since I now have a little bit of time. I am inching closer and closer to being able to plot out the new bulk of book 1 for the The Paladin. I'm understanding the antagonist, knowing how they they think, fleshing out their world, and, of course, thought up plenty of backstory that will never get mentioned in the work itself. Fun. But that's part of the game. You need to know what's going on if you're going to show the results. I'm a firm believer that you can't skimp on the backstory of characters, especially your antagonist. You don't have to do exposition dumps; I highly suggest against them! But you need to know why your characters are doing what they do, even if the reader doesn't. Internal consistent logic. Even if the reader doesn't know exactly why someone is doing something, they can see consistent logic within a character's actions, logic that is informed by the backstory you have created (but not necessarily shared.) The best part about this, I think, is that beyond understanding your characters' motivations better, this allows you to have material ready for supplementary reading or sequels or whatever you want to give to your readers. Sure, you have to have some patience, but you can't write a (good) book if you don't have at least a little patience. I've been working for years on my story and it's on the 8th draft now so... yeah. DFTBA Two more interviews today and one more tomorrow. And would you believe there's already a job offer on the table? Man... this is turning out amazing. There is a new adventure just waiting to begin and I can't wait to tell you all about it. But, in the meantime...
Let's talk about something literary. I don't have a lot of time, but this blog is about writing, dang it. So let's talk a little more about world building. In this case, I want to talk about the integration and relationship between races in your story. For me, I'm doing Urban Fantasy, which means everything takes place in a modern setting, but supernatural stuff is inserted. Think Supernatural, like, the CW show with Sam and Dean Winchester. For me, I have to think about things like "What do vampires do for day jobs?" Does the world at large know about their existence? What is their legal status? How do they run a culture within a larger culture? For you this may be something completely different. Let's look at a more high fantasy example. Let's take a world full of elves and dwarves and stuff like that. Now let's drop a whole load of humans in there. How do the different races actually get along? It's one thing to think "Yeah, they all exist peacefully," but you'll need to consider the world you've built. Are there enough resources to satisfy the needs of all the races? If not, you're going to have conflict. For my story it's pretty cut and dry on that point. There are plenty of ways for something like vampires to get blood without having to resort to mass homicide. It's a modern world with things like blood banks or animal blood. I hesitate to use it as an example, but I'm pretty sure Twilight did exactly this. And you know what? For all the crap I can give the books, that's not one of them. It's a legitimate way to look at the needs of a group and find a way for your world to meet them. But what about your elves and dwarves? Is there enough farmable land? Are they in competition with one another for any particular resource? Remember that clothes, food, medicine, shelter and many other things need to be considered when you map out the needs and wants of your fictional races. The more races you have in your world, the more you need to worry about what each one needs and whether they're going to be able to satisfy that need without conflict. You may want a peaceful Eden to start your story in, but remember, not everyone's friendly when they're starving. DFTBA Remember how yesterday I said I had a bunch of job interviews lined up. Well I got another added on today. So my week is a little shot as far as doing anything else. I'm glad I don't have any games to review right now because I'm spending all my time interviewing this week. And preparing to interview. Researching the company, getting questions together, trying look like a human being.... ah!
But... it's a good problem to have, I suppose. Having options is never a bad thing and right now, I've got a lot of possibilities laid in front of me. They convene along one theme, but they're all a little different. You know, I'm going to be glad when I'm allowed talk about this more openly. Pussy-footing around is not my style. Sure, I like to build dramatic tension; I'm a writer and a pro wrestler! But this... I just want to shout it out. Which I have, in select company. Anyway, point is I have very little time today. I have to head off to the interview in literally minutes, so I'll cut this short. Hopefully I'll be able to talk a little more about awesome stuff tomorrow. You know, when I don't have three Skype interviews in a row. DFTBA Man, when it rains, it pours. I still can't talk officially about my new project, but I can mention that it involves getting a new job. And I have three Skype job interviews tomorrow. Yikes!
I'm not complaining, but it's a lot of stress to handle everything. There are time zones involves, paper work, notarizations to be made... gah! But in the end, I know this is going to be freakin' amazing and I can't wait until I'm able to officially announce it all to you guys. In the meantime, since I'm about run an Extraordinary League session (RPG), I'll just quickly mention that I'm making some good headway with my manuscript. I have several characters developing in my cranium, some deeper lore that won't be directly mentioned but will affect how I write the story, and several other great details that are forming. I think I'll be able to start outlining fairly soon, and that's exciting! Because after outline... is writing! God, I'm such a nerd. Well, speaking of nerds, I have a herd of them chomping at the bit for tonight's session, so I gotta call this here. Hopefully I'll have more interested information for you tomorrow. Until then... Don't Forget to be Awesome! There is nothing on Earth for a writer the is quite like that moment when inspiration finally hits. When you've been slamming your head against that brick wall and the wall finally comes tumbling down. I have been scouring online sources, watching documentaries, and checking wikis since I decided to split my manuscript in twain. Finally... finally... I have an idea of what I'm doing.
It's actually done much more than tell me about my antagonist, I've fleshed out three other characters I didn't think I'd need to use! It's so awesome! Things are falling into place and it's such a relief. I think the thing that always gets me about inspiration finally arriving is that it rarely stops with the thing I was stumped with. I've figured out a good amount of stuff I need to know about my antagonist and what they're going to be doing, but it's the side stuff that surprised me. So many things just started tumbling into place and now I think I might be almost ready to start plotting this bad boy out. The fortunate thing is that I've got a quarter to half of the story written. If you haven't been keeping up with me, I'm splitting the original story of The Paladin into two books because my word count was so high. Obviously I tried my best to bring the word count down, but I ended up at a point where I couldn't take anything else out without affecting the plot. But by splitting it up, I can stretch the ultimate story out, give characters and plots some room to breathe, and let the reader get to know everyone a bit better. So that's where I am in my writing journey. How's yours going? Feel free to share in the comments or let me know on Twitter or Facebook! Until tomorrow-- DFTBA Some days I really wish I could tell you more about my project. I could fill up entire blog entries about what we're doing there. Suffice it to say, today was a big day for it. I'm a little emotionally drained, but still happy. Things are coming along. I've just figured out all the little nooks and crannies and, brother, we have a lot of paperwork to get filed. And perhaps a mandatory vacation. Maybe I can sneak another trip to Disneyland in.
In the meantime, I've been waiting for inspiration to strike me with the creation of my new antagonist for The Paladin. I know that waiting isn't the best idea, but I'm running out of active things I can do. My research is coming up dry and I'm resorting to more and more... unconventional methods. I may have to binge some Supernatural. I thought I'd said goodbye to the Winchester brothers a long time ago, but like one of Dean's STIs, they keep coming back. So I suppose the conundrum I have now is this: what sources are okay for my research? Obviously if I was doing historical fiction like some of my friends in my writers group I could just research history. It may be sparse, but I'd know what I'm looking for. But for this, looking for how to build the characters, the races, the abilities of people in my story, where do I go? Do I restrict my research only to historical accounts? To the old myths and legends? Or do I include contemporary interpretations. I mean, I'm not going to make my vampires sparkle, but how new can I go before I'm not interpreting and just using someone else's stuff? They're all fictional creatures. I know this. I know that I can make them do anything I want, yet there's a line. I don't know where the line is, but I know it's there. And on one side there's characters that can be recognized as the thing I call them and on the other side is something that's only a name. Its frustrating. And yet, I seem to live for this crap. Oh well. Back to the books, I suppose. Be Excellent to Each Other |
Matias TautimezKeep your eyes open for my debut novel, The Paladin. Archives
January 2023
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