I tried. I tried for over a week. I delayed this just because I couldn't find proper ways to credit anyone. So... Here. I love this song. It has a very specific feel when I'm working with undead ghoulies and things that go bump. Unfortunately, this is not only an older song, from a kinda obscure movie... and to top it off, I had a specific fan animation in mind from The Before Times... ie, before YouTube. It's fine, the animation didn't exactly age well and the song alone is good enough without me needing to add anything to it. It's light-hearted while still invoking thoughts of the supernatural, immortality, life and death, and so much more. It's easy to get into the groove and help me keep my mind on my work when it starts to drift. Today I give you Move Your Dead Bones by Dr. Reanimator. Best I can find, it was part of the Reanimator II soundtrack, which I'm sure means I've already lost a bunch of you. Just... just click play. Let your mind relax, and think of all the odd supernatural possibilities. DFTBA
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I've finally got eyes on The Paladin. It's still a little nerve-wracking, but it's an important step. So while I'm waiting on initial beta reviews of the work, I figured it was a good time to go over the next step in my plan.
From here I need to remove a much beloved scene or five. I have to get that word count down because there's little confidence from publishers in new authors. Obviously, once I'm rich and famous and The Paladin has a movie franchise, television show, and best-selling series of video games, I can write 500,000 word novels and they'll publish them in an instant. Until that obviously inevitable day, I need to chop down my book. After the Purge, I'll need to do a final edit. Look for typos and format issue. Fix up some minor issues with clarity and add any changes I want. Then comes a tough decision. Professional edit or no? No, if money was no object, then of course I'd do it. Unfortunately editing is expensive. And it's not like I can blame the people that are doing the work. They're charging extremely fair amounts, but it's by volume. As it stands, and I know I've mentioned this before, the average rate to edit my novel, just a basic edit mind you, is around $3000. Gah... So... likely I'll have to forgo that. I honestly just don't have the money. So from there, it'll be off to the agents. There are the people that will connect me with the publishers and then, it's off to famous author-hood. Obviously. So I need to find the right agents, preferably someone who's just started taking on clients, someone who's hungry to make things work for their client. Though, let's be honest, anyone who believe in my work will do for me. I say all that as if I'm going to have agents fighting over my work. Right now it's totally a buyers market. I'm tossing my novel out into a sea of manuscripts, all clamoring for these agents' attention. So the key is to research my potential agents, make sure I meet their criteria and follow ALL their submission guidelines... and then hope and wait. I suppose in the meantime, while waiting on agents, I can focus on short stories and getting some writing credentials from winning contents. Not sure what else. I guess just... writing? And writing. And writing! DFTBA There's a certain anxiety that sets in when you finally have Beta Readers going over your work. I can only imagine when the work is finally published how anxious I'll be then. There's something about actual people, people who don't owe you anything or even know you from Adam, looking at your work and giving it a critical read.
My inbox is getting flooded with notifications of people noting things about my work. It's hard not to just sit on my email, watching for the next update. These aren't even full updates, just little notes about clarity, continuity, and what have you. Every time I see something, I get more and more anxious. These people are doing me a huge favor by looking it over, giving me their honest opinions. But this is something I poured my heart into for years. It's... hard to see all the stuff I either messed up or that people don't understand. This is a huge stage, not only for the novel but for me. I'm about to feel like the worst writer on the planet, but I know from previous betas that the story is good! Minor nitpicks and confusions about things, especially from people who are specifically looking from them, are going to happen. My novel sits at around 136,000 words. I understand, in my brain, that I can't possibly catch all the mistakes. I'm too close to the work, I understand too much of what's going on in the background to realize all the times I didn't explain something fully to my readers. But these beautiful people are here to help me. Still... I can't help but think, on occasion, "Geez! Stop telling me what's wrong with the novel and just tell me I'm awesome!" But it's okay. This is the process. After all, if you don't have someone there to point out the bad decisions you made in your story, you end up like George Lucas. With... billions of... dollars...? I think I lost that metaphor. Someone should really beta read my blog posts. DFTBA Sorry for the late post tonight guys. Blame my dying monitor. And Deadpool 2. Seriously, go watch that movie.
But onto important matters. Today I thought I'd share my thoughts on swerving. Or, put another way, subverting your audience's expectations. This has absolutely almost nothing to do at all with my having watched Deadpool. I feel like we're in a weird age where some many tropes and cliches have been played out, where so many legitimate formulas one writing stories exist, that everyone seems to be about The Twist ™. In fact, it's become so regular that including a twist is now a cliche in and of itself. Who doesn't go to movies, especially from certain directors or in certain series, anxiously awaiting The Twist ™? We've come to expect it. And you can't just NOT do it. Then people walk away disappointed. But if you do it wrong, people think it was contrived. I wonder if we're reaching a saturation point in fiction. They say all the good stories have already been told. My screenwriting professor told me there are only two stories in the world : Some leaves town and someone comes to town. Could it really be true? I'd like to think that we, as a people, as a culture, as a species, have a lot left to tell and that, even if we're treading on well worn ground, we can continue to innovate. Sure, we can lay one story atop another and point at all the similarities. In some tragic cases we can show flat out plagiarism. But I don't think stories being similar should ever be a reason to ignore them. The greatest movies have been copies (lets say "homages") to previous works. Star Wars? Lucas admitted inspiration from a dozen or so older movies, including some shot-for-shot recreations of a WWII movie that I can't be bother to Google at the moment. We all know (I hope) that The Magnificent 7 was just a cowboy version of Seven Samurai. So I don't think we're in trouble there. Yet. But still, this Twist ™ business. How do you handle it? I'm not really sure. All I can do, and all I can suggest for other writers out there, is not to worry so much. Just write the best story you can. Don't aim for a twist. Don't try to avoid one. Let the story go where it needs to go. Also, you should all check out Aggretsuko on Netflix. It's amazing. ((Didn't see that Twist ™, did you?)) DFTBA ((Yes! I got through it without a single M. Night Shyamalan reference!)) "Why" is a very important question when writing a story. I'm as guilty as anyone else of rushing headlong into a story. In fact, when I first started college, I used to share a story I was working on at the time with my English instructor. She liked it, more or less, but why clued me in on something. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I created worlds and interesting characters. I had tension and conflict. But she was able to stop all of that with a simple question: why?
At the time I was busy writing. I was emulating what I'd read, seen in movies and television, what I'd played in games. I wanted an epic masterpiece, a story that would stretch out over ten novels! My world was vast and expansive, but when asked why my characters did any of the things they did, I was flummoxed. I mean, isn't it obvious? It's an adventure! That wasn't good enough, for her or for me. I've been looking at my own writing, and my dear wife can attest, I will stop writing dead for hours if not days when I hit the "why" barrier. Why do the Paladins insist on a certain protocol? Why don't they just do this instead? If I can't answer, I'm stuck. I just can't write until I've figured it out or otherwise resolved the issue. And while it's frustrating, I think that it's made my writing all the better. My characters have motivations. My world feels alive. I've actually been helping a couple of writers with their own work and I think I might be jeopardizing my friendship with them with as many times as I ask "why." Why does this character need to do that? Why does this creature not just get killed the moment it arrives? Why does this group of people agree to something that would make their life miserable? I can see it in their faces and hear the intense frustration in their voices as they try to come up with reasons. I won't say I don't get a little amusement out of it, but at the same time, I see a younger me in that same position. Why? Such a simple question, but it stymied my writing back then and it still does it to promising writers today. I think it's important to take stock of your characters' motivations. To ask why your world works the way it does. To recount the history of the world leading up to the start of your story. Maybe not at the expense of the story itself, because bad writing can always be edited in better writing, but... it bears consideration while writing. And I think it can really make the difference between a so-so story and a novel that captures a reader. Be Excellent to Each Other. Just a brief update on what I'm working on while waiting for feedback from my Betas. I just finished up reviewing another game for DLH.net. Pretty good one that I'm actually still playing for my own enjoyment, but I'll leave the details for my official review. Until then, feel free to check out one of my other reviews. You can find the links HERE.
The other bit of exciting news is that I'm recording another debate with my good friends over at Smash Fiction. I love listening to those guys, so when they asked if I wanted to jump in on another debate, I agreed in a heartbeat. If you pay attention to my social media you can figure out who's squaring off, but as a sign of respect I'll wait until the episode is announced before I mention anything more. I will say this though... Research can be a pain sometimes. I don't envy those guys doing that kind of research week in and week out. Since I'm literally an hour away from showtime, I'm going to cut this one short, but don't forget to check out Smash Fiction on Facebook and at their website. Don't forget to be awesome! Okay, stick with me on this one. Last time I didn't use the song I wanted because I couldn't properly find attribution and I didn't want to just link a random YouTuber who ripped the song off a CD (I assume they wouldn't download it, of course.) So today I'm going the other way. Now you should all know by now I'm a fan of Aurelio Voltaire. His songs are amazing and honestly, I could throw a dart at his discography and find the theme of my next story. I chose this particular song, however, not because of Voltaire's talent, but because of the talents of one of his fans. This video (along with Voltaire's amazing vocals) is fantastic. So... for today's Paladin Playlist I present to you, The Night by Aurelio Voltaire...and animated by fan Daria Cohen. First off, the song. It's amazing. It's Voltaire, so that's a given, but follow the lyrics and how can you NOT be inspired to write? But this one goes deeper. Daria Cohen's animation is SO spot on. I could easily see this being something official from Voltaire. I mean, look at that vampire! That is clearly Voltaire himself. I almost wrote "if he were a vampire" but to be honest, I can't prove his isn't one in real life. Anyway, enjoy the video guys! It's a favorite of mine. DFTBA! So you may not have noticed, but there's a little difference on my front page now. If you look under the "Bonus" section, you'll see there's a new bit called "Original Chapters 1-3." Original? What might that mean? It means I've updated the sample chapters, baby!
Yes, so that things better reflect the new edit of The Paladin that I have in front of my Beta Readers, I have updated the sample chapters. I moved the previous version into the Bonus Section because I feel it might be interested to compare and contrast the two. The story moves a LOT faster in the new chapters, so you actually get to sample the exorcism I tease in the story's synopsis. I hope those of you that have already read the first three chapters will take a look at the new versions, and if you haven't read either, well, get on it, man? You're here for a reason, right? Check out the first three chapters of my upcoming novel The Paladin right here and see if it's for you. It's got everything! Action, mystery, adventure, and werewolf selfies. Here, I'll even make it easy for you: Click Here For Chapter 1. In all seriousness, I really hope you guys enjoy this. I've worked really hard and come a long way. I know there's still a long road in front of me, but I think you'll really enjoy The Paladin. Don't Forget to be Awesome. I haven't kept it a secret, but not all of you may know that I have no living parents. They both died fairly young, especially for this day and age, and so every holiday I get these wonderful reminders.
I don't hold anyone to blame for the heartbreak these holidays bring: no one sets out to make a Mother's Day commercial with the intent of upset all the people without mothers. Still, it's not a fun time of year for me. Or Father's Day. Or Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Or any holiday I have memories of returning home for. But I can certainly appreciate the sentiment. I loved my mother with all my heart and she was my biggest fan. I wrote all kind of stuff that never quite got finished and she ate it up. Not just with the biased sincerity of a mother looking at her child's art, but with the ferocity of a rabid fan waiting hungrily for more content. It was always encouraging to hear her thoughts on my work, her impressions of my characters, and her predictions for the plot. I must've brought her a dozen or more different stories, but one story stopped her. She read my writing and told me to stop everything else I was messing around with. To focus on this ONE story because it was the best and knew it could go far. If you've ever seen any sappy after-school / holiday special, I'm sure you can guess which story it was. Yeah, no curve balls here. It's The Paladin. So with this last edit over and my focus now and inching closer to publication, I take time today to rededicate myself to my work, to my dreams, and to making sure that her favorite story becomes a real, honest to god book. Mom. The Paladin is for you. Be Excellent to Each Other. Since I'm writing a story that involves monsters, hunting, and the Catholic church, it only made sense that I did a little research on the matter. So for the edification of those writing on the subject, allow me to share what I've learned. Standard Disclaimer: I do not claim to be an expert on these subjects, what I share is merely the product of my intense research. I may be wrong and I encourage others to correct me and do their own research! First thing's first. If you have vampires and the church, crosses are going to come up. So I need to dispel one of most common misconceptions and that is this... Do you know what this is? If you answered "a Satanic cross" or anything of that nature, you, my friend, are misinformed. What you see up there is a Petrine Cross. Also known as the cross of St. Peter. That is, this isn't Satanic. Or evil. In fact, it's quite the opposite. See, St. Peter was crucified upside down because he didn't feel worthy to die the same way as Jesus. That means it a symbol of humility before God. Don't believe me? Take it up with the Pope, man. He had it carved on his freakin' throne. But it doesn't stop there. There's actually a whole slew of crosses, all with their own unique meanings and connections. Just about every saint in Catholicism has their own cross or at least a depiction of the cross that identifies them. Here's a few of the big ones. That blue X? That's the Cross of St. Andrew! Famously utilized in Scotland's flag. And the T? That's Tau cross or the Cross of St. Anthony. Turn that cross on it's side and you've got St. Philip the Apostle's cross! Toss a few extra bars on there and you've got the Papal Cross, symbol of the Pope!
So you can see there's a bunch to learn about the iconography of Catholicism, and this is just the crosses! I could go on about this forever, but I think you guys get the idea. Main Idea: If you're writing supernatural horror, an upside down cross is just a symbol that the author hasn't done any research. Don't Forget to Do Your Research! |
Matias TautimezKeep your eyes open for my debut novel, The Paladin. Archives
January 2023
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