I talked before about some of the details of The Paladin’s world, elaborating on the various paladin disciplines. Today I want to talk a little bit about how they operate in the United States.
Now the paladins operate within the US as sort of contractors. This is because the United States government oversees their operations within national boundaries. The Bureau of Demonic Affairs was into effect through the work of President Theodore Roosevelt after his second term. The BDA was formed in response to a large outbreak of lycanthropy, centered around a meat packing factory. This, in part, lead to the Pure Food and Drug Act, followed by him leading a secret operation which largely killed off most of the werewolves in the US around 1910. Since then, the BDA discovered the presence of the Paladin Order and decided it was easier to allow them to continue functioning within the US under their direction, seeing as how the Order already had the manpower, training, and equipment. This has bred some hostilities between the two organizations, but for the most part, they work together. There’s your peek into The Paladin. I hope it inspires you to check out the first three chapters on the front page and my bonus short story, Val’s Blog. DFTBA
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Being that's it's Halloween, that I'm writing a novel, and that I've done a crap ton of historical research to make sure that my world falls in line with reality in a believable manner, it only makes sense that I celebrate with an appropriate film. I am, of course, speaking of the revered biopic Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. For those unfamiliar, this masterpiece follows the exploits of a young Abraham Lincoln, before his presidency. As only the astute know, his mother was killed by a vampire and, thus, young Abe was set upon the path of the vampire hunter, fighting to save those he loves and of course free our country from the horrors of both slavery and vampire overlords.
Now why do I bring this up? I have a part of my story in which an artist friend of mine has pointed out that I am treading a similar path. I, however, have chosen easily the most badass of presidents: Teddy Roosevelt. I won't get into specifics because, well, I plan on have that particular short story up soon. But this classic of cinema does help me remember that whatever I choose to write, I need to make sure I understand the historical context and find the most opportune moments in history to make my poetic edits. This film doesn't throw the vampire hunting into your face with reckless abandon. It finds the moments in actual history where events are a bit foggy and utilizes these to tell a new tale alongside the historical one. It's great! I get to learn about history in depth and write about Teddy Roosevelt killing werewolves! Bully! I've given the guys at Smash Fiction a shout out before, but now I have a more personal reason: I've been invited to be an advocate! I'm really excited to work with people I've been listening to for a couple years now. If you're not familiar with their podcast, they're basically a geek fight style show. They take two pop culture icons and put them in a battle of strength, of wits, or who can build a better start-up that will impress the Sharks. I'm actually not really joking on that last bit. You see, they have three rounds. Opening arguments, rebuttals, and finally the lightning round, in which I've heard their contestants be put into the weirdest of situations. It's run by a really good friend of mine from my old wrestling days, Miles Schneiderman, though I always knew him as Miles Johnson, one half of the best damned announce team in (Flagstaff) Pro Wrestling! I'm not sure when it's going to air, but I'll be recording it next week. Right now, I'm spending every moment not used for The Paladin to research my chosen champion and their opponent. I'm not sure if I can say anything about who's in the fight, but I will share this: My very general calculations on the Midgard Serpent suggest it weighs about 124 trillion tons.
Check out the Smash Fiction podcast on Facebook at www.facebook.com/smashfictionpodcast and hit them up on Twitter @SmashFicPodcast So we're nearly at NaNoWriMo. If you're not familiar with it, this is when every November tons of writers attempt to knock out an entire novel in one month. Sometimes really good stuff comes out of this, but sometimes you just get a lot of frustrated writers with a self-imposed deadline. Either way, writing gets done, which I approve of.
Here's the catch. I'm supposed to be editing. Everyday I'm shaving words off, cutting scenes, and weighing my word count. I feel a certain obligation to participate in NaNoWriMo, but I wonder if my participation will be at the expense of getting The Paladin cleaned up and where it needs to be for publication. I have no representation yet, so I certainly have immediate obligations to get my stuff done, but at the same time, I feel like I've waited way too long to put myself fully into my writing. So what's a querying writer to do? So... I thought I'd ask you guys. Anyone out there that stumbles by my blog, what do you think? If I did another story, it would be much shorter than The Paladin, but likely in the same world. I've got a prequel of sorts that focuses on Reagan McCarthy (check out the first three chapters on the home page if you're confused) and his time in the Academy. It actually leads right up to the beginning of The Paladin, and would do so without giving away any spoilers. Of course, I have three other potential stories floating in my brain, too! One about a hunter working for the BDA (see Val's Blog in my earlier posts,) and one about what happens to Reagan and the other side characters after the end of The Paladin. So, peoples of the internet. What should I do? Write one of these? If so, which one? Or should I just remain focused on my current work and get it where it needs to be? Let me know in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks! DFTBA. Today I thought I'd share another piece of music from my writing playlist. If you're not familiar by now, this is the list I have going while I'm writing. Sometimes I need specific song for a specific character, sometimes I just need a mood setting song. Since I'm afraid the character songs might be spoilers, today you're getting another mood song. If you're familiar with Within Temptation, you'll know that just about any of their songs could fit my writing list. They're a symphonic metal band from the Netherlands (Dutchies represent!) and their music is incredible. Honestly, I could just send you to any of their songs to put you in the same mindset I get when I write, but today I'm specifically thinking of their song Forsaken. The driving melody, the power of chorus, it's just such an intense song, and coupled with the lead singer's gorgeous voice, it paints such a vivid picture for me. The lyrics give me this sense of beautiful despair. There's a foreboding sense of doom weaved through the music and it really sets me in the proper mindset for some of my darker moments (see yesterday's post about nightmare fuel.) Check them out and hopefully you'll get the same feeling I do. Enjoy! There are some things you need to know about me. I wrote a novel about demons and monsters from the pits of hell, one scene of which a reader referred to as "nightmare fuel." I have stepped into the ring and willingly was assaulted with steel chairs, golf clubs, kendo sticks, and a lung full of baby powder. Been hurled through the air by 300lb+ men who then came crashing down on me elbow first. And through all of that, you must know one thing: I am a coward.
So it's Halloween. The time of year where I pretend I'm not interested in Circus Circus' Fright Dome because it's too cliche. Where I excuse myself from viewing the newest Evil Dead reboot because I like the one with Bruce Campbell better. Where I decline the opportunity to play Five Nights at Freddy's because I've already watched the Let's Plays and theory videos on YouTube. Those are all true... but the hide the fact that, even if they weren't, I wouldn't do those things for money. Well... it'd have to be a lot of money. Point is, I have a strange relationship with horror. I'm dabbling in a genre that flirts with horror. All the occult lore, the demons, the monsters, it's all there. And, to be honest, the idea of horror fascinates me to no end, but I just can't engage myself in it. Was it because I watched that Pink Elephants song in Dumbo as a child? Maybe it's because I was an early victim of those screamer internet pranks as a teen. Point is, I really want to produce something that's scary. Sometimes. I mean, how can I write a story with allusions to The Exorcist and not want to impart some measure of fear? In the end I suppose I'll just have to write what I write. I'll have to hope that my twisted, disturbing images will suffice where I wish I could instill true horror. Because in the end, to write horror, I have to experience horror. And let's face it, that's not happening. I'm a coward. Where do you find inspiration? When you're working on something creative, be it a story, a painting, a piece of music, whatever - where do you draw your creativity? I have to say that since the inception of The Paladin the form of the story, the characters, and the world has morphed and changed so much that it wouldn't be recognizable to a younger Matias. I can still recall some of the ideas that percolated in my brain when I first started on the path to here.
I'm not going to give away plot points, but suffice it to say that my work has changed a lot and I owe that to great sources of inspiration around me. One of the biggest places I get inspiration is from my music. I have playlists that sit through, letting my characters move around to the music, seeing where it takes them. Entire characters have been born through songs, but in general, I tend to get plot points. A character dies in this way. These two characters fight off a certain type of monster. A magically imbued device is discovered and activated. Whatever it is, I usually see the incident first, then fill in the characters next, finishing with figuring out where in the story it falls. Probably my favorite books of all time are Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. They get misrepresented quite frequently in media and often regarded as simply nonsense, but they help me a lot with my story. You see, the biggest thing about the Alice books is that despite the apparent insanity of the world, everything there still operates on a kind of logic. I find that lacking in a lot of modern media that attempts to portray absurdity. Random for the sake of randomness is lazy and misses the point. The Alice books have a set logic, a set of rules that their world operates by, and they adhere to them. Why do I bring this up? I'm writing a novel that includes monster hunters, demons, ghost, vampires, werewolves, nosferatu, fairies, and non-Euclidean geometry; I have to make sure that there's an underlying logic to it all. Suspension of disbelief is a fragile thing. I can buy that Kirk and Spock are two different species from opposite ends of the galaxy who's people are somehow sexually compatible (Spock's half human!) but if Spock's blood is green in one episode and purple in the next, I need a reason. Fail to address it and you've pulled me out of the moment. So.. there's my ramble for the day. I draw the inspiration to write and continue writing my stories from a lot of different places. What about you? What inspires you? Feel free to let me know down in the comments! Don't forget to be awesome! Well, I finally did it. The first three chapters are as good as I'm getting them without the help of an editor, so here they are World.
In all seriousness, posting the first three chapters is incredibly exciting, but also insanely nerve wracking. Putting out the short story Val's Blog was fun and gave people a taste, but this is the real thing. This is Jonathan Sutter beginning his adventure. For realsies. I'm baring my soul here in the hopes that someone out there will read these chapters and be hooked. So, if you'd be so kind, please head over to the home page where you can find links to the first three chapters at the bottom of the page. I'm really excited to see what you guys think. Please, if you have any thoughts or comments on them, feel free to leave them in the comment section here. Thanks everyone! Enjoy the chapters! So, there are two kinds of writers: underwriters and overwriters. Those who set out to write an 80,000 page novel and come up with 50k, and those who come up with 140k. I am the latter.
Each kind of writer presents themselves with a unique challenge when it comes to the editing stage. Those that underwrite find themselves having to invent completely new plot elements to stretch their story into a proper novel. I almost wish I had this problem. You see, the writing is the fun part of creating a novel. Everything about it is great. The world building, the character arcs, it's all so enjoyable. On the other hand, I have overwritten. For my genre, I need to be around 110,000 words, but I'm sitting around 140,000. So, right now my days and evenings are filled with tedious reviews of every word of my novel. Striking redundant uses of the word "that." Culling my adverbs. And now I'm at the hardest part. I'm trying to condense three or four chapters near the midpoint of my novel into one. My beta readers have shown interest in the content of these chapters, but told me they seem to drag. So... that's where I sit right now. What do I keep and what do I ditch? How do I crunch all the info I want in the novel into just the one chapter? Well... that's where I sit today. If you have any thoughts or questions about The Paladin, feel free to let me know in the comments below. I should have the first three chapters (which aren't part of this condensing conundrum) up soon. Cheers! I feel like I probably should've started this whole "Paladin Playlist" thing with this song. "Soldiers" by OTHERWISE is what I use for my base theme. When I need to think of the Paladins in general, Soldiers. Character doing something heroic that doesn't otherwise fit the music I have queued up? Soldiers. Need to psyche myself up for a brave moment filled with combat and self sacrifice? Soldiers. The song has a beautiful cadence, a strong feel, and just puts me in the mood to think about the men and women of the Paladin Order that put on the cassock and go to work. Thankless jobs that the public will never know about. Constant fear of losing those closest to you. Always putting your life on the line. "Soldiers" just hits everything I need when it comes to The Paladin and (fingers crossed) if this series was ever turned into a TV show or movie, this is the song I'd start it off with. |
Matias TautimezKeep your eyes open for my debut novel, The Paladin. Archives
January 2023
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