Meanwhile…

I have just today nabbed a couple of what you proles refer to as “novels.” First up is The Etched City by K. J. Bishop, which was recommended to me by Goodreads after it caught me making googly eyes at China Mieville.

Next is Cory Doctrow’s Little Brother. All the cool kids seem to know who he is, so I thought I’d check it out.

(I also note that Master and Commander has been on the nightstand since June. I check in on it occasionally to make sure nothing happened while I was away.)

I have a couple of articles I’m intending to write for the Flash Fiction Chronicles, one about superheroes, and another about small apocalypses. Stay tuned!

I just read a couple of volume Is that I thought were pretty great.

First up was Four Eyes, by Joe Kelly and Max Fiumara. I’ve liked Joe Kelly’s stuff since the late ’90s, when he wrote a criminally overlooked run of Daredevil. More recently I’ve been reading his creator-owned stuff. (I can’t recall if I talked about I Kill Giants here, but if I didn’t you should check that out if you get a chance; it’s fantastic and touching piece of magical realism.)

Four Eyes is about a young man named Enrico, who lives in a 1930s New York where dragons are real and forced to fight in brutal, illegal dog-fight style matches while gamblers bet on them in a desperate attempt to alleviate their Depression woes.

If you need more than that I’m not sure why you’re even here. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and hope to see more. There’s a lot of potential in the setting, and the art is excellent. At the moment I think this is all there is, with the future of the series uncertain. But it works pretty well on its own, so if we never get any more I won’t feel like I’ve been left with a cliffhanger.

Next was Sweet Tooth, by Jeff Lemire. A post-apocalypse setting in which a plague has wiped out much of humanity, the story follows Gus, who is among a new breed of human-animal hybrids who are immune to the plague but hunted by surviving humans. This first volume hints at a lot more going on in the world than simple survival. Isolated for years from the harsh, shattered world, Gus is a voice of hope and innocence in a dark fairy tale.

Sweet Tooth is coming out regularly, so I’m looking forward to the next trade.

I generally don’t get too personal here, but I thought I’d chat a little about why I’ve been so absent lately. As this will likely be of interest to only a few of you, I’ll hide it after the jump. Continue reading

So my life has been all a tumble lately, apologies for the silence and lack of productivity. I just stopped by to point out this, an art show inspired by the works of China Mieville, which I thought was awesome.

I am particularly taken with the propaganda posters, which will likely soon take their place on my computer desktop.

I think items 12 and 13 are my favorite.

(From my friend over at Forgotten Bookmarks.)

(but not the wasting kind…wait, they’re both sort of the wasting kind aren’t they?)

Watched Inception over the weekend. Amazing!

Also watched the first couple episodes of “Louie.” Greatness. And thus Louis CK gets added to the pile of people to whom my wife compares me (a distinguished list that also includes Ricky Gervais and Larry David). I just have more hair.

I’m like Serpentor, if his DNA had been culled from and hilariously awkward comedians.

Reading-wise, I just finished up Michael Moorcock’s A Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy. It was a quick read, and a lot of fun. The stories get increasingly darker as you progress through the three books, which are essentially Moorcock’s deconstruction of Imperialism. I highly recommend them.

I’m chugging through China Miéville’s The Scar now, and it is as usual incredible. I picked up another fantasy book, a new book by a new writer (I think) at the same time, purely on impulse, but didn’t make it far. I will itemize the following rules for prospective fantasy writers:

• I should be able to tell the difference between the name of a person and the name of a city, artifact, or creature.
• There should not be a made-up word in every single paragraph.
• I no longer care about royalty (did I ever, I wonder?) or who/whatever else rules the kingdom.

I finished a story over the weekend, worked at it to get it to an easily sell-able flash length, then realized it is only the end of a story, and probably needs a good thousand words prior to where I start. Such is the life of a fiction writer.

I wrote the first paragraph of this not too long ago, then wrote a bunch of paragraphs after it that weren’t really going anywhere and seemed destined for a way longer story than I wanted to mess with. So I went back to the first paragraph and took it in a slightly different direction that may be more focused. I don’t know. We’ll see if anything comes of this. I think it is a crackerjack of an opening, if nothing else. Here’s the first 300 words or so, let me know if this is actually an interesting beginning. Continue reading

Erin has a new story up over at Every Day Fiction. It went up on the 4th, and is about the failings of democracy! Check it out.

And in honor of yesterday, happy birthday you poor, deluded, doomed nation.

For those unfamiliar with some of the goings on of the early comic book industry back in the first half of, er , last century, there was a period where a young DC comics, in its fervent attempts to protect a budding Superman, sued pretty much everyone else producing a superhero comic at the time. To their credit, most of the time they were likely right. (If you’ve never read Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, it covers a lot of this stuff, and is a great read.)

At any rate, I found this article over at The Comics Detective about one particular trial involving Will Eisner, one of the greats in the biz. The complete transcripts of Eisner’s testimony are available there. I’ve only had a chance to read the first few pages, but it’s fascinating stuff. My favorite line so far comes from the judge (who just seems really impatient and annoyed with the whole lawsuit): “I don’t know that a man in tights can be copyrighted.”

The past week or so I had a few brainstorming sessions with Jens, as we are world building and plotting and character building  in preparation of what we hope will be a novel of epic proportions. Between that, associating with people like these, and  living close to one of the most ridiculous cities in the nation makes me realize how immensely depressing Texas can be. (I am deeply hoping I can get the hell out of town the first weekend of February.)

Primarily, this is brought home as we are world-building. We’re coming up with these vibrant, colorful, interesting cities with skylines full of towers, fantasy hydro-electric plants, airships, trains, canals, slums full of kraken-worshiping mutants, etc.

You know, the usual. And there are places in this real world of ours that are just as interesting.

Texas is not one of them. I can’t walk a block without seeing a slab of concrete full of idiotically huge trucks. Beside these parking lots hunkers a string of donut shops, tanning salons, pizza joints, huge pharmacies, and dental offices. Half a mile down the road, you will find the exact same thing, only there donut is spelled doughnut. Across the street from these stand more of these outlets, only half the stores are empty, and further down there is an identical outlet under construction. If you want, you can jump on the highway and drive ten miles (which will take you at least half an hour in traffic) to reach any number of other areas that look exactly the same, or go downtown, which is full of more parking lots. It’s hard to find a coffee shop that’s open past three or four in the afternoon (that isn’t a Starbucks), and local bookstores are nonexistent. Everything is built to last only as long as it needs to until the next corporate entity comes along to knock it over and build something equally unimpressive. An eon from now archaeologists will snicker at the suckers who get stuck digging up ancient America instead of ancient Europe.

Unless you’re a musician, building a community of artists is difficult; I feel extraordinarily lucky to have found the handful of peers that I have. Even with our close-knit group, finding places to gather can sometimes be a chore. Most would rather live somewhere else. This just isn’t a place conducive to creativity.

I shouldn’t pick on Texas, since this is a widespread phenomenon across the US. It’s just easier because I live here, and because just a year ago I was in a city that was awesome in pretty much every way that things suck here.

And don’t get me started on the politics or the “Texas is awesome just because” mentality, which seems to do nothing but leave people contented to live with what is actually a pretty shitty status quo.

I’ve been picking at this post all morning and now forgotten what my original point was. I guess this is all just a side effect of creating a playground for storytelling. There’s always been an escapist element to reading, and perhaps we shouldn’t go comparing fantasy to reality too much.

Post Script: To end on a happier note, I should say that cooperative world building with a like-minded writer, especially one as talented as Jens, is mind-blowingly awesome. The logistics of it are daunting, but when it comes together the process is extremely fun.