Background Material

Swearing-Nerd is Evil, So Let’s Snippet Instead

WriterMinionLeave a comment

I feel like I’ve been missing something lately…

Hmm…let’s think back over the list of my (relatively) recent nerdy posts and see where we stand:

History-nerd?  Check.

Anime-nerd?  Check.

Sci-fi/fantasy-nerd?  Check.

Astronomy-nerd?  Heck, even that one gets a check by it, if only for my effort to throw some cold water on Elon Musk’s rush for a manned flight to Mars.

Well…shit.  What nerd-isms do I have left?!  Booze?  Uhhh…I’m still in the coffee phase of my day, so I think I’ll leave that one alone, thank you very much.  How about sailing-nerd?  Not even other sailors want to read random thoughts about sailing!  Politics?  No.  Just…no.

Okay, this is getting frustrating.

Harrumph!

Pretty soon, if this keeps up, we’re gonna end up with swearing-nerd.  While that’ll be fun for me, I’m not sure anyone else wants to read about just how many ways you can tell the world to get bent if you speak several languages.*

*I especially like to mix and match my swearing — a bit of Japanese to leaven a good Czech “fuck off” is always entertaining…

Well, since I couldn’t come up with a post if you held a gun to my head this morning, I suppose it’s time to throw in the proverbial writer-towel and just go with an old standby…

The bit below is not a part of the DockRat cycle of stories (the Connor & Oz series), but it is a random scene from the background material to those stories that I have been toying with expanding into its own story:

Snippet: “First Flight”

Michael Brady was out to get drunk, and nothing was going to interfere with that.  Not the girl sitting next to him — the one trying to distract him with conversation and jokes — and certainly not the bartender who had short-poured his last drink.

He tried to watch intently while she poured a new one, tried to keep track as she mixed the different types of booze.  He tried, and he failed.  His eyes refused to focus and his brain was barely able to keep up with even the most basic of movements.  The empty drink at his elbow certainly had not been his first of the night.  It hadn’t even been his fifth.

The girl touched his arm, her voice bright and cheerful, “So, Mikey, you were about to tell me what you’re doing here at the beach.  No one comes to Coronado anymore.  Not after the war…”

Mikey?  Shit.  Brady would have walked away if she weren’t so completely gorgeous.  And if he could have walked, after all the drinks, without embarrassing himself.  A quick glance around the half-empty bar and he the saw bouncer glowering at him, trying, evidently, to decide when enough was enough.  Brady quickly looked away; he’d been thrown out of far too many bars over the last six months.

He turned back to the bartender just in time to receive his drink.  A long pull, then, and he turned finally to the girl next to him.  He wanted to be contemptuous, to sneer at her naivety and foolishness.  But he also wanted sex.  He wanted sex, in fact, considerably more than he wanted to feel superior, so…”I’m takin’ a break from workin’ for a while.  I’ve been followin’ the coast road from Alaska, and this is just my latest stop.”

“Wow, that sounds like fun!  How long’ll you stay?  If you came for the ocean, by the way, you got a problem.  The water just ain’t all that safe, not with all the radiation pouring out of the San Diego ruins.  I do know a couple places, though, that aren’t so bad…”

The invitation was there, written in her hesitation and in her eyes, and Brady weighed the benefits of one more drink against his fairly urgent need for physical companionship.

The drink won.

Another long pull, then, and he rubbed a hand over his freshly shaved head.  Intricate vines and leaves writhed and shifted on his arm, the ever-changing designs and colors running from wrist to chest.  He’d found the artist in Florida, one of the few who could make the new high-tech inks and techniques stand out clearly against Brady’s dark sepia skin.

Between the heavy tattooing, the freshly broken nose, and the loss of his long braids, he doubted even his own mother would recognize him.  He certainly hoped his ex-employer wouldn’t.  God help him if they managed to track him down.

Finally, he answered her, “Oh, I got no plans.  Not really.  I’ll stay ’til it’s time to move on.  A good swim does sound good, but not if I’m gonna grow an extra eye or somethin’.  I’m actually doin’ my best to swim in every ocean in the world.”

Voices at the bar’s door, then, arguing.  The deep bass rumble of the bouncer, followed by another voice too low to hear clearly.  Brady didn’t bother to so much as glance back.

Fuck it, he thought, who cares?  It’s time to get laid, not get in some bullshit bar brawl.

He’d had enough of those.

He leaned closer to the girl, lowered his voice, “Tracy…right?  Tracy, let’s get the fuck out of here.  You can show me the sights…”

And then it came, the voice he least wanted to hear.  The voice he’d been avoiding for the last six months.

Hiding from, a little voice at the back of his mind corrected.

“Dr. Brady?  I think you’d better come with us,” that voice said.

“What?  Wait…DOCTOR?” Tracy asked, her voice inching towards a squeal.

Brady spun on his stool, rather gracefully he thought.  “What the fuck do you want, Paul?” he barked as he turned.  When he tried to stop…when he tried to stop, the world kept turning.  And not just turn, it started to whirl and spin and hop up and down like a crazed wombat in a chorus line.

Not even the crack of his head hitting the floor was enough to stop the spinning.  That fall, in fact, just made it worse.  Brady decided at that point that he didn’t want to be drunk anymore.  No, sir, he just wanted the acid and booze in his stomach to not try so aggressively to come up again.

Hands on his arms, impersonal and efficient, hauled him to his very unsteady feet.  He looked up, then.  Looked into Paul’s face and saw the briefest flair of irritation at the back of those blue eyes.  Any other man would have been screaming threats and obscenities after what Brady had done six months ago.  But Paul…Paul’s eyes barely hinted at the tiniest bit of irritation.  Brady shuddered at that hint of irritation; Paul was one of the most dangerous men in the world.

“Kinda pullin’ out the big guns, ain’t they, buddy?” Brady slurred, finally.  “You got better things to do than chase my black ass all over the world.  When the fuck did I become a fish big enough for you to arrest?”

“Whoa…wait a second,” the bartender complained, her voice bordering on a whimper.  One glance at Paul, and at the two goons holding Brady at something approximating the vertical, and she was terrified…but she also had a job to do.  “Someone’s gotta pay his tab before anything happens.”

There was no reaction on Paul’s face, just the stoic blandness of a hardened, lifelong warrior.  He leaned forward and placed a slim, matte-black card on the bar.  His voice betrayed not the slightest hint of emotion when he spoke, “Use that for the bill, and add the same again as a tip.  Dr. Brady will not be returning.”

Paul’s icy eyes shifted back to Brady.  The barest flicker of a smile, one that no one — certainly not Brady — could ever swear was actually there, then he said, “I’m not arresting you Dr. Brady.  I was sent to bring you home.”

Brady wished the booze would fade faster.  Something was happening that he didn’t understand, and he did not like that.  Brady was always three steps ahead of everybody else; he was always the one calling the shots.  “What the fuck?  I ain’t goin’ anywhere near Oxford again, that place sucks ass.  Shit, why the hell wold they want me back?  I pissed on the fucking Vice-Chancellor’s desk, ferchrissake!”

“The Beagle failed her flight tests, professor, and she needs her designer.  You’re the only one who can fix her FTL drive at this point,” Paul explained, his voice still flat, still emotionless.  Then, a final twist to the knife, “You did steal the designs, after all.”

“Shit.”

Politics For Dummies…err, Writers

WriterMinionLeave a comment

Look, my contempt for a certain ex-President has been pretty open on these…err…”pages” over the last few weeks.  This post is not about that.  What it is about — tangentially, at least — is naked politics and power.  More importantly, it is an attempt to touch on how those things can be, and have been, used in the creation of fiction.

I am a political nerd in many ways.  If those ways are mostly historical, they still can and will color my perceptions of politics today.  Which is as it should be.  What happened before will always color what happens now.  Anyone out there who believes Irish animosity and resentment toward the English did not have an impact on the bitter, contentious negotiations about Brexit needs to revisit the repressive brutality of the English occupation that officially ended only a century ago.

Hell, even after 160 years, many in the US are still verbally and morally fighting the Civil War.

The trouble with being a historian is that the list of causality never ends.  Everything that happens now was influenced by something that came before, which was influenced by something that came before that, and something that came before that…on and on ad infinitum.

Want to put January 6th in perspective?  I would love to point back to Caesar — facing trial and ruin both politically and financially — and the Rubicon, but if I do that I then have to go back and talk about Sulla first marching a legion into the Forum…and then back to Marius and Saturninus, which leads inevitably back to the Brothers Gracchi…

I think also about the import and impact of events and personalities from other periods and nations.  Events surrounding guys like Edward VIII, Cromwell, James II, Richard II (my favorite Trump comparison) sit right alongside my Roman “causes” for the current zaniness.

Then I could go all Japanese and talk about Nobunaga and Akechi, Toyotomi and Tokugawa.  I would then, of course, have to go all the way back to the Heian period, and the rise of the Shogunate…

See my historical problem?

Okay, so none of what I hinted at above would be interesting to read in terms of modern politics.  The socio-political absurdities currently going on in the US are more than enough for most folks.  No, where all of that background thinking becomes interesting is in the boundless fun only we fiction writers get to truly have: world-building.

If you’re writing an intimate, tightly-focused love story, you can probably skip the political shenanigans. But if you are — like me — writing sci-fi and fantasy, do yourself a favor and build some Machiavellian scheming into your world.  Hell, I spent several weeks sketching out the politics and high-level ruthlessness for a story about poor and desperate kids whose awareness of politics resembles that of overly caffeinated squirrels.  That background work has paid off, by the way, as I transition that story from just a stand-alone to a trilogy.  The first story remains closely personal to the characters, but the following two grow the plot and conflict into the larger “world.”

Does your fantasy knight-errant need to know Thing One about the royal councilors who are the true power behind the throne?  Nope, not a bit.  But what if that same knight-errant picks up a spouse — or an enemy — with ties to that council?  Then you can grow your story from slaying monsters and looting dungeons for fun and profit to the needs and problems of more than just your hero.  That gives you, as the creator, another source of tension and conflict by opening for your (presumably) tough and capable hero a venue where he has nothing but disadvantages…

When I think about ideas for plots and stories, all of those thoughts about history and politics I mentioned above are at play in my mind.  Those thoughts, and how I develop them in terms of world-building, provide depth and shape to the final form of any story I develop.  Honestly, I don’t think it is possible (for me, at least) to actually understand and set-up a story unless you know why and how things are the way they are when you type that first sentence…

Oh, and, if you think all of the shit from the last year ain’t currently influencing the stories, you need to go back to Writers’ School!

Random After-Thoughts:

1)  I’m as sick of the cold as I am of COVID.  Can Spring just come, please?

2)  I just read that Rush Limbaugh died.  Now, whether you loved or hated the guy, let the dead rest in peace for at least a little while.  I was pissed at Trump for his vicious attacks on McCain after the latter’s death, and I am just as pissed at the attacks on Limbaugh so soon after his passing.  When is it “too soon” to criticize the dead?  To paraphrase the old definition of pornography: “I can’t define too-soon, but I sure know it when I see it…”

3)  A year ago — a year! — I posted that I need to travel in the worst way.  That obviously did not happen in 2020, and it doesn’t look like 2021 is gonna happen either.  *extensive cursing snipped*  Get me out of this fucking place!  I don’t care if it is two weeks in a damned Chinese prison camp, I need the inspiration and rejuvenation that comes with traveling!  Ahem.

4)  I got so bored, trapped at home this winter, that I started to learn charcuterie.  Anyone want some cured lamb loin?  Take it from me, it goes very well with a nice winter ale…

{Musical Note — goin’ old school because…well…I feel like it!}

The 4 W’s: What

WriterMinionLeave a comment

Look…you know I’m a character-centric guy. You know anything I write starts (and ends) with the characters, and the plot is just the Charlie-Brown-pine on which I hang the lights and ornaments and decorations that make it an actual Christmas tree. You know because, well, I’ve talked about it often enough…

So, for me, the what of my stories isn’t some big plot point, some stand-alone crisis & climax & resolution…it’s the story of the protagonist(s), and how they deal with with those plot points. I know it sounds semantic, but I can assure you that it’s not. It most assuredly is not — it is a very real difference in emphasis, and in execution.

Let me put it like this: as much as I love Star Wars, why did I hate The Force Awakens? Because the characters — with the exception of Finn & BB8 — were forgettable, 2-dimensional cookie cutters that meant not one damned thing to me. There is no bigger Mary Sue in the damned universe than Rey…and don’t even get me started on the uselessness that is/was Kylo Ren. Quite simply, the characters in that movie were there simply to serve the plot; they had no meaning and no life in and of themselves.

Contrast that with Rogue One. I bought into Rogue One…I bought all the way in. The characters in that movie existed, they meant something. They had more depth, and more reality, than the entire cast of TFA put together. Jyn and Cassian were, quite simply, more believable — more important — than Rey and Poe.

And that makes all the difference.

So, when I plan and design the what of a story, it is not a plot into which I insert my characters. Nope. Quite the opposite, in fact: it comes from the characters themselves.

I’ve mentioned before the rather extensive background work I do before I ever start writing a story. Part of that is just to help me fill in holes and answer questions…but just part. No, the majority of that comes because I need to think and live — I need to experience — my characters’ reality before I truly know where things are going. I need, when you get right down to it, to let them talk to me.

A real world example:

The story that evolved and grew into Wrath & Tears and Silence (and the planned third story, tentatively titled The Flicker of Ghosts) started life simply as a planned series of short stories I nicknamed Project Dock Rat. It was anticipated to be nothing more than the serial adventures of a homeless kid, scraping by as a thief with the help of his best friend.

There was nothing in the original conception about society’s sins, nor the exploitation and violence and ruthlessness that are so a part of the real world. There was, equally, nothing about suicide, or suffering, or the despair of the hopeless.

Then I thought and worked through the two main characters (a third got axed/changed…long story, there), the two who became Connor and Oz.

I had no idea when I originally dreamed up the idea that the protagonist would come to be a reflection of my own survivor’s guilt, nor that his best friend would come to represent those I’ve lost to suicide. I had no idea the story would come to mean something very personal to me.

But it did.

It became not the “adventures of a homeless kid,” but rather the story of Connor’s attempt to save his own soul…and Oz’s failure to do the same thing.

THAT is the what of a story, to me: the reality and evolution of characters that matter.

What Are We Drinking Today?

WriterMinionLeave a comment

Okay, so…food and booze.

Some day I want to write a story where those two are the main focus…

I am – to put it bluntly – a complete nerd (and whore) for good food and good booze. The good news is that I’m also a pretty good cook. The bad is that I couldn’t ferment, brew or distill if you held a gun to my head.

I have also travelled extensively, and know a decent bit about quite a few cultures/societies. In my world – and I am not alone in this – every society/culture is expressed best through its food and booze. A close second, I will add, is through a culture’s music.

I have had unforgettable meals with foods and peoples I never even imagined as a kid. In fact, I remember and know far more about those cultures where I ate and drank with regular folks than about those cultures I formally “studied” in college.

The good thing is that we have available almost anything you can imagine here in the US. The bad thing is that, unless you are in the right area, most of what we have is a pale imitation of the real thing.

Go buy yakisoba here in the US…if you are not in certain neighborhoods in LA or San Francisco, that dish will bear zero relationship to the yakisoba you get in Japan. God forbid we start talking about bibimbap or pho or even a real street taco.

Shit…this is why I love travel! And, yes, like pretty much everything else in my life, when I travel I turn the knob to eleven. There is no such thing as over-doing it, nor as going “too deep” into a culture…

Food and booze actually figure more heavily into my stories than the words themselves let on. Those two things are important factors in communicating the mood and temperament of my characters and the situations they face.

Beyond that, however, they also communicate a bit about me – communicate, even, what I am craving as I write. Connor once noted the smell of a yakisoba place as he walked through the crowded alleys of his res-hold. Yep, you guessed right – the writer was hungry as shit at that point.

Now, while the food might represent me to a degree, the booze is a bit more symbolic. Is it shitty shochu? Or decent beer? Or high-end scotch? Each of those carries a different connotation and meaning that communicates something about the character (and their circumstances) as they order/drink.

On a side-note: there is a standing inside-joke involving beer. I work into every single story I write the brewery my friends own (and, yes, the place where I do a lot of my writing). Every single story. It ain’t always easy to find, but it is always there.

That being said, my own personal prejudices also come into play. You could not, for instance, pay me to drink rum, so none of my characters do. You will know, in fact, if ever a character of mine does drink rum, that I hate and want to kill that particular person!

With the characters I care about, on the other hand, you see stuff closer to what I personally like. There’s a good reason why Oz is a whiskey drinker…

With all that in mind, I am going to make some changes to this blog over the next couple of weeks. This topic will gain a certain amount of space on the page: in addition to a small section for an “album/song of the week”, I am going to add a section for a “drink of the week”.

I did think about doing a “brewery of the week” as well (yes, I love beer!), but that would cut just a bit too close to a different sort of writing I do. So, while I will talk about individual beers, I nixed the idea of doing so for breweries themselves as I don’t want to cross the streams on this particular (pseudo-anonymous) blog.