I was doing research for a different World War I story when I got a request to submit something to a steampunk anthology. I don't consider myself a steampunk writer, though I've been told sometimes that my stories resemble it, but World War I tends to be the later end of the steampunk period, so I figured I could probably write something appropriate with the research I was already doing. That's how "Kite Dancer" came about.
The book I was reading for research was Strangers on the Western Front by Guoqi Xu, which discusses the Chinese presence in Europe during World War I. It's a very obscure topic as most things taught about the western front focus on the conflict between the English, the French, and the Germans.
I hadn't gotten deep into the book yet, but one of the things that stood out to me, as a ethnic Chinese person raised in the United States, was how mistreated China was by the Entente, or Allied Powers (which included Japan and the UK), while China was still neutral. The British were actually surprised that when China entered the war, it chose the side of the Entente, precisely because they knew exactly how rotten they'd been. They thought that if China chose anyone, it would have been the Central Powers, because then China could reclaim all the territory that the British and the Japanese were holding.
The Chinese government at the time probably understood it was siding with its own abuser, but the prevailing thought was that if it was going to be on any side, it wanted to be the on winning one. This was a very weak period in Chinese history and the fledgling government wanted to make its debut on the world stage.
The thought that China could have sided with the Central Powers, and had a reasonable case to do so, stuck with me. So in my story, I made a justification in having Kaiser Wilhelm II going out of his way to woo China to join his side. It probably would not have taken a whole lot to push China a different direction. If the Germans had stood more of a chance, China might have gone with with the Central Powers in our world too.
This gave me a chance to write a World War I story told largely from the eyes of an outsider, Ke-feng, whose name is written in the old Wade-Giles romanization system to show the hold that colonization has had on her part of the country. Ke-feng is from Qingdao, then known as Tsingtau to the Germans and Tsingtao to the English speaking world, which was a German colony in the early part of the 20th century. If you ever wondered why there's a Chinese beer called Tsingtao you can thank/blame the Germans for that.
Because I like fantasy, I gave Ke-feng wind magic. It felt like something could have started as an art form and later weaponized with the advent of airships. If I was going to do steampunk and World War I, how could I not set a story on a zeppelin? This allowed the zeppelins to be the serious threat that they never were in real life. (Wind currents often carried them off target.)
And for fun I got to add in the airborne equivalent of an aircraft carrier. The larger naval ships were often named after German states, so I wanted to name my airborne carrier in the same fashion, only to find out that a lot of the good names were taken, so I looked at some of the former states that are no longer a part of Germany and found a couple potential ideas. Naming it the SMS Pomerania was vetoed on account of potentially reminding people of small dogs, so it became the SMS Silesia. The zeppelins themselves continued the numbering sequence from the real world under the assumption that the Germans made additional, more improved models in this alternate version of the war.
Ke-feng is a very angry individual thanks to having been reassigned on the opposite side of the globe from the part of the war she wanted to fight. She signed up to free her city from the Japanese, but because the Germans need kite dancers elsewhere, she finds herself all the way in western Europe in a battle between two countries that don't entirely matter to her.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the ending for this one, because I wanted to show the difference between individuals and the countries they belong to, so I hope that comes across.
Though I wrote "Kite Dancer" for an anthology, I ended up selling it to Galaxy's Edge instead, and you can currently read it there for free up until the end of February.
Music listened to while writing: "Brave Shine" by Aimer
Showing posts with label inspiration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inspiration. Show all posts
Monday, February 5, 2018
Monday, May 15, 2017
Writing “Between Earth and Exile”
When I was fifteen, I rented an animated movie that for the first time made me wonder "What would I do?" if I was in that situation, and not in a good way. Vengeance of the Space Pirate was the censored and dubbed version of the 1981 anime movie Arcadia of My Youth, and it was not a heroic adventure. Though I hadn't realized it at the time, about half of the most objectionable scenes (usually of people getting shot/killed, or scenes of dead people) were removed or shortened, but the dialogue was left surprisingly intact.
For the first time I experienced a story where the good guys didn't save the world. The movie starts out with humanity having been subjugated by an alien race, and that doesn't change by the end. Harlock, the lead character, finds his own freedom, but he's not a freedom fighter. He doesn't try to save or inspire a people who have essentially given up.
At the end of the movie he is declared an enemy of Earth and told to leave the planet. He agrees to do so, but before he goes, he asks if anyone would go with him, knowing that they could never return.
I had never been challenged with a future this bleak in anything I’d seen or read up until this point, and as I watched Harlock leave with the people who would follow him, I couldn’t help wondering, "Would I have the guts to go? Could I have left my family? Could I leave knowing that my life on Earth would amount to nothing, but only hardship and exile would lie with Harlock?"
"Between Earth and Exile" is about a young woman who made the choice to follow her captain into exile, but after six years of fighting and scrabbling to get by, proposes a way to return to Earth and rescue her family.
This story spent years on the drawing board and went through a number of titles, from "Exile's Sorrow" to "Adolescence in Exile" to the final "Between Earth and Exile" which I think is the strongest. It was originally a much shorter story, the second half as it currently exists was not in the original draft, and I wasn't happy with the ending. I changed it twice before the final version. Alexa was always intended to lose in order to draw a parallel between her and Captain Mercer, but the circumstances of the loss changed over time.
The first ending had her in one of the Bloodborne's shuttles (the frigate didn't even exist) with three other people rather than a crew. They flew all the way to Earth to rendezvous with the transport and Alexa actually used her piloting skills during the skirmish against some Alcaltan fighters to try to save her family. But Alcaltan reinforcements arrived, including a cruiser, so our space pirates were forced to pull back back from a battle they wouldn't be able to survive.
I didn't like this ending because Alexa speny a lot of it an emotional wreck and in denial. She had to be convinced to withdraw rather than making the call on her own. This was also the only ending where Mercer offered to let her know what happened to her family after they were apprehended. Alexa refused, because if she doesn't hear they're dead she still has hope. Mercer's line "I would not have wasted the schematics on a fool’s errand" existed even back then, but because of the way things played out, it came off like he was chewing her out rather than expressing support for her initiative.
It didn't help that the fight scene was pretty limp and not well thought out. I knew I didn't want Alexa to go by herself, but there was no clear chain of command and fighting came down to "Everybody do stuff!"
The second draft is really where the story took shape. This introduced the death of Kellen, gravity technology, and the capture of the frigate that would be used what was now the second half of the story. Substituting in the frigate battle over the one with the shuttle almost doubled the length of the story, but it was worth it.
Now the battle took place in the outer edges of the solar system and used larger ships instead of smaller fighter craft. There was a chain of command and everyone on board (or at least on the bridge) had a clear role.
But… but… there was a problem when they turned around to withdraw. They were heavily damaged, being chased by a lone corvette, as they are in the final version, and I needed some way to save them. And at the time I thought, well, if I want Alexa to really feel like she isn't cut out for leadership, the worst thing would be to have Mercer show up and save her. Because then it would look like he never had confidence in her at all.
I admit I'm a little sad that I had to take out the Space Battleship Yamato-inspired Implosion Cannon, but having the Bloodborne show up to pull the frigate's butt out of the fire and annihilate the corvette didn't feel very satisfying. Even though I wanted Alexa to feel less competent than she actually is, I also wanted her to escape on her own.
Still, I sat on that ending for two years before I landed on the missile pod orbiting around Varuna idea, which is a tactic I cribbed from Arpeggio of Blue Steel, a futuristic submarine series. I had to make some changes due to being in space rather than underwater, but I liked the idea of a separate launch platform that an enemy would not expect, and this allows Alexa to make her final attack and save her crew while they're on their last legs.
There were other nips and tucks along the way. Alexa's engineer, Caleb, had a larger role at one point as her surrogate big brother, but most of the changes were along the lines of her interactions with Mercer, who I had to write a fine line around. Since the story is told in first person, we see him through Alexa's hero-worshipping eyes, so bringing out his humanity and the fact he is fallible as well, was harder. If I ever write another story set in this universe I'll probably choose a different POV character.
Between Earth and Exile can be read on Kindle in the April 2017 issue of Deep Magic.
Music listened to while writing: Soundtracks from Arcadia of My Youth and Skies of Arcadia (the latter not related) and "Ichiban no Takaramono (Yui version)" sung by LiSA. "Ichiban no Takaramono" (Most Precious Treasure) was not an entirely appropriate choice, because the lyrics don’t match the situation of the story, but the vocalist does such a great job of portraying the pain expressed in the lyrics that I couldn’t help but think of Alexa.
For the first time I experienced a story where the good guys didn't save the world. The movie starts out with humanity having been subjugated by an alien race, and that doesn't change by the end. Harlock, the lead character, finds his own freedom, but he's not a freedom fighter. He doesn't try to save or inspire a people who have essentially given up.
At the end of the movie he is declared an enemy of Earth and told to leave the planet. He agrees to do so, but before he goes, he asks if anyone would go with him, knowing that they could never return.
I had never been challenged with a future this bleak in anything I’d seen or read up until this point, and as I watched Harlock leave with the people who would follow him, I couldn’t help wondering, "Would I have the guts to go? Could I have left my family? Could I leave knowing that my life on Earth would amount to nothing, but only hardship and exile would lie with Harlock?"
"Between Earth and Exile" is about a young woman who made the choice to follow her captain into exile, but after six years of fighting and scrabbling to get by, proposes a way to return to Earth and rescue her family.
This story spent years on the drawing board and went through a number of titles, from "Exile's Sorrow" to "Adolescence in Exile" to the final "Between Earth and Exile" which I think is the strongest. It was originally a much shorter story, the second half as it currently exists was not in the original draft, and I wasn't happy with the ending. I changed it twice before the final version. Alexa was always intended to lose in order to draw a parallel between her and Captain Mercer, but the circumstances of the loss changed over time.
The first ending had her in one of the Bloodborne's shuttles (the frigate didn't even exist) with three other people rather than a crew. They flew all the way to Earth to rendezvous with the transport and Alexa actually used her piloting skills during the skirmish against some Alcaltan fighters to try to save her family. But Alcaltan reinforcements arrived, including a cruiser, so our space pirates were forced to pull back back from a battle they wouldn't be able to survive.
I didn't like this ending because Alexa speny a lot of it an emotional wreck and in denial. She had to be convinced to withdraw rather than making the call on her own. This was also the only ending where Mercer offered to let her know what happened to her family after they were apprehended. Alexa refused, because if she doesn't hear they're dead she still has hope. Mercer's line "I would not have wasted the schematics on a fool’s errand" existed even back then, but because of the way things played out, it came off like he was chewing her out rather than expressing support for her initiative.
It didn't help that the fight scene was pretty limp and not well thought out. I knew I didn't want Alexa to go by herself, but there was no clear chain of command and fighting came down to "Everybody do stuff!"
The second draft is really where the story took shape. This introduced the death of Kellen, gravity technology, and the capture of the frigate that would be used what was now the second half of the story. Substituting in the frigate battle over the one with the shuttle almost doubled the length of the story, but it was worth it.
Now the battle took place in the outer edges of the solar system and used larger ships instead of smaller fighter craft. There was a chain of command and everyone on board (or at least on the bridge) had a clear role.
But… but… there was a problem when they turned around to withdraw. They were heavily damaged, being chased by a lone corvette, as they are in the final version, and I needed some way to save them. And at the time I thought, well, if I want Alexa to really feel like she isn't cut out for leadership, the worst thing would be to have Mercer show up and save her. Because then it would look like he never had confidence in her at all.
I admit I'm a little sad that I had to take out the Space Battleship Yamato-inspired Implosion Cannon, but having the Bloodborne show up to pull the frigate's butt out of the fire and annihilate the corvette didn't feel very satisfying. Even though I wanted Alexa to feel less competent than she actually is, I also wanted her to escape on her own.
Still, I sat on that ending for two years before I landed on the missile pod orbiting around Varuna idea, which is a tactic I cribbed from Arpeggio of Blue Steel, a futuristic submarine series. I had to make some changes due to being in space rather than underwater, but I liked the idea of a separate launch platform that an enemy would not expect, and this allows Alexa to make her final attack and save her crew while they're on their last legs.
There were other nips and tucks along the way. Alexa's engineer, Caleb, had a larger role at one point as her surrogate big brother, but most of the changes were along the lines of her interactions with Mercer, who I had to write a fine line around. Since the story is told in first person, we see him through Alexa's hero-worshipping eyes, so bringing out his humanity and the fact he is fallible as well, was harder. If I ever write another story set in this universe I'll probably choose a different POV character.
Between Earth and Exile can be read on Kindle in the April 2017 issue of Deep Magic.
Music listened to while writing: Soundtracks from Arcadia of My Youth and Skies of Arcadia (the latter not related) and "Ichiban no Takaramono (Yui version)" sung by LiSA. "Ichiban no Takaramono" (Most Precious Treasure) was not an entirely appropriate choice, because the lyrics don’t match the situation of the story, but the vocalist does such a great job of portraying the pain expressed in the lyrics that I couldn’t help but think of Alexa.
Monday, February 6, 2017
Writing "Poison Maiden, Open Skies"
"Poison Maiden, Open Skies" came out in mid-December, and it's still the current issue for Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show for a few more weeks, so I'd like to take a little time to talk about my inspiration and writing process for this one, since I think it's my strongest short story of 2016.
"Poison Maiden" was born out of multiple influences, the easiest one to guess being my playthrough of Code: Realize this past summer. There's a bad ending on Victor's route in Code: Realize where Cardia chooses to leave him behind because the queen says she can help her. Underlying that promise is the potential for Cardia and her growing poison to be used as a weapon, but since it's a bad ending, we never see that scenario never play out.
Now, Code: Realize is not the first media I've seen with a literally poisonous protagonist, there's a whole page dedicated to such characters on TV Tropes, but that ending got me thinking, how would you employ a such a person as a weapon in a war?
I write a fair bit of fiction set during World War I, and if you're going to write a war story involving someone emitting a cloud of poison gas, there's no better conflict to choose.
But in a first for me I decided to write from the side of the British.
I got into World War I from reading All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque when I was in high school, so I tend to picture the conflict from the German side of the war. Airplane models, submarine models, strategies used, I have a decent pool of knowledge I can call on if I'm writing Germans. It's how I wrote "The Wings The Lungs, The Engine The Heart" and my upcoming "Kite Dancer" (which deals with zeppelins).
But because I was going be writing about chemical warfare I decided to flop sides. My pet peeve about WWI in media is that frequently people can't seem to tell it apart from World War II and portray the Germans as mustache twirling Nazis. Even the WWI game Valiant Hearts, which includes a sympathetic German protagonist, couldn't avoid having a cartoonishly evil German officer for the last boss.
So for my purposes it made better sense to have the British be the ones deploying a reluctant female soldier as a poisonous weapon. That way the reader could focus on my protagonist's personal predicament rather than the morality of her country's stance in the war.
This required more research though, because I realized I was a complete moron regarding the British situation, and I read up on the draft, the female labor force, among other things. I also studied up on chemical warfare in general since none of my previous stories had involved gas attacks.
"Poison Maiden" went through a lot of changes in its brainstorming/outlining phase. Originally Edith, my protagonist, was going to be the only Poison Maiden, but after some thought I decided it was more realistic for there to have been multiple survivors of the accident that changed her, and thus Harpy Squad was born; a whole band of women who could not help but emit poison wherever they went.
At one point I almost made them literally harpies with an accompanying airborne delivery system to shoot them over enemy lines, but I ended up tossing that out because such a flashy entrance would no doubt result in a lot of Poison Maidens getting killed and given that I wanted them to be a rare resource, I couldn't consider that as a viable strategy.
I also couldn't think of a good reason to give them wings.
Their poison traits are acquired in a highly superhero-ish fashion with the factory accident, but people generally don't connect poison with powers of flight. Still, I did try to keep some of the harpy imagery in through the name and some of my word choices when Charlotte finally cuts loose.
"Poison Maiden" was also written specifically for Intergalactic Medicine Show's Festivals on the Front issue, so I knew that the story was going to be Christmas-themed and I knew going in that I wanted the final scene to be set around an improvised Christmas tree in the middle of no man's land.
Like the characteristics of Harpy Squad itself, the ending went through several permutations of who was there and what condition they were in. Some of the brainstorm endings were incredibly dismal (including one where Thomas, Edith's love interest, ends up feral and insane) before I settled on the bittersweet one that still has hope for a brighter future.
"Poison Maiden" should be up until the end of February, so if you have a subscription to Intergalactic Medicine Show please check it out. There will likely be an ebook version as well on Amazon in the future.
"Poison Maiden" was born out of multiple influences, the easiest one to guess being my playthrough of Code: Realize this past summer. There's a bad ending on Victor's route in Code: Realize where Cardia chooses to leave him behind because the queen says she can help her. Underlying that promise is the potential for Cardia and her growing poison to be used as a weapon, but since it's a bad ending, we never see that scenario never play out.
Now, Code: Realize is not the first media I've seen with a literally poisonous protagonist, there's a whole page dedicated to such characters on TV Tropes, but that ending got me thinking, how would you employ a such a person as a weapon in a war?
I write a fair bit of fiction set during World War I, and if you're going to write a war story involving someone emitting a cloud of poison gas, there's no better conflict to choose.
But in a first for me I decided to write from the side of the British.
I got into World War I from reading All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque when I was in high school, so I tend to picture the conflict from the German side of the war. Airplane models, submarine models, strategies used, I have a decent pool of knowledge I can call on if I'm writing Germans. It's how I wrote "The Wings The Lungs, The Engine The Heart" and my upcoming "Kite Dancer" (which deals with zeppelins).
But because I was going be writing about chemical warfare I decided to flop sides. My pet peeve about WWI in media is that frequently people can't seem to tell it apart from World War II and portray the Germans as mustache twirling Nazis. Even the WWI game Valiant Hearts, which includes a sympathetic German protagonist, couldn't avoid having a cartoonishly evil German officer for the last boss.
So for my purposes it made better sense to have the British be the ones deploying a reluctant female soldier as a poisonous weapon. That way the reader could focus on my protagonist's personal predicament rather than the morality of her country's stance in the war.
This required more research though, because I realized I was a complete moron regarding the British situation, and I read up on the draft, the female labor force, among other things. I also studied up on chemical warfare in general since none of my previous stories had involved gas attacks.
"Poison Maiden" went through a lot of changes in its brainstorming/outlining phase. Originally Edith, my protagonist, was going to be the only Poison Maiden, but after some thought I decided it was more realistic for there to have been multiple survivors of the accident that changed her, and thus Harpy Squad was born; a whole band of women who could not help but emit poison wherever they went.
At one point I almost made them literally harpies with an accompanying airborne delivery system to shoot them over enemy lines, but I ended up tossing that out because such a flashy entrance would no doubt result in a lot of Poison Maidens getting killed and given that I wanted them to be a rare resource, I couldn't consider that as a viable strategy.
I also couldn't think of a good reason to give them wings.
Their poison traits are acquired in a highly superhero-ish fashion with the factory accident, but people generally don't connect poison with powers of flight. Still, I did try to keep some of the harpy imagery in through the name and some of my word choices when Charlotte finally cuts loose.
"Poison Maiden" was also written specifically for Intergalactic Medicine Show's Festivals on the Front issue, so I knew that the story was going to be Christmas-themed and I knew going in that I wanted the final scene to be set around an improvised Christmas tree in the middle of no man's land.
Like the characteristics of Harpy Squad itself, the ending went through several permutations of who was there and what condition they were in. Some of the brainstorm endings were incredibly dismal (including one where Thomas, Edith's love interest, ends up feral and insane) before I settled on the bittersweet one that still has hope for a brighter future.
"Poison Maiden" should be up until the end of February, so if you have a subscription to Intergalactic Medicine Show please check it out. There will likely be an ebook version as well on Amazon in the future.
Monday, October 31, 2016
Writing "Hunters of the Dead"
"Hunters of the Dead" took a long road getting to where it is now, and to be honest it didn't have a glamorous beginning. A year or two out of college I was going to play a homebrew RPG with some friends; an RPG of the tabletop variety. I needed a character.
Jan was created out of leftover gameplay ideas for a different character who was originally created for a piece of fiction. But where that other character was a wizard, Jan was less into the magic and more into the gritty aspect of fighting undead with sword and shuriken. What passed between the other character to Jan was the use of shuriken as a weapon and a lot of necromancy spells (because this was a game and I needed something to do with my turns).
In the week or two downtime between character creation and the game getting started, I wrote a short story called "Hunter of Dead." It wasn't very good, but it my first outing with Jan, so I could get a feel for his personality.
I ended up doing four revisions to that story before leaving it to rest, and it was rejected many, many times.
I think a part of me knew that it wasn't very good, but true to Heinlein's rules, I intended to keep it out on the market until it sold.
Then I won Writers of the Future. It was my first pro sale, and suddenly I had friends and mentors in the writing community that I hadn't before. I couldn't put out crap. What would people think of me?
So I let all my submissions lapse and used a spreadsheet to tag which stories I wanted to take another look at, in case they were worthy of going out again, and which I would in all likelihood trunk for eternity.
While I'd tagged "Hunter of Dead" for a second look, I looked at it again sooner than expected since I was tipped off about a horror anthology and "Hunter of Dead" was the only thing I had that was remotely suitable. I printed out a copy to revise, thinking it would be quick work.
It wasn't.
As I revised I realized how much was wrong with the story, and it wasn't that the character or the concept of his world was bad. It was that there wasn't any plot. It was just a day in his life, and I realized I needed to show the reader why this day was important.
Out went the extended flashback. Out went the original ending. I threw out about half the story, and wrote in its place at least another 75%, which meant that less than 25% of "Hunters of the Dead" came from the original story.
This version benefited from not having been touched in years. I had written other stories set in the world, so there was more backstory to the history of the borderlands, and I knew more about Jan himself since I'd been planning a prequel story at one point.
I thought the story wasn't perfect, but still the best I could do, so I sent it off to a few more places that opened in the interim between when I retired it and when I did the revision. It still got kicked back, but tended to make second rounds. At the time though, it was the best I could do, so I wasn't expecting to go back and do yet another round revisions.
Time passed, and finally I got a rewrite request from Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores to improve the pacing. By this time I had several professional sales under my belt, and Jan has been with me for fifteen years (no one ever said that it was fast becoming a professional writer). He's been my player character in two different pen and paper RPGs, my ranger in Bioware's Neverwinter Nights, my Hawke in Dragon Age II, and more recently my avatar in Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright.
I know Jan, and I still believed in his story. I took a hard look at my last revision and cut it down from 9000 to 7000 words, making it tighter, stronger. I was a better writer now. I knew I could do this.
Now Jan's story is finally out there, and it can be viewed by CR&ES subscribers here as a September 22, 2016 release.
Music listened to while editing: It's been so long I don't remember what I originally wrote it to, though I'll admit there was a period in my life where every other song I heard of the radio could make me think of Jan. LeAnn Rimes's "Life Goes On" was my go to song while RPing (I'm not sure why since I can't listen to it and see Jan anymore), but while doing the latest editing I was stuck on the English cover of "Renegade" performed by Aruvn with lyrics by Jefferz.
Jan was created out of leftover gameplay ideas for a different character who was originally created for a piece of fiction. But where that other character was a wizard, Jan was less into the magic and more into the gritty aspect of fighting undead with sword and shuriken. What passed between the other character to Jan was the use of shuriken as a weapon and a lot of necromancy spells (because this was a game and I needed something to do with my turns).
In the week or two downtime between character creation and the game getting started, I wrote a short story called "Hunter of Dead." It wasn't very good, but it my first outing with Jan, so I could get a feel for his personality.
I ended up doing four revisions to that story before leaving it to rest, and it was rejected many, many times.
I think a part of me knew that it wasn't very good, but true to Heinlein's rules, I intended to keep it out on the market until it sold.
Then I won Writers of the Future. It was my first pro sale, and suddenly I had friends and mentors in the writing community that I hadn't before. I couldn't put out crap. What would people think of me?
So I let all my submissions lapse and used a spreadsheet to tag which stories I wanted to take another look at, in case they were worthy of going out again, and which I would in all likelihood trunk for eternity.
While I'd tagged "Hunter of Dead" for a second look, I looked at it again sooner than expected since I was tipped off about a horror anthology and "Hunter of Dead" was the only thing I had that was remotely suitable. I printed out a copy to revise, thinking it would be quick work.
It wasn't.
As I revised I realized how much was wrong with the story, and it wasn't that the character or the concept of his world was bad. It was that there wasn't any plot. It was just a day in his life, and I realized I needed to show the reader why this day was important.
Out went the extended flashback. Out went the original ending. I threw out about half the story, and wrote in its place at least another 75%, which meant that less than 25% of "Hunters of the Dead" came from the original story.
This version benefited from not having been touched in years. I had written other stories set in the world, so there was more backstory to the history of the borderlands, and I knew more about Jan himself since I'd been planning a prequel story at one point.
I thought the story wasn't perfect, but still the best I could do, so I sent it off to a few more places that opened in the interim between when I retired it and when I did the revision. It still got kicked back, but tended to make second rounds. At the time though, it was the best I could do, so I wasn't expecting to go back and do yet another round revisions.
Time passed, and finally I got a rewrite request from Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores to improve the pacing. By this time I had several professional sales under my belt, and Jan has been with me for fifteen years (no one ever said that it was fast becoming a professional writer). He's been my player character in two different pen and paper RPGs, my ranger in Bioware's Neverwinter Nights, my Hawke in Dragon Age II, and more recently my avatar in Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright.
I know Jan, and I still believed in his story. I took a hard look at my last revision and cut it down from 9000 to 7000 words, making it tighter, stronger. I was a better writer now. I knew I could do this.
Now Jan's story is finally out there, and it can be viewed by CR&ES subscribers here as a September 22, 2016 release.
Music listened to while editing: It's been so long I don't remember what I originally wrote it to, though I'll admit there was a period in my life where every other song I heard of the radio could make me think of Jan. LeAnn Rimes's "Life Goes On" was my go to song while RPing (I'm not sure why since I can't listen to it and see Jan anymore), but while doing the latest editing I was stuck on the English cover of "Renegade" performed by Aruvn with lyrics by Jefferz.
Monday, October 3, 2016
#My5: My Five Writing Influences
My friend Mike Ripplinger invited me to be a part of K. M. Alexander's #My5 project, and I figured, hey, this could be fun! Most of us started writing because we enjoyed someone else's work so much that we wanted to try our hands at it too.
So... "Where do you get your ideas?" The short answer is all over the place. I don't have a novel like K.M. or Mike, but I have short stories enough, and I've been asked the question more than once. A writer tends to be a combination of their interests and life experiences, and that in turn informs what they chose to write about.
So here are the five biggest influences on my work as a whole:
This RPG series is a gold mine for mythology buffs, as long as one doesn't mind urban fantasy with varying levels of darkness. I think one of my friends got a little destroyed by what he called a "BS" ending when he got to the end of Shin Megami Tensei IV. The series and its various spin-offs frequently have multiple endings and not all of them as nice, but it's the only series where I've restored the world at the end of the game and wondered if preventing the apocalypse was really the right thing to do.
Depending on the game, the answer could be yes, it could be no. But I like that moral ambiguity. It makes me think harder when my protagonist is forced to make a choice.
And the demons! The demons are demons by East Asian definition, which means, "demon" includes any supernatural creature. This is a series where gods, heroes, and monsters of all mythologies, including extant religions, exist simultaneously, and if you've ever wanted the chance to discover new myths you've never heard of, whether they're Inuit, Sumerian, or what have you, there's a good chance you'll stumble across something new in Shin Megami Tensei.
This series was an influence on my stories: "Unfilial Child" and "The World That You Want"
I've enjoyed magic tricks for as long as I could remember. When I was a kid, I had a book on how to do (really crummy) magic tricks. But for most of my life, I was more of an audience member than a magician. I watched TV specials, lined up to get David Copperfield's autograph (I got to see him live while in middle school), and if I got the chance in Vegas I liked to catch a magic show.
But there are a lot of good things in storytelling to learn from stage magic. The best magicians tell a story while they perform, and the reason for that is they want a certain reaction from the audience, and the story preps them for what the magician is looking for. Patter, the words the magician is saying, may also serve the purpose of misdirecting the audience so they are busy thinking about one thing while the magician is doing something else.
This isn't so different from writing. I know I've read more than enough books where I thought "This was pretty good, so good I'll forgive it for not doing X, Y, or Z," which is an excellent bit of stagecraft.
While the magician's audience might come away knowing that magic didn't actually happen, and they might even have an idea of how it happened, if they enjoyed the performance it won't matter. As an author you're directing the reader where you want them to go and leading their expectations. Writing is just like giving a good performance. If it's well done, everyone walks away satisfied.
And these days, if you catch me at a con and ask nicely, I might have a trick ready to show you. I did go back eventually and learn some real sleight of hand.
Stage magic was most obviously an influence on: "Confidence Game"
When I was in high school, I was assigned All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque for mandatory reading. This turned out to be a life-changing experience, and he was the first author whose work I tried to emulate. While still in high school I tried recreating All Quiet's under attack while making pancakes scene when writing a space opera.
All Quiet on the Western Front left me with a profound interest in WWI-era Germany and an appreciation for the period language of the time. Remarque was the first author I'd ever been assigned in school whose work I would later pick up on my own. I don't know if it's the manner of All Quiet having been my first or that it's the most notable of Remarque's work, but it's the one I always return to, though I also highly recommend The Way Back, which is a sequel of sorts, following different men of the same company when they return home from the war.
His work was an influence on: "The Wings The Lungs, The Engine The Heart"
I debated whether to put this down here, but when I thought about it, I realized that being Chinese, specifically American-born Chinese, is directly responsible for a fair portion of my work. While I've written Chinese-themed stories that have nothing to do with my life, there are a three in particular that draw heavily on my experience as a third generation Chinese American and cultural tidbits dropped by my dad.
I dislike the thought of only writing Chinese stories, as goodness knows I don't want to be pigeon-holed into being a Chinese writer, but sometimes I feel motivated to write because Chinese in the United States are often written as immigrants or the children of immigrants.
As a third generation Chinese American whose Chinese vocabulary is limited to single digits once you exclude food items, I'm about as American as my ethnicity is going to get, so much of my contemporary fantasy features Chinese characters who pretty much suck at being Chinese. They know the traditions, they know the food, but they can't speak for beans.
It's a type of character that I don't see often enough, so if I'm writing contemporary fantasy (or near future science fiction) I usually make them a third or fourth generation Chinese American that I can relate to.
Influence on: "Mooncakes," "The Ancestors," and "Unfilial Child"
I was exposed to anime while still in elementary school, before I even knew what the word was. All I understood was that these Japanese cartoons were "better" than the majority of American ones. I liked that they had ongoing storylines, and that the characters' actions had consequences. Sometimes, people even died.
Adding icing on the cake, once I got a video game system of my own, I discovered that the vast majority of games I liked also came from Japan. I liked the art style, and I liked the kinds of games they made, which were rarely attempted by western developers. (I was a big JRPG fan.)
This grew into a life-long appreciation for Japanese pop culture. When people ask me "Who would you cast as your main character?" My reply is invariably, "I don't know. Everything looks like an animated movie in my head." Specifically, it looks like an anime in my head.
With the internet these days, it's easier than ever to find Japanese exports. I read translated manga and books, watch translated anime and dramas, listen to J-pop, and I happen to live next to a city with one of the highest Japanese ex-pat populations in the US, which means that great, authentic Japanese food is just a few minutes away.
This was an influence on: Just about everything
If you'd like to check out more writerly influences, you can read the other #My5 posts here:
K. M. Alexander's #My5: The Bell Forging Cycle
Mike Ripplinger's #My5: The Verdant Revival
Eric Lange's #My5: 30 Second Fantasy
So... "Where do you get your ideas?" The short answer is all over the place. I don't have a novel like K.M. or Mike, but I have short stories enough, and I've been asked the question more than once. A writer tends to be a combination of their interests and life experiences, and that in turn informs what they chose to write about.
So here are the five biggest influences on my work as a whole:
1) Shin Megami Tensei
This RPG series is a gold mine for mythology buffs, as long as one doesn't mind urban fantasy with varying levels of darkness. I think one of my friends got a little destroyed by what he called a "BS" ending when he got to the end of Shin Megami Tensei IV. The series and its various spin-offs frequently have multiple endings and not all of them as nice, but it's the only series where I've restored the world at the end of the game and wondered if preventing the apocalypse was really the right thing to do.
Depending on the game, the answer could be yes, it could be no. But I like that moral ambiguity. It makes me think harder when my protagonist is forced to make a choice.
And the demons! The demons are demons by East Asian definition, which means, "demon" includes any supernatural creature. This is a series where gods, heroes, and monsters of all mythologies, including extant religions, exist simultaneously, and if you've ever wanted the chance to discover new myths you've never heard of, whether they're Inuit, Sumerian, or what have you, there's a good chance you'll stumble across something new in Shin Megami Tensei.
This series was an influence on my stories: "Unfilial Child" and "The World That You Want"
2) Stage Magic
I've enjoyed magic tricks for as long as I could remember. When I was a kid, I had a book on how to do (really crummy) magic tricks. But for most of my life, I was more of an audience member than a magician. I watched TV specials, lined up to get David Copperfield's autograph (I got to see him live while in middle school), and if I got the chance in Vegas I liked to catch a magic show.
But there are a lot of good things in storytelling to learn from stage magic. The best magicians tell a story while they perform, and the reason for that is they want a certain reaction from the audience, and the story preps them for what the magician is looking for. Patter, the words the magician is saying, may also serve the purpose of misdirecting the audience so they are busy thinking about one thing while the magician is doing something else.
This isn't so different from writing. I know I've read more than enough books where I thought "This was pretty good, so good I'll forgive it for not doing X, Y, or Z," which is an excellent bit of stagecraft.
While the magician's audience might come away knowing that magic didn't actually happen, and they might even have an idea of how it happened, if they enjoyed the performance it won't matter. As an author you're directing the reader where you want them to go and leading their expectations. Writing is just like giving a good performance. If it's well done, everyone walks away satisfied.
And these days, if you catch me at a con and ask nicely, I might have a trick ready to show you. I did go back eventually and learn some real sleight of hand.
Stage magic was most obviously an influence on: "Confidence Game"
3) Erich Maria Remarque
When I was in high school, I was assigned All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque for mandatory reading. This turned out to be a life-changing experience, and he was the first author whose work I tried to emulate. While still in high school I tried recreating All Quiet's under attack while making pancakes scene when writing a space opera.
All Quiet on the Western Front left me with a profound interest in WWI-era Germany and an appreciation for the period language of the time. Remarque was the first author I'd ever been assigned in school whose work I would later pick up on my own. I don't know if it's the manner of All Quiet having been my first or that it's the most notable of Remarque's work, but it's the one I always return to, though I also highly recommend The Way Back, which is a sequel of sorts, following different men of the same company when they return home from the war.
His work was an influence on: "The Wings The Lungs, The Engine The Heart"
4) Being Chinese American
I debated whether to put this down here, but when I thought about it, I realized that being Chinese, specifically American-born Chinese, is directly responsible for a fair portion of my work. While I've written Chinese-themed stories that have nothing to do with my life, there are a three in particular that draw heavily on my experience as a third generation Chinese American and cultural tidbits dropped by my dad.
I dislike the thought of only writing Chinese stories, as goodness knows I don't want to be pigeon-holed into being a Chinese writer, but sometimes I feel motivated to write because Chinese in the United States are often written as immigrants or the children of immigrants.
As a third generation Chinese American whose Chinese vocabulary is limited to single digits once you exclude food items, I'm about as American as my ethnicity is going to get, so much of my contemporary fantasy features Chinese characters who pretty much suck at being Chinese. They know the traditions, they know the food, but they can't speak for beans.
It's a type of character that I don't see often enough, so if I'm writing contemporary fantasy (or near future science fiction) I usually make them a third or fourth generation Chinese American that I can relate to.
Influence on: "Mooncakes," "The Ancestors," and "Unfilial Child"
5) Japanese pop culture
I was exposed to anime while still in elementary school, before I even knew what the word was. All I understood was that these Japanese cartoons were "better" than the majority of American ones. I liked that they had ongoing storylines, and that the characters' actions had consequences. Sometimes, people even died.
Adding icing on the cake, once I got a video game system of my own, I discovered that the vast majority of games I liked also came from Japan. I liked the art style, and I liked the kinds of games they made, which were rarely attempted by western developers. (I was a big JRPG fan.)
This grew into a life-long appreciation for Japanese pop culture. When people ask me "Who would you cast as your main character?" My reply is invariably, "I don't know. Everything looks like an animated movie in my head." Specifically, it looks like an anime in my head.
With the internet these days, it's easier than ever to find Japanese exports. I read translated manga and books, watch translated anime and dramas, listen to J-pop, and I happen to live next to a city with one of the highest Japanese ex-pat populations in the US, which means that great, authentic Japanese food is just a few minutes away.
This was an influence on: Just about everything
If you'd like to check out more writerly influences, you can read the other #My5 posts here:
K. M. Alexander's #My5: The Bell Forging Cycle
Mike Ripplinger's #My5: The Verdant Revival
Eric Lange's #My5: 30 Second Fantasy
Monday, August 8, 2016
Writing "The Final Gift of Zhuge Liang"
I was really tickled by the idea of writing a more action oriented Cthulhu Mythos piece, particularly one that should be set in the past to accommodate a focus on melee weapons. I had previously written "The Ancestors" as my Chinese American take on "Shadows Over Innsmouth" so I figured why not make another go around?
It didn't take long for me to decide that I wanted to work in the Three Kingdoms period due to it being one of the most famous and intense periods of Chinese history. But the problem was, aside from the names of the major players and a few of the battles, I really had no idea what the context for the whole thing was. Most of my previous Chinese history research had been regarding the Qing Dynasty (which served as the model for the fictional dynasty used in "The Held Daughter") and there's about 1400 years of history in between the two.
All I knew about the Three Kingdoms was that the Han Dynasty had fallen and there was a war that divided the empire in three as three different men claimed themselves to be the true emperor and successor to the Han.
It was a setting ripe for conflict and made famous by the 12th century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
While brainstorming my initial choice for protagonist was Zhuge Liang, because he was known as the master strategist of Shu and possibly the most brilliant person on any side of the war. Due to the nihilistic nature of Lovecraftian fiction, I wanted to set the story during Zhuge Liang's final battle, because I knew he had died before the war was over.
But then I learned that Zhuge Liang had died due to a combination of stress and overwork, which was not a dramatic death at all, even if he had been on the campaign trail at the time.
I also considered using his wife Lady Huang, who was considered to be as talented as he was, but information on her was so scant and I could find no evidence that she accompanied him on the campaign trail.
Then I considered making Sima Yi the main character, figuring that it might be interesting to tell the story of the person who was fighting against an opponent with mythical tactical abilities (and supernatural powers), but it just wasn't clicking, because Sima Yi only wins by outlasting Zhuge Liang and when he finally gets out of his fortress on the Wuzhong Plans he's routed largely due to his own paranoia.
Finally I noticed a name that I remembered hearing before, but didn't know much about. Jiang Wei. He was Zhuge Liang's successor.
Reading about Jiang Wei I found him to not be as cut and dry a successor as I thought he would be, but his mixed legacy was attractive, and I found it fascinating that he was so devoted to his adopted nation of Shu even though he had originally been an officer in Wei (his personal name "Wei" is written differently from the country "Wei").
In Romance of the Three Kingdoms Jiang Wei is presented as a very romanticized character, with the brains of Zhuge Liang and the fighting skills of Zhao Yun, who had the misfortune of being one of the last Shu generals of any standing left towards the end of the war, at which point there was nothing he could do to save the kingdom.
The reality was more complicated, but still, I liked the idea of the student who can never surpass the master, when it's something we always want to happen. Zhuge Liang today is still a part of Chinese culture, with four different actors portraying him in two different movies and two different TV series in the last ten years alone. That's pretty good for a guy who's been dead for 1800 years! How can anyone live up to that kind of legacy?
So I decided that the heart of the story would be about Jiang Wei trying to live up to being Zhuge Liang's successor while also keeping the Shu army intact during their retreat from the Wuzhong Plains. While the reality of Sima Yi's retreat was more a combination of paranoia and a well-placed ambush, in folklore the Shu army either used a wooden statue of Zhuge Liang or Jiang Wei dressed as Zhuge Liang himself to scare him off.
I figured on something a little more supernatural…
But I still have a nod to both, because I think readers who are more familiar with the time period (or are only familiar with it from the novel) might be expecting them.
I really enjoyed writing this one, and I'm mulling over ideas for the future considering that Jiang Wei has many more battles ahead of him in which I could still being the Mythos to bear.
If you would like to check out a preview of this story, there is a teaser now up at Stone Skin Press.
Music listened to while writing: "No Differences" from the Aldnoah.Zero soundtrack and "Kimi no Matsu Sekai" (trans: "The World Where You Are Waiting") from the first set of opening credits to Magic Kaito 1412
It didn't take long for me to decide that I wanted to work in the Three Kingdoms period due to it being one of the most famous and intense periods of Chinese history. But the problem was, aside from the names of the major players and a few of the battles, I really had no idea what the context for the whole thing was. Most of my previous Chinese history research had been regarding the Qing Dynasty (which served as the model for the fictional dynasty used in "The Held Daughter") and there's about 1400 years of history in between the two.
All I knew about the Three Kingdoms was that the Han Dynasty had fallen and there was a war that divided the empire in three as three different men claimed themselves to be the true emperor and successor to the Han.
It was a setting ripe for conflict and made famous by the 12th century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
While brainstorming my initial choice for protagonist was Zhuge Liang, because he was known as the master strategist of Shu and possibly the most brilliant person on any side of the war. Due to the nihilistic nature of Lovecraftian fiction, I wanted to set the story during Zhuge Liang's final battle, because I knew he had died before the war was over.
But then I learned that Zhuge Liang had died due to a combination of stress and overwork, which was not a dramatic death at all, even if he had been on the campaign trail at the time.
I also considered using his wife Lady Huang, who was considered to be as talented as he was, but information on her was so scant and I could find no evidence that she accompanied him on the campaign trail.
Then I considered making Sima Yi the main character, figuring that it might be interesting to tell the story of the person who was fighting against an opponent with mythical tactical abilities (and supernatural powers), but it just wasn't clicking, because Sima Yi only wins by outlasting Zhuge Liang and when he finally gets out of his fortress on the Wuzhong Plans he's routed largely due to his own paranoia.
Finally I noticed a name that I remembered hearing before, but didn't know much about. Jiang Wei. He was Zhuge Liang's successor.
Reading about Jiang Wei I found him to not be as cut and dry a successor as I thought he would be, but his mixed legacy was attractive, and I found it fascinating that he was so devoted to his adopted nation of Shu even though he had originally been an officer in Wei (his personal name "Wei" is written differently from the country "Wei").
In Romance of the Three Kingdoms Jiang Wei is presented as a very romanticized character, with the brains of Zhuge Liang and the fighting skills of Zhao Yun, who had the misfortune of being one of the last Shu generals of any standing left towards the end of the war, at which point there was nothing he could do to save the kingdom.
The reality was more complicated, but still, I liked the idea of the student who can never surpass the master, when it's something we always want to happen. Zhuge Liang today is still a part of Chinese culture, with four different actors portraying him in two different movies and two different TV series in the last ten years alone. That's pretty good for a guy who's been dead for 1800 years! How can anyone live up to that kind of legacy?
So I decided that the heart of the story would be about Jiang Wei trying to live up to being Zhuge Liang's successor while also keeping the Shu army intact during their retreat from the Wuzhong Plains. While the reality of Sima Yi's retreat was more a combination of paranoia and a well-placed ambush, in folklore the Shu army either used a wooden statue of Zhuge Liang or Jiang Wei dressed as Zhuge Liang himself to scare him off.
I figured on something a little more supernatural…
But I still have a nod to both, because I think readers who are more familiar with the time period (or are only familiar with it from the novel) might be expecting them.
I really enjoyed writing this one, and I'm mulling over ideas for the future considering that Jiang Wei has many more battles ahead of him in which I could still being the Mythos to bear.
If you would like to check out a preview of this story, there is a teaser now up at Stone Skin Press.
Music listened to while writing: "No Differences" from the Aldnoah.Zero soundtrack and "Kimi no Matsu Sekai" (trans: "The World Where You Are Waiting") from the first set of opening credits to Magic Kaito 1412
Monday, July 25, 2016
Writing "The World That You Want"
"The World That You Want" is a favorite of mine. It's probably the first story I've written while aiming to hit a specific length, and when I went over, I edited the crap out of it to bring it back to the appropriate size.
This is probably one of the densest things I've written, fitting in a post-apocalyptic world filled with demons and a journey to create a new one in just 4000 words. If you're a fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series, you'll be able to see a lot of influence on this particular work.
I originally wrote this for a themed dark fantasy/horror anthology I didn't get in, and the guidelines were to pick something personal as the subject matter. As it happened, a few days before I heard of the anthology, I’d been talking to a coworker about Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.
The Shin Megami Tensei series typically features teenagers or twenty-somethings dealing with extreme and deadly supernatural events that often shatter their notion of what reality should be. Rather than going to pieces though, the protagonists somehow obtain a way to fight the supernatural through magic of their own or by recruiting demons to their side (or both). Several, though not all, of the Megaten games will give the main character, the player surrogate, the ability to choose among several endings that will decide the fate of the world.
While I was deciding what to write, what struck me was a decision I hadn't made when I was playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. There was a particularly appealing ending available to me, if I was willing to kill a particular NPC to get it. But I wasn't. Sure, it was just a game, but I was trying to play from my personal perspective and that forbade me from killing a character who was more of a bystander than a bad guy.
The seed of my story grew from there. That was the personal hook, though I don't think I would have chosen the ending my protagonist does since it, as a friend put it, "leaves people in a world of suck."
In fact, my "usual" Megaten ending is one the protagonist overhears (and obviously does not choose) on her way up the US Bank Tower. I thought it would be funny if she passed by my dying player insert on the way up.
The US Bank Tower is a real building by the way, though it's a lot less imposing as the scene for demon congregation ever since they put in a glass slide you can ride between two of the upper floors. That hadn't existed at the time I wrote the story and it just opened earlier this year.
"The World That You Want" is my love letter to the Megaten games with a local southern California twist. The world we know has ended and the cityscape is populated by demons and ghosts. In the face of all this, a pair of teenagers head towards the US Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles where an important Decision will be made.
If you still have not had a chance to read it yet, you can find it in the July 2016 issue of Galaxy's Edge which is online free until the end of August.
Music listened to while writing: Soundtracks to Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor.
This is probably one of the densest things I've written, fitting in a post-apocalyptic world filled with demons and a journey to create a new one in just 4000 words. If you're a fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series, you'll be able to see a lot of influence on this particular work.
I originally wrote this for a themed dark fantasy/horror anthology I didn't get in, and the guidelines were to pick something personal as the subject matter. As it happened, a few days before I heard of the anthology, I’d been talking to a coworker about Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.
The Shin Megami Tensei series typically features teenagers or twenty-somethings dealing with extreme and deadly supernatural events that often shatter their notion of what reality should be. Rather than going to pieces though, the protagonists somehow obtain a way to fight the supernatural through magic of their own or by recruiting demons to their side (or both). Several, though not all, of the Megaten games will give the main character, the player surrogate, the ability to choose among several endings that will decide the fate of the world.
While I was deciding what to write, what struck me was a decision I hadn't made when I was playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. There was a particularly appealing ending available to me, if I was willing to kill a particular NPC to get it. But I wasn't. Sure, it was just a game, but I was trying to play from my personal perspective and that forbade me from killing a character who was more of a bystander than a bad guy.
The seed of my story grew from there. That was the personal hook, though I don't think I would have chosen the ending my protagonist does since it, as a friend put it, "leaves people in a world of suck."
In fact, my "usual" Megaten ending is one the protagonist overhears (and obviously does not choose) on her way up the US Bank Tower. I thought it would be funny if she passed by my dying player insert on the way up.
The US Bank Tower is a real building by the way, though it's a lot less imposing as the scene for demon congregation ever since they put in a glass slide you can ride between two of the upper floors. That hadn't existed at the time I wrote the story and it just opened earlier this year.
"The World That You Want" is my love letter to the Megaten games with a local southern California twist. The world we know has ended and the cityscape is populated by demons and ghosts. In the face of all this, a pair of teenagers head towards the US Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles where an important Decision will be made.
If you still have not had a chance to read it yet, you can find it in the July 2016 issue of Galaxy's Edge which is online free until the end of August.
Music listened to while writing: Soundtracks to Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor.
Monday, April 4, 2016
Interview at Flash Fiction Online
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter you may have seen this announcement already.
My flash story "The Ancestors" has been reprinted in the April 2016 issue of Flash Fiction Online. This is its third publication, making it one of my most popularly reprinted stories, and this time I've been interviewed along with it!
Anna Yeatts asked some really good questions, and I managed to not stumble all over myself answering them!
There were a few redrafted answers though. Otherwise my interview probably would have ended up cluttered with way too much video games and anime. It's really hard to keep that out of my system. They were just so influential to me as a young writer and I've never grown out of either.
If you've ever wondered about my writing process, what to do when writing Asian when you're not Asian yourself, or were curious about what I was thinking when I wrote "The Ancestors" it's worth checking out.
My flash story "The Ancestors" has been reprinted in the April 2016 issue of Flash Fiction Online. This is its third publication, making it one of my most popularly reprinted stories, and this time I've been interviewed along with it!
Anna Yeatts asked some really good questions, and I managed to not stumble all over myself answering them!
There were a few redrafted answers though. Otherwise my interview probably would have ended up cluttered with way too much video games and anime. It's really hard to keep that out of my system. They were just so influential to me as a young writer and I've never grown out of either.
If you've ever wondered about my writing process, what to do when writing Asian when you're not Asian yourself, or were curious about what I was thinking when I wrote "The Ancestors" it's worth checking out.
Monday, February 1, 2016
Writing "Confidence Game"
"Confidence Game" is the first story of mine anyone has ever called "first class space opera," which makes me chuffed beyond belief. I'm glad that Chuck Rothman over at Tangent enjoyed the story and that he found protagonist Daryl Yagami "a smart and funny character who's always on top of things."
When Mike Resnick invited me to write an entry in Galaxy's Edge's Sargasso setting, I thought it would be fun, but I didn't realize by how much. Shared worlds are generally pulpier than stories accepted by most other short fiction venues, which would allow me to write more a more action-oriented plot that would be difficult to sell elsewhere.
I read through the preexisting Sargasso stories in preparation and by the time I finished I knew exactly what I wanted.
I wanted to write a stage magician in space, because it's an occupation we seldom see in a science fiction setting. Then I also made him gay and of Japanese ethnic descent, because there aren't enough lovable rogue characters in Western fiction that are gay or Asian, let alone both.
So I ended up with "Confidence Game," a story about an ex-con artist turned magician who gets dragged back into his old line of work in exchange for clearing his criminal record. There are a lot of stories about a criminal hired for one last job before he retires, but Daryl Yagami thought he was already done when his past catches up with him.
Daryl was super fun to write, especially as I built out his backstory so he would be capable of performing the tasks necessary for the plot, and of course, like any good stage magician, he has an assistant in the form of a Translator alien named Kappa. Though I was not able to work it into the story itself since it was rather extraneous, Kappa got his human name from Daryl, who named him after the Japanese kappa from folklore, since Translators look like tortoises (or turtles, which Daryl figures are close enough).
Probably one of the most entertaining things about writing a magician is that Daryl is allowed to pull off some crazy sleight of hand that might be questioned if another character was doing it, but it's no more outrageous than we might see a live magician perform on stage. Just because the story is set in the future doesn't mean that old art forms have disappeared!
Also, having Kappa in the story not only provides Daryl with a friend who is (mostly) in the know, but it gives him someone to play off of. I don't think "Confidence Game" would work as well without him, as Daryl spends so much time lying left and right about who he really is and what he's really doing. Kappa serves as the anchor for the audience that makes Daryl sympathetic, and my beta readers loved him.
"Confidence Game" is still free to read at Galaxy's Edge from now until the end of February. Though it's part of a larger series, it should still be readable by anyone hankering for some espionage action in a space opera setting.
Music listened to while writing: Selected tracks from the soundtracks to Magic Kaito 1412 (anime) and Liar Game (Japanese live action drama), and "One For the Money" by Escape the Fate. "Confidence Game" had a long brainstorm period so it ended up with more music than normal for a short story. If you like club music, Daryl's dance theme is "Here Comes the Hotstepper (Yuksek remix)." Not that this story has any dancing...
When Mike Resnick invited me to write an entry in Galaxy's Edge's Sargasso setting, I thought it would be fun, but I didn't realize by how much. Shared worlds are generally pulpier than stories accepted by most other short fiction venues, which would allow me to write more a more action-oriented plot that would be difficult to sell elsewhere.
I read through the preexisting Sargasso stories in preparation and by the time I finished I knew exactly what I wanted.
I wanted to write a stage magician in space, because it's an occupation we seldom see in a science fiction setting. Then I also made him gay and of Japanese ethnic descent, because there aren't enough lovable rogue characters in Western fiction that are gay or Asian, let alone both.
So I ended up with "Confidence Game," a story about an ex-con artist turned magician who gets dragged back into his old line of work in exchange for clearing his criminal record. There are a lot of stories about a criminal hired for one last job before he retires, but Daryl Yagami thought he was already done when his past catches up with him.
Daryl was super fun to write, especially as I built out his backstory so he would be capable of performing the tasks necessary for the plot, and of course, like any good stage magician, he has an assistant in the form of a Translator alien named Kappa. Though I was not able to work it into the story itself since it was rather extraneous, Kappa got his human name from Daryl, who named him after the Japanese kappa from folklore, since Translators look like tortoises (or turtles, which Daryl figures are close enough).
Probably one of the most entertaining things about writing a magician is that Daryl is allowed to pull off some crazy sleight of hand that might be questioned if another character was doing it, but it's no more outrageous than we might see a live magician perform on stage. Just because the story is set in the future doesn't mean that old art forms have disappeared!
Also, having Kappa in the story not only provides Daryl with a friend who is (mostly) in the know, but it gives him someone to play off of. I don't think "Confidence Game" would work as well without him, as Daryl spends so much time lying left and right about who he really is and what he's really doing. Kappa serves as the anchor for the audience that makes Daryl sympathetic, and my beta readers loved him.
"Confidence Game" is still free to read at Galaxy's Edge from now until the end of February. Though it's part of a larger series, it should still be readable by anyone hankering for some espionage action in a space opera setting.
Music listened to while writing: Selected tracks from the soundtracks to Magic Kaito 1412 (anime) and Liar Game (Japanese live action drama), and "One For the Money" by Escape the Fate. "Confidence Game" had a long brainstorm period so it ended up with more music than normal for a short story. If you like club music, Daryl's dance theme is "Here Comes the Hotstepper (Yuksek remix)." Not that this story has any dancing...
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Anniversary of the Red Baron's Death
Wikipedia wanted to remind me that today is the anniversary of the Red Baron's death, and I felt a little sad. Though I got introduced to the Red Baron via Snoopy (like a lot of people my age) and I've eaten Red Baron brand pizza, my impression of the man has changed a lot since my childhood.
Though he's best known for his prowess as a fighter pilot during WWI, the thing that surprised me while doing research reading about him was how tired he sounded towards the end of his life (he was 25). It's something that stuck with me when I wrote "The Wings The Lungs, The Engine The Heart," which is still one of my favorite pieces.
Most of the time I don't like my stories much after I've sold them. It's just a quirk of mine. But there's a passage in "Wings" that never fails to get me when the Red Baron remembers the wingmen who were hospitalized or died before him.
I wrote that after trying to find a pilot he was friends with who was still alive and on active duty at that point near the end of the war, and I couldn't find anyone. It was very sobering, very sad.
Though he's best known for his prowess as a fighter pilot during WWI, the thing that surprised me while doing research reading about him was how tired he sounded towards the end of his life (he was 25). It's something that stuck with me when I wrote "The Wings The Lungs, The Engine The Heart," which is still one of my favorite pieces.
Most of the time I don't like my stories much after I've sold them. It's just a quirk of mine. But there's a passage in "Wings" that never fails to get me when the Red Baron remembers the wingmen who were hospitalized or died before him.
I wrote that after trying to find a pilot he was friends with who was still alive and on active duty at that point near the end of the war, and I couldn't find anyone. It was very sobering, very sad.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Writing "The Held Daughter"
This story took a convoluted path into being. It started with a pseudo-Wild West setting I was building for a novelette which would feature characters from their world's equivalent of the Qing Dynasty. The novelette was written and I was pretty happy with how it turned out. So I figured I would write more stories in this setting.
At some point I came up with the idea of a "held daughter" (which does not exist in Chinese culture). I already knew that historically boys have been adopted in order to continue the male line, but as far as I know girls were still married off when they came of age. But I liked the idea of a girl being able to carry on the line if no male heirs were eventually born. She would just have to wait, and wait, until her parents stopped trying.
The original draft was going to feature a girl of humble means, who at some point in the story tries to console herself with the fact the Emperor had been a held daughter as well (the title "Empress" would not work for a female Emperor because in Chinese the word literally means "behind the Emperor").
And the story sat for a while. In the meantime I watched Bu Bu Jing Xin, a drama set during the early part of the Qing Dynasty to get a better feel for the costuming, the decor, the customs, etc. for that time period.
Shortly after finishing the series (which is a marathon tear-jerker by the last 3-4 episodes), I realized that my story wasn't about the girl who compared herself to the Emperor, but the Emperor herself, before she became Emperor.
It is one thing for a common girl to be held back from marriage when her father only has a single wife to producer heirs, but when one's father is the Emperor and can take as many concubines as he feels able, it becomes conceivable that he may never give up his quest for a son.
Because of "The Held Daughter's" origins in another story I decided to keep the Cantonese dialect for names and Chinese words. Taishanese, a close relative of Cantonese, is the dialect that was primarily used by immigrant Chinese during the time of the Wild West. However, Taishanese is not well documented since it was the dialect of the poor and in the words of one of my Chinese acquaintances the Taishanese are "the hick Chinese." Rather than invent spellings, I decided to go with conventional Cantonese.
As an additional bonus, Cantonese tends to be easier on the eyes and tongue for English speakers unfamiliar with Mandarin. (And as a personal bonus for myself, I am non-Mandarin Chinese and I like to represent the version of Chinese my ancestors spoke.)
I also would like to add thanks to my Aunt Sally for vetting all the Chinese names I used. I showed up at Christmas last year with a print-out (not trusting my handwriting) of all the names I wanted and she was able to approve or suggest changes on the spot.
"The Held Daughter" is currently available free online at Galaxy's Edge until the end of the month, after which it can be purchased in back issues of Issue 3.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Farewell, Anne McCaffrey
Most writers start writing because because he or she was inspired by something she’d read. There was another storyteller who’d left an impression and became who they wanted to be.
I didn’t think about such things when I was a kid. I generally consider my starting point as a writer to be when I was twelve, and because I wanted to write an adventure story set in my favorite video game. But at about that same age I really got into reading. My dad encouraged my brother and I to read, and agreed to pay half of any book we purchased, which made books affordable entertainment in comparison to video games.
Not that it stopped my love of video games, but I read, a lot.
My first Anne McCaffrey book was actually Dinosaur Planet, chosen because it was quite obviously a science fiction story involving a planet full of dinosaurs, and how could you go wrong with that? I still remember the day I bought the book. A brand new bookstore had opened in town and my dad took me there for a look around. It wasn’t a very large paperback, and there were tons of books on the shelves, but I picked that one. I still have it at home.
Then, when I was a little older in high school, I discovered the school library had an amazing selection of science fiction and fantasy. It had volumes upon volumes of these dragon books by Anne McCaffrey. I liked dragons, so it wasn’t a hard sell. The problem was which one to start with.
I figured the one called Dragonsdawn was a good place to start, given the title, and fell in love with the genetically engineered dragons and their riders. I was disappointed to discover that the rest of the books in print at that time (the Chronicles of Pern collection would later revisit the First Pass) took place centuries if not millenia later, and I had to adjust to a new cast of characters, but I read nearly every Pern book in the school library (skipping only Nerilka’s Story).
After I graduated I continued to read all the way up to 2001’s The Skies of Pern. I read her other books too; The Rowan and Damia, The Ship Who Sang, Decision at Doona.
One of the reasons I thought Writers of the Future was the awesomest contest ever was because Anne McCaffrey was a judge, and the thought that she might one day read my writing was amazing.
Though I won the contest in the biggest way possible, she was not one of my judges, and by then her health no longer permitted her to travel the distance it would take for her to get from Ireland to California for the award ceremony. I wish I had met her.
But she remained an inspiration to me. There is no other author I’ve read more, and I have no doubt that a part of what makes me a writer today came from her.
Farewell, Dragonlady of Pern. And thank you.
I didn’t think about such things when I was a kid. I generally consider my starting point as a writer to be when I was twelve, and because I wanted to write an adventure story set in my favorite video game. But at about that same age I really got into reading. My dad encouraged my brother and I to read, and agreed to pay half of any book we purchased, which made books affordable entertainment in comparison to video games.
Not that it stopped my love of video games, but I read, a lot.
My first Anne McCaffrey book was actually Dinosaur Planet, chosen because it was quite obviously a science fiction story involving a planet full of dinosaurs, and how could you go wrong with that? I still remember the day I bought the book. A brand new bookstore had opened in town and my dad took me there for a look around. It wasn’t a very large paperback, and there were tons of books on the shelves, but I picked that one. I still have it at home.
Then, when I was a little older in high school, I discovered the school library had an amazing selection of science fiction and fantasy. It had volumes upon volumes of these dragon books by Anne McCaffrey. I liked dragons, so it wasn’t a hard sell. The problem was which one to start with.
I figured the one called Dragonsdawn was a good place to start, given the title, and fell in love with the genetically engineered dragons and their riders. I was disappointed to discover that the rest of the books in print at that time (the Chronicles of Pern collection would later revisit the First Pass) took place centuries if not millenia later, and I had to adjust to a new cast of characters, but I read nearly every Pern book in the school library (skipping only Nerilka’s Story).
After I graduated I continued to read all the way up to 2001’s The Skies of Pern. I read her other books too; The Rowan and Damia, The Ship Who Sang, Decision at Doona.
One of the reasons I thought Writers of the Future was the awesomest contest ever was because Anne McCaffrey was a judge, and the thought that she might one day read my writing was amazing.
Though I won the contest in the biggest way possible, she was not one of my judges, and by then her health no longer permitted her to travel the distance it would take for her to get from Ireland to California for the award ceremony. I wish I had met her.
But she remained an inspiration to me. There is no other author I’ve read more, and I have no doubt that a part of what makes me a writer today came from her.
Farewell, Dragonlady of Pern. And thank you.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
My Arcadia
While I was browsing through my unsold science fiction stories, I happened across a story I'd forgotten about. I'd only written the first draft, and for one reason or another had never gotten around to revising it.
It was inspired by a favorite movie of mine, and rereading the story reminded me so strongly of its inspiration that I was motivated to dig it out. That movie was the 1982 anime Arcadia of My Youth.
I think most fiction writers were moved by something when they were young, a story that resonated with them and provided an inspiration to tell stories of their own. While Arcadia of My Youth did not provide the inspiration for me to write (I had already been writing for three, maybe even four, years by the time I saw it), it left a lasting impression on my teenage mind, and to this day I think of Captain Harlock as my favorite pirate of all time.
When I first saw the movie it was a partially censored version called Vengeance of the Space Pirate dubbed into English with 40 minutes removed and marketed as "Just for Kids." Never mind that the main character, Harlock, doesn't end up with much vengeance, that many of the characters die, and the reward for the main character for standing up for his convictions is a painful exile from Earth.
I was sixteen, and terribly moved by the story of a man who fought for what he believed in and was no longer welcome on his own homeworld. There is only way for a human to live on Earth, as part of a conquered and broken people subjugated by the aliens who'd won the war against them. Freedom means leaving Earth behind, never to return. Freedom means existing in a world where no one will help you. Freedom means hardship.
Harlock and his crew choose freedom.
I rewatched Arcadia of My Youth this weekend, my uncut, subtitled version, and was surprised by how much I was moved by the story. There are parts that have not aged well, largely because of things I now know are not scientifically possible or find unrealistic, but the core story, about a man and his beliefs is unchanged from my memory. Harlock is still an immensely strong, larger than life character who if he was a real person I would believe in without hesitation.
This time around though I was particularly moved by Maya, who is heavily implied to be Harlock's wife. It wasn't as though she had been removed from the cut version I'd seen as a teenager, but her messages to Harlock had been trimmed down and the moment of her death had been removed, as well as the grief Harlock shows when he realizes she's died.
Harlock and Maya's relationship is a little odd, which is why I only say it's implied they're married. We never see a ring and with the bleak world they exist in we never see the two side by side in a relaxed setting. They're hardly ever even in the same scene together, but it's obvious they know each other well and care about each other's safety.
I'd always watched Arcadia of My Youth with an eye on Harlock, but this time I found Maya to be a very strong character as well. Though Harlock is the captain and gets all the action oriented sequences, Maya is no less courageous a character for persisting in her underground broadcasts and encouraging the beaten people of Earth to aspire for more.
I'm at a loss what sort of category I'd file this movie under, which makes it difficult to recommend. It's a drama, but there are action sequences and certain moments of coolness that are more appropriate for a popcorn flick. There's just nothing else like it that I can think about off-hand.
I still like it for its message though; that even if it's hard and painful, it's worth fighting for what you believe in.
Arcadia's too close for me to go back and revise my short story now, but it was worth going back and reliving a couple hours with Harlock. It reminded me of just how important and influential a character can be for a young girl.
It was inspired by a favorite movie of mine, and rereading the story reminded me so strongly of its inspiration that I was motivated to dig it out. That movie was the 1982 anime Arcadia of My Youth.
I think most fiction writers were moved by something when they were young, a story that resonated with them and provided an inspiration to tell stories of their own. While Arcadia of My Youth did not provide the inspiration for me to write (I had already been writing for three, maybe even four, years by the time I saw it), it left a lasting impression on my teenage mind, and to this day I think of Captain Harlock as my favorite pirate of all time.
When I first saw the movie it was a partially censored version called Vengeance of the Space Pirate dubbed into English with 40 minutes removed and marketed as "Just for Kids." Never mind that the main character, Harlock, doesn't end up with much vengeance, that many of the characters die, and the reward for the main character for standing up for his convictions is a painful exile from Earth.
I was sixteen, and terribly moved by the story of a man who fought for what he believed in and was no longer welcome on his own homeworld. There is only way for a human to live on Earth, as part of a conquered and broken people subjugated by the aliens who'd won the war against them. Freedom means leaving Earth behind, never to return. Freedom means existing in a world where no one will help you. Freedom means hardship.
Harlock and his crew choose freedom.
I rewatched Arcadia of My Youth this weekend, my uncut, subtitled version, and was surprised by how much I was moved by the story. There are parts that have not aged well, largely because of things I now know are not scientifically possible or find unrealistic, but the core story, about a man and his beliefs is unchanged from my memory. Harlock is still an immensely strong, larger than life character who if he was a real person I would believe in without hesitation.
This time around though I was particularly moved by Maya, who is heavily implied to be Harlock's wife. It wasn't as though she had been removed from the cut version I'd seen as a teenager, but her messages to Harlock had been trimmed down and the moment of her death had been removed, as well as the grief Harlock shows when he realizes she's died.
Harlock and Maya's relationship is a little odd, which is why I only say it's implied they're married. We never see a ring and with the bleak world they exist in we never see the two side by side in a relaxed setting. They're hardly ever even in the same scene together, but it's obvious they know each other well and care about each other's safety.
I'd always watched Arcadia of My Youth with an eye on Harlock, but this time I found Maya to be a very strong character as well. Though Harlock is the captain and gets all the action oriented sequences, Maya is no less courageous a character for persisting in her underground broadcasts and encouraging the beaten people of Earth to aspire for more.
I'm at a loss what sort of category I'd file this movie under, which makes it difficult to recommend. It's a drama, but there are action sequences and certain moments of coolness that are more appropriate for a popcorn flick. There's just nothing else like it that I can think about off-hand.
I still like it for its message though; that even if it's hard and painful, it's worth fighting for what you believe in.
Arcadia's too close for me to go back and revise my short story now, but it was worth going back and reliving a couple hours with Harlock. It reminded me of just how important and influential a character can be for a young girl.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)