There Is A Slight Flaw In My Character...

My apologies for not posting more often on this blog, but I've been kept fairly busy with my job and my NaNoWriMo writing. I definitely plan on writing my thoughts about Captain Vorpatril's Alliance as soon as I get the chance to sit down and read it, but I'm still working my way through two non-fiction books I picked up at the library. On a side note, The Thank You Economy, by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk, was fairly good about social media marketing and customer engagement, if you're interested in that kind of thing.  The dude knows his wine too.

I would post more, but as the title says, there is a slight flaw in my character.

Which brings me to the actual, short subject of this blog post, a book that is criminally under-appreciated and an amazing read. That book is Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart. It's a fantastic novel of an Ancient China that never was, starring a kind-hearted and over-muscled villager who becomes the sidekick of a venerable, roguish detective in a quest to find a cure for the village's poisoned children. It's fantastic.

I first encountered the book due to John Rateliff's Classics of Fantasy series, which I'm going to admit had some real stinkers in the list. Bridge of Birds is a winner though. I even tracked down one of the sequels to the work, Eight Skilled Gentlemen, which was sadly not as good.

Read Bridge of Birds.

Writing a 50K

This post is about NaNoWriMo, or the National Novel Writing Month. You've probably heard of it. I love Nanowrimo. It's fun and exciting to commit yourself to writing the first draft of a book in just one month. Nanowrimo is in fact one of the reasons that November is my favorite month of the year (others: my birthday, first snowfall). And this month my friend Tabor is writing his own novel for November, so I have someone to compete against. The best part of any competition, though, is winning it. :)

Another reason I like Nano is because I think it shows that people are creative. Inherently creative. Maybe people suck at the craft of it, about writing down their ideas and transforming them into cohesive plots, but they have ideas. And that's fun. I don't think you'll find many uncreative children, but somewhere people learn to suppress their creative spark. To hell with that.

There is one thing I don't quite get about NaNoWriMo. The community. I go to the NaNoWriMo website to put in my word count, of course, and I like getting free goodies at the end of the month...but I don't get the community that surrounds it. Especially since they're always asking for donations. What exactly are your costs here, other than running a high traffic website (a problem that would seem to have an obvious solution)?

Now I'm sure that the people are great, nice people. People who like books and stories. People who aren't afraid to say "Fuck it, I'm writing a book," and then proceed to do just that. But between the forum posts, community meet ups, and write-a-thons, I'm not all that surprised that most people fail to finish their book. I think people are more interested in talking about their book and writing than actually sitting down and slamming your face against the keyboard until something comes out.

Sadly, I'm a little behind right now, for various reasons. The book I've chosen to write is called City of the Damned, a kind-of sequel to my fantasy novel No More Kings. Well, it has some of the same characters, anyway, although both the main characters are new. Competing against me is Tabor's The King's Fool, which I would describe as a Game of Thrones-esque power struggle from the perspective of the cunning court jester.

Time to get back to work. 

Order of the Skull, Parting Thoughts

This will be final post about my friend J.E. Tabor's second novel (draft), the Order of the Skull. This is the first time I've really gone through a book, picking it apart and deciding what I like and what I don't. Normally I read books to be entertained, to enjoy the story, not to exercise my incredible powers of negativity to drain all enjoyment out of the printed word. Fortunately, Tabor doesn't really mind it all that much: our friendship began in the fires of adversity (Freshman Theology), and can weather my blog posts. :)

First of all, I enjoyed it. I think it was better than his first book, One Man's Freedom Fighters. In truth, it's probably not as marketable, since the genre he picked is fairly unusual. Not that Tabor stays particularly close to his chosen genre though; I think Tabor's familiarity with pulp is generally limited to Indiana Jones, Sky Captain, and Spirit of the Century. I'm fairly certain that he could rewrite it to take place in present day without too many difficulties, other than losing his enjoyable historical references and the nods to the social attitudes (i.e. racism) of the day.

His characters need fleshing out. There's some nods to depth and backstory, but there doesn't seem to be a lot direct or indirect importance to them, other than the knowledge that Hawkins can shoot like a million people a second with a revolver. Carson and Calloway have potential to have their backstories more fully explored, and perhaps tied to the events of the novel in some way. Emily Carson also starts off as a capable, self-assured young woman before fading into a hostage and love interest. Sister Cecilia doesn't do much of anything, really, other than provide convenient info, and dump acid on someone (always a fun party trick).

Speaking of characters, they lack motivation. They end up getting involved because of some vision quest and vague feeling about the end of the world, driving them to pursue a dangerous secret society across the country. They seem to act almost solely because THE PLOT DEMANDS IT. And they still feel inherently reactive, almost more like the protagonist of a video game than a novel. They might want to stop the bad guy, but they pick up the quest from the Native American shaman with an exclamation point over his head.

The bad guys feel kind of weak, a little generic and poorly-formed. Eigenstulf, while having a great name, has only the motivation of wanting to end the world because the Great War was hell. Yet there's no passion there when he speaks, nothing to make me believe that he's anything other than an antagonist to be killed. And as I mentioned, the Seven Deadly Sins of the Order are kind of weak for a bunch of guys who sold their souls and practice black magic. And the fight scene between Hawkins and the Sins is so sad it should be ashamed of itself (I'd expect six ordinary guys to put up more of a fight against Clint Eastwood in a Western).

One idea I had is that maybe the protagonists should be the ones with the skull, and the bad guys are trying to recover it. And give them each one goal they want to accomplish. Maybe Carson is investigating the deaths of her parents or something. Perhaps Calloway already knows something about the Order and wants to stop them. Hell, maybe he was a member before it all got too dark and crazy. Something like that.

Also: make things more awesome. Turn the dial up to eleven. Don't just have the good guys and bad guys pass through town. Have them change the whole fucking city. Make the disease in Saint Louis directly the work of the Order. Don't have a fight in between train cars, where ordinary people might fight...bring the action on top of the cars, or under, or clinging from side to side. Defenestrate the bad guys with well-placed kicks. If Hawkins is some kind of magician with a gun, maybe Carson is good enough to race her automobile professionally. Maybe Calloway isn't just a bad cheat and worse liar, but a true Magnificent Bastard sidekick. This wouldn't work if Tabor had picked a different genre, of course, but if you've decided to write a pulp adventure story, why not make it over-the-top?

Order of the Skull: Eleven and Epilogue

Tabor brushes over the task of Calloway finding Eigenstulf, and manages to track down his exact location within a sentence of the start of the chapter. I kind of thought it'd be harder. Dirk manages to bring up his backstory again, but it's never really touched on in the future. In fact, none of the characters really draw upon any of the stuff from their past. For example,we never see Carson's aunt and uncle in this entire story. As a reader, I get the feeling that more might be going on, but Tabor was in a rush to finish this draft and never bothered to fill out some of the details.

Calloway decides to take out Eigenstulf alone, with all the logic of a character deciding to stay behind and "hold them off" for all the time it takes twenty armed men to kill one (i.e., three seconds). There's a reason that Sister Cecilia supports his plan, though. And the problem with this scene, Calloway going off to face Eigenstulf, is that as a reader I know it isn't going to work. Especially since the fact they have one gun between them seems to be a problem easily remedied...in a few years, you could purchase Thompsons from Sears for twenty bucks. (They don't sell submachine guns these days...I asked).

Then we get the cool reveal that Sister Cecilia is actually possessed, when a gift from Emily Carson burns her flesh. Neat! Hawk and Emily head off to go kill Eigenstulf, and find themselves in another hostage situation, with Hawkins threatening the skull, while one of his friends is menaced. This feels a little tired. Especially since I don't know any reason why Eigenstulf (or any of the Order) would keep their little McGuffin bones in such easy to reach locations. Voldemort didn't exactly keep his Hocruxes in the trunk of his car, you know? Why not drop it off in a safe deposit box, or bury it underground in a safe, or hide in a hidden oasis guarded by a giant invisible spider (anyone know which story I just referenced?)?

Hawkins proves immune to some of Eigenstulf's magic, however, due to ignorance about his true name. I've read a very similar scene in Lies of Locke Lamora, although I know for a fact that Tabor hasn't read that particular book. An interesting bit of congruence, but for the reveal I think it needs a little more build-up. Their duel after this little reveal seems kind of forced, though, almost as if Mal and the Operative fought for another few minutes after the nerve strike fails. I think it would have been better pacing if Hawkins finished Eigenstulf then and there.

Here's a nice bit of dialogue near the end of the book, as the characters discuss the fate of the once-feared Order of the Skull:

“What, the secret society? Well, they have no leadership, and their base of operations has
been destroyed. I think that if anything will stamp them out, that would be it. I think from now
on the Order of the Skull will be relegated to a rich boy fraternity playing at occult and
superstition. Even so, I wouldn’t rule out another apocalyptic cult waiting in the wings, ready to
take advantage of void. I don’t think anything will ever change that.”

So true, so true. And the story quickly brings us the epilogue, with Hawk returning to get his money from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Oh, yeah, that motivation, that I as a reader had completely forgotten about (well, not really, but most people would have, I think). I think it would have made Hawk and Dirk more likeable if they ended up not taking the money, but instead finding some other purpose in life than drifting. Hawk and Dirk end up talking about going into business together; then they get into another brawl. One thing is that I'm not entirely certain if Hawkins and Calloway ever really liked each other that much. They had a very caustic relationship. And the hero doesn't end up with the girl, with Hawkins and Carson going their separate ways off-screen. That's kind of disappointing. Still, the ending does make me smile, which is always nice.

xxSkullxx

Order of the Skull, Chapter X. We start this chapter with the view from Calloway, since Hawkins went unconscious. They end up trapped underground, flooded by one of Eigenstulf's villainous traps. Carson ends up drugged, so her dialogue actually ends up being pretty funny, a lighter note when teh characters are surrounded by certain doom.

The writing in this chapter seems to be quite good, at least from a technical standpoint. Hawkins manages to do something incredibly stupid, the kind of thing you might expect from Willie of Temple of Doom instead of a generally competent sharpshooter. I think the underwater, underground escape scene could use a little more work, since I can only imagine it would be a terrifying ordeal. As a writer, I'd enjoy writing it properly, since typically in movies there's way too much light (like 13th Warrior). Make it a frantic experience of navigating by touch and current alone, against the clock of the dwindling oxygen in your lungs. Really, the kind of scene that only a book could do properly.

The characters then try to deal with Hawk's evident possession. Tabor does something clever as hell here. I'm not quite certain how well it would work in real life, but it's a cool enough trick that I'd let it slide as a reader.  The characters decide that to cure Hawkins, they need to kill Eigenstulf. I do notice that the police have yet to be involved during their time in Boston, which seems a little interesting since they did beat up that cop on the way there.

Order of the Skull: Eating Nine

I'm going to discuss the next two chapters of Order of the Skull. The chapter opens with a poker game between our hero Hawkins and the villain Eigenstulf. Tabor, at least, shows some experience with poker, by not having the winning hand be a straight or full house; instead, it's a king-high bluff against less than a king high bluff. He even discusses the poker strategy that the characters are using.

One thing I find interesting is that when Hawkins does get his hand on the skull (as a result of beating Eigenstulf), he mentions that it's a culmination of months of effort. I never really got the impression that these characters had spent months chasing this thing. I mean, they took a drive and a train ride. It's not like they hiked all the way across America.

And then, because the men of the story had turned their backs on them for one freaking second, the women of the story end up as hostages. This is one pulp trope that I'd rather Tabor not use.

The scene cuts to Sister Cecelia, the waffling nun. This might be the first time the action has shifted away from Hawk, but it's necessary to establish the situation the women are in. Unfortunately, the situation isn't all that interesting, since all Eigenstulf does is give the "We are not so different, you and I..." Evil Villain Recruitment Speech. Seriously, what's this guy's hiring policy? Will he take anyone? Should I send him my resume? The bad guy's long term goals are also revealed, the typical apocalyptic BS about causing the end of the world...doesn't make a lot of sense for a bunch of rich guys who own everything, but whatever.

Tabor does a good job writing this section, I think, at least physically, but with this viewpoint change we don't get a good sense of just who is Sister Cecilia. So far, the entire character doesn't seem to have much point, other than giving Dirk a date to the masquerade (albeit one with an inconvenient vow of celibacy). I suspect that Tabor had some authorial plan for the character that just never materialized.

The characters have trouble finding the island on a map, and I'm reminded of a line from MST3K. "Being good with maps is like being good at eating cereal." There's kind of a low skillcap, you know? This seems like a pointless obstacle to throw in front of the characters at this point...as if Indiana Jones couldn't get to the Ark of the Covenant in time because his car gets a flat tire, and he doesn't know how to fix it.

After they overcome that terrible obstacle, the two men make their way into the headquarters of the Order, which they do with surprising ease. Suddenly, after the characters finally learn enough to be dangerous and manage to almost disrupt the villain's plans, they're no longer followed and harassed at every opportunity. In a move of even greater stupidity, the evil cult leaves the skulls, secret to their dark demonic power, unguarded.

A confrontation ensues. There's another hostage scenario, with the hostage sitting by helplessly waiting for Hawk to save them, since he seems to be the only one in this story allowed to ever really succeed at anything. And succeed he does. He ends up facing off against all six of the demonic cultists with scary supernatural powers...and kills five of them at once. With bullets. It's not like he even shoots them in the back while they're doing some chanting either. What. A. Letdown.

The reader in me is thinking that obviously this is a trick, that they're just some poor mooks dressed in fancy robes, so then the real bad guys come out behind the corner and enjoy a good laugh at their minion's expense. Nope. It's not even a plan from Eigenstulf where he renders all of his buddies impotent, so he can gain full control over the cult. Speaking of mooks, they're all gone by this point. I guess they're not allowed on Elk Island.

The chapter ends with another hostage trade, and a sudden but inevitable betrayal by the bad guy. This wasn't the actual climax, I think, but it makes you wonder why anyone would bother selling their soul to the devil if they end up getting taken out like such chumps. The Order of the Denarius from the Dresden Files could teach these losers a thing or two, I think.

Order of the Skull: Why is Six Afraid of Seven?

Chapter Six was fairly short, so I kept reading ahead and finished Chapter Seven as well. I enjoyed both of these chapters quite a bit. There's an assassination attempt on the train that has some good writing in it, doing a good job describing the noise and wind of a speeding train. Then there comes a situation where the protagonists are forced to think fast...and don't. Deception and violence solve the issue eventually, though.

And so ends the very short chapter six, leading to seven, where things begin to get a little more interesting. Early on, there's a mention of werewolves...I'm not sure if this was some kind of typo and it's meant to say "warlock" (a term later used), or if this is a world with werewolves as well as demons. What is this, the Dresden Files? :)

Tabor uses the old chestnut, so common to James Bond, of infiltrating the bad guy's party. And this party turns out to be a masquerade. I think that the number of masked balls in fiction vastly outnumber the ones that have taken place in real life...ever (not counting Halloween, of course). A quick little side note is that the characters have a short discussion about the politics of the moment (what a fine phrase), reminding the reader about what's going on in the country at this point in time. Tabor in general has a decent eye for history, although I'm not sure how accurate he depicts the racism of the times.

Annoying, Tabor does include the classic (and bad, in my opinion) bluff of "Do you want to go get your boss, ask him, and get in trouble?" I'm not saying this might not work on occasion, but it seems ever time any book, movie, or TV character wants to try that one, it works. Villains really need to outline these kinds of situations in their employee handbooks: make a note for the Evil Overlord list.

Now, here's where I'm puzzled. They head into the lair of the villain, then pull off their masks. After it becomes known that Lucas Eigenstulf, in addition to seeming to know the whereabouts of these guys at all times, also knows Dirk; they were in the same school, and army unit. And it's not like there's a vast multitude of Native Americans in Boston.

So when it's revealed that Eigenstulf knows exactly who they are, it's not exactly a surprise. It would be far more of a surprise if he didn't recognize his war buddy, and couldn't put two and two together and figure out who Hawkins was. Then we reach the end of the chapter, with the following passage.

Pencil and Curtains leaned back from the table, glancing back and forth nervously. “I
apologize, but this charade was too much for my nerves,” Eigenstolf said. “Skullsman, please
get my bag.” He nodded at pencil, who promptly stood and scurried across the room. He
emerged from behind the bar with an old brown sack. He tossed it to Eigenstolf, who caught it
in one hand.
“I was thinking we should put some real skin in this game,” He said, as he reached into
the small cloth sack. “Or, bone, rather,” he added, as he pulled the yellowish-brown object,
sowing thousands of dust particles in the wake. He set the decades old human skull carelessly on
the pile of cash in the center of the bright crimson poker table.

Finally, the skull makes an appearance. Well, it's a skull, at least; they tend to look the same to the untrained eye. Playing poker for the McGuffin; classic. Not sure what stakes Calloway and Hawkins will bring to the table, though. I do hope that Tabor finally makes a fictional poker game fairly realistic. In every fictional game of poker, everyone draws these straights, flushes, four of a kinds, full houses...you name it. The important hands always feature each player with improbably good cards. No one ever gets taken out by a pair of nines, unlike real poker.