(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This flash fiction was written during a writers group meeting I attended. I was given a postcard with a photo and told to write a story inspired by it. I scanned the image and included it below. I thought at first it looked like a woman’s foot wearing a dance shoe, but then I thought it looked like a foot wearing a Greek sandal. That brought about this little tale. Enjoy!)
The image that inspired this flash fiction.
Achilles, clad in his best chiton, tapped into his warrior’s training as he rose onto his tiptoes and spun. His partner, Helen of Troy, whose face was ready to launch another thousand ships, spun with him, the skirt of her gold-trimmed white peplos billowing. But as Achilles descended, he stumbled and fell, nearly dragging Helen down with him.
“That’s the tenth time you tried that turn!” exclaimed Helen. “I’m going to need a new dance partner at this rate! The Greek Gala is only a few days from now!”
“I’m sorry,” replied Achilles, cradling his left foot. “I’ve not been the same since that heel injury during the Trojan War.”
Helen sighed. “Good thing I know an excellent podiatrist.”
My blog this week is a simple one. First, I need to update this info. Second, I need time for my “real” writing. 😛
Anyway…
Convention season is in full swing, and if you’ve been following my social media, I’ve already been to several shows, though not as a vendor. Regardless, I’ll be attending several conventions as either a vendor or an attendee between now and the end of the year. What follows are my currently scheduled appearances. I will probably add and subtract appearances as time goes on.
“Official” Appearances
Gen-Con 5 in Indianapolis, Indiana (Aug. 17-20) – I return to the “best four days in gaming” for the sixth year in a row. The show will be held at the Indiana Convention Center and Lucas Oil Stadium. I’ll be in the massive vendor hall in Authors Avenue, which next door to Artist Alley and near other literary-themed vendors and guests. I’ll hopefully have a preview chapter and cover art for my next book (that’s something I should blog about soon…). I’ll also have a new story in the annual anthology Missing Pieces, which compiles stories written by Gen-Con authors.
Fantasticon Fort Wayne in Fort Wayne, Indiana (Oct. 28-29) – Last year was so fun, I had to return to my new “hometown” comic-con. The traveling show will once again be held at the Grand Wayne Center. I’ll be joined by my writer friend/collaborator Nick Hayden and possibly my Kaijuvision Radio co-host Brian Scherschel. By then, my new book should be out, so this might be your first chance to get signed copies from me.
Stay tuned about possibly signings at a bookstore in Goshen, Indiana, and author fairs at libraries in Fort Wayne and Kendallville, Indiana!
“Unofficial” Appearances
G-Fest XXIV in Rosemont, Illinois (July 14-16) – I’ve been a Godzilla/kaiju fan for a long time, but this will be my first time attending this show, which is essentially the San Diego Comic-Con of the giant monster fandom. It’ll be at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare. Brian Scherschel and I will be there promoting Kaijuvision Radio, although we won’t be behind a table in the vendor hall. No, we’ll be mingling with our fellow fans and attending film screenings and events.
Science fiction writers have always tried to predict the future with their stories. Something I’ve been meaning to write about for a long, long time is how my books have done that. Or at the very least been a little ahead of the curve. No, I haven’t seen any giant cyborg dragons attacking Moscow or been whisked away to another world via a port-a-potty. However, I started to notice a few years ago that some of the concepts I used in Pandora’s Boxand its companion short stories (“Suicide Soldier,” in particular) began to appear in current events. It was a bit frightening, honestly.
Back in 2014, Ebola was all over the news. An outbreak started in West Africa, but it also popped up in several developed countries, including the United States. It was brought over by travelers who had no idea they were infected. Once it was discovered they carried the virus, they were isolated to be treated. As you would expect, many people were scared by this. They feared an unstoppable outbreak in their own country. The thing of it was they didn’t understand how the virus was spread (it’s through bodily fluids) or have faith in the CDC to contain those infected.
Regardless, that fear was aggravated by some who said ISIS could use Ebola as a bio-weapon—by intentionally infecting operatives and having them interact with as many people as possible to spread it. This could be done because it would be difficult to smuggle out the infected bodily fluids. Considering ISIS was known for using suicide bombers, it seemed to be a natural progression that they would start infecting operatives with deadly diseases in order to spread them. They could potentially kill far more people that way.
Around this same time was when the Syrian refugee crisis became a bigger hot-button issue for several reasons, in particular because ISIS was smuggling operatives into other countries amid those refugees. Given the severity of the crisis, the compassionate response from rest of the world, and the difficulty of vetting refugees, it was a prime means of infiltration.
So, there’s an outmanned and outgunned terrorist organization that, at least at one point, was considering infecting suicide operatives with a deadly disease in order to spread it and was already infiltrating other countries with operatives disguised as refugees.
Like I said, I was a bit scared when I put two and two together.
Cover Art by Zach Hayden
For those who don’t know, I first conceived my novel Pandora’s Box back in 2002, but it wasn’t published until 2010. A key component of the story is a would-be world dictator beginning a non-nuclear world war by unleashing a horrific genetically-engineered virus in the most powerful nations on Earth, thereby forcing a two-prong crisis. The disease is essentially rabies on steroids (think the Rage virus from the movie 28 Days Later), which not only demoralizes the dictator’s enemies, the infected serve as cannon fodder, which presents a moral crisis (is it right to kill the infected on the battlefield?). I had this backstory in my head as I was writing the book, but I could never find a place to include it. That was until several of my writer friends put together the anthology The Day After, for which I submitted my story “Suicide Soldier.” The main character in that is one of the dictator’s operatives, a young woman with nothing to live for, who is sent to the United States as a tourist in order to spread the virus, which she is carrying.
As you can see, my stories actually became more relevant as time went on. I’d originally been inspired to write Pandora’s Box by all the gun control talk in the news (the book addresses this on a macro scale by using nuclear disarmament), and while that’s still a huge issue to this day, I was shocked to see how ahead of things my imagination was when these other issues started hitting the news. While the Ebola outbreak has faded from the public eye, the refugee crisis remains a point of contention, especially as terrorism increases in Europe.
I won’t pretend that I (or my stories) have any answers for how to deal with these problems. At least not any big answers. What do I mean by that? Well, you’ll have to read my stories to find out.
Have you ever written a story that ended up becoming “prophetic”? What was it about? What real-life events did it “predict”?
In a recent episode of the GameChurch Podcast, the interviewee briefly touched on a concept he called “the noble failure.” As he explained it within the context of his experiences creating video games, he defined it as making efforts to achieve something, failing at it, and then using that experience as a stepping stone toward the goal.
Sounds basic, doesn’t it? Like something everyone understands and accepts. Unfortunately, the interviewee mentioned that it was something he thought Americans had little, if any, appreciation for while Europeans were a bit more open to it.
I think he’s right.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my country, but in America, failure is failure is failure. If a product isn’t successful, it’s seen as worthless. The same is true of people. If someone isn’t racking up achievements, they’re seen as pathetic. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first, second, third, or 100th attempt. All that matters is success. That’s how their value is measured.
This is both pretentious and shortsighted. It defines people by what they do and what they have and not by who they are. It allows no grace for outside factors—most of which are beyond people’s control—to have an effect on someone’s ability to achieve. No, results are all that matter. Are you a jobless college graduate? You’re a failure. Did you flunk a test in school? You’re a failure. Did your new business close? You’re a failure.
I’ve learned this from hard experiences. I lost my first full-time, post-college job just before the “Great Recession,” which made it ten times harder to find a new one. I already felt like a failure for losing my job, and now I couldn’t get a new one. I did everything I could to improve my chances (updated and rewrote my resume, applied to different places, tried to network, etc.), but nothing seemed to pan out. On top of that, I was still trying to find a publisher for my first novel and get freelance articles published, but I wasn’t having much luck. Then, after a year of grueling effort, I finally got a job—as a part-time delivery driver. I told myself I’d hold onto it while I looked for something better. But as the recession dragged on, that “something better” never seemed to come.
I was berated by some people during these times. A girlfriend dumped me because she thought I wouldn’t be a good provider. Another girlfriend’s father made accusations that I would force his daughter to be the breadwinner while I sat at home writing (and not making any money at it, he implied). The frequent criticisms of my generation created the “lazy, entitled millennial” stereotype, which was hammered into my head. Again, all that mattered was results. Setbacks were unacceptable. Trajectory was insufficient. Failure was the unpardonable sin.
What’s sad is the stories of great people are replete with failures. Depending on who you talk to, J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was rejected nine to 12 times before being accepted. Now it’s a multibillion dollar empire. Can you imagine being one of those 12 editors? They’re eating crow now! Thomas Edison used thousands of different materials trying to make a lightbulb filament and famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” Then he found one that did, and it helped usher in the modern world.
Or how about this superb inspirational Nike commercial:
Michael Jordan, the greatest athlete to play basketball and the winner of six NBA championships, had a long string of failures. If he’d let those define him, he would’ve given up and never accomplished what he did. It was those failures that taught him the lessons he needed to move forward.
That’s my advice to all of you. Don’t let your failures define you. Learn from them. Move forward a wiser person. Most importantly, don’t let anyone judge you because of your failures. As Bernard Baruch (not Dr. Seuss) said, “Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” Your real friends/fans/supporters will be gracious and understand. Let them encourage you not to give up on your dreams and goals. We all need that.
What do you think of the idea of “the noble failure”? Does it sound good to you? What “noble failures” have you experienced? What did you learn from them?
DC Comics hasn’t had much luck with movies lately. They’ve been striving to catch up with Marvel Comics’ unsurpassed cinematic universe with several films of their own—with mixed results. Then this past weekend Wonder Woman was released. A lot was riding on it. It was the first female-led superhero film in 12 years (and none of the others were successes). It was the first time Wonder Woman was ever on the big screen. DC desperately needed a film to save their “extended universe.”
And it was, well, wonderful.
This blog isn’t a review of the film. What I want to talk about is the first and most important reason why I think this film succeeded. It’s something that took DC’s film division four tries to learn, and it’s something you as a writer can benefit from knowing.
Get your characters right.
One of the major problems the DCEU films have had is they’ve tried so hard to reimagine and/or “modernize” their already iconic characters that they’ve almost ceased to be those characters. Superman is brooding and doubtful. Batman is paranoid and murderous. And don’t even get me started on the Joker.
Here, though, DC doesn’t screw around. They present Wonder Woman—a character I’m sure they were too scared for years to put on screen—as she should be: earnest, inspirational, and above all, compassionate. I’ve not read many Wonder Woman comics (though I suddenly want to read more now), but I’ve always thought that she was written best when she was written as I just described. Yes, she is an Amazon warrior. Her strength rivals Superman’s and her fighting prowess probably exceeds Batman’s. But hers is a distinctly feminine strength. Her drive to fight comes from a desire to comfort and protect. In the film, she witnesses the horrors of war, seeing wounded soldiers and civilians, and without speaking a word, the audience knows her heart is breaking. She’s naïve, but she’s not brooding, doubtful, or murderous. It’s a welcome change from what DC’s been doing with their films.
Along the same lines, this film isn’t steeped in feminist propaganda. By that I mean making all the men in the film worthless idiots (like what was done in last year’s horrid Ghostbusters remake). Wonder Woman is determined to forge ahead and make her own way, but she gladly seeks and accepts help from men. The male characters, especially Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), are all strong, competent, and well-written characters. Wonder Woman even (gasp!) falls in love with one of them and (SPOILER WARNING) renews her faith in humanity because Trevor told her he loved her before dying heroically. In other words, Wonder Woman saw the best of mankind thanks to men.
Let this be a lesson to you, writers: believe in your characters and let them be true to themselves. Don’t let culture or trends dictate how you write them. That’s a one-way ticket to cookie-cutter clichés. Write the characters you want to write. Make them unique. Make them your own. What audiences want isn’t always what they need, or even what they want in the long run. That’s why you need to let your characters be true to themselves, and by extension, you remain true to yourself as an artist and storyteller.
What did you think of Wonder Woman? What are some ways you’ve learned on how to write your characters right?
A Man from Another Time Exploring Another Universe
