Percival Constantine

Moving Shop

2010-10-18T08:11:00.001-07:00

I've recently created a new website over at WordPress.com. I won't be using my Blogspot account anymore, but I will leave it up as an archive. Update your links, here's where you can find me from now on:

http://percivalconstantine.wordpress.com/

And of course, I'm still on Facebook and Twitter.

A public apology

2010-07-14T03:20:00.000-07:00

Ron Fortier has been kind enough to review Love & Bullets and it's a review that can be read at his own site. Ron sent me an e-mail this morning when he posted the review and he warned me that it wasn't very positive. I read it and sure enough, it wasn't. However, Ron said it was a fair review and I agree with him, as he also had some very positive things to say about my writing style. I thanked him for the review and posted a link to it on Facebook (and by extension, Twitter).

Then, I went about my day. Currently, I'm in Fukuoka for two weeks to study Japanese. So I've been locked inside a classroom all day. After class, I went to a little Indian restaurant near the apartment where I'm staying and checked my e-mail. And I received a message from one of my editors at Pulpwork Press informing me he heard from Ron that someone was spamming the Love & Bullets review. And he asked if it was me. I explained to him it wasn't and then I immediately sent Ron an e-mail apologizing for this person's actions.

I don't know who has been spamming Ron's site and frankly, I don't care. But if it's one of my fans or even worse one of my friends, I am extremely pissed off at this kind of immaturity. Ron wasn't looking to do a smear job on me. He wasn't attacking me. The only interaction Ron and I have ever had has been this review. I sent him a copy of it because he's a pretty big name in the small world of pulp fiction and he frequently writes reviews of independent books. And I sent it to him without any expectations. I told him I would appreciate a review but if he doesn't want to, then that's fine as well.

Ron took time out of his schedule to review a book from an author he's never heard of. And in return, he gets someone spamming his journal. This is unacceptable. If this is someone doing it on my behalf, then I implore you all -- don't do me any favors. Help of this nature is neither needed nor wanted. This kind of help is damaging to me, both personally and professionally. I doubt Ron would ever review another of my books in the future and I wouldn't blame him. Why review something if aggravation is your only reward? And what if this is the kind of reputation I'd have following me around? I'd have a much harder time getting people to review my work. Hell, what if my editor didn't believe me when I assured him I had nothing to do with this? I'd lose my position at Pulpwork Press.

If I only wanted my ego stroked, I would have just shown this book to my mother and no one else. That's not what I want. I like being part of Pulpwork Press. I like that I've been able to make contact with people like Ron and get their feedback on my work, whether positive or negative.

You want to help me? Recommend the book to your friends or family. Write reviews and post them on Amazon or FictionWise. When you're finished, donate your copy to your local library. These are things that are helpful to me. But behaving like an Internet troll is the opposite of helpful.

Ron, I'm sorry you had to deal with this and I hope you accept my apologies.

Writing 101: In The Beginning

2010-07-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

I've been asked to use this blog to give advice on writing and it seemed like a pretty good idea. As anyone who's spoken to me for any length of time can attest to, I can get pretty long-winded. Especially on the subject of writing. So if you have any topics on writing you'd like me to talk about, please feel free to drop me a line and I'll be happy to do it.

Now that we've gone over my basic rules for writing, it's time to get to what I was asked to write about—and that's how to start a story. There are a number of schools of thought on this and as the first rule states, it's up to you to find your own path. In Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing (first published in the New York Times and available on any number of sites on the Internet—just Google it), his first two rules deal with what NOT to do:

Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's “Sweet Thursday,” but it's okay because a cahracter in the book makes the point of what my rules are about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks....figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that...Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle...Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”

Leonard is one of my favorite writers, so it's no surprise that I'll side with him on almost any piece of writing advice he can offer. In my world, if you're lucky enough to be half as successful or as talented as Leonard, then you're lucky enough.

But this is ultimately about how Percival Constantine writes, not Elmore Leonard, so I'll get started with how I write my books. And first thing's first, you've gotta start with some sort of plot. In his book On Writing, Stephen King talks about how he doesn't do a lot of advance plotting and I'm of a similar school of thought (On Writing is a book I strongly recommend, particularly the audio version as King reads it himself and it feels like you're having a conversation with the man).

There are a number of ways to plot. Some people jot down random notes and just write as they go along. Other people write out long, detailed descriptions of their characters. Others can spend weeks, months, even years just on laying out the details of the world and the story. J.R.R. Tolkien reportedly had more backstory written about the world of Middle Earth than ever made it into The Lord of the Rings.

A method I've found particularly useful is Lester Dent's Pulp Paper Fiction Master Plot. You can find it on the Internet on a number of sites. Lester Dent was one of the most renowned of the Doc Savage writers and he remarked that no story he ever wrote conforming to the Master Plot ever failed to sell. The plot lays out a simple formula for a pulp story and how to fit it all together by dividing each story into four sections (this was for a 6,000 word story, but I've applied it to 30,000 word novels and it's worked just as well). It's very useful, especially if you're doing pulp stories.

I have a collection of random notes cobbled together and descriptions of the characters and I go from there. Like King, I let the story evolve as I write it. I've found if I do too much plotting, my tastes eventually change through the course of the story and I end up getting frustrated and abandoning it. I know what the major conflict or reason for the story is and I have a rough idea of how to get from Point A to B, but I don't follow a roadmap.

When it comes to beginnings, well, beginnings are truthfully the easiest thing in the world for me to write. Lately in my writing (and you can see one example of this in the recently-published Love & Bullets), I've taken a cue from the James Bond films and I start with a literary equivalent of a cold open. A cold open is a technique in film and television of jumping directly into the story at the beginning or opening. No real set-up, just jump right in.

This is particularly effective in action stories. Instead of introducing the hero slowly and the story, I jump right in and show the hero on a mission. In Love & Bullets, the book opens with the main character, Angela Lockhart, assassinating a target named Jack Travis and then getting ambushed by his bodyguards. All we need to know about Angela is given to us in this first scene—she's an assassin, she's been sent to kill this guy by someone named Dante, and she's damn good at her job. It's not until the later chapters that we find out Angela is a former operative of an intelligence organization or that her husband was killed through unknown means and she went rogue to locate his killer. If we throw all that exposition into the first few pages, the reader may not find it as exciting. But with a cold open, you grab their attention in the first few pages and you get them intrigued—who is this woman? Why is she doing this job? How did she get so good at it? Why was this man a target?

I'm very critical of Dan Brown's writing, but I have to give the man credit—he knows how to keep people reading. And he does it by putting in just enough mystery so the reader is compelled to keep going, but not too much so the reader is confused and gives up. That's a very fine line to walk and you have to be careful with it. You should give the reader just enough information so they can understand what's going on, but enough mystery so they want to keep reading.

So basically, what my first chapter generally is? A teaser or a short story featuring the main character. I introduce them, show them in action, and then end on a cliffhanger that causes the reader to go on to Chapter Two. In Love & Bullets, the first chapter really has very little bearing on the rest of the book, but it serves to introduce the characters. However in my upcoming book, The Myth Hunter, the first chapter leads directly into the main story and sets off a chain of events.

How this works is, again, up to you.

The important thing to remember in the beginning of any story is to just get something down. Don't dwell on the details or the set-up, just hit the ground running and learn the details of the story as you go. You're not going to have everything perfect on your first run-through and trying to make it perfect will just cause you undue stress and fatigue.

So screw it. Just start writing the damn thing. When you're finished, revision is the time to go back and tighten it up, add the little details or cross out the stuff that just makes no sense. But when you're starting out, you can't be concerned with sweating over that small stuff.

When I worked on my college newspaper, we were taught to write in the style of an inverted pyramid. And what that means is you start off with very broad strokes, summarizing the entire story. Then as the article goes on, you narrow your focus and get more detailed. The actual process of writing a novel or a story is the same—you start off writing very broadly, without letting yourself become too concerned with the details. Then with your next revision, you narrow it down, tighten things up and worry more about how it all fits together. Then another revision and so on and so forth.

But just write something. And remember that you don't have to necessarily write in chronological order. If the entire reason you're writing this book is because you have a great idea for a climatic fight scene at the end, then start off by writing that fight scene and work your way through the story from there. Or write the scenes completely out of order. Write the last scene then the first. Then another one that goes in the middle. Then a flashback and at the end figure out how you fit them all together.

There is no right way to write! You write in the style that you're most comfortable in. And anyone who tells you “I have all the secrets to writing a best-selling novel in thirty days, all you have to do is buy my product” is a scam artist. There is no shortcut, no magic formula that makes everything easy for you, so don't waste your time looking for one.

Writing 101: Five Rules of Writing

2010-07-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

The first thing I was asked to talk about is how to start a story. But I think before you can even begin to write, you need to know the rules. These are my Five Rules of Writing, and they're rules that I believe every writer should follow. Every writer has their own process to follow and their own style to write in and that's great. But these are rules that apply universally to all forms of writing.

That brings me to my first rule of writing, which is find your own path. Writing a story isn't like putting together a piece of furniture—there is no instruction manual, there is no correct way to do it and anyone who tells you otherwise is, pardon my French, full of shit. I strongly encourage you to not only listen and experiment with the method I lay out, but to also look into other methods and then find what works best for you.

Of course, every story needs to start with an idea. Don't ask me where ideas come from, because the answer is they come from anything. There isn't a state of mind or an alternate plane of existence where ideas grow on trees and writers just pop in there to pull them out. I've gotten ideas from dreams, meditation, from watching movies and reading books, or even from a conversation with someone or something I see while driving.

So my second rule of writing is this—good writing comes from experience. By this, I don't mean you can only write about your own personal experiences. The literary world would be a pretty dull place if people only wrote about their own experiences. When I say good writing comes from experience, I mean that you need to expose yourself to other things and get out of your comfort zone. Don't just read a lot of books or watch a lot of movies (but I will get to that in a minute). But go out into the world. Everyone has a story, so go out and talk to people. Find out what their stories are. When you want to go on a vacation, don't go to DisneyWorld for the umpteenth time—visit new locations which are different from the ones you've been exposed to your entire life. Talk to the people there. Not only will this help you find new ideas, but it'll also give you a much more culturally-rewarding life.

I mentioned reading books and watching movies, and that's my third rule of writing—read more than you write. Derrick Ferguson has told me on more than one occasion that he's always surprised at how many aspiring writers he meets who tell him they don't read at all. The reason they give is that they don't want to be influenced by anyone else. Look—if you want to be a writer, you're going to have to be influenced by something. Virtually all creative endeavors are influenced from previous endeavors. We wouldn't have Goodfellas without The Godfather, there would be no Spider-Man if not for Superman, Star Wars and A Fistful of Dollars would be nonexistent without the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, which also wouldn't exist without the American Westerns which preceded them, and I think you get the picture.

Read books. Watch movies. Read comics. And not just within your own discipline. Casablanca is one of the greatest films ever made, and it's a film that doesn't really fit within one, identifiable genre. Sci-fi, action, romance, comedy, crime, horror—expose yourself to all these genres and others.

Don't just stick with fiction. In the film Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage) remarks to Robert McKee (played by Brian Cox) that nothing happens in the real world. In response, McKee flips out and goes on a rant, which I think it's very useful to quote here:

“Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why the fuck are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!”

Remember the old adage of “truth is stranger than fiction.” And for this reason, you should expose yourself to nonfiction. Read through the encyclopedia. Watch documentaries. Read newspaper articles. Look through books on history, politics, psychology, medicine, science, archaeology, sociology, religion (which depending on your views, may be fiction but I won't get into that), philosophy, etc.

There's another reason why you should read voraciously, and it's more important than just falling into the experience category—if you want to master your craft, you need to learn from the masters. Every discipline in the world requires training and writing is no different. I once heard a story about the famous playwright George Bernard Shaw. Now I'm not sure of the authenticity of this, but even if it's false, it's a pretty good story. The legend goes that Shaw was at a dinner party and talking with a neurosurgeon. The doctor remarked that when he retires from medicine, he wants to become a writer. Shaw supposedly responded with, “when I retire, I plan to operate on people.” Just having an idea isn't enough to make you a writer. Any idiot can come up with an idea, but only a writer can turn it into a story.

That's my fourth rule: never stop learning. You're a writing apprentice now, and your masters are every writer, past and present. And no matter how successful you become, no matter how many of your stories are optioned for movies, no matter how much your sales increase, your apprenticeship never ends.

Now for my fifth rule, and this is probably the most important one of all—have passion. If you want a hobby, take a class at the city center. Writing is not a hobby—it's an obsession and a compulsion. Real writers don't want to write, they have to write. It's a stressful, nerve-wracking existence and you will fail far more often than you succeed. Real writers know this, but they can't help themselves. Writing is a way of life and it invades every aspect of your life.

Anyone who wants to be a writer because they think it's an easy job or because they want to make a lot of money is fucking delusional and if you're one of these people, stop right now. Because your work will be half-assed, devoid of passion, and of use to absolutely no one. The story you write should be the story you want to write—not the story you think people want to read. So if you have an idea about secret societies and unrevealed history, that's great, but you should write it because it's a story you want to write. If your only motivation is, “well The Da Vinci Code is popular, so this will be, too,” then you're not passionate—you're opportunistic.

Time to recap—the Five Rules of Writing are:

Find your own path
Good writing comes from experience
Read more than you write
Never stop learning
Be passionate, not opportunistic

These are general rules I've come to learn about and believe over the years, and I think they're essential for every writer, regardless of discipline. Next time, I'll get into my actual writing process.

Rabbit Heart by Barry Reese

2010-06-11T00:58:00.000-07:00

I've been familiar with Barry Reese's work for quite some time now. And when you've been reading an author who specializes in a certain area for a number of years, there are usually relatively few surprises. Oh, the stories are entertaining, but by that point, you're usually so familiar with the writer's style that you're not going to be left with your mouth hanging open.

So imagine my surprise when Barry's latest book, Rabbit Heart, was able to cause just that reaction in me.

Barry is well-known and well-regarded (and rightfully so) for his work on The Rook series, which focus on a supernaturally-tinged vigilante operating in Atlanta in the 1930s. It's great stuff, a lot of fun to read. And most of the work I've read from Barry over the years has been in a similar vein.

Rabbit Heart is definitely not what one would come to expect from Barry Reese. Make no mistake, this is not a tale for young readers—and even some adults may find themselves put off by the very mature themes and situations present.

The book centers on Fiona Chapman, a young woman who was nearly killed as a child by a vicious serial killer. Only what no one knows it that Fiona actually did die, in a fashion. By the time she reaches her early twenties, Fiona embarks on a quest to confront her killer and this awakens her true nature, as an Archetype of the Furious Host. But this is only the beginning of her adventure. Her brethren kill humans with almost wild abandon but Fiona chooses to turn on her fellow hunters instead. And with the help of Ascott Keane, a legendary occult investigator, she pursues one such hunter in the town of Milledgeville in Georgia.

Rabbit Heart is extremely graphic. It's brutal, gruesome, and strangely erotic—sometimes all at once. Sex and violence mix together in a way that may be disturbing to some, but is nonetheless gripping. I found it impossible to tear myself away from the book—I was disgusted and shaken to my core and I say these things as compliments. It takes a certain kind of writer to be able to bring about these emotions in a reader, and Barry has proven that while he's very talented in his usual area of expertise, he's also versatile and open to experimentation.

Although the central story will no doubt keep your eyes glued to these pages, what I found most fascinating was the taste of metafiction Barry uses. He does it in such a way that sets Rabbit Heart apart from similar tales, but which is subtle enough to avoid falling into the trap of smug arrogance or tongue-in-cheek camp that metafiction writers sometimes find themselves in.

If you came to this book because you're familiar with Barry's other work, rest assured that he definitely brings his A-game to the table. But don't expect something with a similar tone to The Rook Chronicles—Rabbit Heart operates on an entirely different level. This is Barry Reese does grindhouse, and I for one hope we'll see more tales of Fiona Chapman and Ascott Keane in the future.

The questions you should and should not ask a writer

2010-06-03T06:44:00.000-07:00

Josh Reynolds pointed me to these entries by Richard Dansky. The first is Seven Questions You Should Never Ask A Writer and the second is Seven Things You Should Always Ask A Writer. It's pretty entertaining, and because I'm all about entertainment, here are my answers.

First, the questions that should never be asked (and if I've been asked them before).

1) Where do you get your ideas?

I've been asked this one frequently, but I don't get bent out of shape by it. I think every writer has been asked this question before. And the truth is my ideas can come from anywhere. Often times, I can't tell you where they came from, they just happen.

2) I have a great idea for a novel. If I tell it to you, can you write it so we can share the profits?

I've gotten variations on this, mainly in my work-for-hire comic work. This isn't so bad, depending on who's asking it. For example, if any of my fellow Pulpwork Press authors asked me this question, I'd be hard pressed to say no. If it's going to be a collaboration, that's one thing. Some of my best experiences in writing have been through collaboration.

But if it's someone who's just going to dictate something rigidly to me and not allow for any input, then I'm going to pass on it. I actually recently had a situation like this where someone asked me to help them write a graphic novel. The client's ideas were rigidly set in stone, but they were never made clear to me. Anything I did was met with extremely vague orders for revision, so I had no idea what I was supposed to be writing.

And if it's someone who just throws a one-sentence story idea at me, then:

a) My contract should specify a lot more than half considering the level of work I'm doing
b) I should have a lot of freedom
c) It better be a damn good idea

Believe it or not, there are people out there who try to scam writers into coming up with scripts and then they'll never speak to said writer again and try to pass off the writer's script as their own work. I've never experienced this myself, but I've heard the horror stories.

3) Can you write me into your next novel?

I've been asked this and in one case, I said yes, because the person who asked the question came up with a great way to write her into the book that I just loved and fit in perfectly with the story I wanted to tell. But for the most part, I'll say no. My characters are pastiches of characters from other stories as well as people in my life but never has any of my characters been a direct transplantation of someone I know into a book.

4) Do you know what you should have done with your last book?

I think this question is basically the beginning of someone trying to say how they would have written your book better. And that's pretty damn irritating, not to mention arrogant as shit. I really couldn't care less how you would have written my book because it's my book. Write your own book and then see how you like it when someone else tells you what you should've done.

5) Can you get me a copy of [insert name of highly anticipated best-selling book] in advance, because you're a writer? I know all of you writers hang out together.

Living in Japan, I do get asked a question similar to this, but not because I'm a writer -- it's because I'm an American. My students (especially my elementary students) have often asked me if I'm friends with Barack Obama.

6) Seriously, why don't you want to write this awesome book I had the idea for?

If I said no, pestering me isn't going to change my mind.

7) I want to be a writer. What should I do?

First, find the heaviest object possible. Second, bash your head against it. Repeat as necessary until you get this idea out of your head. Being a writer doesn't make you famous, it doesn't make you rich, it's not a replacement for a "real" job, it's not glamorous and it's frequently extremely frustrating. Every writer I know has a day job. Making a go of it with writing with no other source of income can be very difficult when you're starting out (at least if you're writing fiction).

Also, it's this idea that writing is easy -- wake up around noon, sit in front of your computer for an hour, spend the rest of the day playing video games/smoking pot/drinking/fucking/whatever. Writing is tough. Frequently, the ideas won't be there when you want them to be. When you find yourself with a lot of free time to devote to writing, Murphy's Law dictates that's when your motivation will decide that this free time means it's time for a vacation.

And no matter how much success you have as a writer, no matter how many books or stories you write, no matter how many you sell, you will NEVER surpass your mountain of failed story ideas, rejection letters, and abandoned works.

8) Why do you write?

Because I have to. It's a compulsion. Whenever I've gotten so frustrated with writing that I decided to give it up, I always find myself getting sucked back in.

Now, the questions you should always ask a writer.

1) Tell me about your book.

The book I just released is Love & Bullets, an action novel that's sort of a mix between John Woo and Ian Fleming. It centers on Angela Lockhart, a skilled assassin and covert operative for the mysterious Agency. After the death of her husband, Angela gets fed up with the Agency's lack of effort to find his killer. She leaves and finds herself working for the mysterious Dante, a power broker whose organization Infernum is almost the polar opposite of the Agency. Becoming an assassin for Infernum, Angela eventually comes into contact with another Agency operative, Christian Pierce. Pierce poses as an innocent bystander in a scheme to bring Angela back into the fold, but in the process, the two develop a dangerous relationship.

2) Who are you reading?

Currently, I'm reading Moonraker by Ian Fleming and Rabbit Heart by fellow independent author, Barry Reese. I had just finished Pagan Babies by Elmore Leonard and Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. And I'll say this about some of them.

First off, Vonnegut is one of the greatest writers in the history of American literature. The man was a master satirist and his quirky style remains often imitated but never replicated. It can take some getting used to, but it's absolutely brilliant.

Second, Elmore Leonard. If you like crime fiction, Leonard is your man. He's got a short, punchy style and his dialogue is really snappy. Very few writers have the sense of pacing and dialogue that Leonard has.

Next is Fleming. He can be a bit of a mixed bag -- you really have to approach Fleming's Bond books in the era they were written. So they can be very racist and misogynist at times. But getting past that, Fleming's version of Bond is one of my favorite fictional characters. If you like it when Bond's depicted as more ruthless in the films, then the Fleming books are well worth checking out. And frequently they are extremely different from the films they share a title with. For example, the novel of Moonraker has absolutely nothing to do with James Bond in space.

And finally is Reese. I saved him for last because I wanted to make sure he got a special mention. There have been a lot of pulp-style authors popping up in the independent market as of late and Reese releases a lot of his stuff through Wildcat Books. His Rook series features a vigilante in the 30s and is great if you're a fan of the Shadow, the Phantom or later evolutions of that concept such as Batman or Moon Knight. The book I'm reading right now, Rabbit Heart, I won't talk too much about, since I plan on writing a full review of it. But suffice to say, it is definitely a horror book and there's some pretty unsettling stuff in there (and that's coming from a guy who wrote a very graphic horror book called Chasing The Dragon).

3) What are you working on now?

I've got a few irons in the fire at the moment.

First, I should mention a novel I finished the manuscript for a few months ago -- The Myth Hunter. Love & Bullets was my salute to Ian Fleming and John Woo and The Myth Hunter is a nod to Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. Elisa Hill is a myth hunter, someone who pursues the various legends of the world either for profit or for knowledge (she has done both). This novel (the first of what I hope to be many) deals with her trying to locate the lost continent of Lemuria while avoiding a shadowy organization called the Order, who has employed her old partner, Lucas Davalos. Also, there's another more ruthless player on her trail.

Next one is Outlaw Blues. This book is on a hiatus for now as a lot of it is locked on a hard drive I don't currently have access to. But this book is the second book in the Infernum series (Love & Bullets was the first). Whereas Love & Bullets was more of an action novel, Outlaw Blues is almost like an urban western. It centers on Carl Flint, a man who has a very small but very pivotal role in Love & Bullets. Flint was once one of Infernum's top assassins, but retired after a botched assignment. He's spent the intervening years running a small bar where he plays the saxophone nightly and drowns his sorrows in whiskey and blues music. He gets asked to perform one last job but it leads him into a whole web of trouble.

Next up is SoulQuest. I mentioned some of the history about this in an earlier entry so best to refer to that. This will be released via online serial format through the Revenance original fiction website. Once it's complete, it'll be collected and sold as a novel.

And finally is The Devil's Gate. This features a new character I created called Luther Cross. Cross is an occult investigator who's also half-demon. Despite his heritage, he frequently goes after demons. But he's no ally of Heaven, either -- the angels aren't too pleased with him because he doesn't toe the line. He's somewhere between the two, has a vampire for a girlfriend, and isn't opposed to overcharging the people he helps.

4) Which book do you wish you'd written?

This is a pretty good question. After reading The Losers comic series, I think I'd have to go with that. Andy Diggle did so many things in that series that I wish I had done first. It was just brilliantly executed and Jock's artwork was stunning.

5) What were you going for with _________ in your book?

Since this needs to be more specific I can't really answer. But this is a great question to be asked. My frequent response is, "I have no idea." I'm often reminded of the film Barton Fink, where John Turturro's eponymous character tells John Mahoney's W.P. Mayhew (his writing idol) that what he loves most about writing is exploring all these deep themes. And Mayhew responds with, "me, I just enjoy making things up." That's pretty much how I feel -- I like making shit up.

6) Can I buy you a drink?

Abso-fucking-lutely. Scotch, nothing younger than twelve years.

7) What's your process for writing?

It really depends on the book. Sometimes I'll have collections of scattered notes. Sometimes it'll all be in my head. I try to always have a notebook on me whenever inspiration may strike so I can jot it down. Depending on the book, I'll do a lot or very little research, usually as I'm writing. For The Myth Hunter, I did a lot of research on ancient weapons for Elisa's arsenal as well as research on legends surrounding Lemuria, including similar lost continent legends like Mu and Atlantis (as well as connecting legends).

Of Copyrights and Inheritance

2010-06-01T06:19:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many of you are aware of the current legal battles between the Jack Kirby estate and Marvel Comics/Walt Disney.

Here is the basic gist of the story. Jack Kirby was one of the most influential creators the comic book industry has ever seen. In the 1930s, he co-created Captain America with Joe Simon. In the 1960s, it was the partnership between Kirby and Stan Lee that brought superheroes back from the verge of extinction. Lee and Kirby completely revolutionized the way people thought about superheroes, a revolution that has continued to dominate the industry for about half a century.

Kirby had a major role in the creation of a number of Marvel's most popular characters, including the X-Men, the Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man, among others.

Back in Kirby's day, publishers were not kind to their creators. Compared to what these characters and comics were making for the publisher, the creators were paid a pittance. Creators were frequently screwed out of ownership rights.

These days, publishers now have work-for-hire agreements. These agreements state that any work created for the publisher remains the property of the publisher and the creators have no claim to the copyrights. That's all well and good, because creators are told what they can and cannot expect from the company and they agree that this is the way it is.

This wasn't the case several decades ago. The majority of Kirby's creations were done with no work-for-hire agreement, nor was he an employee of Marvel -- he was a freelance artist. Which meant everything he co-created, he owned half the rights to. In the 70s, Kirby agreed to sell his creations to Marvel. Under the law at that time, the copyrights were set to expire in 2014. A few years after this deal was made, Congress extended the time. But they added a provision that anyone who signed an agreement prior to the extension could file a termination of copyright for 2014.

Kirby is sadly, no longer with us. He died before he could see his creations returned to him (and Marvel has still not returned the majority of artwork he did for them, which is his property). Kirby's heirs are now attempting to reclaim the characters on his behalf.

Now here is the part where I get angry. Not at Marvel or Disney -- they're doing exactly what was expected of them. They're trying to fight the Kirby estate, and I imagine it'll eventually end in a settlement where Kirby's heirs receive royalties for his creations.

No, what makes me angry is the attitude of the so-called "fans." Look at the comment section of almost any web article which discusses this legal battle. It's absolutely disgusting the way people are standing up and defending Marvel and Disney's right to screw over creators. Some of the common complaints I've heard is that the Kirby heirs are greedy bastards, that they don't deserve a single cent because they didn't create the characters, and that they're only trying to get the copyrights now because of the success of the Marvel movies.

First off, on the latter -- that's absolutely ridiculous. The Kirbys waited until now because they had no choice! This was the earliest they could take action, according to the law. They are not exploiting any loophole in the law, they are exercising a right specifically provided by Congress for a situation like this.

Second, the idea that the Kirbys are greedy and that they don't deserve anything. I wonder, how many of these people who are spouting this nonsense have received some kind of an inheritance from lost relatives? How many of them will receive an inheritance after the death of family in the future? Those two combined, I imagine somewhere in the range of about 100%.

Now, how many of them have gone to their loved ones and said, "I know you're planning to put me in your will. But I don't want to be there. I didn't do anything to earn what you want to give me, I didn't do anything to deserve it. No, instead you know who really deserves it? It's not me, nor is it anyone in our family. The only ones who really deserve it are your employers."

Doesn't this sound like an absolutely ridiculous statement? Well, that's what these people expect the Kirbys to act like. And I bet if you asked any of these morons if they've either done this or plan to do this, they'd laugh at you and call you insane.

As a creator, I hope that my creations outlive me. And if that happens, I want my heirs to inherit the rights and to continue to profit from my creations after I die. And if someone should try to stand in the way of that, like Marvel and Disney are currently doing with the Kirby estate, I fully expect my heirs to act in the exact same fashion as Kirby's family and to fight those greedy bastards tooth and nail until they get what they rightfully deserve.

The Kirbys are asking for what Jack was promised -- a percentage of ownership and royalties. That's it. But that's not good enough for Marvel or Disney, they want it all. All those millions of dollars generated by these characters? Marvel and Disney don't want to share a single cent.

More than that, these so-called "fans" and their disrespect for one of the greatest legends in comic book history is nothing short of disgusting. The simple fact is this -- these "fans" are the ones who are really greedy. They are so scared that if the Kirbys get even a shred of what they're owed, that means the comics and the movies will stop. And that's all these people really care about -- how this will affect them. They don't care that this is what Kirby would have wanted, that he spent his later years fighting Marvel to retain what was rightfully his. All they care about is how this will affect them.

So, who's the real greedy party here with delusions of entitlement? I'll give you a hint -- it ain't the Kirbys.

If you could write any licensed property...

2010-05-30T04:07:00.000-07:00

As a guy who grew up and continues to love comic books, one of my primary motivations for writing in the first place was because there were stories I wanted to tell with these characters I loved. Most of my writing training in my teenage years came from writing fanfic and receiving feedback on it. Even though I've gotten comfortable writing my own original stories and characters, I still have a desire to write licensed properties. I think there are quite a few writers who feel the same way.

There are some properties I would give anything to write. One of them are the characters that introduced me to comic books in the first place -- the X-Men. Sure enough, I still harbor aspirations of writing for Marvel Comics in some form, but particularly the X-Men. Several years back, when Marvel launched their Epic project, Brad Horton and I submitted a proposal and a script for a New Warriors limited series that was unfortunately turned down. But the X-Men is where my desire truly lies and I'd probably write that book for as long as they'd let me.

There is another property that I'd love to write a licensed comic book about -- and that one is Final Fantasy VII. I first played the game when I was fourteen and I've probably played it more times than I can count in the thirteen years since then. When Square Enix released their Compilation of Final Fantasy VII which included the DTV movie Advent Children, it brought back a lot of those old memories and ideas. If I ever had the chance to write a comic book focused on Final Fantasy VII -- whether it were set in the past, during the game or after -- I'd probably write a book like that for free.

The reason I bring this up is that it's been on my mind lately. And a large part of that is because of my upcoming online serial for the Revenance site. The serial is called SoulQuest and it's a fantasy/steampunk series heavily influenced by the Final Fantasy series, particularly VII. Originally this project was going to be a comic book, but after several years of very little progress, I've decided instead to do it in the form of a serial (which will eventually be published).

Love & Bullets Blog Tour Day Two

2010-05-17T04:59:00.001-07:00

Check out Josh Reynolds' comments on the book over at Hunting Monsters!

Love & Bullets Blog Tour Day One -- The Evolution of a Concept

2010-05-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

Ever have an idea that you just couldn't get out of your head, a story that just demanded to be told, no matter the format?

I have. And it all began several years ago in 2005 I believe. My good friend Kyle Hafkey told me for a film class, he was going to make his own student film. And he wanted it to be a feature-length action movie. Very ambitious, to say the least.

Kyle had the idea and knowing that I've had experience both in writing and directing, asked me to write the screenplay based on his outline as well as play one of the main characters. I was only happy to do it.

The movie was about a woman named Angela Lockheart who worked for a government agency but after the death of her husband, left. She then found herself working as an assassin for the mysterious Dante. During the course of the film, Angela falls in love with an innocent bystander named Christian.

The film was originally titled Code Name: Black Widow with myself playing the role of Dante and Maggie Carlin starring as Angela. While writing the screenplay, I worked very closely with Maggie and Kyle and Maggie and I would frequently do readings of the scenes almost immediately after they were written. So there was a lot of collective input into the characters and the story.

Of course, as the budget of the film was basically whatever we had in our pockets (and as we were all poor college students, I can assure you it wasn't much), we were pretty limited with what we could do. So the script was a bit minimalist in that sense.

Unfortunately, the film never really materialized. We shot a few scenes (which have unfortunately been lost to the sands of time), but the story and those characters really stuck with me. So a few years later, I decided to give the concept another shot, this time as a comic book. Because I didn't want to risk any conflict with Marvel Comics, I decided to change the title from Code Name: Black Widow to Love & Bullets, which was pretty appropriate.

Because the film limitations were now removed, this allowed me to expand the world a little bit more and take the story a step higher. I also made some other changes. Although the first half of the story in pretty much each incarnation was the same, the second half experienced a number of changes. The major change was elevating Christian from just an innocent bystander into an operative of the Agency, which Angela once worked for (and which is pursuing Dante's organization, Infernum). I found an artist named Keith Jim to work on the series with me.

But again, we had difficulties. Since we were self-publishing through Ka-Blam, we had some limitations with that. I was able to sell copies for $2.50 a piece. But for people to purchase copies at that price, it would take maybe a month before it shipped out to them. This made it difficult to set up a monthly release schedule for a six-issue limited series. Also, as this was Keith's first experience drawing comics and it was my first experience coloring them, I felt our work wasn't really ready for publishing yet. So I made the decision to cut the series. But if you're interested and want to pick up a copy, the first issue is still available for purchase at IndyPlanet.

After the series ended, I had considered trying to revise it but never got past a few pages. But then in December of 2008, I was in a massive state of writer's block. Joshua Reynolds (who will have his own entry on this blog tour this week) suggested I try submitting work to some short story anthologies. Jason Franks (another participant in the blog tour) gave me some places to submit to. One of which was an anthology about assassins.

So I went back to both the original screenplay and the comic scripts and I wrote a story featuring Angela on a job. And I had such fun writing it that I went on to adapt the story into a novel. The result is what is now available for sale -- Love & Bullets the novel, published through Pulpwork Press.

The book took only a few months to write. I breezed through it and made some more alterations to it. What those alterations are, I won't say. It's much better if you read the book for yourself and find out. Needless to say, I believe that the novel is the best version to date of the story.

And this is just the beginning. I plan for more stories to be set in the world of Infernum. The next book, Outlaw Blues, will be kind of a sequel but not completely.

Love & Bullets is now for sale on Amazon.com for $11.95. Here's the description:

Beautiful. Cunning. Deadly. These are just a few of the words that describe Angela Lockhart, former operative of the mysterious Agency. Now working as an assassin for an international syndicate called Infernum, led by a mysterious power broker known only as Dante, Lockhart has become the 'Most Wanted' for every major law enforcement agency in the world. But when Agency operative Christian Pierce begins a dangerous game of deception to try and bring her back into the fold, Angela will find herself torn between her old life and her new one...

Also, for anyone who lives in Kagoshima, Japan, there will be a release party on this Friday the 21st at Recife! For more information, check out my Facebook page.

The backpeddling of Fox News

2010-05-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

Robert Rodriguez's upcoming film, Machete, recently came out with a special Cindo de Mayo trailer. And Fox News put out an article on its website criticizing the film for being racist because of it's not-so-subtle swipe at the recent racist immigration laws in Arizona. If you go to the link of the Fox News article, you'll find out something interesting.

It's no longer there.

Fox News removed the article, which included such tidbits as this wonderful exercise in backwards logic by Tom Tancredo (you know, the guy who recently advocated for the return of literacy tests for voting). In the article, Tancredo said, "The racists who made that trailer, they are as racist as anything I have ever seen...these guys are 'politically correct' racists, so you cannot heap indignities upon them."

The question is, what could have made Fox News perform such a quick backpeddle? Normally, they live for this crap, what with their constant promotion of racist images at Tea Party rallies or Rupert Murdoch's continued support of Glenn Beck even after the nutcase crybaby accused the President of being a racist (and has since had advertisers flocking from his show). So it's highly doubtful that Fox actually gained a conscience.

What's more likely is that a few people dropped the ball at Fox News, big time. They obviously didn't do their homework to find out that they were taking a massive dump in their own backyard. Because you see, not only is Robert Rodriguez currently working with 20th Century Fox on the upcoming Predators, but 20th Century Fox is also the domestic distributor of Machete.

Oops.

Wonder whose job was struck with a machete as a result of this?

Love & Bullets info and a review

2010-05-04T00:21:00.000-07:00

First off, check out the very sweet promotional image for the book created by Ian Mileham!

Second, we've got stuff set up for the release. The Love & Bullets blog tour will begin on May 16th! It will start right here on this blog and then I'll provide links to the other blogs as their entries are posted. Expect installments from other PWP writers like Derrick Ferguson, Joshua Reynolds, and Joel Jenkins as well as a few other entries.

For residents of southern Kyushu in Japan, this will all cap off with a release party on May 21st at Recife in Kagoshima City. I'll be there selling and signing copies for ¥500 a piece, about half off the cover price.

And finally, Derrick Ferguson was kind enough to post the very first review of the book on his blog! So be kind enough to go check it out!

"Why I Left America" gives expatriates a bad name

2010-05-03T01:27:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this review by saying that I have never thrown away a book I bought in my life. Not once. Even books I didn't particularly care for, such as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged or Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code are displayed on my shelf. Why I Left America, by John Arnone, is the first -- and hopefully last -- book I have filed in the circular cabinet. I didn't even want to sell it to a used bookstore or donate it to a library -- because trash like this belongs in the dumpster.

I found the book while I was in a bookstore in Bangkok. I'm an expatriate myself, living in Japan and teaching English. I've also grown disillusioned with America and I've chosen, at least for the immediate future, to stay away from my home country. I love Japan because I love the culture, I love the people, I love the food and I love what I do.

Unfortunately, the fact that we are both disillusioned expats living in Asia is where the similarities between myself and Arnone end.

The book can't even rightly be described as a book -- it is a hundred and seventy-five page rant about everything Arnone views as wrong in America. It was written in the late 90s but in 2007, Arnone went through and added some additional points (which are in most cases just as offensive as the original text).

Arnone, a former pornography distributor and convict who has a few failed marriages under his belt (as well as a sexual harassment charge), is best described in three words: bitter old bigot. He's Archie Bunker, but without the charm of actor Carroll O'Connor. Every one of the hundred and seventy-five pages practically drips with bigotry -- everything from racism against blacks and Arabs to misogyny to homophobia. Not to mention a healthy hatred of the youth of America and just for kicks, a taste of class warfare, reasoning in favor of segregation and he also acts as an apologist for Watergate and Iran-Contra.

Speaking of which, the book is littered with contradictions. While he says Watergate was not a big deal and Nixon was probably innocent the whole time, he then says it wasn't as bad as Clinton's affair. I suppose he doesn't think Iran-Contra was as bad as the Lewinsky scandal, either. And despite wagging the moral finger at Clinton, he also says prostitution should be legalized and gives justification for men who cheat on their wives.

He rails against immigrants who don't adapt to America, yet he himself has lived in Thailand for over a decade and in the book talks about how he and his wife had to choose a location to move to within that country where English was spoken. Over a decade of living in Thailand and you haven't bothered to learn the language? I came to Japan with zero knowledge of Japanese, yet in less than two years I've studied hard, both alone and with a tutor, and progressed quite far in my proficiency with the language. I do this while working a full-time job as well as my side career as a novelist and comic book writer/letterer. If you have time to not only write a hundred and seventy-five page rant about everything that's wrong with America, but then to come back to it several years later and add to it, then you've damn-well got time to learn a foreign language. Oh, and he's retired.

He also badmouths interracial marriage and yet is married to a Thai woman (one who is thirty years his junior, I wouldn't be surprised if the daughter he mentions from his first marriage is older than his current wife). He bemoans the women's liberation movement and talks about bar girls with such glowing praise and how they never complain about their situation. The fact that this scumbag thinks it's okay for women in Thailand to be forced into positions of prostitution because of poverty but thinks women in America shouldn't have advanced in the workplace as far as they have speaks volumes of him (he also claims he's always been respectful of women...riiiiiiight).

Arnone also admits that his wife married him for security and not out of love. He says many Thai women will marry men simply because of security as opposed to happiness and will then spend the rest of their lives serving their husbands. This can be true in many cases and it is sad that Thai women don't have the advantages to make their own way. Except Arnone doesn't think it's sad. He praises this as a virtue of Thai women and believes more American women should be like this.

In fact, other than talking about how wonderful the go-go bars are and praising the subservience of Thai women (which isn't true, I know quite a few Thai women who would not hesitate putting this misogynist in his place), Arnone has precious little to say about the country he's chosen to retire to. When I was in Thailand, I spent most of my time admiring the culture (and especially the food), visiting temples, talking with people (and avoiding the red light districts). The way Arnone talks, you would think the Thailand outside of the red light districts doesn't even exist to him.

And Mr. Arnone, for all your bitching about America, I'm sure the conflicts you have with your wife's family have a lot less to do with a lack of understanding on their part and a lot more to do with the fact that you're one of many scummy old perverts who go to Thailand and marry women old enough to be their daughters.

Arnone obviously longs for the days of the America of the 1950s. A time when white men were the unquestioned masters, when women would spend all day cleaning the house and caring for the children and all night bending to her husband's will, when children were seen but not heard, and when blacks stayed in their own neighborhoods.

I, for one, am happy that those times are a thing of the past. And I take great comfort in the fact that men like Arnone are nothing more than dinosaurs who aren't yet aware of their extinction.

The Sound of the Golden Bell

2010-02-03T16:12:00.000-08:00

I've known Derrick Ferguson for several years, going back to when he saw a cocky, arrogant young punk of a writer and swiftly gave him the knock on the head he had been rightly asking for. Since then, Derrick has been a great influence on me. In fact, it was his casual suggestion of, "I'm waiting for you to write a novel" that led me to write my first book, Fallen. And it was also Derrick who first encouraged me to come onboard with Pulpwork Press. So naturally, when I was given the chance to participate in the blog tour promoting the release of Dillon and the Legend of the Golden Bell, there's no way I could say no.

Yeah, he sounds like a great guy but that doesn't mean I'm interested in his book. Just who is this Dillon character and why should I care?

Good question. And you should care. Ever since I was first introduced to Dillon in Derrick's first book, Dillon and the Voice of Odin, I became a fan of the character almost from the first page. Here's the deal -- Dillon is a mercenary, an adventurer-for-hire who seeks out priceless artifacts and faces up against the kind of villains that James Bond would think twice about crossing swords with. He finds himself in scrape after scrape, constantly defying death and making it look easy all the while with a bit of a gruff charm.

This latest adventure features Dillon being hired by Lord C'jai, one of the Chancellors of Xonira, to locate the Golden Bell of Malacar, an artifact that could help turn the tide of Xonira's civil war. Dillon begrudgingly agrees to the job when he finds out his old friend Eli Creed is involved as well. Tagging along is Dagna, an agent of Xonira and Brandon, a young man with computer chips embedded into his brain. I mention these characters because one of the best things about this book is the way Dillon interacts with each of them. From the old soldier bond with Eli, to the sometimes antagonistic yet mutually respectful banter with Dagna, and ending up at the sibling relationship he shares with Brandon. Only saying that much is a disservice to these characters, though -- Derrick is able to develop them extremely well within just a matter of pages so that when the excrement does hit the air conditioning, you really find yourself worrying about what will happen to the supporting players.

Of course, that's not to say that this book is all talking heads. Like I said, there are times when the excrement hits the air conditioning, and it happens quite a lot. From car chases to airship battles, even jetpacks and a mammoth truck named Big Pig, Derrick pulls out all the stops and never risks the chance that either Dillon or the readers will get bored.

The book's got everything an action junkie could ever want. So what are you waiting for? Head on over to Pulpwork Press and pick up your copy right now!

And now, a small interview with Derrick himself to cap us off:

The influence of Doc Savage on Dillon is unmistakable and you've made no secret about that. What other characters or works had an influence in Dillon's creation?

Deep breath. Okay. In no particular order: Jonny Quest. The Derek Flint movies starring James Coburn. Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. by Jim Steranko. The Mongo The Magnificent series by George C. Chesbro, a writer who taught me not to be afraid of mixing genres. The James Bond series by Ian Fleming. Anything and everything written by Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard and Robert R. McCammon. The Dirk Pitt series by Clive Cussler.

Your first Dillon book, Dillon and the Voice of Odin, was released in 2003. But when did you create the character?

Dillon as a character was born in the early 90's. It was as if he walked up to me, tapped me on the shoulder and said; "Sit down, pal. I've got some stories I want to tell you." I've read that Robert E. Howard has said that when it came to writing Conan he felt less as if he were creating a story than relating what was being told to him. I feel the same way about Dillon.

One of the things I love about Dillon is the sense that he has a massive amount of backstory. There are several times in Dillon and the Legend of the Golden Bell where you reference other adventures. Is there any chance we'll see some of those tales in the future, either in the form of full-length novels or short stories?

Some of them, yes. There's a couple of those adventures Dillon mentions that will most likely show up as short stories.

Also in The Legend of the Golden Bell, you make reference to other pulp-inspired characters, some who appear in the book and some who don't. I know some of these were created by other writers and some were created by you. Have you and these other writers ever considered producing sort of a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-style book that brings them together? Or at the very least some smaller crossover tales?

Most of those characters you mention are either mine or belong to Joel Jenkins. The only crossovers we've done so far are two stories written by Joel. One features Dillon and Joel's Sly Gantlet, one of the Gantlet Brothers, a heavy metal band who work on the side as an elite mercenary squad. The other has Dillon and Sly's brother, Matthias. I'm working on a story now where Dillon and Sly meet up again and brings back Princess Sathyra of Tosegio who first appeared in Dillon and the Escape From Tosegio. Joel Jenkins and I have a project we've been noodling around featuring a couple of our other characters but I don't really like to talk about a project until it's 75% done.

The cover design of The Legend of the Golden Bell by Tamas Jakab is a great one. How much input did you have on that design?

I can take no credit at all for that. Tamas Jakab is a total genius for coming up with that cover and I'm simply amazed by the way he apparently tapped into my subconscious and came up with that perfect look of an old pulp magazine/novel from the 1930's. And everybody should be reading El GORGO! by Tamas Jakab and Mike McGee since it is quite simply The World's Most Awesome Comic Magazine.

You did a Dillon comic story once before. Have you considered doing more comics with Dillon?

Dillon did appear in FRONTIER PUBLISHING PRESENTS (2005) in a prequel to Dillon And The Voice of Odin titled Dillon and The Escape From Tosegio. I wrote the original story which was adapted by Russ Anderson and drawn magnificently by Alex Kosakowski. The comic also features what I believe is the first story written by Mike McGee and drawn by Tamas Jakab, The Skiff. There's also prose stories by Trevor Carrington and Michael Exner III and it's one of the projects I'm proudest to have been associated with. FRONTIER PUBLISHING PRESENTS isn't available for purchase but I have a box of 'em stashed around somewhere. If anybody is truly interested in having one they can contact me and we'll work something out.

A couple of years back an artist did contact me and asked could we work on a 48 page Dillon graphic novel. I started working on a story I was hoping to get Russ Anderson to adapt as a comic script. Much as I love comic books, curiously enough I've never had the ambition to write comic books so I've never learned how to write comic book scripts. Russ and I worked so well on Escape From Tosegio I couldn't see anybody else adapting my story. However, the artist flaked out on me and after eight months of promises, promises disappeared and was never heard from again. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want to take a crack at a Dillon comic book or graphic novel.

What was the inspiration behind the country of Xonira?

I can't put my finger on any one country or place that was the inspiration for Xonira. I needed a country of my own so I just created one, taking bits and pieces from here and there. It's a lot easier to simply make up a country of your own to suit the needs of the story than to do exhaustive research and twist your story to conform to an actual country's laws, legends and terrain. I know there are plenty of writers who enjoy doing that but I'm not one of them. Mainly because I'm too lazy to do actual research of that depth.

You've got a story in Pulpwork's upcoming How The West Was Weird. What can you tell us about that?

It's a story featuring my supernatural gunfighter Sebastian Red who inhabits an alternate world version of the Old West that could have been created by Sergio Leone and Michael Moorcock. It's got demons, zombies and bloody shootouts but at its heart its a tender love story.

Following Dillon and the Legend of the Golden Bell and How The West Was Weird, what will you be working on next?

Right now I'm working on Dillon and The Last Rail To Khusra, then it'll be Dead Beat in Khusra which is the Dillon/Sly Gantlet team-up. After that it's Dillon And The Pirates of Xonira which will see the return of several characters from Legend of The Golden Bell as Dillon goes back to Xonira with a submarine full of rogues on a desperate mission. Why so much Dillon after all this time? It's exactly because there was so much time (seven years between Voice of Odin and Legend of The Golden Bell) that I'm writing so much Dillon stories. In those seven years I had friends and family continually asking when I was going to write a new Dillon novel. I'm determined that there won't be such a long wait time between Dillon novels this time around. The plan is to present the Dillon short stories/novelettes together in one volume. There's been talk of other writers doing Dillon stories as well. Nothing's been set in stone yet but whichever way it happens, there's going to be plenty of Dillon in the near future.

To keep up with more from Pulpwork Press, check out our website! Also, be sure to follow us on Facebook!

A Call To Action

2010-01-22T01:00:00.000-08:00

Although I am very politically active, I don't like using this blog as a forum for me to air my political grievances. But this issue is just far too important to be silent on.

This morning, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court handed the keys to the country over to the corporations. They have ruled that corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to support the candidates of their choice. What we have seen is a coup de'tat -- a silent, bloodless one, but a coup no less.

Some people are standing up. Congressman Alan Grayson has introduced several bills to try and fight against this decision and President Obama has issued his firm commitment to form a bipartisan opposition to this ruling. Grayson has begun a petition, which you can find at SaveDemocracy.net. I urge everyone to sign and circulate this petition and to do everything in your power to fight against the Corporate States of America.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Writing Questions

2009-11-19T05:04:00.000-08:00

Got this from Derrick Ferguson.

1. Are you a “pantser” or a “plotter?”

I'm definitely a pantser. I have a general idea of where I'm going but I don't follow any roadmaps -- I let the characters take me there on whichever path they choose.

2. Detailed character sketches or “their character will be revealed to me as I write?"

More of the revealed as I go along. When I write a story, it's kind of like I'm having a conversation with the character and as we go further and further, they'll tell me more and more about themselves.

3. Do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing?

Again, I have a general idea but I leave enough room for spontaneity. Writing for me is kind of like playing jazz.

4. Books on plotting – useful or harmful?

I really wouldn't call them either useful or harmful. I think of books on plotting more as case studies -- they show you how other writers go about their craft. But replicating another writer's process won't really help you, you have to find your own style.

But I do know this -- if someone tells you "this is how you write," then they're dead wrong. There is no set formula, it's not like assembling a bookshelf. You just need to find your own path.

5. Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?

I go through phases. There are times when I can't write for shit and there are times when I can't stop. But the itch never goes away, which makes the times when I'm blocked extremely frustrating.

6. Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?

I wouldn't call them short bursts but I do go through bursts. It's maybe a few months of solid, nonstop writing followed by a few months of burnout.

7. Are you a morning or afternoon writer?

It varies. Since I have a lot of downtime at my job, I do a lot of writing there. There was a time when I was still in Chicago when the only place I could get any solid work done was when I was at a hookah lounge I frequented. But since coming to Japan, I do most of my writing during my downtime at the office. However lately, I've started writing at night while I'm at home.

8. Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?

For the longest time, I always had music going in the background. But since I do most of my work at the office now, music isn't really an option. I can work in either setting, really.

9. Computer or longhand? (Or typewriter?)

Definitely computer. When I was a kid, I wrote longhand all the time. But nowadays, I'm all about modern technology, especially since I can type faster and longer than I can write.

10. Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One?

Not really. I have a rough idea but I usually change it as I go along.

11. Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?

Not at all. I just write what hits me. I grew up with genre fiction, it's still what I love, so that's what I write. Doesn't matter if it's not as prestigious or profitable as literary fiction or memoirs or whatnot but it's what I enjoy and at the end of the day, that's what's important. You start writing for the market, you've forgotten the primary goal of writing.

12. Editing – love it or hate it?

I've got a background in editing so I have no quarrel with it and I'll frequently do some minor editing as I write. But I know there's a limit. Once a story is finished, I'll proofread it once, make any changes I think are necessary, and then send it off to someone else to give it another look. If I do more than one self-edit, I'll never stop.

13. Why do you want to write?

I really don't know. It's not something I really want to do, oftentimes it can be extremely frustrating. It's something I feel I have to do. I guess in that way, you could call me a bit of an addict.

14. Do you want to publish your work? Why?

I've been published. Derrick said it best, it's a logical progression. It's not because I expect to be rich and famous, it's because I want my work to be seen by as many people as possible.

15. Do like to write alone or do you like to work with others?

I've done both and I enjoy both, depending on my mood. My comic writing that's been published has been written in conjunction with someone else, usually in the form of loose plotting. And Love & Bullets (coming in 2010 from Pulpwork Press) began as a screenplay that was plotted by someone else, although it evolved quite a bit from that screenplay.

KAGEMONO: TOOTH AND CLAW NOW AVAILABLE

2009-10-27T01:50:00.000-07:00

Price per Unit (piece): $16.50

Bigger and badder than ever, KAGEMONO: TOOTH AND CLAW will drag you screaming and laughing through ten all new stories: a werewolf-infested city, a coma ward, a sanctuary for vampires, an old factory, the bathroom of tomorrow, a psychic medium's copy shop, a Miami courthouse, a bluesman's shag-pad, and a suburban home with a very unusual closet. Edited by Jason Franks.

84 pages, squarebound, B&W interior, colour cover.

Click link for details on individual stories and to purchase.

Marvel bows to the almighty Mouse

2009-09-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

First came the announcement that Disney had bought out Marvel Entertainment. That loud crack you heard next? That was the sound of the Internet breaking.

Everyone's been talking about it and CNN even had an article with the obligatory ZIP! POW! BAM! headline (seriously people, that joke wasn't funny the first five thousand times and repeating it has done the opposite of making it funnier).

As is usually the case with any sort of big announcement that affects the comic industry, the fan community is up in arms with “doom and gloom” scenarios and Chicken Littles are scurrying across various message boards to let us know repeatedly that the sky is falling. So let's get some facts straight.

First off, the idea that this means all of Marvel's properties will only be for kids and that we've seen the end of characters like Wolverine and the Punisher is absolute lunacy. People, I want you to think about this logically for a minute. Disney is about more than just the mouse with a funny voice. Disney is an international media conglomerate spanning all different areas of entertainment media and all different age groups. You want proof that Marvel isn't in danger of going completely kiddie? One of Disney's subsidiaries is Miramax Films. In case you haven't heard of them before, Miramax is known for putting out films with very questionable content. Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill? Those are technically Disney films.

Now the second part is that this means Joe Quesada will be fired. This is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of fans who hate what Quesada has done with Marvel. Look, whether you love or hate Quesada's decisions, the fact of the matter is Marvel has become very profitable under his tenure as editor-in-chief. Disney seems to be taking a hands-off approach to Marvel, much like they've done with Pixar and Miramax. That means if it ain't broke, don't fix it, which means Quesada's job is safe. There have been other comments to the extent of, “maybe this means Byrne will be rehired at Marvel” or “this means Bendis will get a promotion.”

People, be realistic—just because Disney bought out Marvel doesn't mean Mickey's going to come in with a magic wand and change everything you don't like about Marvel. Chances are a lot of things will not change at all.

But one more thing about the Quesada angle—a number of people have been going on message boards saying, and I quote, “I hope Quesada gets fired.” I don't care what he's done to your childhood characters, hoping that another human being loses his livelihood just because he's made decisions that have affected nothing other than comic books is crass and rude (although this is the kind of mentality I've come to expect from comic book message boards, which is why I tend to stay away from them).

Personally, as of this writing and until I've seen anything to make me think otherwise, this is a great thing not only for Marvel and Disney but for the industry as a whole. Disney wants to capture the adolescent boy market just as effectively as they've done with adolescent girls with Hannah Montana or High School Musical (the entire tween market). The best way to do that? Find something that appeals to adolescent boys and what better way to do that than with superheroes? Not only superheroes, but superheroes that have a proven track record among this audience.

You ask many adolescent boys who their favorite superheroes are, the most common answers will probably be Spider-Man, Batman and Wolverine. Two out of three isn't so bad. Disney XD already airs both new and old Marvel cartoons, such as Spectacular Spider-Man and Silver Surfer. Expect more Marvel TV courtesy of Disney. Another possibility is live-action television as well—NBC has Heroes and the CW has Smallville. Both shows are very highly ranked and I'm sure Disney wants a piece of that action. Maybe a Young X-Men series featuring students at the Xavier Institute is now a possibility.

Another major interest is movies. Superheroes are very popular and despite the naysayers claims that the fad will die soon (they've been saying this ever since X2 was released), the second highest-grossing movie of all time is The Dark Knight. Maybe the characters themselves will fall out of interest (even that is speculation at best considering that James Bond has spanned four decades, six actors, twenty-two films and a Saturday morning cartoon [and that's just the official series, not counting the Casino Royale spoof or Never Say Never Again]) but the superhero genre is here to stay.

This could of course prove to be a problem. On the one hand, Disney is giving Marvel a hands-off approach, which means once they get the rights of their properties back, Marvel will have more creative control over the movies. So it means an end to films like Elektra or X-Men: The Last Stand and a better chance of seeing future movies treated with the same respect and veneration as Iron Man.

On the other hand, this is a similar problem we see with DC and their relationship with Time Warner. Basically, only so many movies can be made in a given year. So if Disney is going to end up the sole distributor of Marvel films (which they have said they do want to be eventually), that means less Marvel movies and it means less of a focus on smaller characters and more of a focus on the big draws like X-Men, Spider-Man and so on. And it looks like some issues may already start to rise--20th Century Fox has just announced its plans to reboot the Fantastic Four franchise. Can't be coincidence that this announcement comes at the same time as the announcement of the Marvel buyout.

The fact of the matter is, the one thing Disney has kept pretty quiet about is publishing. That leads me to believe that you'll see no big changes as far as Marvel Comics is concerned. There are several benefits Marvel will be able to reap for the comics, however.

First off, distribution. Let's face it, the direct market is broken and has been for years. This could finally be the one thing that breaks the stranglehold Diamond has held on the industry for far too long. Maybe comics will now make their way back to spinner racks and newsstands.

Second, diversity. One of the reasons DC has a much more diverse publishing line than Marvel is because they've got the backing of Time Warner, so they can afford to publish books that aren't as profitable. This means a lot of books that would previously have been canceled may now be able to survive, even without the obligatory Wolverine appearance. That's something I am definitely onboard with. Had this deal happened a few months ago, Captain Britain and MI13 may still be around. This also means another area which Marvel hasn't been as strong in lately—younger readers. They've tried with the Marvel Adventures line, but maybe now we can see an expansion of it, start getting those books in Wal-Marts and Targets and grocery and drug stores across the country.

There are negatives, naturally. For example, Disney is traditionally very territorial and very concerned about copyright infringement. So this could mean an end to commissioned artwork of Marvel characters or sales of comic pages, which is how a lot of artists make a good portion of income. And that could prove to be a very, very bad thing as many artists may now find themselves struggling.

The bottom line there will be changes, but they won't be all bad or all good. There will probably be a mix of both. And until we have any further information, everything at this point is nothing more than complete and total speculation.

So Chicken Little? It's time to shut the hell up.

From Pulpwork Press

2009-07-14T15:44:00.001-07:00

For images and more PWP goodness, check out the link.

Sorry it's been a few weeks folks, but we're still trundling along on the path to self-discovery. Mostly, we're just lazy though.

Well, I'm lazy.

Anyway, word is that Joel Jenkins' Nuclear Suitcase is on the horizon for release, and if you'd be interested in writing a review of the book, please get in touch with us via e-mail or through the message board or forum or whatever that thing is.

Also on the good news front, we've gotten a first look at the cover to 2010's Love & Bullets by Percival Constantine (who, while his name sounds like he should be writing paranormal romance novels and his author's photo suggests he should be writing decadent poetry, has instead crafted a butt-to-the-seat action-adventure thriller), as well as a bit of blurbage to tell us what it's all about...

Beautiful. Cunning. Deadly. These are just a few of the words that describe Angela Lockhart, former operative of the mysterious Agency. Now working as an assassin for an international syndicate called Infernum, led by a mysterious power broker known only as Dante, Lockhart has become the 'Most Wanted' for every major law enforcement agency in the world. But when Agency operative Christian Pierce begins a dangerous game of deception to try and bring her back into the fold, Angela will find herself torn between her old life and her new one...

Doesn't that sound like a good book to ride out an hour or so with?

And, coming next week, big news! Well, more big news.

Medium news.

Really, it depends, I suppose.

I'll simply say this...ALTERNITY.

...

Oh, and wouldn't 'Nuclear Love Bullets' be a great name for a band?

Writer Beware

2009-05-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

As I usually do in the mornings before I head off to work, I sat down in front of my computer with my coffee and checked my e-mail. As I've been focusing more on my day job and less on my novel and comic book endeavors, my Gmail account has been pretty quiet.

But today, I received the following letter:

Dear Percival Constantine,

A pleasant day!

I’m --------- a Marketing Specialist of Bookwhirl.com.

I came across with your book entitled, Fallen. We are interested to promote it and we’d like to help you reach out up to 5,000,000 individuals and let them know about you and your book.

Here at BookWhirl.com, we can help you achieve and attain the goal that you want the most for your book.

If your schedule permits, I would like to have an audience with you over the phone to discuss our different Marketing Services. Otherwise, you can always visit us online during your free time at www.BookWhirl.com. If you have any questions, know that you are always welcome to reply to this e-mail or give me a call at ---------- extension ----.

I hope to hear from you soon and have a nice day!

Sincerely yours,

--------------

I'm not an idiot. Not in any sense of the word. And I can smell a scam when I see one. This is definitely a scam. There are a few telltale signs right off the bat that this is not a legitimate marketing agency.

The first is the horrible command of the English language. If you're going to try and market a book, you should at least know the basics of grammar.

The second is that they contacted me and inquired only about my first novel, FALLEN. They didn't ask me about CHASING THE DRAGON and I know why -- they found my old website, which hasn't been updated in over a year. They did no other research on my name, they didn't bother to find out any additional information about me. Also, although FALLEN was published through Lulu.com, CHASING THE DRAGON was published through CreateSpace. So if they weren't trolling about my website, they were trolling Lulu's website looking for suckers.

The third is that they contacted me and any marketing agency that contacts a self-published writer out of the blue is one to be curious about.

A look at their website shows that their "affordable" prices range from $250 all the way to over $2000. Now, I have a very good full-time job in which I make a very healthy salary, more than enough to support myself. But despite this, I don't have hundreds or thousands of dollars to just blow away on a service like this. This is not an affordable service, not if you're middle class and certainly not if you're a struggling, first-time writer.

Their website also shows that they're a subsidiary of Yen Chen Support Corp, which I looked up. It's an Asian-based outsourcing company. Judging from the poorly worded e-mail as well as the comments I've read from other authors in which they were contacted by BookWhirl representatives who have very heavy accents and very broken English shows that these so-called "marketing specialists" are nothing more than telemarketers with a fancy title.

Publishing is a difficult business, especially if you're going the self-publishing route. You'll be lucky if you get anyone to buy your book, let alone turn a healthy profit. But you should still avoid "marketing" companies that rely on telemarketing and spam e-mail campaigns. If these are the tactics they use to advertise to you, what makes you think the tactics they use to advertise your book will be any different?

At long last, an update!

2009-04-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

I probably should have done this a while ago, but I suppose it's serendipitous that I've chosen now to update because I've got some very good news to share with all of you. The first piece of news is that I've recently gotten some very positive feedback on Chasing The Dragon. Not in the form of reviews, unfortunately, but the fact that people are actually reading my work and enjoying it puts me on cloud nine. Hearing praise about a book you thought wouldn't go anywhere and no one seemed interested in brightens up my day. When someone approached me recently and told me how much he enjoyed it, I spent a good hour or so just asking him questions and talking with him about various subjects tangentially related to the work. Unfortunately, this hasn't been enough to spur my interest in finishing the sequel, Die By The Sword. And Elias Starr and the Prometheus Engine is still a bit stalled as well.

The second piece of good news is that my first writing assignment for AC Comics' Femforce title has been published! Here is the blurb from AC Comics' webpage:

"... the return of THREETA, last seen in FF # 142. As gangster Tony Balistreri has his renegade scientist fire the mystery weapon at THREETA, he has no idea of the socking results- it makes the king-sized superheroine even BIGGGER, in "Size Matters". But what happens when THREETA's mild-mannered alter-egos remain oversized as well? Script by Percival Constantine, Pencils bt Dennis Chacon, and inks by Jeff Austin."

You can purchase the issue on AC Comics' webpage.

The second big news is that I've caught the writing bug again! I just finished the manuscript of Love & Bullets, including the edits, and sent it off to some people. I'm really excited about this book and I'm very confident in its potential. As I've mentioned before, this is a very personal project for me. After both the film and comic versions fell through, I rewrote the first script, got about halfway into it before other things popped up.

Then, in answer to a challenge from my buddy Jason Franks (more information on him and the comic story we worked on together once I have it), I wrote up the opening scene from the revised script as a short story for an anthology. After I wrote it, I had the drive to keep going, so I novelized the entire story, making revisions where necessary and now, it's finished. I went through and edited it and then sent it off to some people who may be interested. More on that as it becomes available. But I have planned out the series connected to this book, at least roughly.

I've also got the writing bug in regards to another potential book series, featuring another character I've nursed for a while (and tried to do in comic form without much luck). I plan on getting started with one of those books very shortly, once I've decompressed a bit from the excitement over finishing Love & Bullets.

Sadly, not much else to report on other projects I've talked about here. The comic work has come to a stop for the most part, mainly because I have dealt with far too many artists who chose to stop answering e-mails. A note to anyone who wants to get involved in any sort of industry -- please keep in touch with people. If you can't take on or stay with an assignment, don't ignore e-mails. Just politely tell the person that you're no longer able to commit for whatever reason you may have. You can even make up a reason if you like, it doesn't matter, just as long as you have a reason.

But when you refuse to respond to messages, don't give any reason for the lack of a response, then you begin to develop a reputation as being unprofessional. And in an industry where there is an abundance of talent, far exceeding the availability, professionalism is key.

Writing Update

2009-02-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I gave an actual update, but here is what has been happening lately in my world. For starters, I should start by getting this off my chest -- I haven't written any original material in months. Both my current novel projects -- Elias Starr and the Prometheus Engine and Die By The Sword (the sequel to Chasing The Dragon) -- have come to a screeching halt. My attempts to bring these back up to the previous speed I had managed on them has met with frustration.

A few friends helped me deal with some self-doubt I've struggled with in my writing. All of them offered great support, but I want to draw attention to two of them in particular -- Josh Reynolds and Jason Franks. Josh, who writes for a number of anthologies, posted a link on my private web journal to the submission guidelines for several theme anthologies. Jason saw this and then challenged me to join him in submitting to Utility Fog Press' Assassin's Creed anthology.

At first I struggled. Then I remembered the aborted scripts for the Love & Bullets comic. I really love that story and the characters, Kyle Shire and I came up with some great stuff in that original screenplay. After the first issue of the series failed, I went back and rewrote the script for the first issue, although nothing more has come from this endeavor. So I dug out the script and adapted the first scene into prose and submitted it to Utility Fog. We'll see what comes from that.

On the plus side, this has led to me continuing to adapt the scripts to prose. I've gotten 7500 words written so far and haven't finished adapting the first issue of the six-issue series. This is a pretty good sign for me and I'll keep going with this. It's not any new material, but at least it's something and I think it's more marketable than my currently published novels.

As far as comic work goes, there has been some progress. Two pages for the Steampunk Western submission have been penciled, inked and lettered, several more pages still to go unfortunately. It's slow-going, but the pages are really high-quality -- Alain Chan and Jon Michiemo are blowing me away with their work. I think it has a very good chance of getting picked up by a publisher.

Also on the comic front, my first Threeta story for AC Comics' Femforce title has been completed and will be in their next issue. And, referencing Jason yet again, the story he and I co-write, Trauma Ward, has been completed for Black Glass Press' Kagemono anthology. Carl Yonder provided the artwork, some of the sharpest work I've seen from him, and I'm really proud of the lettering. This will take a bit longer before it's available, because Jason chose to make this edition of Kagemono a graphic novel instead of a single issue.

More information as it becomes available.

Size Matters

2009-01-18T05:18:00.000-08:00

The Threeta story I wrote for AC Comics' Femforce title has the pencils completed and is going through the inking. In the meantime, I've been laying down some initial lettering to speed things up since the editors want to get this out ASAP.

There seems to have been some confusion with the characters so I've had to make some changes in the dialogue as I'm lettering. Nothing overly destructive though, so I've been able to be creative with it and manage things pretty well.

More information as it becomes available.

Progress Update

2008-12-23T17:27:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, there hasn't been that much progress on my work. I'm still writing, although I've just been focusing on some other stuff just to keep things fresh in my mind and to make sure I don't get out of practice. Between teaching, studying Japanese, and just life in general, I've been pretty busy these days, especially with the planning for my trip to Nagoya this weekend to visit an old friend from high school.

On the comic front, I wrote the conclusion to the Threeta story I took over for Femforce and I'm awaiting progress updates from Mark and Steph on that as well as the artwork on the first part I wrote. Rogue Nation has been stalled a bit -- Seng has had some other problems to deal with at the moment, but he's finished another page and it looks great. Alain has completed all the pencils for Steampunk Western and Jon, our inker, is working on them but with college finals, he was sidetracked. And on The Darkworld Chronicles, Dan has sent in some great layouts that look amazing and is working on the finished pencils. Manhunt, a project I'm lettering, seems to have gotten some interest. I'm awaiting final color pages so I can swap them out for the inked versions I've lettered. I'm also co-writing a story with Jason Frank for his Kagemono anthology.

As far as the novel front goes, Elias Starr and the Prometheus Engine is a bit stalled. I've been putting a lot of effort into Die By The Sword, the sequel to Chasing The Dragon and it's coming along nicely. I've written about a third of it so far.

What I've Written And Where You Can Find It

2008-12-05T01:49:00.000-08:00

FALLEN

After the creation of the Earth and the birth of Man, the Presence seemingly vanished from existence. Once the angels and demons discovered that mortals possessed souls, they became locked in an endless conflict for ownership over mankind. But Gabriel, once the leader of Heaven's forces, felt humanity should be allowed to live in peace. For his transgression, he was stripped of his wings and expelled from Heaven. Now, centuries later, the wars of man have brought the world to ruin. Man's once-vaunted technology has regressed. Lance Kells, a drifting writer with no direction in his life, inadvertantly stumbles upon this war and finds himself trapped in the middle of it. As Lance tries to uncover the truth, he will encounter a host of intriguing characters, from a hard-drinking, pink-haired avatar of death to an elderly Native American mystic. During his journey, Lance will discover a method of ending a conflict as old as time, as well as a disturbing secret which links him to Gabriel.

"Combines elements of science fiction, horror both psychological and gory, Navajo mysticism, Christian dogma, action/adventure, comedy and even the modern day comic book (or graphic novels if you take your inner geek seriously) all wrapped up in a road trip."
-Derrick Ferguson

Available on Amazon.

CHASING THE DRAGON

Brenda McKenzie is a single mother working double-shifts as a waitress and struggling to make ends meet. But Brenda's life gets turned upside down when her teenage daughter, Alyssa, runs away with Ryan Cunningham, her heroin-dealing boyfriend. With the police providing no assistance, Brenda feels all hope is lost. Until the day a strange man offers his help. His name is Riker Stone and he has a monster lurking inside him--literally. Riker's quest will lead him to Ryan as well as the people who support him. And in his search for revenge, Riker will leave a trail of bodies. From Percival Constantine, the author of Fallen, comes a bloodspilling, ultraviolent tale of vengeance and horror in a fusion of splatterpunk and noir.

"If you like hardboiled crime fiction, you're doing yourself a disservice by not reading it. Especially if your tastes run more to the underground crime fiction of Vacchs and Izzo and Westlake, the turf usually staked out by the Parkers and Burkes of the world. Because this is a world where there is nothing but dark spaces, where the only way to be a hero is to out-bad guy the bad guys."
-Thomas Deja

Available on Amazon.

Rogue Nation

2008-10-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

What once was Izujko Nation has now become Rogue Nation and even that name may not be final. But basically, Seng and I have come up with a pretty good premise and outline for the series and I've written a revised version of the first issue based on that. As such, the name also needed to be changed, but I'm still not totally sold on this new name. Either way, to the left you'll see a logo concept I did a few days ago.

Also included in this update is the first page. Seng not only penciled, but also inked and colored this page and I did some lettering for it. As with the logo, I'm not sure if this is the style of lettering I'll stick with in the final version or not, this is mostly just testing things out.

The important thing to take from this is that after a several year hiatus, this project is moving forward. I'm also happy to announce that two of my other projects have found artists as well. Dennis Chacon has signed on to do the Threeta story for Femforce and he submitted some great samples which Mark and Steph were kind enough to pass on to me. As of this writing, he's also finished the first page and so far, so good on that front. Also, The Darkworld Chronicles has found a new artist in the form of Daniel Andrews. His style's quite different from Justin's, but he totally fits the feel Justin and I were going for with this book. Since their styles are so different, Dan's had to redo all of the character designs and so far, they are great. I'll post some of those in a future entry.

And last but not least, I've been invited to submit a story for Black Glass Press' Kagemono horror anthology. I've got a rough story already done, just not sure if it's what they're looking for or not.

An update

2008-09-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a while since I posted anything up here. The reason for that is I've been really busy over here in Tarumizu. My teaching schedule has kicked into full-gear and although I only visit the schools in the mornings or afternoons and spend the rest of the day at the office, I'm usually too worn out by the little ones to do anything creative once I get back to the office. Kids have a way of draining all the energy from your body and add it to their already-abundant energy. If only we could find some way to harness that power of the children of Tarumizu alone, we'd have enough sustainable energy for another millennia.

Honestly, all you who have kids of your own, hold down a full-time job and are still able to maintain creative careers, my hats are off to you. I really don't know how you do it. And yes, I'm looking in your direction as I write this, Mr. Jenkins.

Don't get me wrong, I've got one of the best jobs in the world and I love these kids. But it definitely requires an adjustment after working with high schoolers for so long. There are a few teachers who are in their forties or fifties and I don't know how they last. When I'm that age, I want to be lecturing at universities, not running around with kids.

That being said, my free time hasn't exactly been spent sleeping. While I haven't done any additional work on Elias Starr and the Prometheus Engine, I have been doing some more comic related work.

The first item on the agenda is Izujko Nation. This is one that requires a bit of backstory. Several years back, even before HaVeN, I came into contact with Andrew West, a very gifted artist who had some very big ideas. Much like myself, Andrew had this dream of creating his own studio and most of the titles were ideas he himself came out with and sought out collaborators for. Him and I began work on a concept he had called Izujko Nation. It was to be a three-volume space epic, with each volume consisiting of twelve issues and centering around a mercenary named Kincade (Andrew's sketch of him is on the left), an intergalactic company called the Dante Corporation, and a race of energy-abundant aliens called Cybruns. I plotted out the first volume and wrote the first script and Andrew produced a few pages for it. After that, however, things fell through. Andrew eventually realized he couldn't commit to the art and found another artist. Still more things piled up and while I'm not aware of the details, Andrew eventually chose to close up his studio, called Midnight Studios. Rather than let the concept die and given all the work I put into it, Andrew signed over the rights to me.

The artist Andrew found as a replacement and I communicated through e-mails but each time, all I received was a promise that art was coming soon. Eventually, he stopped sending e-mails.

Recently, I started communicating with a new artist, Seng Lee. Seng has a style that fits in perfectly with the concept although the problem was it had been so long and those notes and plots became lost and all I have to go on are a few sketches Andrew did early on as well as my script for the first issue. All I could remember were some very sparse details and I couldn't even recall what the "Izujko" in the title actually meant (it was a title Andrew came up with).

Rather than struggle with the original concept, Seng and I decided to take what we had and create a new tale out of it. So I've been busy compiling notes and collaborating with him, while Seng has been working on character designs. To the right is one of the designs he did for Kincade, based on what Andrew originally came up with. Based on our notes, this design will change soon.

I've also been in contact with Martin Pierro, one of my lettering clients. I lettered the first issue of his series, Arthur: The Legend Continues and now that the cover art is finished, this series is just about ready for release. I'm just awaiting a high-rez version of the cover so I can swap out the black and white logo for a color version.

I've also gotten good news on another project, Steampunk Western. This was a concept I came up with quite some time ago and now I'm revisiting. It's a bit of a tribute to the spaghetti westerns with a heavy dose of science fiction tossed in for good measure, as the title suggests. Alain Chan is the artist on it and he produced this great sketch of the main character, Caleb, and is now getting to work on the pages.

Of course, good news comes with bad, as always. Marcus Jackson, an artist I met in Chicago who had been working with me on Myth Hunter has had to back out due to personal reasons. So I'm beginning the search for a new artist on that.

Also along with this bad news is that Justin Williams, my collaborator on The Darkworld Chronicles, feels his sequentials aren't up to par. As he created the basic concept, he still wants to do it, but with him providing covers and designs but with a different artist handling sequentials. I'm hoping he finds someone soon so I can get back to work on the second issue, as this is a title I have a lot of fun with.

And the final piece of bad news relates to my freelance work for AC Comics. Originally, I just did lettering for them but when I mentioned to my editors, the wonderful Mark and Steph Heike, that I was also a writer, they offered me a chance to write several short stories featuring the character Threeta for Femforce. The first artist wasn't what Mark and Steph wanted and I suggested Carl Yonder, a great artist I worked with before.

He produced this first page but Mark and Steph felt it wasn't what they were looking for as well. So sadly, we've begun a search for a new artist on that as well. Hopefully Carl and I will find something else to work on, as I love his art and not only is he extremely talented and professional, but also one hell of a great guy.

So that's it for this update. Hopefully some news will be forthcoming and hopefully it will be mostly good.

ELIAS STARR Update

2008-09-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

10,346 / 50,000
(19.0%)

The blue bar is how many words I wrote since my last update.

ELIAS STARR AND THE PROMETHEUS ENGINE

2008-09-08T01:11:00.000-07:00

Today I got cracking on my next novel, Elias Starr and the Prometheus Engine. This is a pretty different book from Fallen and Chasing The Dragon. Although those were pretty different as well, they both dealt heavily with the supernatural and were really dark.

Elias Starr and the Prometheus Engine is nothing like that. It's more of a sci-fi/action book. Today I did some work on it after spending most of last week planning things out and I wrote the first four chapters today.

Here's a look at the progress:

7,941 / 50,000
(15.9%)

Not a lot so far, but not bad for the first day's effort. I may even write some more tonight. Here's a little background info on the book.

Until June of this year, I worked as a substitute teacher in the Chicago area. Substitute teaching isn't exactly a strenuous job. You give the students their assignment or test or put on the movie they have to watch and then you just basically make sure they're not killing anyone (although depending on which part of Chicago you're in, that could be harder than you might think). So this job gave me plenty of time to work on my freelance comic book jobs as well as to do some writing.

One day, I was having a bit of a brainstorm session, jotting down random notes, and I was suddenly hit with this name I absolutely loved--Elias Starr. Doesn't that sound like a great name? The kind of thing that's tailor-made for pulpish sci-fi. I started jotting down some random notes and came up with some rough ideas.

Not too long after that, I met Drew Swift. Drew's an artist from Chicago (and an amazing one at that) and we met on Digital Webbing. We started brainstorming and as luck would have it, we both played off each other very well. Based on some very rough ideas Drew had, we came up with a premise and outline for a five-issue limited series called Machina Nation. Another time during a planning session, Drew asked if I had any ideas for a space epic and I pulled out the notes I jotted down for Elias Starr. Drew loved what I had and we brainstormed for a bit, coming up with even more ideas. However, we decided our priority was going to be Machina Nation, so I put the Elias Starr notes away.

Drew and I recently had to halt production on Machina Nation as he was offered a position with Ape Entertainment. We still keep in touch and we're still very enthusiastic about the prospect of working together in the future, so hopefully that will become a reality.

Anyway, these Elias Starr ideas began to burn a hole in my mind and I wanted to get them out. I began to seek out a new artist (with Drew's permission, of course) and I almost found one. However, it didn't feel right doing this without Drew, so I came up with another project for that artist. I told Drew I had another idea--I was going to do the first story we had in mind as a novel, titled Elias Starr and the Prometheus Engine and I wanted him to handle character designs and the cover art. Drew was very enthusiastic about that idea.

Here's the basic gist of the story--about twenty-five years ago, a ship was created, called the Prometheus Engine. In addition to possessing the most advanced artificial intelligence ever invented, the Prometheus Engine also houses massive databanks that contain zettabytes of information about everything in the known universe--art, history, literature, language, culture, science, math, mythology, etc. The task of the Prometheus Engine was to travel past the known universe, searching out new worlds and civilizations and collecting information about them as well as bringing knowledge of the planets in the Intergalactic Parliament.

However, shortly after the Prometheus Engine launched, it vanished. Until now, over twenty years later, a signal is intercepted that originated from the Prometheus Engine. Parliament enlists Captain Kai Loire, a young but determined and passionate officer in the Parliamentary Security Force. To aid her in her mission, Parliament sends her with the one man who had contact with the Prometheus Engine and may be able to facilitate its return--Elias Starr, infamous pirate who was captured and put into a cryogenic prison for the past twenty years. Also with them is a high-ranking science officer, Adrian Chance--Elias' son who spent the past twenty years growing up without his father and is now older than Elias.

It's going to be a fun ride.

The DIRE PLANET Digital Book Tour, Day Five

2008-09-05T06:40:00.001-07:00

I've known Joel Jenkins for a little over a year. Which is a little odd since he and I share many of the same friends in the writing community, but that's how it goes. When I decided to self-publish Fallen, I didn't know what I was doing. I knew the manuscript could be formatted via Microsoft Word, but there were too many limitations for the way I wanted to format. I knew Adobe InDesign could be used as a way to format and I had the program as part of the Creative Suite, but I had no idea how to use it. I asked Derrick Ferguson (who I owe for many things but that's a topic for another time) for help, as he had self-published his own novel Dillon and the Voice of Odin. Derrick directed me to Joel, who helped him out. I sent Joel an e-mail, explained the situation, and he was incredibly helpful, showing me everything I needed to know about InDesign in order to format my novel correctly. Since then, Joel and I have communicated a few times and I quickly realized this was a stand-up guy who had real passion for what he was doing. Joel's passion is so great for the pulps that he even formed his own studio/independent publisher, Pulpwork Press. When I heard that PWP was beginning this digital tour for Joel's first novel, Dire Planet, I jumped at the chance to host a "stop." Joel was kind enough to send me a copy of Dire Planet and I devoured it in a few days.

Dire Planet is the story of Garvey Dire, a NASA astronaut who is chosen to be the first man on Mars. When he lands on the planet, however, he's accidentally sent back into time by 47,000 years, ending up in Mars' distant past when it was a populated planet with an environment not unlike Earth. Populated by Amazonian warriors and a host of fantastical creatures, Garvey ends up caught in an ongoing conflict. Through circumstances, he becomes thrust into the company of an Amazonian warrior named Ntashia and the two fight side-by-side against vicious creatures, enter forgotten cities, face cruel despots and encounter some extremely sophisticated technology.

As they pursue their quest, in the present-day, NASA has attempted another expedition to Mars and it leads to an intriguing conflict with China (as well as a really interesting choice for the American President on Joel's part, which brought a smile to my face).

Joel brings a lot of elements to the table--political intrigue, Biblical allegories, romance, and a hefty bit of action all mixed up with well-developed characters. Dire Planet serves as a fond tribute to the pulp stories Joel derives so much influence from, but rather than simply being an homage, Joel does some very interesting things and twists typical genre conventions on their heads. I sat down with Joel and asked him a few questions about himself, PWP and the saga of Garvey Dire. Here's what he had to say.

Tell us a little about Pulpwork Press—how it came about, what you guys are currently doing, and any plans for the future.

I think Pulpwork Press came about as a result of a triple-dog dare.

True to its name and charter, Pulpwork plans to retain its focus on pulp-style fiction. My understanding is that Pulpwork plans to concentrate on 'franchise' characters; in other words, characters that have the potential to make repeat appearances and the potential to build a returning readership. The key seems to be getting the word out, and that's what Pulpwork is trying to do through projects like this Virtual Book Tour for Dire Planet.

In the long term, Pulpwork has expressed the intention of pursuing secondary media options and even merchandising opportunities as an adjunct to its written properties.

Now let's move on to the saga of Garvey Dire. From what little I know of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his John Carter of Mars series, it's obvious that it served as an influence for the Dire Planet series. What other influences do you claim in the development of the book and the universe?

Although Edgar Rice Burroughs pretty much laid down the template for sword and science fiction stories, I think that my style of writing owes a lot to Robert E. Howard (author of the original Conan tales, Solomon Kane, Kull, etc). I've always admired his vivid way with words, and though my style of writing has developed into its own animal I hope that it captures some of that evocative language and phrasing at which he was a master. Also there was some biblical--primarily Old Testament--influence in the Dire Planet series, mainly in the exploration of polygamy and the difficulties it poses to a family and society.

In your blog on the first day of the virtual tour, you said that part of Dire Planet was inspired by a dream you had and the notes recounting that dream were set aside for years. In the time between this dream and Dire Planet's online premiere at Frontier Press, did you take down any other notes or plan out anything else for the mythology surrounding the Direverse?

Also in your blog, you said you wrote the first chapter and the characters and situations presented itself. While writing Dire Planet, were you working from an outline of some sort or just taking it a chapter at a time?*

Though I'd been a strict adherent to the idea of working with an outline to save time and so I don't write myself into corners, I started winging it on the Dire Planet serial. I wrote about two-thirds of Dire Planet, which has divergent timelines, without an outline and then I realized I had no idea how the timelines were going to fit back together to wrap up the story. At this point I was getting a little nervous because installments of Dire Planet were being posted every two weeks on the Frontier Press and the pressure was on to make sure everything wrapped up in a way that made sense, so I sat down and mapped out the rest of the novel. I was pleased and relieved when all the pieces dropped into place.

On Exiles of the Dire Planet and Into the Dire Planet I worked from a rough outline and I continue to work from outlines on most of my longer pieces. Unlike some authors, who prefer very detailed outlines, my outlines are generally just a list of plot points and events. I like to leave plenty of room for the characters to tell their story, and they often surprise me. Incidental characters sometimes force their way onto the stage and become major players, and even minor characters develop their own agendas which sometimes throws a spin on the entire story.

One of the things that really struck me about the novel was the detail you went into in scenes dealing with space travel, launch procedure, as well as your knowledge of Mars itself and how the lower gravity gave Garvey almost superhuman strength.. How much research did you do while writing this book?

I did a fair amount of research and the sequence is a recounting of the actual launch of the Mars Climate Orbiter, which NASA claims was later burned up on entry into Mars' atmosphere due to a 'control calibration' error. Of course, readers of Dire Planet know the full story behind the failed mission.

Another thing I found interesting was the Muvari clan. When we first meet them, Lana uses very specific body language and I thought it was a really nice touch as body language just on Earth varies so much from culture to culture. Did you research the body languages of various cultures to form the basis of the Muvari body language or was it completely your own invention?

I was aware of body language differences in cultures and thought to incorporate some of this into the story. The greeting was of my own invention.

Garvey leaves Earth in 1998 and the events on Earth and present-day Mars span about ten years. Was there any specific reason you chose these dates rather than having the story begin further into the future or even the past?

As I mentioned, the Mars Climate Orbiter did indeed launch in 1998 from Cape Canaveral, and was reported lost in September of 1999.

An interesting aspect of the book is the reversal of gender roles. In many stories of a fantasy or science fiction nature, especially earlier in the twentieth century, a damsel in distress is often at the mercy of some fiendish enemy and a strong man is needed to save her. Although you have a strong man with Garvey, the character himself admits one of the reasons he's survived so long is because of the added strength he gets from the lower gravity of Mars and he says he is a pretty clumsy swordsman. In contrast, Ntashia is a very skilled warrior who ends up saving him from a fiendish villainess. Also in contrast to the traditional gender roles, the Muvari men are the ones who stay home and rear the children while the women fill the role of hunter/gatherer. In a lot of ways, as much as Dire Planet is an homage to the sci-fi/fantasy pulps, it's also something of a revisionist take on it. Was any of this intentional or was it completely unconscious on your part?

The role reversal of men and women was entirely intentional. I wanted to build on the tradition of the sword and science fiction pulps without rehashing the same old story. By inserting the elements of a predominantly female and matriarchal society I was able to forge into territory that was new to the genre, and explore the implications that had for families and their society as a whole--and in the meantime I still got to tell a slam-bang action story full of weird creatures and death-defying cliffhangers.

Garvey Dire's saga has continued through three novels so far—Dire Planet, Exiles of the Dire Planet, and Into the Dire Planet. Was Garvey's story always too large for just one book to contain or were you struck with the inspiration to build on the mythology after the first novel was completed?

Sometimes, after a story is complete (or I think it is) the characters keep whispering in my head because they still have adventures to relate. That was the case with Garvey Dire once I had completed Dire Planet. However, Exiles of the Dire Planet was just too much story to be contained reasonably in one book and so it was split into two volumes--the second part being Into the Dire Planet.

Now that we have the Dire Planet trilogy, are you finished with that world and the characters you've created or do you have more adventures planned for Garvey and Ntashia?

Garvey Dire still has some more story to tell, and I hope to start writing a fourth Dire Planet novel in 2009.

What's next for Joel Jenkins?

I try to keep people apprised of my latest writing projects at joeljenkins.com, and I've got a few things in the hopper including a thriller called The Nuclear Suitcase and a fantasy novel, Through the Groaning Earth, which is the sequel to the currently available Escape from Devil's Head which can be found at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and in various digital formats at Fictionwise.com.

Pulpwork Press is debuting a digital magazine the middle of next year, which will host various pulp style serial stories. One of the serial stories will be written by yours truly, and feature Sedrah, slayer of the wizard Kolthos and the Prince of Thieves, the flaxen-haired former courtesan and assassin known to the residents of Bathos as the Siren of Slaughter. Sedrah appears in both my City of Bathos novels Escape from Devil's Head and Through the Groaning Earth.

Thanks for your time, Joel.

For more on Joel's work, you can visit him directly on the web at his personal site. I also strongly encourage you all to stop by Pulpwork Press and pick up your own copy of Dire Planet. While you're there, also take a look at PWP's other writers, the enormously talented Derrick Ferguson and Josh Reynolds.

Check out the previous stops at the tour as well:

Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four

Influences

2008-09-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

I just finished interviewing Joel Jenkins for my spot on the Dire Planet Digital Book Tour for Pulpwork Press. The interview will be posted soon, so you'll get Joel's really great response at that time, as well as the short interview and a review of Dire Planet from yours truly.

What I wanted to talk about instead are influences and inspiration. It's a question I've been asked pretty frequently and it's not always an easy one to answer as something completely random can have a profound influence on a project.

For example Fallen came about from the challenge of National Novel Writing Month and the idea itself came about from a combination of watching The Prophecy with Christopher Walken, the visual look of Vincent Valentine from Final Fantasy VII, and being stuck in traffic on my way to class back in September of 2005.

Chasing The Dragon on the other hand all came about as the result of an online conversation with Doug Bookey and the novel I just began work on, Elias Starr and the Prometheus Engine, owes everything to me randomly coming up with that name last year while students in a class I was substitute teaching for were taking a test.

But when it comes to the authors I admire and who probably influence my work or at least my worldview, there are a few people that come to mind.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - Without a doubt, one of the greatest writers in history and a man whose death saddened me. If I had the choice of meeting any writer, it would be him. Vonnegut had this strange way of showing such a cynical view of humanity while still giving you hope and making you laugh. He pointed out the absurdities in life and his own quotes from interviews or essays are often just as entertaining as the satirical novels he wrote. I don't claim to even begin to try writing like Vonnegut because the man is without equal and whenever someone tries to imitate him, they end up falling flat. Vonnegut had a pure voice all his own that can never be duplicated and that's something I try to strive for in my own work.

Grant Morrison - Some of you might be asking, "who's that?" And it's an understandable reaction. Others may be rolling their eyes and saying, "oh gods, not him." But for the record, Grant Morrison is a comic book writer and he's done some high-profile work on characters like Superman, Batman, the Justice League and the X-Men. He's also written a lot of creator-owned work, often times far superior to the company owned characters. You've heard of The Matrix but were you aware most of that story first appeared in Morrison's creator-owned comic series called The Invisibles? Morrison does an amazing job of mixing complex themes with old fashioned action, big and original ideas as well as a helping dose of great dialogue.

Bret Easton Ellis - When my editor, the lovely Kelly Rabagliati, first went through Chasing The Dragon, she was amazed at the graphic nature of some of the scenes. And the answer to how I was able to write them was simple--I've read American Psycho. And for anyone who has read that book as well will know that even the most graphic scene in Chasing The Dragon is completely tame compared to almost all of Patrick Bateman's murders. Ellis also has a gift for satire, however, and his scathing critique of the 80s yuppie culture comes into full focus not only in American Psycho but also Lunar Park.

Philip K. Dick - If you want to write science fiction, there is no doubt in my mind--you must read at least some of Dick's work. My particular favorite to date has to be Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was the basis for Blade Runner. And although that movie was a cinematic masterpiece, it really does pale in comparison to the novel, especially the themes dealing with religion.

William S. Burroughs - Not so much of an influence, more of a "I wish I could do that shit" feeling. For those who read Burroughs' cut-up novels like Naked Lunch, you'll know exactly what I mean. The cut-up technique was nothing but pure genius and although his books are often comprehensible, there is a lot to be gleaned from them.

Haruki Murakami - You want a great dose of profound, human emotion mixed with beautifully-crafted prose and a nice helping of what I like to call whatthefuckery--then you must read Murakami. I've talked about him a bit more in length in my review of Norwegian Wood, so scroll down for that.

CHASING THE DRAGON NOW AVAILABLE!

2008-08-29T23:04:00.000-07:00

Your hairs stand on end. Fear grips your entire body. This Riker is a wild card, a loose cannon. Definitely not a cop, even the crazy ones won't go to extremes like this. No, this guy's a mean bastard and you know if you make a wrong move, he won't hesitate to kill you nice and slow. He's a maniac.

Brenda McKenzie is a single mother working double-shifts as a waitress and struggling to make ends meet. But Brenda's life gets turned upside down when her teenage daughter, Alyssa, runs away with Ryan Cunningham, her heroin-dealing boyfriend. With the police providing no assistance, Brenda feels all hope is lost. Until the day a strange man offers his help.

His name is Riker Stone and he has a monster lurking inside him--literally. Riker's quest will lead him to Ryan as well as the people who support him. And in his search for revenge, Riker will leave a trail of bodies.

From Percival Constantine, the author of Fallen, comes a bloodspilling, ultraviolent tale of vengeance and horror in a fusion of splatterpunk and noir.

Now available at Amazon!

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

2008-08-25T06:35:00.001-07:00

NORWEGIAN WOOD

Over the past year or two, I've become a fan of Haruki Murakami, ever since a friend of mine from Japan recommended I read Kafka on the Shore. I was absolutely mesmerized by Murakami's style of writing. It's so elegiac and beautiful and even when he speaks frankly of topics like sex (which he does and often in detail), there's still something extremely magical about the way he writes about it all.

I followed up Kafka on the Shore with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, perhaps the book he's most famous for and then I followed that one up with Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

In all of these books, there are several things that keep occuring -- the protagonists are often very similar: somewhat cynical, unassuming, and exist outside of society. Other common tropes are his use of the 60s counterculture music, incorporating the works of the Beatles and Bob Dylan into his writing. And they all utilize magic realism in a way that makes it all seem as if it's perfectly natural. In fact, his use of the latter is perhaps what makes him so appealing to many readers.

Norwegian Wood is significantly different from his other work in that there is no magic realism. But all the other Murakami tropes are there. More than that, even though Murakami states that the majority of the book is completely fictional, there's a sense that this was a deeply personal book for him to write. There are definitely elements of Murakami's own life as a college student in Tokyo present in here, and it shows.

Set at the end of the 60s, the book centers on Toru, a nineteen-year-old college student in Tokyo who was very close to his best friend Kizuki as well as Kizuki's girlfriend, Naoko. At seventeen, Kizuki committed suicide, which led to a deepening of the relationship between Naoko and Toru. Although Toru is completely devoted to Naoko and although Naoko also seems to have those same emotions at times, Kizuki's death has affected her on such a level that she begins to retreat into her own world, eventually leaving college and moving into a sanatorium that's more like a commune than a mental hospital. With Naoko retreating into herself, Toru goes through the motions, frequently going out on the town with his friend and bedding random girls, although there is an emptiness Toru feels each time he does this. He eventually meets a young girl named Midori, who is quite sexually liberated and as Toru's relationship with each of the young women in his life deepens, he continually finds himself torn between the two, yet neither puts much demand on him.

I could see reflections of my own life and my own persona in Toru. One of the most difficult things for an author to do is to make the reader empathize with the characters, yet Murakami does it so magnificently that he makes it look like the easiest thing in the world.

The title of the novel is taken from the Beatles song of the same name and if you want a truly fulfilling reading experience, I suggest putting on Rubber Soul, the album which "Norwegian Wood" appears on as you read. It makes for a more fulfilling reading experience, and there were several times during the course of the novel where Murakami tugged at my heart strings so effectively that I was almost moved to tears.

It's a sad book, but also a hopeful one at the same time, about the choices we make and how they affect those around us. There are many important messages in this work and it would be presumptuous of me to suggest what those messages are. Instead, you should read it for yourself and discover what those messages are for yourself. This was a personal work for Murakami and the messages I took from reading it were deeply personal to me on a level I can't quite explain.

Chasing The Dragon

2008-08-22T07:37:00.001-07:00

After giving it some thought, I've decided to go ahead and self-publish my second novel, CHASING THE DRAGON. I was going to try and publish it through my buddies at Pulpwork Press, but they told me it wasn't really their style. Which I sort of figured at first, but it never hurts to ask, does it? Anyway, I sent them some other ideas for novels, so we'll see how that goes.

But, back to CHASING THE DRAGON. It's been ready for publication for several months, all formatted complete with cover design and burning a hole on my hard drive, so I decided to go ahead and get it sent off.

This time, I'm going with CreateSpace, which is actually a division of Amazon. So unlike Lulu's set-up, where you have to pay a distribution fee, CreateSpace automatically lists it through Amazon. I added some final details and then sent the files off to CreateSpace. Once the proof is approved, it'll be available for sale on Amazon. So give it about a month and then you'll be able to purchase it.

In the meantime, here's the description:

Your hairs stand on end. Fear grips your entire body. This Riker is a wild card, a loose cannon. Definitely not a cop, even the crazy ones won't go to extremes like this. No, this guy's a mean bastard and you know if you make a wrong move, he won't hesitate to kill you nice and slow. He's a maniac.

What happened to Lunar Flare Productions?

2008-08-17T17:26:00.000-07:00

Since I'm sure someone may ask about it sooner or later, I thought I'd address the issue of what exactly went down with Lunar Flare Productions, my short-lived creator studio. I'll start off with a bit of background information for those who haven't the first clue what I'm talking about.

A while back, almost two years now, I had this idea in my head of starting my own creative studio. The idea began with an attempt to produce a graphic novel composed of ten, twenty-two page stories by ten different creative teams. Needless to say, that effort completely backfired on me and not one of the stories was ever completed. Still, I had this desire to try again. Because as we all know, the definition is attempting the same action repeatedly and expecting different results. So I tried again. And this time, I went a bit more full-throttle. I created a logo, bought website space, all of that (things I had put off before until after the anthology was complete). I decided I was going to focus on two things -- novels and comics.

I had one series just about ready to go with a first issue, and that was my creator-owned Love & Bullets. It originally began as concept and characters created by myself and Kyle Shire for a student film. We only shot a few scenes of the film and never moved beyond that. So I decided to do it as a comic book, because I really fell in love with these characters and the backstory we had begun to create.

I transferred the screenplay into comic script and added some additional things into it. I found an artist, Keith Jim, to draw and ink the series (a quick note: this image you see is not Keith's artwork, this is a variant cover I made for Wizard World with a photograph of actress Marguerite Ada, who would have played the main character, Angela Lockhart, in the film). It was this project that actually began my lettering career. I had trouble finding a letterer, so I began to teach myself how to do it, with the help of the many great tutorials at Ninja Lettering. When our colorist had to back out as well, I took on that aspect of the creative process too, although I wasn't as adept with it as I was with lettering. After quite a bit of time, we had the first issue ready to go and the first half of the penciled and inked pages for the second issue in my hands. We published through Ka-Blam and released the issue through IndyPlanet under LFP's logo. I even printed up a lot of issues and handed them out at Wizard World Chicago, with the variant cover you see above.

It was a spectacular failure.

There are many reasons for this. I could go ahead and blame an overly competative industry. I could blame Ka-Blam and IndyPlanet for the way their print-on-demand service is run. I could blame Keith because his art isn't quite ready for prime time yet.

But in truth, the blame lies with me.

I've realized from this experience as well as from speaking with other creators, editors, publishers, etc. in the industry, that you need a few things to run a successful studio. First off, you need the money to afford self-publishing and you need to be able to get your work into the hands of Diamond Comics Distributor and have them agree to put the book in their catalog. You also need the money for effective advertising and you need to know how to market your book effectively. This is one of my biggest downfalls, as I haven't the first clue of marketing or running a business or anything of that nature. You also need the money to be able to pay your creative teams competative wages. Yes, there are people who will work for free or a percentage of the profits, but these people are few and far between and if they're really good, they may end up getting a paying gig sooner or later -- and really, there's no way you can possibly fault them for that (I know this happened with me fairly recently). Or sometimes, you may simply get creators who flake out and cease answering e-mails (this also happened with me quite a few times). And while Ka-Blam may be a great service for preview copies, it's still too expensive and has too much of a stigma. Love & Bullets #1 had a cover price of $2.50, which is pretty reasonable. But each issue cost almost that much to print, so we only saw a few cents of profit per each issue. And we only sold six issues. To add into that, Ka-Blam's processing and shipping time varies with what level of expediency the customer selects. A red eye edition is one that will be printed and shipped immediately, but this is significantly more expensive than the cover price. To pay the closest to the cover price will result in a shipping time of almost a month. And if you're an international customer, the shipping is completely ridiculous.

With this knowledge, plus my own dissatisfaction with the first issue, I decided the best route would be to close up LFP and instead focus on my work and submit it to publishers myself. As for the future of Love & Bullets, Keith and I seem to have parted ways. He wasn't too satisfied with the project himself and expressed a desire to work on more superhero-oriented books. I am working with some artists on developing five-page submissions for various publishers and I'm continuing my freelance work for AC Comics. I've rewritten the script and the entire plot for the Love & Bullets limited series and I'm much happier with the result. The first issue is more action-packed and features more story than my first attempt did.

My second novel, Chasing The Dragon, was originally going to be published under LFP's banner. But now, I'm searching for another home for it and I may have found a studio for the book. But more info will be provided as it becomes available.

Coming back to blogging

2008-08-16T19:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't used this in some time and I hope to change that. This will serve as a basic introduction for everyone.

My name is Percival Constantine. I'm twenty-five and I work as an assistant language teacher of English in the Kagoshima prefecture of Japan. More information on my exploits in Japan can be viewed at another blog, Live From Tarumizu.

I'm also a writer and my first book, Fallen, was published in March 2007. My second novel, Chasing The Dragon, is completed and ready to go, but I'm searching for a home for it and trying to avoid self-publishing as I did with Fallen.

I'm also a freelance writer and letterer in the comic book industry. Most of my lettering has been for proposals and submissions, but one of my frequent clients is AC Comics, and I've done work for stories featured in their Femforce title. I'm now moving into writing for them in addition to my lettering and my first story has recently acquired an artist.

In addition, I'm developing a few projects for submission to publishers with various artists. Information on them will be posted here as it becomes available. Samples of my lettering can be viewed at my deviantART page.

Gun control

2007-04-19T23:13:00.001-07:00

The VT massacre has, just as usual, brought up the usual question of gun control. Would it have been prevented if the laws were more strict? Would it have been prevented if all the kids on campus were allowed to carry concealed weapons? Would either of these have mattered at all? Just how much control is too much?

Now for my thoughts on the issue.

First, I'm going to preface this by saying I hate guns. I think they're one of the worst inventions in the history of mankind. The entire arms industry is something I absolutely despise. It sickens me to know that we have people working day and night to perfect more and efficient ways of brutally slaughtering each other rather than putting those efforts to something that can be a benefit to humanity. Such as curing cancer or AIDS, finding an alternative energy source to fossil fuels, or ending poverty. I have never once fired a gun in my life and I have absolutely no desire to do so.

Now, some of you are probably thinking, "here comes the classic 'guns should be outlawed' speech..." And if you are thinking that, you're absolutely wrong. I don't think guns should be illegal. But I do think we need to have better control over them. The entire gun control issue needs to be reformed because right now, it's not working. It varies so much from state to state and the law needs to be more universal. Some states allow concealed weapons, some allow open-carry, some don't allow you to carry any weapons. I'm not going to break it into specifics, but that's a general overview.

Cho Seung-hui purchased his guns legally. He went into gunshops and met the requirements for purchasing firearms. "So there you go, gun control laws won't stop tragedies like this." Not quite. See, Cho was mentally ill. This isn't a personal opinion, in 2005 he was declared mentally ill and "an imminent danger to himself and others" by a court. He was told to seek outpatient care which, since there have yet to be any documents to prove otherwise, he did not seek. As far as I can tell, there was never any follow-up.

This kid was declared to be an imminent danger, but the court left it up to him to seek out his own care. On a brief tangent, that's all I need to prove that there's a serious problem with health care in this country, both mental and physical. He was declared to be an imminent danger to himself and others, let that sink in. But he was not institutionalized. Nor was his case followed up on. Nobody checked to see if he was actually seeking this outpatient care. That's irresponsible and sloppy.

Now, back to the gun issue. This court ruling was a matter of public record. So Cho buys guns from a gunshop and what happens? They give him a quick, automated background check. Now, let THAT sink in -- THEY GAVE HIM A BACKGROUND CHECK! And this background check either wasn't thorough or the dealers weren't concerned about a person who was declared an imminent danger walking around with a gun.

I don't care where you stand on the gun control issue, a man who the courts have ruled is mentally ill and an imminent danger should NOT, under ANY circumstances, be allowed to obtain a weapon. Let alone more than one. Anyone who says otherwise should seek mental help for themselves.

And I know what some gun advocates are thinking. "Well, if he couldn't get the guns legally he would have just bought them off the black market." Sure, that's a possibility. But just because the black market exists, does that mean we have to make it easier for people like this to obtain weapons? That's a dangerous slope. You might as say, "well crimes will be committed anyway, so we should just get rid of law enforcement."

This wasn't a case of some quiet kid who just snapped one day. No, this was a seriously disturbed individual. Teachers noticed it, classmates noticed it, the courts noticed it. But nobody did anything. Nobody followed up on this case because the help this kid needed was not available. I'm not saying it's not his fault, what he did was definitely his fault. But it could have been prevented had there been a better system in place. When someone is declared an imminent threat to themselves and others, you don't send them off to seek out their own care and hope for the best, never bothering once to follow up on it. That's completely irresponsible.

Now, as to the argument of "well if all the kids on campus were allowed to carry concealed weapons, this wouldn't have happened." But y'know what? As an educator, the idea of a campus full of people armed with concealed weapons frightens the HELL out of me. Especially since many of the people advocating this action say nothing about proper weapons training -- as if everyone is an action hero just because they own a gun. Making it easier for people to get their hands on weapons and allowing them to carry them on campus creates the potential for innumerable tragedies. Now, if there's a report of a gunman opening fire on a campus, what happens? You've got a campus full of people who are in a panic. And that's a recipe for disaster. Not only that, but what about other altercations that may happen? What about a fight? Hell, what about a frat party?

But people don't think of these things. They've watched too many John Wayne movies and they think giving everyone a gun will just magically make all the world's problems go away. In other words, they've detached themselves so far from reality that they're unable to see the consequences of their actions.

Although I can't same I'm surprised. The people advocating this kind of action are the same people who think tax cuts and deficit spending will somehow work in the economy's favor. These are the people who tear the Constitution to shreads, with exception to the second amendment. Who continue to support an unjust war, but are unwilling to fight it themselves.

Starjammers

2007-04-16T17:55:00.001-07:00

Over at Project Rooftop, Nuno Alves and Art Grafunkel have redesigned Corsair.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, Corsair is a Marvel Comics' character, the estranged father of Cyclops and Havok and leader of a group of space pirates called the Starjammers.

This is pretty interesting because not only do the Starjammers rock, but just yesterday I wrote an inquiry letter to Marvel with an idea for a Starjammers series.

Pure coincidence or an omen? Only time will tell.

Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut died at the age of 84. He suffered from brain injuries after a fall in his house weeks ago and passed away yesterday. The article can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/04/12/obit.vonnegut.ap/index.html

Anyone who knows me knows how much I absolutely adore Vonnegut's books. Ever since Pat's father let me borrow Slaughterhouse-Five, I've become a huge Vonnegut fan. In addition to Slaughterhouse-Five, I've read and loved Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater and A Man Without a Country. Now I definitely have to get the rest of his books.

Vonnegut's my idol when it comes to writing. If I could write a book even half as good as his worst, I'll die a very happy man. I'd always hoped that some day, I'd get to meet the man. Unfortunately now that will never happen.

Podcast Interview

2007-04-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

I've been sending out e-mails to various podcasters, telling them a little about my novel and seeing if any of them would like to have me on their show. Three have responded to my request and two of them had to decline as they're presently booked solid. The third though, Michael Potter of ESC!Cast which produces Across The Mic has agreed to have me on either in late May or sometime in June!

Across The Mic focuses on small press authors and their experiences. So this should be an interesting first step.

Fallen

2007-04-02T20:25:00.000-07:00

My first novel, Fallen, is now available for purchase! You can order it through Amazon or directly through the publisher. Also, the first chapter is available to read online.

Here's the description from the back cover: After the creation of the Earth and the birth of Man, the Presence seemingly vanished from existence. Once the angels and demons discovered that mortals possessed souls, they became locked in an endless conflict for ownership over mankind. But Gabriel, once the leader of Heaven’s forces, felt humanity should be allowed to live in peace. For his transgression, he was stripped of his wings and expelled from Heaven. Now, centuries later, the wars of man have brought the world to ruin. Man’s once-vaunted technology has regressed. Lance Kells, a drifting writer with no direction in his life, inadvertantly stumbles upon this war and finds himself trapped in the middle of it. As Lance tries to uncover the truth, he will encounter a host of intriguing characters, from a hard-drinking, pink-haired avatar of death to an elderly Native American mystic. During his journey, Lance will discover a method of ending a conflict as old as time, as well as a disturbing secret which links him to Gabriel.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the response for this. So be sure to buy a copy and please tell everyone you know, get the word out, post up reviews on Amazon, whatever it takes. I need all the help I can get with promoting myself, especially since this is all self-promotion.

For more information on this and my other works, please check out my webpage.

Welcome to the site

2007-03-01T18:26:00.001-08:00

I've just sent off the final PDF of Fallen to Lulu.com's publishing services as well as purchased an ISBN. The proof will hopefully arrive at my door by the end of next week. Once I've approved it, the book will be available for purchase through my Lulu.com marketplace as well as Amazon.com and other booksellers.

In addition, I figured it was about time I actually utilized this webspace I've been sitting on for a while. There's not much here at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks and months.