Clockwerx Interview (Clockwerx Graphic Novel coming Next Month from Humanoids!)

Hey guys! Tony Salvaggio and I have a new graphic novel coming next month from Humanoids: Clockwerx, about a detective who joins a mech pilot team in Victorian England. Check out this interview!

A fan asks questions about HIGHLANDER: THE ELEMENT OF FIRE

It's been a busy period-- not only have I moved from Texas to Colorado, but I've been busy with a new book as well as several tie-in gigs. I've been busy as heck writing the script for this Summer's TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES game OUT OF THE SHADOWS, which is now done, and I'm kicking off another job.
I wanted to update and answer some questions about writing. Generally, I write whatever comes my way, either bubbling up from inside or sent from without.
Whatever product we create, most of us consider ourselves first and foremost writers, a label sufficient in itself. Most write because they love words and love using them. I write for a lot of reasons-- I think creating heroes that readers will want in their lives is an obsession of mine-- but I love challenges, especially the challenge of a new assignment I don't have complete control over.

For instance, I like writing Alex Van Helsing into a terrible corner and then having to write him back out of it, but that's nothing compared the challenges a writer faces with someone else characters. I might have what I think is the perfect idea, but it might not get approved-- maybe I think the Turtles should have a funny argument about old science fiction movies, but the argument might get cut because the owners already plan for a conversation like that in another project soon. That kind of cut-- which means you have to put in something else-- happens all the time. The art of writing demands control, but the art of writing for others demands equal parts control and humility.

I started out writing standalone novels in college, beginning with THE IRON THANE, a fantasy adventure about MacDuff, the hero of Shakespeare's MacBeth. But my first job working with someone else's characters was a tie-in novel for a TV series: the book was Highlander: The Element of Fire, the first tie-in to the Highlander series. I was 23 and busy with law school, and there are choices I made then that I wouldn't make now, but what I remember loving about it was that the producers allowed me to make the book a team-up between the characters of the Highlander TV series and the Highlander film series. I worked hard to blend the two.

But. I wrote the book in about five weeks with very little revising before publication, and it shows at times. There are scenes I would change or cut if I were doing them today. So it goes.

I mention all of this because out of the blue this weekend I got a series of questions from Alexander, a reader who enjoyed The Element of Fire so much that -- and can I say this is bizarre to hear about something I write when President Clinton was in his first term-- he had spent a lot of time thinking about it:

I'm a die-hard Highlander fan, and particularly, your novel "The Element of Fire", which I think is a better story that handles both characters of Connor and Duncan MacLeod in a much better, dignified and honest way than any of the comics and, especially, the "Highlander: Endgame" film did. On top of that, I feel that the story is an interesting and fitting exploration of the first three hundred years of Duncan's life, in as far as his doubts about the Game and Prize are concerned (even though it wasn't your intention, as you had once pointed out in an interview,I think it works still), and how he morphed, basically, into the Duncan of the show.  ...
But to me, the biggest and most amazing accomplishment, was the detailing of the Connor-Duncan dynamic. I love how you wrote those characters, and how they interact with one another. I love you managed to showcase their changes but also their sameness through the years, as well as point out their differences and similarities. To me, you basically set that dynamic, you made that relationship work, and as a fan who loves these characters and the franchise (despite the efforts of its producers to ruin it, movie-wise), I am indebted to you for this experience.
So on that note, I would like to thank you for this magnificent story. It may not be the greatest of literature, sure, but as a story that explores these characters through the years in a rollicking adventure, its one of the best. Thank you so much for this wonderful contribution.

And he had questions! So I decided-- if a reader is actually spending time thinking about a book I wrote twenty years ago, I should see if I remember enough to answer.

So with no further ado, here are the questions I received, the answers to which require me to dig deep into the recesses of my mind:


Q: What do you think of the story so many years later? Would you have changed anything story-wise, or character-wise?
A: Oh, man, there are many things I would change-- for one thing, you'll notice that the book reads in chronological order, so that it starts far in the past and moves forward to the 19th century where most of the action takes place. On the TV show the formula was to introduce a bad guy, then have Duncan take us back and forth through flashbacks that told a parallel story in the past. I wrote the book this way, in the style of the show. But the publishers were unfamiliar with the format of the show and re-arranged the book to be in chronological order. That's on them. But there's one worse that's all on me-- there's a scene where Duncan is pretty brutal to a crooked person he's interrogating, and I regretted the level of violence after re-reading it, and wish we had cut the scene. Sometimes you're working so fast that you don't realize how a scene reads.

Q: What DO you think of Connor and Duncan as characters to write? Which of the two was easier to write, and which was the most fun? Was it challenging that you had to simaltenously a lot of information for Duncan, and not as much for Connor?
A: I liked writing Connor a lot more, because he was such an oddball, with that untraceable accent and strange, detached nature. But I really loved showing them together, with Duncan and Connor debating how to be an Immortal.

Q: Do you think Duncan cleared up his doubts about the Game, or do you think he had lingering doubts about it? In the Series, "The Messenger" episode, which after the book, he's adamant that the Game must be fought, because all it takes one Immortal to not lay down his sword. Did Duncan finally learn Connor's lesson?

A: Well, Duncan kept evolving in the TV series-- and to my knowledge never once experienced the faith crisis that I explored in the book. I just thought he should experience it-- not once in the show had either character expressed doubt that the Game might not be real. That there might not be a prize after all. I fought really hard to keep that line of questioning in, because the TV guys didn't like it-- yet in the end they allowed me to keep it.

Q: Have you read the Dynamite Entertainment Highlander comics that center around Connor and Duncan, and the former's dealing with Kurgan's Dark Quickening? What do you think of them, if you have?
A: Never have! I should pick them up, I guess...

Q: In an older interview, you mentioned that there were doubts about allowing Connor into your story. Had you had more of a blank slate, and among other things, would you have Connor in a bigger role in the story? Fans have noted that he's basically in the sidelines for the story, and would've liked him in a more proactive role.
A: Yes-- he is the mentor character, not the lead. That's because it's a Duncan book with Connor in it. I think you could have a Connor story with Duncan in it, but I think you have to pick one or the other to be the lead. (Having said that, yes, you could have an equal-time story with two leads, but in this case it was everything I could do to get Connor in as the mentor!)


Q: And after having Element of Fire, what do you think of Highlander: Endgame, the movie that paired them in the big-screen? ... What do you think of the other Highlander novels? You have the distinction, apart from writing the only Connor-Duncan story in prose, but also having written the first novel based on the TV Series. Have you read any of the follow-up novels, and if so, what is your opinion on them?
A: t's so long since I saw the movie that I shouldn't even venture a comment. I know they weren't having philosophical discussions about the game. As to the other books-- I never did!

Q: Was there ever an intention of writing a continuance to the novel? Seeing as how the novel is set entirely in the past, and the character of Lauren survived, was it ever a hope of yours to perhaps write a follow-up story, set in the present?
A: YES! I wanted more of Gabriela Savedra, especially. I loved that character, the Spaniard Immortal who apparently went to train with Amanda.

Q: Finally, what do you think of the franchise, overall? What got you into Highlander, and what has the experience of working of EOF meant to you?
A: But I was very lucky to get that gig and have been thankful for it ever since, because it influence my whole career-- because I'd written THE IRON THANE, I got Highlander. Because I'd written Highlander I got not only some Marvel Universe books, but a job with EA doing game scripts. I was so thankful for this book for the opportunity to write in a universe I loved, and for the doors it opened. I'm still thankful.

Thanks!

Write the scene you have to get through now.

Here's some advice I wrote to myself this evening (1500 words!) regarding something that I face over and over with books: Write the scene you have to get through. Don't skip it if you know it needs to be there, just write it. Write it badly if you have to, write it short, write it in bullets and take the bullets out so it looks like paragraphs, write it in dialogue, write it in verse. Write the scene you have to get through and get through it; otherwise you just get stuck at that scene, and you'll come back to the next session and there it will be, waiting and you still don't want to write it. Write the scene you have to get through, and then get on to the next scene you do want to write. Write the scene you have to get through now.

FUTURE SHOCK: In the year 1972, Orson Welles is freaking the f--- out.

If you have not seen Future Shock, a 1972 documentary based on a hit book about the rapid advance of technology, you must. You owe it to yourself, both to laugh and to kind of worry a little.
Imagine how disconcerting! The movie says, to go the airport and be faced with a gate agent who might be a robot!  This is a world before: the Internet, automated phone menus, and kiosks.
The phone book has to be re-written EVERY DAY, the movie tells us, in a grim sort of way that indicates that this fact alone is some kind of Apocalypse.
Orson Welles, the evil drug manufacturer in The Third Man*, here is our narrator, smoking his cigars and walking us through a litany of the frightening and fast changes wrought by technology. "Future Shock" is a term coined by futurist Alvin Toffler, and it kind of means "too much change too fast," which some would call "the beginning of the Singularity," though I prefer "Wired Koyaanisqatsi."About the phone books?

"Nothing is permanent anymore... The telephone directory is re-written every day in an effort to keep track of the mobile society, pages printed out by the computer, deletions, additions, numbers, the rate of change reflecting the fact that where we live means less and less as we breed a race of nomads... few suspect how massive, widespread and uprooting these migrations are."

About that. Oh, I believe that it's true that the phone books were soon (as in, 40 years later) rendered mostly obsolete, but is it true that the freedom to move around has been-- wait a minute. He didn't even really say what was bad here. Just that it was happening. And that was sort of scary. How scary? Next we interview young people aimlessly going places on buses, and they look blissful, but Welles sounds disturbed, so I guess they are scary.

The world is changing fast, the movie shows us, demonstrating social changes such as communes and gay marriage. Unclear whether that is supposed to be scary.

The movie is really just a panicky litany with the question:
"Is there danger in the path we're taking? What happens to the definition of man? Who is he? What is he?"

Some of the future really is scary, if a little oddball in presentation: "Babytoriums! Genetic superstores of the future!" Which you will shop from using a slide carousel, because of course we can picture genetic manipulation but no one expects the iPad.

Marriage is in trouble, and Future Shock lays this danger at the feet of Rapid Change:
"In our society marriage is ideally based on love... but the likelihood that people will grow and develop at the same rate becomes more and more remote for rapid change places a heavy burden on the fragile thread of love." To illustrate this, we see people bickering more or less the way they probably did before Future Shock and after Facebook, and I'm not sure rapid change is at fault.

"With technological changes, more changes will come!" Orson Welles says, still talking about marriage, I think. Then he goes off on a rant that I took down this way because it was going too fast:

Confused, helpless, unable to cope! Stress!

I was moved by one thought experiment expressed by the movie, about the loss of choice *not* to enhance our lives with technology, which anyone who can't turn off their smartphone could lecture any of us about. I'm one.

It introduces us to the facelift and figures this to be amazing.

It all seems disconnected from the future that arrived and yet not a moment is actually wrong (except some things that have not come to pass, such as altering our skin color for fun, though some of us are orange.)

And then Toffler says this, and he's darn right:

“We can no longer allow technology just to come roaring down at us. We must begin to say “No” to certain kinds of technology and begin to control technological change, because we have now reached the point at which technology is so powerful and so rapid that it may destroy us, unless we control it. But what is the most important is we simply do not accept everything; that we begin to make critical decisions about what kind of world we want and what kind of technology we want.”

The documentary is 43 minutes long and on Youtube-- hit my playlist above to try it.


*No, come on, I know who Orson Welles is.

Rick Olney, a Sad Story in Comics, Passes Away, and How To Stop Spending Money on a Lost Cause

In case you missed it, Rick Olney passed away over Christmas. Olney was well known in comics because he had a history as a convention organizer that was marked by more canceled events than successful ones, and he left a string of artists who he owed money to for commissioned art. I have no doubt that those claims are true, but he never owed me anything.
Personally, I encountered Rick only once a few years ago when I was invited to speak at a convention in upstate New York called Mighty Mini-Con, organized by Rick. It was happening just as I had a horror series coming out, so I thought, fine, I'd go up to Syracuse, do a show, and then my wife and I would go up into the Adirondacks for some hiking with a friend who had a cabin there. That's what we all did, except that a few days before the trip, the show was canceled. I didn't much care because I was excited about going up to the cabin. I literally never gave it any more thought, although in theory I could have stewed about having spent money on a ticket, and if I didn't have other plans, maybe I would have.
So I crossed paths with Olney and got off without a scratch. Others have stewed about him for years. I read a screed today by a gentleman who was angry that he hadn't received $100 in over a year it was owed.

This was actually more interesting to me than Olney himself, because it ties into a general rule that I think is very important for freelancers.
It's important to demand your payment. But I have advice for anyone still owed money after a reasonable time, something I know from freelancing for over twenty years.
Some debts just go bad. Some debts are like throwing $100 out the window. If it's a pittance like that (I'd say even up to a few hundred), stop spending money on this problem. And: you are the money you are still spending.

Jason's Rule For How Long to Worry About $100* Someone Owes You

• figure out your minimum hourly payment (M)
• figure out how many Aggrieved (A) hours equals that $100 ($100/M=A)
• then make a promise to yourself that you will not spend more than that time worrying about it. (Worry<=A)

By my calculation, at "A" hours you have passed the point where you will you will have then lost $100 and spent another $100. That's $200 in value down. Let that be the end of it. 

Your time-- your life-- is worth money. So is your pain. And it's yours to squander. You cannot spend any more value. Let it go. You will live longer, or you might, but anyway, you have to know when to walk away from someone who owes you money.
Maybe I'm missing the point, and to you powerful Olney debtors who may read this, understand I may not get it, maybe I'm not understanding how bad things got, or maybe obsessing over Rick Olney was a joy in itself, like hiking or watching old episodes of Law & Order. But spending thousands of hours obsessing over someone who owes you a pittance just seems like a bad investment.


*Substitute your own small claims amount in here, because the formula will work regardless.

VOYA on Alex Van Helsing: "Fast Moving Plot And Gripping Action"

Here's a Christmas present I wasn't expecting-- our good friends at VOYA, who named Alex Van Helsing: Vampire Rising a "Best of 2010," have weighed in on The Triumph of Death!
You can catch the rest in the December issue of VOYA. You can also find them on Facebook!

"This third Alex Van Helsing book is packed full of action and continues to deliver character development with all the same likable characters... with a fast-moving plot and gripping action adventure, making it a most enjoyable, perfectly entertaining novel. ...Alex still copes and adapts using his special abilities and deals with just how special and unique he is in the fight against evil.Hopefully, the author will decide not to end Alex Van Helsing as a trilogy and instead continue entertaining readers with more adventures and vampire mythology, similar to Colfer's Artemis Fowl. This excellent book is a must-have for all libraries, especially where horror fiction is hot." 

Thanks, guys!

Dark Shadows Visual Companion: Get it for the Gothic Vampire Freak in Your Life

It's no secret that I'm a Dark Shadows freak, although I came late to the party. I first discovered the 60s vampire soap opera a few years ago and instantly loved it. There's something hypnotic about the show-- go watch a few episodes on Netflix or DVD and you can get sucked into the sheer otherworldly gothicness of it all: the spooky harbor town, the winding corridors of the family mansion haunted by ghosts and vampires. And to me the fact that it's a daily soap opera only contributes to the magic-- the falseness of the sets, the cardboard and wobbliness, makes the unreal strangely more real. I also really admired the 2012 version-- in my review I wrote:

Tim Burton's Dark Shadows knows the whole terrain of the show, and it knows more. It knows that it can have it both ways, parodying the show while constantly showing such familiarity that the jokes feel genuinely affectionate. It knows that somehow 1972 is funnier than 1966, so we get to see Barnabas come back to a world of the Carpenters and Alice Cooper. It knows that Johnny Depp is not Jonathan Frid, so his Barnabas is completely different-- a hilarious meditation on vampires in general, a reptilian, cursed, alien creature, whereas Frid's Barnabas was a rather discreet vampire most of the time, no more alien than JR Ewing. Depp is funny here, and is in almost every scene. And man, it knows the gothic tradition. The brooding house, the tortured young ingenue, the secret pathways. If you feel you've seen all of Burton's tricks before, think of it this way: all of his tricks belong here, in Dark Shadows. Fans of the show should love this adoring letter to Collinwood.

I felt the way I did because Tim Burton has the same strange fascination with the show, and his movie is an astonishing homage. So now I just got the Christmas present of all presents for Dark Shadows fans: the Dark Shadows Visual Companion. This is a heck of a coffee table book-- a visual tour through the making of the film, with sections on the cast, the writing, special effects, costumes, and more. My favorite is a pair of photographs--on pages 8 and 20-- full cast portraits, each with star Barnabas (Frid and Depp, respectively) in the center. I can't make you love DARK SHADOWS-- but if you do, you will love this book and go back to it often.