Fall of 2023 is here and I'm taking stock. Most of the book fairs and comic cons are break-even or only slightly profitable events. Occasionally one show is a real banger, but then another gig in the same season proves to be near-catastrophic. It mostly balances out.
   Karen Sunchaser is now three books in and doing well, but maybe not matching the initial success of the werewolf books. The only property of mine that is struggling is Daddy's Disappointing Bedtime Stories, but there is a chance to do better with that next year after I collect a couple more volumes into a hardcover omnibus edition. I've had illustrator gigs this past year too -- but only a couple.
   Sometimes this is even more maddening than failure. That at least would send me a clearer message.
     I was really hoping by now for some clear guidance on where to focus my efforts. For those of you who know me, I consistently have the polar opposite of writer's  block. Many creative ideas bounce around my head competing for my attention, and no one series or concept stands out from the pack. I was hoping the audience would help sort that out for me, but it seems like I'm struggling with overall brand visibility.  That isn't really my fault, many algorithms and marketing strategies are limiting me -- but I know it isn't helping that I'm spread out in several directions.
     Right now I've got an historical fiction/fantasy project in development, about elves in the human world on a search for a magical sanctuary. But this would be yet another new direction, and part of me wonders if that's spreading myself even thinner. What would really be great is one reader who enjoys multiple genres and is willing to delve through them all and consult with me on where I'm excelling. Any volunteers?
   On the other hand, I am doing what I love. On every project. Can't help it, I suppose, if my creative brain loves too many things to commit to one relationship and stay faithful in it.  The rest of me is far more monogamous than my maker brain. Maybe I can work on that part of myself. Or, seeing as Christmas isn't far off, I could ask for a shiny new attention span.
    In the meantime, here's a few more book illustrations to check out below.

      I really need to pick a genre, people.
   This is Karen Sunchaser, a science fiction/space opera title and character I've been cultivating in one form or another for years. Two books have dropped now, both on Amazon.  The first book, "Grounded," has done fairly well over the past three months, and now "The Ghostmaker" debuted to follow it just last week. Go check them out here.
    If you're keeping track, that means I've now published titles in historical fiction, children's books, urban fantasy, and sci-fi.  I'm just too full of ideas right now to settle in on one genre -- but I will, because that's usually a better strategy to build a lasting fan base. More on that decision soon.
     Like the Daddy's Disappointing Bedtime Stories, these books are illustrated with my graphic novel/manga inspired art. That's the only similarity. Karen is a bounty hunter tracking down scum and villainy through a galactic frontier of civilizations.  The Alliance is sort of like the Federation or the Union, only humans are newcomers to the pact instead of its founders and feel outclassed by a universe of terrors.  One thing is certain -- the whole place is in need of a snarky and pugnacious lady lawman. And Karen is up for the job.
   The image above is from a cover redesign that's still in development. I believe in this title enough to bring in some top-notch talent. For now the covers are my own, so I can field test the series at a few shows and favored retailers.
     In the first book, Karen finds a love interest in a strange place after space pirates force her to crash land on a developing planet of swarthy hunters. In the second, she leads an expedition into the belly of a derelict starship that was abandoned 300 years ago -- only someone inside has been awaiting her team.
    Please check it out, and send your feedback this way!  If you want to know more, I've got appearances coming up in Warren, Michigan later this month and Dayton, Ohio, over the summer!

  First let me apologize for the long break I took from this author blog. I'm back now, and plan to post at least monthly going forward, because it's a busy time with a lot of ground to cover.
    That's me hanging with Chewbacca this past summer, because the Comic-Con circuit has had a recent comeback in my life, and a surprising  place of

support for independent book authors.
   Some longtime fans know I was a regular on the con circuit back in the mid-00s when I had a small press publishing label.  It was a great few years, hanging with the fandom and making graphic novels. But I decided after a little production fatigue and fan toxicity to take a break (one that lasted much longer than expected). But I'm back now, at least for a while, and it seems the times have really changed.
    Really Cool Comic-Con in Flint, Mich. was my first exhibitor appearance in close to 15 years. Since this time around I wasn't peddling any comics I had no idea what to expect.  Other book authors had spoken highly of the con experience, but I was skeptical. Weren't real books, with their long gray blocks of text, the mortal enemy of the fanboy attention span?
    Turns out I did well too. Better than in my comic years, actually. Fans of science fiction and fantasy horror cut across all genres and media. By the second day I had sold out completely of the Lands Forlorn novels and have to reorder a few. That's why I will be back in November at Grand Rapids Comic Con (see below), selling time travel novels, children's books and a new space ranger series. And of course, more of Kira Naughton.
     This has been beyond encouraging. Sometimes major commercial websites will decline even to spend your own advertising budget to gain online visibility, not because your product sucks but because another one vying for the same spot sells slightly better. Sometimes you as the creator have to let people find you in a place they weren't necessarily looking for you. Online sales will follow, after they've tried your product and liked it.
    I've also found some work illustrating for other authors, and started a new series, but I'll post more on those updates another time.  But this has been a big lesson in marketing for me -- don't wait for the internet to do your legwork for you. If I have to come to you guys, in order to be more visible, I'm happy to do it.  You guys have been great, and thanks for the show of support!

   Great thinkers in our time have suggested that our most heartfelt and enduring literature is that which we write for children. I aim to disprove that, posthaste. 
    Get ready for "Daddy's Disappointing Bedtime Stories," a series that launches with volume one, "Macron the Philistine," now out in paperback this week.  These are fractured-fairy-tale, so-bad-they're-good deconstructions of classical storytelling. I hope to put out two to three of these per year, interspersed among my fantasy and science fiction novels for adults.  They'd go much faster, except I'm illustrating them myself until they gain an audience and support a production budget.
     This particular story turns on a truck driver in Paris who takes on the hipsters  gentrifying his blue-collar neighborhood. My favorite thing about this publication, besides the fact my daughter loved it enough to make her own drawings when she was little, is that after publication Amazon automatically sorted the e-pub by genre into a category called Children and Facts of Life. Facts of life?
    Anyway, you can find it here. Enjoy!

     You've heard the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words.  I say it's actually worth 4,635.
     That's my estimate based on the production time and digital memory needed to store a typical bitmap black/white drawing or PNG file.  My next project is going to be a children's book, and even though the text of it is less than 600 words long, it should probably take about as long with the illustrations as writing a YA or fiction novel of, say, 74,000 words. Hence the estimate in words per picture.

    "Macron the Philistine" is my daughter's favorite of about a dozen stories I made up to tell her at bedtime, when she was small.  All of them were terrible, and in time I think that became part of their charm. 
    This one obviously takes place in Paris, and involves a disgruntled French blue-collar worker and a food fight.  Colors will come later (I think).

     Long-term, I plan to package up several more of these tales into a series: Daddy's Disappointing Bedtime Stories. That's what I called them with my girl, and they all have kind of a fractured fairy tale feel.  The name for the protagonist, Macron, came to me back in 2015 before Emmanuel Macron ran for the French presidency, so I'm hoping it isn't too politically charged now. I wouldn't have the heart to tell my girl I had to change it.
    Look for this one in late fall. Afterward I'll get back to my usual hard action and speculative fiction novels, promise.  Much more to come, but enjoy this sneak peek!

  Sartre wrote that hell is other people. I think maybe hell is yourself.
 
   No one seems to write about hell anymore – unless you’re out on the hard edge of supernatural horror genre fiction. Even there it gets short shrift. I don't go all the way in on an afterlife of sulfur pits and horned men with pitchforks. It may be close to that, but I think there are many other ways hell is still relevant. At the least it needs some fresh ink.
 
    I'm partial to the notion that hell is like being a drug addict on the first day of detox – only detox never ends. Or perhaps being a codependent person in a soundproof bubble, with a group of people just outside the glass and no way to feed on their energy.  No extricating yourself from the worst of your cravings, but no way to feed it either. No one else acts as your external tormentor – no one needs to. Hell is like that worst problem or darkest edge of your nature that you refused to confront or correct, wholly defining you.
 
  And if so, if hell is really yourself, then there’s a certain justice to that. After all, in life, you chose yourself. You chose you over faith, the needs of others, self-improvement, abnegation and the chance at redemption. You chose your tribe or ideology over your humanity, because of what it did for you, and you let it make you cruel.  Hell in that way is depraved wish fulfillment. The 'wages of sin,' as it were (Romans 6:23). Maybe God was trying to save you from sulfur and pitchforks – but ultimately I think He is trying to save you from you.
 
   Look around, at the headlines. Look within, at your own impulses. Heaven might need to be imagined, but probably you and I have a good bead on what hell is like already.

   Obviously, Marvel Comics did not invent the love triangle. Every entanglement and scuffle between Wolverine and Cyclops over Jean Grey hearkens back a little to Guinevere wrestling between Arthur and Lancelot, or Daisy Buchanan choosing between Gatsby and Tom.
   I call it “the debutante plot.” Others say the ménage, romantic rivalry, love triangle and so on. And until now, I may have been thinking about it all wrong.
   Debutante is my favored term, because the story most often turns on a young woman who has recently come of age, and must choose between two rival suitors for a lasting relationship. We don’t care for it as much when a man can’t decide between two equally suitable women (Pitt-Aniston-Jolie was a love triangle, right?). Most tropes in fiction may be patriarchal, but in this case the reverse might be true – a man who vacillates between two women is weak and indecisive, while a woman who does so is prudent and discovering herself through her choices.
   Invariably the conflict cleaves into two archetypes. One is the choice society dictates or deems acceptable, versus the riskier choice whom the heroine truly loves. The other is the man who appeals to her heart, versus the man who appeals to her loins. Jean Grey’s dilemma is more of the latter.
   And I always figured Jean, Scott and Logan were like Katniss, Peeta and Gale. You write those stories to make the rivals each appealing in their own ways, and make the reader feel the heroine’s internal conflict. My own recent four-book series as Devin McRee, Lands Forlorn, dealt extensively with Kira's choice between nerdy and lovable werewolf Flint versus tattoo-covered and sinewy MMA fighter Vance. You can read all about them here.
   But if there’s a clear front-runner, the choice is no fun. An equal appeal breaks readers into “teams” and camps who favor one plot line over the other. Regrettably, readers will enjoy that conflict more than the inevitable resolution -- so of course you drag it out. I always thought so anyway.
   But maybe not.
   “Everyone, even the girls, (are waiting for) Wolverine to jump her bones,” a female writer and friend told me recently. “In real life, you totally marry Cyclops. But this is fantasy. This is where you retreat to explore the choices you would never make, and indulge your darker impulses. And through them you can see how they play out.”
    That makes some sense to me. Cyclops is the stable choice, and Jean’s true north with his psychic rapport and steadfast commitment to her. Wolverine is tougher, more feral and the bad boy your mother warned you about. But I always assumed their equal and opposite appeals carried the tension for women readers.
    Now I wonder. Maybe no one is Team Cyclops, in the way that some Twilight readers are Team Jacob or some Superman fans prefer Lana Lang. It’s notable that Cyclops is played in the movies by James Marsden, who has racked up many such second-best bachelor roles (losing out to Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, Patrick Dempsey in Enchanted, and less favored than Hugh Jackman here).
   Pehaps the tension was never the point. It was the lure of the dark horse all along. Have I been giving Cyclops too much credit, people?

  This image is a pair of sample illustrations from a children's story project I have in the works -- because I tell horrible children's stories, and I think there's an actual market for that.
  All around the world, eager children have asked dads to tell them stories at bedtime. It makes sense that most of those dads are not naturally gifted writers, and some of the stories might even fail to the point of hilarity.

   Why go to the trouble of making up a story, when you know you can't, or memorize one of the greats by Hans Christian Andersen or Aesop when you might mess up one detail and miss the landing?  Simply learn one of mine, and read it out loud, with no previous expectations or fear of disappointment.
   Think of them like fractured fairly tales -- mice on a ship who like to climb the poop deck because it contains the word 'poop,' or animals who overtake a moonshine distillery to make a down-home jug band. Usually the moral of the story is something irreverent, slapstick or nonsensical.
   Hey, could you do any worse?

    First, welcome to the new blog on my author website! This is a space where I'll post my progress on new books and thoughts on other creators' works, probably once or twice a month. For the inaugural post, Iet me share a recent epiphany about 'The Mandalorian.'
   Lately I could not figure out why this series stands out for me among other offerings in the Star Wars oeuvre, and excites me more.  Then it occurred to me -- is this the first case of first-person storytelling in the entire franchise? And is that what makes it so fresh?
    As you know, first-person point of view is the main character directly telling the story ('I' and 'me' instead of 'he' or 'she'). Maybe you think it's hard to identify the narrative voice on film -- especially if the protagonist doesn't offer monologues or voice-overs to assist the audience. But next time you watch, observe that Din Djarun ("Mando" by his real name) is in nearly every scene -- even when he isn't, other characters like Moff Gideon or Grogu are responding directly to his most recent actions. This is very much his story.
    Most of the Star Wars movies are told as epics -- the story is larger than any one character, and follows a long arc of good battling evil. There is of course a main character in every trilogy (Anakin, Luke, then Rey) but several plotlines never intersect with the protagonists. Anakin and General Grievous never meet.  Neither do Luke and Finn. The action shifts seamlessly between separate planets and characters, in the style of an omniscient narrator. And after 40 years, that format can feel very ... let's say, familiar.
   First-person, meanwhile, is both more intimate and more confined storytelling. Nothing all that important can happen outside of the main character's hearing, unless it is recounted to him/her after the fact.  I made my own foray into first-person fiction with You Are Thursday, the time-travel crime novel you can read here (yes this is going to be that kind of blog, with shameless plugs). As the reader we follow Nick Prentiss at every step, on his journey in time.
    Mandalorian does the same, in that we usually know only what Djarun knows about the child's origins or Gideon's plans for him. Key characters disappear for multiple episodes at a time, if Mando isn't visiting their world. We are immersed in the main character's own perspective, and it works. It helps us invest emotionally in his bond with the child and his growth as a bounty hunter. Even other leading-edge SW serials like Resistance and Forces of Destiny haven't pulled that off. Take a lesson, Disney!
    'This is the way' to reinvent.
    Sorry. I had to say that. You're immersing in my own growth journey now, and it's pretty incomplete.