Serialized Pulp Novel: The Rogue and the Merchants (Part 2)

Below is Serial #2 of my pulp novel, The Rogue and the Merchants. Here is a link to the full transcription thus far: The Rogue and the Merchants

The Rogue had been traveling with the merchants for three days now, and, truth be told, he liked them. Although he was technically their slave, they treated him with respect and an amount of deference. It was obvious he was the only fighting man among them, and that he was skilled with a blade. He had demonstrated his fighting ability on the auction block. They were city-bred and they were anxious at being outside of the comforts of civilization. Although the rogue knew how to navigate the complexities of a city very well--he was a rogue, after all--he felt most comfortable in the wilderness. The majority of his long life had been spent in the wilderness and on the road. And part of his nature felt most at home sleeping on damp ground, eating game meat that he himself had felled, cleaned, and cooked.

The merchants took his advice on many things. On where to set up their camps, on which mushrooms to eat, on how best to prepare this or that fish. In a week's time, they grew to rely on him. Brol and the Rogue actually became good friends.

Video Games as Art: The Aesthetic Value of Skyrim

I noticed that a lot of folks have been reviewing the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and so I thought I'd throw my two cents in. I don't plan on doing a straightforward review of the game because nothing I could say along those lines could be very original. Trust lots and lots of other folks and not me when I say, baldly, it's a piece of art.

Having been released December 8th of this year, the game's not even a month old and many have expressed that Skyrim is their favorite of 2011. I completely understand.

I'm not just much of a "contemporary" video gamer and so I don't have many other titles to compare it to (take my review with a grain of salt). Let me be clear, though: I play a lot of video games, but the video games I play are retrogames: old school games on the Atari, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo (SNES), Sega Genesis, and more.

I plan on spending some time discussing these old school games on this blog. But to inaugurate my commentary on video-gaming, I thought I would start with the most popular game out right now: Skyrim.

Why is Skyrim so great? Let me answer that in an indirect way: it makes me cold. What do I mean by this? Well, the setting of the game is the northern province of a great empire, a kind of Norway, that is a beautiful frozen land; and the richness of the scenery is such that (no exaggeration) as I play the game, I sometime feel a chill as the wind blows and the snow is swept up in clouds. For example, my character--a giant, Conan-like barbarian who wields a two-handed sword and wears platemail--fell into an iceberg filled ocean, and I thought to myself, "Wow. That would be cold as hell."

A reflex thought like this reveals, I think, the degree to which the virtual environment of this game is substantial. Indeed, walking through the wilderness, through towns, over mountains, into swamps, through ancient tombs--one can almost imagine oneself being there. In spite of previous developments in 3D rendering technology in video games, I've rarely, if ever, felt that.

At one point I found myself in a swamp at nighttime. Aurora borealis swirled overhead. Moonlight illuminated the vegetation. Glowing flies buzzed around. And a dragon flew in the distance, howling. It's kind of embarrassing to admit this, but, at that moment, I was gripped by a sense of wonder.

I realize this may sound hyperbolic; it definitely sounds silly to speak of a video game in terms of wonder. And yet--and yet! I can't deny that Skyrim effects me in a way parallel to, say, a beautiful poem or a touching song.

Here's a hunch: Skyrim is a symptom that we may have crossed a boundary. It reveals to us more than most previous video games the capacity of that medium to be art. Video games have a lot to go before their aesthetic worth is comparable to poetry, painting, fiction, drama, music. Nevertheless, playing Skyrim allows me to imagine a day when video games demand a sort of cultural gravitas, when their capacity to stir the soul is on par with a ballet or even *gulp* a production of Hamlet.

This is not to say that previous video games were not art. Paleolithic cave drawings and tribal music have their own unique beauty, but they are of a different nature than the paintings of Leonardo DaVinci and the compositions of Mozart. Nor is this train of thought meant to make aesthetic demands on our current video-gaming culture (any video game that aspired to be Hamlet, I think, would fail miserably. Now, alas, is not the time--a integral element of the medium is its fun, non-serious quality).

But, as far as the history of video-gaming is concerned, Skyrim feels like a moment of critical mass.

Serialized Pulp Novel: The Rogue and the Merchants (Part 1)

So I've decided to serialize a novel I wrote in 2008, but I need to offer a kind of intense preamble. Think of this as an author's introduction.

A brief yet strange history of my holiday break in 2009: After I finished my M.A. in Literary History at Ohio University in 2008, I decided to take a year off as a student (I started my Ph.D. in 2009). In lieu of "studenting," I taught writing part time at a variety of colleges and universities. Most of the schools I taught at had breaks through December and January, and so--because I had no seminar papers to work on or research to undertake--I fortuitously found myself with a lot of free time that holiday break of 2009. There's more to this story: when I visited my folks that Christmas their house caught on fire and the whole family had to relocate to a hotel, which was paid for by the insurance. And so, through December and January of 2008-09, my wife and I found ourselves living in a Drury Inn in Columbus, Ohio. 

And there's more:

Recently a buddy of mine had given me a great Christmas gift. Vaguely understanding that I wanted to write pulp fiction, he gave me a 1930s era Remington typewriter as a present (also, he was cleaning out of his house). I loved it!

What does lots of free time in a hotel plus the strange gift of a 1930s era typewriter equal? A bad novel.

Yes, I spent a lot of time that break pounding typewriter keys in my hotel room. 

My goal was pretty simple: write a novel in December and finish it, no matter how bad it came out. I finished my novel, a 30 page manuscript that looks like this:

I'm not sure, precisely, how long it runs. Doing some word-counting and measuring the text, I estimate it to be approximately 35,000 words, a novella really. 

After that Christmas break I returned to Athens, Ohio and put the manuscript aside thereby quickly forgot about it. 

I always intended on transcribing it into a digital format that I could revise and edit. But, knowing how horrible it no doubt was, I could never get myself to go through the drugery of doing it.

What does this have to do with my blog?

Well, usually I'm reluctant to put my fiction up. Aside from flash fiction, I just don't like doing it. Nevertheless, I feel no scruples putting this novella up. 

I flatter myself that my readers might get a kick out of it, this truly pulpy novella, a sword and sorcery I wrote in a month that relates the adventures of a rogue, his travels with a band of merchants, and their strange encounters.

And so, I've chosen to serialize this novel, one post at a time. 

Here's the plan: I'll probably just transcribe a paragraph here, a paragraph there. Furthermore, I will not revise as I transcribe. Aside from correcting what grammatical errors I find, I give you the novel as it exists in manuscript form--as raw and lacking in style as I know it is. I have some artist friends who may or may not illustrate a serial or two. Which would be cool, I think.

If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll try to get through a page. But this is a difficult manuscript to read. A lot of the pages are very difficult to read as I only had one ribbon at the time and sometimes I didn't jam the keys as hard as I should have.

Without anymore preamble, I give you the opening paragraph of The Rogue and the Merchants:

The Rogue sold himself into slavery to pay for debts. This is why he was hanging out with a group of thirteen Tabun merchants. They had purchased him before fleeing their city-state, which was being overwhelmed with political upheaval. There a dictator had set himself above the traditional senate and had filled the city with a garrison of mercenary troops. Brol, the leader of the thirteen merchants who the Rogue now served, was a member of a family who were persecuted by the the dictator. Rather than stick around and attempt to reclaim the city in the name of the senate, Brol decided to seek new opportunity in the east. Brol was a coward, more pragmatic than idealistic. He saw little hope of a quick return of the senate's power, and he feared the seizure of his modest amount of wealth. And so he gathered a group of like-minded individuals. They pooled their money. And they decided on the east. They had heard that the Griess Empire Builders (who technically ruled the city of Tabun Stoh--their home city, the city now at the mercy of a dictator) had pushed into the frontier of the Rahael forest. There a small principality known as Drossus was just now being built. Made up of five small towns overseen by a lenient lord in the capital town of Cawsinever, it sounded just the place for a group of men with entrepreneurial spirit, capital, and the eagerness to begin an enterprise.

Short Fiction: Making the Premise Conform to the Treatment

So I wanted to write a post explicitly centered on the writing of science-fiction, fantasy, and horror, and in the service of doing that I went to the writing section of my bookshelf and took down How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction (Cincinnati: Writer's Digest, 1987). The first thing you'll notice, I'm sure, is the date. How relevant is a twenty-five year old book on the writing of genre fiction? Good question. Let me try and make a case for this.

First off, this isn't a monograph written by a single author, it's a collection of essays. Who wrote the essays? Here is where my main argument for the relevance of this book is made: Robert Bloch,  Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Richard Matheson, etc.. Yes: these are classic weird writers who have had success and whose work populates many of the "must read" lists of this genre. 

With that said, there is a lot in this book that doesn't seem relevant today, namely, advice on navigating the the road to publication: e.g. preparing a manuscript, locating an agent, market studies, etc.. I have another book coming for that: Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer, by Jeff VanderMeer.

But there is a lot this book still has to offer, something that comes through in the introduction. Written by Robert Bloch, it is titled "How to Write Horribly for Fun and Profit." It offers some pretty good advice that he distills into one statement: 

"My primary advice to science-fiction writers and would-be writers is to evaluate story ideas objectively and write them up in whatever length is most effective" (8). 

I find this advice refreshing. Often times I wonder if what I'm writing is the most effective length. Frankly, I struggle with longer fiction because I rarely think my story idea necessitates a novelistic treatment. 

I've written short stories a brief as 3000 words and as long as 10,000 words. One of my short stories wouldn't end and crept up to 16,000 words. I'm currently engaged in writing what I intended to be a novella (my aim was 30,000 words) and I'm 10,000 words in and realize this is going to be much longer. 

The key, I think, is to at least have a plan for length before you begin. And also, that more often than not a story idea can sustain, at most, a short story form. Or less, a flash fiction.

I understand reservations and feel them myself.

The difficult thing about short fiction is its marketability. I get the impression the short fiction market is difficult to break into, though I believe current developments in e-publication and e-readers is making the writing, publication, and selling of short stories easier to do.

Because of their lack of marketability, I think folks are reluctant to write in and master the short stories; accordingly, they want to write novels. And this is because of market realities. And so the issue becomes, are you interested in marketability or aesthetics?

Bloch's advice is that aspiring writers should write their stories in the form they need to be written, market considerations aside. I find that really refreshing. It gives me license to say, "The hell with it. I'm writing a short story because that's the kind of treatment that conforms best to this premise." 

Until I'm confident I've become a good writer, aesthetic considerations trump market considerations. 

Flash Fiction: An Audio-Visual Version of "The Tower of the Sorcerer"

I spent some time this afternoon making a simple audiovisual version of a flash fiction I wrote for this blog titled, "The Tower of the Sorcerer". I'm no actor and so please excuse the my amateur recitation (I stumble over a word in the recording and you can hear the page turning as I flip my script over). The "production value"--if you can even call it that--is very low. But the video was a lot of fun to make!

And here it is:

Swords and Dark Magic: James Enge, "The Singing Spear," and Flatness and Roundess of Characters

After a week in Portland and a week in Columbus, I find myself returned to my home, my study in Cleveland, where the drone of my room heater and the purr of my cat and the steam of my coffee fill me with joy. It's going to be a great year.

Today I'm going to continue my series on the anthology Swords and Dark Magic. Here is a link to the other posts: Swords and Dark Magic: Extended Review

The fourth story is by James Enge and is titled, "The Singing Spear." It concerns the adventures of a drunkard who is also an enchanter of weapons whose name is Morlock. I won't give away the plot. Suffice it to say it is indeed sword and sorcery in tone: murder, drinking, sorcery, moral ambiguity, blood, etc..

To generalize, I loved this story. Second to the Steven Erikson, this story is my favorite. And I'd have to say this is because of the protagonist, Morlock. He's very interesting. At first he seems to be a stereotypical sword and sorcery protagonist--a brooding warrior who is out for himself, haunted by demons, drinking them away. And yet, in the course of a single swordly-and-sorcerous adventure, he surprises you with his depth, with behavior and feelings that I believe were quite surprising.

I've never read Enge's other work but this makes me very eager to seek it out and read more. Here is a link to his webpage and blog: http://jamesenge.com/

Reflecting on Morlock reminds me of an important characteristic of interesting characters, namely, their capacity to change. Narrative theorists reflect a lot on fictional characters and how they function in narratives. Often they re-hash two designations coined by E.M. Forster in his book Aspects of the Novel (1927), namely, flat characters versus round characters.

Flat characters are characters have no hidden depth or complexity; round characters do. I like to think about the distinction between flat and round characters in terms of their relationships to character types. Flat characters embrace their character type through action; round characters resist or subvert their character types through action.

First, what is a character type? It's a fully-formed character role lingering somewhere in our unconscious mind that we deploy in order to understand people. For example: I go to a bar, encounter a young man who wears a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, camouflage pants, and who has a shaved head. This happens to be a local bar in a rural area. Before I even meet him I make certain assumptions: he is a redneck, a hillbilly, etc..

Yes, character types are narratologist's word for stereotypes, except stereotypes are always considered negative, slightly insulting, whereas character types are considered the fundamental cognitive apparatuses by which we understand the world and the people we encounter in it.

Continuing with out example: suppose this fella, upon talking with him, professes his love of the Ohio State Buckeyes, talks about his love of country music, starts telling you stories about his tractor, his rifles, how he recently bagged a few deer. If he showed up in a story, he would be a flat character.

In reality, no one really exists as a flat character. We are all complex and unique and therefore character types always fall short when used on normal people.

Let's reconsider our example: suppose this fella, upon talking with him, professes his love for Debussy and country music; suppose he loves playing D&D and enjoys a good football game. Suppose, if you will, he drives a tractor but also is Jewish, is a virologists as a local university, and writes horrible poetry that he won't share with anyone. This would be a round character.

In reality, we're all round characters. And yet--and yet! in reality, we all treat each other as if we are flat characters (that is, until we get to know eachother). 

The issue, for me, is character type and conformity or non-conformity to it. Flat characters conform to a character type. Round characters resist it.

Morlock, as a sword and sorcery character, is unique because he both manifests that sword and sorcery protagonist stereotype, and yet, he resists it.
 

Old School Roleplaying, the Writing of Fantasy Literature, and a Personal History of Wonder

As a writer of genre fiction, particularly of fantasy fiction, I want to acknowledge the influence fantasy roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons have had on me. These days many genre magazines and fantasy enthusiasts denigrate Dungeons and Dragons as a contaminating influence that aspiring writers should exorcise from the engines of their creative furnaces. Channeling Dungeons and Dragons, the argument goes, makes fantasy fiction formulaic and amateurish. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue. I've never had to read through a slush pile, and so I don't begrudge any magazine editor who makes these claims. And yet, it feels totally disingenuous for me to disclaim D&D a mite. Why? This is of course because my development as a writer was concomitant with my development as a fantasy roleplayer. With that said, I believe my experiences with D&D were more positive influences on my fiction and creativity than negative influences. The jury, of course, is still out on that.

This post is a brief collection of reminiscences of roleplaying games and their role in my perpetual struggle to write fantasy literature.

A history: in 1990 a board game was released in the U.S. titled, HeroQuest. It was a simple board game that simulated the adventures of a barbarian, an elf, a dwarf, and a magician through a variety of dungeons. At seven years old, I found the rules extremely complex and felt very smart for being able to read the entire handbook. But, if memory serves, this was my first encounter with fantasy RPGs.

I won't bore you with the full history of my relationship with fantasy roleplaying, which is no doubt typical of many folks my age. And yet, I'd like to relate some highlights.

By 1992 I had both the Dungeons and Dragons starter set (it was a black boxed set that included simplified Dungeons and Dragons rules and a dungeon, map, some plastic figurines, and some dice) and the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons player's handbook, dungeons master's guide, and monster manual. At 9 years old (a third-grader) I struggled with understanding the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules, but I had a mentor who guided me through.

It's a strange thing to admit this, but I was a fantasy roleplayer before I was an avid reader of fantasy literature. I know I read before the age of eleven, but I can't remember anything as stirring as my first encounter with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit in 1993. After The Hobbit I quickly read The Lord of the Rings (I tried to read the Silmarillion then, but was just too confused). This was followed by C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. And thereafter I found myself reading Dungeons and Dragons novels, predominantly R.A. Salvatore and his Drizzt Do'Urden stories.

Television, film, and video games also added to this early fascination with fantasy, but the iron core of it all was, without a doubt, D&D. In terms of television, I remember watching the Thundercats, He-Man, Conan the Adventurer, and a strange cartoon called David the Gnome. In terms of film, I remember watching Arnold Schwarzenegger's in Conan the Barbarian until my family's bootleg VHS needed to be replaced; additionally, there was Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal and Labryinth, and, of course, George Lucas's Willow. Video games were changing so quickly, and so its somewhat hard to pin down a few specific titles (there were lots and lots), but Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy on the first Nintendo Entertainment System were extremely intense experiences. Later games were Ultima Online and Baldur's Gate.

In spite of all the fantasy film, television, and video-gaming I engaged in, the main attraction was no doubt fantasy roleplaying. I can't explain why, but I remember being filled with a sense of wonder, wandering through the RPG section of Walden Books, drinking up the artwork that adorned the covers of modules and campaign settings and sourcebooks. Indeed, a large part of my youth was spent mastering and playing Dungeons and Dragons.

It wasn't until middle school that anything like a coherent narrative ever evolved from my friends and my clumsy and yet extremely fun attempts at playing that game. Throughout middle-school and high school two particular gaming groups stand out. One campaign lasted the full part of my high school career and getting together with friends we still reminiscence about episodes from it. I hate to say it, but the main villain of that campaign--an evil sorcerer who plotted to take over the world named Tys the Fool--has, I believe, became a part of my adult personality.

By the time I went off to undergraduate school my fantasy roleplaying was no longer an important part of my life. Writing creatively had overshadowed it as a hobby. Of course this had a lot to do with the fact that the friends I grew accustomed to playing this game with were far away and the real world began to distract us from what really mattered, namely, that other place.

In 1997, after the original publisher of Dungeons and Dragons went defunct, I lost interest. Why? A third edition was released that for this reason or that I found repellent. I'm reluctant to even speculate as to why the third edition (and subsequent editions, even leading up to the 4th edition of today) don't stir me. A lot of wasted breath and writing, I think, has been wasted trying to defend or attack this or that edition of D&D. This is what I believe: D&D was (and is) an aesthetic experience, and so trying to explain why I hate 4th or 3.5 or 3rd and love 2nd and Gary Gygax's AD&D is like trying to explain why I believe this or that painting is ugly or beautiful.

With that said, I've created a new section in my blog that will focus on so-called "OSR (Old School Roleplaying). Although the main focus of this blog will still be the writing of weird fiction, I want to bring this element out in the open.

The fact of the matter is, if it wasn't for the experiences of wonder I had through the stories I told and heard and participated in through Dungeons and Dragons, I probably wouldn't be writing at all.