Some Unrealistic Goals for 2014

As you all may have noticed about a month ago, probably due to the proliferation of fireworks and people setting themselves unrealistic goals, a new year has begun. As usual I am late to the party (I moved house, and that's my excuse), but I want to add my own set of Sysiphean Labours to the throng. Last year was probably my best as a writer thus far: I finished a novel and self-published it, but I still have problems with self-motivation. Keeping said lack of will in mind, I present to you my list of goals for the year 2014 AD:

1. SPREAD SOME MANLEY AROUND: At present Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity is exclusive to Amazon. I intend to get it out there on a bunch of other digital platforms, Smashwords at the very least.  I also intend to scrape some cash and willpower together to promote the damn thing.  Book ain't selling itself, ya know?

2. FINISH THE LIGHTLESS LABYRINTH: Yes, I want to complete a novel by the end of the year. Yes, I'm aware that the last one took me over six years. Shut up.

3. START JACK MANLEY AND THE INTERCHRONAL DEATHMATCH TOURNAMENT: I have plans afoot for running a Jack Manley serial, with sections to be released for free every fortnight and eventually collected as a novel. I have the first story arc planned out, and it's going to be a corker.

4. RELEASE VOLUME 1 OF A MARVEL GUIDEBOOK: I'm still working on a multi-volume guidebook for Marvel's superhero comics that will incorporate a whole year's output and integrate it with the previous volume. So the first book will cover 1961, and act as a test-bed for the format and style. Book two will cover 1961-1962, the third 1961-1963, and so on, hopefully giving an unfolding overview of possibly the largest collaborative fictional work in history. The first volume won't take much writing, but I think the formatting and design is going to be tough.

5. WRITE EVERY DAY: Yeah, this is the tough one. I can already write off the month of January, due to the house move from Hell.  But I've got the rest of the year to make up for it.  I'm not gonna miss a single day.  Not one.

Is this a manageable list? For any normal, dedicated writer it probably would be. For me, it is perhaps a little pie-in-the-sky, but what's the point of setting goals for myself if I'm not going to go big? If I'm going to fail in 2014, I'll do it by setting my sights too high. Or perhaps by being too lazy. Which reminds me, I have a 6th goal...

6. STOP TALKING ABOUT BEING LAZY: It's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm hoping that by the end of 2014, any mention I make of myself being a worthless procrastinator will be purely for dramatic effect, and not at all true. We'll see.

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES:

What I've Been Reading:
About Time Vol. 6 by Tat Wood

What I've Been Watching:
Doctor Who: The Daleks
Doctor Who: Time of the Doctor
Walking Dead season 4

What I've Been Listening To:
A Night at the Hip-Hopera by The Kleptones

What I've Been Playing:
Super Mario Galaxy on Nintendo Wii
Forza 5 on X-Box One (Yeah, my son bought one. It's totally going to help me get more writing done.)

Say Something

Lately, given my lack of output and the internal questioning that results, I've been wondering if I have anything to say. At some point I think every writer confronts this question. I started writing because it's fun, and I loved creating stories like the ones I was reading. I have written a lot of stuff, but eventually I have to wonder: do I have anything worthwhile to say?
At the moment, the only work I have with any widespread availability is Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity. It's a straightforward action-adventure story and that's all I intended it to be. It touches on some deeper themes (which I'm not about to elaborate here; I leave that for the analysts), but at the end of the day it's about a man punching another man in the face.
Still, I've long believed that even the simplest stories have something to say. Take, for example, the average Marvel super-hero story written by Stan Lee. Many of them follow a formula: hero fights villain and is defeated, hero mopes, hero comes back and defeats villain with brains/guts/a-gadget-whipped-up-in-three-panels. The majority of them aren't classics, but they are good entertainment. Yet despite their simplicity, they have something to say. You just have to look at the traits that make the villains villainous, and the heroes heroic. If Ant-Man wins because he's loyal to his ant friends, then his story says something. Not something profound, but something nonetheless.
And here's the thing: I can spot a Stan Lee story from a mile away (you can tell them by the exclamation points). I've read so many of the bloody things by now that his style is imprinted on my brain, and if I read a one sentence plot outline I could safely tell you what the theme would be, and what Lee was trying to say. He's created such a large body of work that it's possible to get a very good handle on how he thinks, and the things he feels are important. (As an aside: you should all go read Lee's Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Thor comics.  They're amazing.  Also check out Silver Surfer if you want to see a silver alien on a surfboard angsting about what a bunch of giant cocks the human race is.)
That's what I think I need to do: just create a body of work, even if nobody is buying it. Even if I'm not trying to say anything, eventually some meaning will accrue through sheer volume, a meaning and outlook thats intrinsically mine. I'd like to think that, at the very least, my son could one day read through my work and get a better sense of who I was, and my views on life. Or that I could write a hollow yet exciting thriller novel that sells millions and allows me to retire to Spain for tax purposes. Or the meaning thing. That would probably be better.
WHAT ELSE I'M WORKING ON
I have three major projects on the go at the moment. I'm nearly finished a first draft of part 1 of The Lightless Labyrinth. Once that's done I might fling it out into the wild to be savaged by vicious alpha readers. I've nailed down a format for the Marvel Guidebook I'm working on, and am now knuckling down to do the writing. I plan on creating a test volume containing all the Marvel super-hero comics from 1961 (all three of them!) just to see how it comes out and whether it actually makes for a good read or not. Finally, I've just about hashed out the story for Jack Manley and the Interchronal Deathmatch Tournament, which will be the opening storyline if I decide to go ahead with an ongoing serial.  Now all I need is a work ethic.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading
About Time Vol. 5 by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching
Red Dwarf seasons 7 & 8
The Walking Dead season 4
Pacific Rim
World War Z
What I've Been Listening To
Hello Nasty by The Beastie Boys
What I've Been Playing
Super Mario Galaxy on the Nintendo Wii

Back Inaction

I haven't posted in a while, not because of any lack of activity but because I put my back out at work, and when I'm not at work I have no internet. Ergo, I can't make updates here. On the plus side, being away from work has given me some extra writing time. Which I have mostly been using to play video games, but also to write. Prioritising is not my strong suit.

My Goodreads giveaway finished up on November 7th, and I've shipped the books to five lucky winners. The giveaway attracted over a thousand entrants, and over 400 of those put Jack Manley on their to-read lists; but, as I suspected, none of this has translated into sales. To be honest I'm more interested in getting people to read my book then getting them to pay for it, but that's easier said then done.  The giveaway got five copies out to people, but at my expense, so that's not viable on a large scale.

To that end, I made the kindle edition free on Amazon for two days (the 18th and 19th of November). Of course, given that I've been away from the internet for a while, I wasn't able to promote it, so I probably didn't attract as much interest as I could have. I got about 130 downloads. Again, there's no money in it, but the egotist in me loves getting eyeballs on my work.

WHAT ELSE I'M WORKING ON

Aside from The Lightless Labyrinth and the Marvel Comics Guidebook, I've been tossing some more Jack Manley ideas around in my head. I always intended to write more about him, and I have no shortage of stories to tell. In the interest of keeping my productivity up, and getting my work out there on a regular basis, I'm thinking of releasing Manley's adventures as a serial. Once a month a new installment would come out, available for free, and when a complete story is ready it would be collected in paperback and e-book format. It's a model that works for web-comics, and I'd like to see if I can make it work for prose. More on this as it develops.

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES

What I've Been Reading
About Time Vol. 4 by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Good On Paper by Andrew Morgan

What I've Been Watching
Torchwood: Children of Earth
Red Dwarf season 6

What I've Been Listening To
Innuendo by Queen

What I've Been Playing
New Super Mario Bros. Wii on the Nintendo Wii

The Deadly Doldrums

I have not done a great deal of writing in the last few weeks, either on my novel or on this blog. Much of that can be blamed on the Doctor Who shaped vortex that I fell into following the recent miraculous recovery of nine presumed-lost-forever episodes. But aside from that, I think it has a lot to do with where I am in my burgeoning career at this point.

Let's review. I've finished my first novel, and published it on Amazon (both as an e-book and in paperback); I can't put it up anywhere else just yet, because I'm signed up to Kindle Select (and that means I'll be giving it away for free at some point in the near future; watch this space!). I'm working on a second book, but that's nowhere close to completion, nor are the non-fiction projects I'm tinkering with. I have no money to pursue proper marketing, and sales have dried up. I'm running a giveaway on Goodreads, but that doesn't finish for a few days.  I'm in limbo. There's no concrete task ahead of me except for "write more". I'm no longer getting the addictive buzz that comes with seeing another sale come in. I have no writing to submit anywhere, and nothing that's ready to hand out to my fellows for feedback, ergo I'm not going to get the periodic ego boost that often drives me forward. As I said, I'm in writing limbo.

I'm sure that this is something every writer faces, but sometimes just writing is the most daunting part of the process, even though it's the whole damn reason we do this (oh yeah, and the aforementioned ego stroking). That's the only solution: write more.  It's not as easy as it sounds.

WHAT ELSE I'M DOING

I've been listening to Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fourth in the series. As you may have guessed, this one is about Tarzan's young son Jack Clayton, aka Korak. And he is insufferable. Which is odd, because in may ways he is exactly like Tarzan: noble, physically impressive, morally righteous, etc. And yet while I find Tarzan likable enough, I'd be happy for Korak to get eaten by a crocodile post haste.

Perhaps the reason for this is to do with the backgrounds of the characters, and how they came to be the way they are. Both of them are basically amazing at everything. Tarzan gained these attributes through an arduous childhood raised by apes, slowly progressing from weak child to muscular super-man and earning every skill along the way. Korak is just born that way. He's rich, because Tarzan is rich. He's strong because Tarzan is strong. He's naturally great as soon as he goes into the jungle, and everyone loves him.  (Also, he's a bit racist.)

See the difference?  The reader is with Tarzan every step of the way as he goes from weak to strong. Korak starts as strong and super-human, and stays that way. And I HATE HIM.  If a character is going to be super-competent, he has to be seen to earn that competence.  Especially so, if he's going to do so at the expense of established characters in a series.  Korak hasn't done that yet, but I'm only halfway done; there's still time for the little bugger to prove himself.

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES

What I've Been Reading
About Time Vol. 3 & 4 by Tat Wood & Lawrence Miles
Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs

What I've Been Watching
Red Dwarf season 5
Torchwood season 1

What I've Been Listening To
Ill Communication by The Beastie Boys

What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii (yes, still)

Goodreads Giveaway

As a way to jump-start interest in Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity, I am doing a giveaway on Goodreads. It was a simple process to set up: as an author on the site, I submitted my request detailing the length of the proposed promotion and the number of books I'm prepared to part with. A few days later Goodreads had set the whole thing up, and there's nothing else that I have to do. At the end of the giveaway Goodreads will send me an email with the names and addresses of the winners, and it's up to me to mail out the books. Dead simple.

The promotion started on October 8th, and will end on November 7th. I'm giving away five books, which is about all my meagre budget will support at the moment. So far 217 people have entered, and in addition there are 84 people who have added it to their to-read list. All of this could be meaningless; I'm sure there are plenty of Goodreads users out there who enter every free giveaway there is, just as I'm dubious that being added to a to-read list will translate to books sold. Nevertheless, that's over 200 people who know about my book that didn't a few days ago, and I count that as a success.

WHAT ELSE I'M DOING

I'm still making my way through the Doctor Who marathon I started a while ago. I just watched the TV Movie, the obligatory entry (and only appearance) for Paul McGann's eighth Doctor. I remember enjoying this as a teenager when it first aired, and while I still think there is plenty to like about it time has not been kind.

Whereas 'Rose', the premiere episode of the current version of Doctor Who, is a textbook example of how to introduce the premise to a new audience, the 1996 TV Movie is just the opposite. It does everything wrong in this regard, beginning with the opening narration that feels the need to spell out everything from Time Lords to the Master to the Daleks to regeneration to you name it. There's something to be said for getting this stuff out of the way early, but it worked much better ten years later, where this stuff was teased out over the course of the first episode (and in some cases, the first three seasons).  A fan-wank speech laying out the minutiae of the premise was not the way to go.

Even the TARDIS reveal is blown in the opening scenes; we open with the Doctor in a gigantic parlour drinking tea, reading the Time Machine and engaging in similarly English activities, and then cut to a contextless shot of the TARDIS hurtling through the time vortex. There's no sense of scale to suggest the idea that the ship is bigger inside than out.

I could continue complaining about little things. The kissing, and the orchestral version of the theme music (both of which continue to irritate me well into the modern series). The whole half-human bit (thankfully ignored by the modern series entirely). The climax, which I still can't make any sense out of. It really is a mess.

I think the worst thing about it is the sheer banal, mid-90s cult TV vibe it has. Doctor Who has a tenuous relationship with sci-fi at best, especially the sort of stuff that was going around in 1996. As a show it works when it doesn't get caught up in continuity and details, and especially science. And when it really works is when it gets weird, and scary. When it tries its best to look like nothing else on the telly. This version of Doctor Who, had it gone to series, would have looked just like every other sci-fi show out there.

And yet, there are things to like as I said. It's very well-directed; the scenes of the Doctor's rebirth intercut with bits from the black-and-white Frankenstein movie are a particular stand-out. McGann is rather wonderful as the Doctor, and I get the feeling he would only have gotten better had the series continued. I have a certain perverse liking for Eric Roberts' ultra-camp turn as the Master.

It could have worked with a recut, perhaps by losing the infodump at the beginning. It would sadly cut the amount of screen-time for Sylvester McCoy's Doctor, but he's barely in the movie as it is. I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising fan has done the work already, and I'd be interested to see if it makes for a better movie. As it is, it's an interesting yet flawed blip in the long history of the show.

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES

What I've Been Reading
The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
About Time Vol. 3 by Tat Wood

What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: The Movie

What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii (just one challenge I can't complete; it's driving me bananas.)

Countdown to Paperback

I don't have a great deal to report this week, except to say that I have completed reviewing the proof copy of Jack Manley and approved it to go up on Amazon.  Now I'm just waiting for Amazon to set everything up, which could take anywhere from another three to five days to complete.  I had thought that it would be available by now, but I suppose that the wheels of commerce can turn only so fast.  I'll have all of the details next week, I'm sure.

(Addendum: No, it's up already!  Expect a social media blitz tomorrow!)

WHAT ELSE I'M WORKING ON

I have been deeply immersed in About Time Vol. 2 (by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood), a deeply exhaustive guide to Doctor Who during the late 1960s.  The About Time series spans seven volumes so far, and is a brilliant mix of insightful critiques, cultural touchstones and hardcore nerd-facts.  It's an amazing piece of work, and should be the first stop for any serious Doctor Who fan looking for a guidebook to the series.  (The second stop should be Philip Sandifer's brilliant Tardis Eruditorum blog and book series.  It's just as good as About Time, but utterly different in all the right ways.)

Every time I read this book it makes me desperately want to do the same thing for the Marvel Universe.  The universe portrayed in Marvel Comics is a wonderful, fascinating thing, and easily my favourite work of fiction.  I would really love to write a series of guidebooks that covers the breadth and scope of the Marvel Universe in detail, but the prospect of doing so seems impossible.

The first reason for this is a function of my own skills as a writer and an analyst: I'm not particularly good at picking stories apart and examining their themes.  On top of that I have little experience with the cultural context that the early Marvel Comics were created in.  I'm not American, and I certainly wasn't alive during the 1960s.  I really wouldn't feel comfortable making authoritative statements about these kinds of things, so if I do pursue this project I won't be providing the level of insight given by Miles and Wood.

The second reason that a series of Marvel Guidebooks would be nigh-impossible to create is the sheer weight of the Marvel Universe.  We're talking thousands of comics spanning from 1939 to the present day.  To do the project in the style of About Time, I would have to read them all before I begin writing.  It's just about possible that I could read the entire Marvel Universe before I die, but that would still leave a very narrow window for me to write the damn things.  And there are more comics coming out every week, mounting and mounting up.  It never ends!

The only way I can see to do this is to tackle it in a piecemeal fashion.  The first book, for instance, might cover the first two years of the Marvel Universe proper (1961 and 1962), taking into account only the information contained in those comics.  The next book would incorporate the comics from 1963, the next the comics of 1964, and so on.  Each volume would be a snapshot of the Marvel Universe at a certain point in time, and taken together they would chronicle the development and expansion of that universe both internally and externally.  It sounds like something I would have a blast writing, but it also sounds like a life's work.  I'm going to tinker around with it for a while, and see how it comes out.

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES

What I've Been Reading
The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
About Time Vol. 2 by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles

What I've Been Watching
Speed Racer

What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii

Do I Really Want to Be a Writer?

Is this what I really want?

That's the question I find myself asking right now. For a month or so after publishing Jack Manley I was awash with enthusiasm for writing. I had an Amazon store to maintain, an internet presence to establish, blogs to run and most importantly, books to write. This was going to by the focal point of my existence for the foreseeable future, and I was happy with that. I felt like I had found what I wanted to do with my life.

So why in the last fortnight has my productivity slowed to a crawl?  Why am I watching Doctor Who, browsing message boards, playing Hearts and basically spending my spare time doing anything else except for writing?  It's certainly not that I don't have the time.  Yes, I have a full-time job and a family, but I can always find time to write.  If I can play Hearts for three hours as I did on Friday night, there are no excuses.

So I find myself asking the question: do I really want to be a writer?  The answer in my head is always yes, and yet my actions say the opposite, and I don't know why.  It could be fear of failure.  It could be the thought that my writing probably won't have any lasting value, so what's the point of doing it.  It could just be plain laziness.  I really don't know what the problem is.

What I do know is that this is a pattern.  I go through cycles.  Sometimes I feel like I need to experience everything the world has to offer, to constantly fill my brain with stories and songs and ideas, and to create as much as I can.  Then there are times when I feel the futility of life, and the realisation that in a hundred years I and everyone I ever met will be gone and forgotten, and anything I accomplish with my life is probably pointless.  Needless to say, those are not my most productive periods.

The good news is that I eventually snap out of my black moods, and get back to the business of living.  Tonight I've been productive.  Perhaps I just need to accept that this is how I am, and that there will be periods of productivity mixed with periods of procrastination.  And to always answer the question I keep asking myself: hell yes, I want to be a writer.

WHAT ELSE I'M DOING

I'm on a big Edgar Rice Burroughs kick at the moment, devouring his Tarzan novels. I've read the first two, and they are much more interesting than I would have suspected.  You would never see movie Tarzan wandering the streets of Paris in a depression, drinking absinthe and going to the opera.  Or working as a French secret agent.

As a novelist, Burroughs is what I would charitably label "unpolished".  His books are a structural mess, and his reliance on coincidence to move the plot forward borders on the absurd.  Nevertheless, they work.  They just barrel forwards with breathless prose, and if a certain plot twist doesn't make sense it doesn't matter, because Tarzan's about to snap a lion's neck with a full nelson.  Burroughs is probably the earliest writer that I can read for pure pleasure, because his books are just packed with event.  You never have to worry about slow patches in one of his books, that's for certain.

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES

What I've Been Reading
The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
About Time Vol. 2 by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles

What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: The Highlanders
Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks
Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks
Iron Man 3
Looper
Oblivion

What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii