To Publish or Not to Publish - That is the Rub

Having spent quite a few months working on the Panthology it's time to ask myself: what's next? I'm happy to get back to reading and writing in my collaborative novels at Pan Historia, but ultimately I thrive on goals and projects that can yield tangible achievements. Writing on Pan is the most pleasurable form of exercise I know, but I still consider it exercise. It's social, it's fun, it's interactive, but the end of the day it's building things that last that I enjoy the most. Tinkering with the structure of Pan is something that gives me great satisfaction and joy as I strive to increase membership and participation by increasing the ease and functionality of the site. Of course I'm only a tinkerer when it comes to site construction but I believe that Pan reflects its users to a large degree. It's not so much about bells and whistles and high tech apps, but about being a comfortable place to express one's imagination. Writers just need to write, ultimately.

Perhaps that explains my mild obsession with publishing Pan Press books? I mean the logical conclusion of a writer's work is to be published. It's as old as the hills—or as old illuminated manuscripts anyway. To be published is to be real, genuine, accepted, legitimate. Technically it's considered a form of publishing to post material, such as this blog, on the internet for others to read, but both you and I know it's not what WE mean, as authors, when we say we are "published." Even when we boast, as I have done, of my status as a "published" author deep down in my heart I want that book with pages of vellum, binding, rabbit skin glue, and black ink. This is probably why authors, as a group, are the most resistant to the idea of eBooks. It's not quite... printed... is it? Of course it is, and I would be thrilled to be selling millions of copies of my novel in eBook format, but that will never cure my schoolboy crush on the first object of my desire: the book; either paperback or hardback.

So what is next? Besides going back to work on my own novel, a supernatural/horror adventure, I think I will prepare one of my collaborative novels, FLESH, from Pan for publication. Like the Panthology it will be a collection of writers, but this time we will bring the whole stories. It will be a challenge to edit the pieces together in order to tell each story (it will be a collection of about 4-5 stories set in a post-apocalyptic world where a virus has turned people into zombie-like killing machines). Zombies are hot items, and some of the stories are really very good with some great writers from the site. This is a piece that I feel has merit beyond the site, and can engage a larger audience of readers from hardcore zombie fans to general horror lovers. I would love to see if I can expand beyond members of the community and engage the interest of other readers for our publications. If it's even mildly successful it opens the door for any number of such projects for any number of genres represented at Pan.

Illustration by Jack Knight

Writing the Good Guy: Give Them Black Hats

A casual exchange in #writechat, Twitter's Sunday writing discussion, led me to think a little bit more about writing the good guy in fiction. I stated that I found writing a hero more challenging than writing about the villain. Villains are fun. They are people I don't need to make likeable, honorable, or virtuous, and yet we are all a little predisposed to get a vicarious thrill out of that bad boy doing what we wish we could. The hero might have flaws, even fatal flaws (one that leads to her demise), but we still need to be relating to her and rooting for her.

A good writer friend of mine at Pan says: "People adore Dexter. He's a serial killer. How can you like him or hope he doesn't get caught? Because he fights his insights and sticks to his code." Dexter is a good example of the hero role turned upside down, or an anti-hero because even though he seems to be a prime example of a bad guy, he has an unshakeable code of conduct.

But what about a good old-fashioned hero?

Clementine Proulx (a nom de plume of one of our excellent Pan Historia writers who is also a published author in the real world) advises: "Readers have to care about your "hero." She doesn't have to be lovable or even likable, but she has to have something that makes them want to invest in her."

I write the historical character of Wyatt Earp. I use the historical record to provide him with the flaws needed to make him a believable human being and not a TV show stereotype. The controversy surrounded Earp supplies me with plenty of ways to show that my hero is not just a nice guy. He was a gambler who consorted with prostitutes, but he was also a fearless lawman who was prepared to crack a few heads along the way. He even arrested a judge. His brother Virgil arrested Wyatt once. That kind of single-minded adherence to duty is both honorable and a flaw. Rigidity is not a likeable character trait.

Back to Clemetine Proulx:

Almost all the best heroes are essentially not so nice people overcoming their not-so-niceness. They do it throughout the story which in Hollywood is a character arc. Really "nice" people or "good" people are rather uninteresting heroes unless thrown into a plot driven story. I think of a Stephen King---The Mist---where the decent dad faces unbelievable situations. A hero is always reluctant at first, has character flaws, but eventually makes the satisfying choice. The more flawed the hero, the more he struggles, the more we care for him...so yes, Dexter could be called an anti-hero (like Hannibal who only eats rude people), but he is still a hero because he can't help who he is, formed by one of worst childhood experiences I can think of, but he struggles against it to do - ultimately - good. Sure we all want to kill bad guys. Actually we all want to kill people in our way. But Dexter follows a code that is essentially the code we all follow...only his is obvious and spelled out.

Clementine really knows what she's talking about. In the collaborative fiction novel FLESH she writes a character that is notable for being everything you don't expect in a heroine. She's old, ugly, pudgy, a fanatic fan of Tom Jones, with few social skills who was overjoyed when her mother was consumed by flesh-eating zombies, but her wit, spunk, and ingenuity gets the reader rooting for her nonetheless. In fact it is her flaws and her history (she was picked on mercilessly in school, had a sad and lonely family life) that causes the reader to love her with a passion.

In the same novel FLESH we have started a new chapter and my personal challenge is to create a hero that is essentially pretty unlikeable and yet, in the end, it is my hope that the readers are rooting for him to succeed. Michael is proud, pompous, prejudiced, and overly rigid in his thinking and actions. He's about to be thrown into a situation where he has to help the very people he's been alienating for years: his neighbors. You can check out my writing for this character here on my writing blog. I would love feedback, as the story progresses, about how well I'm doing at creating a flawed hero that you might hate to love.

Announcing the Pan Press Project

Plans are moving ahead for the re-launch of the Pan Press as a division of a small publishing house. We had our first business meeting to discussion the structure of the operation. We have a couple designers ready and primed. My idea is to start with some of the best of the best of Pan Historia for the long overdue second Pan Birthday Book.

The Pan Birthday Book was published in 2004 as an anthology of all the various writing that could be found on the collaborative community's forums. It included sections from the role-play novels as well as essays from the reference book section, poetry, and in addition some great original artwork from some of our more graphically inclined members. It was sold solely on the site to the membership of Pan. It was a great fundraiser for the site and a great snapshot of where we were then.

It's five years later and I want to take our second Birthday Book just a little further. First of all it will be available via Amazon and other online booksellers and give our authors and artists a bigger potential audience. Because of my desire to showcase our creativity beyond our 'borders' I plan to run a contest for the entries with specific guidelines. The entries should be short stories that can stand alone for the pleasure of the reader. They can be collaboratively worked, based on storylines from the established novels at Pan, but tailored for inclusion in an anthology that might be read by people that have never visited Pan Historia.

If the second Birthday Book goes as planned I will start work on published versions of several of our collaborative novels, and hopefully members of the community will join in to create a shelf of work that can be treasured forever. The potential is limitless. Imagine being able to take your favorite online novel with you to the beach next summer? Imagine running your fingers over the pages of a novel you helped to write? I know I can't wait to see my first edition of my original fantasy story The Midnight People or my zombie horror collaborative FLESH And yes, I plan ebook versions if possible.

What's New Pussycat? The Hazards of Playing Tom Jones

It started out as a joke, partially inspired by his appearance in Mars Attacks and partially because of the whole grinding hip male crooner mystique, and because my mother always liked him. If you knew my mother you would know how amusing this is because she is not like other mothers and raised in the era of the Beatles she always considered it a guilty secret.

I'm talking about my role-playing collaborative writing that I do with the character of Welsh singer Tom Jones. What appealed to me was to take him and plonk him down somewhere else besides his natural milieu and so I thrust him first into a weird science fiction novel where people were ripped out of time and place to find themselves on an empty planet. It was a good opportunity for us all to take our characters and challenge them by removing them from their natural habitat. After a while I lost my direction in that novel (what we call a writing group at Pan Historia) and so I yanked poor Tom out of there and into an even more challenging setting: a zombie infested U.S. of A. While playing in Las Vegas the zombie plague hits and Tom is running for his life.

It's been great sport.

What is really challenging conceptually about the writing is not only that he is a real person (hence it requires a little research and I have to play his music just to get into the mood), but because as soon as people see his name and likeness they have preconceived notions of who he is and what he's going to be like.

In all fairness to the real Tom Jones I'm quite sure my bloke is nothing like him, no matter how much I research the sing song cadence of the Welsh accent, or check into his interviews on his interesting relationship with his wife. Of course being in a post-apocalyptic landscape does make it hard for him to do the things that he's best known for: singing and getting panties thrown at him.

That's where Clementine Proulx came in - his biggest fan, and one who miraculously survives zombies feasting on her mother by hiding in the pantry. The writer behind Clementine Proulx is phenomenally talented and I'm hoping to get her to guest on this blog.

I Care A Lot

I'd like to say I woke up on fire, burning to write. Rather I grabbed my mug and fired up the PC and got to a stream of tweets on my Twitter channel that had me stewing in depression immediately so I unfollowed the guy. I'm sure he's very bright and all, and I'm sure I should be educated about the terrible things going down in our economy right now, but it was more than I could stomach before a full cup of joe, man.

I know that it's shitty out there - banks crashing, fires burning, wars being waged, and I care, I care a lot*.



However there is only so much I can take before I start to spiral down into grey areas. In my psyche there is just no room for monochrome emotions, and I try to avoid the black pits just as often as I can manage. In fact my favorite flavor of therapy is denial. In fact that's probably why I love my escapist entertainments. I'm an artist, man, I need beauty.

So in a quest for beauty I think I'll trip over to my favorite collaborative fiction site and and write about zombies ripping people up. Oh yeah… biker zombies!

Awesome.

(Speaking of music, who the hell stole my CD of the soundtrack from Grosse Point Blank? Give it back)