Author: peterclines

Well, okay, haven’t done an actual ranty blog post in about a month. Sorry. These past four weeks have been pretty stressful, overall. Two sick cats and, by the time you read this, seven visits to the vet (they’re both doing better now). And that’s made editing this book a little tough. Then there was San Diego Comic Con, where I didn’t do any panels or signings but still had to shoulder my way through the unmasked crowds looking to pick up a few things.

Like covid, for example. I picked up covid. Lucky me.

I also had a quiet, casual meeting with one of the writer-producers of Orphan Black. And the producer of In The Mouth of Madness and Ghosts of Mars. And the writer-director of The Fog and Big Trouble in Little China and a couple other things you might’ve heard of. It was really cool and we chatted about some interesting things we might be doing together.

Or maybe I’m just making that last bit up. It’d be amazing if a group of people like that all liked one of my books and wanted to adapt it, wouldn’t it? And it’s not outside the realm of possibility. At the very least it sounds good, right? You could believe something like that could happen if any of those people had actually been at Comic Con this year.

And that of course brings us to this week’s topic. Well, really it brings us to Harry Houdini. Perhaps more specifically, to the time he claimed he’d discovered the lost city of Atlantis.

Okay, so some of you may have heard stories about Houdini and how he often tried to self-publicize by writing up stories about his “adventures” around the world. Escaping from Egyptian tombs, fighting werewolves, stuff like that. It was mostly nonsense and his ghost-writer—a wanna-be aspiring writer named Howard P. Lovecraft– flat out said so and often did page one rewrites of Houdini’s “true” adventure stories.

Except for one story Houdini submitted. One where he claimed that, on his way home from Europe, the ship he was on got blown a little off course in a storm and came across an uncharted island. And apparently even from the ship they could see all the buildings on it. So they diverted, sent a few boats out (with Houdini and his wife Bess on board, of course) and spent the next twelve hours exploring all these ancient Greek-styled buildings. And then a giant crab attacked them (no seriously) and killed one of the sailors and Houdini had to save everyone by making this clever set of snares to slow down the crab. Because if you can get out of knots, it kind of make sense you know how to tie them, too, right? And of course Bess lost her camera in the rush to get back to the boats, so there’s no evidence but Houdini swears on his honor it all really happened.

And, yeah, it all sounds like pulp nonsense, I agree.

But here’s the thing that made Lovecraft hesitate a bit. The log books from the ship Houdini was on, The Ocean Queen, still exist. There’s even scans of them online. And it turns out, yeah, they really were blown off course on that trip and they actually did investigate an uncharted island (at Houdini’s insistence) that appeared to have ancient structures on it. And a deckhand who’d gone along, Leslie Davis, was killed on said island and his body wasn’t recovered. Again, this is all true, historical fact. So maybe, in this case, Houdini wasn’t just making up stories. Maybe they actually found something out there.

Or maybe I just made it all up here on the spot. Every bit of it. Maybe it’s no more true than me claiming I met John Carpenter at Comic-Con.

See, here’s the thing. Lots of people tell true stories. And they often let you know it’s a true story on the cover or the first page or at the end of the manuscript. And I think they do this—not always, but quite often—to put a sort of armor around their writing. You think these are bad characters? Well guess what, they’re based off real people, so you’re wrong! The plot’s kind of thin? Well these are all true events so you’re wrong! The whole thing just comes across as a ridiculous pile of coincidences? Wrong, wrong, wrong! You can’t say any of it’s bad if it’s all true! If it really happened!

And look, here’s another ugly truth. Nobody wants reality. They may say they do, but they’re lying. To me or to themselves. The majority of readers prefer their reality with a thin (or very thick) veneer of fiction over it. They want clean dialogue. They want things to make sense and story threads to get tied up, or at least gathered together in an orderly fashion. They want characters who win (maybe not cheerfully or without scars, but they do win).

Y’see, Timmy, reality’s messy. All of it. No, seriously, take a good look at that thing. It’s clumsy and awkward and weird, borderline impossible things happen all the time for no reason.

But I don’t want my writing to be messy. I don’t want it to feel like a pile of random coincidences. I want it to be clean and polished and perfect. As many people have said, in a few different ways, the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. When I’m a writer I’m the God of my world, and if things just randomly happen without serving a greater purpose… well, I’m kind of a piss-poor god, aren’t I?

One final note about this. You know what finally did Houdini’s career in? Well, didn’t kill it, but definitely caused a lot of bleeding? Movies. He’d done thousands of live shows, escaping from so many different locks and handcuffs and so on in front of audiences, he figured movies were the next big thing for him.

Except movie audiences had already figured out that you could do anything in movies. They’d seen people travel to the moon. Monsters of several types. And yes, many daring escapes. They knew the “reality” of what was on screen was a lot more flexible, and a lot less important than if it was entertaining in some way or another. Houdini didn’t grasp that on screen anyone could be a great escape artist. The fact that he was actually doing all this stuff… it just didn’t matter.

Sorry to hammer it home but, again, nobody cares if my story’s true or not. They just care that it’s an interesting story and it’s well-told. If it’s a boring story told in a lackluster way, being “real” isn’t going to make up for it. If I want to tell the true story of drug addicted sex slaves in 2010’s Texas, it needs to be just as compelling as a story about, say, Houdini discovering the lost city of Atlantis. It doesn’t matter if one of them’s true or not. In the end, I’m telling a story, and it’s either going to be a story that holds my reader’s interest or it isn’t.

Reality doesn’t enter into that equation.

Next time, I’d like to give you a quick, easy lesson on storybuilding and conflict.

Until then, go write.

So, hey… the past week’s been pretty brutal on a personal level (and, well, a national level, too, really), but I do have some cool news for you.

We’ve officially signed everything for GJD which I guess I can now tell you stands for God’s Junk Drawer. What’s it about? Well…

Forty years ago, the Gather family—James, his daughter Beau, and her little brother Billy—vanished on a whitewater rafting trip. No sign of them was ever found.

…until five years later, when Billy Gather appeared on the far side of the world, telling a ridiculous, impossible story of his family plunging down through time to a primordial valley populated by dinosaurs, a clan of cavemen, an alien, and an android butler from the far future. Little Billy became the punchline of so many jokes, until he finally faded away.

Now years of research and calculations have told adult Billy Gather exactly where and when he needs to be standing in order to get back to his prehistoric valley.

But the valley isn’t the place he remembered. Maybe it never was. He’ll need to navigate more danger, more violence, and even more mysteries if he has any hope of finding his way back to the present-day world again.

And so will the handful of grad students he accidentally brought with him.

And to stop you now, no, there isn’t an official release date yet. I’m guessing maaaaybe next spring, going off past experience? As soon as I know, you’ll know.

Meanwhile, I’m just over halfway through the second draft of TOS. Which is very cool. And maybe deserves a little explanation.

(if you’ve followed the ranty writing blog for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard some of this before)

When I sit down to write a first draft, I’m a big believer in forward motion. I don’t like to linger or puzzle over things or worry about if I’m getting some detail right or not. My first draft goal is to get to the end. It’s much easier to renovate a house when you have, y’know, a house, and I think it’s much easier to find the right words and details for a story once you’ve actually got a story.

Now, in all fairness, this means my first drafts often have lots of filler names for people and places, markers to make sure something gets a second look (#########), and lots of all-caps notes to myself Things like ASK JEFF RE: OLD REPORTS or DOES THIS LINE UP??? or the ever-popular DO I EVEN NEED THIS BIT???

So for me, the second draft is when it becomes a little less about the wild, fun creative process and a little more about the work. Filling in the empty spaces on the page. Researching the facts. Talking to people smarter than me about this and that. And doing a little basic editing along the way, too. My real goal at the end of draft two is to have a manuscript that I could hand to someone and they could read beginning to end with no problem. Is it the most efficient method? Don’t know, but it works really well for me.

Also, please keep in mind this doesn’t mean I do let people read it at this point. I normally do one big solid, pure editing pass after this. Examining, cutting. rephrasing, cutting more

So that’s where I am with that.

Also, hey, one last thing– San Diego Comic Con is next week and I am not going to be there. Not officially, anyway. I’m not doing any panels or signings, but it’s just a ten minute train ride away for me so I may be wandering around (masked, because the SDCC floor was a cesspit of disease before the pandemic) just to say hi to a few folks and maybe try for one or two con exclusives. Look carefully, maybe you’ll see me there. Look for the wine-red blazer and the cool t-shirt.

What else have I got for you…?

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching
Deep into My Hero Academia now. Star Trek: Prodigy is back and it’s still wonderful. A Million Ways To Die In The West wasn’t a great movie, but it was pretty fun with wine and pizza (we’re going to be joking about kids with sticks and hoops for a while, I think).

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
I got a bunch of Atomic Robo graphic novels to fill holes in my collection and have enjoyed all of them. I also picked up a Tintin book (Explorers on the Moon) that I had as a kid and adored, and I’m pleased that it still holds up in its own, very retro way. Currently deep in the Micronauts omnibus.

Cool New Toys
Hey, I sold a book, which meant a trip to the LEGO store for the big Jazz Club set and a couple smaller, Mandalorian-themed Star Wars sets. Also, I was very fortunate that a friend picked up the two exclusive Monster Force figs for me at JoeFest right around the time of the last newsletter and… wow. I hoped they’d be good, but I really like this Forgotten King/ Omen of Doom. I also got a small handful of Animal Warriors of the Kingdom figs during Spero’s Fourth of July sale and I’m really liking them as well.

And I think that’s all for now. Thanks, as always, for your interest.

There’s a recurring type of video or article or straight up ad that you’ve probably seen. They’re the ones that say something like “Three simple tricks to losing belly fat” or maybe “How I turned this pile of construction waste into raised vegetable beds in just four easy steps.” Or of course, “Four easy steps to get your novel written and published!”

And let’s be honest… we’ve probably all checked out at least one of these. Maybe even a few of them. And I don’t know about you, but for the vast majority of these “four easy steps” things there tends to be a few recurring issues…

F’r example…

First, they usually require lots of practice. Yeah, it’s easy to do this—on the nineteenth or twentieth try. All those first attempts are going to be messy and expensive and possibly painful, but by the twentieth I should be getting completely adequate results.

Second, they often require lots of other skills or equipment. Building miniature scenery is a snap once I’ve got an electric foam cutter, an X-Acto set, these eleven paints, four different drybrushes, and all these specialized raw materials. Making perfect carrot roses are no problem at all. Just get out your 1 3/4” mellonballer…

Third, as the previous two points implied, is they’re rarely simple. A lot of times each of these “easy steps” has four or five sub-steps, which means this is really a sixteen or twenty step “easy” process and the whole thing ends up sounding like that guy at Comic-Con who walks up the microphone and says “My question actually has six parts…”

Fourth and finally… they’re just usually not that effective. In the long run, most of these “four-or-five easy steps to accomplish something” methods just aren’t worth it. Yeah, there’s a chance I might learn a small trick, but in the end, all the time and effort (and maybe even money) spent trying to do something the easy way could’ve just been spent on learning… well, how to do it. If I really want to make good-looking miniature scenery, maybe I should just… y’know, learn how? Not try to figure out some trick that’ll let me skip the learning curve.

Also, I just now realized I’ve listed out four recurring issues, but those aren’t the four steps I was talking about. Please bear with me. It’s just a weird coincidence a better writer would’ve avoided.

Anyway…

“Skipping the learning curve” is something I’ve talked about before, and it ties back to a little maxim I came up with when I was still working in the film industry. It’s one of those things that immediately struck me just how true it was, and I could see it borne out in everyone I worked with and almost everything they did. And yes, I could see where i fit in it, too. I call it the Four Step rule. Whether we’re talking about a career or a hobby or almost any sort of endeavor, everybody goes through the same four stages.

1) Not knowing what I’m doing.
2) Thinking I know what I’m doing.
3) Realizing I don’t know what I’m doing.
4) Knowing what I’m doing.

Pretty simple and straightforward, yes? I can’t remember exactly how I stumbled onto this, but like I said… it just instantly made sense. I could see it with other people on movie sets, yeah, but also with the staff members for an online game I worked on for a while. I saw it in tabletop gaming (both the gaming and the artsy side of it). I’m currently experiencing it in photography. I’ve talked to friends in a bunch of different fields about this and they’ve all seen it, too.

Hopefully most of you can see it applies to writing, too. Personally, when I first sat down to write a story in third grade, every aspect of “writing” was a mystery to me. Character arcs, linear and narrative structure, dialogue descriptors—these terms meant nothing to me. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know.

Of course, once the words were typed out in front of me, it was clear I was a genius. I mean, look at them—they’re typed! Alas, many editors did not agree with my assessment of those pages, and I had a good sized stack of rejections before I had body hair. And that file folder of rejections got thicker and thicker for many years.

I think I was in college when I started to consider that maaaaaaybe every single editor I submitted to wasn’t the problem. Maybe my stories weren’t genius just because they were typed. Yeah, the ones I was writing at that point had a much more elaborate vocabulary than my old ones, but were they really any better than the ones I’d been writing at age eleven…?

I had dozens and dozens of rejections under my belt, but it turned out I still really didn’t know much about writing or storytelling. I’d spent eight or nine years ignoring advice and missing opportunities because I was convinced I was already great. And how could you improve on great?

Being able to acknowledge I still had a lot to learn was what let me finally improve. And improving was what let me get where I am today. Working with other professionals who treat me like a professional. Able to offer actual advice with experience backing it up. Even if some of that experience is, “wow, don’t screw up like I used to…”

Now, there’s an aspect of the four steps you’ve probably seen before. A sort of trap. I know I saw it in the film industry a lot. I fell into it for a while myself. I see it in writing, too.

There are folks out there who are pretty mediocre, sometimes even bad at their chosen career or hobby or what have you… but they’re convinced they’re fantastic. These people are stuck on step two—thinking they know what they’re doing—because they never had that slap down moment. They never bothered to improve because they never acknowledged a need to improve. They just stayed at those early, flawed levels.

Now, y’see, Timmy, we need that screw-up step. That early burst of overconfidence is important. It’s why we don’t give up on something the moment anything doesn’t turn out exactly like we planned. Well, most of us don’t.

But it’s even more important that we recognize it and move past it. That we admit how much we need to learn, accept some of that criticism of our work. And yeah, it’ll be frustrating as all hell and there’s a good chance I’ll find out I spent a lot of time on something that’s just going to go straight into a drawer or maybe the circular file. But if I’m open to learning from all that—to admitting I need to improve—that’ll ultimately move me through the whole process much faster.

We’re all going to fail at some point. And it’s okay to fail. The only problem is if I’m determined not to learn from it.

Next time– okay, look, I’ve got a minor procedure scheduled for next week that’s probably going to knock me out for a day or two, plus I’m about to start juggling edits on two different books. So next time might not be for another two weeks or so. I’ll probably still be getting the newsletter out, if you’re subscribed to that.

All that said… next time I’d like to tell you a fun and 100% true story about Harry Houdini and the lost city of Atlantis.

Until then, go write.

<<Yeah, normally the newsletter comes out the last Monday of that month, but it just worked out weird this time so you’re getting it the first Monday of the next month. You could avoid this sort of weirdness by just subscribing…>>

Okay, sorry this is running a bit late. A bunch of things happening. Which I’ll get to in just a bit.

But first, as usual, some random musings…

Some of you may have seen a few articles floating around the interwebs about how adults are now the biggest audience for toys. I thought overall it was one of those cases where a lot of data got thrown out there, but none of the articles bothered to dig any deeper or actually make any conclusions. Which is a shame, because I think there’s some interesting possibilities in there if, y’know, anyone bothered to look.

Anyway, at one point famous toy enthusiast Dan Larson (interviewed for the article) said that some toy collectors spend up to $400 dollars a month on their collections and I thought, whoa, I’ve got a habit going but at least I’m not one of those guys.

Wait, am I?

I mean just last time I was talking about how I’d kind of given up on Games Workshop, and I’d been pouring a ton of money into that for years. I mean, it wouldn’t shock me to find out there were points in my life when I spent two or three grand a year, easy, on GW stuff, and that’s probably not even counting some of the little bits I’d buy piecemeal on eBay. So now that I’d broken that habit… how much was I spending on toys nowadays?

I started by thinking, hah, I maybe buy one or two action figures a month. Maybe. But then I realized once you start counting preorders, LEGO sets, and a few Kickstarters (I think I may technically be a stockholder in Spero Studios after that Animal Warriors of the Kingdom campaign)…

Yeah, even spreading that out over a year or two, I may not have saved that much money when I gave up Games Workshop.

Anyway… let me give you some updates.

Between StokerCon, by birthday, friends in town, a shingles shot that knocked me on my butt for a day and a half, plus all the other usual stuff I then had to get caught up on after that week, I’m running behind on a lot of stuff. Like this newsletter.

That said… we have a deal for GJD. We still have a few last things to sign before it’s 100% official but, yeah, that’s a thing that’s happening now. Before anyone asks, no we don’t have any dates yet. If I had to guess, we’re probably looking at next spring. Ever so slight chance of it happening before then, but I doubt it. Hopefully next month I’ll have more information about all of that for you.

I just this morning finished polishing a short story for something that could be considered… a childhood dream? Wild fantasy? Definitely a personal milestone if it happens. We’ll see about that.

Tomorrow morning (after all the above stuff) I dive into my first big rewrite of TOS. I think it’s going to go faster than the first draft did but there’s a chance I may have to put it on hold at some point to work on publisher-edits of GJD. We’ll see how the next two months go…

Finally, I had a very interesting phone call last week about a possible film project. Just a casual phone call. Me and one other guy. But still very interesting and a freakin’ amazing name may have come up in connection to said project. And also… just a Hollywood phone call. Not worth talking about more than this for now.

And I think that’s all the big stuff…

What else have I got for you…?

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching
For my birthday I watched Godzilla x Kong: the New Empire and Godzilla Minus One back to back. They’re both very good, although in extremely different ways. I’ve convinced my beloved to watch My Hero Academia, so we’ve restarted that from the beginning. The end of Star Trek: Discovery was very nice, even if this last season has felt a bit uneven. As a Doctor Who fan of a certain age, I shrieked when the big bad was revealed this season.

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
DuaneSwierczynski’sCalifornia Bear by was amazing on several levels. About to finish The Art of Saving the World by Corrine Duyvis and really liking it so far. I think I want to dive into some graphic novels/ collections after this.

Cool New Toys
For my birthday I was lucky enough to get several LEGO sets (which carried me through that second shingles shot), plus my beloved gave me the Patch – Joe Fixit two pack, which means I now have multiple Joe Fixits! I also got myself the utterly amazing Four Horsemen Anubis and Bast two pack, but I haven’t opened it yet.

And I think that’s all for now. Thanks, as always, for your interest.