Which is to say, I asked people to submit authorial photos of themselves that were, in a word, completely terrible. Truth is, most author photos are somewhere between fine to great. A novelist smoldering with intellectual possibility! A crime author at a fake crime scene! A sci-fi author looking up at the stars! A literary author staring off at the middle-distance and haunted by literary things! Pierce Brown just being super handsome! (Seriously, I met him this past weekend at Phoenix Comic-Con and it’s like, dude, you need to ugly it up a little. Handsome? And talented? And charming? Hint-hint, that guy better be a serial killer or he’s just too good to exist. We’re watching you, Pierce Brown. We are watching you.)
But then sometimes you get this guy:
(That’s last year’s winner, by the way — it’s not a real author photo.)
In fact, you can check out last year’s entire submission photoset here. I mean, holy shit. Lady with a chicken! Dude in a wolf hat! A lion eating dinosaurs! What the fuck is happening!
I loved the contest so much, it’s time to do it again.
SO, here’s the rules:
Submit to me the most awkward author photo you can conjure of yourself.
This must be a photo of you. Not someone else. You must also own the rights to the photo.
Send this photo to me at terribleminds at gmail dot com with subject header:
REVENGE OF AWKWARD AUTHOR PHOTO CONTEST
And send it to me by [EDIT: 6/23], at noon EST (meaning, you get two weeks).
Photoshop or other manipulation is okay, but not necessary.
You get one entry per person. Multiple entries disqualifies you automatically.
Winners will be determined by your voting (a roughly week-long process).
(You have to be in the United States to win and receive the mug — though international can win it provided you’re willing to pay for the shipping.)
But as they say, WAIT, THERE’S MORE.
First prize winner (the one with the most votes) also gets:
DEATH.
Literally!
I will kill you in the fifth and penultimate Miriam Black book (tentatively titled The Raptor & The Wren) in some creative manner. Miriam always sees death — since it is her gift to behold how people are going to die by touching them — and you will creatively perish in the book. (And yes, I’m totally stealing this idea from Kevin Hearne.)
Second prize winner will get (in addition to the mug):
Get your photos lined up. Go big. Go awkward. Be as terrible or weird or what-the-fuck as you can. Play with the expected tropes of having an author photo — or don’t! YOU DO YOU. And we’ll vote.
The heart of grief lies somewhere between one man’s expectation and another’s intent.
Enemies come. But one enemy believes the gods were wrong about his exiled people. And he’s impatient.
Nations arm. But one man finds a realm paying for its gearworks with an awful currency. And he’s angry
Politicians lie. But one leader lies because he would end the days of slums and porridge. And he’s ambitious.
Songs restore. But one woman will train to make her rough song a weapon. And she’s in pain.
Magi influence. But one sage follows not his order’s creed; he follows his heart. And his heart is bitter.
And one young man remembers. He remembers friends who despaired in a place left barren by war. Friends who did self-slaughter. But he also remembers years in a society of science. A gentler place. So he leaves the rest, daring to think he can lead not in battle, but by finding a way to prevent self-slaughter, prevent war.
The heart of grief . . . is a trial of intentions.
* * *
SOMETIMES A LOOK IS ENOUGH
I think, as writers, we often default to having our characters verbally share their feelings. But character communication isn’t simply about what is spoken. In fact, I’ve found that if I stare long enough at a block of dialogue, I can communicate everything that character is trying to say in a simple look. Or gesture. Condescension, for example, or dismissiveness, often work better when the character doesn’t even waste energy needed to speak an insult.
SCIENCE IS COOL, EVEN IN FANTSY FICTION
In Trial of Intentions, there’s an entire society dedicated to science. I have colleges of astronomy, physics, mathematics, cosmology, and philosophy. I spent a lot of time researching in these areas to write with a modicum of authenticity. And this is all inside an epic fantasy, mind you. Those sections are among my favorites, providing a nice counterpoint to swords and magic and all the rest. It has a reason for existing in the book, of course. But beyond that, it felt natural to me; science can invoke that same sense of wonder we often read fantasy to experience.
IT’S OKAY IF NOT EVERYONE IS RATTLING THEIR SABRES
Related to #2, I realized that while I had badass fighters preparing for war, I could have characters with just as much badassery whose goal is to avert war. I grew enamored of the idea that a few might use investigative techniques and rigorous thought and debate to try and find a way to stop innumerable deaths. Of course, along this path I wrote in mortal threats and painful backstory and the price of failure for these folks. But I liked the outcome, having different characters tackle big problems in very different ways. Also, a battle in an astronomy tower. Right?!
YOUR COOL MAGIC SYSTEM IS BEST EXPLAINED THROUGH CHARACTER USE
I’m a musician. I listen to everything from jazz to metal. I’ve had classical voice training. I’ve toured and sung shows in different parts of the world. Etc. And I brought that all to bear in building my music magic system. And then, I dumped a great lot of it on the page in the form of instruction of a music magic student. In revisions, I realized that while I loved these scenes, they weren’t working for the reader. So, I cut them back. Way back. And shifted most of the instruction and/or demonstration of my magic system into scenes where it’s being used. I tell you, it was more fun for me this way, too.
LIFE STUFF GETS INTO YOUR WRITING STUFF
It was always the case that the world I built in Trial of Intentions was a dire place. For some, anyway. For example, there’s a barren stretch known as The Scar, where children no longer desired by their parents are sent. You can imagine the emotional damage of those that live there, reflected and exacerbated by the wasteland in which they live. So, some choose to leave, by way of suicide. But as I started writing Trial, something in the real world happened. A friend of mine made this same choice. I thought I’d passed through the stages of grief okay. But in going back over the book, it had clearly gotten into the words. Trial isn’t about suicide, but I can’t deny its influence, either. A few of my characters deal with the aftermath of having loved ones who’ve made this choice. It gives them a powerful motivation to do the things they do. So, I have to admit that life informs art—sometimes, at least—in more than a casual way.
* * *
Peter Orullian has worked at Xbox for over a decade, which is good, because he’s a gamer. He’s toured internationally with various bands and been a featured vocalist at major rock and metal festivals, which is good, because he’s a musician. He’s also learned to hold his tongue, because he’s a contrarian. Peter has published several short stories, which he thinks are good. The Unremembered and Trial of Intentions are his first novels, which he hopes you will think are good. He lives in Seattle, where it rains all the damn time. He has nothing to say about that.
Perception is a first person narrative horror adventure that puts players in the shoes of a blind woman who must use her extraordinary hearing and razor-sharp wits to solve mysteries and escape a deadly presence, all without sight. Crafted by a team of veteran PC and console developers (BioShock, BioShock Infinite, Dead Space), Perception offers a bold and fresh take on first person narrative games.
After months of research seeking the house from her nightmares, Cassie discovers an abandoned mansion in Gloucester MA, the Estate at Echo Bluff. Once there, Cassie finds that Echo Bluff is worse than she dreamed. A ghastly Presence has tormented its inhabitants over generations, and it now hunts Cassie. She must solve the estate’s mysteries or become one of its victims.
I’ve been writing for years, and I’ve been gaming since I was a kid, so of course I can write a game, no problem.
When I sat down with my husband, video game design veteran Bill Gardner, and began to craft the story of Perception, the ideas flowed easily – the plot, the characters, the backstory of the estate at Echo Bluff. We knew the core gameplay loop, we knew the major beats of the story we wanted to tell, so all I had to do was write it and our team would help make it come to life.
Now just put the pen to paper and…
— Wait.
I can’t describe the protagonist’s memories or history. I won’t be able to go into details about how the house smells or the sounds of the creaky floors. I could only write dialogue, actions, and a bit of description of what her surroundings were.
I felt naked. How was I supposed to show what she was feeling? I couldn’t have my protagonist walk around spouting her inner monologue for the whole game. I felt that what I was writing was vague and skimpy. It dawned on me that a script is not a novel.
So then I started to think about some of the storytelling from my favorite games, such as the Mass Effect and Persona series. They didn’t all rely on what was being said, there was the world. I had to shift my thinking, and once I did, it was freeing. The best video game stories make use of the universe in which it exists. Take games that utilize mise-en-scene, for example, like Bioshock, Fall Out and Half-Life 2. I could tell a story of what had happened to the people at Echo Bluff just by utilizing the space around me. A fallen vase here, a pool of blood there and a well-placed diary entry and suddenly you have meaning. Using the environment instead of the inner-workings of your character’s mind is not only a viable means of storytelling, but a really compelling one.
DON’T LET ONE FEATURE DEFINE YOUR CHARACTER
Our game stars a blind protagonist. Cassie’s got a bold way of navigating the world, too. She uses echolocation, much like bats do to get around. There are a number of blind people who do this, such as Daniel Kish, whose TED talk our team found particularly inspiring. So yes, our heroine has a major feature that is heavily significant in her character development.
But that’s not all of who Cassie is, and it does not define her. I, as the writer, had to think of who this brave and headstrong girl was. A woman who would drop everything, fly across the country to visit the house that had been haunting her dreams, and then navigate it without sight? Bill and I really had to dig and search to discover what would make someone do that. In doing so, I’ve created my favorite heroine to date. Cassie is bullheaded but vulnerable, outgoing but distrustful. She’s as real and as flawed as any of my other characters in my books, and she happens to be blind. I wanted to make a character that was not defined by her disability, but certainly affected by it, the way anyone would be.
GOOD HORROR IS LIKE AN ONION
Games, movies or books that rely on only one type of “scare” to affect the audience usually come off as pretty flat. To truly get under the player’s skin, I learned that the horror in this game has to be nuanced, but more importantly, layered. I tried to approach the fear in the game as having many tiers, ranging from feeling startled, to experiencing dread, all the way to true, bone-chilling terror.
I started with the setting. The house itself is a character on its own, and I had to think about how to make the place frightening. Our team drew inspiration from The Shining and how the fear of isolation and madness can affect a person. I also really liked the unsettling feeling that reading House of Leaves gave me—this house changes. Throw out what you think you know, and start again. Plus, having lived in New England among historic homes my whole life, I understand the power that a house with a serious history can have. It was important to our team that Echo Bluff itself had a rich and tortured history.
I also felt there should be underlying personal issues that complimented the themes. Cassie had to battle her own inner demons that paralleled what was going on around her. I tried to weave the torturous stories of the house’s other inhabitants in a way that made Cassie sympathetic to them, but also made everything more frightening to her. These stories may have supernatural elements, but each level has a truly human and relatable fear about life.
Lastly, I had to go for a bit of the old school horror. Enter the Presence. We wanted a shadowy enigma, something unsettling that would stay with you long after you’ve played the game. For the Kickstarter campaign, we have actually kept our images of to a minimum. We wanted the Presence to be our version of Bigfoot—often spotted, rarely seen clearly. We want our elusive baddie to tease you just enough. But, in creating the character for the full-length game, the team had to dig deeper. I think something innately frightening is the power of myth and creatures that endure stories throughout centuries. Urban legends about the Presence in the game have been around for hundreds of years, dating back to sailors’ reports of the foul and unnatural events they witnessed on the shores of Echo Bluff. This little spin, for me, was a nod to a little bit of the Lovecraftian motif of evil that endures. But I had to think further about what it would do, and also say. Without giving away the plot, I wanted the Presence’s dialogue to be schizophrenic and manic. I wanted more than just Cassie to be afraid of this thing, I wanted you to be afraid of it.
Then, of course, there was some more overt horror, such as startling, ghastly images, gut-wrenching tragedies, and the like. Mainly, what I learned was that the best horror has a number of nuances that add up to a total cumulative experience.
GAMES REQUIRE MORE COLLABORATION
When you’re writing a novel, it’s yours. Sure, you may have great critique partners and a stellar agent like I’m lucky enough to have in Jessica Sinsheimer, but at the end of the day it’s your baby. You own it, regardless of how much input you’ve listened to or how many eyes have edited it.
Writing a videogame is quite different. Writing a videogame with your spouse is more so. I was intimidated, at first, working with my husband Bill on this. He’s been a fantastic crit partner for my books, but now I was venturing into his territory. Bill’s levels in BioShock have been called some of the best levels in gaming, and he even co-created all of the amazing Kinetescope videos in BioShock Infinite. I was in his house now. Well, not the one we pay the mortgage on, but I digress. It was a little frightening for me to now be the writer on this project full of award-winning gaming vets, especially since I was the one driving the narrative, and the BioShock series is known for its stories.
Soon after outlining the story, we came together and started to really put it together, and it suddenly wasn’t as terrifying. I was a piece in this very intricate puzzle of designers, artists, musicians, voice actors, and more. And each of these people have different, and often game-changing ideas that they contribute. You have to be flexible and not get too precious about your ideas, because in one day, an entire level can be struck from the game, or two characters could end up becoming one. There was a lot of give and take, and by the end of our Kickstarter trailer, I knew that as a collaborative, we’d really done something special.
A GOOD STORY IS STILL A GOOD STORY
There was a moment in the process that made me realize that regardless of how steep the learning curve was, a good story was a good story at heart. It was when Bill and I Skyped into the studio session where the amazingly talented Angela Morris recorded the lines for Cassie. We had over a thousand auditions to listen to, but Angela had this realness to her voice that we couldn’t pass up. She sounded professional but like a real person. Like Cassie. And when she began to record the lines for the game, I started to tear up. There she was, my Cassie, speaking the lines I’d written.
And she delivered the lines exactly how I pictured. They sounded natural, and her cadence and rhythm matched what was in my mind for so long.
I felt validated. The words I’d written were clear and meaningful, as evidenced by a complete stranger to the project being able to completely inhabit this fictional person we’d created as a team.
And I think regardless of the medium, writers write. Stories speak to us from all corners of our lives, and at the end of the day, we just want to experience a great narrative. I hope I’ve been able to bring that to Perception.
If this game sounds intriguing for you, I’d love for you to check out our Kickstarter campaign, www.kickstarter.com/perceptiongame. Thanks, Chuck, for having me!
* * *
Amanda Gardner: A life-long gamer, Amanda has been fully-immersed in the geek lifestyle for as long as she can remember. Amanda is excited to bring to you the story of Cassie and the estate at Echo Bluff, and has enjoyed transitioning from writing urban fantasy novels to writing video games. When she’s not writing, she’s chasing around her two children (while quite pregnant) and teaching English. Amanda also serves as the game’s producer, a role she was born for, considering all she does is chase after people anyway.
Said it before, will say it again: Mad Max: Fury Road is the dust-choked rocket-fueled orifice-clenching crank-mad feminist wasteland batfuck doomsday opera you didn’t know you needed. It’s like eating fireworks. It’s like being inside a rust tornado. It’s like having a defibrillator pad applied directly to your genitals but somehow, you love it?
It’s not a perfect movie.
But it’s amazing just the same.
And part of — for me! — what makes it amazing is how easily it flaunts its rule-breaking. Writing — particularly the very-patterned art of screenwriting — comes with all these preconceived sets of “rules” or “guidelines,” and like most creative rules and guidelines, they’re half-useful and half-dogdick. It’s great once in a while to be reminded why the rules work. But it can be even more illuminating to realize when something works in spite of those rules — in direct contravention to what you expect can and should happen.
And I wanna talk about that just a little. Real quick.
Hold still. *fires up the defib pads*
CLEAR.
bzzt
Begins With Action And Then Action Action Holy Fuck More Action
Beginning with action is hard. Because a lot of the time, you need context. You jump right into some actionstravaganza and you feel lost — unmoored, drifting, caught up in OMG THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE EXCITING BUT MOSTLY IT FEELS LIKE ACTION FIGURES BEING FIRED OUT OF A CANNON AGAINST A WALL BECAUSE I DO NOT YET HAVE A REASON TO CARE. It’s all whizz-bang-boom, but ultimately? Hollow as a used grenade. Shallow as a puddle of sun-baked urine.
Fury Road is like, “Yeah, fuck you, mate,” and then instantly there’s a car chase? And then like, five minutes of setup and another car chase that goes until the middle of the movie? And then a sequel to that car chase that ends the movie. On paper, that shouldn’t work. On screen, it roars like an engine and drags you behind it like you’re chained to the goddamn bumper.
How does it work? I don’t fucking know. That’s the amazing thing. Best guess is that we get just enough character overlaid — Max is a survivor, Max is haunted by ghosts, Furiosa is a bad-ass, Immortan Joe is a skull-mask wearing chemo monster, and we’re off to the races once more.
Very Little Oxygen
Writing action is very often: ramp up action, then draw down into some oxygen, then more action, then more oxygen. A action film’s rhythm is like breathing during sex — starts normal, then you hold it, then it gets faster and faster and then you slow back down and then go go go nnngh holy toe-curling shitkittens, boom. Die Hard has that classic rhythm. Intense action, then oxygen of roughly equal duration. You learn about character and context, then back into action. It works. It’s a good pattern and you can use it for a lot of storytelling that has fighting or gunplay or fucking or fightplay gunfucking or whatever.
But Max gives the tiniest little appe-teasers of oxygen. But mostly? It’s all action. It’s two hours of cinematic-foot-on-an-accelerator with only a handful narrative potty-breaks.
How does it work?
What little oxygen you get is like gulps of air when you’re drowning in rising floodwater.
They’re meager, but they work. And the film never really lets you get comfortable.
That won’t fly with every story.
But hot chromeshite, it works here.
Protagonist And Main Character Are Not The Same
Mad Max is the main character.
Furiosa is the protagonist.
His is our POV.
But she is the one with agency to change things.
She moves the story.
He is merely present in the story.
She fires the gun.
He’s the shoulder on which she rests the weapon.
(I can’t speak to whether or not the film is truly feminist — that’s for smarter and more impacted people than I am to decide. But you have a world where the men are either all-brutal or half-useless, and are made more “human” by their contact with women. Women in this are generative creatures, the keepers of the future, the civilizing force. They’re the ones who get shit done and who will change the world. The men can either get in line, or they can get fucked. It’s not just that the film gives the women characters agency — it’s also about what’s necessary for them to be equal, and for the world to be made better in their wake, not in the wake of men. We are given the suggestion that men ruined this world, but it might just be the women who fix it.)
Regardless — separating your protagonist and your main character is a tricky maneuver. It’s ADVANCED LEVEL shit, hombre. But Mad Max handles it well — even using it to perhaps drive home the point I just made (re: feminism) above.
Explains Almost Nothing
Haha, you wanted answers and context as to what’s really going on?
WELL TOO GODDAMN BAD.
The film’s world-building is such that here’s how it builds its world:
“Did you see that thing that just happened? We just drove past it at 120 MPH.”
“But you didn’t tell me anything about it.”
“Oh, you want to know more about it?”
“I do!”
*shoves bottle rockets in your mouth*
*throws you into a pit*
*covers you in guzzoleen and bullet casings*
*throws a car on top of you too because hey cars are cool*
*the car is covered in spikes and Juggalos because of course it is*
The movie doesn’t linger. It never AS YOU KNOW, BOBs you. It assumes you either will figure it out or you won’t and that’s on you. What’s with the chrome paint? And the Valhalla? And who are the Bullet Farmers and what the fuck is Gas Town? Why is Max a blood bag? What is a Doof Warrior and why is that girl named Toast? Who is the little girl in his vision?
What the actual unholy sand-fucked shit is going on?!
Nope. None of it. No hard answers.
Just buckle up, butterfly. Can you get away with this in your story? Maybe. Fury Road does it because it still recognizes that the real story isn’t all those details but rather, about the flight for freedom. It gives you the details you really need to get to the next moment — and literally nothing more. No fat on those bones. It’s lean and raggedy as a starving coyote.
But it still hunts.
And Oh By The Way, Fuck Consistency
Everyone wants to know how this lines up with the previous three films and they’re scrambling to draw the comparisons — MAYBE MAX IS FERAL BOY AND FURIOSA WAS MAX’S DAUGHTER AND LOOK THE MUSIC BOX AND I’M PRETTY SURE I JUST SAW MASTER BLASTER IN THE CORNER OF MY EYE SITTING NEXT TO ME IN THE THEATER — and all of that routinely fails because these films are basically disconnected narratives. They advance only the narrative of the apocalypse (in each, the world is worse than when we last saw it). Max is different in each. Little actually connects them. Less connects this one to the last three. It doesn’t matter.
Good luck pulling that off in your story, ha ha ha.
Why does it work here? Again, fuck if I know. It works because it works. It works because thematically it’s tied together. Because it’s like revisited mythology — an interpretation of character and story, whether we’re talking about Zeus or Jesus or Batman or Bond. (Behold my new character: JAY-ZEUS BATBOND, the super-spy vigilante savior! Somebody pay me.)
Mad Max: Fury Road doesn’t give a bucket of sunburned fucks about your rules.
Your writing and storytelling rules are just roadkill, bubba.
What are you reading right now? Er, beside this post, I mean.
Me, I just finished:
Delilah S. Dawson’s HIT — a YA about a girl who takes on the debt of her mother and has to pay it back in a rather unconventional way: kill or recruit other debtors in service to the bank that just secretly took over the US government. It’s fucking rad, this book. It’s like, the metaphor of a teenager taking on the burden of her parents is right on. And Patsy is in some ways a cousin to my own Atlanta Burns* (an heir to the problems her not-great mother brought to bear, uses a gun, Southern, drawn into a conspiracy larger than she cares to handle, small town, unexpected dog).
Christopher Golden’s TIN MEN — doesn’t come out till the end of June, but this is a bad-ass near-future war thriller worth checking out. Terrorists and presidential assassinations and cool bleeding-edge tech and oh yeah soldiers controlling robot drone bodies with their minds. I read it and I thought, “This reads like Terminator plus Saving Private Ryan,” and then I went back and saw that Scott Sigler said exactly that in his blurb. Thus proving that I am secretly Scott Sigler.
Speaking of Scott Sigler —
I am presently reading his own: ALIVE. Which is so far taut as a choking rope and mysterious as the strange rash I have on my left buttock in the shape of Cousin Balki of Perfect Strangers. The book stars teenage protagonists but I don’t think is YA? Whatever, it’s great. Not out till July. I also, rather foolishly, haven’t read enough Sigler in my life, so this goes toward correcting it.
I’m also reading Adam Christopher’s MADE TO KILL — which is, what exactly? Robot pulp noir? I dunno what to call it, but I know I’m loving it so far. (Adam is, of course, my co-writer on The Shield, which hey did you see Drew Johnson’s jumping on board the book and hey look at that art that I’ve posted at the bottom of the page because I’m totally shameless and isn’t it cool?)
Oh! Also, a couple quick administrative notes:
a) I’m gone from Wednesday this week to Monday of next week. Because of Phoenix ComicCon, which is awesome and you should go and I’ll see you there. But that means posting might be light.
b) I feel like some folks haven’t yet seen the winners of the STORY IN SEARCH TERMS contest — but hey, the winners are picked, and if you are a winner, contact me, will ya?
Anyway.
Your turn.
What did you just read?
And what are you reading now?
Time to share the book-love.
Or I guess the book-hate if you didn’t like it, but pssh, whatever.
* by the way, Atlanta Burns is on sale this week at Amazon — the Kindle is at $3.99, and the trade paperback has dropped to $7.50, should you be so inclined to check it out.
