100 Days of Fantasy: Day 58

This is an ongoing series looking at books that affected me as a fantasy author.

Han Solo at Stars' End
by Brian Daley

As a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was eaten up with the Star Wars fever at the time. I was such a fanboy at the age of 10, I remember getting in a fist fight with my best friend after we saw The Empire Strikes Back for the First Time. Why did we fight? Because my friend kept saying that Darth Vader really was Luke Skywalker's father, and I kept saying "Nuh uh! Vader is a liar!"

If memory serves, I got the worst of that fight. And three years later I was proven wrong when Return of the Jedi hit the big screens.

But back in those days, Star Wars fans didn't have the plethora of Star Wars novels and other literature to pick from as we have today. The first novel to contain a story that went beyond the tales in the movies was Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster, but soon afterward author Brian Daley had a novel released about everyone's favorite space smuggler, the book titled Han Solo at Stars' End.

A subtitle on the book mentioned that this novel was the further adventures of Luke Skywalker, which was nice because it let fans know for sure that Luke was the main character in the original series, but Luke never actually appears in Han Solo at Stars' End.

Nope, this book was all about Han and his sidekick wookie pal, Chewbacca. The story takes place before the events in Star Wars: A New Hope, and has Han and Chewie infiltrating a prison to save a friend. The tale is kind of goofy and disjointed, but it was the best we had back then and was kind of fun.

At the time, I was young and just beginning to work at writing, but this novel solidified for me the importance of characters and characterization. Technically, I guess George Lucas did that with A New Hope, but Daley's novel of Han and Chewie convinced me that great character could continue outside their original tales and still be fun and interesting for the reader.

So, even if Han Solo at Stars' End wasn't great literature, it still had its lessons for me as a beginning writer.

And it was a lot of fun to read, as were its sequels, Han Solo's Revenge and Han Solo and the Lost Legacy.

Up next: Cyteen

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 57

This is an ongoing series looking at books that have influenced me as a fantasy author.

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens

Let me be frank. I hate Charles Dickens.

To be fair, I don't hate him personally. I'm sure he was a fine enough fellow 150 years ago. But I can't stand his writing. His prose seems as dry to me as the soil of a desert.

But to say Dickens never had an influence upon me as a writer would be folly. Dickens has, whether we want to admit it or not, influenced nearly all American novelists since his time in the 19th century.

I first became acquainted with this author's writing with this book, Great Expectations, during junior high school. I had to read the book for an English class. I hated it. The book and the class. Which was unfortunate on all counts. I like to read. I like to write. I generally liked all my English classes in school except this particular class.

It's sad really.

Why did I hate this class? Because the teacher tended to go on and on and on about thematic materials in the literature we had to read. She never let up, informing all us youths about the hidden meanings of this character's name, or the history behind the author's use of a certain phrase, or the cabalistic secrets referred to by a particular author's use of semi-colons.

I hated all that nonsense. Why can't a story just be a story? Why can't a write just write?

I personally tend to think most writers don't have all that stuff going through their heads while their putting pen to paper, but I'm willing to admit that some do, especially literary writers. And I'll admit that as an adult, I have grown somewhat fond of literary study and criticism.

But I didn't feel that way back when I was 12 or 13.

To repeat, I hated all that nonsense.

And I think that's why to this very day I still can't stand the writings of Charles Dickens. I've tried some of his other works. Still don't like his writing.

But, all that being said, I do recognize a lot of strengths in Dickens's works even if I am dulled to sleep by his prose.

The man knew how to plot. True, by today's standards some of his plots were a bit serendipitous, but they were still quite strong plots and interesting. They worked for his times, and for his readers.

I also think Dickens knew how to create characters quite well. Today many of his characters seem to be stereotypes, but that's because they were such iconic figures for their times. Even though I detest reading Great Expectations, once done, who could ever forget mousy little Pip or cruddy Miss Havisham. And in his other works, Scrooge, the Artful Dodger, David Copperfield, Tiny Tim, all of these are iconic characters still remembered more than a century later.

So, as much as I hate to admit it, Charles Dickens and his Great Expectations have influenced me as an author. If nothing else, he and the book have influenced the way I look at and study characterization and plotting.

But I really wish I liked reading his books. Really, I do. Maybe I'll give him another go now that I'm older.

Up next: Han Solo at Stars' End

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 56

This is an ongoing series looking at books that have influenced me as a fantasy author.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
by Mark Twain

"You see, my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags — that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whose Constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have — at all times — an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient."

That rather lengthy quote comes from Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and for me, that quote sums up the themes of the novel in a nutshell.

That quote also happens to be one of the reasons this is my favorite of Twain's work.

Yes, I love his writings about Huck and Tom, and even his travel literature about going out West and to Hawaii and even overseas. But it's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court that always draws me back in.

There's a lot to like in this novel. It has Twain's famous humor. It also has speculative fiction elements (it's a time travel story, after all, unless you consider the tale a dream ... and if you do, there's evidence in the story itself that it all wasn't a dream), which I enjoy. And at its heart it has a lot to say about America and the nation's ideals.

I like the message Twain is preaching in the quote above. I do consider the "people" more important than the institutions of government. Does that make me a left wing nutcase? A right wing nutcase? A libertarian? I personally don't subscribe to any particular political or social train of thought, being more of a moderate who believes in judging each circumstance individually instead of creating sweeping decisions and judgments that will effect everyone. I lean right on some things and left on others. I don't believe in demagogues, who seem to have taken over the political processes and the national media in this country (and if you're one of those who says "but my guy isn't a demagogue" ... well, yeah, he or she probably is ... otherwise we shouldn't even have the word "demagogue" in the dictionary).

Okay. That's my little socio-political rant for the day.

Twain said it first. So don't blame me.

Up next: Great Expectations

My first e-book trailer

I put together my very first e-book trailer for my upcoming collection of horror short stories, SEVER, SLICE and STAB, which will be available ... no, I'm not telling. You'll have to see the video to find out.

The video is quite simplistic, but it's my first effort and I think it turned out pretty well for what it is.

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 55

This is an ongoing series looking at books that have influenced me as a fantasy author.

Dracula
by Bram Stoker

Unlike many readers I've talked with over the years, I never had to read the classic piece of literature that is Dracula for a class in school. I read it on my own for the first time when I was about 14 or 15 years old. I've always had interests in speculative fiction, and at that age I hit a point where I realized I need to read not only the modern stuff, but I also needed to read the classics in the speculative genre.

Since I knew at a young age I wanted to be a writer, it seemed doubly important to me that I should read the classics in literature in general. And that's still important to me today.

In my 40s now, I've read Dracula several times over the last 25 or so years. Each time has been a different experience, teaching me different things as a reader and a writer.

One thing I've always loved about this novel is that it's influence upon modern vampire literature isn't as strong as its Hollywood versions. Yes, it sounds odd, but I actually enjoy the fact that Hollywood got it wrong so many times and has yet to actually come out with a movie that's much like the original novel. The one movie that has come closest, in my opinion, is the 1992 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and is called Bram Stoker's Dracula. Though my favorite Dracula-related movie has always been the original film version, the 1922 silent movie Nosferatu. Why do I love it so much that Hollywood, and the modern vampire genre, has gotten so much wrong when compared to the original novel? I guess because it makes me feel like I'm a member of some sort of secret club, those of us who are "in the know," so to speak.

And what kind of things have changed about vampires in our culture since Dracula was originally published? Well, for one, Dracula could go out in daylight, he just didn't have all his powers. And for another thing (SPOILER ALERT), Dracula wasn't killed by a stake through the heart or holy water or anything fancy like that. A good old knife did Dracula in in the original novel.

I like that.

Will I ever read Dracula again?

Probably, eventually, but I'm in no hurry. There's too much other great fiction to read!

Still, it will be nice once more to step back in time and traverse the Carpathian Mountains and the dark streets of London, England.

Up next: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

100 Days of Fantasy: Day 54

This is an ongoing series looking at books that influenced me as a fantasy author.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide
by Gary Gygax

Tabletop gaming has been around for about 35 years now, and many players got their start with the game that started it all, Dungeons and Dragons. I was a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and a fan of fantasy literature, so it was only natural for me to pick up on the D&D craze that was kicking off at the time. Yep, I bought all the main rules books (and then some) as well as some of the pewter or lead miniatures, tons of gaming dice, tactical maps ... basically all the goodies that went along with the game.

But even back then I knew I was going to be a writer. And as an enthusiastic reader, I didn't just have those rulebooks for gentle perusing. No, I read them cover to cover. Multiple times.

Yes. I was a D&D nerd in junior high school. To be more exact, I as an AD&D nerd back in junior high. What's the difference? Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was a slightly more complex version of the game than the original D&D, but not so much so that it really made a difference. If you played AD&D, you had probably played regular D&D, too. I had. My preference was AD&D, which was in its first edition back then, and is all the way up to version 4.5 last I'd check.

But back to writing and reading.

Of all the rulebooks for AD&D, the biggest one, and the one that took the longest to read because it was so full of text was the Dungeon Master's Guide. Look at the artwork with this article for the two different covers this book was released in, the first one in the late '70s and the other in the early-to-mid '80s. Since then, there have been other versions of the DMG for newer versions of the AD&;D and D&D games, but this first one is still my favorite.

Why?

Because it was much more than a book about rules. Sure, you had your dungeon mastering rules, but there were also lots of long chapters about fantasy in general and the fantasy genre and the books and authors that influenced the creation of the game in the early-to-mid 1970s. In the back of the DMG there were tons of lists of great fantasy authors, and that was better than cake and ice cream for my young self back then (and I really liked cake and ice cream ... still do, for that matter). It's just too bad today's gaming books, at least the ones I've read or flipped through, don't seem to have that same connection with the roots of the fantasy genre. Today's books seem to be nothing but rules and they're usually quite short, often leaving out what many a player would consider important rules. Why do publishers do this? My guess is so you'll have to go buy another gaming book that contains those important rules.

Without the 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide, I would have missed out on a lot of great fantasy reading at various points in my life. That book steered me towards plenty of great masters in the fantasy genre, and I'm thankful for the book at Gary Gygax for that.

And I'm thankful for one other thing. That DMG was actually a pretty good read. I can't say the same for many of today's gaming books, which might be one reason why I haven't gamed in at least 5 years.

Up next: Dracula

100 Days of Fantasy, Day 53

This series looks at books that have influenced me as a fantasy author.

Zodiac
by Robert Graysmith

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote has long been my favorite true crime book, but Zodiac is my second favorite.

Unlike In Cold Blood, which is told in a narrative similar to that of a novel, Zodiac reads like the more traditional true crime books, as journalism. The author lays out the events in order that they happened, follows up with law enforcement's search for the Zodiac serial killer in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and has several chapters on possible suspects.

I say "possible suspects" because the Zodiac killer was never caught. He was never even identified. Though there have been a handful of suspects over the years, no individual has ever been shown to actually have been the Zodiac killer.

What makes this case even more interesting is that the killer had numerous correspondences with police and the media, mailing letters and sometimes even evidence.

And in the end, no on really knows how many people the Zodiac killer murdered. Approximately half a dozen victims have been confirmed, with a couple of people actually surviving brutal attacks. But the killer himself (yes, there is enough evidence to say the killer was a male), often claimed to have killed many more.

Another mystery to this true-life tale is that the killer's notes and letters to police and the media stopped coming during the mid-70s, and no more crimes were confirmed as those of the Zodiac. Did he keep killing? Did he die? Was he jailed for another crime? Or did he merely move and take his murderous ways elsewhere?

We don't know. No one seems to know. We probably never will.

The writing here is solid, as Graysmith is a former journalist, and he keeps the reader's interest high throughout. Eventually the author wrote another book, Zodiac Unmasked, which points out the evidence for Graysmith's personal beliefs about the killer's identity, but I've yet to read this one.

Up next: AD&D 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide