Category Archives: The Fictorians

Fictional Holidays

Christmas tree
Christmas Tree

With the holiday season passing us, I think it is a good time to look around us and figure out how we can put this in a fiction world. Looking at our own holidays is a great way to help world-build and create believable celebrations in your own world. A well designed world that includes holidays may also provide a look into the history and cultures that exist in the world.

Looking at Christmas, we can see different elements coming from different cultures with different priorities, the two that jump to the front being religion and harvest. Religion has been with us since the first cognizant person witnessed the first lightning storm or felt his first earthquake. To their primitive culture, such acts could only be accomplished via a supreme being. It’s not surprising then that many of the holidays surround the worship or appeasement of a god. Even the name holidays comes from Holy Days.

The date is centered around the Winter Solstace, or December 21st. The Norse celebrated Yule, which focused on the return of the sun. If you watched the sun in the sky, each day it would drop lower and lower as the days got shorter. On solstice, the sun would stop its movement and start rising as the days got longer. To celebrate, they would get large logs and light them on fire and feast until the flames went out. The Norse believed that each spark from these Yule logs, which could burn for around 12 days, symbolized a new life that would be born in the forthcoming year.

The Romans celebrated Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of Agriculture. Since farming and agriculture paused for the passing of winter, it provided time for celebration and feasts. Saturnalia also centered on the rebirth of the sun and the hopes of a good new year. One big part of the celebration was the day of Gift-giving on December 23rd. On this day, people gathered to give gifts to friends, family, and patrons.

Finally, with the coming of Christianity, many of these celebrations were converted in an effort to bring more people into the religion. As society progressed and became industrialized, the rebirth of the sun and the worry about growing crops for the next year subsided. Despite this, the history and concerns of our people in the past is still evident in how we celebrate now.

Looking back at fiction, you can put these same ideas into your holidays. If the people of your world never had to worry about food or the loss of the sun, then having them celebrate a Christmas like celebration wouldn’t make sense. Also, in a world where Gods are not only worshiped but actively walk and affect the lives of their followers, certain requirements may be demanded upon them. Think of how these requirements would change through the years. Perhaps a past god required one thing and was replaced with the current god who actively protested the celebrations. How would this effect the world and those living in it?

Even if you don’t tell the world of all the history, it can help give ideas and really give color to the world. If nothing else, it will give you, the author, a deeper understanding of your world and the people who live there. And that can only help improve a novel.

ANNOUNCING: The Book of Creation

In the wake of a discovery that rocks the archaeological world, three strangers meet for the first time in the mountains of central Switzerland. Under a cloak of secrecy, they’ve been gathered together by a ruthless billionaire whose goal is to harness unspeakable power by unearthing an artifact more ancient than civilization itself.

Their mission soon finds them on the chase of a lifetime. From the Great Pyramids of Egypt through the wilds of Antarctica, they circle the globe on the heels of a mystery thousands of years in the making, pursued by forces intent on their destruction, proving once and for all that there are some mysteries in this world too dangerous to be solved…

For in the dark waits a terrifying menace.

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As a regular contributor to The Fictorian Era, over the last year I have shared with you my views on writing, publishing, and my general sanity. Well, obviously the goal of all that blood and sweat is to achieve the dream of being a published author. Slowly but surely, a lot of us Fictorians are starting to see the fruits of our labor pay off. As each of us comes out with a new book, we’re excited to share the news with you, our readers. Today, I have just such a piece of good news!

Authors can often trace their labors of love back through the years. Well, this week, after more than five years of hard work and tireless research, I am pleased to announce the release of the writing project I am most proud of.

The Book of Creation, a novel written by myself and Clint Byars, will be published in print this upcoming March from Word Alive Press. However, for those of you who own Kindles and other ebook reading devices, the book is being made available early. It is now available for purchase from the Kindle Store, and in the coming weeks it will pop up in all the major ebook venues. It’s priced at just $2.99. Even if you’re not a Kindle owner, there’s an option to purchase the book as a gift for friends and family who are Kindle owners. The book would make a great, inexpensive Christmas gift. Think of it as a digital stocking stuffer!

The novel is an exploration of the premise that our ancient history is fundamentally different from the prevailing historical views of our times. Similar in vein and style to Indiana Jones and The DaVinci Code, this novel presupposes that elements of the world’s greatest mythologies have a kernel (perhaps a large kernel) of truth… a truth which is finally coming to light after thousands of years hidden in the dark.

And now, without further ado, here is an exclusive preview of The Book of Creation:

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Emery Wörtlich was disappointed. At this point in his career, he would have expected more than a half-empty lecture hall. And if this class went anything like the ones preceding it, the numbers would dwindle to a mere handful by the time he presented his more controversial theories. If he had learned anything as a professor, it was that students couldn’t be bothered to think for themselves anymore.

If I change even one mind, it will be worth it. Of course, he would have preferred to change several hundred at a time.

“Good evening,” Wörtlich said, a slight German accent clipping the edges of his words. He unzipped his bag and pulled out a laptop, placing it softly on the lectern. He double-clicked on his presentation file and turned back to the class as the screen lit up.

Sadness once again took hold as he counted the number of empty seats between filled ones.

“Today we look at the Giza pyramids,” he said. “You are all graduate students, so you think you know everything there is to know, but there is probably a lot you do not… things other instructors will not tell you because they do not think they are important. But they are. Vastly important.”

He opened the first slide, an overhead view of the pyramids. “But before we get to that, I want you to pay particular attention to the Queen’s Pyramids. These smaller structures surrounding the Pyramid of Khufu are like remoras on sharks. In and of themselves they are nothing special, at least not in comparison to the pyramids, and yet their proximity alone makes them worthy of study.”

He brought up a view that accentuated the difference in size between the Queen’s Pyramids and the Great Pyramid. “As you can see, these were not built by the same people, certainly not contemporaries of each other. The construction of the Queen’s Pyramids is so shoddy that it requires a staggering absence of intelligence to make such a leap. No joke, you must have borderline dementia to accept such a ridiculous hypothesis.”

Already three people in the back were gathering their stuff. Wörtlich wasn’t going to stop them. If their minds couldn’t take such a basic challenge, they weren’t worth his time.

“These minor pyramids all contain mummies-or rather, they did before grave robbers got to them. What I find most interesting, though, is that the main pyramids did not. Contain mummies, that is. There is very little evidence to suggest that.”

He changed slides again, but before he could return to his notes, he heard a voice from the front row.

“But isn’t that why the Egyptians built the pyramids in the first place? For burial?”

Surprised, Wörtlich glanced over the lectern and eyed the few students staring back at him. One of them raised her hand. She was an American; her look and accent was unmistakable.

“For one thing,” Wörtlich mused, “I do not accept the premise of your question.”

“That the pyramids were intended for burial?”

“Obviously. But what I mean is, the Egyptians did not build the pyramids.”

Skepticism blanketed the room in an uncomfortable silence, but it was nothing he hadn’t experienced a hundred times before.

Once again, the student put in her two cents. “Forgive me, sir, but that’s… well, that’s preposterous.”

“You are forgiven.”

“What he means,” said another student, a man, “is that the Egyptians made the Jews build them.”

Wörtlich furrowed his brow. “No, that is not what I mean, but I appreciate you putting words in my mouth. Now, I am sorry to contradict your eighth grade history textbooks, but this is a center for higher learning. If you want me to stand here and contribute to one of the longest lasting and most ridiculous lies perpetrated by modern academia-well, I regret you will have to go somewhere else for that. I hear Professor Gingrich hosts an excellent class on Fridays. If, however, you are interested in expanding your minds and hearing what I have to say, then by all means, pay attention.”

He replaced the slide with a profile shot of the Great Pyramid. In the margins, he had scribbled dimensions and proportions.

“In case none of you have seen it for yourselves-and I suggest you get around to it-the Great Pyramid is monstrous. Its base alone covers thirteen acres. It contains 2.3 million stone blocks, each weighing about two and a half tons. In fact, there are a few granite blocks higher in the pyramid structure that weigh over a hundred tons. Do not ask me how they got them up there; that is a question for much later. In any event, it is a hell of a lot of stone.”

He looked squarely at the American student. “If you need a point of reference, that’s enough stone to build a six-foot wall all the way from New York to Los Angeles.”

The student shrugged. “Couldn’t they have built ramps to get the blocks up?”

“Or a pulley system,” another suggested. “One of our professors even theorized that they might have built it from the inside out.”

Wörtlich nodded to the second student for at least doing her homework. “Well, certainly. I suppose those theories might be possible. But what traditional sources do not often admit is that for the Great Pyramid to have been built and completed during the timeframe suggested, the reign of Pharaoh Khufu, workers would have had to move one and half stone blocks into place every hour for twenty-three years, without stopping for nights, weekends, or bathroom breaks. And remember just how heavy they were. Still are, actually.”

“It could have happened. There were thousands of slaves.”

“Sure! Absolutely it could have happened. Let us consider for a moment that you are right. Also consider that the pyramids embody such a wealth of mathematical know-how and precision that its builders would have needed wisdom akin to the knowledge we have today.”

“The Egyptians of that period operated at the height of ancient civilization, didn’t they?” someone asked.

“That is highly arguable. But it is good of you to give them the benefit of the doubt. Let us look at some specifics now, so that you, all of you, can judge for yourselves. Begin with the impressive fact that the pyramid’s base is a perfect square with right angles accurate to one-twentieth of a degree. That is very precise. Also bear in mind that the sides of the pyramid, perfect equilateral triangles, face exactly north, south, east, and west. And I mean exactly. Now, if we take the Hebrew cubit to be 25.025 inches, then astonishingly we find that the length of each side of the base is 365.2422 cubits. Does that number sound familiar to anyone?”

Wörtlich gave them a chance to weigh in. Truth be told, he was delighted that this group at least had the gumption to speak up.

“That’s about the same number of days in a year,” someone ans­wer­­ed.

“No,” Wörtlich said forcefully. “It is the precise number of days in a year, including the fraction that accounts for leap years. These builders placed a premium on precision, no? Is any of this starting to sound unlikely? In case there are any skeptics left in the room, and there always are, the numbers get even more interesting. Very juicy. If we multiply twice the length of a side, at the base, by the total height, at the apex-which is 232.52 cubits-we get pi. To within five decimal places! I must say, that is not bad for six-thousand-year-old Egyptians.”

“Okay, I get it,” the first student admitted. “It’s weird.”

Wörtlich rubbed his hands together excitedly. “And just to, how do you say, “make the deal sweet,’ bear in mind that the Great Pyramid stands at the precise center of the world, longitudinally between the west coast of Mexico and the east coast of China, and latitudinally between the northernmost coast of Norway and the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. The Egyptians could not possibly have made such a calculation, what with not having discovered the existence of the Far East or the Americas. You cannot make this stuff up. If the Egyptians were so damned precise, why did the Queen’s Pyramids cave in on themselves after a few centuries while the greater pyramids continue to stand after several millennia?

“Now, Professor Gingrich and most of his peers would chalk all this up to coincidence, one piled upon another. But since I actually understand a thing or two about math, I know better. The odds of that happening are astronomical. I mean, truly and unfathomably massive.”

When he paused, the class was silent. Wörtlich was pleased to note that he hadn’t lost any more people since the beginning of his tirade. He couldn’t help but smile. He hid it by looking down and changing the slide again.

“So, to summarize what you have just heard, these builders had access to knowledge beyond the scope of their worldview. They somehow intuited that the planet was a globe, flattened at the poles, and also seemed to know its rate of rotation, not to mention the 23.5 degree tilt of its axis. And of course, they knew the precise number of days required for the Earth to orbit the sun. But I am sure all that is coincidental. After all, the Egyptians just barely had a firm grasp on the wheel.”

He returned the slide to the opening photo and waited for the inevitable response. Sure enough, they didn’t disappoint.

“So who did build the pyramids?”

Wörtlich smiled crookedly and closed the lid of his laptop.

“Finally, a good question.”

*            *            *

If you like what you’ve read so far, please visit our Amazon page and pick up a copy today (click here). You can also visit our official website. Happy holidays to all!

Media Tie-In Writing

 

After over a decade of involvement in various fan communities, I’ve noticed certain misconceptions about writing tie-ins (books based on other intellectual properties, such as movies, video games, and TV shows) that seem to repeat themselves on every message board and convention question and answer panel.

Plenty of fan fiction writers think it would be great to spend all day telling stories about their beloved characters and getting paid for it.  The most junior mistake is to find addresses for people already involved in the franchise, and send them the fan fiction so they can see how good it is.  Unfortunately, even the best fan fiction won’t get read-and not because the recipient is “mean” or even just too busy.  For legal reasons, professionals working on an IP avoid reading fan fiction.  Otherwise, they open themselves to lawsuits from fans claiming that ideas or concepts were “stolen” from fan works.  True or not, these allegations require costly legal support and can delay production.  For professionals, reading fan fiction isn’t worth the risk.

Intellectual property companies don’t go to fanfiction.net when they’re looking for a new writer for a tie-in novel.  They go to published authors who are already writing in the genre and style they’re looking for, and ask if they’d be interested.  They want to work with professionals:  people who’ve already proven that they can produce a novel with both the quality and the appeal to be accepted for publication.

So, setting out with a dream to write tie-in fiction for a particular beloved franchise is a challenging prospect.  You would first have to write an original novel, get it published, and then-through circumstances largely outside your control-wait in the hope that someone working for that franchise would invite you to write for them.  The important quality for a fan is loving the franchise; the important quality for being a tie-in writer is being a professional writer.  If you are working to be a professional writer anyway, tie-ins can provide good income and mass exposure; but you don’t know what jobs might come along.  If all you want is to write about your favourite series/movie/comic for a living, think again.

Professional tie-in fiction isn’t fanfic.

In fan fiction, you’re free to do whatever you want.  You can kill off the main character.  You can break up canon couples and create new romances.  You can introduce new story elements, such as magic, or time travel.  You can make gay characters straight and straight characters gay.  You can do crossovers with other series.  You can cheerfully overlook any characters or storylines that don’t hold your interest.  When you’re writing for your own entertainment, there are no restraints.

Professional tie-in fiction, on the other hand, is overseen by the intellectual property company who needs to approve everything you write.  How much freedom you will have to tell your story will depend on many factors:  how much pre-existing canon there is; how flexible that canon is; the tone, themes and setting of the franchise; the needs of other authors writing in the same franchise.  Your freedom will also depend on whether the company has a particular idea in mind (ie. “write a novelization of our video game”) , a specific goal for the book (ie. “write a prequel for our movie to show how the characters met each other”), or something more open-ended (ie. “write a story about the Were-rats in the Shifting Breeds universe”-or perhaps even just “Write a Shifting Breeds story).”  Companies know that killing off a main character in a tie-in novel can have a major effect on their fan base; it’s done rarely, and with careful thought, for a reason.  Your “unrequited romance between the hero and the villain” might be your favourite daydream for the franchise, but unless it’s already part of canon, it’s unlikely that it would ever become sanctioned by the intellectual property owners.  The company wants to create a tie-in novel that will cause as many fans as possible to buy it, enjoy it, and come back for more.  It doesn’t want to publish a book just to cater to one person’s private fantasies-that’s what fan fiction is for.

Tie-in writing is hard work, often with tight deadlines, writing in a shared universe where the writer is only one of many contributors.  Because of those tight deadlines and mandatory cooperation, intellectual property companies look for established writers with reputations for professionalism and teamwork; people they can count on to get their work in on time and done with the best interests of the franchise as a whole in mind.

For those of you who think Star Wars would be better without Luke Skywalker, or if the prequel movies never happened, or if Leia and Lando got together, or if the Millennium Falcon took on the Starship Enterprise, or if Darth Vader were a dragon-rejoice!  Fan fiction is, and always will be, yours.  For those of you who would like to write tie-in fiction as part of your career-keep working on that original novel.

 

Managed Expectations

One of the things that the contributors to this blog do, as part of a larger community of writers, is to set goals for the coming week that we broadcast to each other. The things that we need to do, or aspire to do, written there and stated plainly to the others in our writing group. The following week, we not only make new goals, but we account for our progress on the old ones. It’s been a way that we can keep in touch with the goals of others, and act as encouragement for those who need it, or to celebrate in each other’s accomplishments. Sometimes we’ve cheered as someone gets a publication, and sometimes it’s been something as simple as praising someone meeting their quota of words for the week. It’s been a great way to keep in touch with what people are doing, and what people are hoping to achieve.

In another sense, it’s a way to keep each other accountable to our goals, even if the only sanction is a sense of shame at not having lived up to the standard you’ve set for yourself. There have been times where I have cheerfully and earnestly placed a goal – say something modest, like writing a few thousand words – only to fail at it, and then have to face up to writing that accounting the following week.

Sometimes I write my rationalizations – oh, what the hell, excuses. I was busy. I did this instead. I did that instead. Et cetera. Sometimes – the times when I really didn’t have an excuse – I just didn’t say anything. A flat, inflectionless statement of the coming week’s goals, as though last week’s mark had been completely forgotten.

Inevitably that leads to a sense of frustration and failure. Wracking up week after week of missed bars is not a good feeling, and there have been times when I have felt that keen frustration that comes achingly close to just calling the whole thing off, taking a hiatus, not bothering to keep up with the accounting.

This is the wrong way to go about it. If you’re at all like me – someone who has a desire to write, but has a whole lot of life in the way of it – it’s important to keep those goals, and those reckonings. But maybe they have to be shifted. Maybe this won’t be the year that the blockbuster gets written or the screenplay gets done. But maybe, if you can block off some time, hit your small achievable goals, well, that well keep the whole thing from turning into an inescapable morass of shame and failure.

For me, I have my final licensing exam for my medical boards in May. I will not have time to do much writing in these last five months – I just wont. Afterward, we’ll see. In the meantime, what goals can I achieve? How can I do enough to justify to myself that I am a writer, as opposed to some hobbyist with an unused laptop in the corner? Maybe for the next five months it will be blog posts, and small submissions to journals that carry prose and poetry in the medical humanities field. Maybe token goals – a scene a week, or a couple of hundred words. Something that won’t detract from the very real need to study for this exam, but will make me feel as though I’m still actively engaged in this equally important passion. A managed expectation, if realistic and still aimed toward the future, can still be an important one, and one that keeps you on the path forward until you can raise the bar higher once again.