deanfortythree

Rumors of my Demise etc

I’ve written for as long as I can remember, or damn close to it. I’ve always wanted to do it, you know, and make some manner of living at it. For many years, I had (still do, shush) that fear of actually showing my work to anyone, which makes it difficult for it to be published, and thus, it turns out, purchased. So I scribbled, refined, and threw away millions of words. Then one day, I realized…

I have focused a lot recently on the aspects of storytelling like subtext and narrative– the elements which are not committed directly to the page, but are nevertheless understood. There are, to me, the most vital elements, for they transcend the story itself. For the most part, this is a positive thing. Generally, we plan for these things, what we want a story to be, what we want it to say – but…

Your Author Social Media Policy

Allow me to sound old for a moment*. Nowadays, it’s so easy to connect with authors you admire and/or have read. What we forget so often, though, is the old adage: Never follow your heroes on Twitter. Because guess what? They have opinions. They have opinions about politics, religion, sports, or that goddamn dress. They share stupid shit, and seriously. They’re people, too, it turns out. Allow me…

There is a lot of discussion about horror right now – it is October, after all, so I suppose it to be appropriate. Oddly, though, much of it centers around why we read or watch it, should we, etc. Do crime fiction writers deal with this? Because it seems every genre these days has a persecution complex – YA, Romance, SciFi, grow some skin already. But I digress. I’d like to avoid those issues,…

Let’s Talk About Assholes

Not like that, you pervert. Get your mind out of the gutter. “Asshole” is the catch-all phrase we use to describe someone with less than desirable traits. It’s a label it get a lot, since I have the personality equivalent of “resting bitch face” (which is ALSO a thing I have. I hear “smile” an awful lot). But to your average person, I am standoffish, sarcastic and often cold. This buys me the…

Time Enough at Last

If you want a good laugh and also to be depressed, tell someone you are a writer. There are only about five responses people give to this revelation, the most obnoxious being “Oh yeah? I’m going to write a novel one day, when I have time.” I used to reply to this with a polite chuckle, now my response are words to effect of “bullshit“. This gives them a lovely shocked look on their face, and…

I think it is safe to say that anyone reading this blog has a healthy appreciation for the beauty of language, and words. Both the glory of words, and the drawback, is they are simple used to represent concepts – they are not things in and of themselves. For example, what comes to mind with the word shambles?  Likely “a state of total disorder”. But it comes from the Latin scamellum, for bench,…

I’ve written before about the importance of making your audience ask ‘what next’, but let’s play with that for a little bit. There are a lot of stories out there – more and more, it seems – that only answer that question. Sometimes they play with the structure of it, or offer some crazy twist, but in the end, all they do is answer that question. Make no mistake- it is a question you want your…

So I, like every other human being on Earth, love Stranger Things on Netflix. While I haven’t finished it, everything about it is so pitch perfect for a show that is a homage to the 1980’s and horror movies. Wait, what? No, it’s a good freaking show. It doesn’t really… need… to… What is it with the goddamn 80’s? I was born in the middle of the decade, as opposed to living through it, but I lived…

I turn 31 shortly. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that the month leading up that has been… not good. I’m generally a private person about a lot of things, but the basics are that I was in a serious relationship with a person I love more than I even thought possible, and then it ended- and it was all my goddamn fault. Let’s talk about faults for a second. We all have them, and some of us…

The Dirtiest Pokemon Names

Is this blatant Pokémon clickbait? MAYBE. Is it funny as hell? I sure think so. Am I a curmudgeon who doesn’t see the appeal of Pokémon at all? Most assuredly. Jigglypuff. Never let your friends find out you like Jigglypuffs. Koffing. You’ll try it once because it sounds fun, but then it’s just too complicated and not really worth it. Chansey. We all knew a Chansey, didn’t we? Yeah, we did. sure…

Perhaps no word in the English language is so abused as poor irony (‘like’ is up there). It’s the rallying cry of hipsters who drink PBR and wear T-shirts ‘ironically’. And little needs to be said about that song, which contains nothing which is actually ironic, which, if intended, makes it actually ironic. So it is either brilliant or dumb. In any case, irony has suffered much. And not only has…

In Praise of Subtlety

Pretty, POTC, but not subtle Do any of you have that word that you use all the damn time, but can still never spell correctly? And you usually go so far astray that autocorrect looks at it, looks at you, back at the word, and kind of walks away with a defeated shrug, muttering to itself?   ‘Subtlety’ is that way for me. And I use that word a lot because it is a word, like irony (more on that…

Edginess is all the rage these days. Has been, for a long time, really. Push the envelope. Do something shocking and different. And that’s is all true and good – to an extent. Once upon a time, a little film you may have heard of called Gone With the Wind made waves by using the word ‘damn’. Scandalous. And for the time, it was. And I am pretty sure we can all agree that standards when it came to…

How to Make a Good Video Game Movie

Video game movies have the same kind of reputation right now that comic book movies did. There is no way to make a good one! Lo and behold, you sure can make a good- even great- comic book movie! This summer, there was a lot of optimism surrounding the Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed movies. The jury is still out on Assassin’s Creed, but the early reports on Warcraft is… not good. And I am not even…

Smoke, Mirrors and Monsters

Everyone loves a good mystery. The feeling of reading something, that feeling of need to know the answer that forces you to keep turning pages even after you promised yourself just one more chapter eight chapters ago. The bigger the mystery, the better. The ones that seem unsolvable are the best. They make you wonder how it will resolve satisfactorily. Only, so many times they seem unsolvable…

2016 Hugo Reactions, a Story in Three Gifs

    The moral of the story is ‘ignore the Hugos’