Have you ever gone to see a movie in the theater/read a new book right away/rearranged your schedule to watch a TV program because you knew there would be talk about it in social media and you wanted to be part of the conversation?
words
“The Doomsday Warrior Gets It On”
StandardThe Peter Parker
StandardI know. It sounds like a impolite euphamism, doesn’t it?
This weekend, bittercon is going on, and as part of my general desire to procrastinate on Man Bites World I’m going to write about a topic I’ve wanted to cover for quite a while.
It’s a type of protagonist I think of as a “Peter Parker,” the secret identity of Spider-man. For those who don’t read a lot of comics and have never bothered with the movies, let me make a brief list of qualities a Peter Parker would have:
* – always tries to do the right thing, usually at great personal cost.
* – does not receive just rewards for the good they do.
* – often have tremendous personal troubles unrelated to their do-gooding activities
* – while skilled or powerful, they aren’t the *most* skilled or powerful, usually getting by on cleverness or grit
Harry Dresden, to take one example, started off as a Peter Parker hero. He never backed away from doing the right thing, even when everyone else around him thought of him as a villain.
Peter Parkers stand in opposition to other hero types. There are the Clark Kents, who are quite powerful in their own right, extremely idealistic and concerned with living by fair and just rules, and who receive the accolades they deserve for the good they do. If they have personal problems, they stand in stark contrast to their near-invincibility in their realm of conflict. Captain America is a Clark Kent (in fact, I was tempted to call this type the Steve Rogers, but I figured Clark was more well known). Quite a few TV cops fall into the Clark Kent mold, too, including Swoozie Kurtz’s character in THE CLOSER.
Another type is the Bruce Wayne–a hero who is extremely skilled/ powerful and tremendously efficient in the realm of conflict. Whether they receive accolades or not is beside the point for this type, because they are an authority figure apart from other types of authority. The Bruce Wayne characters are less about admiring a character for doing the right thing no matter the personal cost as they are (often brutal) power fantasies about extreme competence in the face of terrible danger. James Bond is a Bruce Wayne type, for instance.
For them what wonder, I chose comic book character names for the label because they are long-lasting, well-known and relatively static.
What do you think? Any other heros you’d like to categorize or any other categories you’d like to create? Personally, I’ve been trying to decide where Indiana Jones would fit in, or whether he deserves his own category.
Sample Chapter of Child of Fire
StandardHere is the first chapter of Child of Fire. It’s under 5K words, and I’ll put the bulk of it under a cut to spare the sensitive and uninterested.
CHAPTER ONE
It felt good to sit behind the wheel again, even the wheel of a battered Dodge Sprinter. Even with this passenger beside me.
The van rumbled like a garbage truck, handled like a refrigerator box, and needed a full minute to reach highway speeds. I’d driven better, but I’m a guy who has to take what I can get while I’m still alive to get it.
The passenger beside me was Annalise Powliss. She stood about five foot nothing, was as thin as a mop handle, and was covered with tattoos from the neck down. Her hair was the same dark red as the circled F’s I used to get on my book reports, and she wore it cropped close to her scalp. It was an ugly cut, but she never seemed to care how she looked. I suspected she cut it herself.
She was my boss, and she had been forbidden to kill me, although that’s what she most wanted to do.
this is not a subject line
StandardFinished today’s work and yesterday’s, too. The book wants to be written now, and is helping me push it along.
I also “finished” some promotional stuff Del Rey asked me to do for Child of Fire, for certain values of “finished” that involve another read-through to polish it up.
I was supposed to also work on Cool Thing That Would Be Awesome If It Worked Out, but time has already left, and so must I.
Books I have read. Books I will read.
StandardFirst things first: I’m not usually a fan of Megan McArdle’s political blogging, because it often seems like a triumph of preconceptions over evidence.
However! This interview with Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth, is pretty interesting stuff. I wish I’d seen it before I hit the bookstore today.
What’s that, you say? Bookstore? That’s right. I was about 12 pages from the end of The Patriot Witch by C.C. Finlay and it was so freaking good that I had to rush out and buy the next two, just in case they vanished from the bookstores or something. Now that I own them, I can read them at leisure (which means: right away).
I also bought Breakthrough Rapid Reading and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Speed Reading (because I’m a complete idiot). I’d tried to read the former once before, but I borrowed it from the library and I had to–no joke–return it before I was done. No, really, I’m not kidding.
I think, in an effort to embarrass myself into learning to read faster, I will blog about my attempt to learn speed reading. Nothing like a little humiliation to goad the lazy.
You know what I need?
StandardOrganization.
I don’t know how many times I’ve been writing a book and I had to stop myself with a Wait a minute. What car is [protagonist] driving?
Because he has his own, but sometimes he’s forced to leave it somewhere and “borrow” someone else’s. Has he gone back for his little Ford or is he still driving that stolen Land Rover?
And what about cell phones? I know he ditched his early in the book, but he stole one, didn’t he? And his boss gave him a new one. Has someone else taken it from him since then?
I don’t even want to start on guns.
I need a simple way to keep track of the things Ray carries in his pockets. I could leave a separate file open on my desktop with a running tally of the things he’s picked up and discarded, but I know myself: I’d forget. What I need is bookmarks or footnotes or something.
Also, I’m planning to write an essay for John Scalzi’s “Big Idea” series, centering on Al Held’s painting “The Big N”. Lots to do and so little time.
I leave San Diego today
StandardToday I will be taking the train out of San Diego back to Studio City. Yesterday’s signing went well–I even got to sign the poster!–and lunch with my editor and publicist went very nicely.
Yesterday was also the day my credit card forced its way out of my wallet and I spent some money down on the exhibitor floor. Nothing crazy–I certainly didn’t buy the 100 dollar lightsaber that changed color–but I did pick up some nice books at the Mysterious Galaxy booth and some magazines for my son. I also picked up the Call of Cthulhu movie (Yay!)
Famous people sighted yesterday (in chronological order): Joshua Jackson from FRINGE, Woody Harrelson from the upcoming ZOMBIELAND, Amanda Tapping from SANCTUARY and various STARGATE series, and Grant Imahara, one of the MYTHBUSTERS.
More importantly, I got a call from my wife yesterday–she’s back from her camping trip in the Olympic Peninsula, and called me here at the hotel. It’s been almost a week since I talked to her, and… yeah. I miss them both. I’ll be back in Seattle soon enough.
God, I’m so fucking stupid
StandardRather than
StandardRather than struggle with Man Bites World for a moment, I’m going to post some links.
1) The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of all Time. Some of these have been circulating for a while, but there’s some all new, all disturbing images there. Via eeknight.
2) Bamboo Bikes from Zambia. Too cool.
3) Ten Ways to Take a Bad Author Photo. Pretty funny. I used my author photo on the front of my Facebook page.
4) The only part of the NY Times Book Review section I read religiously is the Crime Section, but there’s something about Marilyn Stasio’s style that annoys me to no end.