Category Archives: On Writing

My First Published Story

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At every comic book convention and book festival I attend, I meet young writers—some middle schoolers, but mostly teenagers—who want to hone their craft, but are either embarrassed by what they’ve written, or frustrated that the words aren’t coming fast enough. And they want to give up.

As writers, we all know about frustration. It’s sitting at your laptop or desktop computer, staring at the screen, trying to will the next words to form so you can get down to business—and they won’t show up. And sure, we all get embarrassed by stuff we’ve written—we see the mistakes and the clunky sentence structure and the stilted dialogue that everyone fails to notice while they’re telling us how brilliant the prose is.

But that, as the saying goes, is all part of the game. You accept the frustrations and the embarrassments and move on. There’s no reason to just give up.

Want an example?

Here, presented for the first time anywhere, are scans of my first published work, “Again: He Who Stalks”—a space-fantasy story I wrote in my junior year at Loyola School in NYC; I would’ve been 16 or so. (I’ve updated the title treatment so not everything about this thing is embarrassing.) Even though it wears its Star Wars influence not just on its sleeve but on the whole damn coat (I was a major SW fan back then), even though every moment I spent re-reading it for this post made me cringe—because no creator likes to examine their early works—it reinforces the adage I’m constantly telling young writers: Everybody’s Gotta Start Somewhere. You just have to keep at it.

Looking at “Stalks” today…yeah, it’s pretty embarrassing—to me, at least. The clunky sentence structure and stilted dialogue? They’re all there—and more. I mean, nerdy author notes within the story explaining sci-fi terms I’d made up? Really? I even provided the sad illustration on page 4. Even worse, it was meant to tie-in to an 8mm sci-fi movie I’d tried my hand at writing and directing (Star Knights? Seriously? Ugh.), but never got past the first couple of days of shooting—before the brand-new camera broke. (That’s what I get for attempting double exposures on film by taping over one of the gears inside the camera housing—damn you for your bad advice, Cinemagic magazine!)

And yet, warts and all, this little gem won The Loyola Magazine!’s contest for Best Short Story—which came as a complete surprise to me. It also led to the teacher who oversaw the magazine asking me the next year if I’d like to become the fiction editor (thanks again, Mr. Moylan!); I said yes. So, maybe “Stalks” was better than I thought…at the time. And maybe if I hadn’t written it I wouldn’t have started down the path that has me entertaining you today with the adventures of a teenaged Goth named Pandora Zwieback.

Everybody’s Gotta Start Somewhere. So keep writing!

“Again: He Who Stalks” copyright © 1979, 2014 Steven A. Roman. All rights reserved.

Writing Influences: Hunters and Warriors

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In prior installments of this recurring topic, I’ve talked about some of the inspirations that influenced the first Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud: for example, HorrorPops’ song “MissFit” and Misfits’ “Fiend Club.” (Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” also has its place in Zwieback history, but we don’t need to cover that one today.)

There have been other, nonmusical ones, of course—both the TV series Doctor Who and the comic book character Vampirella have been major influences on Pan and her mentor, Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin (we’ll cover those in another post)—but for now, let’s focus on these three:

Highlander: Not so much the original Christopher Lambert/Sean Connery film that launched the franchise (let’s just pretend the god-awful sequels that followed never happened), but the 1990s TV series starring Adrian Paul as Duncan MacLeod. Four hundred years old? Warrior and lover? Flashbacks to historical adventures? Yeah, I guess you could say it had a tiny bit of influence on Annie’s immortal status.  😀

 


Kolchak: the Night Stalker: Before Mulder and Scully in The X-Files, there was intrepid-but-luckless reporter and monster hunter Carl Kolchak, created by author Jeff Rice in an unpublished novel titled The Kolchak Papers, and portrayed by fantastic character actor Darren McGavin. Kolchak starred in two early seventies made-for-TV movies (The Night Stalker—adapted from Rice’s manuscript—and The Night Strangler, both written by I Am Legend author Richard Matheson), and then in the one-season TV series that bore his name. From vampires and swamp monsters to Jack the Ripper and seven-foot-tall American Indian spirits, Kolchak chased and killed them all, in pursuit of the one great news story that would make him an A-list journalist. Of course no one ever believed him, and he never got that A-list story, but that didn’t mean Carl stopped trying.

Sonja Blue: Author Nancy A. Collins’s punk-rock vampire who hunts other vampires, introduced in the 1989 novel Sunglasses After Dark and still stalking her kind today in brand-new novellas. In an Anne Rice–influenced horror industry, at a time when just about every publisher was seeking to knock off Interview With the Vampire (or at least its success, as publishers do these days with their Twilight, Hunger Games, and 50 Shades of Grey imitations), Sonja arrived on the scene as the anti-Lestat. There was nothing romantic about vampirism in Sonja’s world—it was brutal and ugly and a curse, and being turned into a blood-drinking corpse only meant that Sonja was able to unleash her full anger to kill every stinking vampire she could find.

Brutal and ugly vampires—sort of like the way I approached the vampire clans in Blood Feud. Because if there’s one thing you can be certain of in Pan’s world, it’s that the vampires don’t sparkle.  😀

Still, it’s what you do with your influences that makes the final version of any writing project. Annie may take a cue or two from Duncan MacLeod and Sonja Blue, and she and Pan might be descendants of Carl Kolchak, but they’re only spices added to the flavorful stew called The Saga of Pandora Zwieback; the rest of the character ingredients come from me.

Hmm. Cooking analogies. I think maybe I’ve been watching Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives too much. Well, Pan does get her surname from a cookie, so…

Writing: Musical Influences: “Fiend Club”

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So, picking up where we left off in the February 27th post, we’ve been discussing influences on the writing of the first Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud. Last time I talked about how the Horrorpops song “MissFit” became Pan’s anthem. Now we get to the introduction of her gothy friends.

There’s a scene in chapter 21 in which Pan and her friends do a little song-and-dance number for videographer Tim Merrick (whose day job is working as an assistant to David Zwieback, owner of the storefront museum Renfield’s House of Horrors and Mystical Antiquities). When I started writing that scene, the first horror-related tune that popped into my head was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” A classic 1980s pop hit, with a good beat and lyrics, and Vincent Price rapping—what better song for Pan to launch into?

Yeah, okay, it was too easy a musical choice, and way too mainstream a tune for Goths, but I was trying to find a way to make a transition between a scene in Renfield’s, during which Pan has lovingly bullied her father into retrieving her makeup kit from his car, and the dance number on the museum’s basement steps. As originally written, it went like this:

The door swung shut behind him, and Pan turned to face Tim. He looked highly amused. “What?”

Tim shrugged. “Just couldn’t help noticing you got him trained well.”

“Of course.” Pan flashed a wicked grin. “And now, Timothy,” she intoned in her deepest, most ominous voice, “at last you know the true power of being Daddy’s Little Girl…”

*          *          *

“ ’Cause this is Thrillllerrrrr!” Pan wailed, head thrown back, as she and the crew sang along with Michael Jackson and danced on the steps leading to the museum’s basement floor.

In movie terminology, I saw the transition as a smash cut: an abrupt jump from one scene to the next—in this case, everyday Pan giving her best sinister smile instantly changing into glammed-up Pan singing her heart out as the “camera” pulls back to show her and her friends on the stairs. (If you’ve been following these posts, you already know how I tend to “see” the scenes I write in cinematic angles.)

But then one night I downloaded the latest episode of Rue Morgue Radio (a great online, F-bomb-loaded radio-style show that stopped broadcasting in January 2012 after seven years, but you should definitely check out their archives). One of the first songs that the host, Tomb Dragomir, played was a track from the Misfits’ 1999 album Famous Monsters: “Fiend Club”—and I suddenly realized that Pan & Co. had a much better song to perform:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5TgEU4f_eY

We won’t pretend that this is the end
We’re not losers all of the time
We march and we fall
We’re one and for all
It’s just evil all of the time
All the time

We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
Not you! Not you!

You dress so messed up
Your hair is too long
But I’m changing it all of the time
We march and we fall
We’re one and for all
It’s just evil all of the time
All the time
Evil all the time

We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
Not you! Not you!

Evil all the time

We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
We are the fiend club
Not you! Not you!

We are the fiend club

Not exactly a song you can choreograph a dance number to—well, not unless it includes a lot of violent head banging—but I thought, what a great anthem that would make for Pan and her friends: united in their weirdness, and proud of it. So, out went the King of Pop and in came a far more appropriate band (who are horror fans themselves).

FYI: The actual Fiend Club is the Misfits’ fan club. You can find it here.

Writing: What Inspires You?

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“Where do you get your ideas from?” It’s the question every writer has been asked at some point in their career, and one that never has a set single answer.

I addressed a similar question, “What inspires you to write?”, in a recent interview at the book-review blog Fiction Fascination, explaining the genesis of a couple of scenes in Blood Feud, the first Pandora Zwieback novel: Pan sitting out in a rainstorm; how her dad gave her a DVD copy of the not-suitable-for-little-kids movie Watership Down (“But it had bunnies on the cover!”) for her fifth birthday. Writing inspirations can come from almost anywhere—it can be a book you’ve read, a conversation you overheard, a song that played on the radio…

They can even come from observations of the most mundane events. For example: this scene in the 1999 film American Beauty—written by True Blood creator Alan Ball—in which Wes Bentley’s character Ricky Fitts describes videotaping a plastic bag floating in a breeze:

In an interview conducted in 2000, Ball explained that the scene was inspired by “an encounter I had [in the early 1990s] with a plastic bag one day in front of the World Trade Center.”

One of my short stories, “Laundry Day”—about a group of people trapped while doing their wash on the eve of a zombie uprising—got its start from a toy ring that I bought from a gumball machine in a neighborhood Laundromat. What popped into my head when I first saw the machine full of rings was a scene of a guy presenting this crappy, 25-cent jewelry to his girlfriend as a romantic gesture, knowing they’d never have the chance to get married. The “camera” in my head then pulled back to reveal them huddled inside a Laundromat that had its metal security gates pulled down; beyond the gates was a full-on zombie apocalypse. (Yes, a lot of what I “see” when I write involves Hollywood-style cinematography.)

Initially it was going to be a three-page comic book story, with the zombie reveal on the final page. I never got around to writing it, though, and the toy ring (the one you see in the picture) sat in a drawer for a few years. Then, in 2006, I was invited by editor Vincent Sneed to pitch a story for his upcoming zombie anthology, The Dead Walk Again!—and it just so happened I had this toy ring in a drawer to remind me of something…

By the time I finished the story it had taken on a much darker—some have said incredibly nasty—tone. My rationale was that, in a zombie anthology, there’s no surprise in having your tale end with “And then he became a zombie, too!” and a happy ending would seem like a cheat. Thus, the bleaker tone, and an ending that literally took people by surprise—which is exactly the sort of reaction every writer wants from their audience.

(“Laundry Day,” by the way, was reprinted in 2010, in another walking dead anthology: Best New Zombie Tales 2, published by Books of the Dead Press. Warning: it’s not a story—or a book—for younger readers. The stories are gory as hell, and in “Laundry Day” I drop F-bombs so frequently you’d think I picked them up at a discount at Costco.)

Next week, we’ll look at some of the inspirations that worked their way into the first Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud. Feel free to sing along with them…


Talking to Myself (Part 3)

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Wrapping up a previously unprinted interview that I did for another Web site…

What is the one book no writer should be without?

I’ll give you five (’cause I’m so generous!):

On Writing, by Stephen King: It’s not only a great guide to the craft, but it’s also a good look into the creative writing process and serves as the closest thing you’ll get to King’s autobiography. I’m always recommending it to writers, even though I ignore probably half of his rules.

Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale—The Final Chapter, by Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook: Basically, it’s a massive collection of e-mails between Davies (the writer/producer who, in 2005, successfully revived Doctor Who) and former Doctor Who Magazine editor Cook that intricately explores the writer’s mind-set when he’s trying to create. Davies is amazingly open about how he writes, and in how he fights through frequent bouts of procrastination. The Final Chapter covers the period between Davies’s third season on the show, all the way to the conclusion of the final David Tennant two-part episode “The End of Time.” It may not teach you new writing tricks, but it’s a fascinating exploration of the writing process.

The Chicago Manual of Style: It’s the bible of the publishing industry, used by every editor, copyeditor, and proofreader worth their salt. It makes all their jobs easier if writers familiarize themselves with how things are meant to be written, and not just guess at it. Yes, it’s an expensive book (about $45.00), but in the long run it’s worth the investment. I’m constantly making use of it.

Webster’s Dictionary (most up-to-date edition): This is the dictionary used by mainstream publishers for reference—they accept no substitutes.

The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White: A great reference tool that will help you tighten your writing and guide you past common writing mistakes—for example, it’s “I couldn’t care less,” not “I could care less.”

What writing magazines or other resources do you find most helpful?

I think Writer’s Digest is a good place to start for beginners interested in improving their craft. Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal keep you up-to-date on what’s going on in the industry, but considering how expensive a subscription is, it’s best that writers check out the online versions instead, or subscribe to their free e-newsletters. And magazines like Rue Morgue and Gothic Beauty keep me informed about fashion and horror culture that pertain to Pan Zwieback’s world.

Are you working on anything now?

Sure! I’m busy working on Blood Reign, the second Pandora Zwieback novel, for next year. But considering the cliffhanger ending I wrote for the first novel, Blood Feud, I can’t really say anything about the new book, except it’s got another great cover painting by Bob Larkin.

I also have a graphic novel coming out later this year from my company, StarWarp Concepts. Lorelei: Sects and the City is about a succubus (a female demon who feeds on the souls of her victims) trying to stop a supernatural cult from destroying the world. It’s a “Mature Readers” title, which means you have to be older than 18 to buy it because of adult language and some nudity. It’s sort of a tribute to the horror comics I read and the horror movies I watched when I was a teenager.

What’s the best piece of advice you ever had on writing?

Back in college, the professor in a screenwriting course I was taking once told the class that if you want to be a writer, you should always have a pen and notepad with you in case an idea comes to mind, or if you see something in your travels that you think would make for a good scene. So I don’t go anywhere without a notepad.

Do you have any advice for young writers?

Write what you know, but don’t be afraid to research what you don’t. Research is critical if you want to add depth to your story, especially if it’s set in the real world.

Always be willing to listen to constructive criticism; you don’t have to accept all of it, but you should keep an open mind. I got some great feedback while I was writing Blood Feud, especially from my editor, Howard Zimmerman. Contrary to the belief of some writers, editors aren’t there to screw with your “vision”—certainly not the good ones. They’re there to help you improve it. It’s the bad editors you have to watch out for.

Oh! And always carry a notepad.  😀

Talking to Myself (Part 2)

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Continuing a previously unprinted interview that I did for another Web site. (Part 1 ran yesterday.)

What was your big break?

As much as I hate this kind of thing, it really was a case of “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

In the late nineties I was an editor for a publisher/book packager named Byron Preiss, who had a license from Marvel Comics to publish original novels based on their characters. Having edited some of the books, and written short stories for a couple of anthologies (Untold Tales of Spider-Man and The Ultimate Hulk), I was offered the chance to take over a YA novel titled Spider-Man Super Thriller: Warrior’s Revenge—Marvel had rejected the manuscript delivered by a mystery and fantasy writer named Neal Barrett Jr. Basically, I was in Byron’s office when news of the rejection came in and he turned to me and said, “So, you want to write it?” Of course I said yes!

The only problem was, the cover for the book had already been printed for advance sales purposes, so I wound up ghostwriting the book for Neal, who was amazingly gracious about the whole thing.

So, if you ever come across a copy of Warrior’s Revenge, just remember: it might have Neal’s name on it, but it’s actually my first novel!

A couple of years later, a similar situation happened: two established writers were supposed to do an original X-Men novel trilogy, except Marvel rejected their proposal. And again Byron asked if I’d be interested in taking it over. Well, who was I to say no?

The result was X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy, in which the X-Men fight their archenemy Magneto, Doctor Doom (from the Fantastic Four), and the Red Skull (from Captain America) for control of the Cosmic Cube, a device that allows them to alter reality. All three books sold really well—helped in no small part by the fact that Book 1, X-Men/Dr. Doom, came out in time for the first X-movie. I think that’s when people really started to recognize my byline.

What authors have influenced you the most?

Well, Stephen King is probably my biggest influence. There’s comics guru Stan Lee (with whom I got to collaborate on a comics project!) and H. P. Lovecraft—an early twentieth century pulp-magazine horror writer who influenced guys like King. And there are some others who’ve influenced me: comic writer Alan Moore, mystery writer Robert B. Parker, Harlan Ellison, and Ray Bradbury. (I’m sure there’s somebody I’ve forgotten.)

The trick, though, is finding a way to blend all those influences into something that eventually becomes your own, unique writing style.

What are some of your hobbies?

I used to be a major comic book fan, but over the years I got tired with all the superhero stuff—which is kinda funny, considering my professional writing career started with me writing short stories and novels about Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Incredible Hulk. Now I just spend all my money on Doctor Who merchandise! I’ve been a Who fan—Whovian?—since high school. I even got to write a story for an official Doctor Who anthology!

What’s your favorite movie?

When I was a teen it was the original, un-messed-with Star Wars. (The one where Han shot first.) Somewhere along the way it became The Blues Brothers. Must’ve been all that great blues music—well, that and the insane car stunts…

If your book, Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1, was turned into a movie, who would you like to play the main characters?

At conventions I often describe the Pandora Zwieback series to folks as “Ellen Page and Salma Hayek in a Hellboy movie.” They’re a little too old at this point to play Pan and Annie, but when I was trying to land the series with a publisher back in 2005/6, I thought they’d be perfect.

For me, Salma Hayek had been Sebastienne Mazarin since 1995, when her big-screen debut in Desperado coincided with Annie starring in the Heartstopper comic series I was writing. And when Ellen Page was running around in X-Men: The Last Stand, dressed in leather and calling Vinnie Jones’s Juggernaut character a dickhead, I thought, That’s Pan!

Oh, and Bruce Campbell for Pan’s dad!

Tomorrow: Advice for writers, and suggested reading. Be here for the thrilling conclusion!  😉

Talking to Myself (Part 1)

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Sure, it’s said that the first sign of madness is when you start talking to yourself, but I’ve been doing it for years and I turned out okay.  😉

While I’m working on my convention report about this past Sunday’s Brooklyn Book festival for the StarWarp Concepts blog, I thought over here you might like to pass the time reading an interview I did that was meant to run on a review site to coincide with Blood Feud’s publication. “Meant to” being the operative phrase. Unfortunately, there was a change in policy—the site’s bosses decided to discontinue reviewing self-published books before the interview could be posted.

(What, you didn’t know I was also the publisher of StarWarp Concepts? Gee, I must’ve forgotten to mention that…  😉 )

Anyway, that was the end of the interview—until now, that is. I found it on an external hard drive last week and, after some tweaking, thought you might find it of interest. I broke it into three parts because some of the answers are a bit long—but hey, more reading for you. And you’re here because you like to read, right?

We join the interview already in progress, bypassing the introductions…

Did you always want to be a writer?

Oh, yeah! Back in grade school and high school I was always writing stories and doing comic strips. I was even appointed fiction editor of my high school’s magazine after winning a short-story contest. But when I started out as a professional writer I wanted to write comic books; in fact, I’ve been writing comics and graphic novels for a good while now. But it wasn’t until I was actually working in the book-publishing business that I began thinking about becoming more of a novelist.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?

Probably what I am right now: a freelance proofreader and copyeditor for a number of publishing houses. The hours are flexible and the money’s decent, and the work keeps me in touch with the industry.

What is your working style?

You mean when I’m forcing myself to sit down and write, instead of finding anything else to do that won’t involve staring at a blank computer screen until the words come into my head?  😉

My writing tends to be very fluid, changing as a new idea or better way of presenting something pops into my head, so I’m always going back and tinkering as I move ahead; usually it involves dialogue. It’s why, when I hand in a manuscript, my editors have always considered them tight first drafts (sometimes the only drafts, depending on their deadlines!).

Sometimes I’ll listen to specific pieces of music, for inspiration or scene pacing or emotional depth. I’ll give you an example: In Blood Feud, one of the most emotional scenes toward the end of the book involves Pan racing to rescue another character and then attacking the main bad guy, a fallen angel named Zaquiel. While I was writing it I kept playing on a loop a track from one of the recent Doctor Who soundtracks: “This is Gallifrey—Our Childhood, Our Home,” composed by Murray Gold.

Now I can’t listen to this piece without seeing Pan’s confrontation in my head.  😀

Do you prefer to write longhand, or on a computer?

Everything starts out longhand in notebooks—sometimes even on Post-its, if a good line pops into my head that I need to write down. And even after I transfer that handwritten material to my computer, I’ll still print out the pages and continue handwriting on those.

Do you believe in outlining?

For my own projects? No, but I’ve had to do that when working with licensed properties like the X-Men and Final Destination, and that’s because the editors and licensing agents need to know what you plan to do with their franchises. But even then I had a tendency to wander away from the outline and let the story write itself.

I know outlining works for other writers, but I’ve always found it too restrictive. I don’t even like working out a full plot because things change as I’m writing. My approach is: I know where I’m starting, I know where it’s gonna wind up—let’s see how we get there.

That’s probably not the best way to go about doing it, but it’s worked for me (so far).

Tomorrow: My big break, writing influences, and who I’d like to have seen starring in a Pandora Zwieback movie!