Imminent Releases

It’s May and so I’m editing the next book for release. On the 31st, “One for Sorrow,” the first Magpies novel, will be released. That’s not all which is on the horizon, though (luckily for me). So this post is a short roadmap of what is going to come out during the next few months.

• August will see the release of the seventh Knight Agency novel, “Grave Diggers.”
• November will bring about the second volume of “John Stanton - Agent of the Crown,” which includes the three novellas “The Case of the Horrid Hellhound,” “The Case of the Goddess’ Assassin,” and “The Case of the Deadly Documents.”
• February next year will be the month in which my vampire hunter drama “Alex Dorsey” will be released.

I currently have quite some projects in the works, too.

The third Black Knight Agency novel, currently titled “Grey Eminence,” will have to undergo severe changes, because I’ve realized I’ve written myself into a corner with it. I even mentioned that in the last post before this one.

“Ignition Rites,” the eighth Knight Agency novel, is still in the early stages, but I’m looking forward to incorporating a few scenes I already have in mind. The basic plot is there, the sub-plots still need a little work.

“Two for Joy” is the title for the second Magpies novel, but it’s in a very, very early stage (I barely have the plot, but I want to revisit Inez and Tom, so there’s that).

Then, there’s three novellas with a common cast which I still have to write, but I’m sure they’ll see the light of day eventually under the current title “Benjamin Farrens.” I’ve already written quite a bit of “The Case of the Blind Medium,” but “The Case of the Blood Ruby” and “The Case of the Cornwall Vampire” only exist in my head so far.

Finally, there’s another Swenson and Carter story I want to eventually write and add to the first two, at which point they, too, will see release in e-book. “Vengeful Ghost” and “Raging Blood” are done already, but “Christmas Spirit” hasn’t gone far so far.

The Benjamin Farrens project is the oldest of them all, to be honest. I wanted to write it down as a novel years ago, but the actual structure lends itself more to three novellas with an overlying arc of gathering the necessary talents for the last of the three cases Count Benjamin will have to tackle. Not to mention that this one, together with the Swenson and Carter project, will give me the chance to dive into a real late-Victorian setting. John Stanton, after all, is a modern-day Steampunk era.

This is the roadmap, but the course may have to be re-plotted, if real life should intervene.

Writing Yourself Out Of A Corner

What do you do when you realize that you’ve written yourself into a corner with your new story? You either write yourself out of it again or you bury the story. There really are no other choices.

It might be because I’m a discovery writer that I find myself in a corner every now and then. If I planned my plots in advance, I might spot a problem earlier and could rework it then. Only, I personally wouldn’t get a single short story finished if I plotted it in advance. My writing just doesn’t work that way.

Recently, I realized that I had written myself into a corner with the next Black Knight Agency novel and I’m not completely sure what I will do to get out of that corner again - but in this case, giving up is not an option for me.

But what does it mean when you ‘write yourself into a corner?’ Well, very much the same as with a character who finds themselves in a corner, threatened by enemies and unable to escape. Your story has reached a point where you can’t continue and have no idea what to do. Unlike the character, however, you can simply erase the mistakes you made and choose a different path instead. Lucky you. Or not, because reworking a piece of your story (and often a big one) is no fun.

First of all, you need to ask yourself where you did a wrong turn. Where you went left when you should have gone right - or the other way around. This moment can be a long time before the corner. I will have to rework the main premise for the novel mentioned - because I’m not going to do a second ‘underworld takeover’ story set right after “Going Legal.” How much of the chapters written already will I be able to keep? So far, I don’t know. I’d like to keep some stuff I have started (since there are, of course, several plot threads), but I’m pretty sure that other stuff will have to go. Well, there’ll be other novels to use it in.

Sometimes, you realize that it will take a rewrite of your whole text so far - or everything beyond the very first paragraph or chapter. In such cases, you might want to wipe the slate clean and start over completely, instead of trying to cut and paste and realign. A new start can be a lot easier, depending on how challenging or complicated the work is.

From “Grey Eminence,” I will probably have to drop the murder of a drug lord (investigating it, not committing it) and also the whole ‘rearrangement of the underworld’ part - although that’s just one scene and I could keep it in as a start for Jane’s two more personal arcs: Jane taking over the old lair and making it hers and Jane becoming a consulting criminal can and will stay. I also will absolutely keep the casino heist - perhaps that can be expanded into the major plot line.

Luckily, I hit the corner early there - I’ve also had cases where I realized very late that I had written myself into a corner and had to abandon my story or start it over again. That is why I have a large graveyard of unfinished stories on my hard disk and commit grave robbery on them every now and then.

So, you hit that corner, you realize that you have hit it, you know where you went wrong, and you are ready to rework things. What you need to ask yourself now is why you went wrong. Which plot thread, which theme or topic sent you the wrong way. Why did you think the direction was right or a lot of fun to take? You need to figure out why you have written yourself into a corner before. Were you just sloppy? Did you think it would be the best or easiest way to go? Or was the premise interesting, but didn’t fit with the characters or the other plots? If you don’t look at why you went wrong, chances are the next corner is, well, just around the corner.

Usually, it helps to take a step back and look at what you have and what you want. I have a few scenes and plots I don’t want to lose, but I also don’t want to write the same basic plot again for the next novel in the series. That’s why I’ve hit a corner, realizing I was going to do just that.

I have two choices: I can accept that I will write the same basic plot again or I can figure out how to put a new main plot in with what I want to keep (Jane’s sub-plots of slipping back into the criminal world and the casino heist plot). If that means repurposing the murder plot for another novel or changing it so it will fit with Jane’s sub-plot (as she’s in the underworld again), that is what I will have to do. Since writing the same plot again is out of the question, I’m currently trying to figure out what kind of plot to put in instead and how to entwine it with the plots I already have.

Writing yourself into a corner can happen. It’s easy to take the wrong turn while you’re writing or plotting your story, but I guess it’s easier to do that when you’re a discovery writer and, thus, don’t really plot. The important thing is not to avoid the corner (because sometimes it’s unavoidable), but to know how to get out of it again.

Representation or No Representation? 2

Last week’s post was about arguments against diversifying from the ‘straight, white man’ hero, so this week’s post is about what to expect when you don’t use the standard hero in your stories, but go for someone from another social group. People will complain - which probably isn’t a surprise to you. Some will simply complain about you not using the kind of character they expect. Others will complain that your character isn’t all they should be. Those are the ones I want to talk about most.

It’s easy enough to deal with those who complain that your character isn’t what they expected. Expectations not being met happens on a daily basis, after all. Simply pointing out that to you the character you used was more fitting should be sufficient - if you want to address that complaint at all.

The ones which are far more difficult to deal with are those who claim that the character isn’t different enough - you know, it’s not enough to have a female hero, she needs to be black, queer, have two disabilities, and whatnot. The basic argument seems to be that if you don’t use the standard, you need to make your character represent everyone else - which is simply not possible, of course.

It’s a simple way for people who don’t like it when a main character doesn’t meet their expectations to keep people from repeating that ‘mistake.’ If authors face a lot of seemingly justified criticism over their main characters, they might want to revert to standard - others might never stop using the standard straight, white man. As a matter of fact, I have seen people in comment sections of articles about diversity in writing who say that they don’t use any unusual heroes because they don’t want to deal with that kind of thing. My suggestion? Don’t let others make you nervous there. Instead, you need to learn to discern between justified criticism - which can be very helpful - and criticism not worth your time - which is very common by now, too, unfortunately.

Personally, I write characters the way they are, because that’s the way they should be. Jane Browne came about when I wanted to write a secret agent who was female, but not the regular femme fatale. So I basically tried to make the regular image of a secret agent female. I later on removed the ‘ever-changing boyfriends’ topic when I gave her a steady one, but that wasn’t so much me thinking she should go steady than me being tired of trying to come up with new boyfriends. Besides, flipping the ‘hero with a caring partner’ idea also was nice and I like how Jane and Cedric have turned out together.

I like exploring how to tell a story with characters which are unusual. I like throwing my characters into a plot and see how they master it. Part of that is, of course, me being a discovery writer who never knows precisely what will happen in her next novel. Part of it is simply that I like to develop my characters instead of my plot in advance (because if I try to pin down the plot before writing, there will be no writing).

What you should really check your characters for, is not if they represent as many different groups as possible, but how well they represent the groups they’re part of (we all are part of several groups in real life). Not only ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation matter. Nor are possible disabilities the only thing to look at. We’re not defined merely by being ‘a woman,’ ‘a lesbian,’ or ‘someone with ancestors from Asia Minor.’ There are many things which define a human and a well-rounded character will have them all.

Even if you look at a character as old as Sherlock Holmes, you will see that he’s not just a detective. He’s hard to live with, as is obvious from his troubles finding a flatmate in “A Study in Scarlet.” He loves art, not just music (as is evident by his own mastery of the violin), but also painting and acting - there are several stories in which he mentions visiting galleries, but also concerts and theatres. He can fall into something akin to depression when there’s nothing to do and he mistreats his body when there’s a good case to follow, not eating or sleeping nearly as much as he should. He’s addicted to cocaine, but only when the depression has him (at his time, the use of cocaine wasn’t considered criminal). He is brusque and has little patience with stupidity, yet he can also deal very well with people in distress, including women of all ages, despite having nor romantic and, presumably, sexual interest in them. Doyle has given him a complete character, even thought the actual stories focus on his work as a detective.

If someone criticises your character, look at that character and ask yourself if they are a real person, if they have weaknesses and strengths, if they have more talents than just those focused on the work they do (remember that, according to the “Hitman” soft reboot of 2016, Agent 47 is a good drummer and capable of giving yoga lessons). Look at how certain situations might play out differently, because they are not the standard straight, white dude. Of course, if you’re working with Fantasy or Science Fiction scenarios, you might have different situations in which different groups will have a different experience. While creating a world there, make sure to wonder how living in it will be for different groups of people - depending on the setting, there might be little or big differences. In a medieval-style fantasy world, women, poor people, or people with specific ethnicities might be cut off from certain professions (but you can also turn that around, there might be professions which only these groups are allowed to have). In a science fiction scenario in a far future, an egalitarian society might give everyone the same rights and duties, no matter the gender, ethnicity, or other factors, but then try to show it (looking at you, “Star Trek” reboot and your ‘coincidentally all male’ leadership). It depends.

The best way to react to criticism of any kind is to look at whether or not it’s justified. Then try to incorporate justified criticism and just ignore the unjustified. It’s not easy, but unless you want to completely forego any heroes out of the regular, you will need to master that. And, honestly, those irregular heroes are often a lot more fun to write, so you shouldn’t simply abandon them.

Representation or No Representation?

Welcome to a double post about representation and the arguments some people will give you against it. This first post is more about the arguments against it. The second post will be more about the over-the-top demands some people make when you’re choosing not to go with the standard hero.

Let’s start with the standard hero, then. The standard hero, even today, still is the straight, white man. This is understandable historically, but still not the way it should stay.

A short historical discourse here. The ‘white’ standard across the globe (which leads to African and African-American people straightening their hair and bleaching their skin or Asian people spending money on getting their eyes reshaped) was introduced during the Age of Colonisation. White people, dissatisfied with neighbours who possessed the same weapons as them and ruling houses interbred all across Europe and tired of centuries of feuding about the same few square miles of ground, hopped their ships and started to explore the world - naturally assuming that everywhere no European had landed (as far as they knew - see North America, Columbus, and Vikings) was ‘undiscovered country’ and they could just take it. For them, people who were not Europeans were no real people. They could be killed, enslaved, raped, stolen from … you name it, the explorers and conquerors from Europe definitely did it. Their first venture was Africa and they expanded into parts of Asia as well. Then they expanded westwards, after Columbus had found the Caribbean while looking for India. They crawled across the globe like cockroaches. And just like them, they proved a little less easy to kill than most of the people they met. That is why African borders look that very linear way today - they were actually drawn with ruler and pen when the Colonial Powers came together to discuss who would keep which part of Africa. And basically all European powers, from Portugal and Spain to Russia, from Scandinavia and Britain to Italy, were in that game.

The colonies have won their freedom, but the world has been imprinted with the ‘white’ ideal. With the ideal of looking like a European person. With the ideal of dressing like a European person (even in climates unsuited for suits - sorry, not sorry). With the ideal of pretending to be a European person, if you can.

And that, friends, is why the straight, white man is white. More about the other two parts further down.

Especially in Fantasy novels or novels which claim historical sources, people often argue against a more diverse cast on the grounds of ‘that’s not how it was.’ If you listen to them, you’re led to believe that Medieval Europe (upon which a staggering number of fantasy worlds is based) was not only devoid of people with a slightly darker skin tone, but also of women, people with disabilities, or people who actually liked their own sex more than the opposite one. Despite the fact that women always made up about fifty percent of the populace and there were more people with physical disabilities around before surgery got to the level we have today. I’m not even going into what centuries of inbreeding did to the mental health of the ruling class. All of that is slightly … odd.

It’s not, of course. It’s build upon the premise of heroes being physically attractive and male - because we all know women faint at the sight of blood (we women do a lot of that once a month, yeah). The physically attractive part, which does exclude everyone with a physical disability or visible physical flaw, comes from fairy tales, where the good are beautiful and the evil are either ugly or vain. The male part comes from the strict definition of gender roles which excluded women from fighting and from being self-controlled (a definition which didn’t even exist then).

And, look, I can see why you don’t want a person from Asia in your story about Vikings. And while there are historically approved ways of constructing a situation in which to include someone like that, it’s not even necessary. The whole ‘those people didn’t exist in Medieval Europe’ just about (but not quite) works for Non-Europeans. Yes, there was no large number of Africans, Arabians, Asian, or Indigenous people from all over the globe in Europe then. There were some, though, at least of the first three. The Ottoman Empire, made up of a lot of Arabians, at its widest expanse reached through most of Spain and well into Eastern Southern Europe. At one point, they had reached Vienna, which is pretty central in Europe. It’s not unlikely they left their genes everywhere over the continent (genetic research shows a lot of European men share specific genes with men from Northern Africa). And during medieval times, there were Non-European traders and workers in Europe, even though more commonly in the cities than in small villages and hamlets. Silk was already imported from China, too, just as spices were imported from India. Since the Asian and the European continent actually form one big mega-continent together - and Africa is connected to them by the Arabian Peninsula - trade between those continents is easily possible, it’s just a question of time. Not ideal for stuff which goes bad quickly, but spices, silk, and other goods were not troubled by that. With trades also come traders, which means people from outside Europe. So, no, Europe wasn’t completely ‘white’ during the Middle Ages. Predominantly so, certainly, but not completely.

And even if we presume your quasi-European village has nobody in it whose great-great-grandparents weren’t already born there, there’s still diversity to be had.

Chances are about half the people in your village are women. And while male warriors are more common, history knows female ones as well. Several graves of female Viking warriors have been found, the Romans also trained female gladiators for a while, and women generally also took up arms and even took up leadership in times of need. So you can add a woman to your ‘straight white dude squad.’ Give her a ranged weapon, perhaps, or make her the group’s healer.

Chances are also that some people in that village have some kind of disability. What about a guy with only one eye? Odin thought that was cool enough to sacrifice one eye for wisdom, so, surely, you can have a warrior or advisor with a missing eye.

Not to mention that there’s no reason whatsoever for not having some LGBT+ representation in your group. Pre-Christianity, a lot of societies were lenient towards very different sexual behaviours and same-sex relationships happened. They weren’t necessarily the norm, but they were there. Hell, even the Roman-Catholic church ‘married’ monks to each other - supposedly platonic, but can you guarantee nothing ever happened there?

That means your ‘straight white dude squad’ does now include a woman, a man with a missing eye, a guy who is into other guys, and a straight white dude. Voila, you have reached diversity!

If you want bonus points, tell a story of a man from Asia Minor who was sold north as a slave, saved the one-eyed man’s life, was freed for that, and has now joined the team. That could have happened - the Vikings traded in the Mediterranean, took slaves, and valued courage. Wow, you’ve even eradicated the ‘completely white’ problem!

Diversity means having a greater range of characters from different backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and genders. It doesn’t mean you need to do everything every time you write a story. It just means breaking the winning streak of the ‘straight, white man.’

Hero And Villain Match-Ups

The hero and the villain of a story are the two most important characters. It’s their relative position to each other and their powers which define what is going to happen - and often also why. There are two basic ways to match a hero and a villain for an interesting story: equals or opposites.

‘Equals’ can be found in pairings like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. Both highly intelligent, both capable of understanding crime, using their talents in opposite ways - one a consulting detective, the other a consulting criminal. They are the same, they could exchange places, but they are pitted against each other. Equals are defined by having the same skill sets or power levels (if we’re talking about superheroes or mages). The same goes for the story where Secret Agent X faces off against Fantomas - both of them are masters of disguise and don’t even shy away from pretending to be each other in disguise.

‘Equals’ also work for the ‘evil twin’ trope, which might be as old as storytelling. The story of the Doppelgänger, the ghostly double which will curse you if you see it, surely is old as dust. The evil twin trope is also in Fantomas - during the long run of the original novels, it came to light that Inspecteur Juve and Fantomas are twins, so the man who hunts the criminal mastermind and the mastermind once shared a womb.

Making the hero and the villain equals has many advantages. It’s easy to explain why the villain can outthink the hero, but also gives the hero a chance to outsmart the villain. It can explain why they’re both after the same goal - an easy conflict to set up for your plot, since it means they will have to cross paths and swords every now and then. It can explain why they are working against each other - why the hero seeks to find the villain or the villain seeks to destroy the hero. It’s a very useful tool for writers, setting up the hero and the villain as equals of some kind.

It also has its problems, of course. Usually, it’s much easier to make a hero heroic if the villain is much more powerful than them, one way or other. The old ‘evil twin’ trope has been done so often by now that people almost automatically expect something like that. And if it’s not the evil twin, it might be another relative (“I am your father,” anyone?). It can also be difficult to set up two people with very similar skill sets, but make them different enough to work as hero and villain. The easiest might be some kind of soldier - a soldier ‘going bad’ isn’t hard to explain and will make hero and villain both similar and different at the same time.

On the other side, we have ‘opposites.’ That goes for all cases where the hero and the villain are very different in their skills and backgrounds. Superman and Lex Luthor or Batman and the Joker from the DC comics are two easy examples. Superman vs. Lex Luthor is physical strength vs. mental strength. Batman vs. the Joker is order vs. chaos. Other ways to construct a pair of opposites can be seen in Fu Manchu vs. Nayland Smith - an evil mastermind who has his minions for everything vs. a hands-on officer of the law.

Opposites can also be used easily to create conflict. Opposition in world views and morals is a constant source of conflict between two people or two groups. It also allows for setting up a difference in power. As mentioned already, Fu Manchu has his minions. He has money, reserves, manpower. Nayland Smith is on a government wage, has some influence, but has to do most things by himself. Fu Manchu has more power at his disposal, which makes his defeat a much more heroic feat than if it were the other way around. It’s easy for someone much more powerful to smite the less powerful one. It’s heroic for someone with less power to defeat a more powerful foe.

Opposites set up two different goals for hero and villain while making it impossible for both of them to reach their goals at the same time. The Joker wants to throw the world into chaos, whereas Batman wants to restore order to Gotham and lead it out of the chaos produced by criminals and a corrupt legal system. The Joker at his best is not interested in wealth or power or even control of the underworld. He’s interested in destroying any semblance of order, in creating anarchy and chaos. That’s what makes him tick. And that’s what sets him at odds with Batman, because Batman takes great pains to recreate order. The Joker is not shown without the facial makeup and it seems - at least sometimes - as if even he himself has forgotten his civilian identity. There’s no regular human behind a mask, as with Batman and his civilian identity as Bruce Wayne. The Joker is chaos 24/7 and that is how he wants it.

The problem with opposites is that it can come across as unrealistic. Take Superman and Lex Luthor: they work as a hero/villain team, because Lex has a lot of social power in addition to his mental skills. If he weren’t a rich man with a smooth tongue and the ability to influence and manipulate, he wouldn’t be able to hold himself against Superman. If Lex lost his social power without gaining something else in return, he would no longer be able to function as a villain against Superman. If your villain is highly powerful, has wealth, a lot of henchmen, and also holds a high position in society, it might be hard to pit your simple, hard-working stranger against them. Opposites can be too big and then the story will no longer work out well. It’s no coincidence that heroes who go up against masterminds (who have wealth, power, and henchmen) usually have some sort of backing, be it government (for example James Bond or Nayland Smith) or by some other power (like the K-9 organisation when it comes to Secret Agent X). They need a certain power to draw from themselves and they need at least some influence. Opposites like Batman/the Joker work without that, because there’s more of a balance to their powers.

The hero and the villain of a story are the two most important characters and it pays to think about how they are connected and why they are at odds when you set your story up. They can be equals, they can be opposites, or something in-between. But there always has to be a good reason for them to face off against each other.