On Ray Bradbury, Pat Conroy, Renaissance Fairs, and setting as a character in a story (Combining Blogs, Part 3)

Dear folks,

A while back, I started a second blog, one just for my renaissance fair novel, Blackthorne Faire. I’m combining them, because, well, it’s a lot easier to maintain one blog than two, and a lot of the topics I want to write about, like music in fiction (just to name one), fit equally well in both.

So I’m moving the Blackthorne Faire posts here. I hope you’ll stick around.

Here, if you missed it, was the third of the posts from that blog….

 

A setting, especially one like a Renaissance fair, can be more than just a stage where stuff happens. A setting can be, almost, a character in the story instory. I think it should be.

If you’re going to set a novel at a Renaissance fair, the fair itself needs to be … something special. It needs to be something that speaks to all those people who love Renaissance fairs enough to go to them year after year after year. It must invoke laughter, music, and memories. It must invoke story.

As I mentioned before, I think a large part of the magic of a Renaissance fair has to do with with the communities that seem to spring up there. There’s more, though. After all, those communities form and thrive at Ren fairs, not at, say, office buildings, coffee shops, or shopping malls.

Something about that setting, that specific place, calls us, or about five million of us, anyway. A story set at a Renaissance fair probably couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be set anywhere else — not even a similar event like, say, a science fiction/fantasy convention or an SCA event.

Can you imagine Charles de Lint’s Moonheart or his Newford stories set anywhere else? What about Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? How much do the fog-shrouded streets of London add to the stories of Sherlock Holmes, or to the novels of Charles Dickens? What is Heathcliff without his moors? I don’t think the stories that take Tarzan away from his jungle ever really work.

Place is important.

A story’s setting can be more than just a stage, it can be more than just a place where stuff happens. It can be a deep part of the story’s fabric. More, I’ll argue it can be almost a character in the story. That’s a lesson I learned from two of my very favorite writers: Ray Bradbury and Pat Conroy.

Mr. Bradbury, who was a dear friend, and Mr. Conroy share a lot in common — both were absolute masters of elegant, lovely prose, both were heavily influenced by events in their childhood, and both wove stories that are absolutely drenched in a sense of place. I am thinking of Mr. Bradbury’s Greentown, his Mars, and his carnivals, and of Mr. Conroy’s coastal Carolina.

Place is so important to Mr. Conroy that he includes these lines near the beginning of The Prince of Tides:

“To describe our growing up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation. Scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open you an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, ‘There. That taste. That’s the taste of my childhood.’ I would say, ‘Breathe deeply,’ and you would breathe and remember that smell for the rest of your life, the bold, fecund aroma of the tidal marsh, exquisite and sensual, the smell of the South in heat, a smell like new milk, semen, and spilled wine, all perfumed with seawater.”

Those lines are gorgeous enough to be heartbreaking, but Mr. Conroy doesn’t write them just to fill his pages with pretty prose. No. They’re important. They bring to life a primal landscape that shaped the narrator as a character, as a person, as surely as any parent (another important factor in Mr. Conroy’s work). The Lowcountry is a character.

Ray Bradbury, too, will always be one of the great masters of place and season. Here, for example, are the opening lines of his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes:

“First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren’t rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet. July, well, July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away.

But you take October, now. School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on old man Prickett’s porch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.”

I talked to Mr. Bradbury about his experiences working on Disney’s film version of Something Wicked This Way Comes. He said he was always telling the director, “‘It’s autumn. We need more leaves.

“The director would scowl at me and say, ‘I’m getting tired of hearing about your damn leaves!’

“I’d tell him, ‘I have to talk about them. They’re important. Now go down to central casting and hire me ten thousand leaves!'”

Mr. Bradbury understood the truth: autumn in a small town, and the coming of a carnival … those elements are as crucial to the story as any character, hero or villain. Place and time give the story mood and texture, sure, but they also, in some subtle way that defies analysis, shape and push the characters in ways that, usually, in the hands of lesser writers, only other characters can.

Where else but a Renaissance Festival might one plausibly find a landlocked pirate ship selling swords? Well?

I’m trying to take those lessons to heart in my own writing, especially Blackthorne Faire, my novel that’s set at a Renaissance Festival, a place that’s so rich with scents of beer and frying meats, with sound — music, laughter, shouts — and colors, oh, so many, many colors. That’s easier said than done, especially when one is attempting to learn from masters like Mr. Conroy and Mr. Bradbury.

First, both men are very concrete with the details they provide … think of how Mr. Bradbury talks about season, something core to the very heart of his story. Think about how Mr. Conroy moves far, far beyond visual description to invoke scents, sensations, even tastes? All of those details combine to create a sense of place and time that does more than simply flavor a story. They are ingredients, not mere seasoning. Meat, not salt.

I started in a prologue set decades in the past by attempting to describe the place where the Blackthorne Faire Renaissance Festival will someday be built:

All Hallows Eve, 1936

In later years, the vast suburban sprawl of Atlanta will bleed outward like kudzu to cover the hills and hollows that surround the O’Brien farm with subdivisions and mini-malls. But not yet. Now the city is too much in the future to be a part of life here. It is distant, a dream, like New York or Paris, or the Pyramids in Egypt. The southern hills burn with rich color, fire and rust—a thousand million shades of orange, yellow, and apple red set against a deep and enduring background of evergreen beneath the brilliant, sapphire blue sky of an autumn long past. The old year has dressed in its finery for one last hurrah before the winter frosts come to soothe it away to memory. Breathe! Taste air crisp and heavy with the scents of pumpkin, sweet applewood smoke, dying leaves, and the last wild Georgia blackberries. Breathe, and autumn fills you like spiced wine.

Season is important in my novel, too.

Next, I introduce the fair from the point of view of the two main characters, Erin and Brian. Starting with Erin:

Cloaked in pre-dawn fog, the Blackthorne Faire Renaissance Festival waited quietly, an empty stage, curtain drawn and lights dim, a story waiting to be told. Empty pathways wound hither and yon around the plaster-stone façade of a castle and through faux half-timbered Tudor shop fronts with their sloping roofs of slate or thatch, hiding secrets and surprises the way a carnival does before the barker lets loose his first shout. Erin Winter loved it.

The hush would vanish soon; in a few hours it would melt away with morning’s gray mist. The cast, sleeping off the remnants of the past night’s revels in the employee campground behind the back gate, would whisper, giggling and moaning and sharing hangover cures as they washed the cottony thickness of bourbon’s sweet rot from yawning mouths and slipped into costume and character. And then, when the first guests passed the gates like tourists through a magic wardrobe, the air would ring with music, laughter, and carefully practiced (and more or less convincing) English accents. The guests would breathe deeply, tasting the wind of another time, heavy with the scents of beer and sun and roasting meat. The performance spaces would welcome jugglers, jesters, and musicians, and every stage would boast a marvel. Since this was the last weekend of the fair’s spring run, the crowds would be large and boisterous.

Soon, soon. But not yet.

Walking alone, Erin could almost taste a hint of magic in the chilly mist, some witchery that carried her away from the field north of Atlanta and deposited her in the bright watercolor pages of a favorite book. To Erin’s eye, shadows ringing knotted oak trees hid mysteries, and rings of toadstools marked the places where fae creatures danced in wild circles washed in the light of the full moon. The morning brought a breeze, enough to stir dust from the dirt pathway had seasons after seasons of foot traffic not packed it nearly as hard as the cobblestones that paved the main paths. She found a penny, but it was face down so she didn’t pick it up. Instead, she turned it over to let someone else find it and have the luck. She found herself wishing, suddenly, that she had more time to twirl and wander through the still morning looking for hidden luck. But she didn’t. Her friend Caitlin McGregor waited in the makeshift fair-site apartment above the shop she shared with her husband, Carter.

A sorceress with cloth and bric-a-brac, Caitlin stitched colorful frocks and doublets that delighted fair patrons and cast members alike. When Erin had spilled red wine down the front of her usual garb while making a little too merry at the cast revels, Caitlin had promised a new dress. “Oh, I’ve got something that’ll do, dear. It’ll just want a little touch or two here and there.” Erin hummed a bit of an old Celtic morning tune mingled with a snatch of classic REM and hurried along.

The shop was tucked neatly into the village square just before the paths rose toward the rocky bluffs behind the festival’s back gate, and just inside the rushing stream that bordered the western edge of the site. Caitlin and Carter were already up and about; Erin heard their laughter and light morning conversation, and her belly rumbled as she drank the scents of fresh coffee and sizzling bacon.

Brian’s first impression is different. To him, the fair seems loud, crowded, and tawdry. His opinion changes, though, as he himself grows as a character:

Brian didn’t answer; he simply listened, and in the notes and chords he heard more than melody. He heard the sounds of the fair, not as it was, but as Erin knew it. He listened, and suddenly the costumes around him seemed no longer puerile or gaudy, but bright and merry, spun from rainbows. Erin played, and Brian heard the music of earth and wood and hidden cities forgotten by time and the march of years, of wild toadstools growing in rings beneath the shadows of the deepest heart of a forest. Shop façades and stage flats vanished like canvas hidden by an artist’s brush, replaced by tall castles and welcoming village squares, alive with people and stories. Brian gasped and turned, taking it all in with eyes and mouth wide open. The music shook him, gently, tenderly, like a caress, a touch as soft and full of promise as a first kiss. The tune changed, and Brian heard the sounds of May and the birth of spring, of robins and blue jays, of butterflies and newborns and damp earth. He heard wind and whispers and the buzzing of bumblebees so fat with nectar they could barely flit from flower to blazing flower. He heard the song of streams swelled by melting ice flowing down, down, ever down to join silver rivers leaping over smooth stones.

What makes people change? What makes characters in stories grow? Experiences, certainly. But I think interactions with others, friends, family, lovers, even enemies, change us even more.

Place, though, place defines us. It shapes us from birth. Pat Conroy showed us that. We are never so lonely again after when find a place to truly call home, because we always have, somewhere, a place to belong. I think place can change us, too. It’s no coincidence that quests and pilgrimages involve a journey.

One of my characters in The Widening Gyre, another of my stories, learns that very lesson:

Seeing a new region changes you, I think, because it makes the world you know that much bigger. And it adds to the store of beauty you keep secreted away in your heart and your attics of memory.

In that sense, settings, at least in the hands of masters like Mr. Bradbury and Mr. Conroy, are characters. That’s a lesson I’m still struggling to learn. Blackthorne Faire needs to be a character as fully realized, in its way, as Erin and Brian.

I’d love to know what y’all think.

ON RENAISSANCE FAIRS AND THE FEELING OF BEING LOST IN A STORY (Combining Blogs, Part 2)

Dear folks,

A while back, I started a second blog, one just for my renaissance fair novel, Blackthorne Faire. I’m combining them, because, well, it’s a lot easier to maintain one blog than two, and a lot of the topics I want to write about, like music in fiction (just to name one), fit equally well in both.

So I’m moving the Blackthorne Faire posts here. I hope you’ll stick around.

Here, if you missed it, was the second of the posts from that blog….

On Renaissance Fairs and the Feeling of Being Lost in a Story

Why do I love Renaissance fairs so much? Why do I love them enough to have written a book about one? One answer, I think, is because when I step through the gates, I feel like I’ve fallen into the pages of a story.

It’s not exactly a magic wardrobe, true, but I can’t help feeling like it’s a gateway into a story. By the way, the woman in the hat and the white shirt (walking away from the camera) is my lovely wife, Carol.

I was the kid who grew up spending way, way too much time reading under the covers with a flashlight, and standing in line to see The Empire Strikes Back on opening night. My love for story  has been a part of the very core of my being since … well, as long as I can remember.

I don’t think I’m alone in that.

There is something intrinsic in our collective identity as human beings that makes us strive to find narrative in anything and everything, including, perhaps most of all, the chaotic happenstance of our daily lives. There is something in us that recognizes (or creates … toe-MAY -toe/toe-MAH-toe) patterns, and weaves them into meaning.

We recognize, somehow, that our lives are more than just episodes and coincidences. We respond to stories because we recognize in them the way we’re meant to live, something that we’re supposed to be. We are, all of us, the makers of stories. I am fond of something Alan Kay of the Walt Disney Company said:

“Why was Solomon recognized as the wisest man in the world? Because he knew more stories than anyone else. Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we’re all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories.”

For me, for that kid reading under the covers way past bedtime, it wasn’t enough just to read a story. For reasons I couldn’t begin to articulate at the time, I longed to be in a story. I wanted to visit Narnia, to climb the hills of Prydain, to brave the forests of the Commonwealth, or sip a pint at the Prancing Pony in Bree.

When I visit a Renaissance festival … something I try to do single year, even if I seldom succeed … I’m that kid again. I’m turning a tattered cover and finding myself lost in another place, another time. I’be broken through the page and found myself, just for that fleeting moment, in a story.

I don’t know what their story is … but there’s a part of me that envies them for it. By the way, the little girl on the left was laughing, not crying. My picture was not well timed.

I’ve noticed something else about Renaissance fairs and stories. There is something in both of them that inspires communities.

Recently, my business partners and I incubated our own publishing company, Gramarye Media (the world’s first cross-media story incubator) through Georgia Tech’s Flashpoint program.

As a part of our research, we spent a lot of time talking to readers. One of the things we learned (it didn’t really come as a surprise, I confess) was that many readers long for community … to be with people like them. Many equate their best and dearest friends with people who love the same stories. When you find those rare someones (it’s a lot easier now in the days of Internet communities), there’s an instant connection.

C.S. Lewis put it like this in The Four Loves:

“Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”

There is, in my experience at least, an instant assumption of kinship when you meet someone who loves the stories you do … a feeling that this person is like me in a way that other people aren’t. The other person has to do something dastardly indeed to break that assumption of immediate friendship.

In doing our research for Flashpoint, we saw that some people had communities that they counted among their very dearest friends … even though they’d never met in person.

I found those same communities, or ones very much like them, at Renaissance fairs … among people who attend them and among people who perform there. These people have stories, all of them. The casts at Ren fairs always seemed especially close, and, deep in the heart, I always wanted to be a part of those fellowships. I never was — I had neither the time nor (alas) the talent. That’s one of the sadnesses of my life.

His Majesty, Ik, King of the Trolls

When I first started researching my own Renaissance Fair novel, Blackthorne Faire, I asked Mr. Bryan Thompson (AKA Ik, King of the Trolls)* for help. He very kindly invited me to a gathering of the cast of the Georgia Renaissance Festival after the fair had ended on a Sunday night. We met at a long table at a nearby Mexican restaurant, and we ate and drank and laughed late into the night. I listened, and they told stories.

There was a community there, dear and close, made more so by the fact that (as with so many of the best theatre companies) they knew their fellowship was a temporary one, bright and gone like the flash of a falling star.

I found that I envied them.

I was a welcome guest, but I wasn’t a part of their community, of their story, and I never really could be. But I loved it all the same. Like a reader glimpsing Narnia or Middle-earth distantly, through the dark glass of the page, I was only a visitor, and my time among them was short.

Funny though … all those years later, I still think about that night. I am probably the only one who does; it was one of many for them, and I doubt anyone was wise enough to recognize how precious it was, how soon they would scatter without ever recognizing that one night that was their last together. But in me, though, that night is preserved, in all its giddy glory. I will always be the outsider in that family, the traveler passing, but I remember. Maybe an outsider is the only one who can.

And maybe that’s my role in this story. I remember, and I tell. I can’t be a part of that story. But I can remember it, I reshape it into new patterns, and I can tell it. Hence, Blackthorne Faire.

*By the way, his Highness King Ik has a cameo or two in Blackthorne Faire.

Combining blogs!

Dear folks,

A while back, I started a second blog, one just for my renaissance fair novel, Blackthorne Faire. I’m combining them, because, well, it’s a lot easier to maintain one blog than two, and a lot of the topics I want to write about, like music in fiction (just to name one), fit equally well in both.

So I’m moving the Blackthorne Faire posts here. I hope you’ll stick around.

Here, if you missed it, was the first of the posts from that blog….

Welcome to Blackthorne Faire!

Cloaked in pre-dawn fog, the Blackthorne Faire Renaissance Festival waited quietly, an empty stage, curtain drawn and lights dim, a story waiting to be told. Empty pathways wound hither and yon around the plaster-stone façade of a castle and through faux half-timbered Tudor shop fronts with their sloping roofs of slate or thatch, hiding secrets and surprises the way a carnival does before the barker lets loose his first shout. Erin Winter loved it.

The hush would vanish soon; in a few hours it would melt away with morning’s gray mist. The cast, sleeping off the remnants of the past night’s revels in the employee campground behind the back gate, would whisper, giggling and moaning and sharing hangover cures as they washed the cottony thickness of bourbon’s sweet rot from yawning mouths and slipped into costume and character. And then, when the first guests passed the gates like tourists through a magic wardrobe, the air would ring with music, laughter, and carefully practiced (and more or less convincing) English accents. The guests would breathe deeply, tasting the wind of another time, heavy with the scents of beer and sun and roasting meat. The performance spaces would welcome jugglers, jesters, and musicians, and every stage would boast a marvel. Since this was the last weekend of the fair’s spring run, the crowds would be large and boisterous.

Soon, soon. But not yet.

Those paragraphs are from Blackthorne Faire, a novel I’ve completed recently. My literary manager, Mr. Peter Miller, the Literary Lion (believe me, he’s earned that title) of Global Lion Intellectual Property Management, is presently helping me shepherd it from manuscript to bookstores. It’s a new adult fantasy adventure with elements of paranormal romance, and it’s all set at a contemporary Renaissance festival.

I didn’t dress up when I went to the fair to take these pictures, but so help me … I would have.

I have a confession to make. I love Renaissance festivals. I attend the Georgia Renaissance festival just about every year. And do you know what? I’d probably go more often if I could. Turns out, I’m not alone. Here are some fun facts about Renaissance festivals that you might not know:

• More than five million people attended a Renaissance Festival in 2008 … twice.
• There are at least 57 Renaissance Fairs in the United States.
• There are many more Celtic, Old English, Medieval, and other closely related events.
• Approximately 13,680,000 people attended a Renaissance Fair in the United States in 2013.
• More than 65% of those people had previously attended a fair within 5 years and more than 37% plan to attend every year.
• Celia Pearce, a professor at Northeastern (formerly at Georgia Tech) likes to say that Renaissance fairs are the biggest business in America that’s not on anybody’s radar.

So it turns out … I’m not alone. My wife Carol and I attended the last weekend of the Georgia Renaissance Festival. As we were leaving, she smiled and asked if I was having a good time. I could only grin and say … “these are my people.”

More importantly, I think the community of people who love Renaissance festivals — English and history majors, fantasy fans, music and drama lovers, costume aficionados, and all the rest — have stories to tell. 

In this blog, I’m going to tell some of those stories, and talk about the book, Blackthorne Faire, and its journey. To be honest, this is new to me. I’ve never blogged about a specific book before. I hope you’ll join me, and let me know what you think.

Food for thought … can the old pulp heroes of yesterday work in a contemporary setting?

Ron Ely was the Tarzan of my youth. I didn’t  learn about Elmo Lincoln, Johnny Weissmuller, and, best of all, Edgar Rice Burroughs, until much later.

My love for the old pulp heroes — characters like Tarzan, Doc Savage, Professor Challenger, and the Shadow — came early, and when it took hold, it never let go. First loves are like that.

It started, like so many of my early loves, on Saturday morning.

I was watching TV with my dad — the Tarzan adventures with Ron Ely. Back in those days, there used to be shows, like, say, The Six Million Dollar Man, that Dad and I could could watch together, and both enjoy.

Dad explained that Ron Ely wasn’t the real Tarzan; that was Johnny Weissmuller. (And Clayton Moore was the real Lone Ranger.) I didn’t know if Dad was right or wrong, but I didn’t care. Ron Ely’s Tarzan delighted me.

After that, Dad led me to The Phantom in the newspaper comics, and told me about The Shadow and Doc Savage, characters I would discover for myself in later years. When I was a bit older, he introduced me to James Bond.

These characters were the first superheroes … they came before Superman and Batman and their legions of followers. They fought without costumes or superpowers (well, arguably a few like the Shadow and Mandrake the Magician might have had what you could call powers, but even they weren’t exactly leaping tall buildings with a single bound)  … just extraordinary skill. They were the peak, the very best ordinary men and women could become.

As you’ve probably heard, Superman owes much of his mythos to Doc Savage — the Man of Bronze and the Man of Steel, Clark Savage and Clark Kent, the Fortress of Solitude and the, uh, Fortress of Solitude … you get the idea.

The superpowered crowd, with their bright capes and primary-colored, skin-tight costumes, might have driven their predecessors, with their fedoras, loincloths, and ripped shirts into relative obscurity, but they’ve never quite gone away. Superman, after all, had been flying for years when I watched Ron Ely’s Tarzan with Dad. There’s a new Tarzan film out now. I haven’t seen it yet, but despite some decidedly mixed reviews, I intend to. Like I said, those early loves go deep.

Shane Black, one of the most interesting filmmakers working, is bringing Doc Savage back to the screens, and Sam Raimi was working on a new version of The Shadow, although (alas!) that seems to have vanished into development hell. Sherlock Holmes is everywhere these days — and yes, I consider Sherlock Holmes a pulp character. To me, the golden age of the pulps begins with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and his Holmes and Challenger characters, and ends with Ian Fleming and his famous creation, James Bond.

Most pulp adaptations, successful or otherwise, share one thing in common — they are period pieces. This year’s The Legend of Tarzan film, for example, is set after the Berlin Conference of 1884 and 1885. The 1994 film version of The Shadow was set shortly after the first World War.

Attempts to modernize the pulps usually come across as, well, ludicrous. Tarzan in Manhattan, I’m looking at you.

Frankly, I think that’s a key part of the charm of the old pulp hero stories. They are relics of a time past. Something about that very inaccessibility makes suspension of disbelief easier somehow. You can kind of believe, almost, that Tarzan was raised my jungle apes, or that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger could find dinosaurs in a mysterious lost world in South America … when those stories are set in decades long past.

In the days of Google Earth, we know, all too well, that there are no more hidden plateaus or lost cities of gold in the deepest jungles. We live in a world where mysteries are vanishing.

Indeed, attempts to modernize the pulps never really seem to work. Moving Tarzan from the jungles of the late 1800s to, say, modern Manhattan, usually comes across as downright silly.

Sure, there are exceptions. There are two modern takes on Sherlock Holmes that are working beautifully … although I have a hard time imagining that Professor Challenger would have the same luck.

Tim Byrd has written a very modern take on the pulps.

My pal Tim Byrd has written a series of wonderful middle grade/young adult novels called Doc Wilde, a not-even-thinly-disguised homage to Doc Savage. Tim’s stories are set in modern times, but his Doc Wilde isn’t the Doc Savage we know and love … it’s his son, and the main characters include the first Doc’s grandchildren. So while Tim’s stories are decidedly modern, they have deep roots in the past.

 

But these seem to be the rare exceptions that prove the rule. By and large, pulp adventures seem to work best as period pieces.

Even the venerable James Bond series, at least until the “reboot” that came with Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale, seemed a little … out of place when divorced from the cold war era. In fact, I remember reading that the producers actually considered, at least briefly, making Craig’s adventures period pieces and returning them to their cold war roots.

So my question is this … can a modern pulp series work in a contemporary setting? Could Indiana Jones have gone after the Ark of the Covenant in the 1980s, or was the World War II setting necessary?

Are the pulps doomed to be just quaint relics of a vanished age?

I ran into this problem a few years ago, when my pal Bob Robinson and I were thinking about developing a pulp pastiche for television. I wanted to make a period piece, but Bob wisely pointed out that budget and audience demand made that idea impractical at best. So my task was to come up with a modern take on the pulps, without losing the charm and adventure. After all, we still have a need for wonder … we need modern myths for the information age.

Bob and I never worked together on that project, but I never let it go.

Early concept art for Challengers by my pal, John Bridges

The idea became Challengers, a TV pilot and bible I wrote. It’s spent years in Hollywood development hell (that’s frustrating, but despite what you hear, the process made the story at least a thousand times better). The TV version is still kicking.

 

Just this year, though, I turned the first episodes into a series of novels. My literary manager, super agent Peter Miller, has meetings in New York literally even as I type this to shop the first book, The Secret of the Serpent’s Eye.

So how did I solve the period problem? Glad you asked. Challengers tells the story of the great grandchildren of the pulp heroes. Their great grandparents could have those amazing adventures because … the world really was different then.

Something has changed.

The nature of that change is the secret history of the world.

The lead character is a 25-year old billionaire and adventurer named Tom Reilly. Twenty years ago, Tom’s parents learned a secret no one alive should ever know. They were found murdered. Only one thing was missing — a leather bound journal belonging to Tom’s great-grandfather, the founder of the Challengers, Professor Phineas J. Reilly himself.

In this first adventure, Tom recovers the journal. Desperate to learn the secret it contains, Tom gathers his diverse team, a magician, a shaman, a daredevil pilot, an inventor, a spy, and an assassin (also the great-grandchildren of pulp-era adventurers), and begins a journey that will take them to a lost temple, where they find a key that seems to alter the nature of reality itself.

One of the producers who worked with me on the television version of this story, called Challengers Edgar Rice Burroughs meets Joss Whedon as introduced by Grant Morrison, which thrilled me to no end.

As I say on my Web site, in the era of Google-earth, when we know all too well that there are no more undiscovered dinosaur plateaus in South America and no last enchanted forests waiting, still, to be found, we live in a world bereft of wonder. And perhaps more than ever, we’re hungry for the sacred stories that, like Ariadne’s thread, show us the way out of life’s dark labyrinths.

So like Tim Byrd, my stories have deep roots in a mythic past to create new archetypes in a world starved for wonders.

So what do y’all think? Can the pulps, or pulp-inspired characters, work in a modern setting? Would you want to see an Indiana Jones or Doc Savage remake set in 2016?

 

 

In which I am interviewed on writing and marketing, I write about Renaissance fairs and setting as a “character” in a story, and prepare to write about the old pulp heroes of yesteryear

Setting can be more than just a stage where stuff happens. Place can shape and change us just as much as other people can. It can be, almost, a character in a story.

This isn’t really a blog article as much as it is a brief update.

First, there’s a new article up on my other blog, the one about Renaissance Fairs and my book Blackthorne Faire. In that article, I talk about Ray Bradbury, Pat Conroy, Renaissance Fairs, and setting as a character in a story. Please take a look and let me know what you think.

In other news, I was recently interviewed! If you have a minute, please check out my answers to 5 Questions with Fantasy Author John Adcox.

I’ll have a new blog up next week about the old pulp heroes … characters like Doc Savage, Tarzan, and The Shadow who were popular until Superman and his costumed followers replaced them in the public zeitgeist. I’m wondering … do those stories ever work as anything other than period pieces?

It’s an important question to me, because I’m working on a series of novels, Challengers, that are heavily influenced by the pulps, but are decidedly contemporary. My literary manager, Peter Miller, is shopping them as we speak.

I’d love to know what y’all think.

Stay tuned, folks. There’s more to come.

Did y’all know I have another blog, too?

Hey, did y’all know I have another blog, too? It’s about stories, writing, fantasy, mythology, and Renaissance festivals.

You can find it here: http://blackthornefaire.net

The most recent post is about Renaissance fairs, and the feeling of falling into a story. There’s a lot there about communities, too. I hope those of you who follow this blog will take a look at that one, too. I’d be grateful.

Thanks and huzzah!

Musing on Some Elements that Work in Fantasy, Part Two: Iconic Imagery

One of the most iconic images in all of fantasy literature: The One Ring from The Lord of the Rings.

If you read Part One of this series, you already know that some partners and I are starting a new publishing company, ePic Adventures, Inc. As I mentioned, we’ll be doing print books, both hardcover and paperback, but our emphasis is on eBooks designed to stretch the capabilities of smartphone and tablets and redefine what an eBook can be in the age of transmedia. Again, think of them as eBooks 2.0, or the Magician’s Book from Narnia, or the tablet/smartphone equivalent of a volume from the library at Hogwarts.

As we build the ePic Books brand, we’re focusing on a single genre (or range of subgenres, I guess), at least for the first year or two: fantasy. A part of our strategy involves looking for certain elements that the very best and most successful fantasies share in common. When I say “most successful,” I’m talking about the classics of the genre, the most beloved and enduring works that stand out, across years and even generations. These are the works that shine above the rest, when as works of equal, or arguably even greater, quality dim into obscurity.

One of those elements that most enduring and successful works seem to share, Iconic Imagery, is very closely related to the Iconic Locations detailed in Part One. If you haven’t read it, skip back. It’s okay. we’ll wait.

Back? Okay then.

Absolutely iconic.

Star Trek is a terrific source of iconic images: the famous badge, the bridge of the Enterprise (always recognizable, generation after generation), tribbles, and, of course, Spock’s ears and Vulcan salute. Bladerunner? Don’t even get me started.

Speaking of the bridge of the Enterprise, how is an iconic image different from an iconic location? I admit the line is thin. In fact, at least three of the examples I mentioned in Part One, the Lamppost in Narnia, the Starship Enterprise, and the Death Star from Star Wars, might better be called iconic images rather than locations. The lamppost especially … our first view of it includes two characters, Lucy and Mr. Tumnus with his umbrella and bundles; the characters are as much a part of that scene as the lamppost and the snow-covered trees. So whether you consider it a location or an image, the point remains; it’s iconic and unforgettable. You want images like that in your story … assuming that you are striving for one of those enduring, unforgettable classics. And if you aren’t, seriously, why the hell not?

I should also point out that iconic images, at least as I’m thinking of them, aren’t always exclusively visual (which makes me think I have likely picked the wrong word, but there you are). Consider the Lightsabers in Star Wars. Those glowing laser swords are unforgettable—and are even, I think, a part of why the first film was so astonishing successful. But as iconic as that image is, most of us, I am willing to wager, can recognize a lightsaber even without the visual. The sound, that unmistakable hum, is as much as part of the integral lightsaber-ness as the visual design. If someone plays you a clip of a light saber activating or deactivating, you’ll know it at once. Go head, give it a try.

Star Wars is another gold mine for iconic images: The Millennium Falcon, the X-wing, Yoda, Wookies, the creatures in the cantina, Princess Leia’s hair buns, R2 and 3PO…. In fact, that’s one of the differences between the original trilogy and the prequels. The original trilogy is chock full of iconic images. The prequels have far more incredible and imaginative designs. But how many stand out? How many are memorable? Of those, how many didn’t appear in the original trilogy first? Off hand, Darth Maul’s character design is about all I can come up with. Could you sketch him? Or even describe him in a sentence?

Tolkien’s ring is one of the most iconic images in all of fantasy. So are his hobbits, with their pipes, their small stature, and, of course, the furry feet. What would the Harry Potter books be without, say, the wands or the moving paintings? I can honestly say that I remember more about the visuals of The Wind in the Willows, from the characters to the locations, than I can about the story itself (which means it’s probably time to revisit it).

Captain Hook’s hook is an iconic image that helps define him as a character. without it, he’s a generic pirate.

Personally, I think the best and strongest iconic images are related closely to a character if only because they have the effect of making that character iconic almost by consequence, although of course the image alone won’t do that. But at a glance, they give the character a very specific look, and they tell us a little something about the character. More, the character just won’t be the same without it, like the Dread Pirate Roberts without his black shirt and mask.

Some examples? Remember how Darth Vader’s iconic black helmet and cape stands out from that sea of white-armored Stormtroopers the first time we see him in Star Wars. Think of Indiana Jones with his jacket, whip, and hat. He’s still Indy without them, of course. He’s wearing a white dinner jacket in the opening scenes of The Temple of Doom. But when I saw the film on opening night, the first real spontaneous round of applause from the audience came when Indy pulled on his familiar “uniform” on that little plane.

If you see a poster—or read a description—of a muscled man wearing a loincloth in the jungle, chances are you’ll assume it’s Tarzan. If you see a stern male figure smoking a large pipe and wearing a deerstalker, you’re probably not thinking Nero Wolfe or James Bond. When you see a man on a white horse wearing a white hat and a mask, you won’t have to ask, at least not with a straight face, who was that masked man? It’s the Lone Ranger.

Bob Kane’s original concept for The Batman, before Bill Finger suggested the dark knight we know today.

The colorful uniform made Superman stand out from his pulp-era forefathers like Doc Savage and The Shadow, themselves iconic. When Bob Kane created Batman, he originally envisioned a bright red body suit, bat wings, and a domino mask. Bill Finger contributed a different look … the brooding cape and cowl. Would Batman have worked either way? Maybe. But I doubt it.

Granted, iconic imagery is a pretty shallow way to define a character, and it takes far more than a distinctive look to make a character truly classic. The icons help us recognize a character at a glance (Harry Potter’s glasses and scar); they don’t make us care. It’s at best just one layer, the surface one, but it’s a good place to start.

Iconic images present a challenge to the writer. It easy to show an iconic image in, say, a film or a comic. On the page? Not so much. I include the screenplay page here, too. Strong visuals help a film sell. Regardless of the medium, iconic images have to be described in sufficient detail that we can see it, sure, but the best resonate through the other senses as well. When you’re reading or writing, think of sound (remember the lightsabers), smell, and weight. The icons have to be real. In this case, the written word has an advantage. You can’t smell a film, but a writer can make a scent real. For better or for worse. A film can show us a magic sword, but the written word can show us what it feels like to hold that power pulsing through the palms of your hands.

They present challenges, but they have advantages. They make your character (or prop, or location, or vehicle, or…) a part of the collective zeitgeist. Just about any man, woman, or child can recognize Superman or Mickey Mouse at a glance. Most of them can recognize Harry Potter, Spider-man, or a lightsaber. If you want to have your work adapted for the screen, or illustrated, iconic images give the interpreters a strong foundation from which to start.

And finally (this may sound a little crass), iconic images are merchandisable. You can make toys, t-shirts, costumes, posters, mugs, trashcans, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Just look at what Patrick Rothfuss has been able to do. That’s a way to keep people talking about, and promoting, your work. And it’s a pretty good way to make it attractive to studios and publishers. And it’s certainly something that’s on our checklist at ePic.

Any thoughts, writers and readers of the world?