Karen Traviss, New York Times best-selling author

Real heroes

An extraordinary man died a few weeks ago, and I'd like all of you who spend a lot of time reading about fictional heroes to pause for a moment and look at the real deal.

I couldn't invent a character like David Paton.  And there are an awful lot of David Patons all around us, unseen and largely ignored.  There were hundreds of them who took part in the absolutely extraordinary WWII raid on St Nazaire, a real operation so staggeringly impossible that I actually wasn't able to use even half of it as a basis for events in a novel.  I'm a WWII buff, as many of you know, and I like to pay homage to the servicemen and women of that era by echoing some of their sacrifices in the combat scenarios I use in my books.  War tends to repeat itself, of course, and there is nothing in WWII or my books - except the technologies, of course - that the average Roman soldier wouldn't recognise.  Combat has its own repeating patterns, because humans haven't changed since we picked up the first rock and hit our neighbour with it.

Having said that, though, you have to be sparing in your parallels. Especially with cases like the raid on St Nazaire. It just didn't work in fiction. It was too incredible, even scraps of it. I ended up saying to my editor: "Sorry, I had to drop that idea in the end. Nobody would have believed it in a novel."

And yet David Paton did it for real, along with a few hundred other men - not supermen or genetic wonders or any of that crap, just ordinary blokes with guts, made extraordinary by their willingness to front up and do it. They were among the very first of the modern commandos; and they were a very mixed bunch, from Oxford academics to working men. They sailed a small fleet of wooden ships to the St Nazaire naval base in occupied France, made it past the Nazi defences, rammed the dock with an explosive-laden WWI destroyer pulled out of mothballs, and effectively put the German battleship Tirpitz out of the war by denying her the dock she needed.  Few of the commandos made it back. It was obvious from the plan's inception that it was going to be a one-way trip for many, and yet they still did it.  Five VCs were awarded. Even one German naval commander recommended that his British adversary be awarded a medal for sheer guts and refusal to surrender even when it was clear he was finished.

And David Paton, one of the few survivors, went on to land on Sword Beach on D-Day. Like so many others, his war wasn't just one headline. They went back and did it again and again.

Operation Chariot defies belief.  Even if you have a very short attention span and you think history's boring, please click on these links and read the articles, because you owe these men that much. It's not "just history"; it's why you and I are here today. They do things that put fictional heroes to shame. Don't forget them - ever.

Rest in peace, Dr. Paton. You earned it.

 

UPDATE:  on the topic of real heroes, I'm delighted to hear that all Gurkha troops have won the right to stay in the UK. It's a decision that's taken far too long, and should shame all of us in the UK that we tolerated this particularly ugly example of colonial exploitation for so long.  Anyone prepared to die for this country - and God knows the Gurkhas have - has a moral right to citizenship.  How many of us have?

The Gurkhas are magnificent troops who've fought for this country for nearly 200 years, and won a stack of VCs, but by way of thanks we've treated them worse than those who come to the UK to freeload off our welfare while preaching holy war. (And we have a particularly shitty record of kicking out other overseas troops when we've had our use of them, too - Great Britain, my arse.)  When Jacqui "Dreary Housewife" Smith has finished crowing about her support of the Gurkha cause, maybe she can tell us why her morally bankrupt government didn't right this wrong in 1997 when it came to power. The "compelling case" to be allowed to stay, you mediocre little creature, is that they're prepared to die for us while we sit on our fat white arses - and that includes all those troops we're still booting out when we're done with them.

 

 

 

 

 

Scream like a girl

I find spiders fascinating. That's not to say I'd pick one up and give it a kiss, but I let them carry on doing their thing in the house, as long as they're not too intrusive.

Intrusive as in venomous, aggressive, and frigging huge.

So, yet again, a Brazilian wandering spider has been found in a bunch of bananas in Blighty. To save you the trouble of Googling, this is a very venomous spider, as in it can kill you. It's more venomous than a black widow, although I'm not sure if being extra-dead is worse than just dead. This guaranteed-to-put-you-off-your-dinner discovery is becoming routine here, and what makes me bang my head hard on the desk with each OMG news story is this line: "We thought it was an ordinary spider."

Well, I'm from Portsmouth, and 'ence well 'ard, but even we don't think something like that is ordinary.

Maybe I take more notice of spiders than is healthy, but this bugger couldn't look more exotic if it tried. It practically has a Carmen Miranda fruit headdress and a pair of bloody maraccas. Remember the one that the medical Einsteins (and RSPCA...) let loose in the grounds of a Taunton hospital? After it bit a guy, and he ended up in said hospital, with full media frenzy, and the spider was brought in for questioning? Yep, the RSPCA, whose animal recognition skills I may have to re-evaluate, allegedly said it was a harmless British variety, so it was okay to let it go.

If you watch the video I've linked to, you can't help but notice the words "thousands of eggs" in the voice-over. Combine that with the fact that it's warm enough here now for scorpions to breed in the wild, and I'm not a comfortable girl. My humane spider-catcher just hasn't got the firepower to deal with a thing that can wrench the device from my hands and beat me over the head with it.

I know racial profiling is misleading and all that, but as far as spiders go - if I saw this one in the fruit and veg section of my supermarket, I'd be pretty sure it didn't have a UK passport.

It's the little things...

Some things should be a certain way. Like time. Left to my own devices, I use the 24 hour clock, and have done for many years. It makes sense. It's the navy way. And it's unmabiguous.

And, at midnight, the 24 hour clock goes like this; 2358, 2359...0000.

I'm now wrestling with the disorientation of finding that the digital clock on my Neff cooker goes 2359, 2400, 0001.

Heresy!

I hadn't noticed this before because - quite reasonably, and unusually sensibly for me - I'm not usually cooking at the stroke of midnight. But...well, it's just weird. That's all. And if that's the biggest problem I face this week, I shall count myself lucky.

Quick reminder: you can hear Sohaib Awan interview me today about ORDER 66 for the Fictional Frontiers show on WNJC-1360 AM Philadelphia.  You can listen here   at 1100 EST. (Podcast here.) 

 

UPDATE: I'm way behind on my mail, by the way, so apologies to everyone who's waiting for a reply from me. It'll be at least another couple of weeks before I get round to clearing the backlog.

Clarkson Island

Okay, that was cheating. Utterly unrelated blog title, simply because I keep finding myself saying, "...when they're not surrendering...to your granny" in my best Jeremy Clarkson voice. (And unless you saw HARRY & PAUL this week, then you won't understand why I find that so addictively funny. Remember - post-watershed humour.)

Actually, today's theme is interviews. I've been gobbing off like a good 'un to assorted media about Gears of War and Order 66, and as many of you have learned to your cost, I can rabbit for England. Stand still while I'm haranguing you...

Here's an interview for Figures.com , part of their GEARS OF WAR week.  I went on for so long that it's in three parts. Sometimes you have to shoot me to stop me, and if you've not got the firepower - you get the full thoughts of Chairman Traviss.  Just lie back and take it. You'll feel all the better for it.

And then there's ORDER 66. (Warning; there may be spoilers in the following interview if you haven't read the book yet.) Sohaib Awan interviewed me about the novel for the Fictional Frontiers show on WNJC-1360 AM Philadelphia, and you can listen here on September 21 at 11:00 AM EST. (Podcast here.)

 A P.S.: I'm getting mail from readers of my wess'har series asking when I'll be going back to my creator-owned novels. I think it's sunk in that JUDGE is the last of the sequence - really the last, the end of the story arc - and that there's no sequel on the horizon. I may return to the wess'har universe one day, but it's not my next planned series, which will be something wholly new. And before I get to that, I have tie-ins to deliver. This is the point at where I get a little selfish.

I get mail occasionally that expresses regret that a writer like me (define...but don't share it with me) doesn't do more "original" fiction but that the reader understands I have to keep the wolf from the door. While I can see this kind of message is meant as a kind and flattering one, it's actually missing the point big-time, quite apart from rubbing me raw on my pet peeve about those who regard licensed fiction as inferior. (See my web site FAQs. This really gets on my tits something chronic, folks.) So let me explain my thoroughly selfish and - yes, maybe utterly arrogant motives.

I write tie-ins because I love doing it. And because I do it bloody well. Yeah, I said it. I bust a gut to make every book just as good as if it was my copyright. Stone me now.

 I don't need the money so badly that I don't have a choice about it. I've made a few bucks, and I'm smart with finance. So I could stop work for two or three years, maybe more, without a single extra contract coming in, and just chill. Loaf around. Write all sorts of stuff. Travel. Whatever. But I don't.  Because that's not much fun when you could be writing instead.

I have to write tie-ins - not because I'm contractually committed to some more, or because I promised Del Rey or any other publisher, or because I wouldn't let Epic down ( all of which are true, by the way) but because I bloody well love the daily grind of doing it. And when a "real writer" like me stands her ground and says to the critics, "Okay, dickhead, I'm good and I choose to write for a licensor, so what have you got to say to that, eh?" it makes the point to the litsnobs (like I give a toss what they think, to be honest, but some of my colleagues do) that tie-ins are real books, and well worth my effort.  There are, in  fact, lots of good writers with careers of their own who actively choose to do tie-ins - Karen Miller and Sean Williams in SW, for a start, and many others right across the genre spectrum - and gosh, there are even best-selling authors who happily write Bond books and HHGTTG, although I'm not sure if they'd identify themselves as tie-in authors.

They are, of course.

I don't know any writer (not personally, anyway) who knowingly writes a lit-lite dumbed-down style for tie-ins.  It's our names on the cover, after all; we have our reps to consider. Anyone who reads both my creator-owned and tie-in work can see the material is the same standard in every way - apart from the fact that some franchises can't let me say "m***********" in dialogue, of course. (That's okay, I always have Mando'a for that...)

And here's the selfish bit. (The previous rant was the arrogant bit, in case it wasn't obvious.) If I don't get the buzz of working on something like Gears of War, then I've got less adrenaline in me to write my creator-owned stuff.

I need fun. I need to marvel at the talents of people who can do things I can't; artists, composers, software engineers, concept designers, video techies, audio guys, voice artists. I need to learn from them. I need to feel part of a team, and a winning team at that, at least for part of the working week. When my reservoir of enthusiasm is topped up, then it's easier to go back to sitting alone in an office and working entirely in a creative vacuum.

So, wess'har fans, I'm really grateful and flattered that you love my books. But without folks like Epic Games and the Gearsiverse, you wouldn't get many more of them. I have to do one kind of novel to keep the momentum going for doing the other. And you get a better novel for my having brushed against the inspired Gears team. Same goes for the comics and other non-novel work I'm doing. It enriches me. I do it because there are no limits to storytelling, and I need to explore until I fall off the edge of the world.

So, when the next Traviss-owned series hits the shelves, I'll be probably financially richer, because the royalties are far, far better than licensed work. But my real wealth lies in the joy I get from that collaborative world where I get to play with amazing toys that aren't originally of my imagining.

 

 

 

 

Keep calm and carry on

There's blood all over the kitchen today, which is not an unusual thing, but I still feel stupid for doing it.

I was opening a stubborn parcel the Portsmouth way (large knife) and it all went to rat-shit. Result: puncture wound in hand, copious amounts of the red sticky stuff, and much foul language. Thankfully, the second parcel I opened (more cautiously) was a backorder for a mug I'd taken a fancy to: most apt. 

 

 

As the WWII vibe is now set for the day, I'll link to the excellent Miller and Armstrong in their personae as WWII RAF pilots, but I must warn you that - if you follow more of the links from the YouTube pages - you'll find some of their more offensive (and even funnier) material.  Any under-18s and easily-offended adults who've made it this far: do not click. NSFW. The Flanders & Swan spoofs are...damn brilliant.

 

Hiding in plain sight

Okay, maybe it was 107 miles to the Jedi Temple. (Thank you for not asking why the charge on the Deece depicted on the cover of ORDER 66 reads 107. No, I mean it. ) But tomorrow, the book that Republic Commando fans have been waiting for ever since a certain Jedi developed inappropriate feelings for a certain hunky clone commando goes on sale.

I wrote the end of ORDER 66 four years ago, when I was still working on HARD CONTACT. I had no idea at the time whether there would ever be any more books beyond this one-off novel intended only to promote the game, but I needed to have an idea of where these characters would go in order to write them convincingly. The basic premise, though, was so riveting that I believed it could sustain a series in its own right; the squeaky-clean and totally unchallenged heroes of the Jedi Order were mired in the exploitation of enslaved human beings, a moral crime so compelling and full of dilemmas that I had to see where it ended. And, if you engage that fully with a story, chances are you can collect enough readers to make the journey with you.

The naive boy-soldiers left Kamino and grew up fast. They worked out what the Republic was doing to them, and that it wasn't glorious, and that it wasn't fair. A few Jedi reached the same conclusion.  The dissident band grew, gathered together by a thuggish yet charismatic Mando mercenary, and by the time I got to the end of ORDER 66, the final scene - the whole ending, in fact - wrote itself in a very different way. I'd had to throw away my original road map, because, over the course of four books, the characters had developed and multiplied so much that the whole story arc had shifted.

That's what I mean by letting the characters drive.

I think it shows when a writer shoehorns characters into a plot they want to make happen. I can't work that way. My stories always flow from the personalities of the characters, and how they react and interact. And the characters flow from the kind of person most likely to fill that particular niche in the environment; Kal Skirata and the Cuy'val Dar, for example, were a necessary tweak to the basic story of Kaminoans (not exactly natural SAS material) training crack troops of another species - humans; I didn't believe the old fish-nazis could manage the job, so I asked Lucasfilm for permission to change a bit of the plot of Attack of the Clones to have a hitherto-unseen secret corps of off-world training sergeants, real hard bastards who could train elite troops. That was the only way I could write Omega as an authentic special forces squad along SAS/ SBS lines. That was all I knew, of course - the real world of defence. And, as I wasn't comfortable writing American dialogue back then, and as I also needed to differentiate the clones with varied speech patterns and accents, it enabled me to have a sergeant who used all the services slang that I was used too.

So Kal Skirata was born of necessity. And, because Jango had to pick mercs he could trust to keep the project secret, Skirata had to be Mandalorian. And you all know what happened after that.

The weaselly little bastard decided to have a life of his own, and so did the Mando culture he came from. So did Omega Squad; so did the various Jedi who worked with them, from ethical and courageous Bardan Jusik to earnest and self-doubting Etain Tur-Mukan. Walon Vau and Mird were conjured up on the spot when my buddy at LucasArts mailed me to ask if I could flesh out a sergeant for a cutscene in the Republic Commando game, which was still being finished long after the book went to press.  I knocked that profile out in five minutes, and I still don't know quite where those two came from. 

But they all came alive. I have no idea how some of them evolved so fast, or even where some of them came from at all, but my toolkit of psychological profiling, a kind of mental identikit of personality types, kept churning them out book after book, and I had a wonderful, scary, upsetting, funny, angry time following them and seeing the world through their eyes.

I still don't understand why more authors don't do this. Why base characters on real people, or - worse, more boring, more pointless - yourself? What could be more of an adventure and an education than taking this journey with complete strangers who never lose their capacity to surprise you?

My characters have changed the way I see the world. Their moral arguments, seen from behind their eyes, have upset and unsettled me, and forced me to rethink my own position on some fundamental ethical choices.

Yes, they really did acquire lives of their own, as all good characters should. And now, four books on, some of them have to bow out. But life and lives go on, and however harrowing the events of the final days of the Clone Wars , the motley Skirata clan will dust itself off and regroup for the next battle, this time under the Empire. The war may be over; but the real fight has only just begun.

I didn't actually want the book to end the way it did, in case you're planning to ask. I woke up for days after I finished the manuscript with a sense of disorientation and grief that disturbed me. It's just a bloody story, after all; none of it is real, nothing except the basic human truths within it. But to write vivid fiction, you have to live the lives of those characters every inch of the way.  And that's why it hurts, like the aftermath of a nightmare. Your body and your hormonal systems experience it all as if it really happened. Flat-out balls-to-the-wall writing is just like that.

So, yes, I would have wanted different outcomes for the characters.  But the story just didn't develop that way. The characters didn't go in that direction. If I'd interfered, and steered them, then I'd have been left with a wish-fulfilment fanfic kind of fairy-tale that would have defeated the whole object of the way I work - which is to build fully-realised and wholly original personalities, stand back, and report faithfully on what they see, think, and do.

It still hurts. And I'll still keep on doing it. Because that's where the most emotionally resonant stories are born.

 

 

A nation of shopkeepers...not

I've been getting mail from UK readers having hassle trying to buy ORDER 66 in Blighty.

Living in this green and not terribly pleasant land myself, I feel your pain. I can't do anything about it, alas: I'm just a literary code monkey at the wrong end of the food chain. Authors have no control over anything past the first proofs, which means we can't control - and aren't even told - about the sale, distribution, and editions of our books. We tend to find out from readers. That's just the way the industry is. Always has been, I'm told.  (Unless you're a mega-mega-seller like Brown or King. )

But let me tell you what I know, and what I don't know. I hope it helps.

First: order ORDER 66 from Play.com.  FREE DELIVERY! And fast. But that's the wrong cover they're showing, and it's not their fault, because the online retailers get some kind of automated central database thing which is also a mystery to me now. Del Rey had to change the cover, remember, because it was so much like the Clone Wars one that they thought customers would get confused. 

ORDER 66 comes out as a hardcover in the US on Tuesday, from Del Rey, as per usual. There will be a US paperback version some time later. There is also a paperback export edition for other English-speaking countries other than the UK.  I found that out when I was sent some in error. I had no idea they existed.

To the best of my knowledge, there was never any plan to do a UK hardcover edition. Only MMPB - mass market paperback.

Random House UK publish the "mainstream" Star Wars books, but they don't seem to touch anything related to the games - not the ones I do, anyway. So Orbit, a totally separate publisher, picked up the Republic Commando books. That's why Orbit is also publishing the UK edition of Del Rey's GEARS OF WAR: ASPHO FIELDS. Alas, I still have no idea why Random House UK don't publish my game-related books that their US sister company originates. I've asked. Remember that - despite the fact that I'm English and I live here - the UK is technically an overseas market for me. RH UK have no contact with me whatsoever.  Orbit don't publish any other SW books apart from mine, as far as I know. (But they do try to stay in touch with me personally, send me author copies, and are nice and friendly on the few occasions that we talk.)

Do I sound confused? Disjointed? Good. Because I bloody well am.

Bookstores in the UK - well, if I actually bought and read books, I'd be even more frustrated than I am now.  I seldom see SW books in shops, except in major chains in bigger towns and cities. If they do have any SW book in smaller stores, then the selection is poor. Independent book stores - just don't get me started, okay?  I have no sympathy when they start griping about online retailers and supermarkets putting them out of business. Maybe they ought to look at the service they offer and wonder why. I won't bore you with my horror stories again.

I'm a very business-minded girl.  The spreadsheet is my bible. But publishing generally, both its production and retail arms, is still an alien world to me even after four years of trying to get to grips with it; it behaves like no other industry that I know. And you can multiply that by a hundred when you get to the UK side of the equation.

So all I can do is apologise to all my readers in the UK who can't get my books, and have frustrating times with bookstore staff. I can do nothing except get angry with you. In the meantime, all I can advise is to vote with your wallet, and give your money to those online retailers who want to sell you stuff. If Amazon UK isn't working for you, then try Play.com. Better still - try the US online retailers like Amazon.com, who have a terrific selection, and the p&p isn't as bad as you might think.

And before you ask why I don't do UK signings - well, I offer, but UK book stores just don't want to know. Lord knows I've gone out of my way and made a lot of calls and visits to try to get some interest. Echoing silence...

Then I compare that with the mail I get from US stores asking me when I'm next going to be in the US, and I just have to shake my head in complete bafflement.

Sorry, fellow Brits. I've given up on home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reality check

So, you get your first glimpse of GEARS OF WAR: ASPHO FIELDS today. You can read the prologue here.

If you know the game, and you know my other books, then you can probably take  a fair guess at what it's going to be like in terms of style and flavour.  You'll be in the characters' heads. You'll know how it feels to be fighting for survival. But, more than anything, you'll get the truth.

I make no apologies for the number of times I've told interviewers how much I love Gears of War. I didn't discover Gears as a gamer; I came to love it for professional reasons- through its excellence, its emotional resonance, and my admiration of a massively complex job brilliantly executed. I also love it because - even though it's full of Locust and weird monstrous things - it's so very, very real. The Gears are fully realised and lovingly portrayed, warts and all. It's one reason that so many soldiers love this game.

Right now, my dear friend Ray is deployed in Afghanistan, and he tells me that one of his younger comrades is currently playing his copy of Gears, sent from home, and totally immersed in it.   He mailed me: " I hear the carnage nightly, along with all the shouts..."  And, strange as this might sound, just knowing that Ray's young buddy is enjoying Gears right now focuses me a lot; because these are the guys whose opinion I set such store by.  I want all my readers to enjoy my books, but when military readers write to me to say that I've captured their experience the way it really is, I feel that I've earned my oxygen for the day.

I owe those guys. I owe them in an anonymous way, for doing the rotten necessary jobs that most of us won't or can't do, but expect others to; and I owe them personally, individually, for all the generosity, patience, wisdom, help, and sheer bloody good fun they've given me over the years. The very least I can do for them is to depict their job the way it really is.

I believe in truth in fiction. You know that by now. I feel the power of fiction to create stereotypes - for good or ill - makes it a dangerous tool to handle, and so it shouldn't be done carelessly. When I see "mil porn" fiction - and even though I don't read novels, I sometimes get to see samples of it in the course of my job - I just get angry. I think lazy, careless, insulting portrayals of our men and women in uniform is a noxious thing, and I saw some text this week that made me furious; it was clear that the author had made no effort at all to find out how military personnel feel about the terrible things they have to face.

It takes little effort to find service personnel to talk to about their experiences and feelings. I accept that not all writers can have my background and access, but if you're going to write about fighting men and women, then you should have the basic courtesy and professional discipline to at least find out about them and talk to them.  They give generously of their time; and we ought to give back the reality.

Which brings me back to Gears of War. The core of the game, the essence of the Gears experience for me, is a group of guys looking out for each other in a post-apocalyptic hell - not superheroes, but regular men made heroic by their willingness to step up and do what's needed.  Look past the visceral thrill of splatting Locust - no, I'm not immune to the raw enjoyment of shooting the shit out of things in games, either - and you're left with a story of incredible loyalty and sacrifice, not always easy, not always victorious, often agonising, but always a group of decent, honest squaddies looking out for their mates.

That's what speaks to me. And that's why I think that being given the ability to write military fiction is a privilege, and with it comes a duty to the real men and women whose reality I plunder to create entertainment. In this world of dwindling forces and defence cuts, where most civilians go through life never meeting someone who serves, my stories may be the closest that many readers get to that reality. So it has to be as right and as real and as honest and as fair as I can make it.

So, even on Sera, in a world of Locust and chainsaw rifles and crazy boots, the soldier's voice still has to speak the truth.  That, for me, comes before anything.

 

Because it's true

If you've reached this blog, you've probably come via my web site. If you've visited my web site, then you might have looked at my contact page, which tells you how to contact me, and what I can and can't read or reply to.

Someone drew my attention today to a web page (which looks kosher, but do check all internet sources, like any good journo should) that shows how Robert Heinlein used to handle fan mail. I found it sobering, not simply because so much of it was  identical to my own list of caveats and the way I respond, but because it shows a certain inevitable pattern in the relationship between author and audience.

I've never seen that document before today: I drew up my list - and modified it as time went on - based wholly on my experiences of trying to deal with fan mail. It starts as a trickle, and then it's a flood - thousands of messages a year. I still reply to almost every fan e-mail or letter I receive individually, no form responses.

I'm not saying a form response isn't a good idea. Time pressures mean that it may end up being the only option for me, too. But I haven't gone that route yet. I'm steeped in the business (and cultural) ethic of answering folk when they talk to me, customer contact, that kind of thing. I'm commercial, not artistic. It costs me a lot of time, and I'm not always sure where the break point is going to be when it gets too much.

Anyway, take a look at the two lists side by side, and you see identical trends, identical reactions. This is behavioural convergence caused by environmental pressures, a neat little example of the evolution mechanism in action.

I don't feel so bad about having a long, long list of caveats and conditions on my contact page now.

 

 

 

The violence within, and bad people

First, let me get this off my chest; World Lux are evil, evil...evil. When my uberspiffy Aurora Optima mini pencil arrived today (see earlier blog), not only did it make me want to rush back to my wallet to buy more items in the range, it also nestled seductively next to a World Lux catalogue, a publication so unashamedly, luxuriously extravagant that it makes Vogue look like a toilet roll - the hard single-sheet Izal variety, at that. In this catalogue, this volume of pure pen evil, there were magnificent pens I had never seen before.

Ponder on that. Me, lifetime pen nut and owner of a stupidly large and expensive collection of fountain pens dating from 1880 to last week, discovering not just new pens but whole ranges of pens I'd never seen before. This is like discovering a new variety of dinosaur, intact, mummified, and maybe with an unfinished diary grasped in its claws with just the words "Frigging big meteorite heading this way... " still legible. Except it's a lot more expensive, will grab no headlines, and can only end one way. I think I'd just better get my agent to pay my advances straight to World Lux in future.

And these bad, bad people, who must know I have the breaking strain of a warm Mars Bar when it comes to writing instruments, are based in Seattle. They have a shop there. I will be attending PAX in the future. That's right next door, pretty well. I think you can see where all this is heading. In my defence, World Lux prices are much better than most high-end pen retailers pen-for-pen by a long chalk, which brings them down from you-know-this-is-bankruptcy grade to just bloody expensive.

Now to violence. It's a pens and swords thing today. Chew over that idea first.  My money is still on pens, in both senses.

My father, usually the most supportive of dads, told me he's concerned about the effect that violent games like Gears of War have on folks. Naturally, I leaped to the defence of the new love of my life, as any decent woman should, and cited research that says the only people who'll become violent after playing violent games are those who were going to do it anyway. After all, the vast majority of the most horrific of the world's violent acts have been committed not only without the benefit of computer games, but without any high tech at all. Humans are violent, sadistic shits when push comes to shove, a small percentage are more violent and sadistic than others as a first option, and if anything, someone's reaction to violent games is more of a diagnostic tool to spot the loonies than a device for creating monsters out of hitherto nice boys and girls.  My gamer buddies have never carried out a violent act in their lives, and even those of my friends who kill for a living aren't into random acts of violence. Monkey see, monkey do, is a bit too simplistic and lazy a psychological theory for my tastes.

Having said that, though , I do worry about violence in fiction, and my role in propagating it.

But it's not chainsawing Locust that worries me. It's the violence gussied up and buried in candy floss that scares the shit out of me, the stuff we feed youngsters without a second thought. 

In Gears, you damn well see what violence is. First, you're warned before you even open the box. Second, the violence (in the unfiltered content) is explicit. Third, if you look at the characters with any degree of analysis at all, you see that violence and constant war really, really mess these guys up. This isn't a paean to killing. It's actually a story about a desperate war for survival, and how human decency - yes, look again, look at the character interaction - can still surface even in hell.

No, my work for Gears doesn't keep me awake at nights at all. What does give me pause is the risks in the careless violence embedded in apparently innocuous stuff that we let our kids read, play or watch without even checking on it.

That's why I write Star Wars the way I do; where any character uses violence, I spell out the reality, even if the PG rules prevent me from going the whole anatomical hog.  That's why Boba Fett reminds Jaina what really happens if you cut off  someone's head with a nice, clean, cauterising lightsaber.  They'd be conscious for a few minutes. It's a horrible way to die.

That's why Ben asks his father Luke the obvious moral question in Sacrifice; why was killing everyone on the Death Star okay? How did he cope with that and so many other deaths - not all of them the deaths of demonstrably evil, dangerous people - on his conscience?

I need to think that Luke Skywalker, who's supposed to be the ultimate moral hero, gives that some thought, and finds it troubling. And he does. Because if he doesn't, then I've sold kids a bad thing. Not only is it out of character for Luke to be a killer who wastes lives callously, which is plain bad writing, it's also a dangerous way of sliding poison with a candy wrapping into a reader's subconscious. You don't expect to see that kind of thing in Star Wars (or any other family-friendly fiction) and so you're not on your guard for it.

As authors, we have responsibilities, because - as I've said so many times - fiction does influence human beings. Good, emotionally-resonant fiction influences us even more - adult or child. And because it's fiction, we don't see it coming or notice what it does to us.  One violent act in fiction won't make a psychiatrically normal person rush out to copycat a crime; I don't believe average, normal humans will be motivated to shoot people or steal cars simply by playing GTA.  But the steady, endless, inexorable drip-drip of the idea that violence by the self-defined good guys is okay, and not the same as violence by the bad guys, fosters acceptance at a deep level of double standards, and reinforces the submission to whatever the guy in charge tells us is fine.

Do I really want youngsters absorbing a subliminal message that chopping off someone's head is a clean death? Even with a lightsaber? Because it isn't.  God knows we should all be aware of that by now. Do I want kids thinking it's okay because good guys cut people down without a second thought, and don't seem troubled by it - even joke about it? No, it's never okay, and if a hero jokes about it and doesn't suffer afterwards, then we have a clinical definition for them: a psychopath. A dangerous nutter. Psychopaths don't do it out of real rage, either. So they're okay, right? They aren't motivated by the dark side.

I actually see and hear kids arguing that killing people is okay if Jedi do it, but not if Sith do. God help us, I've even seen thirty-something adults say that, although I'll accept that they're the developmentally-challenged drooling fringe. It's kids I worry about.

No, I don't want kids imbibing that implied approval without thinking. So I take personal responsibility as an author for the world I create, or my corner of someone else's world. My books are not kids' books, but I know kids - and impressionable adults - read them. I am responsible for the picture of violence - of every reality - that I draw. So I'll draw the honest picture.

If you're going to have violence or any other nasty thing in your story - bloody well tell the truth about it. It can be done in a way that kids can understand, too. The real danger of portraying violence is in sanitising it. 

Ironically, that's what my father now recalls seventy years later. As a small kid, he watched movies where the comic hero booted someone up the backside when they bent over. So he did it to his buddy. It was funny and harmless, right?

No, it wasn't. He really injured his friend. He thought kicking someone hard like that had no consequences, because he never saw any injury or aftermath in the movies. He's never forgotten that lesson.

And neither should you.

Me, I sleep okay at nights when I'm working on Gears. It's the PG-13 stuff I worry about. 

 

Oh, all right, then...

...I weakened. Gordon is a moron. (And why has nobody dusted off that jolly little song from the past yet? I hear it played minus lyrics on certain TV ads, and marvel at the lack of connection. Perhaps it's too cheap a shot.)  Brown is down and close to out, and all that remains is for us to form an orderly queue for the fun of kicking him in the nuts.

The Banana Republic of Lesser Britain's current excuse for a government relies on public apathy to keep it in power, and one of my concerned readers (thanks, Mike S) reminded me this morning that I need to get my political panties in an angry bunch once more.  Okay, I hear you, Mike, but I need to build up my stamina again.  The Indie is helping me pace myself back to my former record time for covering the distance between hearing some political outrage to developing a full-on apoplectic rant. Zero to maximum frenzy in ten seconds is possible, I think...

So thanks, Matthew Norman of The Independent: what you said.

"There was no coherent Blairite ideology because ideology was the last thing on their minds when Blair, Brown, Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson and the rest of that tiny cabal – Charles hovering on the outskirts like the good little Kinnockite he was – adroitly hijacked a political movement. "New Labour" was never more than a device to enable the winning and retention of power, purely for the joy of having power. Any individualism these professional paranoiacs believed threatened electoral success was crushed as lethally as any perceived challenge to the uniqueness of Mr Blair's popularity. "

Ooh, that feels good. Now let's wheel out the full dirt on the dodgy dossier, too, the fabrication of the massive lie that took us to war. I feel the old stick-'em-all-up-against-the-nearest-wall muscles responding to that little bit of exercise. In a week or two, I'll be back to full froth levels.

But I probably have new readers here who are bewildered by all this political stuff, and want to hear about the books. Good point. The books are fine, there are too many of them for my physical comfort, and as a result of having too many books to write, I have too much money to squander on pens. Latest acquisitions; a gold Sheaffer Signet and matching pencil (circa 1955  - been looking for a set like that for a year or so) and an Aurora Mini Optima pencil to match the fountain pen that Richard Binder customised for me. Nice.

Okay, a cheap segue there, but yes: GEARS OF WAR: ASPHO FIELDS has reached the final proof-reading stage and has been sheer joy to write. The novel is out at the end of next month, with a luscious cover that has all the perfection of the game art. It it's one of those images that you can pore over for hours and keep finding new and fascinating detail. Check it out on my web site.

Cramming an entire writing career into four years leads inevitably, as I've said before, to a high level of disillusion and jadedness, probably because the human body isn't designed for that kind of time compression, but Gears - the whole experience, from dissecting the game to working with the fine folks at Epic to savouring the nuts and bolts of doing the novel - has restored the pleasure of writing for me.  It's good to know such things can still happen.

One side-effect of being immersed in the Gearsiverse, of course, is that I find myself watching Gordon Brown on the news, revving up a Lancer via my mind's eye, and hearing a Gus-like voice saying: "Bring it on, baby! This is my kind of shit!" 

Make a note. The Gears comic by Joshua Ortega is out in a month, then it's ASPHO FIELDS on October 28, and then the second game, GEARS OF WAR 2, is out on November 7. 

And it's one hell of a game. Trust me.

 

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Tools of the trade

Today, I'm going to stick to stationery.

Maybe it's old age, but I find I just can't get a decent political apoplexy on since I started blogging again.  I think I burned out my Mrs Angry chip, at least as far as the UK government is concerned; there's little I can add to illustrate out what a bunch of incompetent, sleazy, DUMB dicks they are, not if you've been keeping even the most casual eye on the UK media.  They've lost confidential data on at least half the UK's population. (Yes, I mean half. Fifty per cent. One in two. It's that bad.) They do it a lot. The economy is so bad that the Chancellor is publicly washing his hands of it and hinting that the big Scottish boy next door hit him and made him do it.  They've turned the country into a second-rate East Germany, complete with Stasi-style surveillance of ordinary citizens, with exhortations to spy on your neighbours and shop them for not using the right recycling bin.

No, I'm not making any of that up for comic effect.

You'd think that after the best part of 30 years of breathing the same air as politicians that nothing the twonks do would surprise me, but even I remain surprised by their ability to hit rock bottom and then dig deeper. But angry? They've exhausted me into a state of meh. Yes, I'd stop to string them up from the nearest lamppost if the opportunity was offered, but for the meantime - I get paid in US dollars and I cleared my mortgage years ago, so the pound can sink as much as it likes.  I just live here for the while. This is no longer my country; I don't recognise what it's become.

Anyway, stationery; storyboards, to be precise. I was introduced to them way back when I began working in television, and I've been using them ever since - even for non-visual media. In the bad old days, I had to photocopy blanks, and then Filofax started making storboard inserts, thereby changing my life.  I think they've discontinued them now, but I still have a stash somewhere.

Over the years, I've veered between DIY storyboards and buying them off the shelf. So here's my current tote board on how the current ones shape up.

My definition of a good storyboard template is that it should have room for text - that's partly because I'm used to having space for voice-over or dialogue, but also because even people who deal solely in visuals need to jot stuff down sometimes. and if you're using them for general brainstorming rather than planning visuals, you need that space.

LEVENGER: the stationery junkie's friend (well worth the horrific shipping costs to the UK) makes two kinds of storyboard pads, near enough A4 size, and Circa storyboard sheets in various sizes. Frames plus room for text.  Probably my fave. When I first found a Levenger store (on a trip to Boston) I said I could die there quite happily, which disturbed the staff somewhat. But it's a joyous shopping experience.

MOLESKINE:  I like the notebooks, however pretentious the marketing - it's just paper, people - but the storyboard version is only available in pocket size, oddly split between two frames to a page at the front of the notebook and then four to a page with space for text at the back.  An enterprising person has created a template for marking up the large notebooks, but if I'm paying that much, I resent having to do the work myself. The UK prices, even from the excellent Mojo, are damned steep compared to US prices, too, which puzzles me. Caveat: Moleskine paper can be pretty crappy if you use a fountain pen. Some top-quality inks bleed on it badly and the show-through is a problem. If Smythson can make its featherweight paper completely fountain-pen friendly - and that stuff is like tissue - then I expect better from Moleskine. (The Smythson notebooks really do live up to the claims, by the way. But for that price, I bloody well expect them to. Only drawback is that they're all lined paper - no unlined option.)

If I were going to resort to penciling in frames from a template, I'd rather use Clairefontaine pads or notebooks, because the paper is perfect. Those trees didn't die in vain. There are also plenty of Moleskine alternatives that have borrowed Molie's once-USPs of elastic straps and a filing pocket, so shop around.

DIY PLANNER: a variety of printable storyboard templates for all sizes of paper and card, and of course you can customize your own. And pick your own paper stock, too. (A5 template here.)  Ranks close to the Levenger approach as a Traviss fave.

There's also plenty of software for storyboarding, but I spend so much time at a keyboard that I need the break and the chance to scribble. It's therapeutic. If I were doing more comics/ TV than novels, though, I'd probably go for it. I'll investigate the options and maybe blog on that later.

If you've come across any other good off-the-shelf storyboard stationery, mail me.  I'd love to know about it.