Author Appleton

Writing. Fantasy. Sci-fi. Mystery

fiction

Paperbacks ready for Signing & Packaging!

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My favorite Christmas memories involve unwrapping new books, then lounging on the couch to read while Christmas music played and my family laughed. Christmas is almost here, and the best way I know to celebrate is with a new book!

Among Broken Gods (The Sword of the Dragon series Book 6) already has 5 ratings/reviews on Amazon… and all of them say 5-Stars!

Ready for Signing and to be Packaged for Shipment!

Today my shipment of ABG paperbacks arrived. They look sharp on the shelf😎 Tomorrow, I will be Signing these, and my lovely wife is going to help me package them to ship out to the Kickstarter backers.

God bless you and yours!

Storytelling comes first

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There is a cute little book store a short distance from my house. In fact, it is inside of an elderly woman’s brick home. I don’t know how long she has been running that business, but she uses the front two rooms to showcase and sell used books. Upon a recent visit there, I was thrilled to find a small paperback of First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells. It’s one of those old 50-cent copies that you can almost tuck inside your pocket, and as I started to read it I was reminded of my growing conviction that Storytelling comes first.

Before the mechanics of how to tell a story, before grammar, before structure. Without a good story to tell it is not worth the telling. I have a similar paperback of The Time Machine (another classic!) and it astonishes me that Wells was able to pack so much world building, characterization, and fun into such a short book. It makes me think that I should start writing some shorter tales along a similar vein, told as a narrative to be as memorable as possible. I’ll admit to not feeling entirely up to the task yet, but that’s due to my own lack of faith in my ability.

The truth is that if we write a fascinating story the grammar and mechanics can be polished and the narrative strengthened later. We imagine ourselves to be perfectionists when in fact we are procrastinators. We need a little humility, a little reminder that we are but humble creatives groping about like young children in a new world.

Storytelling comes first. I tested this with The Swordmaster’s Glory and the full-length novel Shards in Belial in the first half of this year. The result was two stories that I feel pleased with and am confident are tighter story narratives with great adventurous fun and heart.

First Men in the Moon is a mere 160-pages long in a small paperback format. Like The Time Machine its length is appropriate. But today most science fiction and fantasy publishers will not accept submissions of works less than 80,000-words… A fascinating fact when you consider that the ever popular The Time Machine is about 32,000-words long.

Q: What do you think? Would you like to see shorter reads, or do you hold with a bear’s grip onto the tree of longer fantasy and science fiction books?

Available now! Shards in Belial on Kindle

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Over a thousand years before Ilfedo and Dantress were born, the Unholy Trinity of wizards seek scorched earth, and heroes rise to oppose them.

Curl on a couch with your Kindle

The abbot seeking to protect an orphaned boy, the young woman thrust into the role of High Priestess, and the Swordmaster forced to watch his loved ones die.

When the cockatrice appears, it may doom them all.

Reverend Ashinah promised to take care of the orphaned Xavion, but events are beyond his control. Ooletta never wanted to become High Priestess, but she’s stuck with the responsibility at the expense of her own dreams. Only Olympan the Swordmaster has a clear path, but it is a dangerous and bloody quest.

Rated PG-13 for violence and sensuality. Paperback edition will release next, then hardcover, and there will be an audiobook version as well.

When stories understand their audience

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Expectations. We are people of expectations whether we want to admit it or not. When we go to read a book or watch a movie we have an expectation of the story that must be made if we are going to positively reinforce it to people that we know.

When I started off my writing career I did my best to craft a story that would resonate with a broader audience. But truth be told I didn’t understand how to do that, and now I understand that you should not do that. The story doesn’t necessarily need to be divisive but it should be thought-provoking and challenging to folks of a different world view.

Someone who picks up a harlequin romance is going to have a different expectation than one who is looking for a Christian Amish romance. On the one hand a conservative reader might appreciate the lack of physical description and sexuality in an Amish romance. But on the other hand another reader might have an expectation of realism. To them the Amish romance is rediculously tame, to the point that they find it unrealistic and cannot enjoy the story.

Reader expectation is everything.

For those of you who have watched the first Maze Runner movie, you will appreciate what I’m about to say. If you thought that it was a dystopian along the lines of the Hunger Games, as I did, then when movie two came out you were severely disappointed when it turned into a zombie apocalypse. Your expectations were let down and you felt deceived.

Amidst the muck of politically-charged media-driven fiction, a few stories highlight what’s beautiful.

When I say muck, I am referring to that moment when I was watching a show with my kids, in this particular case it was the show Voltron, when the last episode introduced a gay couple wedding. I am referring to the Netflix original series the dragon prince, which had a great story going for it but in the second season decided to introduce a prominent lesbian couple. In the absence of strong traditional male-female romantic interests these pointedly emphasized relationships reek of political correctness. Thankfully there have also been some examples recently of stories that do themselves service by understanding their audience and delivering a story that their audience loves because it resonates with their values.

As a parent, I find it increasingly frustrating when I cannot simply enjoy the show without worrying that a politically charged message is going to be thrown in my kids’ faces.

This post is not a rant. It is not even a disparagement to those types of stories that I find offensive to my kids. Although I will note that my kids were the first to find it confusing and offensive because it went against their very nature. It is interesting that in the simple thinking of children is often found the greatest truth.

As a writer I have often struggled to understand my own audience. Even now as I am re-writing my first novel I have struggled with some elements of the story that could’ve been crafted in a mature fashion, but instead I wrote in a simplistic way so as not to offend certain readers. I have experimented with re-writing some of those sections of the story in a more adult manner, and in some respects the story is far better for it. But I will let the readers be the judge. My job is to make people think without breaking down their sense of morality. If my stories are successful than they encourage my readers in the ideals that they strive to live out.

I think that the recent Toy Story 4 was a fantastic example of a creative team who understood their audience. I saw an interview on the BBC where someone was complaining about the “lack of diversity” in the characters. Her complaint was laughable really, because it centers around a bunch of toys! But I found it interesting that she complained about one toy that didn’t seem as strong to the feminist perspective. In my opinion that element of the story was what made the film as great as it was. And you know what? My kids absolutely loved it.

When a creative team understands the audience that they are appealing to, then the story resonates and impacts the audience’s soul. If, instead, the creative team seeks to placate a critic, then the story loses its punch.

I am fascinated by this. The closer we get to strongly-set morals, and the closer we get to a familiarity in the story that challenges us and makes us stronger or encourages us, the more impact that story has on us.

For some people that set of morals is going to look entirely different than it does for another audience. But that’s okay. Not all stories are made for all people. Neither should they be.

Controversy generates hype. Similarities create relationships. Relationships are built on trust, and relationships only grow deeper the longer they last.

Q: What expectations have you recently enjoyed or found disappointing?

Brightburn: crafting an evil generation

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A disclaimer is in order before I proceed with this article. No, I have not watched Brightburn. But I have watched the cultural shift over the last decade or so from hero-centric to villain-centric fiction and this review of Brightburn confirmed my concerns: Plugged In Online Brightburn review As creatives in media, whether that be film or books or audio, it is our responsibility to realize the impact our work has on future generations. Are we creating the culture that we want to live in? Or are we drowning our children in such a negative outlook of humanity that they have lost all faith in it?

Are we looking to the good or to the evil? We know that the answer is not in the evil and yet this is what an increasing percentage of our media does explore. What if we looked to the evil?

I have long said that the books that made the greatest impact on me were those which gave me a hero to look up to who was more than I am.  Exploring the evil for the sake of shock value is it hindrance to the growth of any future leader. Historically those who were fascinated by evil became evil themselves.

There is a very simple truth here: we become what we eat, we become what we read, we become what we watch, and we become what we listen to. We become the sum of those that we associate with, and we become the balance of those that we study and look up to.

When you read Harry Potter do you want to be Harry, or are you drawn to the vileness of Lord Voldemort? When you watch Star Wars do you find yourself rooting for Luke Skywalker, or are you drowning in the darkness of the emperor and Darth Vader?

Great writers know that we do not follow trends. We create them. We are writing the culture of the future into existence. We are writing to the generations of the future. Our work is immortal, to a degree, and the responsibility weighs heavily upon us.

I hope that it weighs heavily upon us all.

Thankfully there is still a lot of original content being produced that lays out a bright future. A better look at humanity. A future full of hope and not of fear. As for me, my novels are an exploration of the greatest that we can be. The greatest that we were created for.

We need awareness raised as to how creative content impacts younger minds. And, even, the effect it has on mature ones that are fairly steeped in evil content. It affects us all whether or not we want to admit it. Everything should be done in moderation. Everything should be considered with wisdom.

Q: What kind of world will today’s Brightburn-like content create?

Make your characters hurt

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Most writers have a little difficulty building their characters into third dimensional creations. Eventually as the story progresses they fall in love with at least the majority of their characters. Without this creative transformation the story feels flat, but most writers struggle with the next essential phase of creative story development:  making their characters hurt.

When I was writing my first novel,  Swords of the Six, I received my first editorial critique. I remember feeling disappointed because the editor had been unable to make a strong  emotional connection to the characters.  But she adeptly noted that the connection could be made if my characters did not continue to come unscathed out of every battle.

This  was a  revelation to me as I proceeded with the story. I had a scene that I was working on and after a vicious battle with sea serpents my hero did emerged unscathed. So I went back and rewrote it,  leaving the hero with scars for life. The result was eye-opening. As the character recovered from his wounds, I found myself creating interactions, with  other characters for him, on a whole new level.  Suddenly this was not a legend without reason, he had become a hero truly by blood sweat and tears.

Inflicting pain on the story’s hero made me fear for his safety in a way that I had not realized I could. Prior to this the story was fascinating, one could say it was enthralling, but it hadn’t felt real before. Not in the sense that it could be part of the real world that we live in. Now, I could imagine my own terror, my own dread of the consequences of the battles he was facing.

Hurting my characters became an essential element to every story that I wrote. In my primary series this has served me over and over again. In “The Sword of the Dragon: Offspring” I was afforded another opportunity when the heroine emerged out of a battle that completely disfigured her. I had written it out so that the dragon prophet healed her of her wounds, but when an author friend commented on it I realized there was a much better angle to take to that. When the dragon healed her of her wounds I changed it so that he received her scars on his own body. The result was sensational! Suddenly what he had done for her did not seem so light a gift. Suddenly the gift was a test  and demonstration of his true love for her.

Make your fiction characters hurt and make the consequences permanent. Little speaks to their moral fiber as much as showing how they respond to tough circumstances or limitations. These are the fires in which the writing gold is refined.

Q: Do your characters hurt?

How tragedy strengthens romance in fantasy

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Tragedy grabs our attention more certainly than most any other writing device. Think of it! You fall in love with a character, follow their journey of romance, but then something insurmountable is revealed and the romance can never culminate. In fact, it must come to an end and the characters will never see each other again. They will be left alone in their grief, each desiring the companionship that can never be. Such stories are potent because they grab at our desire for companionship and romantic fulfilment. Some of the best books I’ve read are fraught with tragedy, and romantic tragedies are among the most memorable.

While most people know Star Wars as a film franchise, most do not know that this franchise has been built on the pages of literally hundreds of books. Some of them are among the best fantasy novels that I have ever read. Following the original movies (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) a group of writers were handpicked to craft great stories to expand the Star Wars universe. One of those books was Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly.

The story’s premise is this: Luke Skywalker, haunted by ominous dreams and guided by a force he cannot identify, journeys to a remote asteroid field. There he discovers the automated Dreadnaught Eye of Palpatine–from the days of all-out war. Taken aboard the ship, Luke is counseled by the spirit of Callista, a Jedi Knight who gave her life to stop the ship once before. Together they must figure out how to stop the ship from destroying a world.

The premise doesn’t do this book justice. Through the Force, Luke and Callista grow to love each other. Their desires for each other will be forever unfulfilled. Their destinies will separate them irrevocably.

I love this story because it illustrates what a story can be. How it can play at our heartstrings. Maybe you’re not a romantic like me, but still you can appreciate the potency of the emotions romantic tragedy plays in fantasy fiction. As I read this book I found myself asking how I would have remembered the story differently if it had had a happy ending to the romance. It would have changed the mood of the book entirely. In fact, it would have weakened the story. Callista’s self-sacrifice makes you love her. Luke’s heartbreak makes you resonate with his sorrow but at the same time admire his steady path as a jedi master. Emotional entanglements are left aside when they interfere with the greater good of bringing peace to the galaxy.

The impression this story had on me ended up influencing the writing of my fantasy novels. I am not afraid to kill a romance, nor to introduce tragedy, because each of these strengthen the reader’s empathy with the characters. The next time you read a novel that grabs your heartstrings, try asking yourself what it was in that story that made it stand out to you and impact your thinking.

Q: Do you appreciate a romantic tragedy?

Dealing with immorality when writing fiction

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During contract negotiations some years ago my fantasy novel Swords of the Six went before a Christian publishing house’s committee and a couple of editors raised objection with the violence in the story. I remember the acquisitions editor asked for a good response to their concerns. Back then I felt in my soul what I wanted to say, but it was difficult to put it into words. Fortunately another editor had foreseen this and I was able to satisfy their questions by showing them why I believed violence was a necessary element in that novel.

In my books and my short fiction I deal with tough subjects, darker themes. Being a Christian empowers the clarity of good versus evil, yet it presents its own set of challenges when well-meaning parents or readers object to elements of my stories’ content. Violence and romance are a couple of examples.

As a guideline I like to look at what God left us: the Bible. And what is the Bible full of? Along with good deeds it is full of violence, theft, incest, rape, murder, and all kinds of wickedness. But what the Scripture does not do is glorify the sin or the sinner.

Some have argued that those sins are shown only because they are part of history, but it’s important to note that these things are not glossed over. Rather, they are often told in great detail. As to historical context, a simple summary of an evil act or an act of violence would suffice but instead we are often given the details.

A prime example is Ehud who slew King Eglon (Judges 3:12-30). Some would consider the details of Eglon’s death gross and gratuitous. Who wants to picture stabbing someone who was fat enough that his body fat prevented Ehud from pulling the blade back out?

But because of the details we experience disgust, and those who are inclined toward wicked deeds find themselves horrified at the consequences of God’s retribution.

In past ages children were not sheltered as much as conservative Christian American children are from tales of violence and cruelty. Well-meaning parents often miss the point of showing the good along with the bad. The law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, and without a fear of God no one flees into His arms for salvation.

Christianity has the advantage in fiction because it demonstrates love and fear, wonder and evil and horrors. Without the darkness we cannot see how bright the light is.

When fiction is written to be “safe” it creates unrealistic expectations for relationships and our lives. It paints a picture in our mind of ideal people in ideal or easier circumstances.

It is my conviction that we need less “sanitized” fiction and more honest fiction. We need to stop avoiding evil in story in order that the light can reveal the darkness for what it really is. Too often conservative Christian youths enter the world and find that “Surprise! Sin is pleasurable.” But if they are taught to discern instead of avoid, they will have greater defense against temptation because they know that the pleasures of sin only last for a season.

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for  a whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For  the one who sows to his own flesh  will from the flesh reap corruption, but  the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7,8 ESV)

Instead of interpreting what is good by how we were culturally raised, let’s learn it from how it is demonstrated in Biblical and historical narratives. Instead of worrying how culture will respond to our writing, let’s be excited to share through stories that are true to our earthly existence, even if that means we have to drag readers through darker events and wickedness.

Show the good, but show the bad too. The Biblical cannon demonstrates this repeatedly. Writing is only powerful as long as we are willing to let it take us through the muck as well as the green fields.

Q: Which subjects do you avoid when reading fiction?