Author: Jim McGowan

Ed and Fern

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Here’s an excerpt from Book 2.5 between Fernallus, a jocular Dragon disguised as a Human, and Ed, a hyper-powered swordsman:

Ed nodded.  “I’ll be fine.”
The blue-haired ward eyed Ed closer. 
One of his brown eyes temporarily took on a yellow hue with a slitted pupil before reverting back. “People who say, ‘I’ll be fine,’ aren’t.”
Ed shoved him with a crooked grin.  “I’ll be conflicted, but collected.  That suit you better?”
“Not really, but we’re going in regardless, so I’ll pretend like it does.”

Ed and Fern are among my favorite characters to write.  They’re very fun and a lot lighter than Ashe’s crew.  It will be most enjoyable to meld the two worlds together in later books.

Back to it.  Keep on powering the fight.

Svithe

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I’m back on Book 2.5, writing some characters who will be a big deal in Ashe and Avril’s lives in Book 3.

Here’s a mini excerpt I particularly enjoy:

“Xax is many things,” Svithe said.  “But he only acts the fool to hide his craftiness.  Be on your guard should you encounter him.”  He moved in closer to her.  “Because he knows exactly what you are.”
Candice gave Svithe a feverish nod.
He leaned in with his obsidian mask nearly touching her cheek, savoring her fear, her humiliation.  “And do you know what you are?”
“A killer.”  A tear glimmered at the edge of her eye.  “Damned to suffer.”
“That right.  And extent of your suffering will very much depend on how well you perform at the Pale Desert’s frontier.”  He patted the side of her cheek.  “Act well, my dear.  Act well.”

I’ve been told by a few readers that they really dislike Svithe.  And that’s a good thing.  He’s very fun to write as the guy people love to hate.  An urbane sociopath who gets off on messing with people.  Hopefully you don’t know anyone like this in your life.

And if you do, I hope you know someone like Avril too.

Nuh-Wuh-Wuh-Fffff!

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Got the Hidden Chapters finished up.  I’ll have Sally Walker read one of them at this year’s Nebraska Writers Workshop Fall Fiction Fest at the Ralston Library on the afternoon of Sunday, Sept 22.  I’ll regrettably not be able to attend.  For short it’s the NWW FFF, pronounced Nuh-Wuh-Wuh-Fffff by me only, but I’m trying to start an audio meme as of right…. now!  Nuh-Wuh-Wuh-Fffff!  Say it proud.  Say it loud!  Say it after you’ve stubbed your toe and Ow’d.

Now, you know why I write grim science fantasy instead of comedy.

In the meantime, sales on Repenter are… steady.  Oh, marketing, how I loathe you.  Luckily, I’m in this for fun because I gots ta do it.  As I recently told an old buddy, what else am I going to do, make a smart watch?

And.  AND.  I finally found some good new, pensive hard rock to write to, Black Veil Brides.  Right in my wheelhouse.

Crazy behind on the comics pile, looking forward to seeing how X-Factor wraps up.

In the words of Yoda: For now, all that is.

-Jim

PS- Nuh-Wuh-Wuh-Fffff!

Slow going and Memorandum

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Been a while since the last post.  Been slow going this past month.  I’ve been writing some bonus content for Repenter that I plan to release for free on Smashwords or something similar after I copyright it.  Hoping it will clock in at around 50 pages.  It’s just not moved as fast as I would like.  Sometimes the words flow and sometimes they ebb.  The last month has been the latter, regrettably.  The key is to keep at it.  And so keep at it I shall.

In memorandum, a friend of mine, Michael Burton, recently went missing in Arkansas and almost certainly drowned while spear fishing.  As of now, the authorities are still searching for the body in the murky water of Beaver Lake.  Michael was an outstanding man, a great husband to Annemarie and great father to his son, Issac.  I often interacted with him at Ultimate Frisbee.  He and I would sometimes shoot quips back and forth as we ran up and down the field.  He will be sorely missed.  And to those he left behind, always know that you are not alone.

God bless.

Libraries and Pending Hidden Chapters

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Hey, all.  I’ve decided it’s too tedious to list all the new comics I purchase each week, so I’ll limit it to the ones of note.  Lazarus #1 from Image looks very cool this week.  I’ve actually made a dent in my pile, so this one is next up.

I’ve been told that Repenter is now available on Overdrive (the ebook hub for libraries).  I took a look on the Omaha libraries on my Google Nexus, and didn’t find anything yet.  Hoping it shows up for others.

I’m currently writing a series of hidden chapters for Repenter that I’m going to self-publish for free through Amazon or Smashwords.  The aim is to entice new readers to purchase the novel proper.  Should be about 50-100 pages of new content, including the Cigars with Mom and Post-Coital Design Advice short stories from the Stelfire.com website.

Also getting my first royalty payment soon.  I’ll be happy with any sum, honestly tis a journey, not a destination.

Getting back at it.  Keep on machining the rage.

Comics Wednesday 6/19/13

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Yello, everybody.  Heavy week this time around with my purchase from Krypton Comics, so I’ll jump right in with ranks of least to best:

Fantastic Four #9: This one is not popping as much as I’m wanting it to.  Not bad by any means.  Just not popping.

BPRD #108:  Always enjoy the creepy vibe, but needs more weird agents.  Too many regular humans.

Harbinger #13: I really enjoy this new take.  Especially the variant 8-bit cover.

Bloodshot #12:  Ditto for this one, but it did lose me earlier on.  We’ll see if it can keep me beyond the crossover.

Hulk #9: Mark Waid’s take on the Hulk is refreshing.  Embrace your inner need to smash.

X-Factor #258: It’ll be interesting to see how PAD draws this to a close.

Revival #11: The cover alone made me want this one.  This series is fabulous.

New Avengers #7: I like the addition of Beast to the Illuminati.  Cool concept to see a bunch of smart guys trying to save reality.

 

Avengers # 14: Cannonball is a favorite B character of mine.  Glad he’s getting more exposure.

 

Uncanny Avengers #9: Got a slow burn of cool building on this one.

 

Age of Ultron #10: Polybagged for my protection.  Yay.  I’ll read it anyway.

 

Also caught Man of Steel on the big screen.  I went in expecting a super-punchy action movie and got exactly that.  A few moments of clunky dialogue, but pretty good in my reckoning.  I give it a B+.

 

Other posts to come.

 

Comics Wednesday 6/12/13 plus an Amazon email and props to the dearly departed

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You know what day it is.  Wed to the Nesday.  Comics are purchased at Krypton Comics.  Ranked from least to best, they are.  Read I shall some day when my heart is pure.  Mmm, yes.  (That’s supposed to be a Yoda voice.)

 

Harbinger Wars #3: As indicated earlier, love the new Valiant line.  And I loved HARD Corps back in the 90’s.  They’re back.  I’m in.

 

Thor: God of Thunder #9: Thor is a character who lives and dies by his creative team. This crew is doing swimmingly.  The son of Odin is followed by me anon!

 

Guardians of the Galaxy #3: Forget that I love Bendis, McNiven, these characters, and space.  The cover has Rocket Raccoon with a gun.  SOLD!

 

Light week this time around.  A few quick other items.  I got an email from Amazon advertizing new sci fi books and Repenter was in the subject line and showed up first of the list.  That’s gotta be good, right?

 

Also, my wife’s grandfather, Earl Searson, passed away this week.  He was a great story-teller and had ample character.  He shall be missed.

 

That’s all this for this week.

 

Interview with Kent Sievers

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Greetings, all.  I recently had the great pleasure of reading Kent Sievers’s novel, LITTLE MAN.  It is a contemporary thriller-mystery set in Omaha focusing on a homeless everyman, Alex, who yearns to reconnect with his daughter while avoiding the turmoil of the street and the mounting menace of a zealous killer.  Kent and I are both Fiction Works authors and members of the Nebraska Writers Workshop.  While our books are different in subject matter, they share connective tissue with these two organizations.  They also both make use of the word “repent”, though with radically different context.  And the two stories involve fathers and the bonds tying them to their lost daughters.

I recently interviewed Kent about his book and was delighted by the insights he provided:

1) Alex’s struggles with just surviving the street were as compelling as the mystery of the killer. What inspired you to write a story about a five-foot tall homeless man as the central protagonist?

To help you understand how I arrived at my decision, let me give you a little of my background. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona in a family business located between a busy homeless shelter and a welfare housing project. From the loading docks I witnessed and often had to deal with all manner of violence, addiction and desperation that accompanies life on the street. In the early 80s I was working as a newspaper photojournalist and noticed cardboard and plastic tent cities popping up all over the old neighborhood. Whole family’s living out of their cars were adding themselves to the usual mix of street people and the results were often tragic. For weeks after finishing my late shift at the paper, I’d wade into the homeless camps with cameras in hand, earning trust, taking pictures and drinking gritty coffee boiled up in rusty, #10 cans. Long story short, the front-page story that came out of those late nights brought a flood of generosity. I saw those who were desperate to climb out of homelessness find help and those who preferred the street (don’t kid yourself, there are a lot of freeloaders out there) take advantage of the windfall and move on. Because I was comfortable navigating that often unseen world, I became the go-to guy when homeless issues surfaced wherever I was employed.

Alex was inspired by a real man who lived in a doghouse on the fringe of Omaha’s north downtown. We met while I was shooting a story on a brutal winter’s impact on Omaha’s homeless population. Now, the real Alex was far from the American dreamer/everyman I created for LITTLE MAN, but I liked the guy and I suppose the made-up Alex was my way of giving the old fellow the sort of life I wished for him.

Several years ago when I finally gave into my need to write fiction, homelessness seemed the logical starting point and Alex, who had died years before, seemed the perfect witness. To make him fit, I did a “what if,” placing a good portion of my 50+-year-old, non-college-educated self in Alex’s shoes, then let my imagination fill in the rest.

2) You deftly portrayed the wintertime city of Omaha as a “character” in your story.  What went into the research of the settings of this book, both above and below ground?

Time spent navigating snowdrifts, shelters, dumpsters and soup kitchens with the real Alex played a big part in getting to know the area. Other familiarity was gleaned while on various news assignments, but a lot of the knowledge came from just stopping in to visit the places I found interesting. I’ve had readers send me pictures asking if they’d found the location of a setting in the book and I’m touched that they felt compelled to look. Some of the buildings are there, some have been demolished and other were purely made up in my head. My version of life inside the shelters and soup kitchens was an amalgamation of every shelter I’ve ever been in with a smattering of imagination thrown in.

As to the below ground settings, I love that you ask because I had a great time writing it. The underworld was a mix of imagination, a now-demolished building in the north downtown and a tour of a water-eroded cavern beneath an abandoned apartment complex in north central Omaha. I’d gone to the apartments to shoot a picture for a story on their pending demolition and ran into a shady bunch of copper scavengers who wanted to show me something “cool.” It made for an interesting picture, but I was really happy to make it out uninjured and with all my possessions intact.

3) The Michael antagonist was just plain creepy.  How did you wrap your mind around writing such a disturbed person?  Did you have any inspiration for his motivations or behavior?

Michael is a disturbing “what if,” born of many sources. Several years ago I shot pictures for a series that examined how the state of Nebraska deals with the issue of mentally ill children. During months of talking with professionals and families and documenting the worst and best case scenarios, I gained a better understanding of the endless complications and heartbreaking damage it can do.

Since mental illness and homelessness often go hand in hand, I wanted it to play a big part in the novel. I’d learned that some believe a trigger for schizophrenia in teenage boys may be sexual abuse by a trusted friend or family member. I have no idea if that is theory or documented fact, but it stuck in my head and resurfaced when thinking about Michael. The “what if” I built around Michael was a perfect storm of what could happen when horrific child abuse collides with greed and indifference. Trust me when I tell you that it was difficult to let my imagination wonder into those dark corners. Antagonists can be fun to write but Michael was not. I worried his sickness might be too much for some readers and struggled with balancing the need to show a profoundly disturbed man while keeping the perversion and violence from seeming gratuitous.

4) Your novel has a lot of food for thought regarding society’s tendency to sweep the vulnerable, the forgotten, and the sick under the proverbial rug.  If you could put this story in the hands of a policy maker, what do you hope this person would glean from it?

As a working journalist I have to be careful not to take sides on public policy, but I think all would agree that the issue of mental illness is something that deserves constant, clear-eyed and non-political examination.

5) What haven’t I asked you that you want your readers to know?

I’d like readers to know how much appreciate their taking time to read the book. Moving from telling stories with a camera to telling stories with words was a scary leap, but once I realized the grandeur and scope the process offers it became a joyous addiction. Hopefully readers will want more, because I have a head full of characters and an imagination that has found its perfect outlet.

 

Thanks so much to Kent for taking the time for this interview.

I highly recommend LITTLE MAN.  You can purchase it on Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Apple iBookstore, and many other ebook retailers.  For more information on Kent, please visit his website.

Feel free to comment on this blog entry on my Facebook page or tweet me on Twitter under @Stelfire.

Keep on powering the fight.

Comics Wednesday 6/5/13

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Howdy, all.  It’s time for another comic pre-commentary of my purchases for this week, courtesy of our friends at Krypton Comics.  As always, they are ranked from least to best.  Crazy-heavy week this round:

Hypernaturals #12: I want to love this series.  Cool concept with a computer called the Quantinuum that runs humanity in the future.  I love DnA’s run on Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy.  The art just is not up to the task of conveying all the high concept ideas.  I like the character Thinkwell a great deal.  He writes inky equations that are basically like spells.  I’m on the fence with this series overall.  I might keep buying it, I might not.

Dark Tower: Gunslinger: Evil Ground #2: I understand this series is going to end.  It’s probably time.  They’ve pretty much mined all they can from King’s source material.  Fun ride while it lasted though.

Thanos Rising #3: I’m so glad they put Thanos back as a supreme bad ass.  Loved the Infinity Gauntlet as a teenager.  This origin series is as twisted as you would expect for a villain of his magnitude. POP! POP! (Couldn’t resist for you Community fans out there).

Earth 2 #13: Same sentiment as last week’s annual.  It’s the alternate-alternate DCU.  Green Lantern (Alan Scott) is gay.  Flash (Jay Garrick) is now a college kid after spending forever as grey-templed dude. Holds my interest.

Abe Sapien #3: Holy snikeyes I enjoy Abe Sapien.  Always have in Hellboy and BPRD.  Glad they brought him out of his coma.  Hate that Fenix chick for shooting him, but she likely did it so he’d mutate and help save humanity from the crazy shiz-nit gong down.  Yay for fish guys!

X-Factor #257: Jamie Madrox and company are very complex characters.  Looks like PAD is wrapping it up.  Sounds like it’s on his terms, so that’s cool. I’ve dug this book for years.

Archer and Armstrong #10: I like this iteration more than the original run from the 90’s.  Aram is a greater boozer character, and Archer is a good straight man.

Daredevil: End of Days #8: The last issue of this alternate future title where DD gets killed and Ben Urlich has to find out what his last words, “Mapone” mean.  Big noirish fun.

East of West #3: Hickman is setting up another epic story here.  An alternate reality where the US fragmented into several nations after the Civil War, 3 of the 4 Horsemen come back as malicious kids, and Death is mad.  I likey.

Astro City #1: Busiek describes his fun archetypal series as a chick flick with a big budget superhero movie happening in the back ground.  I’ve loved each volume of this series.  All manner of genre conventions are turned on their head, or looked at from other points of view.  Great stuff.

Avengers #13: More epic-ness from Hickman.  Looking forward to the journey on this big ass story.

All New X-Men #12: The idea of the past X-Men visiting the present continues to bear lush fruit.  Love how awkward past Cyclops is with everyone hating him.

Age of Ultron #9: This series 2nd and 3rd acts have just been plain fun to read.  Time gets bent up something fierce.

A dozen this week.  A dozen that I’ll likely read some Sunday in a four hour binge with another 30.  I love comics.  Don’t want to write ’em, though.  Though any who have read Repenter will see that I’m heavily influenced by them.  Stay tuned for another entry soon with an interview from Kent Sievers.  You will enjoy.

 

 

Comics Wednesday 5/29/13

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Starting a new feature featuring the comics I purchased on any given Wednesday.  I’m a customer of Krypton Comics in Omaha.  It’s an outstanding store staffed by friendly folks and not a sun-faded poster from the 90’s to be found.  My pile is always overflowing, so I likely won’t actually read any of these for a few weeks.This week’s purchases are ranked from least to best.    I always save the best for last.

BPRD Vampire #3: I LOVE BPRD’s regular series.  Mike Mignola is not afraid to eff up the status quo.  The artists always do a good job of conveying the off-kilter, apocalyptic world.  This mini series is about an agent running afoul of vampires.  Not expecting much.  But the dialogue is always strong and the atmosphere is always creepy, so I’m in.

Earth 2 Annual: Earth 2 is the only New 52 book I purchase.  DC just isn’t turning my crank, and it hasn’t since Final Crisis.  I get this because I enjoy James Robinson’s writing.  Check out his Starman run from the 90’s.  Opal City is a great fictional location.  Oh, yeah.  Another Batman shows up.  I shall read it with the expectation of punches being thrown.

Indestructible Hulk #8: I enjoy Mark Waid’s run on this title.  This latest arc with Thor feels a little “fillery”, but I still enjoy it.

Captain America #7: The Dimension Z Saga is going to be better in my eyes after Cap has lived through it and is haunted by it in future issues.  Crazy ride in the meantime though.

New Avengers #6: The Illuminati continue to march toward the death side of Jonathan Hickman’s massive epic.  Very dense, but worth it.

Thief of Thieves #14: This crime series about a pro thief who can’t escape the people in his life is awesome.  I understand AMC is developing a series based on it.  If so, it will partly fill the hole left by Breaking Bad’s passing.

That’s all for now.  Happy Wednesday!