5) boy meets girl, falls in love, fall out of love, somehow get together again and live happily ever after.

uh wrong, human relationships are more complicated than that.

4)Damsel in distress….really no, not gonna happen if the heroine is a strong-willed person

3)Unconditional love is hard for the human species to obtain, they have to be really selfless and forgiving type.

2)Knight in shining armor syndrome

1) Mandatory happily ever after, I am alright with a satisfactory ending, not necessarily a happily ever after.

Ciao for now!

I haven’t seen anything that really annoys me here…yet.

Just some key facts about this genre…

#1 Dead Ends are fine, if the character hits the wall, great they have to find another way.

#2 the villain hangs off in the shadows with whatever weapon necessary to the story

#3 The detective has a hard time figuring out whodunit

#4 Criminals are smart now a days with technology

#5 Sometimes forensics gets it wrong

#6 Better to keep the audience guessing to the end

#7 better be some nail biter scenes

#8 Detective don’t necessarily get the villain if it is part of a series.

#9 Whoever the lead is don’t necessarily get the love interest either.

#10 Then there are times where the lead gets the love interest and the villain.

Other than that well there isn’t much to say.  Mystery is about discovery and there isn’t away to really goof it up.  Now if you write about Mary Sues, rewrite now and give them issues and reservations.

Ciao for now!

These incredible science fiction works for me defines the ultimate in sensibility and sort of crosses the line between flight of fancy and the tale of humanity twenty-thousand years from now.  The ultimate trip down what if lane.  How do things evolve and change and how would humanity operate under an imperium spanning thousands and thousands of light years apart.

A family saga at heart.  Hard core technology on the surface.  Ecology studies and the effects of man on ecosystems.  Yet, no earth, destroyed long before the story starts.  Only a fading memory on the long chain of mankind.  It is the humbling tale of man named Paul and his descendants and the ever addicting spice.  He becomes a hero in this first book and falls in the second.  His twins with Chani take up his work in the third book and his son melds with the Sandworms of Dune.  In God Emperor thousands of years have passed and humanity is without single authority other than the God Emperor.  In fifth the planet known now as Rakis is destroyed and in the sixth it ends on cliff hanger.  It took nearly twenty years to finish the story, but his son Brian with the help of Kevin J Anderson finished Dune with Hunters and Sandworms of dune, the former Dune 7.

I know that is exceptionally concise a summary, but I won’t give away the good parts.  I will though Acknowledge its influence on me.  Its unearthly hold on the reader.  Its like being on a trip without drugs.  The power of imagination is something to behold.  These timeless tales echo  life back with he first wrote the stories, and yet laid the ground work for a possible future thousands of years from now.  Not that there are desert planets inhabited by worms in the universe, but who knows, really what is possible in the universe.

Now there is news/rumors afloat that Dune may be made into a movie again.  This is where I draw the line.  I visualized the characters in any book a certain way.  With Dune though it’s not about the characters, it’s just going be hard to capture in a movie what makes this legendary book, this monolith in Science Fiction so unique and individual.  Which is mental trips and being on the spice where you can see in your mind’s eye the time flow around the character.  You can see fear as rolling storm of cloud and lightning blow through and around you and then seeing where it has gone and only that character remains.

This is one those series I enjoyed because of the cerebral nature of it, the sheer scope and grandeur of the tale.  Trust me reading the books back to back is mind-blowing.  For me as a writer though they opened a whole new world to me.  Not just for science, but for fantasy, for taking my characters in those dark place we dare not tread.  For taking them to the edge of what it means to be truly human or become a monster.  It inspired me to find a way to create rich wonders and gems of my own.  I like to think and watch my main leads struggle with doing the right thing.  Sometime it takes shoving them out of the pan into the fire or they find people begin to question their reason.

My person opinion on Dune is that huge effect it gave me as writer.  Not for making this epic or broad scoped, but showed me my own personal golden path to change the way I write, the way I think and observe the world.  It has opened my eyes that those we idolize are human as much as we are ourselves and they are fallible.  I rely on myself and my sensibilities.  I don’t follow people, I prefer to march to the beat of my own drums as I always have.  I keep the Sandstorm version of the Litany against fear always close by.  Because:

Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Paul Muad’Dib  Atreides–Dune, Frank Herbert.

I’ve always kept that close to me.  I fear nothing not even what the day brings, its challenges and things I see.  I am human and I am fallible.   I will always be grateful to my aunt that showed me these wonderful books as I showed her the conclusion of the story when I bought it.  I see the unknown as a challenge to my senses and sensibility.  Dune opened my eyes, my experience in life, has helped to a degree.  I am a writer and I see all the things made possible for me as a writer made possible by these legendary books, as well as other influences but these were the key to unlocking the barriers that I put up and made a box for myself.  They were the beginning of me Feeding the Jackal.

Ciao for now!

Yeah about that…

Annoyance #5

Unexplained or lackluster faster-than-light travel.

Base it on physics and what we known rather than assumptions.

If space can be folded then do it…

Annoyance #4

Aliens with attitude problems.  Sort clichéd at this point.  What ever happened to the fact that they are thousands of years more advanced and the only way we’d win is giving them our diseases which they may not have immunity too?

Annoyance #3

Nations that exist today may not exist tomorrow…

Humanity changes governments over time it deems unworthy of use or organization of people.  Economies govern the governments, if they proved unstable then geopolitical issues flare.

Also our cultural differences and the way we believe that we can be governed means that a world government would be the most fragile form of government.  Trust me, no man who believes that we have the right not to be terrorized would not suffer gladly under tyrannical world government rule.

Annoyance #2

Space Opera…Just call it Science Fantasy.  It’s not our universe…  It is the Laser & Sorcery of Science Fiction.

Enough said.

Annoyance #1

According to physics Time Travel is about going forward.  We can’t go back, then the whole thing is are you certain its our time stream in the first place.  Quantum Physics comes into play here with the Multiverse theory.

Supreme Annoyance or Annoyance # 0….Leave Earth in one piece.

I strike again at being annoyed.  My biggest most universal pet peeve is when Mother Earth herself is destroyed.  Its depressing and almost made me throw a book across the room.  AI is evil and shouldn’t be developed ever…. No thinking Machines.

Earth, no matter how we as humanity live as a species, no matter how many tens of thousands of years time goes for us, is our home world.  It is the world that gave us life, that sustains us.  No matter if there are AI on it they can be destroyed with electromagnetism.  Earth is our past, our present and part of our future.  It is the reason we search for other worlds.  No matter how far we travel in space and time, we want a place to remind us of where we come from.  That goes for when we grow up and move away from home.  We have a piece that always goes with us.

I know its fiction.  I am a bit of an earth lover.  It may be part of my heritage, considering  I have Native American in me, probably not much, but my paternal grandmother’s grandmother, either on her matriarchal line or patriarchal line I remember, either way it is there and I also get it from matriarchal line also.  I think that may have something to do with it.

5) There must be a prophecy.  Not true in all cases but most of the time some great prophet comes along and says unless so and so here at the random farm can save the world…doom awaits us all.

Seriously get a grip and rework this tired old thing.  Prophecy makes for interesting reading but it can have a thousand different tones and undercurrents under the surface.

To be a hero requires sacrifice of current living conditions.  To be a hero it doesn’t take a prophecy.

4)Inherit and obvious racism.  Elves, dwarfs, humans, orcs, ogres, trolls.  Oh my goodness its a nasty troll or oh its a stuck up elf.  Really, I don’t think so.

Elves are pure magic, they are mystical and yes aloof but they all shouldn’t have the I’m better than human attitude, good grief so you have pointed ears, wow and magic likes you a big whoop for you.

Then some kind of evil races of ogres, trolls, and orcs.  Serious a mad horde of trolls come dashing out of the mountains to slay people sure, sure whatever.  Things can be turned on its head.

3) Dragon issue.  Really unless you can take human form you don’t need gold or jewels or fair maidens.  You really shouldn’t need to be big as a train.  Really no sense in being any bigger than bus.  They have to eat something, there aren’t enough cows to feed a serpent the size of a train.

2) Must take quest to save the world because a wizard says so…

Enough said.  Tell that to one of my characters and see what they do.  They would all give him the equivalent of a vulgar gesture.

1)Lack of a choice.  He can walk away from it and watch the consequences or face the danger on his/her own terms.  I know young naivete of a farm boy with some secret royal or magical lineage there had to be a reason.  There has to be a reason for everything and no prophecy.  No wizard to tell you what do to do without having the ability to sense magic from person.

Freewill plays an important part in people’s lives and being forced to do something goes against it.  No body can be forced to do something if they don’t want too.  The only thing is doom may rain down on all their friends and family.  Choice makes for an important decision and tension factor.