Month: April 2022

Slaying giants and old tropes

By Steven L. Shrewsbury

An old trope sounds like a creature that lives under a bridge waiting for billy-goats, gruff and otherwise. What is this I speak of?

“In the arts, a trope is simply a common convention in a particular medium. It refers to anything that gets used often enough to be recognized. When you see a kid running around with a cape and know they’re pretending to be a superhero, you’ve recognized the trope that superheroes wear capes.”

An old trope is like having a dragons, dwarves and wizards in a fantasy novel. It isn’t necessary, but they pop up a great deal. Like one’s manhood, it all depends on how one uses such a thing if it is entertaining or not. In my new novel Killer of Giants there are no dragons (lots of other monsters), a few dwarves near the end, and a couple wizards. I’m guilty of using such tropes, but not in excess. The dwarves in Killer make a cameo appearance at the end, and the wizards? Well, they are evil bastards as always.

I had Gorias La Gaul beat a few guys to death with a dwarf, literally used as a foreign object in Thrall. He was a jerk necromancer on top of it. If I have a dragon appear, they are something different, like being undead (in Thrall and Curse of the Bastards), and in the forthcoming Gorias novel Reckoning Day, made of water. The idea should challenge not only the reader to go to a new place, but the writer to create a different view.

I have never used a monster manual to explore monsters, the endurance of characters or the parameters of a world. Years ago, I had an undead dragon in a WIP and a friend said, “Oh! A draco-lich!” I liked the term and used it, but I didn’t research the origin of the term. In Born of Swords, we see a dragon that loves to feast on the dead, eating out of tombs cut in cliff faces. Why? I just thought it was cool. A fan once tried to say, “Well, I’ve heard that blue skinned dragons are eaters of the dead.” Well, yeah, sure, because I just decided this one was like that. Why? Thought that for the area, where folks were entombed about the cliffs, it was a good idea and visual. If I broke a commandment of some kind in a lore manual, well, I’ll likely go to hell for worse behavior than that.

Wizards are another thing oft appearing in fantasy literature. I try and shy away from the wizards living in a cave, wearing robes…but that image persists a bit. I confess to making wizards appear in my works, but they are usually not nice guys or girls. Probably a tad extreme, but I find that entertaining and hope readers do, too.

So I reckon I’m not on a quest to destroy all old tropes as it were. I do things my own way and hope folks will find it enjoyable. I’ve been chastised a few times about the salty language in my works. I’ll paraphrase the late Karl Edward Wagner when he was given grief about saying shit or fuck in a book. If a character falls and hits their head, I really doubt they screamed FORSOOTH! thousands of years ago. Did they say shit or fuck? Not exactly, but something close…that didn’t sound like the King’s English…which they also didn’t speak thousands of years ago, either.

I implore everyone to read. Read things not just in your comfort zone, especially if you’re a writer. If you love horror, read a western. See how different stories are told. Read romance. Yes, you heard me. Why? Well, they outsell horror for starters and one might learn something. I write a lot of fantasy, but I read a great deal of biographies and historical works. Some of these facts slip into a tale or augment a culture set in an ancient time. It makes things interesting, I’ve found, and I’m certain I’m not the only one doing it.

So, check out my new novel, Killer of Giants from Seventh Star Press. It’s a rough, rowdy tale full of grit and wild happenings.

In an antediluvian world, Keltos warrior Rogan emerges as the lone survivor of a battle. Slaying a Nephilim giant from Shynar, Rogan takes back the mammoth his folk gifted the kings.

Soon, warriors are sent to recapture the mammoth and bring it to the Lord of the world, Zazaeil, a demon in human flesh, and the Nephilim giant Marduk, in the fabled city of Irem.

After learning that his sister is to be a sacrificial bride to Marduk, Rogan journeys to Irem in the company of Elisa, a warrior herself, whose mother is a wizardess. With a horde of warriors in pursuit, they encounter many evils, monsters, and challenges to their selves and souls.

Will the song of Rogan’s blood make him strong enough to be the Killer of Giants?

Coming soon to the Literary Underworld! 

 

 

About the author:  Award-winning author Steven L. Shrewsbury lives and works in central Illinois. He writes hardcore sword & sorcery, fantasy and horror novels. Twenty of his novels have been published, including Killer of Giants, Beyond Night, Born of Swords, Within, Overkill, Philistine, Hell Billy, Thrall, Blood and Steel, Stronger Than Death, Hawg, Tormentor and Godforsaken. His horror/western series includes Bad Magick, Last Man Screaming, Mojo Hand and Along Come Evening. He has collaborated with Brian Keene on the works King of the Bastards, Throne of the Bastards and Curse of the Bastards, and Peter Welmerink on the Viking saga Bedlam Unleashed. A big fan of books, history, the occult, religion and sports, he tries to seek out brightness in the world, wherever it may hide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time (drink)

By J.L. Mulvihill 

 

It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be heard, cannot be smelt. It lies behind stars and under hills, and empty hole, it fills. It comes first and follows after, ends life, kills laughter.

— Riddles in the Dark; The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, J. R. R. Tolkien, 1937.

Here I am turning 55, and I am pondering the concept of time and wondering where all my time went. When I was little, time was a thing of infinite substance and seemed to stretch on. I was always waiting. Waiting to get out of class, waiting to go to the pool, waiting for dinner to be ready, always waiting. Now I am constantly running to catch up and time eludes me.

By the way, did you know this is article includes a drinking game? If you are trying to stay or get healthy and are drinking water, carry on, or if you are a connoisseur of the spirits, so be it, but every time you see the word time, DRINK! Also, if you are under 21 might I recommend ginger beer, which is my beer of choice and non-alcoholic, it has a nice ginger bite to it.

So, back to my pondering. I seem to never have enough time in my life anymore. There is always something going on and it feels like the days are getting shorter and shorter and time runs away from me.  I have no idea why this is such a problem suddenly, or has time always been my nemesis? Perhaps in the turmoil of recent events I just forgot how to time manage, or is it manage time?

Time management is essential to a writer. If you have been doing this for a while, then you know this; if you are new to writing, then you should know this. The management of time is not just being able to schedule your writing around your work and life, but also consider setting aside time for research and editing, which are an absolute must if you want to be a good writer. Then there is the business side of writing and in this you must make time for marketing and promoting. So much time goes into the career of a writer that it is hard to sustain a normal life. In time you learn to manage and juggle all these things, or you don’t, and you ride time like a wild turnip hoping you don’t fall off.

Every person, whether you are a writer or not, tries to squeeze more time out of the day. Why is this, I wonder? Have we become a society that bites off more than we can handle? Have we added more tasks to our day and then given ourselves an inadequate amount of time to achieve our goals? Are there really that many things we need to do or get done in such a short time or are we fooling ourselves? I look at the dishes in the sink and wonder if I should do them later or take the time to get the job over with. On the other hand, I could be writing or working on something else more productive in my mind. However, the dishes are still there and eventually they still need to be done, so what does it matter when I set aside the time to do them?

It appears we never have enough time to get everything done we set out to achieve. Time is passing us by, and as we get older time flies by even faster. Psychologists have discovered the reason behind this time-flying thing. Oh, thank goodness, a mystery solved at last. So, psychologists believe the brain forms more memories of new experiences than that of familiar ones. Since fewer new memories are built later in life, time seems to pass more quickly. Well, that doesn’t solve any time problem at all. If this is true, then the simple solution to that is to constantly make memories. Keep going, don’t stop and you will never see time get away from you.

Nonsense, you say. Agreed, the psychologists might be right on the concept of time flying by for us, but it still does not satisfy the need to get everything done and not having enough time to do it. This leads me to the fact that we ask too much of ourselves in our daily lives. This excess of tasks leads to exhaustion, and it is not time that gets away from us, but rather us getting away from time, needing to nap or work slower because we are too tired, or procrastinate.

Exhaustion is not a new concept and in fact every era has its reasons for exhaustion. We now say that modern technology has made things so much easier for ourselves and our lives that we add more things to do on our list expecting that technology will save us time allowing us to achieve our goals. Perhaps we think too much of ourselves in this manner. We tend to want to overachieve or prove ourselves better than the next person. I have written five novels but feel that I am so far behind the status quo that I try to do too much to achieve what I think is the expected number of written novels I should have.  If I did that, would I actually be writing good novels though?

This line of thinking always circles back to needing more time. But I can’t buy time, I can’t steal time, I find it very hard to make time, and I sense there is no way to invent time. Time is elusive. As a child I used to complain at bedtime that time was a made-up concept by humans to make other humans do stuff they don’t want to do. Especially Daylight Savings. That only confuses my brain more, and my body when it thinks it needs more sleep, and my cat when she thinks it’s time to be fed. What started all this time nonsense anyway?

Scientists have concluded, without my help I might add, that there was a beginning of time with the Big Bang, but as far as there being an end, there is no way of knowing.  In particle physics experiments, random particles arise from a vacuum, so it doesn’t seem likely the universe would become static or timeless. I am not sure what that really means except that we cannot obtain more time, nor can we lose it.  This does not help at all and only confuses the matter of time.  Or is time real?

According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. He explains, the apparent existence of time — in our perceptions and in physical descriptions, written in the mathematical languages of Newton, Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger — comes not from knowledge, but from ignorance. ‘Forward in time’ is the direction in which entropy increases, and in which we gain information.

Ahh, so at last someone who agrees with me. Time is as Einstein says, relative, meaning it will happen no matter what you do or when you do it. But Carlo Rovelli says that time is an illusion, and it is not real. So, is time what we make it, or will it happen anyway? The subject is still under debate to this day. Reading all the articles and books there are on time does not give me a sense of accomplishment, but merely scrambles my brain.

I have as much the answer as anyone else. If you believe in time then you must manage it properly, put your nose to the grindstone and get your stuff done. If you do not believe in time, then you should be able to slip through reality and get a lot more done than the rest of us. Either way I think you should not push yourself too much, and just go with the flow. You don’t have to be too strict but instead riding that wild turnip, then maybe try and tame it a little bit. Give it a saddle and teach it to prance at a pace before you gallop across the desert.

By now you are either waterlogged or drunk, and if that is the case then I have done my job. I don’t suppose I given you any real answer to the question of how to have more time, but maybe I have entertained you a bit or even enlightened you in some shape or fashion.  These are merely my ponderings and the wonderings of my mind, and I am happy to share my chaos.

Cited articles:

Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. “What Is Time? A Simple Explanation.” ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/what-is-time-4156799.

Andrew Jaffe probes Carlo Rovelli’s study arguing that physics deconstructs our sense of time; 16 April 2018; https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04558-7

 

Though J L Mulvihill (Jen), is a descendant of Hollywood royalty, she relinquished her crown and rock star days to obsess over her passion for telling stories. An author of young adult fiction and an award-winning screenplay writer and public speaker, Jen dabbles in a variety of genres including science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, medievalpunk, horror, thrillers, and historical fiction. Her recent debut as host for the talk show On The Page with Geeky Side Network TV has got everyone asking, “What will Jen do next?”

To find out the answer to that question check out Jen’s webpage at www.jlmulvihill.com where you can also find her books and short stories. Or just type in jlmulvihill for all social media and you can catch up on Jen’s much ado on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You might just happen upon her sporadic foodie fest Jen Can’t Cook where Jen tests her hand at old style cooking.

Jen’s y/a series, Steel Roots, is based in the steampunk genre and engages the reader in a train hopping heart stopping adventure across a dystopian America enclosed within the walls of its own making. Follow young AB’Gale Steel as she travels across America in search of her missing father learning about the world around her as she goes, and The System that has a hold on its people. A story of love, friendship, hope, and the courage to fight back injustice. 

Jen is also the author of a y/a medievalpunk series, The Elsie Lind Chronicles. This epic adventure boasts of demons, dragons, and dark witches. From the strange and dark corners of her mind Jen has created an extraordinary fantasy world. Weaving Scandinavian folklore into the telling of the adventure of a young girl who is struck with amnesia and finds herself in the middle of an ancient forest in a world filled with mystery and danger. 

Not only is she known for her writing but also her public speaking, where Jen encourages other writers to hone their skills. Currently Jen is working on several writing projects including a science fiction novel, a thriller, a children’s book, toss a couple of cookbooks in there and some poetry, include several movie scripts, and Jen will never get any sleep again. Ahh, but it’s gonna be great!

Check out J L Mulvihill’s books on Literary Underworld!