True Gamer Anthology – Stories by Gamers for Gamers

An untapped market of $152,000,000,000 (that’s billions of dollars) a year with over two billion active participants? Maybe. I suspect most writers are unaware of it.

Games today require an immersive story line. Howard Hughes is featured in Fallout New Vegas. Apparently, Howard survived the nuclear war as a human-robot hybrid living deep underground in a vat of biomedical brew. He controls the city, not for money, but because he wants power over others so he can create a post-apocalyptic world in his own image.

The average video game writer salary is $82,935.
https://www.quora.com/How-much-do-video-game-scriptwriters-make-in-a-big-company
(Forget Fan-fiction, except for fun. Logically enough, it is difficult to make money based on something someone else has created and copyrighted.)

Voice actor dialogue is first-rate. Linda Carter – yep, Wonder Woman – wrote and sang the songs for her own in-game character. Magnolia, the sultry lounge singer in Fallout 4 sings good jazz, too. Google her sometime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S39BnYdGD6Q

We are beginning to plan an anthology of true gamer stories. You are invited to join us. Imagine, real stories that happened in fantasy. We think some of those two billion gamers will want to read it. Only the game gods know what we will find. Love stories, of course. And death. I once played with a drug enforcement agent who came online one day and just wanted to be with “friends.” She was quite upset. She had had to shoot someone in real life. In-game is where she went for consolation. Expect extremes. I remember a lady from the earliest days of online gaming who logged into the game from the maternity ward. She wanted everyone to meet her new baby. That was -truly 😃 – memorable role play as we sat at our keyboards around the world, grinning and being happy for the mother. Expect delight.

To produce an anthology of true gamer stories we will need agents to explore the game forums and find true stories, writers who are also gamers to write their own stories, ghostwriters for players who are not writers, editors of course, and a publisher to format the story and put it on Amazon in time for next Christmas season. You may be any one or more of these and how this effort is organized is up to the people doing the work. Those who are still here this time next year will be the agents, writers, editors and publisher of what can be a ground breaking effort.

Join us. Go to the Facebook Group, “True Game Stories.”
Or email me, GD<at>Deckard<dot>com.

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The PC Censor

Does political correctness censor your writing? I ask because I woke this morning with the realization that my WiP is purely politically incorrect. Badly so in parts. I thought about dropping the project until, fully awake, I remembered that everything I’ve written is fact, not opinion. It is not fiction based on my experiences as a medic during the Vietnam War, it is a telling of those experiences.

Every writer worth more than their sales knows that truth, however one defines it, is beholden to fact but not to the expectations of public opinion. I have to wonder though, to what extent my writing is influenced by wanting people to like it, to not offend others by a truth that I define.

The nature of the beast is the problem. War is not easily described to people with preconceived notions about how good people should behave towards other good people. Young men and women see the world differently from the way they learned to see it when they are serving in a war hospital eleven thousand miles from home. Perception overwhelms upbringing. The daily smells of blood and iodine disinfectant around open gunshot wounds in dying men cannot be processed the same way as feelings hurt by an offensive remark.

Words, as used here and now, are not meant to convey the reality of there and then. The words of war (hmm, I’ll have to make that a chapter title) are determined by the exhaustion of compassion, the need to wall off the horror, and to cling to a useful sanity in an insane world. Acceptance of reality is required to save lives. The death rate of wounded soldiers in Vietnam was 1.9% because the men and women involved coped with reality.

How they coped is my story. This WiP sat in my mind for years while I searched for words that don’t exist. When I began, I found myself writing from the point of view of the people involved, and with no regard to how that might affect today’s reader wrapped in a comfort blanket of moral smugness. Having thought it through, (thanks for reading this) I’m determined to continue. The soldiers understood that death requires forgiveness. I am not going to apologize for their stories.

+++“I was taking a guy to x-ray in a wheelchair. Shot-up, just off a medivac. We go by the gift shop and he says, ‘Stop! See that nurse? I want to eyeball-fuck her.’ I stopped.” He shrugged.
+++“Who was she?” Captain Kelly asked with humor in her eyes.
+++“Jenkins, from O.B.”
+++“Oh. That didn’t take him long then.” She turned serious. “I understand. You see death, you want life.” Sucking in a breath, she pushed her chair from the table and stood. “Back to it.” He took in the redhead walking away. Kelly was on the dialysis team and regularly watched young men die because their kidneys had been left on the battlefield. When she was on call at night, Captain Kelly was notified by waking the doctor on call that night.
+++– from Code Blue and Little Deaths

Children, aging and the joy of videogames

Note: I saw this post on a videogame forum last week.

– by Andreslamantis

Let me tell you a little story:

I found a couple of kids (no more than 12 years old) near my camp the other day. Even when the Hobo is my favourite character, my main is an old retired Brotherhood commando, kinda like paladin Brandis in Fallout 4. White hair, glasses, scars. Rarely one of my characters reaches a high level (this one is 77) because I start new characters all the time. I get the fun from that, and roleplaying it. This one is, certainly, a survivor.

It was late at night (in game, not the real world) and I was resting (sleeping, because my character is old and needs to sleep) and they were outside, checking the wares on my vending machines. Suddenly, one of them entered the house and asked on the mic if I could give them something for 40-50 caps. Even their characters looked super young. They were carrying a machete and a short hunting rifle, one of therm was wearing the vault suit and a ranger hat, the other was wearing pastor’s vestments. And it hit me:

It looked like Halloween.

I got up and dropped a bag of missiles, half-empty cores and mini nukes to make space, some protective undies nobody was buying plus ten US supply requisitions, and they gave me loving emotes for 5 minutes. I went back to sleep.

“Thanks, mister, we’ll remember this. Call us if you need us.”

I imagine them talking about it at school the next day.

I am 36 and I remember being 10 and rocking my Genesis. In fact, I remember being 5 and rocking my Commodore 64. I remember being 3/4 and my dad holding me up so I could play “Crossbow” at the arcades (my earliest videogame memory). I cannot help thinking that one day I will be old (I hope) and remember being 36, and playing this game, bugs and all.

<><><>  <><><>

It strikes me that there must be many true stories  in cyberspace. (Not talking fan fiction here.) A Google search turned up only scary stories about bad things happening to people on the Internet. But over two billion people play videogames.
https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/newzoo-2017-report-insights-into-the-108-9-billion-global-games-market/

Who’s writing their stories? Two billion real people are interacting with strangers in make-believe worlds! Are we missing a market, a huge, incredible, untapped market?  In what genre would you even put this -or, would it make more sense to create a new genre to appeal to videogamers? What do you think?

Do You Know Who I Am?

(A brief rant by Bill McCormick)

I got asked that today. By someone who was very angry with me for not having the correct response. FYI, that six word question inevitably leads to an answer that is as unenlightened as you might imagine. For the record, I’m fifty-seven years old, have had the honor and privilege of working with, and getting to know, many famous people.  Only once have I heard that question asked with a legitimate response expected. That was when a security guard stopped James Brown from entering a venue where the marquis said, in massive letters, TONIGHT ONLY: JAMES BROWN.

So that seemed warranted.

After that I’ve never seen anyone be impressed with the answer they got when they said “Nope, I have no idea who you are.”

I’ll give you some perspective.

Michael Jackson sold thirty million copies of THRILLER. That is slightly more than the population of Shanghai, which has twenty-four million people. Or, looked at another way, ninety-five percent of the planet earth, a/k/a slightly more than seven billion people, did not buy Thriller. A substantial portion of those people never heard of him at all. Many went blissfully to their graves never once hearing him go WOOT! Never once seeing him moonwalk.

They never saw Blanket Jackson, never knew of any scandals, never saw him as a music god, never knew a damn thing about him. And they lived their lives just fine, thank you very much.

I can only begin to aspire to that level of social ignorance.

Not that I can complain too much. There are billions of people who don’t know me either. But enough do that my landlord allows me to live indoors. It’s a start.

If someone doesn’t know you, or what you do, take it as an opportunity to teach them. To welcome them into your world. It’s a far more productive response.

A man who doesn’t pay his bills never lacks for correspondence

Wilton Stillwater wasn’t the sort of person you’d immediately accuse of being a puking, ill-minded, fustilarian. He was, in his own eyes, a man of impeccable honesty who always paid his bills. Eventually. So he was somewhat irritated when Struan Cruet, the grocer, paid a small boy to follow him round shouting a variety of insults after him.

On the other hand, I can rather see where Cruet was coming from. Stillwater owed him money, yet paid his bills, in full, every five weeks. The problem is that Cruet sent a bill out every four weeks and had initially been entirely happy when Stillwater seemed to be so prompt with his payments. It only eventually dawned upon him that, actually, for every five bills he sent out, Stillwater had only paid four and after three years there was a considerable amount of money outstanding.

I, as a poet, know the standard of living to which I aspire, and attempt to achieve it. Obviously there are times where patrons are remiss in sending me money, or even in offering me work, and the flow of funds, never exactly a torrent, dries up to a trickle. Well I can hardly be expected to go without eating, or sharing a glass of wine with my friends, just because others have failed in their duty.

But with Stillwater he seemed to avoid paying his bills as a matter of policy. It wasn’t that he hadn’t got the money, it was simply that he would put the money on deposit, or invest it in some money making scheme. Thus when he finally got round to paying you, he could keep the return that his investment had made.

Some debts were older than others. Hence he purchased a suit from Sakes. This he bought to get married in. He finally paid for it when he needed it altering so he could wear it to marry the second Madam Stillwater. Given that he and the first Madam Stillwater had had five children, you can see that he hadn’t actually rushed into handing over the money. Indeed the only reason he paid at all was that Sakes held the suit to ransom, refusing to hand it over, or even do any work on it, until he had been paid in full for the purchase, and in advance for the alterations.

This incident aside, it has to be admitted that Stillwater wasn’t often outwitted.

Dame Readle, who ran the dame school Stillwater’s children attended was perhaps the worst hit. At the end of the first year she asked where the money was, and by the end of the third year she was threatening to expel the children, on a weekly basis. Yet when she finally managed to catch up with Stillwater, he merely pointed out that she was educating the children, she was not educating him, thus it was only proper than she approached the children for money. Indeed he pointed out that for the last three years he had been teaching her several valuable life lessons. Thus it had occurred to him that she ought to be paying him. Finally Dame Readle had to be happy with a promise that the children would pay the debt back out of the money they earned once they started work.

Perhaps inadvertently, it was the children who were the cause of Stillwater’s schemes coming to an end. For Madam Stillwater’s first confinement, husband and wife decided to approach Mord Filch who provided a midwife and generally remained in the background. Still he was on hand and maintained a watching brief. The midwife was entirely competent and the mother blessed by nature with a physique well suited to childbirth. Mord Filch’s role in the whole process was dropping round after the birth to check up on things and to congratulate mother on such a beautiful baby. Still the midwife needed paying and by the time Mord Filch had got round to sending the bill (he was somewhat lax in these matters,) Madam Stillwater was once again expecting. So it seemed not unreasonable to pay for both together after the second baby was born. Again due to delays on both sides, when the bill arrived, Stillwater wrote back asking whether there shouldn’t be a discount for quantity, and whether he could expect to get three for the price of two? Finally Mord agreed to four for the price of three.
When the fifth child arrived the midwife stepped in and refused point blank to do anything until the money was paid in advance. Her implacable stance collapsed when Madam went into labour and Stillwater disappeared. The midwife sent Stillwater a note telling him that he wasn’t getting his wife and child back until he’d paid the bill for her services. Stillwater, calculating the savings that would ensue from not having meet the day to day expenses of wife and child, never bothered to answer the letter.

Finally after three weeks, Madam Stillwell, exasperated beyond measure, went home to her mother and sent her husband a note which effectively stated that she was resigning from the role and dignity of being his wife and would like back the funds she brought to the marriage. Wise to her soon to be ex-husband’s little ways, she asked the court not merely to dissolve her marriage, but also to instruct Stillwell to pay her the money.

The court took cognisance of her request and instructed Marisol and Chesini Clogchipper, forensic accountants, to investigate the financial affairs of Wilton Stillwater. They reported back, laying before the court the whole sordid picture. The court was unanimous. Wilton Stillwater had arrogated to himself the privileges of late payment properly pertaining to the public purse. He was instructed, firmly, to cease this behaviour. The court also pointed out to Madam Stillwell that she had been happy enough to benefit from her ex-husband’s business practices whilst she was married to him, so complaining about them now seemed a touch hypocritical. Hence she would merely be added to the end of the list of his creditors once she had divorced him. Given that during this somewhat lengthy legal process Stillwater had already married the second Madam Stillwater, he did attempt to appeal the court’s decision on the grounds that the cost of maintaining his current wife must surely be sacrosanct and should not be counted as his income for the purposes of calculating how much he could afford to pay back his first wife.

Instead the court repaid all the debts from court funds and told Stillwater that he was now in debt to the court and that the court would charge interest on this loan. This would be calculated at the rate of six percent, per month, compounded. Stillwater paid off the lot within the first month but the experience broke him. He was never the man he had been. He couldn’t get over the fact that a policy, considered entirely normal when carried out by the public authorities, should be considered immoral when put into effect by a private citizen for their own benefit.

 

And now we’d better hear from Jim Webster.

So here I am again with another blog tour. I’ve released two collections of short stories from Tallis and if you’ve enjoyed the one you just read, you’ll almost certainly enjoy these.

So what have Tallis and I got for you?

Well first there’s, ‘Tallis Steelyard. A guide for writers, and other stories.’ The book that all writers who want to know how to promote and sell their books will have to read. Sit at the feet of the master as Tallis passes on the techniques which he has tried and perfected over the years. As well as this you’ll have music and decorum, lessons in the importance of getting home under your own steam, and brass knuckles for a lady. How can you resist, all this for a mere 99p.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tallis-Steelyard-guide-writers-stories-ebook/dp/B07TRXJH8C/

 

Then we have, ‘Tallis Steelyard. Gentlemen behaving badly, and other stories.’ Now is your chance to see Port Naain by starlight and meet ladies of wit and discernment. There are Philosophical societies, amateur dramatics, the modern woman, revenge, and the advantages of a good education.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tallis-Steelyard-Gentlemen-behaving-stories-ebook/dp/B07TRYZV6C/

So come on, treat yourself, because you’re worth it.

 

 

CO-OP ADVICE

This was originally a Facebook post but, after being accosted with some new pitches for Kickstarter, Indie Go, and others, I decided to flesh it out. Think of these as bullet points to avoid tragedy. I know I’m not really the answer man but I do, occasionally, have useful information to impart. This is for my fellow creators.

First, I cannot emphasize this enough, make sure your writer is fluent in the language you are using. “I so too saw this” and “much to the good are I doing” aren’t actual phrases in English. “Gehrn habe ich es” doesn’t work in German. I could go on but I’d rather not. And, yes, those are actual quotes. If you can’t afford an editor at least get a grammar assistance program. Grammerly may hate the Oxford comma, and can be annoyingly pedantic, but it’s still better than some of the stuff that’s been foisted into my inbox. If your pitch, or jacket cover blurb, is filled with typos, and/or bizarre grammar, the odds are heavily against you getting anyone to take you seriously. Also, just FYI, spell check is not your friend. Eye sea ewe will not get flagged.

Second, I get it that everyone has an awesome epic adventure to tell. Even so, it won’t kill you to run your basic plotline through Google to see if anyone else has told your awesome epic adventure. Your character goes back in time and becomes Jesus? Cool. It’s been done, done well, and won awards. Yours better be unique or it will pale by comparison. Or, as one author who makes goo gobs of cash told me; “Every story has been told, except yours. So tell that one.”

Third, if you plan on using some old gods to liven up your story, please make sure you know more about them than their names. There are people who do nothing but study ancient theologies and they’ll rip you a new one if you screw it up. Of course you can put your own spin on them, they’re fictional, but make it clear you’re doing so. That said, if you’re going to use gods or prophets who are currently being worshipped, tread lightly. There are three billion people who practice Islam. Making Muhammad a gangster rapper isn’t going to win you any friends.

Yes, someone did that. No, it didn’t get published.

Fourth, if your pitch requires more genres than adjectives you’re in trouble. Your Y/A sci-fi urban melodrama set in a women’s prison on Ganymede run by faeires better be purposefully funny as hell or you’re doomed.

Fifth, if your response to a Nebula winning writer (not me, not yet anyway) who offers help is “Fuck off! What do you know about anything?” you’re destined to a life stuck in your parents basement screaming at pigeons. Just FYI, I was in the library with the afore-referenced writer, whose name and picture were on the posters announcing their arrival, when this happened. They did not respond to the pigeon person and we went out for drinks instead. I was fine with that.

Sixth, if your cover art is actually someone else’s cover art, you’re an idiot. And an asshole. Yes, I have seen this happen … twice. Something tells me I haven’t seen the last of it either. Just cutting out someone’s title doesn’t make it your art. There are plenty of services out there where you can pay a tiny fee for an image. Go, invest in one. Or hire a pro. They are more cost effective than you might imagine.

Last, but certainly not least, if someone offers you help they are not offering to do all the work for you. If that’s what you want, pull out a credit card (preferably yours so no one goes to jail) and pay them.

Okay, rant over, you may now return to your regularly scheduled internet.

Your Characters are Weird and You Should Feel Weird

 – by Christy Moceri

I have always felt like a freak, and there’s no surer confirmation of my freakishness than watching people try to make sense of my writing. My minister friend pored through pages of obscenity, violence and lustful passion before declaring it “Profane… but meaningful.” (That’s going on my business card.) I write romance, but I’d rather be compared to Chuck Palahniuk than Danielle Steel. Any good love story should have gritty action, a high body count and a heap of conflict. My work has been described as “dark” “intense” and “emotionally exhausting.”

One of my writer friends condemned my protagonist thusly: “She’s a hot mess.”

She always is, I can’t deny it. She is every stupid, self-destructive impulse I’ve ever had. She is my justified rage, the narcissism in my neurosis, the id to my superego existence. Unlike me, she doesn’t give a damn whether you like her or not. She has other priorities.

The problem with writing your guts out is that not everybody gets it. Or wants to get it. Or can stand to look at it. Or even understands what they are seeing. As writers, we constantly have to balance artistic integrity with likability. I think woman characters have an extra hurdle to jump in this regard. I’ve noticed practically nothing my female characters do can escape the suggestion that they are trying to “manipulate” someone. In a recent story I wrote, my female protagonist propositioned a man. “Is she trying to manipulate him?” “No, man, she just wants to have sex with him.” Is it particularly adaptive to proposition a stranger when your lover is on the warpath? Not so much, but it’s thoroughly characteristic of traumatized, desperate, self-destructive people. And these are the kind of people I write about, because these are the kind of people I understand.

Some people read it and immediately get it, no explanation necessary. I have found kindred spirits in unlikely places. These people are my lifeblood. They keep me hustling. At a certain point you have to embrace your weird, maybe even revel in it a little. Maybe the cost of reaching my people is alienating everyone else.

For those who don’t get it… is it a failure in my technique? Some error in my craft? Perhaps. I still have much to learn. But maybe most people have no reference point, no way to enter into the reality that I take for granted. I have a master’s degree in social work, a stable, happy marriage of thirteen years, and a normal (probably boring) life. But once upon a time, I was a 17-year-old legally emancipated minor scrounging nickels in my car seat cushions to pay for gas. I spent one stint in psych ER. As a college student, I took a two-year medical withdrawal in order to teach myself to cope with my constantly overwhelming emotions. I’ve had to fight bare-fisted with my painful childhood for every bit of “normal” I’ve got. I beat back the past, but my knuckles are still bloody. Most people do not understand what it’s like to have your own worst enemy living inside you. Maybe my great task as an artist will be learning how to communicate the nature of that struggle.

Any time I fail to make the reader connect with my troubled characters, it feels like a rejection of my truest self. Last night I shopped my first (EVER) short story to my writers group. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale about a woman leaving an abusive relationship. I based the dynamic on one from my childhood. It’s good, they said. We like it, they said.

Is there anything worse for a writer to hear? “This is competent.” God. Twist the knife in deeper.

I’m just going to have to work harder, until at least one of them hates it.

Christy Moceri writes romantic thrillers in alternate worlds. Her WIP is a futuristic fantasy novel about a revolutionary spy and the violent degenerate who loves her.

“What is to give light must endure burning.”  – Viktor Frankl