I get teary-eyed watching this.

For the third time.

Seriously, I’ve got a full-on geek-crush for Ryan Reynolds after this display of classy awesomeness. Enjoy:

I recently had a reader approach me after reading Half Way Home. She was perplexed and wanted to know what my views on abortion were. Her confusion, I believe, stemmed from the overall progressive nature of Half Way Home (i.e. environmental issues, homosexuality, animal rights, mineral plunder). How, then, could I end the book with a seeming call for the celebration of life? How could I make, from first chapter to last, such a villain out of the A.I. that attempted to abort the colony, and seem to lambast the procedure itself?

The answer to that lies in the distinction between a philosophical love of freedom, and the blind acceptance for what one does with that freedom.

For instance: I am a huge fan of Democracy. Giving a people the power to vote for their representation, and thereby shape the framework of their own social contracts, is one of the great inventions in human history. There are few things I’m more in awe of than this recent social development. Now, does that mean I support the votes individuals cast with that freedom? Of course not. Hitler was voted into office (granted, he gradually usurped more power than the people vested in him). Closer to home: I disagree with the votes cast for most of our Senators each election cycle. And yet, I applaud the right to cast those votes.

This distinction is important. After the French Revolution of 1848, which resulted in universal suffrage (which, naturally, didn’t include women), there came a vote. The results were not what the revolutionaries wanted. The people voted for a conservative government, not vastly different from the one they had before. Rather than deal with the blow and prepare for future elections, there were more revolutions, which pushed the populace further and further to the right until one Napoleon Bonaparte emerged as a more tyrannical ruler than those usurped.

England went through a similar ordeal during their civil war and the nasty rule of Cromwell. In both cases, there was a philosophical love of human freedom, but a rejection of what they used that freedom for.

Another fun example is Capitalism. Capitalism is to property what Democracy is to politics. Despite the recent abuses heaped on Capitalism (largely coming from those too lazy to look up the definition of the word), all it stands for is human economic liberty. The freedom to own stuff. The freedom to trade stuff with other people. The freedom to enter into binding contracts. That’s it. Not to get too far off the point, but what Enron did was the opposite of Capitalism. Any violation of human economic liberty cannot be used to rail against Capitalism. That’s like using the crime of robbery to invalidate Democracy. It’s a bizarre of using the opposite of something to denigrate that something. Weird, eh?

Okay, back to the point: I support Capitalism. How can you not, once you know what the word means? However, just as with Democracy, I do not blindly support what one does with their economic freedoms. I shake my head at these nimrods who buy houses approximately ten times larger than they need. I feel outright pity for professional athletes who blow their millions and are destitute within seven years of retirement. I have a hard time sympathizing with anyone who can’t make the payments on their second home, or feel weighed down by their private yachts. I see waste all around me, and it all runs counter to my own tastes. And yet … I support the freedom those people exhibit to make these (subjectively speaking) bad decisions. I don’t have that weird self-esteem issue where I need everyone to conform to my standards (a fault of the Left and Right). I’m just happy we live in an era where more and more people enjoy these freedoms.

Now, let’s talk about abortion. If you follow the pattern above, you might guess that I’m pro choice. And you’d be correct. Oddly enough, it’s people on the Right that also applaud the two items above, but they loathe the idea of aborting a human fetus. An ideological inconsistency they could avoid if they learned to distinguish between a love of freedom, and the blind acceptance of what those freedoms are used for.

What strikes me as odd with most pro-choicers is that they verge on being pro-abortion. If there’s any doubt: abort. Perhaps this stems from the Left’s general intolerance of humanity; it’s hard to say. For me, the issue comes down to individual choices, just like votes and economic decisions. If a woman is having her eight abortion because she keeps having unprotected sex, and is the sort of person to just deal with problems later rather than employ a bit of foresight, I say that person is an idiot. I am still pro-choice, but I think her choice is bunk. Likewise, if a woman decides to have an abortion because she and her boyfriend are having a fight, and she thinks the best way to get back at him is to prevent their child from being born … again, I think that’s a pretty bad call. Same goes for a couple that has decided they want kids, and then a woman gets cold feet and aborts a planned child without first telling the husband she’s going to do so. Not as black-and-white for me, but also not a fan.

Those are hard to come up with, admittedly, because I can think of a legion more instances were abortion seems like the right call. Beyond the obvious cases of rape, incest, medical risk, fetal abnormality, genetic risk, imparted disease (AIDS, for instance), there are the millions of cases where having a child is going to do harm to both parent and offspring. It does no good for a woman  to have a kid if she isn’t economically, emotionally, or socially prepared. It does a disservice to the potential, future kid she could have in better circumstances.

The issue, then, in Half Way Home, becomes this: is the abortion procedure of any Colony okay? Is it okay in the specific example detailed in the book? I would clearly vote “no” for the latter, and lean toward “no” for the former. Do I celebrate life? Absolutely. But I don’t see how having a child in a manner that ruins two (or more) lives is a celebration of it. That seems to be a blind acceptance of the same decision, no matter the circumstances or outcome. Nor do I see the rationale behind applauding the ending of every life, even where it has almost nothing but the potential to be something beautiful. That sounds like more blind fanaticism.

Here is the guiding principle that gives these disparate ideas their consistency: I celebrate choice. I celebrate freedom. And I compartmentalize that love so that I may loathe the stupid shit people do with them.

I just fired off an email to another writer, and it contained some thoughts on these two concepts that I thought I’d share a bit more publicly. Keep in mind: there’s a good chance that I have no idea what I’m talking about.

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…Another thing to think about is the difference between world-building and storytelling. Both are incredibly difficult to do well, and each is a wholly unique animal. World-building is something many people can’t do. They can’t look at a blank page and construct a believable land or universe whole-cloth. You do not have that problem, which is a very good thing. Writing books with texture and depth is impossible without this skill (which is nothing more than a vivid imagination combined with a sense of aesthetics, really).

World-building is the enemy, however, of lean writing. The urge to add too much detail, to info-dump, to introduce too many characters all at once, all this comes from your excellent world-building skills. It isn’t the sign of a problem; it’s the sign of a powerful ability that needs practice honing. It would be like a man with massive muscles learning to golf. The tendency would be to hit it a mile, but never quite where one was aiming. That can be a good problem to have, because it’s easier to back something off than it is to ramp up what isn’t there.

The competing force in writing is storytelling. If world-building is the macro, storytelling is the micro. We zoom down through the history and lore, past the epic battles of time past, and we land behind the eyes of a simple character who has all of that larger stuff in their peripheral. Here’s the tricky part: the author needs to have that lore spread before them, like a map, but they need to write with the limited perspective of that character. As the reader, we will feel lost initially, but so should this person through whom we’re seeing the world. Their discovery is our discovery. That’s why we immediately relate to the first main character we’re introduced to. We like to think we’re them.

With storytelling, it’s best to not be too creative. Human beings have a shared genetic history, which includes innate senses of right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unjust, pleasing and disturbing, etc… The exceptions to this are not worth mentioning, because you aren’t writing for an infinitesimal percent of the population. You are writing for the people to whom Homer and Shakespeare make a lot of sense. Sir Gawain and the travelers to Canterbury all resonate even today. We might call it cliche to write of the pauper with a noble heart who one day becomes king, but then we could call it cliche to admire the shape, smell, and color of a fresh flower, or call it cliche to hum with delight at the first bite into a ripe apple. We have certain tendencies, and it behooves the author to fashion according to near-universal tastes.

So, after you’ve spent time building your world, pick a few characters (not too many), and tell their story as simply and clearly as you can. Make it compelling. Give it an odd twist here and there by playing on old themes in new ways (for instance, the gray, wizened wizard can be substituted for the town drunk, who only drinks to silence the prophecy and bad dreams he is accused of being insane for having. Once again, we see the redemption theme, the pauper -> prince theme, all hidden in an unusual take on a traditional character).

These are just my opinions, of course. I haven’t been doing this terribly long, but these are probably the same things I would’ve said five years ago, just from my experience as a reader. Like you, most of what I’ve learned has been from consumption. I am only now beginning to learn via creation…

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That’s it for now. Back to my own writing!

I’m about to make my birthday a festive one for everybody! With Amazon’s new royalty system, whereby authors get 70% of a sale, rather than the old 30%, I’ve decided to revamp the look of my eBooks and offer them for much less money. I want these books to be priced where anyone will try them out, and even owners of the physical book will feel like they need to also grab a copy of the digital version.

All three Molly books are now available on the Kindle store for less than $4.00! The Parsona Rescue is priced at $2.99. If you have a friend with a Kindle who isn’t hooked on this series yet, tell them about these deals. You seriously can’t get this much action, adventure, romance, philosophy, and tense cliffhangers for such a great price.

Check out the entire series here.

Happy birthday, indeed!

Enough about the books I write, what about all the books I read? Well, I haven’t had the time to do any of my in-depth reviews lately, but I’m still knocking back at least a book a week. And the freebies from publishers keep rolling in, which means I keep running out of shelf space. What to do? How about spending a weekend building one hundred linear feet of bookshelves?

The following two sets of shelves aren’t new, I just threw pictures of them in as well. Not pictured are the floor-to-ceiling shelves in my office.

Before we get to the pre-order business, let me tell you a little something about this book. First: it’s the best stuff I’ve ever written. Hands-down. Not only that, it was the hardest book I’ve tackled. It’s the one I had the most doubts about. The one I agonized over.

When I started writing Land of Light, I contemplated restricting the Bern Saga to three books. Looking back on how much hand-wringing I did over that decision, it seems a bit silly. The Bern Saga was always supposed to be four books, and I only started doubting the move as I worried readers would tire of the books before they got to the end. When I expressed this view, I heard a resounding: “ARE YOU KIDDING?!” Two readers are already giving me a hard time for not promising books five, six, and seven. It turned out I needn’t worry about writing too many of these.

With that resolved, I set to work crafting the best Molly book thus far. The challenges were numerous. For one, this is the first book in the series where the drama unfolds over multiple locations. There were hints of this in Land of Light (during the Wadi Rite and following Anlyn’s exploits on Drenard), but Blood of Billions carries this structure throughout. And it really drives the story forward. You’re gonna dig it.

Another challenge I had was working with new character dynamics. I don’t want to spoil anything, but you’ll see what I mean. The bonus here is that this is not one of those series of books you’ll read and feel like you’ve already heard this story before. The interactions between the protagonists are new, rather than just re-hashing what I know already works. As a reader foremost, I did what I wish more authors would do, which is to take chances. In Blood of Billions, I feel that every one of them paid off. I hope the majority of you agree.

Finally, this is the book I spent the most time with. I probably did seven full revisions, each pass adding a bit more polish. Blood of Billions also has even more of my philosophy on life, including my views on politics, racism, immigration, free will, energy policy, and so much more. There are some scenes taken right out of my 9/11 experiences as well, which makes this the first time I’ve really written about that day. These are just a few of the reasons I hold this book so dear.

In fact, I feel so strongly about this book, it makes me want to get more readers to pick up the first two. I want to urge them to read those already fine novels, just so they can experience this one. I might just have to come up with a package deal for people who haven’t gotten into the series yet (or who want their own personalized, signed copies). I think once you read this entry, you’ll be feeling the same way. You’ll want to write Amazon reviews for all three books. You’ll want to gift them to friends. You’ll start talking about them at work.

Anyway, that’s how I feel about this novel. Now, the first 70 pre-orderers will get a book out of the first batch heading my way. Those books will be shipping from me, to you, on the 21st of June. The next batch will probably be in a week later, or you can get your boring non-signed copies on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble’s website in early July. Alright, thanks for letting me ramble on. Click the cover below, or use the image off to the right.