Category: On Writing

Plot vs. Character

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A buddy wrote me recently about the upcoming movie, Upgrade. It’s not an adaptation of my book. This was as heartbreaking for me as it is for you, no doubt. I think the subtext of the email I got might have been, “Those motherfuckers stole your idea!” While it’s difficult to tell from a trailer whether someone has stolen my ideas verbatim, I think it’s more likely there’s some parallel evolution going on here. This is probably okay, and maybe we should even encourage it. What the actual fuck? Read on. The movie trailer looks great. Here: Broadly, it shares some ideas with Upgrade. Not necessarily stolen, but common: the upgraded-human thing is very #cyberpunk, for example. Writers in genre fiction share some concepts (e.g., Altered Carbon…). The weird thing is, a movie and a book named the same thing might help. Read More …

Delilah: Part Three

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If you haven’t seen Delilah yet, start at the beginning. The first task was to find Sampson. The man was an enigma. A ghost. A shadow. No one even knew if he was a man; he could have been male or female, young or old, God/gods-fearing or atheist. Delilah had been hired to find Sampson, destroy his tech, and bring him in. If she couldn’t, leaving his body cooling in a dumpster would be a good second option. His code was the real prize: Sampson had released a virus into the link network, turning ordinary people into husks, their bodies crippled, minds shattered. The syndicates didn’t agree on much, but they agreed that Sampson needed to go down. Reed Interactive was just the latest one willing to put good cash on the table to see it done. Their angle was curious though; Reed’s tower was Read More …

Tyche’s Grace

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The final Tyche Origins story was the hardest to write. Let’s be honest, Grace hasn’t had a good run at life, has she? Despite that, she’s Grace. It’d be hard to keep her anywhere she doesn’t have a mind to be. Check it out — it’s on the store today! Grace Gushiken is a prisoner at fourteen. Grace is confined on her father Kazuo’s grounds. She, like him, is an esper: a reader of minds. Kazuo has arranged extensive training for her. Stealth. Infiltration. And combat. When a simple trip to the ancient city of Ise brings disaster, Grace tries to run. Her stunted esper abilities betray her. Kazuo turns Grace’s friends against her. No one can stand against the power of his will. When her father is called away to meet the Emperor, Grace has one shot at freedom. She must Read More …

Canadians Doing It Right

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I watched a two-part documentary about a video game recently. While how I choose to spend my time should be free of your judgment, a thing worth calling out is the repeated themes from the company involved. Digital Extremes are based in Canada. Throughout the videos where they talk about company hard times, the repeated messages are about how they can look after their people, and how they can sustain this long term. Success for them is measured in employing a couple hundred souls, making sure there’s a good work environment for them, and being able to sustain this. Communication between them and their fans was more important than having a lot of fans (quality over quantity). With all the recent megacorp news about companies losing data, or type-A management trying to use you like an ATM, it’s easy to lose sight Read More …

Getting it Wrong

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By that, I mean on purpose. Before we get started, I need to preface with a couple of points. These are tips for writers. If you’re a reader, this shit might give you a glimpse behind the curtain. Good or bad? I don’t know. We’ll discover that. Together. This is not a post about alternative facts or some other political bullshit. There is no excuse for not knowing your shit. This post is not about how to fudge things so you can get away without doing research. Let’s turn that handle, yo. Let me set a scene for you. You’re watching a cop procedural on Netflix. In the scene are the good guys on one side of a table, bad guys on the other (you decide if the cops are good or bad in this scenario – it doesn’t matter). There’s Read More …

The Power of Names

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Ever since I read Le Guin’s amazing A Wizard of Earthsea, I’ve been captivated by the idea of names having a kind of power. (Side note: if you haven’t read the Earthsea books, you’re missing out. I don’t use ‘amazing’ lightly; this is a series I re-read often. The writing is brilliant, the characters captivating, the stories both beautiful and poignant). Hobb has her own take on this with her Liveship books (also excellent). Same but different, you know? Worth your time (and I needed to look up ‘Fitz’ when I started on these books). Me, I’m pretty much a hack compared to those two. But I still want the names of my characters to have meaning. In my Tyche books, I named the crew with a purpose. Some of the characters were renamed from their originals (did you know, Hope used Read More …

Tyche’s Fury

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My original working title for Tyche’s Fury was, “Kohl’s Bad Day.” It all starts with a bad idea over saki. But hell. No epic story started with a salad, amirite? Someone wants to hire October Kohl. First mistake. Trypso is a below average world filled with below average people. October Kohl wants off the crust and away from the wannabe Yakuza there. When the crime syndicate contacts Kohl with an opportunity to be free of both them and Trypso, Kohl jumps at the opportunity. The job’s easy money: deliver a package to another planet. Get paid. Then grab a beer. When a rival gang gets his scent, Kohl must make an unlikely alliance with the captain of an ex-war heavy lifter. If they can’t get along, everyone’s dead for sure. If they manage not to kill each other, the prize is Read More …

WTAF, Another One?

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You got it. Pew! Pew! – A Fistful of Pews is out. You might remember my story Consensus appeared in Pew! Pew! 4. And you know what? Those suckers wanted me back for number 5. My story in PP5 is The Chadd, about Chad Foradel and Saveria Complex. You might remember Chad from Tyche’s Deceit (and Tyche’s Crown), a minor support act who is rescued from [SPOILERS] and ends up heading up the [SPOILERS]. Well, The Chadd takes place after Tyche’s Crown (and before the upcoming Tyche’s Demons…). Chad’s on a mission, and on that mission he meets the young pirate, Saveria Complex. Both Chad and Saveria return in Tyche’s Demons. If you want to find out how they met? Here’s your answer. A scream for help across the hard black, then silence. That was the start of Chad Forradel’s bad day. One minute he was checking out a planet of Read More …

Tyche’s Hope

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Half-way there! Tyche’s Hope ships your way today. Get it while the getting’s good. The ad said Job of a Lifetime! Triton Station is Hope’s new home. At twenty-two years old and already Guild Engineer First Class, she is asked to breathe life into the broken spans of Triton’s shipyards. The fall of the Empire brought opportunity for the underground. Triton is home to thousands, organized crime eating the space city like a cancer. They’ve snared Hope’s wife in their net. Hope must get Reiko free. But the cost of Reiko’s freedom might be everything Hope has worked so hard for. As the hungry and the powerful close in for the kill, Hope must find a way out. If she doesn’t, she’ll lose Reiko for good. Tyche’s Hope is the third novella in Richard Parry’s gripping Tyche Origins pentalogy. If you Read More …

The New Chic

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If I may, I’d like to skip some of my usual flavor to showcase some other people. I know. Weird for you? Weird for me too. These particular humans were of a smaller size than what I’m used to. I had the great honor and privilege of being asked by Maungaraki School to speak to a room of their junior writers. When I was a kid, I was one of the lippy ones. I spent too much time being kicked out of math class for taking the wrong line of inquiry, if you get me. I was curious, but in a narrow lane. I met these people yesterday, full to the brim with questions about everything. Some of the ideas for stories they had? They’ll blow your mind. Kids who are spies. A new take on epic fantasy that would make Read More …