Better than the Best

My novel Agents of the Eye and Ear is medieval fantasy. The characters are elves, dwarves, orcs, gnomes, goblins, trolls and ogres. There are also humans and a half-elf. The weapons are swords, daggers, bows and arrows. Magic is common.

It can be assumed that Agents of the Eye and Ear is just another fantasy novel, an inferior derivative of The Lord of the Rings. By the sum of its parts, it is.

My Strange Galaxy stories are science fiction fantasy. The characters are humans, space aliens and androids. The weapons are guns and swords. The technology is advanced but there is also magic.

It can be assumed that Strange Galaxy is just another “space opera” series, an inferior derivative of Star Wars. By the sum of its parts, it is.

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Agents of the Eye and Ear is better than The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s elves have their own languages, but how does that distinguish them from human cultures? Aragorn, a human being learned their language. He learned their ways. My fairy folk are not human beings. They are different species, distinct by nature. Their language is speech, not their own gibberish. Their ways are natural, their cultures primal accordingly, no matter their sophistication.

My fairy folk are otherworldly. Tolkien’s are exotic, but as… humans.

Strange Galaxy is better than Star Wars. Lucas’ space aliens look weird and ramble in strange gibberish, but not as people. Chewbacca is a character more like the hero’s dog or horse than his actual friend. Lucas’s politics are the morality of the universe. My space aliens are very alien, but as people, though strangely so. The morality of my universe is seemingly ambiguous, since I sympathize with every side in a struggle.

My galaxy is a world that defines itself. The galaxy far, far away is defined by whimsy and politics.

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I love The Lord of the Rings. I love Star Wars. They inspired me. They were inspired by things before them. My work is not inferior. I dare say it is better. I do so in all sincerity.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Shawn-OToole/author/B07C28S75Z?isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Wisely Ridiculous

I write books, illustrate the covers and create the title fonts. My latest project is one I have been working on for years. I have already written tens of thousands of words, illustrated the covers and created the font. I am close to finishing the first and second book.

The settings of my fiction are imaginary. I prefer a universe I customize to the uninspiring reality we live in.

The pending books are about an SS officer and his teenage daughter as the villains. The girl’s mother and half-sister are the heroes.

The Nazis are the baddies but so are the Confederates. They are contemporaries as thriving empires. The setting is the 1930s but as the modern day. Speech was never confounded into languages and weapons of mass-destruction are obsolete.

I could have set the stories in authentic history. It would be easy to substitute the Confederacy with the Empire of Japan. The adventures in Latin America would be in East Asia instead, no problem. The characters would speak whatever languages they were required to know. The 1930s would be as they actually were, no problem. The atomic bomb was not ready until the 1940s, so there is nothing for me to change about that.

The SS officer is a sorcerer. His daughter is an enchantress. The girl’s mother and half-sister are both psychic. I could tell their stories without including magic and psychic powers. They still use guns, knives and technology, so no problem.

I could easily have written these pending books as historical fiction. They could be entirely realistic without changing much. Still, I would be uninterested. I want the supposedly ridiculous aspects. The reality is uninteresting to me without it.

If my preferences are faulty then stories better than mine prove it, especially if better for the very things I dislike. Alas, countless realistic stories have been written. Endless volumes of authentic history have been written. How would my work be better for being what we already have ad nauseam?

https://www.deviantart.com/yellowplasma/journal/Worlds-of-My-Making-2-1060632082

Like God

It takes me longer to create a world than it did God. It took me fifty days to craft Weird World compared to the five days it took him to make our world, so he’s ten times faster than me.

I write fiction. My ability to create worlds and people is because of my soul, the very breath of God. My impulse to do so is also from him. I understand the meaning of life accordingly.

Our reality is the physics and continuity of the story that God wrote. He finished the book, though we are still reading what he wrote.

Honestly: I am disappointed in reality. The setting is messy, the story is uninspiring and the characters unlikeable. The cover art is attractive and some of the illustrations gorgeous, but otherwise the universe is a waste of paper.

I may be wrong. I am not yet finished reading what the Author has written. The beginning was good. The end may be better.

I can empathize with God… because I know what it is like to have an idea and bother to make it work. It becomes work to do so. Nothing goes according to plan, even when it does. Bringing it all to a satisfying conclusion is the hardest part.

My writing is a labor of love. It does not pay my bills or buy my groceries. I would like it to, but that is irrelevant. I do what I do because I want to, not because I must. I illustrate the covers and create the title fonts, though it would be easier to commission someone else to do such things. My craft makes my life harder, not easier… but that is all right. When “it is finished” I am exhausted… but the joy that follows makes it all worth it.

God gave me the ability to imagine and create. In doing so, he gave me the ability to understand him. I am amazed. When I hold a book I wrote and stare at the cover I illustrated, I am in awe. I hold what I made to my bosom and give thanks.

Namesake

I wrote a novel in fifty days. It was 66,265 words worth of story set in a universe created from scratch. I illustrated the cover and created the title font only days afterwards.

As a writer of fiction, I create universes. I name them. “Other Folk” is fantasy. “Strange Galaxy” is science fiction. “Black Death” is action-adventure. “White Empires” is dystopia

The new novel was entitled The Wayward School for Girls. The name of its universe could not be derived from the title since “Wayward” is a secondary villain, though the main antagonist.

I named the universe “Weird World” for two reasons. First of all, it describes the dreamlike atmosphere succinctly. Secondly, it is like a terrestrial version of the “Strange Galaxy” name of the interstellar setting.

The name “Weird World” is never mentioned in the novel. Since it is neither in the title nor in the story, I needed to make an extra effort. I decided to write another book. I entitled it Tales of a Weird World and illustrated its cover.

I repurposed old stories and wrote new ones for no other reason than to give the new cover a book. I only made the new cover to give a name to the universe of my latest novel.

https://www.deviantart.com/yellowplasma/art/The-Wayward-School-for-Girls-full-cover-1043500403

Making a Better World

As a writer of fiction, I am uninterested in disease, languages and weapons of mass-destruction.

DISEASE: A hero can fight monsters… but he is either immune to a contagion or not. He is not heroic for being vaccinated.

LANGUAGES: Groups are more important that individuals when personalities are secondary to cultures. Dialog is not a battle of wits if literally gibberish.

WEAPONS OF MASS-DESTRUCTION: Everything bad about war is all there is if courage and prowess are rendered irrelevant.

Our reality is never the setting of my fiction. Disease is unheard of, speech was never cofounded into languages and weapons of mass-destruction are obsolete. I never mention these particulars in the stories. It is all taken for granted.

Well, I do show humans trying to nuke extraterrestrial races, only to be confused by the impotence of the weapons.

Many people whine about my preferences. They claim that disease, languages and weapons of mass-destruction make our world more interesting… even though everyone who makes this claim whines about the world as it is. I guess their idea of “interesting” is “frustrating” because if you are frustrated you are not… bored, maybe.

Stephen King wrote The Stand and it is about a plague that sweeps across the world. The story ends with a blast from a nuclear weapon. J.R.R. Tolkien created Elven languages and wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Frank Herbert wrote Dune and incorporated atomic weapons into its universe.

I have read Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert. I bear witness that they have earned their fame. Their works are genuine classics.

Still…

My novel The Wayward School for Girls is much shorter but much deeper than The Stand. The elves of my novel Agents of the Eye and Ear are more exotic than they are in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. The war in my book Empires of a Strange Galaxy is more imaginative than the one in Dune, and just as believable.

I have proven, by my own hand, that my disinterest in disease, languages and weapons of mass-destruction is justified. I can make the world interesting without them. I make it more interesting, actually.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Shawn-OToole/author/B07C28S75Z?isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true