My Historical Fiction

I imagined a world where speech was never confounded into languages. Contagions are unheard of. Weapons of mass destruction are obsolete.

Do you prefer our world as it really is? Is it better because people literally cannot understand each other? Are we blessed with illness? Are weapons of mass destruction what make war interesting?

You have the world as it really is. It is so inspiring that its history is legends and propaganda. Its best fiction is about other worlds.

I did not change things to make anything better. It was to make the world more interesting. A character is humanized by its dialog, so I want the reader to understand the dialog. The stories are supposed to be thrilling, so giving them diarrhea or making them bedridden were bad ideas. I fancy warrior prowess so am uninterested in weapons that indefensibly negate it.

The world changes its history, to make it more interesting or to indoctrinate us. I changed history without pretense. Unlike the non-fiction, it is overtly fiction.

The Sorcerer tetralogy is about a world where the Confederacy won the War Between the States and aligns with Nazi Germany. The title character is the villain: a senior leader in the SS who uses magic, technology and armed force to commit atrocities. The mother of his daughter (or son) is the hero, and fights to stop him.

How would language barriers make the stories more interesting? What about disease or nuclear weapons? Do tell… or forever hold your peace.

Unity, Merit and Exceptionalism

Star Wars and Star Trek and Harry Potter and even The Lord of the Rings are turned into crap… and I don’t care. I write and illustrate my own fiction. I can’t match the production value of these franchises, but the stupidity that controls them assures that my work is better regardless.

Capitalism broke my back and left me to rot… so I have no love for capitalism. On the contrary. Marxism is the socialism of the rich, so I am not a Marxist either.

As of today, December 6, 2024, I am free to share what I write and illustrate with the world. I can even sell it. I am sincerely grateful. It is something that makes capitalism better than socialism… until the capitalists take it away from me, one way or another.

I am a white, heterosexual and male gentile, as were most people who wrote the best fiction and rendered the best art. I am being replaced by diversity hires that cannot make anything interesting no matter the budget allotted them. I shall inevitably outlast my replacements.

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

Book of the Ages

In reality, lives are phases. We begin as children, grow into adults then fade away as elderly. We all begin as children. Many of us die before adulthood. Many adults die before elderly. The phases are what they are regardless.

In fiction, ages are not phases. They are personality traits. The innocent or ignorant are children. The good or evil are adults. The wise or weary are elderly.

In my novel The Wayward School for Girls most people are children. They are either innocent or ignorant, as most people are in reality. They are small and weak, as most people are in the grand scheme of our actual world.

Most adults are invisible in the Weird World of the novel. They can be heard but not seen. In reality, we make our voices heard but collectively. We are seldom recognized individually.

Authority is visible adulthood. Such individuals are both seen and heard, even if nameless. They are typically evil, no longer children because they lost their innocence.

The elderly are visible. They are either weary children soon to fade away or wise and immortal. In reality, the very old are noticeable. They are either feeble and need help or accomplished and venerable.

Age is not just a number. It is what it is regardless of our attitudes. We are small and weak as children. We do have responsibilities as adults. We are at our best or worst as individuals when elderly. I am mindful of this.

Juice, Wine or Vinegar

Real people grow up then grow old. Fictional characters are different. They seldom grow up. They are adults in every story. They seldom grow old. They are in their prime forever.

Of course characters are sometimes children, like Newt in Aliens. She never grew up, however. She is a child forever. Darth Vader was a child… but after he died an old man.

I write books. I create fictional characters. Each is the age I need it to be for the story. Few of them are ever children. Few of them ever grow old. They are what they are forever.

Ages are phases in real lives. They are personality traits in fictional characters. Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, for example, looks like “wisdom” as an old man. Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz looks like “innocence” because of her youth. James Bond looks like “virility” because he is in his prime… and stops looking like James Bond as the actor becomes too old.

A fictional character is an idea. Its aspects convey the idea, its meaning. The following are the general meanings that decide the age of a fictional character:

CHILDHOOD: innocence and hope or selfishness and ignorance

ADOLESENCE: discovery and maturity or irresponsibility and immaturity

ADULTHOOD: responsibility and accomplishment or liberty and guilt

ELDERLY: experience and wisdom or weariness and decay

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