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

The Message

I write fiction. The genre is either adventure or horror as either science fiction or fantasy. My style emphasizes dialog over exposition. 

I illustrate the covers and create the title fonts. The illustrations are minimalist. The fonts are thematic but very simple.

My fiction began as childhood daydreams. I imagined scenarios and muttered the dialog of the characters. People heard me talking to “myself” and thought I was weird. I eventually wrote what I daydreamed.

My illustrations began as childhood drawings. I wrote and rendered scenes of comic books I never finished.

I create my own fonts as an afterthought. I was fond of the ones already available… but wanted the entire cover to be of my own making.

My fiction is always weird, violent and sexual. The weirdness may be subtle, the violence may be implied and the sexuality nuanced, but they are what they are, and always all three.

The killing is the sexiest aspect of my work. It is quite often the only one. The fancy is not death itself, mind you. The sexiness is in context. The victims are ordinary and insignificant. The slaying is impersonal and effortless. The killer is usually a hero and his victim a nameless foot soldier of villainy.

My work is allegorical. Main characters, heroes or villains are INDIVIDUALITY. All the other characters, regardless of faction, are SOCIETY. To understand this is to understand the recurring theme of a hero slaughtering droves of nameless baddies with pathetic ease.

The message is loud and clear.

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

Dreamlike

I write weird fiction. I do mean as the subgenre of speculative fiction, supernatural horror specifically. Even the action-adventure stories are such, though as survival horror.

My latest work in this category is the novel The Wayward School for Girls. The premise is “Dorothy” of The Wizard of Oz and “Alice” of Alice in Wonderland as girls in the modern day. They are in the gifted program of the same school. Unbeknownst to the public, the principal is a warlock and the teachers his coven of witches. They indoctrinate their students to become selfless, loyal and obedient thralls. The gifted girls are groomed to become teachers. The “special needs” students are buried alive and used as batteries to power magical devices. The average girls are trained for use as labor or soldiers.

The school is an institution of those in power. Telling anyone its secret is pointless.

Alice and Dorothy escape the school. They are “gifted” and have special powers they were trained to use. They slaughter the brainwashed ordinary girls sent after them.

The setting is Weird World, a dreamlike version of our world. Most adults are invisible, though children can see and hear them like they do imaginary friends. What grownups are clearly visible are either elderly (“second childhood”) or agents of the secret rulers of the world.

The next book is Tales of a Weird World. It is not about Alice and Dorothy. It is a collection of short stories about other people who live in the same universe. The Wayward School for Girls is one of several antagonist factions.

I created a dreamlike universe before. It was the setting of my novel The Goddess of Self. It was very similar to Weird World… but with a stark distinction. The Goddess of Self was about a girl from the real world finding herself in a surreal world. The surreal is the reality of Weird World. Everyone in it is from it.

The weirdness of a weird setting is normalized as it becomes familiar. To offset this in The Goddess of Self I often had the protagonist return to our reality. I did no such thing with Weird World. The point is for the weirdness to be normalized.

A dream makes sense while dreamt. The weirdness is normal. I did not want to “awaken” the reader of Weird World. The point is complete immersion. I wanted the stories to be “dreams” as literally as I could make them.

Not a Drop to Drink

A multicultural society is a society without a culture. It is corrupted by its diversity, not enriched. It is not a community. It is fractured into groups that can only tolerate each other at best. They need a common enemy to come together… and that is an alliance, not friendship. Such allies turn on each other when the enemy is vanquished. 

Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Afghanistan and South Africa are multicultural societies. None of these are strengthened by their diversity. On the contrary. The Walloons and Flemish dislike each other. The English speaking and French speaking citizens of Canada dislike each other. The ethnicities of Switzerland keep to their own, though they are generally civil when they interact. The diversity is hatred and genocidal violence in Afghanistan and South Africa.

Japan and South Korea are countries that are also their cultures. Though many people in lands with few resources, they thrive. Their factions are trying to change their communities, not live apart from them.

Unity is strength. Diversity is weakness. The “sameness” of homogeneity is an actual culture.

Multicultural is to a society what the ocean is for someone in a raft dying of thirst: Everywhere but not a drop to drink.

I am Storyteller

Fiction is not about reality. It is about us. It is our thoughts and feelings as stories. The realism is to provide a common basis of comparison. A story is gibberish without it.

I write fiction. It is always weird, to varying degrees. The weirdness is to convey my intuitive sense of things. Our feelings of themselves are invisible. Articulating them in a way that can be visualized brings order to the chaos that is our emotions.

FLOW and BALANCE.

Fantasy is flow. Reality is balance. Fantastic is imaginative. Realistic is meaningful. The best fiction is both, as one and the same.

We are not amazed by the unbelievable. On the contrary: We dismiss it as ridiculous.

We are not amazed by the believable. On the contrary: We accept it as ordinary.

We are amazed when made to believe the unbelievable. Our small minds grow and our narrow thoughts broaden.

As a writer of fiction, I strive to inspire people to make believe the unbelievable.

We are indoctrinated by every faction in this world to learn rather than think. We are shamed as ignorant if we question. We are praised as educated if mindless. Our pride is used against us, to brainwash us.

My fiction is not the propaganda of any faction. It is my own thoughts and feelings. It is written to be a playground of the mind. It is an amusement park and every story is a ride. My thoughts provide the themes. My feelings provide momentum, twists and turns. It is all meant to be enjoyed.

https://www.deviantart.com/yellowplasma

My Pending Masterpiece

I am writing what may be my best book. It is becoming three books, actually. Its greatness is not its idea, though it is a good one. It is my rendering of the idea.

The story is many stories as one. I know how it begins and ends, and have for a long time. I have not changed my mind in the meantime, though many ideas within the gist have.

I was trying to decide whether I should write about Confederates in a steampunk story or Nazis in an alternate history. I wondered how World War Two would be different if the Confederacy won the War Between the States. I was fascinated by the idea of the 3^rd Reich and the CSA as allies. It was especially interesting if in a modern or futuristic setting.

I imagined a Confederate officer as the main antagonist of a story I would eventually write. The Confederacy lost the war but he is still fighting, using arcane technology to do it. He evolved into an SS officer I eventually named Arnold Kess. The steampunk setting became an alternate version of the modern day.

Senior Leader Kess is the Sorcerer. He commands the 13^th SS Air Assault Battalion. His daughter is his apprentice. She is the Enchantress and serves at his side as Junior Assault Leader Kess. They use magic, technology and armed forces to cleanse the world of undesirables.

The Confederacy is a world power and is sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Their enemies are the United States and the Albish (British) Empire. The Empire of Dawn (Japan) is neutral but considering joining forces with the Nazis and Confederates.

Mary Ziegler is the hero of the story. She is a freedom fighter with psychic powers, as is her part black daughter. They travel across the world to defeat the Nazis and Confederates. Mary was the lover of Senior Leader Kess. She is the mother of his daughter.

The drama of the story is about a broken family. Arnold and Mary still love each other. Their daughter thinks she is in love with her father and hates her mother out of jealousy. The girl’s half-sister still loves Arnold as the only father she ever knew… and he does care about her.

I am still going to create that Confederate officer I imagined. Though he evolved into the Sorcerer of the Realm he shall also become the Wizard of the Confederacy. His story shall be in the same universe and at the same time. His cause shall not be the Lost Cause, however. His skills shall serve a thriving empire. He may have a cameo in the books of his twin.

https://www.deviantart.com/yellowplasma