On Writing G&T

Origin

Gifted & Talented began as a very different idea. I was driving to work one day when I thought up a story about a steampunk-esque world where people grow up in trade guilds, a society entirely focused on technological progress. I put it on the back burner.

I was doodling in my notebook later and I drew a girl robot that was just a head with spindly steel legs and huge goggles. She became the exact vision for Medusa. Later still, I drew a guy with a jetpack, huge goggles, a bald head, huge chops, and I messed up his legs. That's when I realized it would be neat if he had amputated legs. Thus, Tuck.

I started imagining another story, still focused on tech and "guilds," but closer to our reality and throwing in things like smartphones and physical enhancements. Things started to feel pretty ridiculous. Then I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and realized that ridiculous can work really well if you do it correctly. I got pumped about jetpacks fighting with swords and thought maybe I could pull it off. I pitched the story to one of my friends and her said I just needed to start writing immediately.

So I laid out a plot outline. It was four books long. I decided that, being my first attempt, it would be best to distill my ideas into just one book. My notebook contained character descriptions, maps, sketches, diagrams, and I made a list of every awesome thing I could think of (lasers, dinos, robots, etc.).

I couldn't figure out where to begin, though. So I actually started with the scene where Polly meets Lauren. I knocked it out in one night and somehow knew exactly where to start, so I wrote shapter one and caught up to that scene in a couple days.

Why & Wherefore

I debated for a long time whether I should write another story about a special kid in a special school. Those stories are a dime a dozen. My wife kept telling me that it's an easy setting to start in because nearly everyone is familiar with it. So I listened.

But of course, I can never leave well enough alone. I decided that if I was making this a genre piece, I'd upend as much of that genre as I could. And that's what the book truly is: deconstructive. What happens if the main character isn't the uniqe of the unique? They aren't the person who has to save the world. They aren't the chosen one. They shouldn't even be there in the first place. That would really mess things up.

I still wanted to keep all those awesome things in play, though. So that's partly what G&T is about: the tension between the ridiculous and reality, stretching the spectrum as far as I can and then cramming it in there. Sure, there are loose ends, awkward moments, and some random situations. But that's high school. That's life.

And (SPOILER ALERT) what if the end wasn't some huge battle you think is coming? What if it played out the way it probably would if you had a bunch of reckless and resourceful teens taking a personal offense into their own hands? What if, before you had time to realize it, it was all just...over?

Surprise

At the time of writing this, over 300 copies of G&T have been downloaded. It's ranked at #785 in the Free Kindle store. There are over 3,000 books in the Free Kindle store. This is staggering for me because I expected to release about 20. From the outset, I didn't care about people reading it. I just wanted to get it written. So thanks to everybody proving I should've cared about that part a little more!

And thanks for reading.

Conventional Wisdom

The following piece is fiction in the form of non-fiction, which turned out to flow very naturally. I think about nerdy things a lot, and I guess I was pondering the idea of some sort of fictional canon that remained 'pure' and not what usually happens: a confusing mess created and recreated by writers, illustrators, editors, etc. I mean, it's inevitable when a serial-based franchise lasts for decades, but what if it was...evitable?

Pairs well with: Anything geeky and its subsequent message boards.

*****

   Everybody knew the first rule of Fight Club. Nobody seemed to follow it. If they had, there would have been no Fight Club.
    The same principle applies to the greatest pop culture phenomenon you’ve never heard of. You won’t see it trending on Twitter and you won’t see the movie trailer and your fellow geek won’t let you borrow the comics and so you have the opportunity to catch up on it before it comes out so you can complain about how the real stuff is better. You will never know it exists.

    Standing in a convention center in one of America’s major cities, I find myself mostly surrounded by aliens--that is, humans dressed up as aliens. Combine the Star Wars look, the Star Trek gab, and the ComicCon size. You now have Star Heroes.
    Following an anonymous tip, I forked over one hundred smackers to register for what was disguised to outsiders as a gardening convention. Purposely ambiguous and difficult to find, Star Heroes gatherings and paraphernalia are so expertly buried that I gained access to only one online forum, two comic books, and one novel within the Star Heroes universe. That alone took me six months. When I imagine how much total time it has taken the three thousand-ish others in this building to create, disguise, and collect the combined tokens of their fanhood my brain starts to smoke. Star Heroes isn’t just underground, it’s the magma.
    I’m a little scared. There is eminent danger of being detected as an outsider, so I do my best to keep up with the lingo and get journalistic information without asking journalistic questions. Quotes are scarce because conversation is so intimidating--like the fear of shattering a lucid dream. One would expect typical geek competition to apply here: the invisible timeline of when people jumped on the bandwagon, the trivia-offs, and pointless debates (wherein reside all the fun, right?). Star Heroes is different, though. Everyone here is on the same side, because basically everyone outside the walls of the convention are out of the loop. You’re in or you’re out. The playing field is leveled here, which was the goal of Star Heroes from the beginning.

    Star Heroes is probably the first of its kind to owe its genesis to its fans. Imagine Spider-Man having readers before Amazing Fantasy #15 was ever released. Star Heroes was invented by average geeks and then entrusted to industry professionals to realize. Either the original “founders” have been concealed for good or I just have yet to dig that far, but from what I can tell, nobody knows who truly birthed Star Heroes. Likewise, the authors, illustrators, and organizers featured here today will all admit to the same thing: their work was pitched by fans.
    “I came into it late, I suppose,” one renowned comicbook artist tells me. “I was asked to design a character: Guff Pulsar. I made a few sketches and one of them stuck. After that I did some of the comics, each one already scripted by God-knows-who and then sent my way.”
    Unlike any other entertainment franchise that shares similar media, Star Heroes trickles up. Fans decide the names of the characters, who looks like what, where the story will go next, and most important: who dies and when. And when someone dies in Star Heroes, they apparently never return, thus putting to rest one of the most annoying (and yet beloved) tropes of sci-fi and fantasy sagas. With a character’s death also accompanies some unwritten but strictly followed rules.
    “Last year I dressed up as Tank-Tank,” says one fan with sadness. “But since she died shortly after that Con, we retired that jersey.”
    It is the only sports reference I hear all day. The statement holds true, though, and not one Tank-Tank impersonator stands among the crowd. I wonder how many other beloved characters have been put to rest for the sake of the greater story.

    One of the comics I managed to find before the convention featured Tank-Tank in one of her most memorable moments: battling Red Giant, mana a mano. Equipped with various incredibly oversized assets, one of which being a backpack-cannon-thingy, she dukes it out with the villain for fourteen glorious pages. As I learned today, her lifespan lasted only three more issues.
    Tank-Tank was a member of Milky Way United, a band of superheroes deriving from various solar systems within the same galaxy as us humble Earthlings. We are the last galaxy left in the universe not consumed by what is referred to as The Initiative, an imperialist force bent on ruling every form of life ever.
    Sound broad? It is. And yet, by some miracle, the multi-formatted story line flows smoothly forward without exploding at any given speed-bump. Maybe it’s the wiki site I assume the fans use. Maybe it’s a collective fear of seeing their precious house of cards collapse. Most of all, I think it’s a disillusionment with what they’ve grown up with: cyclical, convoluted, recycled plots and characters. For instance, these folks want one origin story per character and they don’t want it reinvented. Tell the story and make it good the first time. Don’t retell it and resell it, generation after generation.
    I’d bet good money that’s why there are no movies here. Of all the hotshots I’ve seen, no directors or producers are present. No homemade fan films that I can see, either. A movie adaptation is a death wish on the entire Star Heroes concept, I suppose. You release this baby to the general public and it becomes diluted with wannabes and alternate visions of a so-far undefiled universe.

    No geek gathering is complete without a few panel discussions. One of the sessions I attend turns out to be one of the most important and controversial: The Origin Story of Bode Brax. Weird name, dead serious character. No other persona is more imitated via costume here than Mr. Brax.  The panel itself is actually an ad hoc collection of the seven best-dressed versions of the man.
    Take the rugged ambiguity of Boba Fett, spice him up with the savage ruthlessness of Wolverine, and finish him off with the charming recklessness of Han Solo. That’s Bode Brax. The unfortunate downside to the aforementioned characters, according to the majority of the panel, is that they lost a sizable chunk of their groove when they received an origin story. Mr. Fett was more fun before the prequels, it’s debatable whether most people even cared about Wolverine’s backstory when it was revealed, and Han wasn’t necessarily cool because he had a bit of mystery, but it helped his overall dashingness.
    A couple of the panel members and a handful of the fans in the audience insist that while Bode Brax didn’t have an origin yet, everyone else in Star Heroes does. However, I don’t pay much attention to the point-counterpoint crossfire. I am engrossed in the loyalty this Brax guy has among his creator-followers. They love him and invest in him emotionally. These are not just fanboys and fangirls, these are stockholders. Bode Brax is not trademarked property of such-and-such corporation, he is a man of the people.
    The move to tell Brax’s origin is vetoed.

    There are other breakout sessions I don’t catch. One of them gathers RPG fans together to play their favorite games with their custom Star Heroes characters. Another includes fan fiction readings, complete with a coffee bar and master of ceremonies. I pop into a forum concerning the various common languages of the Star Heroes universe (and developing their individual alphabets and grammar rules). Expressing the boredom I suffered would take a whole other article.

    There exists an age-old nerd game, passed along from generation to generation, never losing its appeal, only snowballing in richness over time: Who Would Win in a Fight? The set-up: find fellow nerd(s), suggest two characters, and debate. The game does not necessarily yield a winner every round; the end isn’t so much the point as the means.
    Unless, that is, you’re playing for keeps at Star Heroes Con. I’m standing amidst apparently the most buzzed-about event here. Who Would Win in Star Heroes? is a new concept this year, allowing attendees to cast votes on various victors that will be waging battle in the Star Heroes universe one day. You don’t just get to vote, though, you have to make your case.
    “People like me come prepared,” says one guy dressed as baddie Felix Tash. He’s wielding various bundles of stapled papers like a college student on finals week. “I mean, you want to make scenarios play out reasonably. If a character is stronger or better than another, you have to make sure they win. Otherwise, things would get unbelievable.”
    Unbelievable, indeed.    I refrain from voting, myself, lest I taint what is clearly a fragile suspension of disbelief. I do try to ask who counts the votes and calls the shots, though, to which I receive confused looks. The answer is either mostly unknown or so obvious I should not be asking. Either way, as the infidel here I don’t press my luck.
   
    It takes me a while to notice, but there are no cameras anywhere. Even cell phones aren’t snapping away. Unwritten rule number twenty three at this point. Documentation is a no-go. The posters one generally finds flowing out of these gatherings like milk and honey are also non-existent. If you can’t talk about Star Heroes, you can’t throw a huge banner up in your room for your comrades to spot, either.
    And yet, a sense of contentedness resonates, regardless of the lack of swag. There is little need to prove your inner geek to the wannabes when all of your tribe is here. Frankly, this is the only time the tribe gets to see each other. Everyone seems happy to just hang out and love something nobody else does and do so together.
   
    Still, I don’t leave empty-handed. I managed to snag a couple more novels, a few signed comics, and a headful of ideas as to where I can find more. You’ll likely want to do the same. As you can guess, I’ve changed all the names and, if I’ve played my cards right, thrown any readers off the scent enough to justify the publication of this piece. I would hate to betray a people I could one day call my own. I will say this: when you see that obscure comic title you’ve never spotted before, or that unbelievably outdated-looking sci-fi book cover, or your buddy starts to talk about a character you’ve never heard of but he or she quickly stops and changes subjects, you may just be the next fan. Like I said, the first rule always gets broken.

Copyright © 2010, Luke Devlin. All rights reserved. Seriously.


Portrait of a Reindeer as a Young Reindeer

A Christmas story. Enjoy.

*****

    Let me just start out by saying Rudy was a douche.
    Call me harsh but you were all there, so don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Even before old man Claus asked Rudy to be the lead deer on Sleigh Crew--way before that, actually--the guy was a self-loving prima donna.
    What really kills me is that, after what just happened, I know--I mean, I just know--people are gonna sugar coat the whole story and make Rudy out to look like some hero.
    Sure, the kid had a shiny nose. The thing glowed like a freaking light bulb...probably because he polished it every morning before school. I’m telling you, every time we had reindeer games we had to wait for Rudy to show up late. It’s not like we weren’t letting the pretty boy play, we just always had to start without him. Our coaches tried their best to run a tight ship around the joint; if you’re gonna pull sleighs, you’ve got to earn it. So you can imagine how tickled we were when Santa overlooks all of us and recruits ol’ Pinnochio to be top gun.
    What? Of course we called him names. Everyone had nicknames. I mean, we were kids for Claus’s sake. Take Dancer and Prancer, for instance. You really think those are their real names? They earned those for being, you know, fabulous.
    As I was saying, we were all working pretty stinkin’ hard that year. You guys remember: two-a-days every week for months to get ready for the blizzard forecasted to hit around Christmas. We tried to warn Claus about it, but you know how he puts stuff off like that. He doesn’t even check The List until after Thanksgiving. Lo and behold, at the last minute he freaks out and gets Rudy to “guide the sleigh.”
    Let me remind you all how crappy of an idea that was. I mean, Cupid and I are up front, right? We’ve been prepping for this storm for months. Still, Claus shoves Rudy’s lazy butt in front of our faces and tells him to lead the way. First off, the guy has no clue where to go. No kidding: he asked us which way was south. We live on the north pole; every direction is south! Secondly, that nose of his did bupkis in that blizzard. If you can’t see your own hooves in front of your face, a red flashlight isn’t going to help much. Not to mention that obnoxious sound it made. Like the dial tone from hell.
    I’m sure it’s too late and the history books are probably written by now. Rudy the super-reindeer swoops down and saves those poor little misfit toys and delivers them to children who will truly love them. False. False on all counts. I had to listen to those misfit toys whine about their rejection issues all night long. We all had great intentions, we wanted those guys to find homes. Eight hours later, we just wanted to get rid of the monsters. Even the misfit kids didn’t want the misfit toys. Who wants a jack-in-the-box that doesn’t, you know, do that pop thing? Nobody. Go back to your island.
    I’ll admit, though, that all of these incidents are mere digressions from why we are here in the first place: the abominable snowman. That bearded, mountain-climbing drunk said it right, Bumbles bounce. One second they’re chasing you around like bloodthirsty predators, then they’re hanging the star on your Christmas tree, then they’re maiming every elf in sight on New Year’s Eve. Bouncy, indeed. Pardon the pun, but can you say “bipolar?”
    So, can we blame Rudy for all this? Honestly, I don’t think it matters what I have to say anymore. We’re in the midst of the biggest cover-up the North Pole has seen since that eggnog pre-gaming Claus pulled in ‘93. The books are written, the movie rights sold. Rudy’s about to become the hero of the people, and I’m sure that’s how he’ll go down in history.
    Like Columbus.

Copyright © 2010, Luke Devlin. All rights reserved. Seriously.

Mechanics

Instead of an intro, this story has an outro at the end...

*****

    I’m sitting in one of those comfy chairs at a coffee shop. I’m looking like ‘that guy’ with my laptop out, my coffee getting cold because I’ve already had three mugs, a fork I didn’t use atop a plate covered in muffin crumbs, and Dostoevsky chilling on the arm of the chair because I want to look like I come to this place to do more than use the internet. Half the people in here are doing the same thing, so I’m okay.
    This guy came in about twenty minutes ago. Tall, kind of a hipster, and wears shorts even though it’s about forty degrees outside. He orders black coffee and makes way for the regulars, who order their usuals and refer to the baristas by name. Then the guy sits down off to my right by the fake fireplace and stares out the window at the lunch hour passersby. I know this sounds creepy--that I was tracking this guy--but I’m not really paying attention until the girl walks in.
    She’s a bit more hipster. She comes inside, lets in a draft, and ordered a soy chai latte, which wasn’t a surprise. I know the type. I’m looking at her shirt when she reaches for her drink and I see her ring and feel a little guilty. I look at the dude and realize he was watching her the whole time, too. Got it.
    I get back to doing important, not-Twitter things. The espresso thingy clicks and the steamer steams. The blenders hibernate. The next time I look up, the girl looks unhappy.
    I do a little eavesdropping. She’s asking him about doubts and cold feet and stuff. It takes some stealthy neck-stretching, but I observe no ring on his fingers. Okay: typical fireside, pre-marriage, freak-out-a-little chat. He keeps shaking his head, though. Whatever he wants to say isn’t getting said. I should know, I’m a communication major.
    ‘I’m not like you,’ I hear him say.
    She just looks at him, waiting for him to continue. She glances up at me and I quickly look back at whatever I was doing before. Some lady orders one of the icy, blended drinks, insisting it’s ‘never too cold for my drink.’ The whirring drowns out the couple. Rude.
    I wish I knew what was said because the guy sticks his fingers in his coffee. He just holds them there for a few seconds and they come out steaming, dripping.
    Hipster girl isn’t impressed. She asks what that’s supposed to prove and how ‘this better not be a joke.’ I think she has a case of the Mondays. The guy looks frustrated--not at her, really, but at life. He looks around, as if for an exit. He spots my unused muffin fork (who uses a fork to eat a muffin, anyway?) and asks if he can borrow it. It’s all yours, man.
    The girl looks as exhausted and confused as ever as the guy takes the fork and holds it like he’s about to stab himself in the underside of his forearm. After another look around, he does just that. The girl doesn’t scream but I sure do--just a little bit, though, and I cover it up nicely with a cough. But they aren’t paying attention to me, they’re looking at the fork that drags along his skin, tearing it open and revealing I’m-not-sure-what because his arm is out of my view.
    ‘Are those wires?’ she asks. But before she gets an answer, she asks, ‘Why aren’t you bleeding?’
    I’m dying to see what’s happening but too scared to look. I stare straight forward and listen hard. The guy isn’t saying much and I really wish he would because the girl is starting to freak out, not in the arms-flailing-lots-of-screaming way but in a systems-failure-this-is-not-happening way.
    ‘Is it all like this?’ she asks. I guess she means his body.
    ‘Yes,’ he sounds mostly sure.
    The girl wants to know whether he’s some sort of machine and whether he’s even human. If he answers, I don’t hear him. She cries. I finally glance their direction again. He’s looking out the window again at the people on their phones in their cars on the road. His eyes are sad and dry.
    Minutes pass. Finally, he asks if ‘this’ changes things. If she changed her mind. If she could still love him. His questions are slow, fragmented, frightened. She says she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know. He’s looking at the floor now. In angry whispers I can barely hear she asks whether he ever felt, ever hurt, ever bled.
    ‘I used to,’ he says as he looks up. She’s already gone.

Copyright © 2010, Luke Devlin. All rights reserved. Seriously.

*****

This story was inspired by a hypothetical situation I discussed with some people at work a couple months ago: If your fiance(e) confessed to being a completely synthetic android, would you still marry him/her? Even more interesting was whether you would stick to that answer if your robot fiance(e) had also just discovered that they were a robot. I thought I would take one step outside of the story and make the narrator basically a fly on the wall, of sorts.

Pairs well with: Coffee on a cold, cloudy afternoon.

South of the River

This was published in the 2009 issue of descant, a Fort Worth literary journal. This is the first time its been available to the general public.  In fact, it's been so long since I wrote it that I don't remember the title it was published under.

To introduce the piece, let me give a brief back story. Our assignment was to write someone's untold story.  So I did some research and stumbled across these kids who lived in the Republic of Congo, dressed up like cowboys, and eventually became a significant part of a revolution in the 1960s. Crazy. There was virtually no material on them but I can say that everything I found is somewhere in the story.

Pairs well with: The Sandlot and/or Lord of the Flies

*****

My birthday was four days ago, which makes me twelve years old, which makes the year 1959, which makes my brother fifteen.  His name is Pecos.  I do not have my name yet.  I want it to be Tex.  Most of the good ones are taken.

Pecos and Buffalo and Jesse James and I spill out of a theatre in the middle of the afternoon.  Our eyes squint to tame the sunlight as we look for horses, which are bicycles.  I have not named mine yet.  We had just seen “Le Triomphe de Buffalo Bill” for the third time, which was great for me because that is how many times you have to see it to be a Bill, or at least to start training.  Now, I have no money.  The picture is six years old, but we only got theatres in Léopoldville two years ago, so it is new to us.

We round up our bicycles and head for the nganda so the older boys can get drinks and we can meet up with the rest of the Godzillas.  I know my brother knows that I just saw “Le Triomphe” three times and I hope he says something because he is older and I do not want to sound pushy even though I want more than anything to be a Bill.  I have the red bandana and my slingshot but I left my cowboy hat at home, which I hope is alright; I am just not used to wearing it and bringing it everywhere yet.

Our stallions take us east down the Congo River, passing houses and children and games.  I see some friends kicking a football and something small and deep inside of me wants to go play, but I know that I am old now and I am making older friends and doing older things.  Once we see the nganda, we race.  My brother wins and leaves me in fourth place.

Bill Oye! we say as we walk into the bar.  I have no money and I do not know the barkeep very well so I do not get a drink.  The other Godzillas have been waiting and have had their drinks.  A poster of Mami Wata hangs on the far wall.  She is holding two snakes and stares at me, making me feel young and small.

Ranger is the leader of the pack.  He is the biggest and the oldest and the bossiest.  I have learned, though, that if you want something very badly, sometimes you must do what the bossiest people tell you.  My brother talks to him and my heart hits my throat when I learn that he is telling Ranger that I saw “Le Triomphe” three times and I am old enough to be a Bill.  They turn to look at me and I feel like I did when the Mami Wata stared at me.

Where is your hat? Ranger sternly asks me.  I cannot help but let my eyes drop to the floor and say I left it at home.  Ranger grunts and says more to Pecos, quietly.  My heart is bruising my ribs.  After a painful handful of minutes, the two finally end their meeting.  Saddle up!  Ranger shouts, the other eleven responding with a loud Bill Oye!

As the Bills finish their drinks and head outside, my brother approaches me.  He is blocking my way to the door and I worry that I may never leave.  The sunlight that once hit my face through the opening in the doorway is blocked by his silhouette and I am caught inside his shadow.

You are young and you are slow compared to the rest of us, Pecos tells me, I am trying my best to get you into the Godzillas, but you must prove yourself to Ranger on your own now.  Bills have enough battles to fight.  I cannot fight yours, too.

I stand and try my best not to cry because there really is no reason to cry and I am old now and men do not cry, especially cowboys.  Pecos starts to walk out of the nganda.  I am this close to tears when he turns around and says to me, Why are you just standing there?  We are going to Santa Fe.  My heart is a like a cheetah’s.

I know what Santa Fe is.  Right on the bank of the Congo River where the trees get thick up near the temple, that is where the Godzillas find home.  I would feast on the stories my brother would tell: learning bilayi combat and cowboy words and how to fight other Bills off of Godzilla territory.  Those other Bills are usually the Texans.  Their territory is obviously called Texas.  They say they are the first of the Bills, but everybody knows the Godzillas were the first ones to even see a cowboy movie in the new theatres, let alone wear the hats and bandanas and say Bill Oye!

We ride our horses closer and closer to Santa Fe.  The thick trees are in sight and my imagination is desperate to predict what will happen.  Images of secret plans and difficult challenges and earned bruises and glorious victory splatter across my mind.  As on our trip to the bar, I am in last place.  I am trying to catch up, but my bicycle is old and my legs are small.

Suddenly, I see hats and hands emerge from the shrubs on either side of our path.  When I notice their slingshots, they are already fired.  The Godzillas are bombarded with rocks and many fall off their horses.  Battle cries emerge from the shrubs and screams respond from our pack.  The enemies do not notice me, though, because I am far behind and all of my body parts want to turn around, except for my ears, which still hear my brother telling me to prove myself, and my eyes, which see Mami Wata who challenges me to be brave enough to handle even snakes, and my hand, which now reaches for my slingshot in my back pocket.

Previously published in descant, 2009.
Copyright © 2009, Luke Devlin. All rights reserved. Seriously.