S.M. Douglas

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Apex Predator Update: The Horror Writer’s Journey

June 5, 2016 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been getting questions about when my upcoming novel Apex Predator will be published. I am thrilled to say it will be soon. In the meantime I’m excited by my readers enthusiasm. However, let it be known that the writing process is an interesting one.  This is even more true once the manuscript is “complete”, for that’s when the real work begins.  Given the multitude of decisions I am currently agonizing over (regarding formatting, editing, cover art, fonts, and so on….) I will be regularly posting in the weeks to come about those final steps that go into trying to make a manuscript three years in the making into a book worth spending time on.

For instance, there are the decisions that need to be made surrounding the editing process.  For some authors it’s easy. They’re naturals, capable of producing a solid effort in just a couple of drafts. Horror author Steve Vance comes to mind. Last year I interviewed him for my blog Random Pop Culture (now incorporated into this website). I found myself simultaneously delighted as a reader, and insanely jealous as an author. That’s because Vance admitted that his editing process involves maybe a couple of drafts. On the other hand I have been over my book at least a dozen times in the past nine months. This includes the requisite month without looking at it, in hopes that fresh eyes will catch things they missed – and did they.

Perhaps because of this process I finally bit the bullet, and hired a professional editor. For financial reasons it was not an easy decision. However, I decided that if my book was to be the best product it possibly could then it needed professional editing. I have seen too many books where a good pair of objective eyes would have made all the difference. The same was true of mine. I sent my new editor a writing sample a few weeks ago. Though she said there was much to commend, she also came back with a host of questions and comments that made my head spin. The kind of stuff that was staring me right in the face, but which I missed because I was looking too hard.

By the way, the process of finding my new editor was actually relatively painless. Several months ago I joined the Create Space forum. So far I’ve asked for help twice – each time I have been inundated with wonderful guidance. In this case the advice also included a short list of editors worth looking into. This has taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of participating in writing forums and communities – a decision that has landed me a wonderful editor.

I know many of you will say sure an editor is great to have, but there’s the cost. And there’s no question about it, to pay for a pro is a far more costly step than getting your English major buddy to read over your MS. But trust me, it’s worth it. People talk about a book’s cover, but if they purchase that same book and every few pages something jarring smacks them in the face then it won’t take more than a matter of weeks before your Amazon page is littered with the kind of reviews that will sink years of effort.

Speaking of the book’s cover that’s another major consideration with it’s own set of headaches, but I’ll speak about that in the weeks to come. In the meantime I’ve been hemming and hawing over other decisions. These include whether to include black and white illustrations, maps, a bibliography, and much more. Please stay tuned, and feel free to give your opinions.

For instance, I would love to know how many of you find intriguing the idea of illustrations in a werewolf book. Or are you like Stephen King, and as he as often said the less described about your character’s appearance the better. The idea there being so that your reader can create their own mental images as to how characters look. This is a tricky decision, as can be seen by the following example.

In the best-selling Lee Child authored Jack Reacher books the protagonist is a big muscular brute of a man. But the subsequent film had Tom Cruise and all of his slender five feet seven inches in height, playing the titular character. If you were a reader of the books that might have been off-putting. In turn, what if Child had written Reacher as looking exactly like Tom Cruise? Would being so overly descriptive have turned off readers?

The same kind of consideration goes for the werewolf -to a point. That is to say my werewolves will be described. But there’s described, and then there’s the concrete vision that comes to mind in a reader’s head in terms of interpreting that description. This is a critical decision for a horror author. Once you get past the basics of things like two legged werewolf versus four legged, long wolf-like snout versus a more Lon Chaney type look then it’s up to you as to how much you will leave final interpretation open to the reader’s mind’s eye. Do you let the reader fill in the blanks with what they think is the best or scariest werewolf they’ve ever seen? Or do you spell out the beast’s dimensions and characteristics in detail? Whatever you do just remember that every author and reader is different in their opinion.

For instance, maybe you’re someone who thinks the Bernie Wrightson illustrated werewolf from the novella Cycle of the Werewolf is the be-all-end-all of werewolves:

Cycle-of-the-Werewolf

Others might think there is nothing scarier than special makeup effects creator Rob Bottin’s werewolf from the movie The Howling:

Howling_werewolf

What does the writer do? Go for broke like Stephen King and hire an illustrator to show exactly what the werewolf looks like – which for anyone that has read King’s werewolf novella knows was a break from his normal practice of barely physically describing the characters found in his full length novels.  If you decide to include illustrations do you maybe take a middle ground, and just show the creature’s clawed hand/paw or other such body parts teasing it out – with the full bodied pay-off at the end? Or do neither, nixing the idea of illustrations, and leaving it to the reader to best fit the creature’s outline to the mental image that terrifies them the most?

I’ll be honest here. In my book, and if I choose to not illustrate it, the text has described the creatures enough so that in my mind’s eye I’m seeing those particular werewolves that scare the devil out of me. In essence I’m writing for myself. But I’m also leaving it a bit open to interpretation, so that the Bernie Wrightson or Rob Bottin fans can fill in the final blanks.

From there, and beyond the look of your characters, beasts, and decisions about how much to reveal versus how much to show there are other considerations as well. If much of your action takes place in a central location how many of you think a map so similar to the one’s you find in a good fantasy novel would be  a nice touch? How many others wished more of your horror books had bibliographies where you could see the sources that influenced your favorite authors? What about the cover font? The text font? Page color? Decisions, decisions….

My hope is that by openly discussing some of these topics I will help other authors who are struggling with their own creative demons. Furthermore, it’s important for our readers to understand the effort that some authors put into trying to entertain them. Because entertaining the reader, and giving them something to think about, will always remain the ultimate goal in genres such as ours.

I can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, email (smdouglas73@yahoo.com), or the comments section of this blog – I would love to hear from all of you.

 

Top Gun 30 Years Later: Was it Really the Best Cold War Film of It’s Era?

May 25, 2016 / / 0 Comments

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the iconic 1980’s film Top Gun – the highest grossing film of 1986, and a movie that seemingly defines the term “Cold War film” with it’s macho swagger and high tech military hardware.

Tom Cruise_Top Gun

With the popularity of current films and TV shows centered on the Cold War it’s not surprising that Top Gun has been getting so much attention in the mainstream media. Nevertheless, and though I very much enjoyed Top Gun there were many other 1980’s Cold War themed films that are often overlooked, and in many ways every bit as good. And if one were to put together a list of the best of these movies it would be incomplete without at least one of the following films:

War Games

War Games_NORAD War Room

A high school student who accidentally hacks into a NORAD supercomputer to play a simulated game of thermonuclear war instead nearly triggers World War III

The good: Original, fast paced, and entertaining – it was a superb movie. The film was so realistic that it even prompted President Reagan, to question US vulnerability to cyber attack and task the N.S.A. with studying the issue. The report that ended up coming out of this study was hardly reassuring.

The bad/ugly: The director messed up Galaga , interspersing sound effects with on-screen action that did not go together. In another scene F-15’s are mistaken for F-16’s – a total cold war no-no.

Firefox

 

firefox_Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood plays a U.S. pilot who is covertly infiltrated into the Soviet Union to steal a game changing jet fighter invisible to radar, faster than anything else in the sky, and which can be partially controlled by neural link.

The good: Dark, gritty, and featuring an action packed ending. In many ways the film is Top Gun’s closest competitor, given the similarity in it’s focus on high tech aerial warfare.

The bad/ugly: The special effects, though enjoyable at the time, do not hold up nearly as well as Top Gun’s scenes featuring actual front line military aircraft. Though to Firefox’s credit it attempts to portray what a Soviet military aircraft would look like, whereas Top Gun relies on U.S. manufactured aggressor squadron aircraft as stand in’s for actual Soviet Mig’s.

The Living Daylights

Living Daylights Poster

James Bond is led to believe that General Pushkin, the head of the KGB, is systematically killing British and American agents. But in an ensuing adventure taking Bond across Europe, North Africa, and Afghanistan he finds out reality is not what it seems.

The good: Perhaps the most underrated James Bond movie ever, and perhaps the most overlooked Bond. The film’s action scenes hold up much better than those in Bond’s that came even a few years before, and Dalton provides a much needed corrective to Roger Moore’s camp.

The bad/ugly: Maryam d’Abo’s Kara Milovy was far too weak of a Bond girl for a movie with pretensions of returning Bond to his grittier roots following the Roger Moore era.

In addition to the three films listed above one could add in any number of films including:

Rambo, First Blood Part’s II and III (the stick fighting scene at the start of the third Rambo installment was a classic and perhaps the best part of the movie), Rocky IV, Spies Like Us, Red Heat, Red Dawn, Invasion U.S.A., and so on…into the realm of classic B-movie late night viewing fare.

Is there something I missed? Feel free to join the conversation via the comments section, Facebook, or Twitter.

 

 

 

Humanizing The Monsters

April 27, 2016 / / 0 Comments

My daughter is of an age where questions are commonplace, especially following a movie. I have tried to avoid the Disney trap, but it seems virtually inescapable.  Thus, I have resigned myself to the fact that my daughter now watches Tangled, Frozen, Little Mermaid, and all the other “princess” movies. And don’t get me started on Frozen – I don’t know how they did it, but somehow the writers at Disney engineered a kind of princess crack cocaine for kids. Even the music from that cursed movie fills my house at all hours of the day.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t set on excluding princesses from her life – after all Princess Leia is a great independent, strong, female role model for a young girl. And thank god my daughter does like Princess Leia – and the Star Wars universe in general! It’s just that she also likes Elsa, Ariel, and all the rest of them. Such is life.

Nevertheless, over the last six months, and in the course of watching seventy odd years worth of Disney “princess” movies, what surprises me the most is that one of the many questions my daughter has asked following each of these viewings is always the same: “Why is “insert the villain’s name here” a bad person?”

Now in discussing the nature of “bad” with a preschool age child there is only so far you should go. Suffice it to say my answer generally revolves around a variant of: “Because she (invariably in a Disney movie the evildoer is a “she”) was trying to get Ariel, Rapunzel, etc… to do things that were against her own interest and which would hurt her or the people she cares about.”

You and I know exactly what these “bad” things were, and why they were being done. Characters like Ursula (Little Mermaid), or Mother Gothel (Tangled/Rapunzel) are sociopaths quite willing to do anything to further their own selfish goals. They are monsters. And like any monster some of them are quite horrible. Even scary. Don’t believe me. Watch Little Mermaid again. Ursula is downright creepy. And as she should be, given that she is basically an ocean witch.

It goes without saying that monsters should be scary. And for most of the past half-century or so the monsters populating our movies, books, graphic novels, comics, and so on are creatures out to devour or destroy humanity. The lone exception for much of this time was Godzilla, who went from ravishing Japanese cities to something of a folk hero staving off the assaults of other Kaiju type creatures.

But in recent years we have seen many other of the most famous monsters humanized. This is true to such an extant that if it were possible to bring Bram Stoker back from the grave he likely would be shocked to see the rendition of vampire’s in such popular films as Twilight.

Twilight_Edward

This picture was the scariest version of Edward “the vampire” I could find anywhere on the internet, and that was only by doing a search for “angry Edward images”. You try it. That’s a vampire at his meanest? Good grief.

We have even seen T-Rex go from monster in Jurassic Park….

T_Rex_Jurassic_Park_Image

…..to a Godzilla like hero in Jurassic World.

Indominus_VS_T._rex

And woe to Jurassic World’s producers had T-Rex met the same ignominious fate he suffered in Jurassic Park III – with T-Rex’s unlikely death at the hands of the longer but less massively muscled fish eating Spinosaurus one of the key reasons the third installment in the franchise is widely regarded as the worst.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a large and active backlash against cutesy versions of vampires, werewolves, and other such creatures:

Werewolves Vampires yesterday vs today

And thankfully, there are plenty of films and books that do everything possible to put the horror in horror. But given the larger role monsters often play as a means for understanding our place on this planet what does it say about our society that some of today’s greatest heroes are the same creatures that are ostensibly out to feed on us?

Perhaps inverting our heroes in such a way means we are learning that the worst monsters aren’t vampires, werewolves, or even Ursula the sea-witch. Perhaps it means the worst monsters are those that walk among us. You know who they are. Those respectable looking very serious individuals we are taught to listen to, but who in turn have done what for most of us in return?

Perhaps there is a reason horror is more popular than ever.

Perhaps it is because those bad people my daughter asks about, dare I say monsters, are all around us.

 

Shark Week 2015

July 22, 2015 / / 1 Comment

As everyone not living under a rock knows Shark Week came early this year. And though I am not a fan of the July running time (versus the standard August airing that otherwise provided much needed entertainment value to the dog days of summer) give the Discovery Channel their due. Shark Week 2015 was a success.

Big Great White

Readers may remember my comments on last year’s woeful edition, and I am happy to say that other than a few glitches Discovery Channel got it right this year. This is important not just for Discovery Channel’s bottom line, but for sharks as well.

Discovery Channel made a big effort to return Shark Week to the elements that originally made it worth watching, as noted by Howard Swartz, Discovery’s vice-president of documentaries and specials. Swartz has publicly stated this year’s goal was to kill the bullshit about extinct sharks mysteriously still living today, and focus on science-based television. And that they almost did.

Several episodes were particularly strong, including “Shark Trek”, “Monster Mako”, “Alien Sharks”, “Tiburones: The Sharks of Cuba”, “Ninja Sharks”, “Shark Planet”, “Sharks of the Shadowlands”, and “Shark Clans”. Though each had flaws, the decision to branch out and discuss sharks such as the Thresher, Seven-Gill, Mako, and Salmon Shark was much appreciated. I hope next year follows up on what was undeniably a strong line-up.

Careful readers will note that only two of the episodes listed above truly focused on Great White sharks. I am not bagging on Great White’s – I love them, hands down my favorite animal alive. And even the episodes I am about to critique were worth watching, albeit with the sound muted, just to see these incredible animals. For whatever reason the Discovery Channel still seems to want to get gimmicky when it comes to embellishing a creature that is so magnificent it doesn’t even come close to deserving the schlock treatment.

To that end I am first singling out “Island of the Mega Shark” as being sub-par. For one reason the enormous female Great White “Deep Blue” repeatedly singled out as “pregnant” was clearly merely fattened up by recent consumption of an elephant seal.

Biggest-Great White Filmed

To date there is absolutely no evidence that near term Great White’s would get anywhere near a prime hunting ground, especially given that big Great White’s are known to eat smaller one’s. Why can’t you just enjoy the fact that you managed to capture on film one of the biggest Great White’s ever seen and let the viewers enjoy that? In addition, was it really necessary to have “Dicky” involved. The guy is a tool. He has no business anywhere near a research vessel. For that matter Discovery Channel would do well to push the non-scientists/non-experts into the background. The strongest episodes were all one’s where the scientist’s (or people like Rodney Fox who are clearly experts on shark behavior and identification) had leading roles.

Second place on the list of the worst episodes was “The Return of the Great White Serial Killer” which though interesting in theory simply did not warrant an entire hour. Not only was it incredibly speculative, but it was largely a retread of previous episodes. It could have been greatly strengthened by discussing the relationship between Great Whites, their prey, and how humans inadvertently end up in the mix in California waters in particular.

Finally, one of the other poorly done episodes would have to be “Super Predator”. It was incredibly frustrating in large part because the real story was right there in front of the Discovery Channel team. But they chose to ignore it in favor of some strained inference that maybe a Megalodon type shark is hunting the depths of the Southern Ocean. Stop it! Note to Discovery Channel, had you focused on the actual fact that there is this place where because of unique currents and underwater geography it creates an enormous buffet for some of earth’s biggest predators that would have been a great story worth exploring.

Overall I would give Discovery Channel a B+ for its efforts. Hopefully they continue in the direction they are going. In the meantime buckle up – It’s time for Sharknado 3! Yikes!

Was the Greatest Horror Movie Ever Really a Horror Movie?

May 28, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Last month we discussed the topic of “nature-horror” and as part of that discussion the movie Jaws came up. Given we are fast approaching the forty year anniversary of the film’s release (June 20, 1975) let’s revisit one big reason why it was able to become a massive blockbuster, unlike Grizzly, Orca, Piranha, and so on….

Jaws_Movie_Poster_

First off, remember that Jaws is widely regarded as one of the best horror films ever, with the opening scene rated by Bravo as the scariest moment in film history.

People were so terrified by Jaws many spoke of being afraid to even take baths. Now some of this is hyperbole, but as a kid I more than once found myself peeking under the water in fear when in a swimming pool or lake, no less the ocean. That didn’t stop me from watching the movie over and over again. To this day it is my all-time favorite, and a huge influence on my life – including a primary reason behind my twenty plus years as a scuba diver.

When people discuss why Jaws became such a cultural phenomenon they often point to the strong cast, John William’s great score, the superb editing done by Verna Fields, the decision to leave the shark unseen for most of the movie (though this can backfire as anybody who has seen the latest Godzilla film will attest), and other such elements. But I believe there is another reason Jaws achieved the cross-over appeal most other horror flicks can only dream about; and that’s because Jaws was more than a horror movie.

Now, many of my readers will blanch at such a statement. After all what is more quintessentially horror than a giant man-eating shark laying siege to an entire town? But careful viewers of Jaws will note that it’s really two movies. The first half is an unquestionable scare fest featuring numerous gruesome deaths capped by the bloody shark attack in the estuary. The second half is more of a man versus nature adventure film. Don’t get me wrong the final act is also filled with classic horror techniques, including many “gotcha” moments to make the audience jump – plus Quint’s ghastly death. But that’s also why the film works so well where others fail.

In combining the genres of horror, adventure, and even comedic aspects Jaws connects with the viewer in ways standard horror movies struggle to emulate. The strong character development, intense pacing, and story don’t hurt either. But without blending genres as he did I seriously doubt Steven Spielberg and the immensely creative team of actors, screenwriters, editors, and so on working with him would have been able to so viscerally tap into our most primal fears. And before you say “well if mashing together different genres is the ticket to the big-time then why doesn’t everybody do it” note that doing it in a way that works is far from an easy task. One need look no further than Peter Benchley’s novel of the same name.

Sure Jaws the book was a best seller that achieved tremendous success, but when measured against the movie version it is one of the few books that comes out the loser in such comparisons. For instance, and for whatever reason (perhaps to piggyback on the Godfather’s coattails) Benchley included a mafia related sub-plot that simply did not work with the horror/adventure genre’s he tied together and Spielberg’s team improved upon. That’s why come June 20th I will plop down on my couch, dim the lights low, and not crack open my early edition hard cover copy of Jaws. Instead, and for the hundredth time, I will pop into my Blue-Ray player this all-time classic. And I will love every minute of it.

 

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