About a year ago, as I was working through the revisions of Axon, Inc., I got into an intense discussion with my brilliant and beautiful wife Ali about the Chronicles of Narnia. It's a series I adored when I was younger, but when I read it again to my kids when they were very young, I… Continue reading Side Project: Return to Sagaia (Narnia-inspired Fantasy)
First, an announcement: the first chapter of Axon, Inc., "Lubumbashi", is now available on Wattpad. Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting four more chapters, a total of almost 10,000 words. In the meantime revisions will continue. As an experiment, I'll be over on Wattpad a lot more in the future. In addition to… Continue reading Revisions Status: Oct 7 2015
This is a sample from the Refusal of the Call section of Axon, Inc. See the post on mapping story structure to get a sense of where this appears in the novel. He didn’t know the fastest way to a road or a house, so he simply headed back the way he’d come: straight through… Continue reading Mount Si: Refusal of the Call (Axon, Inc. Sample)
This is the second of a series of posts on the status of my revisions to Axon, Inc. The first one is here. As before, instead of giving spoilers or arbitrary word counts, I'm going to reference my Story Map here. The Story Map reveals the basic shape of the novel, without being specific about what… Continue reading Revisions Status: May 20 2015
Axon, Inc. is a tightly-focused novel, concentrating on the lives of just a few characters. Following up on the in-depth discussion of the protagonist, Walden Reathall, and the antagonist (?) Logan Byrnes, this post discusses two other essential characters: Walden's sister, Tori, and good friend, Paula Amaranto. There are no spoilers here, just notes about… Continue reading Characters: Tori Reathall and Paula Amaranto
Axon, Inc. is a tightly-focused novel, concentrating on the lives of just a few characters. Following up on the in-depth discussion of the protagonist, Walden Reathall, this post discusses another agonist: Logan Byrnes. Like that post, there are no 'spoilers' here, just notes about character inspiration and background. Logan Byrnes In the summer of 2017,… Continue reading Characters: Logan Byrnes
Axon, Inc. is a tightly-focused novel, concentrating on the lives of just a few characters. Stories like this one explore the ramifications of transformative technologies, unraveling the world we know and weaving a new one from its ruins. Focusing on one or two characters allows the reader to become more immersed in the novel, to… Continue reading Characters: Walden Reathall
Ever since George Lucas introduced Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces to screenwriting, it's had a profound influence -- not just on the movie industry, but on fiction in general. A quick Google search will bring up thousands of pages about applying Joseph Campbell's work to novels, short stories, and even television commercials. I… Continue reading The Call of Adventure: Mapping Story Structure
There are only two kinds of plots in true science fiction: Science is a Hero, and Science is a Villain. In Science is a Hero, there is some problem or other -- an asteroid is going to hit the Earth, the Galactic Empire is falling, there's a Plague IN SPACE!! -- and the heroic characters… Continue reading Man vs. Machine: John Henry, Science Fiction, and the March of Progress
In a series of posts a few years ago, I talked about the function of fiction. What is it for? What purpose does it serve? After all, it’s all a pack of lies — and what’s more, it’s lies that everyone knows are false. In that article I argued that fiction’s primary purpose was to… Continue reading Fiction and the Shamanic Journey
Axon Firings 