Amen, brother.

But onto the topic of this particular post.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve always liked things that, for better or worse, most people think of as ridiculous and silly.  I love monsters the size of skyscrapers, killer robots, and superheroes.  You really don’t have to read many of my books to realize this.  Whether it’s cannibal witches, robot detectives, or fat werewolves, I’m a guy who likes the absurd, the bizarre.  I’d much rather watch Mega Piranha than Precious.  If a story has a dinosaur fighting a vampire, I’m all for it.

The problem though is that I don’t, as a general rule, like “camp”.  Camp to me is apology.  And I won’t apologize for thinking robots are cool or that Superman is awesome.  These things are absolutely true, and anyone with an ounce of sense should already realize this.  But if you haven’t, that’s your problem, not mine.

Yet there is an apology culture when it comes to this stuff.  Even people who like it try to excuse it.  Or, even worse in my opinion, they’ll knock it down before anyone else gets the chance.

The trailers for the new Jonah Hex movie look promising.  Hex is a comic book cowboy character.  You’d think that would get comic fans excited about his move to the big screen.  Yet I see far too many fans of the medium already eager to dismiss the film.  Sure, the trailer is full of explosions, one liners, and has horse-mounted gatling guns.  But isn’t that a good thing?  Do we really need another action film that takes itself dreadfully seriously?  Are those are only two options as a culture?  High art and dumb fluff?

NBC has a new show called The Cape.  It looks like a superhero show that dares to actually be about a superhero, unlike Heroes, which was so determined to be serious that it robbed every bit of joy from the superhero genre.  The Cape, on the other hand, shows promise as a cop, framed for a crime he didn’t commit, adopts a costumed identity to fight for justice in a corrupt city.  Isn’t this what superheroes are all about?

I don’t know.  All I know is that I refuse to believe that things can either be smart and boring OR stupid and fun.  I refuse to believe that a story with a robot or talking duck is automatically unimportant and unintelligent.  I don’t think boring always equals deep, and I don’t think there’s anything innately wrong with a killer elevator story.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Can’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’m glad you enjoyed my “fun” little stories about robot detectives and country-fried vampires.  But did you listen?  Did you heed the warning?  No, you did not.  But everyone will have probably have noticed by now that slime monsters and horrible consuming beasts are a recurring element in my stories.

The byproduct of an obsession with weird creatures and kaiju movies?  

The prophecies of an unappreciated visionary?

Pure, dumb luck?

Even I can’t say for sure.

But I welcome our new oozing overlords, and advise all of you to do the same.  While many of you will be fed to the nameless gods of the depths, it shouldn’t be long before our benevolent dinobot masters come to free us.  Oh, the glorious war of the oozing death and the laser cybersaurs shall be glorious to behold.  And from the ashes…a new empire will rise.  One of peace, prosperity, and equality for all.

Until those damned Inhumanoids come and ruin it for everyone.

You have been warned.

Anyway, here we are.  And I find myself with the beginning of a new blog to collect my oh-so-noteworthy thoughts.  No pressure or anything, but if this post stinks, it’ll probably be a blow from which I shall never recover.  So let’s try to make this one memorable.

I’m a novelist for a very specific reason.  I love the freedom it gives me compared to other mediums.  When it comes to the art of storytelling, it’s harder to find a more welcoming canvas.

I love monsters, for example.  And it’s really hard to make a movie that features a monster as the hero.  I was struck by this recently by Transformers 2.  For a movie about giant shape-changing robots from outer space, there sure were a hell of a lot of people in this thing.  Too many if you ask me.  But movie folks get nervous if they don’t have a bankable star.  They want recognizable faces.  They want sex appeal and “relatable” characters.  And while it’s easy to criticize film for doing this, it’s also understandable.  When you’re investing millions of dollars into a motion picture, you logically want to hedge your bets.

But in a book, I’m not reliant on actors.  I can do what I want.  And if I’m going to write a story about kobolds or scrawny vampires or robotic detectives, I’m pretty free to do so.  More or less.  Although you might not notice this considering the number of characters in fiction that are deliberately described as good-looking because, yes, even in novelology, sex sells.

There are no special effects budgets for me.  I can blow up the universe or populate my cast with ogres or build cities in space.  But there’s another advantage to novels too.  Special effects aren’t quite so special either.  I can’t really draw oohs and aahs via a cool explosion.  I don’t have to build my story around a particularly FX laden scene.  I can run wild with my imagination, but it won’t save a boring story to have lots of colorful explosions or pretty sets.

Finally, a novel is less of a collaborative effort.  I do have an editor, a copy editor, my workshop, my friends and family.  But this is a paltry number compared to the dozens upon dozens of people who offer their input in a film or television series.  While no book of mine could truly be called my work entirely, it’s a lot closer than usually what makes it onto the movie or television screen.

So it turns out that novels are really my medium of choice.  It wasn’t a deliberate decision.  I kind of just stumbled into it, and if I’d picked something different, I’d probably think that was the cat’s pajamas instead.  But I didn’t, and I’m glad to be here.  There are a lot of ways to earn a living, gang, and I’m just happy to be making mine doing something I enjoy.

And, as always, I couldn’t do it without you.

Fighting the good fight, writing the good write,

Lee

(Since most folks who meet me get confused by the A. and Lee in my name, I’m just going by Lee mostly now.  Makes things simpler.)