Getting Schooled: Robert McKee's STORY

The phenomenal Steven Pressfield always has fantastic advice to share over at his blog (as well as some of his friends too) he recently posted a piece here about how he still appreciates getting a recharge from the masters too. Mr. Pressfield has no ego and fully understands its about the art and that we never stop learning, (or at least we shouldn't stop learning) we can always keep progressing.

Namely the master Mr. Pressfield is referring to is Robert McKee, famed screenwriting guru, he calls him not just the best teacher of writing but the best teacher of anything.
Mr. Pressfield  highly recommended that all writers who care about their careers' go attend Mr. McKee's seminar. Pressfield says it will give you a veritable PhD in writing, and wouldn't you know it, now that I'm living in LA, McKee is holding a seminar not 15 minutes away from where I live in 3 days.

But...

Life being what it is, kids, home repairs, etc etc, I just can't make it. BUT thankfully, my ever loving wife has the audiobook of McKee's STORY and I've been listening to that the last few days and I gotta tell ya, it is heavy.

It might even be better for me that I can keep relistening to the audio tracks and digesting everything McKee himself is narrating. There is just too much for me to truly blog about just yet, but I wanted to mention that I'm digging this and will get to point where I can better write about it when I have had a chance to go through it multiple times, and again I want to stress the concept of forever improving and learning. All I can say just yet, is that it is amazing.

The Next Big Thing Blog Chain...

I was chained to this by Shelley Brown (author of The Fall of Cliff Castle (Book One in The Glass Slipper Chronicles)) and so I'm sharing a little bit about my WIP with you today.

So without further ado (because ado is seldom useful) my WIP:

What is the working title of your book? 

 Bless the Child

Where did the idea come from for the book? 

I was fascinated with the concept of mercenaries in the ancient world. The idea especially of Greeks, when they weren't fighting each other, would sell themselves out to the Egyptians, Babylonians, and other minor kings; and that brothers could potentially find themselves facing each other on opposite sides of a conflict very far from home.

I also wanted to utilize some Biblical old world references that I found interesting such as Elephantine Island on the Nile, the fall of Jerusalem thanks to Nebuchadnezzar, and a number of rumored aspects of that siege and destruction.

* the artwork for the cover has graciously been donated by Kris Cooper

What genre does your book fall under?

Historical Action/Adventure with a Sword & Sorcery flavor

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

I have given no real thought to this. Most of the characters (even while many are real historical personages-Solon, Psenophis, Jaush of Lachish, Nebuchadnezzar, Zedekiah, and Balthazar/Daniel are inspired by people I personally know)

While I do think this could be turned into a screenplay much easier than my other works. The protagonist, known as The Spartan would need to be an able bodied man in his mid twenties in the beginning of the book and it follows his story up to around forty or so.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

Never thought about this before but here goes...

To keep from getting wet, the bloody, drowning road to redemption for a Spartan mercenary is perhaps best traveled by boat.

another...

Saving oneself is most nobly done by saving another.

and (having too much fun with this)...

No country for sword-less men.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

This will be my first self-published novel. The greater motivation for such will be explained toward the end of this post.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

I think I finished the rough draft in about 5 months. 

This was also when I was offered my first publishing contract and decided to start this blog and hence the name Nephite Blood, Spartan Heart - a merger of sorts of my Heroes of the Fallen saga and this Spartan book, the only two things I was working on at the time.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

I really liked, Jezebel by Frank G. Slaughter, Lord of Samarcand by Robert E. Howard, Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, Lion of Cairo by Scott Oden, and 300 by Frank Miller.

Who or What inspired you to write this book? 

I began the book when my daughter was in the hospital with a terrible case of RSV. She almost died. The frustration and heartache in the beginning of Bless the Child is from that pain of not knowing if she would make it or not. I wrote it at her crib-side in the Primary Children's Hospital in SLC.

I was also greatly inspired by a lot of my historical research reading related to my first novel(series) Heroes of the Fallen ipso facto - Hugh Nibley.

And lastly, when I was still doing construction to pay the bills, I was remodeling a basement at the home of an old woman and her daughter - a single mother whose toddler son kept calling me 'Daddy'. It broke my heart.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? 

I am going to donate 100% of the proceeds to The GAN Warriors a trio of young local boys with a terribly debilitating disease. I wanted to do something to help them and polishing and dusting off a trunk novel seemed the most viable thing I could do. It lets me get my work out to a greater audience and help someone(s) else at the same time.

There you go, that's all she wrote!

 

Now I have to chain people to this thing...so...

I'll stick to my regular blogger friends who I know are always working on something

Charles Gramilch

Paul McNamee

Angie Lofthouse

and

Adventures Fantastic Keith, I'd love to hear more about what you're working on, not that we don't all groove on your reviews.

39 & Turning Pro

I just finished Steven Pressfield's  The Art of War and Turning Pro and was quite moved-I highly recommend them for my writer friends and I'm also urging my wife to read them.

In a nutshell, Pressfield shares his experience to help the artist overcome resistance (anything that stops you from doing what you should be doing) and grow. To have the ambition to succeed and truly excel at one's ultimate goal requires a paradigm shift which he refers to as Turning Pro.

From Turning Pro ~ "Turning Pro is free, but it demands sacrifice. The passage from amateur to professional is often achieved via an interior odyssey whose trials are survived only at great cost, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. we pass through a membrane when we turn pro. it's messy and It's scary. We tread in blood when we turn pro."

I'm 39 today and taking stock of my writing career. Turning Pro is what I want and am doing, too long I have let my own distractions and self-doubts (a universal writers malady I believe) slow me down. Time to banish the shade I've let loom over myself and do the work I believe in.
As such, I need to look at what I have accomplished and be proud of that instead of beating myself up over what I haven't done yet. Time to live in the present and have joy.

My published works and awards so far.

April 2009:

LDStorymakers Writers Con - 1st place General Fiction First Chapter Contest

Dance the Ghost with Me

February 2010:

LDS Publisher Blog Short Story Contest

1st place Song of Saphir ~ 2nd place Covenant of the Scalp

April 2010:

WiDo Publishing ~ Heroes of the Fallen

October 2010:

IRON BOUND magazine issue #1 ~ Sailing to Valhalla

February 2011:

Shadows & Light II ~ The Hand of Fate

April 2011:

Monk Punk ~ Fistful of Tengu

May 2011:

Lovecraft eZine issue #4 ~ Curse the Child

October 2011:

Utah Geek Magazine issue #1 ~ Midnight Son’s part 1: Cold Comfort

November 2011:

Monsters & Mormons ~ Fangs of the Dragon

March 2012:

Sword & Sorcery Magazine #2 ~ Hel Awaits

June 2012:

Unnatural Tales of the Jackalope ~ Tangle Crowned Devil

July 2012:

Wandering Weeds ~ Garden of Legion

In Situ ~ The Dig

***
And in some indeterminate near future (these have already been accepted for publication)

Blood of Our Fathers

Roar of the Crowd ~ Whispers of the Goddess

Challenge Discovery ~ The Serpents Root

The Evil Twin ~ The Cry of Carrion Birds

Dark Eclipse Magazine ~ A Good Home for the Spoon

Tying the Tales All Together

I love how some writers link a lot of the stories in their own universe together.

Robert E. Howard does it (the Ring of Set turns up in tales all through time)
Stephen King does it (The Dark Tower saga)

And I love the concept so much that while I have thought on it at length (already in my own mind some of my tales do connect in the same universe) I have yet only briefly mentioned points that touch.

But in the current tale I am working on, Cold Slither - a weird western with Porter Rockwell, it directly relates to another project The Bastard Prince an adventure historical that is itself very loosely based on the Welsh Prince Madoc ~ (and how I think Conan of the Isles should have been done) and if you read between the lines they link to Heroes of the Fallen/Blood of Our Fathers.

I never planned it that way, it just came about~but I have to admit that when I realized it was doing that on its own (the Muse, as Steven Pressfield calls it) I was excited.

While I am sure that some of my tales will never tie in to anything else, these in particular are beginning to weave together and its just something I as the creator/writer enjoy.

How about you?