In this week's episode, I discuss the origins of my HALF-ELVEN THIEF series, and describe some of the ideas that inspired it. I also talk a little about some of the common scams in self-publishing. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 217 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September the 6th, 2024 and today we are discussing the origins of Half-Elven Thief. Before we get into that, let's have an update on my current writing projects. I am editing Shield of Conquest. I'm about 40% of the way through the first round of editing, so hoping to have that out in the middle of September if all goes well, but we'll see. I am 44,000 words Ghosts in the Tombs, which I am planning to have out in October and 14,000 words into Cloak of….uh…Illusion. That's how you can tell I've written a lot of books. I can't immediately recall the titles at the drop of a hat anymore. In audiobook news, the audio for Half-Orc Paladin is done and working its way through processing on various sites. It should be up on Audible, Google Play, Kobo, Chirp and all the other major audiobook stores soon, but you can get it off my Payhip store right now since I was able to post it right away. So if you want to get before anyone else, you can do it there. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects (once I remembered all their names correctly, of course). 00:01:16 Question of the Week And now let's go to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is your favorite fictional villain? The inspiration for this question was that I saw a writer complaining how hard it is to write a book without a villain. It's not impossible, of course. The conflict of the story might be man versus nature, two people competing in a sporting event, or on equal footing. But it is easier to write a book about a villain and of course really memorable ones often become enduringly popular characters. So as you can imagine, we had quite a range of responses for this one. Mary says: King Haggard in the last Unicorn. Evil, unfathomable, and dangerous. I can't believe he adopted a foundling, at that. Jonathan D. says: If I had to limit it to one, I would go with Megatron. You have to be an iconic villain to still be the main bad guy for 40 years. Honorable mention to Scorpius from Farscape. He was only supposed to be in a few episodes at the end of Season 1 but was so good he became the main villain. Bret says: Voldemort. I like villains to be simple, the embodiment of evil, evil from the moment they were born, never wavering from evil, and with no chance for redemption. But I prefer the villain to be the system and/or human nature. For example, in your Ghost Exile Book One, there are some bad guys, but since it's not known that point that there's a super villain behind the scenes, Caina is fighting the system (like corruption, slavery of Istarinmul) and the bad guys are bad because of human nature in the system, and that's a great book. One of my favorites. Michael says: I am a big fan of Marvel comic books and they both have my favorite villains, Doctor Doom and Magneto, because they are both well written personalities and are perfect examples of people with power who will do whatever evil thing it takes to rectify evil conditions in their lives that they have personally survived. Our next response comes from Becca, who says: I really liked Grand Admiral Thrawn and his use of art. He's an excellent character. Another Timothy Zahn series villain is the Modhri, a sort of hive mind that ends up with lots of different aspects. The books she's talking about are the Quadrail series by Timothy Zahn and they're pretty good. Check them out if you get a chance. It's basically a noir-style train mystery but in outer space. Simone says: Definitely Doctor Evil, because sometimes I also want some “freaking sharks with freaking laser beams attached to their freaking heads.” I have to say I entirely agree with Simone. Sometimes you want sharks with laser beams. Andrew says: John Simms playing The Master in Doctor Who. BV says: Urzo, that villain cracks me up. In fact, the whole crew of villains are characters. Yep, Urzo was something else. Plus he makes me laugh. Martin says: The Watchmaker from Jeffrey Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series. I think the key to an engaging villain is that they have a capacity to win. The watchmaker matches Rhyme's deductive skills with his own meticulous nature. The question becomes who will make a mistake first and what the consequences will be. You can never be sure who will win. I also enjoy the fact that you only get to read it from the Watchmaker’s point of view without truly understanding him. It's only at the end that things click into place. Jenny says: The best villain is when you feel like, yeah, maybe they have a point, but the whole way they're going about ...
