But what is he when he's at Home? Other Novel Ideas.

I've had people in my Real Life tell me that they're confused about what I'm selling at the moment.



I post on my personal pages about what I'm working on, while at the same time inviting them to look over A Pius Man. 



So, it might be a good idea to clear things up.



To do that, I think it's time to allow you a glimpse into my dark, dark mind.



A Pius Man is only one of my thrillers. My thriller universe is interconnected, and borderline incestuous, if you read them in the order they were written. Eventually, every character in my thriller novels comes to know everyone else … if they're still alive.



And all of them ended up in A Pius Man.



Summer Death Camp, book one of the Death of an Alois Boy series.

 I had a high school that I really, really didn't like. I started writing a murder mystery series that, in the outline, started off as acting out little grudges. In the mysteries, the class pornographer wannabe ended up face down in a bucket of KY jelly. A bully who made constant KKK jokes ended up lynched with a noose made of piano wire. The “hero” was only the protagonist because he was always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he had the inside track because he was hip-deep in the high school stupidity.  Sort of like Murder, She Wrote with teenage serial killers.



The character's name was Matthew Kovach. He started off being modeled on me, and he bored the crap out of me. Though, in my outline, by book four, he stopped looking like me, and became far more interesting.



He shows up in A Pius Legacy.



It Was Only on Stun

It Was Only on Stun was a novel of Sean A.P. Ryan, mercenary. He was doing security at a science fiction convention out in Long Island. It was called C-Con … no relation to I-Con, also out on Long Island, where I had volunteered once or twice.  An actress from the Balkans is about to be a major star in an American TV series that threatens to make her popular world wide--and since she had been driven out by all sides in the Balkan conflict, all sides want her dead. 



This book had everything, including two incompetent “IRA hitmen” being hunted down by Interpol Agent Maureen McGrail, and there was also Middle Earth's Most Wanted Elven Assassin … don't ask. Matthew Kovach appeared as an author, hawking his books “Tales from a Catholic High school” that looked like “Jean Shepard meets Jack the Ripper.”  It was one part comedy, one part mystery, and it ended in a massive shootout, playing hide and seek in the backwoods of Long Island, and a sword fight.



Maureen McGrail and Sean A.P. Ryan both show up in A Pius Man.



I also have a hostage novel set in a Barnes and Noble, only one of the hostages is related to a mafia don, and his "fixer" shows up.  A man named Jonathan Koenig.  Jon Koenig shows up in A Pius Stand (book three of the Pius Trilogy).



Too Secret Service, Et Al.

Too Secret Service is about a Secret Service Agent who was trained to eliminate any and all threats tot he life of the President.  During an international "incident," he is framed for attempted murder, and needs to not only get his head attached to his shoulders, but has to stop the President from being nuked.  However, CIA Assassin Catherine Miller is also investigating the same threat, and he is in her cross hairs.



Dances With Werewolves. Another Secret Service tale.  Catherine Miller has been sent to assassinate a Haitian President using voodoo to scare the natives -- human sacrifices of the tourists will scare practically anyone.  The Prime Minister, and high priest, is a little slicker, and she needs to hunt him down in New Orleans.

Meanwhile, my Secret Service Agent is investigating a laughable threat to the President--a prediction made by a Wiccan coven in San Francisco.  He stops laughing when the one who made the prediction is found vivisected.

And Matthew Kovach also wandered into this story too.  He's up in Boston trying to create a fiction universe; he wants to do to Massachusetts what Stephen Kind did to Maine.  And it looks like he found an interesting subject: Joshua Melasure's Community of the Old Time Religion.

Enter the Kraft Brothers.  Each own a magic shop in a different part of the country.  "Merle" of San Francisco works for the Federal government as an expert on weird; he also doesn't need lock picking tools.  "Tal" is a stage magician in New Orleans. And it looks like the third one, "Dalf," is dealing in magic of a slightly darker nature.

Imagine Live and Let Die, updated with Goths, vampires, and Wiccans.



Night of the Assassins-- Everyone's past comes back to haunt them.  Literally.  A guest star is one Scott "Mossad" Murphy.



Giovanni Figlia was a bit player in Too Secret Service novels, and he shows up in A Pius Man.



And, later, I go completely off the tracks. Literally. I have three series in the works that have nothing to do with any of the above. In one, I've got five books already written, and the other series has one book that I'm expanding into (probably) three.



Tales of White Ops: If I were designing the future, it would look … a lot like science fiction of the past, only better-looking. Take a group like a interstellar Templar Knights, pit them against two Sauron-like enemies, and then create a special forces unit within these alien Templars. Take one part space opera, one part Babylon 5 as written by David Weber, and one part Mission: Impossible as written by John Ringo, and you get the idea. Add a great military genius who looks like the wrong end of a horse, a psychotic President who stole an election, a telepathic special forces unit made up of complete sociopaths, and a crackpot who likes to play with nuclear bombs, and you get the idea.  I also blow up an amusement park currently named Disney Planet, have an alien mafia with its own special forces killers, and it spirals out from there.



In this series My hero's name was "Sean Patrick Ryan" -- now you know why every mention of the 21st century Ryan makes a point of calling him Sean A.P. Ryan.  Five books have been written in this series, and I'm on number six.



The Last Survivors.

A little something I co-authored with a friend of mine (or I was Shanghaied, I'm fuzzy on the details), it had been proposed to me as a dystopia in a little corner of the world that had been nuked to within an inch of its life (San Francisco). Then I asked about the rest of the world. And I asked how the rest of the politics, and the economy, and the dynamics of the society worked … and somewhere along the line, I started writing parts of it.



I had suggested a character, a spy exiled to San Francisco for being "Inconvenient," with the capital I.  My friend wanted to name him "Mr. Anderson."  When I started writing, I called him Kevin (can you tell I'm a smartass?)



 Book one is written, book two is half finished, and it's outlined to book seven.



The Last Survivors, 2093.  Three years after the minor nuclear war known as the April Fool's War, Kevin Anderson is going to take out the nuclear arsenal of the Islamic Republic of France.  His mission is blown by politicians on the Senate Foriegn Intelligence Oversight Committee.  It's time to enforce term limits.  But how do you burn a spy like that, and where do you send him?  Hint: not Miami.



The Last Survivors: Professional Ethics.  San Francisco's most famous misanthrope is a professional assassin, the last of his guild.  When a serial killer starts using San Francisco as his playground, using methods out of the assassin's playbook, it's time to go hunting.



Unnamed Vampire Project.

I don't know what prompted this particular work. It's probably because I had seen one too many vampire novels and movies so mess around with the original concept that I wanted to get back to basics. Joss Whedon at least had vampires react to crosses, and used holy water as a weapon, and then he stuck them in the smallest town he could find in California. I wanted to examine vampires from a more real-world perspective. I'm a history major: What would vampires be doing for the last century? And, because I'm a philosophy nerd, I also wanted to answer the question of why religious artifacts would work on vampires; are they automatically evil, and if so, when did free will get chucked out the window? In my vampire universe, vampires use communion wafers as suicide pills. And you can do creative things with rosaries, and full-immersion baptismal pools. I'm come up with numerous titles to this project, and absolutely none of them work—and half of them have been used already. 



And, then, at the end of the day, there's



A Pius Man.

Professor David Gerrity, PhD, has been murdered while on sabbatical looking through the Vatican Archives.  His assassin is blown up shortly after the murder, and the killer's corpse lands on the car of Giovanni Figlia, head of Vatican security.   Figlia has enough problems-- Secret Service Agent Wilhelmina Goldberg has come to audit Vatican security, and a Egyptian cop Hashim Abasi has come to coordinate the Pope's visit to Egypt.

At the same time, an al-Qaeda strategist has been murdered ... and no one is claiming credit.  Scott "Mossad" Murphy comes to Rome to investigate, and finds a beautiful German spy there to help him, Manana Shushurin.

And lurking in the background is a priest with commando skills, a Pope who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals, and a highly destructive Sean A.P. Ryan is working at the Vatican.

It has philosophy, theology, history, war, international politics, geopolitics, advanced weaponry, a mystery, betrayals, plots, three conspiracies, several counter-plots, mass murder, and enough high explosives to level a few dozen buildings.

It's fun.

Coming soon to A Pius Man: Catholic FAQs, Feedback, etc.

Since I have the next few weeks of blogs scheduled, and the blogs written, I thought I would give you a preview of what's to come.



February 22: "But what is he when he's at Home? Other Novel Ideas" -- Basically, for anyone who loses track of all the various and sundry projects I'm working on, this is a comprehensive list.  No, it's not just A Pius Man.



March 7: Catholic Cannibals: Snarky Theology -- Lent starts the week of March 7th, so I thought I would start by kicking the explanations into full gear.  I'm starting with WHY I have no intention of trying to actively convert anyone.  Why?  Because in my Church, we eat people.  Involves CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll.

March 14: Snarky Theology: FAQs about Lent.  Pretty much everything it says.  If Catholics shouldn't eat meat on Fridays of Lent, what about fish? Do fish grow on trees now?  Why do we fast?  I am taking questions as of now.  So if you have them, now's the time to ask them.

March 21: Snarky Theology: Evolution, Who knows and Who cares... Some people believe creationism.  Some believe in evolution uber alles.  I believe that it really doesn't matter.

March 28: Jesus Freaks Scare Me -- They do, they really do.

April 4:  This entire week will be dedicated to  Murder at the Vatican, the Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes.We will have a guest blog from the author, a brief Q&A session, and my review.







April 11: This week shall appear much the same as April 4th, only the book is Infinite Space, Infinite God II.

April 18: Extremists, Atheists, and Jesus Freaks-- being fair and mentally unbalanced, I want to play whack-a-mole with a few anti-theists.   Paging Mr. Dawkins ...

This last project may or may not happen.  For Easter week (April 25), I have considered a week of "Evil religions, From Islam to Christianity" .... as usual, it's not what you think it is.  These blogs I have yet to write up, but I would like to the "Evil Religions" posts the whole week.  We'll see.  There's Islam, Christianity, Judaism.... though I may be able to break it down regionally.  We'll see.  Why everything you know about the evils of religion is wrong.

Keep in mind, these blogs may be interrupted by stupid news from the Vatican, or by breaking news by a publishing industry outpost.  If I get a contract with a publisher, this schedule might be a little thrown off, due to my dancing in the streets.

However, I would like to ask, once again, for any questions you may have.  Or, since I'm currently taking suggestions, does anyone have any articles you would like me to write up?  Anything you'd like me to comment on, or make fun of, or get my utterly sideways viewpoint on it.  There's no pressure, I have enough blogs to last me a while, but input is always appreciated.

Building Character: Scott "Mossad" Murphy.

**Spoiler alert.  Be sure to read O Little Town of Bethlehem and Tinker, Tailor, Goyim, Spy before reading the blog.**



Two of the short stories posted on this site have, thus far, been about Scott “Mossad” Murphy.  Mysteriously, they all seem to fit with the end product of Murphy in the novel. I think it helps that I essentially wrote a short biography for Scott, like I have for all of my other characters. The character becomes alive in my head, and all I need to do is drop him into a situation and let him play.



Though it wasn't until I wrote Tinker, Tailor, Goyim, Spy that I realized how much of a stiff Scott really was. But, then again, I don't know too many party animals who want to be accountants when they grow up.



And by the time of O Little Town of Bethlehem, I only just managed to hint at Scott's isolation. Not only did he not fit in anywhere in Israel, even his own office, he had just killed or arrested most of the people he had spent the previous three weeks with. At that attrition rate, it's hard to keep a long term friendship going.



And then I started considering how much the character of Scott Murphy fit with the end product in the novel.  Despite all of the new things I discovered about his character, and the more his past has developed in front of me, the puzzle pieces of his life still fit together.

[More below the break.]





Tinker, Tailor, Goyim, Spy

This story wasn't that hard to come up with. I had Scott's origin story in mind from day one. But it was just easier to tell it from the point of view of anyone but Scott, especially since the last sequence looks much more impressive if you don't see how that particular magic trick was done.



And, as always, there was the problem of politics in regards to intelligence work-- not only between the government and Mossad, but the internal politics as well. Hence telling this tale from the point of view of Mossad Chief Imi Morgenstern (one part Imi Lictenfield, creator of Krav Maga, and one part Amy Morgenstern, one of my Krav instructors).



One of the things I had to change about Scott was his age. When I wrote A Pius Man the first time, 2011 was the future. Things that were high-tech at the time can now be gotten as an app on the iPhone. Under the original rubric, where 9-11 happened when Scott was in college, at current rate of speed, Scott would be in his mid-30s by the time the book is published. So I had to make him younger.



Surprisingly, it fit better.



The Scott Murphy of my novel is smart enough to never need a gun, avoid every firefight, and plan in such a way that his plans are the weapon. So why shouldn't he have skipped a year or two of school? And if you're a workaholic, who had finished college courses in high school, college is not that difficult with a full courseload during every possible session. And being a workaholic is a good survival trait—he harder he works, the faster he could get out into the real world. Why? Because Scott had never been described as “attractive” in any physical sense, so he's isolated by looks, by youth, and by intellect (I know something about two out of three of them); the real world had more options for him. The faster he went through school and started reality, the better.



And then 9-11 happened.



To quote Isaac Asimov, beware the wrath of a patient man.



Murphy is very patient.



So, making him younger fit in with the character. He was able to join Mossad after 9-11 to become the first member of the Goyim Brigade, and still stay in his twenties by the time A Pius Man (hopefully) gets published.  If the book takes too much longer, 9-11 will have to happen when he's still a teenager.  His career choice of "accountant" will have to be because his idea of fighting terrorism is to defund them, and steal their money with a pencil instead of a bank heist.



But that's one rewrite I'd like to avoid.

O Little Town of Bethlehem



This was made up completely from wholecloth. I was originally going to do a Sean A.P. Ryan Christmas story in California, entitle it Coyote Christmas (little yappy dogs being fed to a coyote was part of it), but it didn't really mesh together well. Trying to make Sean appear neutral as opposed to violently deranged (in a bad way) or in some way heroic was too much to ask.



As far as A Pius Man is concerned, Sean's alignment is Chaotic Neutral when the book opens.



So, what to do for Christmas? A time of peace and love with a story that starts in Bethlehem …



Oh, wait, Bethlehem is near Scott.



Yee haw.



I threw Sean A.P. Ryan into the opening because all intelligence work starts somewhere, and sometimes with people who are not the nicest folk on the planet. Which is why the interrogation starts with someone hanging upside down off the Empire State Building. Because it's one way to get someone's attention. And, I can keep Sean looking neutral by doing something morally ambiguous while not outright vile. Jack Bauer did more to suspects on 24, and he was the good guy. However, Sean does have this amazing apathy when it comes to what happens to his enemies, hence the “Oh well, if he beat me to the ground floor, I know I didn't attach the bungee cord.”



For the middle of the story, I wanted everything to look like it was going to go straight to Hell. So it would work best if I just showed it from the terrorists' point of view.



And for the end of O Little Town of Bethlehem, in addition to a wrap-up section that would explain how Scott managed to make everything happen, I had little hints of how cut off he is. He's working on Christmas morning, and he has nowhere else to go.



This still fits. I had put into A Pius Man an offhand comment about times he had spent with women who the Mossad used in honey traps. They gave him details on wooing, and seduction, and other activities he wanted nothing to do with. Given Scott's unbending nature, that lesson plan may have had to start with several of those women tying him to a bed. The rest of the events would be as funny as hell … it would have an NC-17 rating, but it would still be hilarious.



By the time of A Pius Man, Scott Murphy will have been a spy for years. He is isolated from the outside world by being a spy. He's isolated from the Mossad community by being a goy. His work will be his life.



And then, one day he gets called to Rome … And then the fun starts.

Music to Write to, Now Playing-- Two Steps To Hell.

Currently, I'm writing through the wonderful world of fight scenes.  Mostly, I'm working on "something completely different."  However, this is music to write to....



Okay, it's music to write fight scenes to.



These are a few cuts from the album I'm listening to.  Please, ignore the titles, though.  I suspect someone just picks the names at random from a dictionary.



 Enjoy.

Disasters to Marvel At, the Revenge: A Brief History in Comics.

(This post is dedicated to all of those comic book fans who are single this Valentine's Day. If you're interested in a romance-themed blog, check out last week here.)

We interrupt this week's blog post (originally on writing) to bring you this update.

Which reason do you like?



Thus far, the most read post this blog has been "Disasters to Marvel At: A Comic Discussion," where I reviewed about five years of Marvel comics' story lines, and came to the conclusion that they were gimmick-ridden, hackneyed plots, and that Disney should make Joe Quesada walk the plank off the top of 666 5th Avenue. 

I wrote it in November.

 In January, Joe Quesada was "promoted" from Chief Editor to "creative consultant." 

In the Catholic Church, the Vatican also has a tendency to "promote" certain bishops to come to Rome.  And they're never heard from again, because they're put into the deepest, darkest little cubicle the Vatican has.

So, Joe Q's promotion pretty much sounds like a way of saying "We'll put him someplace where he can't hurt anything."

Why would I say that?  Let's take a (very) brief look at the kind of stupidity coming out of Marvel lately.

As covered last time, lately, the Marvel machine has pulled out a lot of stories that are more gimmicks than anything else.  Plenty of style over substance.  Pick your cliche, Marvel has probably already used it.  Multi-colored Hulks?  Got 'em.   Turn a hero into Frankenstein's monster? Check.  Turn a character into a villain possessed by a demon?  Hello Daredevil.

And, as mentioned last time, there was Spider-Man, one more day, an idea that was purely Joe Quesada's ... J. Michael Straczynski, when asked about "writing" One More Day while at NYCC, merely answered with Joe Quesada's hotel room number, so I'll give Joe Q. the blame.  Peter Parker, due to circumstances covered in the first "Disasters" post, made a deal with the devil to save his Aunt May, by sacrificing his marriage to Mary Jane Watson...

Last time, I gave my own opinion on the matter of OMD.  I'll give the critique to professional kvetchers now.  Let's just say that the phrase "Editorial Mandate" popped up a lot.



Michael "Mookie" Terracciano, of the web comic "Dominic-Deegan: Oracle for Hire," at that year's I-Con scifi convention, said that he could only imagine that it was a guy in a suit who made THAT particular decision. "Yeah, I know, we'll do a deal with the devil, see? Yeah."  (Actually, it felt a little like an Edward G. Robinson gangster routine as done by Bugs Bunny, but it works.)

Joe Q gave a simple reason for breaking up the marriage, that had lasted nearly twenty years: he wanted to appeal to younger readers, who have no idea what it's like to be married, so young readers could sympathize to Parker better when he was young and single....

Forgetting for a moment that, at that time, there were two comic book lines covering a young, single Spider-Man, (Ultimate Spider-Man and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man), Spider-Man has always been popular because he was one of the few superheroes with a mortgage, relationship problems, bills to pay, etc.  He had real world problems in addition to villain-level problems.  He even had, gasp, real world marriage problems.

But, nope, let's just chuck all that out the window so we can pander to anyone under the legal age of consent.

Oh, and the dumbest part of the actual "deal with the devil," was that Peter got (1) Aunt May all better (2) no one knew who he was anymore, but Marvel's Devil got to enjoy ... subconscious agony of the two of them being apart? 

Wait, so Joe Q. wants to shoot for the younger, angst-ridden reader...

Marvel is pandering to the Twilight crowd?

Looking at their recent X-Men movie trailer, I wonder.

Moving on....

IRON MAN 3.

Recently, other stupid crap that has come out of Marvel was that they fired Jon Favreau from Iron Man 3. 

To be honest, there are conflicting stories.  One version says that Marvel fired him to get someone cheaper.  Another says that Favreau left because Marvel wanted B-list super-heroes in Iron Man 3, whether they fit the story or not.

So, whether or not Favreau jumped, or was pushed, I would pretty much blame someone at Marvel for that stupidity.  When someone is making you lots and lots of money, don't interfere with them, don't blink funny at them--follow every reasonable demand they have.  When Jon Favreau was new, they could pay him peanuts for Iron Man ... for Iron Man 2, they needed to shell out ten million dollars.  Unless he asked for something as insane as a salary equal to the cost of the move, leave the man alone and let him work.

Hmm, who was in charge of Marvel in December of 2010? Oh, yeah, Joe Q.

Right now, Marvel may have a bigger problem in the wings.  Robert Downey Jr. has final directorial approval of Iron Man 3.  He liked Favreau.  But he'll be working on Avengers with Joss Whedon -- if he likes Whedon, Marvel may have issues trying to control another director (Grrr.  Arrgh).

SPIDER-MAN: THE MUSICAL

I appreciate all sorts of innovation and attempts at creativity.  Too bad Joe Q. has neither.

Now, unless you live in a box, or insulate yourself against any and all Broadway news, you know that Marvel has a Spider-Man musical on Broadway.  They've spent over sixty-million dollars on it, and, right now, they would need to sell out to audiences for the next four or five years to recoup their losses. 

It includes a "Geek chorus," and Arachne from Greek mythology being deeply and intricately involved in Spider-Man's creation, down to giving him his costume, and drafting him to help her.  She comes complete with "Spider-Furies," and other elements that look like a train wreck of Bullfinch and Stan Lee.

Can we blame this on Joe Quesada too?

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.

Joe Q. is gone now, but, obviously, someone wasn't paying attention to crap that he had left in the pipeline.  Like any book, comic books have to have things approved and written in advance, if only for promotional reasons, not to mention that they have to write it before they can draw the darn things (non-comic fans note: writers in comic books don't just come in after the artist is done, and fill in the words.  Honest.)

Let's start with the "New Venom."



Venom, as I understand the character, was first a bit of biotechnology, created for Peter Parker when his original suit was trashed on an alien world.  However, it was literally made for HIM.  When he discovered that it was not only alive, but about to bond with him permanently, he got it the hell off of him.  After several years of sitting in a jar in the Fantastic Four headquarters, the symbiotic suit developed an obsessive hatred for him.  Along the way, the suit found someone else who hated Spider-Man, Eddie Brock.  And the two set off to kill Spider-Man, repeatedly.

Both the symbiote, and Brock, were insane.  Even when Venom was a nominal good guy in the 1990s, he was still nuts, and every good deed he did was a side effect.  Brock / symbiote had a thing for protecting innocents, as "we were once innocent, until Spider-man corrupted us," yes precious.....



Yes, I do think the inside of Venom's brain should look like Gollum's, but that's for some other time.

Now, over time, the symbiote has jumped characters, and now it's landed on a new host.

Flash Thompson.....

The Spider-man character of Flash Thompson was, at the same time, Peter Parker's biggest bully and Spider-Man's biggest fan.  Then he was a high school Phys Ed. teacher.

Then there was One More Day ... somehow, Peter not getting married resulting in Flash Thompson joining the army.  Uh huh.

And then Thompson goes and gets his legs blown off. Okay....



And now Flash Thompson is the new Venom host ....

Say what?



This happened because, during the Siege, Venom was caught, the symbiote was removed from its then host, and put on Flash Thompson so he could be a "Black Ops" warrior.



While my opinion of politics is well known, that every politician is some sort of brain damaged, I am having issues with anyone in the entire Marvel universe being stupid enough to put the Venom symbiote on ANYBODY.  It has proven to drive people INSANE.

But, no, we'll just put this mass murdering, psychotic creature onto a war hero, give him an arsenal, and we'll see how that turns out.

Yes, because Venom has always been one of the biggest threats in the marvel universe because it always needed a gun.  Not.

Are we sure that this is Venom?  For all we know, this could be Deadpool "Back In Black" (see image on the left.)



And, for a moment, let's introduce a continuity problem.



One More Day made everyone forget who Spider-Man is, right? However: how do you do that with Venom?  Venom, whose very concept is so tied to it knowing Peter Parker, it lived on him, in him, and even linked to his brain.  Right now, this means that the US military should have a knowledge about Spider-Man.  But "it's maaagggiicccc."



What else could go wrong?



Funny you should ask.

DEAD AGAIN.

Fantastic Four team member Johnny Storm, brother of the Invisible Woman, has taken his turn at dying.  Give him time, he'll get better.  Probably. But, since Marvel can't stand odd numbers ... or change the title... they brought in a replacement.  



And what's with the costumes?

Are we shopping at the Apple Store

Now?

Spider-Man.



Yes, Spider-Man is now one of the Fantastic Four ...



Ahem.



Let us reflect upon this idea for a brief moment.

Spider-Man has four regular titles. 



Spider-Man is also on the Avengers. 



Spider-Man is now on the Fantastic Four.



Does anybody, and I mean anybody, at Marvel know about something called continuity?  Once upon a time, Spider-Man had to struggle to pay the bills.  Now he spends so much time in spandex, he must be pulling down a regular paycheck, since he's putting in full time hours as a superhero.

Not to mention the biggest problem Marvel has ever dealt with.

One More Day.  Again.

After OMD, no one knows who Spider-Man is is anymore.   So ... now ... what?  Is Spider-Man moving into the Baxter building?  Are the FF supposed to accept him as a replacement, let him join the team, without knowing his freaking name?



I can only assume they did this because someone decided that, when getting rid of a smart-mouth, addle-brained fool, you replace him with another smart-mouth.  This second smart-mouth can be one of Marvels top ten smartest characters, but what the heck, who'll notice?

WALKING BACK THE (BLACK) CAT.

In the spy trade, after they discover a traitor in an espionage organization, they go backwards through someone's history to see what sort of damage they've done.  It's called "Walking back the cat."



Five years of bad story lines, documented in November: Civil War, Back In Black, Siege, One More Day, Shadowlands, killing Captain America, and every other attempt to "event" their way to keep up with DC's Crisis of the Week.



Marvel has lost: writers J. Michael Straczynski and Joss Whedon, directors Jon Favreau and Sam Raimi.



Right now, I'm told there are a few, possible, saving graces in Marvel ...



Ed Brubaker, who writes Captain America, seems to have a fine grasp on the character, and has a strong fan base.





Brian Michael Benis, who writes Moon Knight, and practically all things Avengers, seems to be going well, but I've read his stuff: his heroes have some exposition that will bore the villains to death.



And there's Peter David, who practically owns X-Factor, and will write for any superhero.  Seriously, any of them.



Now that Joe Q. is gone, we can be hopeful that the plots of the last five years will be shoved down the memory hole of Marvel's readers. As with the years of Spider-Man's "Clone Wars," they will be retconned into another universe; these are not the issue numbers you're looking for, move along ... though Lord help them as far as the Spider-Man musical goes.  I've only heard one great, smashing review for it .... from radio talk show host Glenn Beck.  I don't see that as a good sign.

Hmm .... you know, given the bad writing, the cliches by the bushel, the angsty crap targeted at younger readers, and NO concept of continuity, Quesada probably was targeting Twilight fans.

Bad Romance: How to be a Cynical Romantic.

“[T]hink about it ... You know how good this is? .... How right it feels?  .... How easy it was? .... It just isn't f**ked up enough to really be you and me.”  ~Harry Dresden, in Jim Butcher's short story "Love Hurts."

In case the readers of this blog have not caught on yet, I'm a little strange.



At which point, I can just see each of you recollecting every other instance of borderline schizophrenia that I have described in my blogs on writing, and answering: “Duh.”



In this case, I have two very strong streaks in my personality. Lots of cynicism, and lots of romanticism …



On the one hand, I believe that all people are essentially good ... on the other, I believe that groups of people are stupid.



I believe in meeting someone, and being in love with them for the rest of my life ... and I go into first dates wondering how fast the phrase “let's just be friends” will appear in the conversation.



I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son Our Lord ... and on the other hand, if one more person mindlessly spouts random Bible passage without knowing ANYTHING about the context or the meaning, I will be sorely tempted to hurt them.



And my problem is that I see nothing contradictory about the above statements. “Good” does not equal “smart;” and when people get into large groups, the average IQ only goes down. “Belief” doesn't automatically mean “theology scholar;” and if someone becomes a monomaniac about a favorite passage of Revelations (which reads like the author is on magic mushrooms), it's hard to do anything about it.



My cynicism and sharp, biting opinions have brought people to me, asking for “relationship advice” …. I usually specialized in “Anti-Cyrano” letters for friends of mine, where I write a letter crystallizing a person's feelings and putting it into a diatribe at his or her ex, blasting said ex with enough wit that s/he feels like s/he brought a knife to an artillery duel.



On the other hand, when I can't talk to one I care about, I settle for reading instant message logs.  Can you say "sap"?



About a year ago, I started writing a love letter. I listed all the reasons why I was falling for this one woman. I explained I felt drawn to her wit, her IQ, her looks. I liked how many of our interests aligned. How good a friend she was to me. We were made for each other …



And other romantic tripe.



By the end of the letter, I told her that the whole thing was a stupid idea. I had met her once. We lived over a thousand miles apart. We talked on the phone, but that was no reason for me to become a romantic sap about it. I care about her too much to put her together with an obvious nutjob like me. She should do the sane thing, and run as far away from me as possible.



Before I had even finished the letter, I had made several conclusions about another character a writer friend was working on – someone who was also crazy, but smart enough to know he was crazy, and if he fell in love with someone, he would know better than to inflict his crazy on anyone else.



I don't think I'm the only person who could start a love letter, and end with character profiles for a fictional character, after trying to talk the object of my affection out of associating with me further, for her own good.



If you thought I was strange before, now you know better.



This actually comes in handy for writing a love story for spies in A Pius Man.



You knew I had to relate it back to the novel somehow.



As mentioned, A Pius Man also has a love story in there, between two people who are constantly questioning what the hell they think they're doing.



Manana Shushurin of the German BND, and Scott “Mossad” Murphy are brought together to investigate the assassination of a high-ranking al-Qaeda strategist.... the only reason anyone cares is that no one is claiming credit for the killing.  The CIA thinks Mossad did it.  Mossad thinks the CIA did it.  And then they realize that no one they know did it.



Enter the two most diametrically opposed characters I've ever written.

Manana is breathtakingly, jaw-slackeningly gorgeous. And Scott is pale and pasty, and survives by being invisible.  Instead of drooling over her looks, or undressing her with his eyes, Scott's first thought is “I hope to God you're not the one I'm meeting.” Her first thoughts aren't recorded, but as the book progresses, they fit well together.



Scott is a stiff. He is professional, and disciplined, and “Damnit, if I stare at her, someone will slip a knife into my ribs.”

There were odd little things at first. Scott reads a document over her shoulder, and she stretches, only noticing he's there when her hand brushes against his head. And Scott is staring so intently at the document, he blinks when she grazes his head, he apologizes profusely. She laughs at him, ruffles his hair, and calls him cute. I couldn't tell if she was flirting with him, or treating him like a fond new puppy. Later, after a firefight, where he gets rattled (because he rarely comes near the business end of a pistol unless he's already pulled the firing pins), she reassures him.

And the more stiff and awkward he acts, the more … lighthearted and playful she becomes. When things are quiet, Manana goes through the book as though spygames are just that, a game. When the bullets start flying, she's the first to fire back, if she's not firing first. She's the part of him that he's missing. He's the person who tries to ignore her looks and treats her like a person.



Throughout the novel, both of them are wondering what the hell they're doing, with various excuses: Have both of them been alone for so long, and are so desperate, that each is latching onto the first person of interest? Seriously, what moron would fall in love in the middle of a stakeout? And why is s/he kissing me and … nevermind.



As I said, I am a romantic sap. Thankfully, the cynical side of me takes that sap and smacks me over the head with it.

Then all heck breaks loose.  There are automatic weapons, and there will be blood.  And by the end of the book, the two of them will have to change roles.  Scott will have to take up a gun, even though he has only rudimentary knowledge about how to use it.  And Manana Shushurin will have to do a lot of running.



And there will be Manana standing over Sean Ryan's blood-soaked body.  But that's another story.