Honor At Stake, and publishing

Cedar Sanderson

Last week, I announced the news: I've been picked up by a real, honest-to-God publisher. Notice I didn't say much about it. I'm not exactly excited about it. I'm not gushing about it.



Imagine if you just finished moving furniture for a whole day.  Are you going to go out to a party to celebrate by dancing, and getting more sweaty, or are you going to plop down on the couch and take a nap?



I've been moving this particular piece of furniture for ten years. And I tripped over it. That was it. Dumb luck, and an acquisition editor with a high reading speed and an empty in-box.



Do I regret the self publishing? Hell no. In fact, if I weren't trying to be social online, I wouldn't have tripped over this, so, saying that God works in mysterious ways isn't exactly true. Mildly annoying ways, sometimes, but not much on the mystery.



The book is a vampire novel entitled Honor At Stake, and it's going to be include all the usual vulnerabilities you ever read in a copy of Dracula, because removing the religious defenses against vampires is just bull. It allows vampires to be your standard overpowered enemies, and we only survive based on their good graces.



And, second, REAL VAMPIRES DON'T SPARKLE. Period.



Now that I'm going to be working with a "real publisher," who will help me market my book, pay for an artist to cover my book, get me into actual bookstores, what does that mean for The Pius Trilogy?



Well, the publisher, Damnation Books, part of Eternal Press .... yes, I now work for Eternal Damnation, Inc ... will not touch self published novels with a ten-foot pole. They might take the sequel to Codename: Winterborn, mostly because it won't be so tied to the sequel that you can't read one without the other.



If you've read A Pius Legacy, you realize that book three, A Pius Stand, isn't going to be that easy to read without the other two books.  So, yes, A Pius Stand will come to an Amazon shelf in short order.



Will I party that day? No. But I'll flop on the couch and take a nap.



But Declan, you ask, what does that have to do with the cute redhead on your page?



The cute redhead is Cedar Sanderson, a fellow author. This coming Saturday, her book, Trickster Noir, is coming out as a freebie on e-book


Cedar Sanderson is interesting. She's half-way through a degree in microbiology, "just getting to the interesting bits." A former military brat, she grew up in Alaska (when the family became nailed down to one place). She grew up learning to hunt, fish, trap, garden, forage wild edibles, prospect for gold and gems, survive in the wilderness, camp, can, butcher, cook, bake, paint, research, and blow stuff up along the way. After Alaska, her adult life, was spent in New Hampshire, before moving to Ohio.

So, she's got a colorful little background....AND she's a cute redhead.  Yes, I have a thing for smart women. And cute redheads. Shut up.



The book is described as follows.

Book two in the Pixie for Hire series,
Trickster Noir picks up where Pixie Noir ended. Lom, the little pixie
with the tough-guy mentality, has proposed to Bella. All should be
well, but their happily-ever-after is in grave danger. Threats from
both Underhill and the human realms are closing in on them, and the
fairy princess raised Alaskan redneck has to learn on the job, and
fast!   

So, while you're waiting on A Pius Stand, you might want to check out her stuff.  Seriously, you can't beat free, now can you?

Reasons to check spam

Have you ever had one of those days?



Few years back, I did a novel that was basically "Catholic vampires," where I kicked the mythos into compliance with standard theology, and then did a little rewrite of history since 1789, and....



Anyway, one of my Facebook groups wanted something "Dark." A fellow member was an acquisitions editor, and had nothing in her email.  So, I sent in my book, and well....



Nothing happened. At all.  No word, no nothing. I got a reply at 1pm the next day saying that it was received.



That evening, I was cleaning out my spam folder.  There was a response 6pm, that very day.



Anyway, I got a contract in the mail today from Damnation Books. They want my novel Honor At Stake.



And this is why you check your spam folder.....



MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA



Anyway...



Thought I'd share the joy.



Don't worry, if you're interested in A Pius Stand, I will publish book three no matter what.



Happy Easter......

The Winter Soldier Bigfoots Agents of SHIELD. It Gets Better.

Yay.  Marvel's Agents of SHIELD has finally gotten really interesting. And I don't mean an individual episode, I mean the entire series, several of the characters who weren't before, and the writing in general.



How did we get here? And better yet, where do we go from here?



SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER AND AGENTS OF SHIELD



So, I was talking with Matt Bowman, the Novel Ninja, and he noted.

Matt: Agents finally woke up and realized "hey, we've had most of a season without real character growth. What up wit dat?"


Me: I think it was "Hey, we can't do anything really because Cap2 is going to come in and step on us like Godzilla. Let's do NOTHING until Cap2 comes out. Hail Hydra"  [Best use of Gary Schandling ever]


Matt: I need to write a blog post on it and then link to your argument on the subject. 


It then occurred to me that I should probably have an argument on the subject.

Obviously, you know where parts of this is going. After an initial start that I felt was kinda positive, they had a steady downward slide, especially when compared to other shows. What was the excuse for Agents of SHIELD's piss poor performance?



"We didn't want to have a Marvel movie tie in series. It needed to build up to that."



And yet, nothing happened until last week's episode, which was a direct tie-in with the new Captain America film. Nothing.  No character development, no character, nothing.  The best episode before that?  THE TIE-IN WITH THOR: THE DARK WORLD! The episode that happened the week after the DVD came out!

And they were "building up to" Hydra as the primary villain? Really? Hydra came out of NOWHERE on this show.  There was no buildup, no hint, no whisper, nothing that indicated that it had survived WW2. The closest they got to Hydra was episode two, where they found a Hydra weapon in Brazil, ripping off a 1970s novel and film, The Boys from Brazil. And it was such a throwaway episode that I found it painful.



Ooooo, but this was the plllaaannnn.



No, Jeph Loeb, head of Marvel television, you don't get to pretend you had any idea what was going on. Chekov's gun says that you have to show a hint of a plot point before you can fire it, and you didn't show us anything aside from some crappy tinker toys. I have been told that they knew about Hydra since Day Two.





Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to tell you exactly what goes down over the remaining five or so episodes. Ready?  Almost everything that you've seen over the course of this season will make a brief appearance. The Hydra ray-gun from Brazil, the ice-machine guy from the academy, a few lab experiments from "centipede" (which was obviously not-AIM, but now they're going to be Hydra), will all be whipped-out of the Hydra toolkit. The writers and creators will point to these things and say "See! See! We said we had a plan! Really we did!"



Fertilizer! Biofuel! And other variations of crap! Standard Marvel doomsday weapons do not require a whole origin story. That is not a plan! That is not any kind of a plan. That's padding, and hoping that they accept it as a plan.

If there were a real "plan," someone would have invested us in making Agent tall dark and wooden (Ward) a likable person, so when he turned traitor, we would have cared. Instead, they gave him a creepy sex-buddy status with a woman old enough to be his mother, and gave him completely inappropriate feelings towards the woman he's mentoring (teacher-student relationships don't work that way), and somehow we're supposed to care when he exhibits something like feelings towards her? (It's hard to tell, he doesn't emote well... or at all).



For the record, I've had people tell me that they can reverse Ward turning traitor. No, they really can't. He just stone-cold murdered the highest-ranking member of SHIELD. There's no way to spin that unless Victoria Hand faked her death too, and it makes no sense to do that, and it's officially overused at this point.



The original maxim of Chekov's gun is that if you show a gun in act one, you have to fire it by act three; conversely, if you fire a gun in act three, you must show it in act one.  You want to bet that they're going to just take that literally, and it's the gun from episode two? That's where my money is. There has not been a hint of Hydra outside of that lousy gun.



Like I said, this isn't a plan.  At best, it's padding.



The closest they had to advanced planning has been writing in an obvious replacement for Ward -- who is, of course, a young hip black fellow, in an obvious attempt to answer the critics who said that Agents of SHIELD was too white. The only reason that works thus far is because the character, Triplett, is a fun, charming, likable guy who has more personality than any two of the series regulars put together.



At the end of the day, I'm finally encouraged by and looking forward to episodes of Agents of SHIELD. I'm even semi-enthused about season two.



Oh, you didn't realize they were renewed? Yup. They are. And, now that Heroes is being rebooted, maybe Jeph Loeb will go back to NBC, Joss Whedon will finish Avengers 2 and actually do something for Agents of SHIELD.



I can see it now. Save the cheerleader, save Agents of SHIELD.

Review: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

We spent a lot of time on Captain America: The Winter Soldier last week. At the end of the day, how did it turn out?

Pretty darned good, really.





I'm pretty much in accord with the Novel Ninja, or Howard Taylor.  However, I disagree that while the villain is simple, I don't even think we need to have his motivations. It's a long story, but self-explanatory when you see the spoilers below.



Some things not mentioned in either review.  There is the return of Peggy Carter -- yes, the British love interested from the first Captain America. And it is possibly one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the entire film. And that was from the first twenty minutes. I seriously hadn't expected tears from a Marvel film. Really, I hadn't.



I'd like to know how much money did they pay Gary Sinese to be the narrator for a Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian.



If you thought that Nick Fury didn't have much to do in the other films, or wasn't all that much of a badass, this is the movie where you get to see just how many people it takes to get the drop on Nick Fury. Answer: more people than the bad guys have at their disposal.



Also, they had a GREAT setup for Avengers 2, as well as Cap 3, while maintaining its own self-contained main plot. There might also be a Black Widow spinoff, and maybe one other.



And the Falcon? Totally awesome. He steals every scene he's in, and might have been able to steal the movie. I also loved how he knew what Steve Rogers was thinking solely on the basis that they'd both been in war zones.



Also, Agents of SHIELD is screwed.



SPOILERS AND CONFIRMATION OF SPECULATION.



How much did I get right last week?



Nick Fury doesn't stay dead. Color us all shocked. In fact, I think this film might be a setup for a Nick Fury movie, where Sam Jackson can say the line "Screw you, David Hasselhoff."



Black Widow kissing Captain America is about surveillance. Check.



Robert Redford as bad guy? Check. Is he the Red Skull? Nope. He is HYDRA, however. Because this is Captain America. Like Hellboy, there are always Nazis.  Yes, he is talking to the Winter Soldier in the trailers.



There was NO Red Skull in this movie. At all. But Dr. Zola does make an appearance, and that was interesting.



We have a little bit more of Black Widow's backstory in this film, but not a lot. The movie continuity still has Natasha as a member of the KGB, but ScarJo is 28. When the USSR fell, she was SIX. I felt I was stretching it when Manana Shushurin was involved with them at age ten.



Yes, Agent 13, who is only identified as "Sharon," has a part to play in this movie. Though it's not as big a reveal as I thought it would be. Seriously, I expected it to be a surprise twist, and not so much.

Dissecting the Winter Soldier trailers

Well, yesterday was a little long-winded, wasn't it?



Today should be a little shorter.... yeah, no, probably not



Here’s my rundown of stuff you can draw from the assorted promotional materials.



Some of these are SPOILERS, you HAVE BEEN WARNED.



And some of these are ... well, they are MAYBE spoilers, bit and pieces collected from what we know of the Winter Soldier plot (covered yesterday) and the Marvelverse at large, and just plain old-fashioned speculation.



So, SPOILERS and SPOILERS...maybe.



In the words of Heath Ledger, here ... we .... go! [below the break]





Paranoia and conspiracies.



You may have noticed one or two things in the trailers posted yesterday that was a little paranoia-ish.If you didn’t pick up on this vibe, you weren’t paying attention. From shots of SHIELD’s arsenal to Cap beating up a bunch of agents in an elevator, it’s pretty obvious that the idealistic World War II hero is going to find himself pitted against the more modern intelligence community. Add to that a shadowy assassin (potentially the person Robert Redford is talking to when he says, “Your work has shaped the century”) and your story begins to take on the dimensions of major American myth.

 We've seen SHIELD on SHIELD violence. Fury being shot at, perhaps helicarriers firing on helicarriers, an airship crashing into the Triskelion, the Black Widow apparently on the run, out in the cold with Cap, a lot of images of SHIELD seemingly fighting itself and/or failing the people it’s supposed to be supporting. American-looking fighter planes chase the Falcon around the helicarrier. Cap argues with Nick Fury about SHIELD policy. Fury warns Cap not to trust anybody. Is that because the threat—whatever it is—is closer than Cap would like to admit?

And they have Robert Redford, ultra-leftist, in a Captain America movie ... how is he NOT the bad guy?  

The directors have insisted that this is a nod to 1970s paranoid thrillers like Three Days of the Condor, which was all about "the evil government wants oil!" So, Captain America will be running a lot.



Steve seems to spend a lot of time in these scenes walking around in civilian clothes—at least once, seemingly through a museum exhibit dedicated to his wartime exploits. The ensemble even includes the traditional hero-incognito baseball cap. But he’s still seen carrying the shield and getting shot at—and fighting the Winter Soldier—in that civilian garb.



Something else from the trailers....



Um....

Nyet, comrade. I suspect cameras are involved

Cap in love? 



Yes, that’s a set photo of Steve and Natasha making out.



No, I don’t believe it. Unless fanfiction writers have taken over this script. But the last Captain America movie was pretty darn romantic for a film with only one major female character. With Natasha giving Steve romantic advice in that early scene, it looks like she’s getting involved with his personal life. And while Natasha could have any of a billion reasons for that involvement, Steve is pretty straightforward with his emotions. If he falls for Natasha, he’s serious about it. And that can’t go anywhere good.



However, Sharon Carter, Cap's other love interest, is also in the film. So.... muahahahahaha.

The Falcon.

See that guy with the metal wings? That’s Sam Wilson, a.k.a. the Falcon, one of the first African American superheroes. In the comics, Sam was powered by the Red Skull with a fancy wing-suit and a telepathic link with birds, including a hawk named Redwing. and sent to kill Captain America. That worked as well as can be expected, and the two of them ended up best friends and partners. The relationship was notable at the time (the 1970s) for being something pretty close to a real partnership, too; while Steve was obviously giving Sam tips on superheroing, Sam held his own remarkably well in those stories, and wasn't nearly as stereotyped as typical portrayals of black characters from the same period (see: early Luke Cage). 

Also, Falcon started out wearing green and purple spandex, something that the actor actually said he wanted to try, instead of a flight suit, seen above. Obviously, this is a man who has never, ever been in spandex. Ever.

Anyway ...Steve and Sam routinely describe each other as brothers—a term Steve reserves for Sam, Bucky and a couple of war buddies, and that Sam uses only for Steve. While this Falcon is apparently a SHIELD agent rather than a creation of the Red Skull, he seems to have the same deep and instant loyalty to Steve Rogers. It’s good to see him up on the screen; this movie needs a rock like Sam Wilson.

Robert Redford.

As mentioned earlier, that’s Robert Redford. And he seems to be talking to Steve Rogers about the need to tear down an old world and build a new one … but is he talking to Steve? 

At one point, he’s heard saying, “Your work has shaped the century. And I need you to do it one more time.” Steve was pretty impressive in the war and everything, but shaping a century? That sounds more like a description of the Winter Soldier and his involvement in key assassinations throughout the Cold War. And with the role of spy-mentor already filled by Nick Fury, Redford’s character is looking more and more sinister... outside of being ROBERT REDFORD. Yeesh. He might has well have a neon sign over his head.



The best use of Redford would be as a red herring -- he's not the bad guy, will be the good guy, maybe even the best man of all, but I can't bring myself to believe it Cap’s got a long history in the comics of going up against bad guys in suits who seemed innocuous at first. Is Redford’s character the next in a long line?



The current theory is that Robert Redford is the Red Skull, older and Back! From! Spaaaaccceeee! after he pissed off the cosmic Rubix cube in the first film. Skull really enjoys mind-controlling, impersonating, and body-snatching people in power..  And Red Skull will always be Captain America's enemy. Even if he isn't on screen, he'll probably be in the background.



Oh, and the alphabet block from Hell has also played as a home for Skull's brain more than a few times. if the Red Skull did happen to be in there, the entire Avengers film probably would have woken him up. And SHIELD owned it for a bit, so .... bad things will happen.  Period.



Though it might be a touch too obvious.  But, still, Redford, evil.

Nick Fury having a bad day.

His car gets blown up and ripped apart by the Winter Soldier, SHIELD is going bonkers all around him, and Steve quotes “Fury’s last words” (which might be his last words before he apparently died, or just the last thing he said before disappearing). And someone with Fury’s skin tone is seen as a patient in an operating room. When ol’ One-Eye goes from running an international law-enforcement organization to being dead or missing, it’s a bad day for the free world, and a worse day for Steve Rogers. There’s even a scene that appears to show Natasha walking out of a congressional hearing about intelligence operations.

Fury’s major weakness is bureaucrats who can go over his head to get things done. How high do the bad guys go? And how low will Fury have to sink to beat them? Answer: as low as he can get. 

Also see: "Coulson kept his Captain America cards in his locker, not his jacket."  Yes, Fury is a m-fing BASTARD.

For the record, a spoiler: if Nick Fury "dies" in this film, he's going to get better. As in "you didn't touch me, sucka." The comic book Fury is so manipulative, this is a guy who has messed with every major superhero at least once, and didn't get his guts torn out -- this list included calm, relaxed folks like Wolverine.

Okay, let's look at a storyline caled Secret War -- no, not the one from the 80s, from the last decade.  Fury recruits every superhero in New York (ie: most of them) and brings them to Latveria to stop the Prime Minister from selling off all of Doctor Doom's technology to the highest bidder (Doom is temporarily in Hell at the time. Long story). Fury gets the heroes in, and assassinates the PM, and then mindwipes everyone so they don't remember it happened.

Later, when blowback happens and no one remembers why it's happening, Fury explains what happened.  Wolverine, who doesn't react well to having his mind messed with yet again, pops his claws and shreds Nick Fury.

Fury's robotic decory calmly answers, "Logan did you really think I'd be dumb enough to tell you this in person? I'm going off grid for a while. Bye."

Someone talk to the artist.

I think they enhanced ScarJo too much.

I don't mind, it's just that I can see it.

Black Widow.



Don't hold your breath on a Romanov/Rogers romance. Seriously, just don't.



The Marvel movies have been hinting around at the Black Widow’s history for a while now. From the effortless way she infiltrated Tony Stark’s life in Iron Man 2 to her loaded conversations with Loki and Hawkeye in The Avengers, she’s always come across like a complicated character with a long backstory.



Now she’s been promoted to second billing, right after Cap himself, and she’s in a lot of scenes in those videos. Most importantly, she’s the one seen telling Steve—reluctantly—about the Winter Soldier and his legend.



Are we finally going to get to see where the Black Widow comes from? Is the movie Black Widow going to have her own history with the Winter Soldier?



Since ScarJo is getting her own Black Widow film, I'm going to say.... not yet.



Agent 13

This isn't in the trailers, but Emily van Camp is listed in the cast of this movie as “Agent 13”, but she hasn't been seen except for that extremely brief shot of her in the UK trailer. Considering the huge importance of Sharon Carter in the Winter Soldier comics storyline, her absence is conspicuous. They're obviously going to have Sharon as a a surprise. 

So, Agent 13 is the neighbor for Captain America ... I wouldn't put it past the boys from SHIELD (read: Fury) to assign Cap a new best friend / lover / babysitter / spy.  After all, Steve has no friends in the twenty-first century, and doesn’t seem interested in making any. He apparently spends his free time alone in the gym. That kind of isolation is not healthy, so I wouldn't be surprised if SHIELD tried to set a valuable operative up with some “starter friends” to ease him into his new situation. 

The last thing SHIELD needs is a self-destructive superhero. Besides, why would Captain America have normal neighbors? Wouldn't they at least need to be vetted by SHIELD just to live in the same building?

For the record: I love the idea of Emily van Camp as Agent 13. Words can't express how much I like the idea. On Revenge, she's basically playing someone in a long-term, deep cover operation, maipulating people to self-destruction.  I've also seen her fight, and I've seen her wearing black versions of Agent 13's white body suit.