Music Blog: Lord of the Rings.

This was just fun. I think I've played this at least three dozen times since it came up.

The Hobbit and the Piano Guys

This is a music blog sort of day. You may recall that these are the same people who brought you "Cello Wars" and my music blog featuring "Bring him Home" from Les Miserables.  If you don't recall them, you'll still like this -- they're doing the entire soundtrack of the Ring cycle (Tolkein, not Wagner) with two guys.



Enjoy all.

The Politics of ... Captain America?

I don't think words can really convey how much I hate politics.  Even though I've done at least two blogs on the topic, around the Ground Zero Mosque, and the politics of my novel, and I would like politicians to just shut up already.

But now, someone had to go putting their politics into my comic book movies.

Before I continue, this is nothing new. Every time a superhero movie comes out, it must be metaphor for modern politics. The Dark Knight was seen by some idiots at the NYTimes as a commentary on the War on Terror.  Which is odd, I thought it was merely "the Joker is evil, and if we're going to catch the bugger, we're going to have to break a few laws to do it."

The Times were also instrumental in discussing the Lord of the Rings as metaphor as well, with the theatrical release of Return of the King's absence of Saruman being likened unto a missing Osama.  Instead, everyone who saw the Return of the King, special edition knows that Saruman was deleted from the film because of time issues.

Spoiler alert:

Saruman the White is dead.

So is Grima Wormtongue.

So is Osama bin Laden.

The end.

Now, somebody at Salon  has decided to make Captain America into something ... else.
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Music to Write To: Winterborn, Cambreadth, and Over the Hills....

Sometimes your friends know best.



After months of doing non-fiction, "high-intellect" blog posts, some of my friends could see what it was doing to me better than I could. Let's just say that they could tell I was under a strain. Also, they found the posts boring.



So, time for something fun.



It's been a while since I posted a music blog, and I really think I should get back into the swing of posting whatever I like. Which include history, blowing stuff up on paper, and doing it to really cool music.



Here's some more stuff that I enjoy writing to.



"Winterborn," by the Cruxshadows. I never know what to do with this band. They are nominally "Goth,"  but they tend to use a lot of classical imagery. I first encountered from in a John Ringo novel called Ghost.(A book I will talk about at a later date, with a few cautionary notes ... it's not that bad, but there is one section that should carry a warning label)  I had no idea what the song was about, so I looked it up on YouTube. The title is taken from something that could be from the original Illiad -- that the bravest of those who died were born in winter.



In this case, the visuals are taken from the video game "Halo 2."







"March of Cambreadth," by Heath Alexander. I first discovered this song in a John Ringo novel called When the Devil Dances, a scifi military novel about a cannibalistic Mongol horde spreading through the galaxy, with only humans to stand in the way. While the author himself refers to it as carnography (which I can only presume means "carnage porn"), it's well designed, the characters fully developed, and there's enough scheming and political intrigue to fully screw up a war.... the images are from the tv show Babylong 5, which happens to also be a scifi war epic. I know this because I assembled the video myself.











"Over the Hills and Far Away."  It's an army song from the Napoleonic wars, and was first introduced to most people through the British tv movie series "Sharpe's Rifles." Richard Sharpe, the main character, was played by Sean Bean.... coincidentally the one who played Boromir in the video below.









"Over the Hills and Far Away," by Nightwish.  I found this one song while looking for the it's partner above. And, wow, was I in for a surprise.







And, a final one for today.  Remember all of those movie trailers, when you listen to the awesome soundtrack, and you expect to hear it in the movie... only to discover that it's not there, only in the trailer?



Odds are, it's Two Steps from Hell.

Osama's death. One week later.

If you are sick and tired of listening to anything to do with Osama bin Laden, I recommend my short story from Saturday, "One Way to Stay Out of Jail." It has action, humor, and staying one step ahead of both cops and robbers.  Enjoy.

Now, onto this week ......

As more and more details leak out about Osama bin Laden's death, the situation becomes more, um, interesting.

I will, for the moment, ignore conflicting reports.  One report had Osama using a wife for a human shield. Another said he was simply shot outright, and the wife was still alive. We had help from Pakistan. Pakistan knew nothing about it. Pakistan supports our efforts, Pakistan threatens to blow us out of the sky if we ever do that again .....  One report by Eric Holder said that bin Laden's assassination was in "national self-defense." Bin Laden wasn't olding launch codes to a nuclear arsenal, and, to some accounts, didn't even have a weapon inside the mansion he was living in. If this was "national self defense," it must have been a "preemptive strike."  Or it was simply an assassination. So, we'll see exactly how the details shape up in the long run.
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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.

The Infinite Crisis of DC Comics.

Ah, DC Comics..... You didn't think I had a grudge with Marvel, did you?



Last week, I took a look at Marvel comics, and how they've tried for yet another Marvel “event” every other week.



At the other end of the comic book universe, in DC Comics, there has been a crisis or two … hundred. They had an Identity Crisis, an Infinite Crisis, a Final Crisis, and one, three year War of the Rings (a Sinestro War, a Corps War, a Blackest night).



Spoiler Alerts all around.



2004: Identity Crisis.  This was fun. It was a small scale, character-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC forever! It was essentially a murder mystery, where the wife of Elongated Man was murdered in her own home. In going through the lists of suspects, we discover dark happenings going on behind the scenes of the Justice League—our “B-list” characters have been altering villains, and even mentally “adjusting” allies among the League members. It first started with wiping villains of superhero identities, and then altering them so they became less dangerous, and ended by manipulating fellow League members, most of all Batman. At the end of the day, we discover that the culprit is the ex-wife of one of the League members (The Atom): by attacking one of their loved ones, she figured that all the superheroes would start staying home more often, including her own ex-husband.



It was interesting, and things shifted for everyone. Tim Drake (Robin) lost his father. We actually cared about the minor character of Elongated Man. As the villains go, it had some Retcon (retroactive continuity). It was the beginning of the end of the Justice League, and a setup for the next crisis.



2005: Infinite Crisis … A massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC forever! A sequel to the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths (which was the Retcon from Hell), heroes from that Crisis had come back as villains of this piece. It had universes created, cities ruined, and some additional retcon. Even if it was confusing to start with, it ended in a bang, resolved a few issues, and created 52 alternate universes. And it killed Superboy, who no one cared about to begin with (don't worry, he gets better).



2006: “52” … A massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC forever! Batman has taken a year off after nearly having a nervous breakdown in Infinite Crisis. Superman flew too close to a red son and needs to recharge. Wonder Woman is in temporary retirement. The A-list characters are out of the way, so now, practically every B-list character gets a starring role as they try to handle all the problems that arise during this particular crisis.



Overall, it was surprisingly well written. People die, countries get wiped out, and we get the pun “The Isle of Dr. Morrow.” It also spawns several other comic book lines, including Booster Gold. It shows how the major players in the DC universe took a year after Infinite Crisis to get their bearings. Minor Character of Elongated Man dies (has stayed dead thus far). Police Officer Rene Montoya of Gotham City becomes a superhero. The finale starts a War in Hell, and ties up any loose ends left behind by Infinite Crisis.



52 also starts an interesting line of inquiry: practically everyone in DC has come back from the dead at one point or another. Ralph Dibney (Elongated Man) asks the question: Why do they keep coming back?



2007: Sinestro Corps War … a Green lantern storyline with branches into nearly everything else in DC. The character of Sinestro has always had a Yellow ring, one that operates on fear like the Green Lantern Corps has rings that operate on will (But has no relation to Jim Butcher's wizard Harry Dresden, who also has rings of power, who also uses will to power his spells.... )



So, Sinestro starts his own Yellow Lantern corps. The premise is simple enough: “Crap, Sinestro has an army. We have a problem.” This is a massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC for … the next three years, starting the War of the Rings.



The Sinestro Corps even ends with one of the characters (the Anti-Monitor, who is anti-life itself) being blown to pieces, and his remains turning into the Black Lantern (see 2009).



2008: Final Crisis … a massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that … okay, forget it.



I can't even tell you the plot of this one. I'm serious. I read it. We have the New Gods of the planet Apokolips (subtle, no?). They killed the Martian Manhunter. Superboy came back.  Barry Allen as The Flash came back. DC didn't even pretend that they killed Bruce Wayne (Batman), but made him unstuck in time (just like Captain America, hmmm). Superheroes from the future were involved. That's about all I know. Even the Wikipedia article makes me go cross-eyed.



2008-2009: There was New Krypton … a massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that seems to have had no impact on anyone. It even ended with the “War of the Supermen” … Right.



2009-2010: Blackest Night: is a massive, world-killing, world-altering storyline that shakes DC like San Francisco, 1905. We have the War of the (Lantern) Rings come to a head as the DC writers unleash the Black Lantern Corps—which apparently operate on "death," as opposed to any emotion. Black rings take over the corpse of practically every interesting character who has ever died in the DC Universe, creating an Army of Darkness (quick, call Bruce Campbell).



Why are black rings animating corpses?  Since this corps doesn't have emotions (they're dead, after all), the members of this Army of Darkness are chosen to evoke emotional reactions in people they target, and when they are full of emotional goodness, the Army of Darkness rips their heart out and eats it.



And no, they don't want brains.



The best part of Blackest Night is that they turned the various and sundry resurrections of practically everybody into a plot point. The creature that lives within the Black Lantern, Nekron (again, subtle, no?), has declared that he has prevented everyone in the DC universe from staying dead, he has kept the door from death open for them, allowing them all to come back from the dead … and allowing him to control them! Which means, uh oh, the Black rings are taking over everyone who has been resurrected over the course of DC history. That's a lot of people.



In order to face this menace, various and sundry heroes and villains are drafted as temporary members of the rainbow coalition (um, the various colored Lantern corps). This ends in the creation of yet ANOTHER Lantern color, and practically everyone who has died comes back. And if they haven't yet, just wait for it.



I have just managed to tell you everything that has been happening in DC for the last five years....



Last week, I cited that, while my book is not about superheroes, or comics, I can at least comment on bad writing.  The epic of the week wasn't so much bad as ....



Well, let's try it this way.  One of the things about the Catholic church is that it has a tendency to think in centuries. You won't see another Vatican Council in your lifetime, or in the lifetime of your great-grandchildren, mainly because we're still fine-tuning the LAST council.



DC has decided to shake up their universe, which is admirable. It has been creative, and breathtaking, and all sorts of good stuff …



But in the name of all that's holy, can somebody stop the shaking machine for a minute? There is a massive, world-altering storyline every single month now. Can we wait five minutes for the dust to settle first? After Infinite Crisis, there was 52, and while that was massive, it was at least spread out over dozens of issues, and let the dust settle nicely from Infinite Crisis ...



Then DC was in permanent crisis.  Let's have "The Great, Giant, Massive, War Of The Rings" ... okay, that's nice, can we see if any various and sundry other regular villains in the DC universe earned a Rainbow Ring?  The subject was touched on in Blackest Night (preempting a future fan-boy debate of "What character would be offered what color ring?"), but not settling the subject on a more long-term basis for the previous years in the War of the Rings.



Right now, with their "Brightest Day" storyline, it looks like DC may just stop shaking up every last millimeter of their universe. Maybe.  We hope.



The point: you don't just shake up the universe like a snow globe and expect everyone to go back to normal.  There are things like character: how someone is affected by the Great Massive Storyline.  It's hard to do when no one has time to recover.  Raymond Chandler's idea of writing advice was, "When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."



The Crisis of the hour is the man with the gun.  It's hard to have a plot when the universe is one giant shooting gallery.  I like an action sequence as much as the next guy, but can we tone it down? Please?

Novels to films, a brief history.

I have received the question, at times, about who should play characters in a film of A Pius Man.  This got me thinking about adaptations. Given the last decade of novel-to-film movies, the question becomes more interesting.



Looking at the slew of Harry Potter films, filmed comic books, etc, I find that Hollywood has obviously hired people who can read.



Why do I express surprise? I can answer that with another question.



Does anyone REMEMBER the 1990s?



Let's look at a few authors who had their work turned into films.



Michael Chrichton:



Author of such noted works as Jurassic Park, Congo, and Rising Sun, he probably had the most good fortune of any author short of Stephen King in having his books translated by Hollywood. And that's the sad part.



Anyone who's read Chrichton's work will appreciate a book I saw while shopping in London. Star Trek as Written By Other Authors—the short story as “written” by Chrichton had five charts and graphs over three pages. While no one missed those in the film versions, I'm sure they missed a few other things.



In Jurassic Park, the novel, the differences were numerous and frequent. There were dozens of Velociraptors, and part of the problem was that raptors had been escaping to the mainland. The park staff was more than the seven people we saw over the course of the film, and security was so well armed, there were moments when it looked like it was Park security versus the dinosaurs in an all out war that included missiles.



Back then, there were few complaints because, despite all the differences, it was still a fun movie, and to create a full adaptation would have required a miniseries. Elements from the first novel would be scattered throughout the next two films.



The Lost World: The sequel to Jurassic Park, the novel, was... better than the filmed version. While the novel followed up on the original enemy from the first one (the problems of Jurassic Park were caused by industrial espionage), the movie decided to make the primary adversary was the stereotyped “Evil Businessman #1.” Someone decided that the movie needed to be made into an endangered species riff, complete with an action lead played by.... Matthew Vaughn, playing an ecoterrorist? And we're going to throw in a cute kid, just because Spielberg likes cute kids. There's a reason that the third film consisted of little plot, less character, and mostly running.



Rising Sun: Someone must have been asleep on the job when looking up their cultural research. I can only conclude that Hollywood wasn't paying attention the day that the Japanese Emperor declared that both blacks and women were “inferior”... why else would they change make one of the lead policemen of this murder mystery into Wesley Snipes?







Tom Clancy: The major problem here lies in one book, one that I'm sure everyone remembers as a film.



The Sum of All Fears: The premise of the novel was simple. Middle Eastern terrorists nuke the Superbowl in order to prompt the United States and the Soviet Union into World War III. It's up the National Security Adviser Jack Ryan to talk everyone down.



I will usually grant a lot of leeway to people who adapt a screenplay. A lot. The previous film had been several years before, and Harrison Ford had moved on to other things. It would have been reasonable to have gone onto later novels, changed actors, and move on. Alec Baldwin had played Jack Ryan in the first film, The Hunt for Red October, I would not have objected to bringing him back. And they had already skipped one novel—The Cardinal of the Kremlin—due to the fact that there wasn't a Kremlin anymore. Taking the character of Jack Ryan from his post as CIA director (from the previous film, Clear and Present Danger) and making him NSA director (in Debt of Honor, the first post-Cold War novel), would have been nice and easy.



Instead, the film for Sum of All Fears was a series reboot about shiny new CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck), going up against.... wait for it... Neo-Nazis. Most of whom were taken out in an ending sequence reminiscent of a Godfather film.



So, wait, the movie comes out after 9-11-01, and for some reason, terrorists from the Middle East are inferior villains? Hollywood's racism is astonishing; somehow, European bad guys are superior to any other flavor of bad guy, especially if the Europeans are evil Nazis.







Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child



The Relic: The first book in their series about mysterious FBI Agent Prendergast, who seems to specialize in X-Files quality strange, without the space-alien level stupidity. The Relic was a thrilling tale about a monster in the New York Museum of Natural History. When the book was first written, the museum in real life looked like a great setting for a horror film. Part of this team consisted of a graduate student Margo Green, her wheelchair bound mentor Dr. Frock, and, of course, Special Agent Prendergast. The mystery starts with what, exactly, could have killed a museum security guard in two blows—one to rip open the chest, and one to smash the back of the head clean off.



The adversary of the novel was a genetic mutation that was about eight feet long, like a cross between a panther and bug... it had an exoskeleton like an insect's chiton, only bulletproof. It survives an encounter with a SWAT team with full assault rifles and a grenade launcher.



The film... eliminated multiple key characters (one being Prendergast, goodbye series), killed off several who were necessary for any possible sequel, replaced everyone remaining with pure cliches, and made the creature a thirty to sixty foot monstrosity. This extra large beastie is supposed to have slipped into a small employee restroom to kill a guard, when it couldn't even fit into the hallway leading to the restroom. It manages to kill an entire SWAT team because they all run like scared rabbits—possibly frightened by the horrid graphics—and it starts bleeding because it took a few rounds from a .9mm handgun (to quote the governor of California, if it bleeds, you can kill it). But, no, in this film, they had to try blowing it up with bad CGI fire.







I'm going to cheat for the next few books. They are not the nineties, but they are film adaptations that went horribly sideways.







F. Paul Wilson—The Keep.



This one is interesting. F. Paul Wilson, Fordham graduate, agnostic, and all around interesting person, who even created a character with a rabid following—one so rabid Stephen King is President of the fan club.



One of his earlier books was called The Keep. It opens in 1943, with the German High Command getting a communication from an outpost in Transylvania: “Something is killing my men.” In another area of Europe, a man awakes, and knows he has to get to The Keep before everything ends. It essentially starts out as Dracula and ends as Lord of the Rings.



Enter: the movie. The author himself has concluded that the set of The Keep had a lot of white powder going up a lot of noses. Frequently. Not even Ian McKellen could save this train wreck. The synopsis of the film is as follows: creature kills Germans in WW2; a professor in the Keep makes deal with creature. Professor's daughter sleeps with guy who comes out of nowhere. Creature kills everyone in the Keep. Guy who comes from nowhere has an entrance with lots of light, creature goes away. Credits roll. Audience goes “huh?”





Clive Cussler—Raise the Titanic!



Before there was Indiana Jones, there was Clive Cussler. His main character is Dirk Pitt, one part old fashioned swashbuckler, one part nautical engineer. You may have seen the movie Sahara, made from another of his books—not a great film, but a decent popcorn movie. Better than this one.



Premise: there is an element that might be able to power a sonic-missile shield for the United States (this is the 70s). The only known sample was on board the Titanic, so, we—guess what—RAISE THE TITANIC! (this was before anyone knew how badly the ship had been totaled, so go with it). The book had everyone sail away on the resurrected vessel after a tense shootout with Soviet agents who had found out about the plan and tried to steal the precious material.



The movie, of course, had to have the Soviet bad guys come on board, and our hero scuttles the ship to make sure they don't get it. No victory, just a draw.



Movies of the day suffered from the Hollywood's idea of detente—there are no victories, only draws. If that was the only problem Raise the Titanic suffered from, it might have been salvageable. Instead, Hollywood took a fast paced, tightly written book, and turned it into a slow, ponderous mess. To tell you how bad it was, Clive Cussler saw Raiders of the Lost Ark and cried—mainly because it captured everything that he put into his own writing.





Today, I look at several adaptations—if you have major kvetches, I suggest holding off of them until my conclusions.



Lord of the Rings: Scenes lifted directly from the pages, dialogue from the novel, subplots taken from the appendix. You don't get much better than this. The major quibble I can conjure up is the buildup to the climax of the second film, The Two Towers—and I can blame that on the director's fondness for the buildup in the film Zulu, which felt like nothing but screaming “WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.” Aside from that part of one film, I couldn't complain even if I wanted to.







Harry Potter: I read the books. They weren't bad for YA novels, and a nice parody of the English school system. The more you know about British culture, the funnier they were. Frankly, I thought the films improved on some things. Granted, some of what was left out of the films confused me... in movie three, there's no explanation for a major device of the film, or how another character knows of it. In #4, our protagonist asks why something went odd with his wand, and no answer is given. I say its odd because both “problems” could have been corrected with about three lines of dialog each. And, while confusing, no big deal. The end.







Comic books.



These are clumped together, and easy.



X-Men Origins: Wolverine: For a film that was studio mandated, it wasn't bad. Originally wanting to make Frank Miller's storyline about the mutant with anger management / memory / family issues, the people who did the film were ordered to make an origin story. Considering that the details of everyone involved in Wolverine's past were essentially turned into memory goulash, it was possibly the most comprehensible version they could come up with. I'm still confused about complaints that “Deadpool wasn't done well. He was just Ryan Renolds.” Considering that Deadpool wasn't the main character, and had, maybe, five minutes on screen, I don't think you can do anyone well in that amount of time.







The Spider-Man Films: The comic book career of Peter Parker looks like a rubric to diagnose bipolar disorder. Check. The whole Goblin family drama—mostly. Check. Parker puts on the black suit and turns from nerd to.... evil nerd. Big check. Though he could have taken tips from Neil Patrick Harris on being an evil nerd.



The biggest complaint has been about Spider Man 3, particularly on the character of Venom... well, as Sam Raimi said, “I had never read Venom in the comic books, since they came after my time. Because of that, I didn't have a natural inclination toward him. And when I read those comics, at [producer] Avi Arad's urging, I didn't understand where Venom's humanity was. I know that kids think he looks cool, and they think he's a good villain for Spider-Man. I actually didn't. What was it about Peter's own makeup that this villain represented some weaker or darker side to? Just looking like a dark version of him is not enough for me. The more I read [Venom stories], the less interested I became.” So, I get that. Though I wonder why he bothered putting Venom in a film if he didn't really like him.



Aside from that, there could be aesthetic quibbles—why they felt they had to make the Green Goblin look like a power Rangers, I don't know.





Batman Begins: I've had some people complain about the opening of the film, and how Bruce Wayne had been trained to become Batman. My usual response is that, if you read the comic books, the way it was done in the film contained the simplest, least convoluted explanation, as well as introducing the primary villain. And if there are any complaints about The Dark Knight, the best I can come up with is that the movie should have left off with catching the Joker, leaving Harvey Dent / Two-Face to be an ominous thread to be expanded into another movie. The last fifteen minutes felt odd, but having one of your key actors die in the middle of shooting can mess up a schedule a bit.







Now, aside from the above example, I will not say that modern day Hollywood adaptations are all perfect. That would be impossible. However, without lingering on minor quibbles, I can point you to several movies made recently that were based on books and made into something... different.





Shooter, based off of Stephen Hunter's novels about a marine sniper who had been framed for murder, turned into the usual conspiracy theory film about evil government employees messing around in Africa for one natural resource or another. That it starred Castro fan Danny Glover was a hint that the book would be rewritten.





[NOVEL SPOILER ALERT] The Bourne Identity was based off of Robert Ludlum's novel of the same name. A tv miniseries was made in the 1980s, starring Alan Chamberlain. The CIA had sent operative David Webb, war veteran, after assassin Carlos the Jackal, seeming to be another assassin and competitor named Jason Bourne. During the operation, he is shot in the head while fleeing a ship at sea, and awakes with amnesia. In piecing together the story of his life, he believes that he really is an assassin, the CIA thinks he has gone rogue, and the assassin he's hunting is returning the favor, and a civilian he saves from being gunned down in the crossfire is a female accountant who grows attached to him.



The movie: Boat, amnesia, perfect operative, check. Carlos the Jackal is replaced by African Dictator #1 from the nearest cliché yard, and the CIA isn't interested in listening to what happened to him, they all just want him dead. Period. Everyone involved on the CIA end dies, except for Julia Styles, using her amazing blonde powers. Bourne hooks up with a backpacking, gypsy-like female with no discernible education, intellect, or personality.



The Bourne Supremacy – The novel: elements in the government want to use David Webb to flush out another assassin, only this one has taken over the name of Jason Bourne. So, they kidnap his wife, the accountant he saved in the first novel, leaving clues that end him after this new Bourne. The CIA isn't the bad guy, but they are manipulative, which pretty much goes with the trade. Webb's other friends within the Agency lend him aide as he tries to find his wife.



The film: Still on the run as Jason Bourne, his girlfriend gets her head blown off by a Russian assassin on orders from a CIA administrator left over from an X-Men film .... Start your average revenge plot. Kill more CIA agents. Throw in some Russians, because they are obviously still the massive, intimidating threat that they were when they had a working government, now that they're taking orders from us, somehow.... huh? Julia Styles still manages to survive.



The Bourne Ultimatum—the novel is simple: Revenge of Carlos the Jackal. The film: obviously not, because they didn't have Carlos in the first film anyway.





In short, Hollywood has apparently become literate since the 90s—or, at the very least, is CAPABLE of adhering to source material such as novels and comic books. I'm certain that part of it has to do with a director appreciating the source material (Lord of the Rings), or a horde of slavering child fans who will tear them apart if they screw up the movie (the whole Harry Potter / Twilight franchise), or having the Intellectual Property owners run the studio (Marvel / WB). When you consider what has come in the past, things have improved.



Though, apparently, all bets are off when a film include Matt Damon or his clone (Mark Wahlberg). Still, even those films at least resemble the books they were based on to some degree. So, whenever you have a quibble about your favorite character in a novel / comic that's been adapted to film, or that elements had been changed, shifted or modified, always remember one very important lesson that I have learned over the years.....





It can ALWAYS be worse.



And if you don't believe me, ask the hordes of video game fans who have ever gone to see a Uwe Boll film of their favorite game.

How A Pius Man Came to be: Part 2

Part 2: Now what?

So, you're going to right a history novel that's both thrilling and accurate, without resorting to something over the top fantastical in the meantime?



The answer there is: that's nice, wake me when you're done.



Oh, darn, wait—I want to write it!



Now what?



Before I begin the process of this book's creation, I should make something clear. I've wanted to write for a living since I was sixteen. By the time I had started A Pius Man, I had written almost a dozen other novels; a science fiction quartet that started as fan fiction and turned into a space opera; a thriller trilogy about a Secret Service Agent and the CIA assassin who kept running into each other; a murder mystery set in a Catholic high school summer camp; another mystery set at a science fiction convention; a hostage novel; I won't discuss the short stories. None of them had been published, but I had other things to do—high school, two bachelor's in three years, a master's in one, I was generally busy.



My point: writing wasn't an issue. I had more or less taught myself keyboarding by the time I had gotten the concept of the book, and had developed a mental habit of innovation out of the weirdest little things, as well as the ability to write for thirty hours straight.



But now, a new project. Working on a thriller encapsulating everything I had learned about Pope Pius XII. So, when in doubt, the title had to be a bad pun. Title: A Pius Man.



Then the questions started.



Well, where do I set the novel? Another world hopping journey, digging in the muck and mire, or perhaps solving puzzles laid out from World War II?



Been there, done that, and we've probably all seen that movie. If only for Ian McKellen's acting.



So, if I'm not going to bounce around the planet, where am I going to put this?



A few years prior, I had wanted to make a murder mystery set in the Vatican. I had never gotten past page one, but I wanted to have the scene open with a dead priest and a knife in his back.



So, when dealing with the Roman Catholic church, go to Rome. Check.



We need a conspiracy—what fiction with the Catholic church in it doesn't have some kind of deep dark conspiracy around it? Not counting The Exorcist.... few. Who's behind it? Well, the standard options are the government, the Church, or intelligence agencies.... I came up with a fun combination of all three.



Next step: who was I going to use in this mischegas of a plot? I didn't want an automatic hero. I didn't want a protagonist to leap out of a telephone booth or a police box. It wasn't happening. I needed vague characters. Someone whose loyalty the audience would question along the way. It wasn't going to be a paranoid thriller, but there are segments where it would be close.



One character was someone I had already invented—Commander Giovanni Figlia of the Vatican Office of Vigilance. His job is to protect the Pope. But if the Pope is guilty of a crime, or of conspiracy to commit murder, then what can he do? And just how do you arrest a pontiff anyway? He was already in Rome, a bit player I had invented for the background of a few other novels. It was time to give him a personality. A back story. Anything at all, really.



That's one...but what could possibly get him involved in a conspiracy going back decades?



Oh, that's easy. Kill an academic. Someone going through the Vatican archives. The “secret” archives, even though that's a bad translation error. Kill someone looking into Pope Pius XII.



Now, are we going to kill this guy in the Vatican? Really? Because I can't imagine how else we're going to involve Figlia...



Oooooh, wait, a bomb can fling a body a good distance, right? I can work with that.



Next, we need a fish out of water. Someone for whom the audience can relate to when she goes “Huh?” Especially when the audience is trying to figure out what sort of rabbit hole they fell into. My Alice had to be as out of place in the world of European Catholicism as possible... and who would be more out of place than an American Jew? Yes, my Alice is a Wilhelmina “Villie” Goldberg. Immediately, I had a vision of a short Italian acquaintance come to mind. She'd do for a physical model—about 4'11”. She'd have to be part of a security service, and making her American would make her a Secret Service agent.



Though if I stuck with that physical model, she would be a little short for a Secret Service agent who played human shield. However, foreign governments talk to the Secret Service about improving security, and all you need is a brain for that. So, when in doubt, get her from the NSA—which provided technical support for the protagonists.



How are we going to get her involved? Have her be there when we drop a body on Figlia... or his general area, at least. Check.





Somehow, having all this going on without another interested party being involved seemed unlikely. Someone from Mossad—if the Israelis wouldn't be interested in this subject, who would? Mossad involvement was easy to arrange—I created a character in one of my notebooks, someone who had arrived in Israel as part of a small emigration from the United States. A Gentile in Mossad... we have to call this section the Goyim brigade.



And what would attract anyone in Mossad to Rome? That's easy enough—there had been an earlier victim who had been researching the archives, and he was connected to terrorism. A dead terrorist with no confirmed killer—looks a bit suspicious. And a second dead body connected to Pius XII, seriously suspicious.



Mossad gets most of its intelligence from Germany, and the Germans would be involved anyway, given the subject matter—they are sort of touchy about the 1930s and 40s. So, throw in someone from German Intelligence. Two spies, check.



A neutral party would be good. Some character who has NO horse in this particular race; who has no investment in Pius XII being guilty, innocent, or not guilty by reason of insanity. Jews are out, Christians are out.... and if the Pope was going to declare a propaganda war on the Middle East (see below), he would probably tour it. Which means there would be a security specialist to coordinate with the Swiss Guards. He'd be connected to Figlia, for the coordination, and Goldberg, because she'd be improving security. But it would be too easy to have him be visibly neutral and good. We're suspecting everyone else, why not him? Hmm... oh, yeah, it seems that he stoned his wife to death. That'll work.



Check one investigative team: Papal Security, the Secret Service, and someone from, oh, make it Egypt.



And there's a wild card that has to be tossed in. Just to make everyone wonder what the hell goes on at the Vatican.... well, the man who shot Pope John Paul II was first jumped by a nun. Given how many clergy are in Vatican City, it would be more likely for one of them to first get to an assailant than some of the Swiss Guard. And if that should ever happen again, I would sure as hell want to bring in a security expert to train them....



Enter security specialist Sean A.P. Ryan. Already, he's earned comparisons to the comic book character Deadpool, the mercenary who will, occasionally, do the right thing, if only as a last resort. Not to mention being bat guano crazy. Wild card, check.



And what good is a mystery without a murdered witness? After all, they have Vatican trials for saints. Witnesses appear. One of the better known priests that I knew of was an Irish priest named Fr. Caroll-Abbing; he arranged much of the aide in Rome for fugitives and refugees. Caroll-Abbing was a real figure, but also quite dead when I started writing. However, I'm sure he must have had an aide. Caroll-Abbing was an Irish priest, assume an Irish aide.... and I had another character all ready and sketched out: Interpol Agent Maureen McGrail. And I had given her a previous professional dislike of Sean Ryan. We get to have some more fun that way.



And her arrival will certainly confirm that the events were all about Pope Pius XII—a dead academic may be accident, a murdered terrorist coincidence, but a murdered witness is enemy action.



I had my primary lineup. Two spies; a proper team of Papal Security et al; and two people from out of town. A three-tiered story. Works for me. In several books, Tom Clancy did at least three storylines for a hundred pages before he brought them together in a train wreck. I won't dawdle quite that long.



No, time to insert some paranoia. In any good thriller, you need to be under the impression that you can get it in the neck at any time from any direction. Kind of like a fast season of 24. We're in a thriller with the Catholic church, we must have at least one sinister looking priest, and a highly suspicious looking pope, someone so invested in the reputation of Pius XII, he'd do practically anything to see it's protected.



Hence Pope Pius XIII, who wants to make the World War II pontiff a saint, make him a figure to rally around....for...? Hmm. Rally around for what?



Enter another graduate course I took—problems in Contemporary African history. I had done a paper on the war in the Sudan, a war going on and off since the early 1980s. This Pope would have grown up with his country ignored, left to be bombed to hell, and—Darfur? Really? Thirty years of bloody warfare, civilians killed, churches bombed, and the world media focuses on one town? I suspect he would be a little put out by that, especially if he had lived in a town no one never heard of before or after it was wiped from the map.



How could I possibly make the Pope look sinister? I know—make him somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. He's using Pope Pius XII as a banner, using one side of the “debate” (mentioned in Part 1 of this article), Pius XII as hero and saint.



But, while making the Pope as sinister figure is nice—he's not going to run around Rome in a white robe trying to be inconspicuous. Especially since he's over two meters tall, and doesn't exactly blend in around Italy. (One acquaintance of mine returned from Rome and said “There are black people in Italy. Oh. My. God.” She was so shocked and appalled... she also wonders why I don't talk to her anymore.) He needs something every good Evil Overlord requires—a lackey. We need another priest.



Already have one. In a previous novel I drafted, I created a priest wandering around in the background—a priest with combat training from his time in special forces. He has martial training, kicks ass, and he has silver hair, and pale skin—no one would ever take him for an albino. Of course not. Suspicious looking lackey, check.



A three-layered plot with a wandering priest tying them all together.



Works for me.



Conspiracy, check.



Characters, check.



Now it has to be written.... Oh, shoot me now...