Since I started writing for WhatCulture, I’ve produced a total of ten articles, and I have one more that’s currently under review. I’ve accrued over 200,000 hits total in that month, which I hope will lead to more people following the link to my site and check out my books.

If you’re interested in seeing what I’ve been working on over there, you can read the articles at this link.

Other than the WhatCulture stuff, I haven’t made much progress on fiction writing. I’ve mostly been working on my resume. My current day job will come to an end by late July, and while I have one job already lined up, it’s only part-time, which means I’m trying to find something else to fill the void. I also feel like I need a bit of a break after finishing SoulQuest before I jump into another novel.

Speaking of SoulQuest, I’ve finished the first round of edits on it. There was actually a lot less to fix than I initially feared, so that’s good. Of course, once I get it back from my editor, that may be completely different. But them’s the breaks, I guess.

What else is new? Well, I saw Iron Man 3. Yes, for once, Japan not only got a movie on time, but we actually got it in advance of America! Too bad that doesn’t hold true with Man of Steel (August 30), The Wolverine (September 13), Star Trek: Into Darkness (August 23), and Thor: The Dark World (February 2014). Come on, Japan, can’t you at least release a movie in theaters before every other country puts it out for rental? Especially given that we pay such a premium ticket price?

Iron Man 3 was extremely disappointing. The first half was incredible, but then…ugh. It just descended into self-parody, culminating in the awful twist with the Mandarin. I won’t go into detail about it here, but I wrote about it on WhatCulture and you can see it there—Iron Man 3: Thoughts on the Mandarin.

I will say this, though. One of the reasons I put a pause on Vanguard is because the villain I’d created was initially intended to be sort of a Colonel Kurtz-type of character, a western soldier who goes off the reservation and turns against America after seeing what they’re responsible for. And when I heard Shane Black describe Iron Man 3‘s version of the Mandarin in pretty much the exact same language, I sat there going, “wow, that sounds like a great idea! In fact, it also sounds…kind of familiar…oh crap…”

Of course, now that I’ve seen the movie, I know that isn’t what the Mandarin is, so I feel more confident about writing my story.

Take, for example, the promotion I’m now running in order to celebrate the shop’s opening! From today until May 13th, if you purchase all four of my books, you’ll get an automatic 50% discount on the total purchase!

All the books are available in two formats: mobi (for Kindle devices) and ePub (for iPad, Nook, and just about everything else). Once you’ve purchased the books, you’ll be directed to a page to download your purchases!

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to the shop to get started!

It’s funny, actually. Two years ago was the last time I finished writing a book, and that was Dragon Kings of the Orient. I haven’t been writing non-stop ever since, in fact when Dragon Kings of the Orient was released last year, some may recall that I said it might actually be my last book as I was struggling with writing.

I finally decided to get back onto the horse in October and I used NaNoWriMo to help me get started. The project I began work on was titled The Legacy of Frankenstein and it started off good, but quickly hit a brick wall around 16,000 words. At that point, I decided to take another look at SoulQuest, which I had about 10,000 words written for already.

SoulQuest, some readers may remember, began life as a comic book project. The initial artist I tailored the project for stopped responding to e-mails, but I later found a new artist named Frank Jensen. Frank was initially very excited about the project and did a lot of character designs and gave some plot input as well. Then history repeated itself and he also stopped responding to e-mails.

For about two years I didn’t give SoulQuest any more thought, until a friend of mine began a website for original, serialized fiction. I dusted off SoulQuest and decided to do it as a monthly serial novel. The plan was to release a chapter a month online for free and once the entire thing was finished, to take it down and release it as a full novel.

The site, however, fell through before the second chapter was released. And while I attempted to make some more progress on it, it mostly stalled. But when I hit the wall with The Legacy of Frankenstein, I took another look at SoulQuest and felt the desire to jump back into it. That was around mid-November/December and now I’ve finally completed it.

The project’s goals have shifted a lot. Originally I aimed for 50,000 words. Then that became 60,000. Then 65,000, then 70,000 and 75,000. And the book topped out, as you can see from the little guy in the Writertopia image, at 78,440 (by the way, the beer he’s holding is prophetic, that’s definitely what I’ll be doing tonight!).

And it’s not even close to finished. As any writer will tell you, completing the first draft is just the beginning. Next comes the revision process. Normally I’m pretty good about self-editing as I go along, but this time I just went full-speed to complete this draft. And now that it’s done, I know that I’ve got a lot of revisions to do before I send it off to my editor. For instance, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I made the decision halfway into the book that one of the characters was superfluous so I decided to cut him. I have to remove all references to him in the beginning. I also have to change around a few other things.

But first, I need to put it aside for a bit. Editing and revising can be a tough process, and you want to let some time set before jumping right into it so the book isn’t so fresh in your mind. Besides, I’ve got ideas brewing for my next project that I really want to start developing into a full-fledged outline.

Anyway, for those who aren’t aware of the story, bounty hunter King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) buys the freedom of a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx), who is the only lead he has on a bounty. Schultz is German and despises slavery, so he makes Django an offer: if Django identifies Schultz’s bounty, Schultz will give Django his freedom and a portion of the reward.

After it all goes down, it turns out Django and Schultz make a good team and instead of just sending Django on his way to try and reclaim his wife on his own, Schultz makes another offer: work together through the winter, and then together they’ll rescue Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).

Django agrees and the two become an incredible bounty hunting duo, until they can track down Broomhilda’s new owner, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Candie, in addition to owning one of the largest cotton plantations in the south (called Candieland), also deals in Mandingo fighting (think a human version of cockfighting or dogfighting). They pose as Mandingo slavers and are able to convince Candie of their legitimacy, but his house slave Steven (Samuel L. Jackson) is not as convinced.

Now, let’s get a few things out of the way right from the start: Django Unchained is not historically accurate. But neither were pretty much any of the spaghetti westerns. Or Mandingo, a film about slaves being forced to fight each other, a film that Tarantino was clearly referencing (I’ve never even seen that movie and I still knew it was a reference). Plus, Tarantino has never claimed to be a historical filmmaker—hell, Inglourious Basterds ended with Jewish-American commandos gunning down Hitler in a movie theater in Paris as opposed to him killing himself in a bunker in Berlin. So as far as historical accuracy, let’s lighten up a bit—no one is going to watch a Tarantino film in order to study for a history test.

Second, there’s the issue of racial language. Yes, the N-word is used quite frequently in this movie. And yes, it is a terrible word. But it seems like its usage is actually handled more gracefully than in other Tarantino movies. Now I know some people will raise eyebrows at that, but bear with me for a moment. Most of the usage of the word comes from white racists, who are either depicted as stupidly buffoonish or completely evil. Django uses it a lot, but Schultz rarely uses it unless he has to in character. Plus, it should be noted that we’re talking about the pre-Civil War era here, so it’s not like the word didn’t exist in this period.

Another concern has been the violence. And again, I say people are making mountains out of molehills. Some reviews have pointed out that some violence is laughed at by white people. What they aren’t realizing is that those scenes are almost always scenes of violence against white racists. Tarantino was actually far more careful with his depiction of violence than in any other movie. In this movie, it’s only the violence against pro-slavery people that’s depicted as funny. Violence against anti-slavery types is depicted as far more gruesome and difficult to watch. Broomhilda’s torture scenes, D’Artagnan’s death, Django hanging upside-down (people who have seen the movie know the scene I’m referring to, I’m being obtuse to not spoil it), these scenes are all depicted not as funny or comical, but as extremely disturbing.

And that was the point. Tarantino attempted to emulate what Takashi Miike did years ago in Ichi the Killer—contrast scenes of playful violence that make the audience laugh with scenes of painful violence that make the audience cringe. The point of these scenes is to make the viewers question the difference between them. If you’re laughing at a scene of horrific violence and are disturbed by another scene of horrific violence, then the question isn’t what’s wrong with the filmmaker, but rather what’s wrong with you.

Okay, that’s a topic that could provide the basis for an entire book. So instead, let me give you a simple scenario. You’re sitting at home one night and scrolling through your streaming service of choice, or maybe even your personal library on a media box like Roku or Apple TV. You come across one of your favorite shows. Maybe it’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, maybe it’s Supernatural, maybe it’s The X-Files, maybe it’s One Life to Live (hey, who am I to judge?). You think, “man, I could go for an episode of this show” and you select it.

Now you have even more work to do, because you have to choose one episode out of the dozens that are available to choose from. Which season do you choose? Which episode do you choose? It’s enough to make someone say, “screw this.”

Of course, this didn’t used to happen. In the days before streaming media and full season sets became available. And that’s not a knock against those things. Believe me, I love having my favorite TV shows available at the push of a button and all organized in order. If you’ve got an entire weekend or so to waste, there’s no better way to do it than watching your own personal marathon of your favorite TV show.

But what if you’re not in the mood for that? What if you just want to watch a random episode? For the most part, when I feel like watching an episode of The Simpsons, it doesn’t really matter what episode is available. All I care about is watching a random episode. In the past, this was actually much easier, I knew that at certain times, The Simpsons would be on the air. Didn’t matter which episode, I just wanted to watch the show. And that was good enough.

And this, my friends, is what digital video is missing—randomization.

The bizarre thing is this is so easy to implement. We already have the option with digital music to sort music at random. Why can’t we do it with TV shows? And why does it have to stop with TV shows? What if you’re trying to find a movie to watch on a Friday night and can’t choose? Why not a command that selects a movie at random?

This is something to consider, media providers. It’s not a complicated move, in fact it’s probably the simplest change ever. But it is very useful.

Faulkner once said, “in writing, you must kill your darlings.” He was referring generally to those sections of writing that you’re really in love with, but it’s also been applied to kill off your favorite characters. In this case, I’m using it to refer to characters who you created but then sort of forgot about, your bastards. Hence, I’m changing Faulker’s quote from “kill your darlings” to “kill your bastards.”

If you look at the image, you’ll see a very small (very incomplete) list of characters in the Scrivener file for my current book, SoulQuest. Yes, there are more characters than this in the book. No, I don’t have every one of them catalogued. Yes, this means sometimes scrounging through my manuscript and notes, trying to remember a character’s name. Yes, I need to get more organized, but that’s beside the point. You’ll see the last character, Jan, is selected with “Move to Trash” highlighted.

It’s a decision every writer will likely be faced with at some point in the course of a project—whether or not to excise a character that just isn’t pulling his or her own weight. If you’re lucky, this will hopefully happen before you’re 50,000 words into the book. If you’re like me, you didn’t properly revise your original outline to account for the changes that would happen.

In SoulQuest, Jan is the pilot of the Excalibur, the airship our intrepid group of sky-pirates (and unlikely heroes) travel in. Back when I was collaborating with an artist to produce SoulQuest as a comic book, Jan’s role was much larger. Not only was he the pilot, but he was also a childhood friend of Zarim, the protagonist. As this was originally planned to be an ongoing series of an undetermined length, there would have been more room to explore Zarim’s past, but when I made the decision to turn SoulQuest into a novel, a lot of changes were made. For example, in our original plans, Jan was going to die and become part of the ship. But as I was drafting the outline for the novel, this didn’t work as well for me and I decided to get rid of it.

Now the question comes, why is Jan still here? He doesn’t go on missions with the rest of the crew, and aside from one scene, he doesn’t really play an active role in the story and mostly just provides the occasional line. All he does is fly the ship, and that’s a role which, with a little rewriting, can be handled by one of the other characters.

It’s one thing to decide to remove a scene or a chapter that just doesn’t work. But to remove a whole character can be even more daunting. But if that character is just dead weight, you’re not doing the story any favors by keeping them in. Currently, I’m writing a chapter where the crew has been taken captive. Now, I already know how they’re going to get out of this, it’s in my plot. But as I was preparing to write the next scene in this chapter, I started to think to myself, “what is Jan up to right now and is there any role I can have for him in this part of the story?” And that got me thinking, “what role does Jan actually have that’s beneficial to the story?” I skimmed through my chapter notes and realized that in reality, he doesn’t serve much of a purpose. He once did, in the original plan way back when. But with all the revisions to the plan, his purpose became lost and now he’s simply become a bastard character who doesn’t have much use.

So now, I’m planning to cease writing any more scenes that include Jan and when I get started on the editing and revising of the manuscript, I’m going to have to rewrite the scenes in which he is in. A bit daunting, yes, but I don’t think it will be as difficult as it seems at first glance.

So kill your bastards. They’re not helping your story, they’re dragging it down.

In the year 2212, long after the world has been reshaped by seismic cataclysms and polar shifts, Princess Angelique Bosc recovers from a terrible Hovercraft accident, which left her injured and near death. Her friend and physician, Dr. Laurent Stine, used his skills as a robotics engineer to replace her damaged organs with android components. Angelique realizes that her mechanical heart will require a fresh battery pack within 48 hours. However, a loathed and exiled warlock, Xavier Thames, steals all of the battery packs and transports them to his castle, Thames Keep, in order to build a time machine. Angelique, Dr. Stine, and their allies are forced to embark on a long, perilous journey to Thames Keep located on Cadaver Island. Can they reach Thames Keep and replace Angelique’s battery pack before she goes into cardiac arrest?

Cadaver Island is the first installment of a trilogy by Author Kevin Rodgers, who introduces readers to a fractured, ruined world where forgotten, legendary creatures live and thrive in towering mountains, magical forests, and barren deserts. Angelique Bosc and her allies will traverse harsh, nightmarish landscapes to discover the secrets of the past, stabilize events in the present day, and unlock the
mysteries of the future.

Featuring stunning artwork by Adrianne Soares of Fitztown and mind-blowing design and format by Sean Ali, Cadaver Island is a mind blowing futuristic horror thriller guaranteed to chill and amaze! From Pro Se Productions, a leader in Genre and New Pulp Fiction!

I’ve got a new piece I sent in to GaijinPot last weekend, which my editor told me would be up soon. So it will probably turn up by the weekend or early next week.

Once I’ve finished SoulQuest, I’ve been contemplating what I should work on next. It’s been a while since I’ve written an Infernum story, and I’ve got one planned for the third book in that series. Going along with the tone I’ve established for that series, it’ll be a stand-alone book featuring a brand new protagonist, with some familiar faces in supporting roles. I can promise that Dante, Tauna, and Johnny Venom will all show up.

Another potential project is the third Myth Hunter book. For those of you who have read it, you know Dragon Kings of the Orient ended on something of a teaser for the next book (and if you haven’t read it yet, what’s stopping you?). The next book will feature Elisa re-teaming with her sometime-friend, sometime-foe Lucas Davalos and going after the…well, read Dragon Kings of the Orient for the tease.

And then there are two other projects I’ve considered, both of them unrelated to anything I’ve done so far. One is a superhero book I’ve considered doing for a while. The other would be set in postwar Japan. But it’s too early to say anything more about either of these just yet.

Of course, it’s a bit too soon to get too invested in other projects while I’m still pounding away at this one. I might switch gears just a bit to do something different, since lately I’ve only managed to knock out a few hundred words per day as opposed to my goal of two thousand. Or I might just keep plugging away until I get back into the groove.

Can you think of one? My guess is you probably have difficulty thinking of just one. That’s because Hollywood has a very, very, very long history of telling these types of stories, and why not? They’re straightforward, they don’t have to be expensive, and people seem to really like them.

So why is it then that we’ve now had not one, not two, but three separate movies featuring Frank Castle, the Punisher, and none of them have managed to really get it right? The Punisher should be the easiest comic book character to make a successful movie out of. Yet no one seems to have really been able to do it. And more than that, what can Marvel do to make the Punisher work now that they have the rights back.

First, let’s look at the film that started it all.

The Punisher (1989)

This film was the first attempt to bring Frank Castle to the big screen. It featured Dolph Lundgren with his hair dyed black. In this movie, Frank Castle is a former police officer whose family is killed in a mob hit. Legally declared dead, Castle now lives in the sewers and wages a one-man war on crime. His former partner (Louis Gossett Jr.) is trying to bring him in. Meanwhile, the mafia is under threat from the Yakuza, who have kidnapped their children and the only one they can turn to is the man who has declared war on them.

In the plus column, Lundgren does a pretty good job as Castle. But the script isn’t too terribly good and there’s some cheeseball parts in here that are real cringe-worthy. Its biggest failing, though, is that if you stumbled on this movie late at night and missed the opening credits, chances are you could go a good long while before realizing it’s a Punisher movie. It’s such a generic action movie and one of the biggest mistakes is they didn’t include the Punisher’s trademark skull shirt. Just including that little detail would have gone a long way to differentiating this from all the other B-flicks flying around at the time.

Because of the studio’s financial difficulties at the time, this didn’t even get a theatrical release in the States and was instead released straight-to-video. It was so poorly received that no one would try again until fifteen years later. That’s when we got…

The Punisher (2004)

When I first saw the movie Thursday, I came away with one thought: the actor who played Casey, a former drug dealer who has gone straight and whose life is thrown upside-down when his old partner comes calling, would make for the perfect Frank Castle. As long as he dyed his hair black.

That actor? Thomas Jane. So you can imagine my excitement when my dream pick ended up being cast in Jonathan Hensleigh’s Punisher reboot. This time around, they stuck a bit closer to the comics, including giving Frank his signature death’s head symbol.

This time around, Castle was ex-military who was working with the FBI. On his last job, the son of money launderer Howard Saint is killed. Saint (John Travolta) is not happy about this and he and his wife order a hit on Castle’s family while he’s at a reunion in Puerto Rico.

The beginning is slow and the family reunion scene is just pointless. This movie really suffers from OSS—Origin Story Syndrome. Once we get past the origin and Castle becomes the Punisher, then it picks up a notch (despite some cheesy moments from Castle’s neighbors).

Jane is absolutely perfect as Castle, but the biggest problem once more is the script. He dropped out of the sequel because he didn’t like the direction it was taking, and so that led to the sequel becoming a reboot, and that brings us to…

Punisher: War Zone (2008)

This time around, Ray Stevenson plays the part of Frank Castle. And it’s also the closest we’ve gotten to a good script and the one that stays closest to the comics.

The Punisher’s origin is told very simply in a quick flashback. Castle is a military guy and he’s back in New York (the previous film being set in Tampa). They even managed to work in a little-known tidbit from the comics—before the military, Frank was studying to become a priest. We’ve also got a better supporting cast in the form of Microchip, played—surprisingly well—by Wayne Knight. And we’ve also got the Punisher’s nemesis from the comics, Billy Russo, Jigsaw (Dominic West).

Stevenson does a good job, but the costume design was really bad. I get they tried to make him look like he’s wearing body armor, but that vest makes it look like he’s wearing a neck brace. And in a lot of scenes, the skull is so faint that it can barely be seen. Costume design aside, though, he’s good. Not as good as Jane, but he gets the job done.

Dominic West, however, is just terrible. Same goes for Jigsaw’s brother, Looney Bin Jim (Doug Hutchison). Right in the middle of this serious movie, director Lexi Alexander dropped in two characters who act like they should be in an R-rated version of the old Batman TV show—yes, they really are that campy. There’s a total disconnect between Stevenson’s serious performance and West’s cartoonish over-the-top debacle.

The tragedy of the latter two Punisher films is that if you took Jane, Travolta, and Will Patton (who played Howard Saint’s right-hand man in 2004′s Punisher) and cast them as the Punisher, Jigsaw, and Looney Bin Jim, then you’d have a really awesome film that I think both the average movie-goer and Punisher fans alike would have been happy with.

So now the question…

Where Do We Go From Here?

That’s actually pretty simple. If you haven’t yet, go watch Dirty Laundry on YouTube. It’s an unauthorized short Punisher film starring Jane as well as Ron Perlman and directed by Phil Joanou. And it is incredible. This is what a Punisher movie should be like—dark, uncompromising, and violent.

But I say, forget the movie route. Three times we’ve tried, now let’s try something different. Marvel is looking to expand into live-action television, starting with ABC’s upcoming SHIELD series. And one of the easiest characters to bring to television is the Punisher…depending on how you bring it to TV. There was, briefly, a Punisher series in development recently, but it looked like bad news from the start.

Now here’s my idea. If you haven’t yet, check out Netflix’s remake of House of Cards, directed by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey. It’s a Netflix exclusive series and it is remarkable. Disney recently signed a licensing deal with Netflix. And while the Punisher isn’t a good fit for network TV with all its constraints, there wouldn’t be any such constraints if the show were a Netflix series.

It’s pretty simple, actually—hire Phil Joanou to develop a Punisher series for Netflix and get Tom Jane to star in the title role (I also wouldn’t mind seeing Wayne Knight back as Microchip). Everything’s already set up for it. Jane is very interested in coming back to the role and is very fond of the character, Joanou obviously has an interest as well, or else he wouldn’t have directed Dirty Laundry. Disney now owns Marvel and Marvel Studios recently got back the rights for the Punisher, and now Disney and Netflix have a licensing deal in place.

It’s a great solution all around. You’ll get a live-action Punisher that will enjoy more success and a broader reach than another movie, and it will also help both Marvel and Disney utilize new media.

Ever since The Avengers proved to not only be a massive financial success, but also a textbook example of how to do a superhero film right, Warner Bros. has been extremely antsy about bringing the DC Universe to cinematic life to compete with Disney and Marvel. But it’s been met with numerous obstacles, the latest reported from Badass Digest that Will Beall’s Darkseid-centered script has been trashed.

Here are some things Warner Bros. needs to do.

1. Get your own Kevin Feige

You know how the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been so successful and integrated together very seamlessly? That’s because you had one go-to guy, and that man is Kevin Feige. If Warner Bros. wants to pull off a successful Justice League franchise, they need to have someone in charge of it who can arrange all the pieces. Christopher Nolan is already the big behind-the-scenes guy on Man of Steel, and you could do a lot worse than bringing him onboard. It’s important that the Justice League movies present a coherent vision.

2. Have a plan

Granted, there weren’t any plans for The Avengers until Iron Man proved so successful, but Marvel quickly got a plan in order once they saw it was viable. Before you could say, “Excelsior!” Marvel had an entire slate of planned films—Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and topping it all off with The Avengers. When Green Lantern went into production, it seemed like Warner Bros. had some semblance of a plan, but that was quickly undone once the movie flopped. So they went back to the well by allowing Nolan to close the book on his version of Batman, and now they’re trying to find some sort of middle ground with Man of Steel. Yet there’s still no real plan in place.

3. Forget your shame

Watch all the Marvel Cinematic Universe films back to back and you’ll notice something about them—not only are they great movies, but they aren’t ashamed of their roots. Between Smallville, The Dark Knight trilogy, and Arrow, it does seem like Warner Bros. is ashamed of the fact that these characters are comic book superheroes. And you can’t be, not if you want it to succeed. If Joss Whedon didn’t have a lot of affection and respect for the comics he was adapting to the big screen, The Avengers wouldn’t have worked. He didn’t try to run away from or hide the superhero aspect, he openly embraced it. And everyone loved it.

Superheroes are here to stay. Either get over yourselves and embrace it, or stay out of the way.

4. Talk to DC Comics

This is not an option. Expert consultants are nothing new. If you want to make a police procedural, you bring in a police consultant. If you want to make a medical drama, you bring in medical consultants. And if you want to make a good superhero movie, you absolutely must talk to the people who create superhero stories for a living. I know some fans may balk at this given the current state of DC Comics, but there are a number of good creators who work there (and despite my reservations about some of the writers at Marvel, when the studios consulted with those creators, the result was something incredible). And speaking of which…

5. You do still have Bruce Timm and Paul Dini’s phone number, don’t you?

Remember Batman: The Animated Series? Superman: The Animated Series? Justice League? Justice League Unlimited? What did all these shows have in common? Aside from the fact that they were awesome, the answer to that question is Bruce Timm and Paul Dini. If you want to bring the Justice League to the big screen, talk to the guys who successfully brought it to the small one.

6. Hire me

This one is self-serving, but if you want a good Justice League script, drop me a line. I’ll have it to you in a few weeks and I guarantee it will be better (and cheaper) than what you got from Beall. You’ll get a Justice League script that includes the Big Seven (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter), it will have an intergalactic threat (either the white Martians or Starro), it’ll have explosions, characterization, superhero showdowns, and a massive climatic battle. So give me a call.