Honestly, what can be said about Marvel Studios’ absolutely amazing mini-series about Maya Lopez? A lot! So come hang out with me and a bunch of nerds discussing the incredible recent show, Echo.
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Come join me and other geeks talking about one of the best comic book movies in recent history, Across the Spider-Verse! All hail Burrito Peter!
I hope you enjoyed The Marvels as much as we did! If so, please join me and a panel of wonderful fans as we discuss the ins and outs of The Marvels!
“The flame might be gone, but the fire remains
And I’m stuck on a path to my own ruin
Did you see me behind the wheel?
Did you see me behind the wheel?
And the flame might be gone, but the fire…
-“Remembered” by The Dear Hunter
Sometime in the middle of last year, I heard the premise for American Fiction (2023) and thought it sounded like an absolutely genius concept completely relevant to not just my experiences as an author, but the experiences of a whole bunch of POC that I personally know. Lo and behold, upon viewing it, they knock most of it out of the park (I don’t like the final act, personally; I think it doesn’t feel cohesive and satisfying enough to end what was a REALLY good story in the first and second acts). Enough that it’s why I felt like I wanted to blow the dust off my blog for an entry. I think this movie is going to give us a lot of cud to chew as a society, and that it’s definitely a conversation worth having among black authors in particular.
Let’s get into it. Before we start, spoilers for American Fiction (2023). At the time of this post, it is still in theaters so if you want to get the juicy details, I recommend you pop out to a theater. Its theatrical run was extended thanks to the Oscar nominations.
American Fiction is about a struggling black professor named Thelonious “Monk” Ellis who is vexed by the fact that his work is actually quite good, but it doesn’t sell because it’s complex and not palatable to the masses. After a lot of misfortune, he gets the idea to write a book that’s both pandering to urban fiction readers and is a middle finger to the industry that puts out books that basically (in his opinion) reinforce harmful black stereotypes and sends it to his publisher under a different pseudonym, laughing that he will get reviled reactions to writing tripe. Well, the opposite happens! Immediately, a huge publisher says they want the book and to offer him friggin’ $750,000 for it. Monk is gobsmacked, but since his sister just died and his mother was just diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, he reluctantly decides to take the offer. Things get even more complicated when the book blows up as a number one bestseller and he gets a movie deal, despite his chagrin and embarrassment, and he struggles to reconcile the fact that the worst thing he’s ever written is now his most successful book.
So, in my family, my older brother and have a running joke about the fact that I am a fairly good writer (or at least I feel that I might be one; none of the good writers ever know it or believe it even when given evidence) but I make nothing off my books because I don’t write to market, and if I just sold out and wrote bad smut or books for basic bitches, I’d be a millionaire.
You can see why I went right out to see this film as a result.
American Fiction’s biting sarcasm and relentless exposure of the faults in the publishing world and the black community is definitely going to be remembered by all relevant parties. This film shines a light on something that the average person, regardless of race, ethnicity, and nationality, probably doesn’t know. Way too many people don’t know how the writing and publishing world works, and this film does. It truly gets it. It gets what black writers go through and it gets what the mainstream publishing world sounds like. Whoever wrote it definitely has either experienced this crap directly or is intimate with someone who does, because everything in the film proceeds exactly how it does in real life, for the most part.
And that’s what got me thinking.
If I had to sum up American Fiction (2023) in a word, I’d say it’s about responsibility.
So in the story, one of the reasons Monk decides to write the most base and pandering piece of crap novel is after having to endure watching a book seemingly just like it blow up by a black female author named Sindra. It inadvertently puts him on edge every time he has to be somewhere and see her book, given that the book just panders to every black stereotype since that is the genre expectation for urban fiction. Finally, in the third act, he and the author are in the same room and he asks her why she considered his book (keep in mind, she has no idea he wrote it) pandering, yet hers doesn’t count. She fires back that she’s writing to market and that it’s not her fault if white people or other people think that all black people behave the way they do in urban fiction. The film is basically examining personal responsibility as an author and in particular, as a black author.
And I can say for certain that is going to ring through the halls of history as relevant for decades to come.
The film has a very intelligent argument and I appreciate the living hell out of it being in a big production movie that is now an Oscar nominee. Now, don’t get me wrong—fuck the Oscars. Yeah, I said it. They’re archaic, antiquated, and utter crock. Most of the time, if a good movie gets an Oscar nom, it’s a fucking coincidence. The Academy in no way is interested in awarding the “best” movie anything; this is a room full of people that wanna be pandered to, and the harder you pander, the more they’ll pat you on the back, which is why damn near every year is the same fucking movies getting nominated. It’s aggravating as hell and it’s why they are continuously losing the public’s attention. People are tired of unknown garbage getting attention, especially since the Academy is who’s being lambasted by the very same film they nominated. The Academy doesn’t want to hear shit from POC unless it’s a story about their pain. Every once in a blue moon, you’ll get competent and joyful films winning like Everything Everywhere All at Once, but largely if POC are nominated, especially black people, it’s because it’s talking about our pain, not our triumph, and the Academy seems to think the only relevant stories we can tell are about our pain, which is exactly what is discussed in this film, and it’s handled rather well.
But I do take a departure from Sindra’s argument.
Sindra’s argument boils down to “people enjoy what I write and I’m not wrong to write to that market; it’s the responsibility of white people to not believe nothing but stereotypes.” That’s a good, solid argument…but I disagree. I understand the argument completely and I think I agree to an extent, but my problem with what’s discussed in the film is more of a long term, wider scale problem than an isolated one.
The reason that I dislike that type of writing is that it reinforces negative stereotypes about black people that affects things outside of just the reading world. What I’m concerned about is the long term effects of writing that kind of fiction. Sindra is correct; it is the responsibility of society to not reinforce negative stereotypes, but I argue that authors hold some of that responsibility too. It is for this very reason that you see a lot of popular white authors either never writing black people (even if the character LIVES IN THE MIDDLE OF FUCKING CHICAGO NOT POINTING FINGERS OR ANYTHING BUT YOU KNOW WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE) out of fear that they’ll “get something wrong” and offend POC or they seldom write them and cheat readers out of what could be an interesting character and story. If these white authors don’t have POC in their lives, first of all, that’s sad and they need to get their shit together, but second of all, they feel like they’re too scared to write POC because all they’ve ever seen are Tyler Perry movies and Worldstar and Eric Jerome Dickey books, so they have zero frame of reference for the black experience, so they skip it. While that’s an isolated problem, it’s much bigger than that. The problem I have with Sindra’s argument is that when you endorse this type of writing, there are real life consequences.
I’ll give you an example. Let’s say there is a job opening for a front desk clerk at a dentist’s office. The hiring manager has two candidates that are the same age, have the same level of education, and have the same level of experience needed for the job. Both of them have great interviews, too. One is black and the other is white. For the sake of the argument, let’s say this hiring manager is white. Now, here he sits with two resumes of identical people. How does he make that decision? Well, if this hiring manager has seen nothing but Tyler Perry movies and reality TV shows, what are the chances he starts thinking about his black potential candidate as being a problem? More than likely, it’s gonna creep into his head and influence the decision, so he passes on the black candidate based on falsified evidence of what black people are like. That’s my problem with Sindra’s argument. This is of course a small situation and I’m sure that black candidate doesn’t want to work for someone who would turn him down based on him believing an incorrect stereotype, but that’s my point.
Opportunities can be taken away from black creatives based on negative stereotypes. And that isn’t just black people, too—people of color in general have to struggle with the fact that the white population is still in control of most of America’s working parts, and so we have to contend with extra stress and problems that they don’t necessarily have based on race. This is of course not to say white people don’t have problems; of course they do, they have the same problems except for the fact that when white people act out, no one blames the entire race. And that’s what black people—and POC in general—have to contend with on a daily basis. I cannot tell you how many micro-aggressions I’ve had to endure being a black woman in the South. It’s truly maddening how differently you’re treated as a black woman in America, but the South really can get under your skin and make you frustrated with how they handle everything down here. Sindra’s argument, to me, is too idealistic. I would love to live in a world where stereotypical behavior is not viewed as blamed on an entire race of people.
But that’s not the world we live in.
Someone once said that being a woman is like ballroom dancing backwards in high heels, and it is. But I would argue being black is very similar. We can’t just be as good as our white counterparts—we have to be better in every way, and even when we are better (though to be fair, better is a very subjective term for this argument), there is still an enormous possibility that we get nowhere because the person at the gate is someone who looks at us and sees nothing but negative stereotypes. We have to work ten times harder for the same reward that would’ve been considered on normal merit had we not been a POC. That’s why I don’t agree that there is no responsibility with us as black writers. I think we have to pay attention to what we’re putting out there because even if it seems like no one cares and no one’s watching, someone certainly is and they can unknowingly affect the outcome of a black person’s life based on their experiences. I’d love to say that we can get there as a society, but I’m not confident in our ability to understand complexities.
But that’s also what I like about the film. It is a complicated argument with plenty of support for both sides and I love that someone wanted to have this conversation at all. This is exactly what all low-to-mid-level black authors go through at some point, especially the indie and small press crowd. I certainly don’t feel negatively towards urban fiction; who the hell am I to judge? If y’all saw my Browser History on AO3, you’d have plenty of stones to throw into my little glass house. But what I am saying is that I think it’s still our responsibility as black authors to think before we write something that might have a Domino effect down the line, but we also need to call out the people who make shitty decisions based on stereotypes at all times. We can’t let up on that. It’s ridiculous to sum up a whole race of people based on a 90 minute movie or a season of a reality show. We shouldn’t do it to each other and we shouldn’t do it to other races, nationalities, and ethnicities. Hell, that’s how we’ve had a resurgence of fucking Nazis in America; instead of punching them in the face, people said “we should hear them out” and now we’ve got a whole ass third of the country insane enough to storm the fucking Capitol to assassinate the Speaker of the House and the goddamn former Vice President. This. Stuff. Matters.
And yes, I know that’s a huge example for such a modest film, but that’s why I feel so strongly about the argument the movie presents. It’s surprisingly the small stuff that can make a difference in the writing world. I also think that every writer, no matter how successful, should be fostering friendships and relationships to help each other out. We are not in competition. All of us should reach down and pull the person below us on the ladder up, not pull the ladder up behind us so they can’t reach out of fear. We have to uplift if we want things to change. We have to keep having these conversations to eradicate as much of that learned hatred as possible.
And I really think films like American Fiction (2023) are how we get closer to that goal.
So thank you to everyone who had anything to do with making it. Even though I didn’t feel the ending was right, I really had a good time with the first and second acts and I hope they get to bring home the (irrelevant) gold just because it would be good for America to find out just how fucking rough it is out here for black authors.
But we persevere.
Here’s to you, American Fiction. Knock those old bastards at the Academy dead when it comes time.
Kyoko
Got some free time this November 9th at 7:30pm EST? Then join me and several other awesome geeks as we chat about The Bat! I will be part of an online panel discussing everyone’s favorite fictional genius billionaire playboy philanthropist this Thursday. Please stop by!
The time has come for me to make the biggest announcement of 2023: I have a short story in the upcoming anthology, Captain America: The Shield of Sam Wilson! Take a look at that cover and tell me if you see anyone familiar…
This wonderful anthology will be hitting bookshelves January 14th, 2025. Description and pre-order link below.
The new Captain America has a big shield to carry. Is he up to the task? In these short stories inspired by the Marvel comic book universe, Sam Wilson takes up the shield and proves his mettle.
Sam Wilson has a heavy shield to lift as the new Captain America. Read an action-packed anthology of stories about Sam Wilson. Inspired by the Marvel comic book universe, the stories will see Sam prove he is ready to carry the shield as he faces Skrulls, Sabretooth, Kingpin, and other infamous villains.
A revolutionary anthology of stories written by authors of African Heritage and inspired by the Marvel Comics universe. Slated to take part are several noted, award-winning authors including bestselling author Kyoko M., fantasy author L.L. McKinney, crime writer Gary Phillips, sci-fi author Sheree Renée Thomas, comics creator Alex Simmons, horror and mystery writer Nicole Givens Kurtz, and many more. Edited by Jesse J. Holland, distinguished visiting scholar in residence at the U. S. Library of Congress who edited the Marvel anthology Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda and wrote the novelization of the graphic novel Black Panther: Who Is the Black Panther?, which was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for outstanding Literary Work.
Pre-order it on your Kindle or in hardcover!
Too much of a good thing can be bad for you, and I think there is no better example than TV shows that get after-the-fact mini-series or additional seasons after their initial run, like Justified on FX. For those who are not aware, Justified was an FX show starring the infinitely talented Timothy Olyphant as US Marshal Raylan Givens, based on the book series written by the late Elmore Leonard. Givens is a modern day cowboy of the most badass variety, and Justified is a love letter to urban cowboys. I wish I could say the show was perfect, but it is far from that; in my opinion, it should only have had four seasons. I found season five to be bad except for the most epic villain death in television history (if you must know, look up “Justified Twenty-One Foot Rule” on YouTube and sit back and enjoy), and season six was dogshit. Therefore, when it was announced there would be a new mini-series ten or so years later, I remained cautiously optimistic and began to tune in each week via Hulu.
And what I found is unfortunately a lot like when Dexter ended, then returned to try and close the loop a little better the next time around.
Which is the subject of today’s episode of Cautionary Tales.
So all the way back in the year of our Lord 2015, I wrote a cautionary tale blog post about Justified’s lousy final season. To sum it up, the last season was very forced and it was apparent the writers had no more good ideas as they’d used them up in seasons 1-4, so the last season ended on a pathetic whimper and I won’t get into it because it’s a sore subject. But I knew all the way back then that there was a finite amount of talent in the writers’ room, and I had hoped that the big gap of time between the end of the original run and the revival would have given them the time to find a good story. I actually bothered to grab the book that this series is loosely based on, City Primeval by Elmore Leonard, just because I wanted a preview of what I might expect here. The book has a reputation for basically being a middle of the road title for Leonard’s career, but the reason I’ve brought it up is because of the context. This book has nothing to do with Raylan Givens. The book is actually about a character named Raymond Cruz, but the Justified producers decided to take Cruz out and plop Raylan in since the show, while never an enormous hit, had a modest viewing of two million viewers until the final season, which lost about half a million viewers after season five was NOT good and season six was even worse. They knew they had a built in audience that would likely return for a revival, so they decided to take the plot from the book and just assign it to Raylan instead.
And honestly, I think it was a mistake.
Not a huge mistake. Not a catastrophic “I hate this” mistake.
The problem is that this revival is nothing but wheel-spinning.
Let’s get into why this is today’s lesson of cautionary tales.
Naturally, massive spoilers for the ending of Justified and for episodes 1-7 of Justified: City Primeval. At the time of this post, the series finale has not aired, so this is more of a retrospective recap and discussion of where I think things went wrong.
Alright, so here’s the basic set up: in the original series, Raylan was reassigned back to his hometown of Harlan county Kentucky after he shot a mobster to death in a crowded restaurant in broad daylight in Miami. Long story short, the original series ends with him surviving Harlan and going back to Florida, which was where he was before the shooting. We pick up close to ten years later with a very seasoned Raylan dealing with his preteen daughter, Willa, whom he had with his ex-wife Winona, and Raylan catches a case that sends him up to Detroit, Michigan. Now, Raylan is very familiar with some Detroit mobsters that had a foothold in Harlan county because it’s a backwater town full of gross racist pieces of shit and so the drug trade is huge in Harlan and so is the general crime. After arriving to Detroit, he crosses paths with Clement Mansell, an Oklahoma Wildman who has no regard for literally anyone or anything. Through sheer dumb luck, the judge Raylan was working with runs into Mansell and Mansell snaps, killing the judge and his assistant in their car in the dead of night and taking the judge’s book full of blackmail material on dozens of Detroit citizens. Mansell, who is a career criminal but managed to walk on a technicality thanks to his lawyer-under-duress, Carolyn Wilder, then gets with another one of his associates named Sweetie to start blackmailing the people in the judge’s book to make money off them, citing that once he has enough, he and his side piece bimbo Sandy will retire to the tropics.
Now, that sounds like an alright idea on paper, but unfortunately, I think the bad writing from the final season carried over into this one. The biggest problem of the show so far is that while I get that Raylan is a fish out of water, none of the things that make him a great character other than that sly sense of humor and swagger are present in this mini-series.
Raylan Givens has two important things working for him as a US Marshal: he’s incredibly intelligent and observant and he’s an amazing shot. Those two traits define him as a character. Most of the fun of the original show is watching the Harlan criminals figure out that Raylan’s intelligence and perception mixed with being a crackshot make him next to impossible to evade or defeat. And what I’ve always loved about Raylan is that he is always fair. Almost every time he’s had to confront a convict or an escaped felon, he explains exactly what he’s going to do and what their situation is and he lets them make a choice. And 99% of the time, the dopes in Harlan county think they can either outthink or outdraw Raylan and they are dead wrong, pun intended. So I was excited to see Raylan in a new environment, ready to see him adjust and change and grow in this new city.
And yet I’ve gotten 7 episodes of absolutely nothing.
I’m someone who understands that a new series can mean that they make changes and I won’t necessarily always like said changes, and that’s okay. The issue I have with this particular change is that it makes me wonder why they bothered to tell this story if Raylan’s intelligence and amazing shooting skills are not at all in use this entire series. He never gets the drop on Mansell. He and the Detroit cops fumble the investigation so badly that I frankly would be annoyed if I were a real Detroit cop because they basically make them look incompetent. The decision to basically neuter Raylan and not give him any decent leads or even just use his own intuition to figure out how to get this guy behind bars is infuriating. The difference with this series in particular is that it’s not like Mansell is very clever in how he commits crimes. The guy is blatantly doing whatever he wants, but the Detroit cops are so stupid that they somehow still can’t lock him up. So forgetting the judge and assistant’s murders, he also attempts to rob an Albanian guy at gunpoint and breaks his leg when the guy doesn’t have any money for him to steal. He was caught on audio by the police trying to blackmail a civil servant. He murders his co-conspirator, Sweetie, and burns down the bar. He executes the guy whose condo he and his bimbo had been staying in, basically for no reason, in broad daylight in an upscale condo. Did you read all of that? Now explain to me how the heck the cops can’t find any hard evidence or anything to get this guy locked up?
I’ll tell you how: shoddy writing. And unfortunately, this has been a problem for as long as fiction has existed. Often, lazy writers don’t want to make a villain smart and always one step ahead of the protagonist because it’s “too hard,” so what they do instead is simply make a dumb protagonist who bumbles all the attempts to catch the villain. And that’s really the biggest issue I have with Justified: City Primeval. The writers decided to take the easy way out by making the Detroit cops idiots and make Raylan a neutered puppy who can’t anticipate any of Mansell’s moves or gather any evidence that would lead to some kind of conviction. All of the momentum of the previous show is not present in this mini-series.
And you know, I’d be less salty about it if the content we’re seeing that is not Raylan investigating Mansell was good, but it’s not. Now, I will say that Raylan and Carolyn Wilder’s fling is by far the only legitimate enjoyment I’ve gotten out of the show. You’re welcome to throw a Criminal Offensive Side Eye at me for it; I’ve wanted Timothy Olyphant to have a black female love interest for 10 years and this series gave me exactly what I’ve always wanted (just no sex scenes, grrrr) and I’m okay with my own bias in that regard, but everything else in the show suffers as a result of the show not delivering good content. The performances are good, don’t get me wrong, but nothing is even coming close to the enjoyment we had back in Harlan county with the kooky criminals and the interesting fellow marshals in Lexington. This revival comes across as a cash grab leaning on an established IP to get viewers.
And based on the reactions from the Justified fandom, I don’t think the show is hitting for them either. I’ve been hearing complaints about Raylan’s lack of police work since episode two. I personally had reserved judgment and was hoping it was going slow in the beginning, but it would pick up in the middle, but it didn’t. The needle has not moved an inch. The entire plot is only moving forward because of Mansell, not Raylan, so in the end, it makes the show feel like Raylan was the Decoy Protagonist and the show is instead all about Mansell, who is an irritating piece of shit in every regard, and it annoys me greatly that this actor’s fangirls have clogged the Tumblr tag with a bunch of disgusting simping for a man who murdered his own mother in cold blood and threatened to rape an underage girl in front of her father. But that’s a long story I’m not gonna get into.
The central fact of the matter is that if you’re going to resurrect a show, then you have to do your due diligence in—and pun fully intended here—justifying its existence. From what I read of the book, it was a decent story that was worth telling. This story is not worth telling. It adds nothing to Raylan’s dimensions as a character and the “rivalry” they are attempting to set up with Raylan vs. Mansell is weak because the show has not developed it. I went through my head and thought about how many scenes Raylan and Mansell have had together and oddly enough, it’s not very much. He gets under Raylan’s skin because he’s a slimeball and knows it and yet the laws of man somehow just don’t apply to this guy, but that’s it. There is nowhere near the history between them like some of Raylan’s far better opponents like Boyd Crowder or Dickie Bennett. They might as well have just not made this revival in the first place if the only thing that would be good about it was Raylan gettin’ it on with a smart, powerful black woman who can handle him in a way none of the skanks he’s slept with in the past ever have. (Yes, I said it. Every woman Raylan has ever slept with in the original show was a skank. Come at me, scrublords, I’m ripped. )
Some of the issue, too, is that the supporting cast is nowhere near as strong as the one in the show’s original run. Our cast of characters is too big and so no one’s getting the focus they should have in order to make them more interesting. I already mentioned that Mansell has a stranglehold on the screentime and everyone else is left with pieces. There have been two majorly important conversations between Raylan and Carolyn that were cut short that I think was a massive mistake: seeing how they hooked up for the first time, and this most recent episode when she bluntly asked him how he would get Mansell’s prints on the murder weapon. We should have seen more content for Carolyn, Sweetie, and the detective that Raylan’s been partnered with, Wendell. None of these relationships are elaborated on enough to really make us care about what’s transpiring. It’s all too much of a light touch with Mansell as the focus, and frankly, if the new show is so enamored with this douche, then you should have just adapted the book as-is instead of including Raylan since Raylan isn’t getting to do anything the entire time.
I also want to take a little aside here and mention a pet peeve of mine. Anyone who knows me knows about my theory about what I call White Bitch Syndrome. White Bitch Syndrome, in a nutshell, is when writers coddle white female characters (and 90% of the time they’re also blonde) when everyone else in a story has to pay for their mistakes and live with the consequences of their actions. The number one reason I hated the final season of Justified was because the show went full White Bitch Syndrome with a character named Ava Crowder, who basically spent all six seasons being a reprehensible piece of shit and got away with everything solely because white woman. Now, the bimbo Sandy Stanton is nowhere near the level of cunt that Ava Crowder is—and yes, I use that term sparingly, but Ava Crowder has earned it, trust me—but she is still being coddled and I absolutely despise the way that she’s been Mansell’s accomplice, but only now does she realize he doesn’t care about anyone but himself and would kill her the second she defected. It’s not fair for you to make all these other characters pay for their actions, but she gets to walk because she’s blonde, white, and female, but again, this was Justified’s MO in the original show. Ava got away with everything and Winona’s stupid ass walked out on Raylan too without a scratch on her, cementing her as one of the dumbest characters of all time since there is no man in Harlan county like Raylan and any woman with sense would jump at the chance to be with him. But I digress.
I guess, overall, the words I would use for this revival are “unnecessary” and “unsatisfying.” It doesn’t feel like it needed to come back if this was the material it returned to in the end. Is it better than the last season? Eh. In some ways, yes. There are better characters here and Raylan isn’t acting like a complete psychopath willing to throw his badge and life away just to kill Boyd Crowder, but at the same time, this isn’t a worthy story for Raylan Givens, especially if like I suspect, they kill him off in the series finale. This was not the right choice for him and it seems to have fallen into the traps like the Dexter revival I mentioned above (keep in mind, I never watched Dexter, but I knew it had one of the most hated finales of all-time and I know about the revival’s reception only because my dad watched it over winter break one year and we chatted about how it went).
Is it possible the series finale wows me and fixes all the problems I had in episodes 1-7? Yes. Is it likely? No. My guess is that they left all the action in the final episode so it’s an incredibly bottom-heavy series with an unsatisfying conclusion. Rest assured, if they kill Raylan off after an incredibly lackluster season, I will simply go into denial like I did with the original final season, as I sadly have had to do with a lot of shows I used to love.
So what can we learn from this debacle?
A few things, really. First, don’t bring back a beloved character unless you have something relevant to say about them or about any sort of important subject matter that you want to write about. Second, if you are more interested in writing about the antagonist than the protagonist, then you need to establish that right out of the gate instead of leading people on to think the story is centered on the protagonist. Third, learn what scenes need to be elaborated on and what can get cut that won’t be detrimental to the overall story. Fourth, don’t be lazy and make a dumb protagonist so the antagonist can get away with everything; do the work of writing a competent antagonist and a competent protagonist equally. Because if you don’t do that, you end up with a trope that has a name I forget that has to do with Lex Luthor; don’t write your bad guy getting away with his crimes so often that it induces apathy within your audience because Status Quo is God. This trope refers to Lex Luthor as the main example of how a conflict between good and evil can get boring if the bad guy ALWAYS gets away with his crimes so that the work of fiction can continue to be made. We all know that Lex is never going to jail—not for anything serious that he’s done and not for any significant length of time if they do get him on something eventually—and so Superman defeating him time and time again can get old if you’re not adding any new dimensions to the struggle. Lex fared a little better in Superman: The Animated Series because Supes and Lex were engaged in, for lack of a better word, a cold war. Lex does a bunch of illegal, shady shit and Clark tries to stop it or tries to gather evidence to either put Lex away or destroy his chances at future crimes, and that worked for that show’s format. You have to balance it with victories and losses for both sides or your audiences will lose interest.
And frankly, that’s about what happened by the time I finished watching episode 7 of City Primeval. I’ve just lost interest in what they decided to focus on and this isn’t a return to form for Raylan Givens nor this writers’ room. But what can you expect when the last season was also a dried turd?
If nothing else, I’ll commend them for giving Raylan an age-appropriate, interesting love interest with whom he had actual chemistry. That’s the best thing I can say for City Primeval, personally. I guess we’ll see if they somehow buck the system and stick the landing, but my guess is I’ll be just as disappointed with this finale as I was with the original one, and that’s a damn shame considering the enormous talent of the cast in this mini-series.
Better luck next time, my long legged cowboy boyfriend.
“On this lonely road
Trying to make it home
Doin’ by my lonesome, pissed off
Who wants some?
See them long, hard times to come…”
I am happy to announce that I will be appearing on this week’s Authors’ Corner hosted by ConCarolinas TV! Please join us at 7:30pm EST on August 24th, 2023 where we will be discussing science fiction. Details are in the poster above. I look forward to seeing you all there!
Edit: ICYMI, here is the link to watch the recording on YouTube:
I am very excited about returning to Multiverse Con this October. In the meantime, I was featured on Go Indie Now’s Spotlight last night along with the amazing Violette Meier. Take a gander at the interview here:
Of Wings and Shadows (Of Cinder and Bone #5.5) is now available on ebook and in paperback! Get it today-only for .99 cents. The price will increase tomorrow. Read excerpt one here if you haven’t already.
In a modern-day world teeming with marauding dragons, there is only one solution: The Wild Hunt.
The United States government has decided to hold a tournament called The Wild Hunt to determine who will be responsible for the capture of wild dragons by the Knight Division. The four challengers Noah Wilson, Charlie Howard, Su Jin Han, and Beowulf have to catch five deadly dragons alive if they want to win the tournament and become the new Knight Division dragon hunters. Their journey will take them through the mountains of South Carolina, the seas of Key West, the caverns of Ruby Falls, the Redwood forest, and finally, the murky bayous of Louisiana. Will they succeed against their competition, or will the dragons of the Wild Hunt be too wild to tame?
Of Wings and Shadows is the sixth book in the Of Cinder and Bone series. It takes place in medias res of Book Five, Of Claws and Inferno. It follows Of Cinder and Bone, Of Blood and Ashes, Of Dawn and Embers, and Of Fury and Fangs.
Here is an all-new excerpt for your reading enjoyment!
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“Well, at least we picked a nice day.”
Charlie chuckled as he held his hand out for the camerawoman to steady her as she stepped onto the bay boat. She was a stocky Brazilian woman decked out in a fisherman’s rain slicker, the camera rig on her shoulder already outfitted with waterproof plastic as well. Rain pounded down from the heavens, thick droplets splashing all over the marina, but that was normal for this time of year in Key West. After all, they were currently in hurricane season, which might have been why the storm dragon had been so active in the area.
“I’m Elena,” she said, shaking his hand once before letting it go. “The fella with your eye in the sky is Kevin. We’ll be coordinating to make sure we get a good capture, but I’ll stay out of your way as much as possible.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m assuming you’re well-versed in boat safety?”
“Absolutely. They tapped me for this specifically since I’ve shot a few documentaries about fishermen in the area, so we’re good to go.”
“Great.” He pointed to one of the larger boats to their right. “The Florida Department of Natural Resources is on standby to help us transport the storm dragon once caught. They can back us up if things get really ugly and we have to reassess how to catch it. The plan is for Penelope to spot it, then we’ll chum the water to draw it closer and employ the netting.”
Elena saluted him. “Got it. Yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me and all that.”
“Ha! In this kind of weather, it does feel like we’re in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, doesn’t it?” Charlie took his spot by the helm and fired up the engine to pull out of the marina. Elena took a seat at the stern and began to film.
“Agent Okamura, do you read me?” Charlie said into the comm-link.
“I’ve got you, Charlie,” Yusuke replied. “Though it is a bit spotty on account of the bad weather.”
“Tell me about it. I wish I had windshield wipers on this helmet. We’re leaving the marina now. How’s Noah?”
“He’s seen a medic for the bruised ribs. Should be headed for New Orleans shortly.”
“Good. That midnight dragon was one tough customer. I’m glad he’s alright.” He glanced at the panel on his armored suit. “We should reach open water in a bit, but it’s likely going to be a long hunt. There is a lot of ground to cover, metaphorically speaking.”
“Understood. Just be careful. We’ve already seen these creatures can throw quite the left curve at you when you least expect it.”
“Amen to that. I’m gonna check in with Penelope; back in a few.”
Charlie switched channels. “Penelope, this is Charlie, over.”
“Got ya, Charlie,” the pilot replied. “Having fun so far, over?”
“Oh, I’m having a ball. Lead the way; we’re ready to rock and roll, over.”
“Great. The dragon’s last sighting was a little after six o’clock this morning.” She read out the coordinates of where they were headed and Charlie adjusted the boat accordingly to follow. Once they left the marina, he went to full throttle. The DNR boat followed at a safe distance. Most of the path had been cleared by the Coast Guard. Key West saw less visitors during this part of the year, so unlike Libby’s hunt of the aquatic dart-backed wyrm, civilian interference was far less likely.
“Charlie, I’ve got a visual. Can you confirm, over?” She read the updated coordinates to him and he adjusted his course, then slowed the boat. He then adjusted the HUD scope to zoom in as he spotted the shifting waves.
The storm dragon had been circling a school of fish, borrowing some technique from the local sharks—it would stalk them at a distance, then close in and attack from below, pushing the fish up to the surface where they would be easier to catch. Its dark blue scales blended in with the deeper sea water and made it harder to detect. It also shared traits with seabirds, being covered in plumage that allowed for buoyancy and protection against the salty waters and harsh winds during hurricane season. It had a long, narrow body that was fifteen feet from snout to tail and webbed feet with sharp talons on each, its wings doubling as fins when it was fully submerged.
Charlie whistled. “Thar she blows. Sighting confirmed, Penelope. I’m going to start chumming the water and I need you to keep an eye out for other predators in the area, since it’s bound to attract some that want a free meal, over.”
“Roger that, Charlie. Be careful, over.”
“Thanks. You too, over.” Charlie headed towards the stern where he’d had a cooler waiting, the bucket of frozen chum inside already prepped. “Elena, we’ve got the dragon in view.”
“Fantastic.” She headed for the bow and took a look. “Wow. Que linda. You all ready to go, Plankton?”
Charlie paused. “Plankton…cute. And yeah, let’s see if we can get Moby Dick over here.”
He shut off the engine once they were several meters out and then dropped the anchor. He picked the side of the boat facing the marine reptile and lowered the metal mesh chum bucket into the ocean. Though visibility was harder thanks to the storm, he could see bubbles and blood beginning to blossom out from the bucket and spread into the ocean water.
They waited. The storm dragon had submerged but hadn’t left the area. Charlie knew from experience that it wasn’t always an instantaneous reaction. He resisted the urge to pace, as the vibrations it would cause in the hull might deter the dragon.
“Uh-oh,” Penelope said over the channel. “We’ve got incoming. I’m spotting something on radar headed your way, to your starboard about fifty meters out, over.”
Charlie went over to the right side of the boat and peered through the rainfall, muttering under his breath, “Please be a hammerhead. Please be a hammerhead.”
As it reached twenty meters away, Charlie could see a fin and a wake, giving him an idea of the species. “Shit. Looks like a Mako, at least ten feet long. Things are about to get messy.”
“Why?” Elena asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Not all sharks are aggressive,” he told her as he pulled up the anchor and then turned the engine over. “In fact, Key West has never had a fatal shark attack in its entire history, but Mako sharks are among the aggressive ones, which means we might have a confrontation here in a second. We need to be ready to boogie if that happens; a fight could capsize us.”
Sure enough, the storm dragon changed directions to head for the chum just as the Mako made contact and began eating the bits of barracuda that had floated loose from the bucket. Charlie gave the boat a bit of gas to help it float along at a steady pace, then began working on laying the net while keeping a wary eye on the two approaching predators.
The storm dragon circled behind the Mako and then dashed towards it, aiming a bite at its caudal fin. The Mako had anticipated as much and darted out of the way, then swung around to face its rival. Its powerful jaws snapped as it attempted to bite the right wing of the dragon when it swam past, missing by mere inches.
The storm dragon dove out of sight beneath the boat, the water swirling behind its long, powerful tail.
“That can’t be good,” Elena remarked, practically reading Charlie’s mind. He gave the boat more gas as he started to try and strategically lay the nets in a wide semi-circle around the area. The storm dragon proved them both right when it surged up from below and rammed the shark, causing it to flip upside down. The shark wriggled for less than a minute, but then went completely still on its back along the water’s choppy surface.
Charlie’s eyes widened beneath his helmet. “Holy hell. It’s figured out tonic immobility.”
“Who-whatta-huh?” Elena asked.
“If you flip a shark upside down, it enters a kind of trance and can be motionless for up to fifteen minutes or so. It’s how orcas sometimes catch and eat sharks. This dragon’s not only smart, but definitely experienced.”
Both of them jumped as the storm dragon grabbed the motionless shark and bit a hole into its side. The water churned red with blood as it began tearing chunks of its soft sides and belly off.
Elena swallowed hard as she watched. “Yeesh.”
“You said it,” Charlie agreed. “Nature don’t play.”
He switched back to the comm-link. “Agent Okamura, we may have a bit of a problem. Our storm dragon decided it wanted some Mako shark instead of sushi for lunch. I’m working on laying the nets now, but I’m not sure how long it’ll stay stationary.”
“If it gets airborne, we might have trouble following it with this weather. The best bet might be to dart it and slow it down while it’s distracted with the meal.”
Charlie winced. That was risky, but he knew he was running low on time. The tournament timer had already clocked him past the hour mark, so he had to finish this hunt now or it would hurt the team’s average. “Copy that.”
He grabbed the tranquilizer rifle leaning up against the helm and checked that it was properly loaded. Then he stepped over to the starboard side of the ship and took careful aim at the wriggling mass of dragon beneath the Mako shark carcass, which it had already eaten a great deal of in only several seconds.
“Charlie, we’ve got more incoming,” Penelope said. “One to your one o’clock, the other at your three o’clock, over.”
No sooner than she said it, the storm dragon released the Mako shark’s corpse and swam deeper beneath the surface.
“Dammit,” Charlie swore as he readjusted the sights on the rifle to look at the surface of the water. “We’ve got a feeding frenzy on our hands. Visibility is next to none. I think I’m gonna have to go down there.”
“What?” Yusuke demanded. “Charlie, that’s too dangerous. You can’t possibly out-swim it and there are other predators being drawn to that spot.”
“With all due respect, sir, we’re already lagging behind. If I can get in range, I can attach a syringe to a harpoon gun and dart it from a distance. The sharks will be more concerned with the chum and the Mako carcass than me.” He pulled open a waterproof suit bag that contained scuba gear as well as a diving oxygen tank. “I’ve spent my entire adult life around these animals. I need you to trust me, Okamura.”
There was a long pause, then he heard him sigh. “Alright. I trust your judgment.”
“Thank you.” Charlie removed his helmet and replaced it with the breathing apparatus, sliding his arms into the straps for the tank. He removed one of the syringes from the tranquilizer rifle and attached it to the end of the harpoon gun he’d brought with him. He fitted the flippers onto his feet and took the mouthpiece out long enough to address Elena. “I’ll be back as fast as I can. Keep an eye on the activity at the surface. If it gets too rough, move the boat.”
She nodded. “I will. Be careful, huh?”
“I will.” He smiled before putting the mouthpiece back in and grabbing the harpoon gun. The boat rocked slightly as he walked to the port side away from the bloody mess and jumped into the water.
Charlie let his weight allow him to sink several feet below the surface and switched on his head lamp. The two sharks that closed in on the Mako shark’s body were a bull shark and a tiger shark. The two predators didn’t want to be bothered with one another, so in the time it took him to prep, they’d torn the corpse in half and were devouring the remains. He swam below them, keeping a wide berth, and spotted a dark shape moving towards the chum bucket that was up near the surface.
Though a formidable opponent, the storm dragon must have reasoned it couldn’t fight two fully grown sharks for the rest of its meal, so it returned to sate itself with the chum. He knew he had to work fast; once it was full, it would likely fly away or simply swim back into open water. The nets he had lain had straightened out and surrounded them, meaning he would need to dart the dragon and then guide it into the netting, so he swam forward steadily to make his presence known.
And it didn’t take long for the storm dragon to notice him.
The marine reptile had been nosing at the bucket to release more tidbits, but it angled its head when it spotted his light. The glow of the flashlight shone over one of its pale blue eyes, its pupil contracting, and then the dragon let go of the chum bucket to focus on him instead. There had been many a time it was just him and a large aquatic predator in the shifting seas and something in him was always awed and terrified at the same time.
The dragon swam towards him much like a crocodile, its streamlined body cutting through the water, and stopped just shy of a few yards to examine him. The creature had encountered humans before, and unfortunately took a man’s life, but it had been an accident when the fishermen pulled up their nets. It seemed rather curious instead of afraid or agitated. Charlie let it observe him for a moment, then cautiously offered his hand to the creature, palm out. The dragon drifted closer. His hand landed on its snout and petted it gently. It didn’t seem to mind.
Its curiosity satisfied, the storm dragon glided past him. Charlie prayed for the safety of himself and his colleague as he let it go by, then turned and fired the harpoon gun. The syringe struck the dragon’s tail on the underside near the base. He hoped with the creature’s size that such a small prick wouldn’t be felt.
The dragon’s head snapped around, its teeth bared.
Hope is a thing with feathers, Charlie thought to himself.
Then he swam as fast and hard as he could for the boat.
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Read the conclusion to Charlie’s hunt in Of Wings and Shadows, out now on all platforms! Thanks for all of your support so far and happy reading!