Category Archives: Writing

Nackles Wishes You a Merry Christmas

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Tonight (or tomorrow, depending on some sources) ist Krampusnacht! In lieu of treats in my shoes, I’m reposting an article I wrote for Techyum.

Creative Commons photo by El Waka.

 

Here in the U.S., we’re finally through the stuff-your-face holiday — and you know what that means. The dark gods of Capitalism get to haul out their blackjack and lay it across our collective faces a few dozen times. That’s right: it’s Christmas, friends. Time to start consuming.

You know who else wants to consume this holiday season?

Nackles does.

Who is Nackles, you ask? As described by crime author Donald E. Westlake writing under his occasional pseudonym Curt Clark in his 1964 short story of the same name:

Nackles is to Santa Claus what Satan is to God, what Ahriman is to Ahura Mazda, what the North Wind is to the South Wind. Nackles is the new Evil.

…And what does Nackles do? Nackles lives on the flesh of little boys and girls…Nackles roams back and forth under the earth, in his dark tunnels darker than subway tunnels, pulled by the eight dead-white goats, and he searches for little boys and girls to stuff into his big black sack and carry away and eat. But Santa Claus won’t let him have good boys and girls. Santa Claus is stronger than Nackles, and keeps a protective shield around little children, so Nackles can’t get at them.

But when little children are bad, it hurts Santa Claus, and weakens the shield Santa Claus has placed around them, and if they keep on being bad pretty soon there’s no shield left at all, and on Christmas Eve instead of Santa Claus coming down out of the sky with his bag of presents Nackles comes up out of the ground with his bag of emptiness, and stuffs the bad children in, and whisks them away to his dark tunnels and the eight dead-white goats.

Nackles is so evil, in fact, that he got writer Harlan Ellison into one of his most famous Hollywood bar brawls. In the mid-1980s, Ellison adapted Westlake’s story into a spooky-as-hell racially-charged script for a Christmas Special of the Twilight Zone reboot, on which Ellison was to make his directorial debut. The network freaked: “Santa Claus can’t have an evil twin!” Ellison freaked: “I’m Ellison!” Merry Christmas.

But more importantly in these trying times of a brisk Black Friday and budget-crisis caterwauling — as Westlake put it:

“Did God create Men, or does Man create gods?…In the old days, Santa Claus would treat children a bit more scornfully, leaving a lump of coal in their stockings in lieu of presents, but I suppose the Depression helped to change that. There are times and situations when a lump of coal is nothing to sneer at.”

In such times, Westlake implies, far more brutal methods are required to keep the populace in line: methods involving dead-white goats and a big bag of Empty.

Is this one of those times?

Nackles knows.

You can read the whole text of Westlake’s classic Christmas story at Nackles.com, but before you click that link, you should know that I have no idea if that site is authorized by the Westlake estate. That text could be pirated.

And reading pirated texts is very, very naughty. Don’t be naughty.

You don’t want a visit from Nackles, do you?

My Site’s Ballardian New Background

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Owing to a completely inexplicable meltdown (not mine…my site’s) I had to reinstall WordPress on Thomasroche.com and re-import all my posts.

So I gave the site a dementedly Ballardiapocalyptic new background, to reflect the way I often feel when typing on the interwebs. Especially when interfacing with WordPress. Luv ya, guys…mean it.

Bonus points if you spot the subtle Kerouac allusion here…made less subtle by the fact that I mention it.

I’ll refrain from pretentiously claiming there’s also a reference to Bulgarian playwright Georgi Markov…sometimes an umbrella is just an umbrella.

But the briefcase is Marcellus Wallace’s.

And to answer your question, it’s packed with cheese.

In Search of Michigan County

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Now Entering Michigan County Resize

For years, I assumed Bruce Springsteen’s iconic song “Highway Patrolman” was set in Michigan.

I can’t tell you why, other than the fact that Joe Roberts, the protagonist, “musta done 110 through Michigan County that night” while pursing his brother Frankie on suspicion of murder toward the end of the song.

But there is no Michigan County in Michigan, I discovered. No problem, then…it’s probably Ohio. Hell, Joe feels like an Ohio guy, right? He reminds me a bit of Ted on “How I Met Your Mother.” Ohio it is!

Doh!! You can’t drive to Canada from Ohio. You can drive to Canada from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pensylvania, New York…but why would Pennsylvania, or New York, which don’t border Michigan, have a Michigan County? They don’t. Neither does Ohio. Michigan as a place name is based on a French pronunciation of a Native American word, so it is very unlikely that the name could exist in Pennsylvania or New York predating the state of Michigan.

Now, that’s not the end of the story, because county names in the U.S. aren’t quite as simple as all that. Many counties have historically changed their names, been incorporated into other counties, and even switched states. The song is set in the ’60s and possibly the early ’70s. So, hey, who knows, right? Maybe there wasone.

In fact, there isn’t a Michigan County anywhere inthe United States, there wasn’t in teh 1960s, and as far as I or any other obsessive Springsteen fan can tell, there never has been.

Yes, in case you were wondering, I felt silly when it finally occurred to me to look up the Wikipedia page on the song. Especially since I’d been using Wikipedia trying to find out if there was a historical Michigan County. To be fair, I think when the question first occured to me a while back, there was no page for ‘Highway Patrolman’ the song. But apparently others before me performed the same weird search that I did. Then one of them said, “I think I’ll start a page for ‘Highway Patrolman’ and mention that there is no Michigan County.” Thanks, guys. Obsessive Guy Time Wasters Task #133,675 completed, with honors. Now moving on to the ballistics pages to try to figure out if you could really kill ten people with a sawed-off .410.

Joe is also a sergeant out at Perrineville, which could have been “Perronville,” which is an unincorporated area in Michigan’s Upper Penninsula. But it’s not. I’d never really looked at the lyrics in print. Why would I? As with all the songs on Springsteen’s Nebraska, the lyrics clearly anunciated. Hell, it’s like listening to a damn audiobook. It’s one of the things I like most about the album — because on Nebraska, Springsteen pairs both narrative subtlety and thematic clarity to evoke my favorite part American landscape — the night side — in a way he hasn’t done before or since. I certainly wouldn’t be the first person to say that the album is American noir. There’s a cleanness to writing about real locations, even in noir fiction. Atlantic City, the New Jersey Turnpike…they’re real, sure, but there’s a different feeling, an atmospheric one, to writing about invented places. Gotham, Arkham, Metropolis, Sunnydale…maybe Michigan County is Springsteen’s Sin City, where you do 110 down the right back highway you can find anything…anything.

On Nebraska, nothing is what it seems. As in a Hitchcock movie or a Cornell Woolrich story, no word, phrase or gesture has only one potential meaning. On first listen, from some perspectives, the lyrics seem credulous, credible, almost boneheadedly simplistic. The stories they tell sound like soundbites from the nightly news if you don’t read them too deeply. But in fact, not a single line on Nebraska is meant at face value. Nor is the album laced with comic irony. Hey, Springsteen is a good-natured guy, I think. He’s mostly too nice to be snarky. And isn’t it always the nice ones who turn out to be serial killers? Springsteen’s irony, on Nebraska, has one intent, and that’s to fuck you up so bad you won’t know what hit you.

Oh, sure, Springsteen might be making a point about the American Dream, about family, about sin, redemption…whatever. That’s all the counter-text to a credulous subtext. It only works because it’s vicious. It’s meant to leave you bleeding. If you think Springsteen thinks it’s all right that Joe Roberts let a killer escape, you’re off your rocker. If you think he’s making a statement that Joe did the wrong thing, you’re equally whacked. To my reading of the song, Springsteen doesn’t know what the hell Joe Roberts should have done in Michigan County that night. He’s just glad he’s not Joe.

Except that he is, and we all are, and that’s why it works.

Bruce usually isn’t ironic. Oh, sure, he can be kinda funny at times. I get the sense he’s a good-natured guy. Having seen him twice in concert, I am glad he was never my toddler. I imagine he cracks jokes, siles a lot, slaps his friends on the back.

But he isn’t usually ironic in the way he is on Nebraska, where Even my favorite Springsteen song, “Thunder Road,” is mostly unironic throughout. There’s one exception, and I think it makes the song. I imagine the narrator smiling when he says “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re all right,” as if he were talking to a sisterly friend he grew up with, and used to tease because he liked her… and she just happens to have become the love of his life. He gives her shit because he likes to see her blush. Beyond that one line, I read “Thunder Road” as being desperately straightforward.

Anyway, “Highway Patrolman” is not desperately straightforward, and it’s not set in Michigan. It’s not set in Ohio. And as to what Joe should have done, well… all options sucked. That’s the point.

Here’s to you, Michigan county: Speed limit 110, no waiting to cross the border.

NANOWRIMO Day 2

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Chiding Secretary

 

This year I’m participating in NANOWRIMO; I’m just getting a late start.

For those of you on the same page as me (the one with nothing on it), 50,000 words divided by 29 days is 1,725 words a day.

My opinion is that trying to make up the extra 1667 words today if you drew a blank yesterday is the wrong way to go.

Setting your daily or weekly goals too high is a good way to have no fun at all writing a novel.

When writing a novel is no fun at all, you’re more likely to go do something reasonable and productive with your time instead…something like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, or nailing your foot to the floor and spinning around in a circle squawking.

Both of which are also options. Hell, why not blow off today? 50,000 words divided by 28 days, after all, is only 1,785, right?

New Write Sex Post: “Make a Fool of Yourself”

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Write Sex Logo

My new post is up on Write Sex, in which I encourage you as a writer to make a fool of yourself:

You probably already know that there are a million reasons projects don’t get finished — whether they’re novels, short stories or freeway overpasses. For the occasionally-published writer or the frequently-published writer who has a project or two they never get around to, the reasons are often creative or structural.

But for people who never get anywhere — not just who think they might like to write and never do, but who sit down and write, but never finish a project, or finish it but never get it published — the reasons tend to be far more amorphous. Novels are one thing — they’re long. Finishing one to the point where someone might like to read it is, in my opinion, a bitch.

But with the advent of e-books, you can self-publish a 3,000-word short story in about six clicks on Amazon.com. It bewilders me that people who want to be writers don’t do that, just to test the waters. I don’t care how wretched your execrable prose is, it’s a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff I’ve paid money for. And yeah, you might sell only one copy of your 3,100-word werewolf romance epic — to your mom, or maybe your therapist.

Read the rest at WriteSex.net

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Don DeLillo Interviewed in The Paris Review

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Don DeLillo

I love this quote from Don DeLillo, which The Paris Review excerpted on their Facebook page from Adam Begley’s interview with him. It feels eerily reminiscent of how I feel, not so much about being a writer but specifically about being a novelist.

…I wish I had started earlier, but evidently I wasn’t ready. First, I lacked ambition. I may have had novels in my head but very little on paper and no personal goals, no burning desire to achieve some end. Second, I didn’t have a sense of what it takes to be a serious writer. It took me a long time to develop this. Even when I was well into my first novel I didn’t have a system for working, a dependable routine. I worked haphazardly, sometimes late at night, sometimes in the afternoon. I spent too much time doing other things or nothing at all. On humid summer nights I tracked horseflies through the apartment and killed them—not for the meat but because they were driving me crazy with their buzzing. I hadn’t developed a sense of the level of dedication that’s necessary to do this kind of work.

Read the whole interview here, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Tuareg vs. Touareg — Autocorrect FTW!

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Tuareg Man

 

It pleases me to announce that I now have a standardized spelling of “Tuareg” programmed into Autocorect in Microsoft Word.

I find that I often type it as “Touareg,” just out of habit, because I find it, visually a prettier word. I was unable to determine what the Tuareg themselves prefer (I don’t think that woudl exactly be the easiest task for a pastoralist nomadic people living in possibly the most oppressive desert region of the globe), so I settled on Tuareg as the standard because it is the most common spelling in English today, and most poeple in the U.S. know Touareg as a model of Volkswagen.

Speaking of which, does anyone remember the Volkswagen Scirocco, named after the Italian word for the Mediterranean wind that blows off the Sahara? Thanks for making North African adventure fiction seem less exotic than ever, fuckers. Maybe you could call your next model the Volkswagen Quicksand instead of the Volkswagen Fech Fech?

In fact, all of Volkswagen’s models from that era were named after winds. Some of them survive, like so:

The Scirocco name derives from the Italian word for the Sirocco wind — and the period in its history when Volkswagen named vehicles after prominent winds, including also Passat (after the German word for Trade wind), Golf (after Gulf Stream), Bora (after Bora), Polo (after Polar Winds), and Jetta (after Jet stream).

I know I am prone to off-color humor, but it seems like a bad idea to name any line of products after a bunch of different winds. I remember being about 12 and playing Trivial Pursuit in Lake Tahoe with some friends.  One of the questions concerned the VW Scirocco and its namesake, the hot Sahara wind. For the rest of the weekend, whenever any of us farted, we announced proudly, “Here comes the Scirocco — the hot Tahoe wind!”

Anyway, back to more dignified concerns: In deciding on a spelling of Tuareg to stick with, it wasn’t just Touareg I had to deal with. If words transliterated from Arabic are a nightmare for speakers of European languages, believe me, ones from Berber tongues are even more confusing.

I rejected the occasionally seen “Twareg” as being a visually hideous word, and although “Touarick” may actually be more contemporary to what I’m writing, I dismiss it as vaguely dysphemistic. I’m sorry, but adding ck’s to a word where none belong is just, I don’t know, unnecessary.

Oh, also, in case anyone cares, I now autocorrect “wadi” to “oued.” Having been so deeply affected by Emmanuel Jal’s War Child, in which it is spelled “wadi,” I will always want to type it with the Sudanese spelling instead of the Algerian one. Both words are pronounced the same way: “wah-dee.”

Just, you know, in case anyone cares.

AUTOCORRECT FTW! And if deciding on a spelling for Tuareg isn’t a First Word problem solved, then I don’t know what is.

Image: Tuareg man in Algeria, by Garrondo, via Wikipedia. Creative Commons.

‘The Panama Laugh’ Makes the Preliminary Bram Stoker Award Ballot!

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This happened a week or two ago, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to keep up with my blog posts. Anyway…My debut novel The Panama Laugh is on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association! I’m not a “nominee” yet, and I’m definitely not a “finalist,” yet. But I’m very excited to be on the ballot.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled, and completely blown away — this was pretty unexpected. I’m greatly honored to be in such great company. It reminds me what a privilege it’s been to work with such incredible writers over the years. On the preliminary ballot are, among others, many people I’ve worked with. There’s my good friend Shade Rupe, to whose fantastic anthology Funeral Party II I contributed “Viva Las Vegas,” and with whom I collaborated on an (as yet unproduced) screenplay; there’s my fellow Night Bazaar blogger John Hornor Jacobs; there’s Maria Alexander, who wrote several wonderful articles for me when I was editing Eros Zine, the brilliant Brian Hodge, who contributed two completely incredible stories to my Noirotica series, Caitlin R. Kiernan, a contributor of wonderful pieces to several of my anthologies including Noirotica 2 and Brothers of the Night, Nancy Holder, who contributed a magnificent story to In the Shadow of the Gargoyle, one of the Ace Books anthologies I edited with Nancy Kilpatrick, plus such luminaries as Robert Dunbar, Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, Jonathan Maberry, Adam Troy Castro, Marti Noxon of Buffy fame, John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of Let The Right One In, and — GASP — Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Alan Moore, Peter Straub, Ellen Datlow…the list goes on. I’m absolutely amazed to have my name mentioned in the same breath as people like this.

In case you don’t know about the Bram Stoker Awards, here’s what Wikipedia says about them:

The Bram Stoker Award is a recognition presented by the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for “superior achievement” in horror writing. The awards have been presented annually since 1987, and the winners are selected by ballot of the Active members of the HWA. They are named after influential Irish horror writer Bram Stoker, author of the novel Dracula, among others.

[Link.]

Have I mentioned, by the way, that Stoker’s Dracula is one of my favorite novels of all time?

Here’s the complete preliminary ballot, from HWA’s site. (Again — just to remind everyone — I’m not a “nominee” or a “finalist” yet. I just made the preliminary ballot…which doesn’t take away from the honor.)

NOVEL:

RECS:

Ballot Required

Lamberson, Greg — Cosmic Forces

Longfellow, Ki — Houdini Heart

Malfi, Ronald — Floating Staircase

O’Neill, Gene — Not Fade Away

Warner, Matthew — Blood Born

JURY:

Ballot Required

Conlon, Christopher — A Matrix Of Angels

Dunbar, Robert — Willy

McKinney, Joe — Flesh Eaters

Oliver, Reggie — The Dracula Papers, Book 1: The Scholar’s Tale

Thomas, Lee — The German

FIRST NOVEL:

RECS:

Ballot Required

Bird, Allyson — Isis Unbound

Lee, Frazer — The Lamplighters

Reynolds, Graeme — High Moor

Talley, Brett J. — That Which Should Not Be

Wagner, Jeremy — The Armageddon Chord

JURY:

No ballot required, the following works will proceed directly to the Final Ballot. Please note these works may not be described as Nominees until the Final Ballot is formally announced.

Jacobs, John, Horner — Southern Gods

Roche, Thomas — The Panama Laugh

YA NOVEL:

RECS:

Ballot Required

Faherty, J. G. — Ghosts of Coronado Bay, A Maya Blair Mystery

Holder, Nancy — The Screaming Season

Maberry, Jonathan — Dust & Decay

Matthews, Araminta Star — Blind Hunger

JURY:

Ballot Required

Blake, Kendare — Anna Dressed in Blood

Kraus, Daniel — Rotters

Ness, Patrick — A Monster Calls

Oppel, Kenneth — This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein

Roth, Veronica — Divergent

GRAPHIC NOVEL:

RECS:

Ballot Required

Hill, Joe — Locke & Key, Volume 4

Maberry, Jonathan — Marvel Universe vs. The Punisher

Maberry, Jonathan — Marvel Universe vs. Wolverine

Mignola, Mike and Golden, Christopher — The Plague Ships

O’Reilly, Sean; Nassise, Joe; Weick, Halston — Candice Crow

JURY:

Ballot Required

Brosgol, Vera — Anya’s Ghost

Fialkov, Joshua Hale — Echoes

Jensen, Jeff — Green River Killer

Moore, Alan — Neonomicon

Smith, John — Cradlegrave

LONG FICTION:

RECS:

Ballot Required

Breaux, Kevin James — Dark Water: Beaming Smile

Calvillo, Michael Louis — 7Brains

Little, John R. — Ursa Major

O’Neill, Gene — Rusting Chickens

Schwamberger, Ty — The Fields

JURY:

Ballot Required

Hodge, Brian — Roots and All

Kiernan, Caitlin — The Colliers’ Venus (1893)

Lindqvist, John Ajvide — The Music of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer

Shearman, Robert — Alice Through A Plastic Sheet

Straub, Peter — The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine

SHORT FICTION:

RECS:

Ballot Required

Bailey, Michael — “It Tears Away” (The Shadow of the Unknown)

Lillie-Paetz, Ken — “Hypergraphia” (The Uninvited, Issue 1)

O’Neill, Gene — “Graffiti Sonata” (Dark Discoveries)

Palisano, John — “X is for Xyx” (M is for Monster)

Warren, Kaaron — “All You Can Do Is Breathe” (Blood and Other Cravings)

JURY:

Ballot Required

Ausubel, Ramona — “Atria” (The New Yorker Magazine, April 4, 2011)

Ballingrud, Nathan — “Sunbleached” (Teeth: Vampire Tales)

Castro, Adam Troy — “Her Husband’s Hands” (Lightspeed Magazine)

King, Stephen — “Herman Wouk Is Still Alive” (The Atlantic Magazine, May 2011)

Saunders, George — “Home” (The New Yorker Magazine, June 13, 2011)

SCREENPLAY:

RECS:

No ballot required, the following works will proceed directly to the Final Ballot. Please note these works may not be described as Nominees until the Final Ballot is formally announced.

Ball, Alan — True Blood: Spellbound (Episode #44)

Goodman, Cory — Priest

Nolfi, George — The Adjustment Bureau

JURY:

Ballot Required

Gimple, Scott M. — The Walking Dead, episode 13: “Pretty Much Dead Already”

Gimple, Scott M. — The Walking Dead, episode 9: “Save the Last One”

Noxon, Marti — Fright Night

Ovrehahl, Andre and Havard S. Johansen — Troll Hunter

Sharzer, Jessica — American Horror Story, episode 12: “Afterbirth”

ANTHOLOGY:

RECS:

No ballot required, the following works will proceed directly to the Final Ballot. Please note these works may not be described as Nominees until the Final Ballot is formally announced.

Carbone, Tracy L. — NEHW Presents: Epitaphs

Hutton, Frank J. — Tattered Souls 2

Skipp, John — Demons: Encounters with the Devil and His Minions, Fallen Angels, and the Possessed

JURY:

Ballot Required

Dann, Jack and Nick Gevers — Ghosts By Gaslight

Datlow, Ellen — Blood And Other Cravings

Datlow, Ellen — Supernatural Noir

Datlow, Ellen and Terri Windling — Teeth

VanderMeer, Jeff and Ann — The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

COLLECTION:

RECS:

Ballot Required

Burke, Chesya — Let’s Play White

Connolly, Lawrence C. — Voices: Tales of Horror

Gresh, Lois — Eldritch Evolutions

Haines, Paul — The Last Days of Kali Yuga

Morton, Lisa — Monsters of L.A.

Ochse, Weston — Multiplex Fandango

JURY:

Ballot Required

Fowler, Christopher — Red Gloves: The London Horrors

Kiernan, Caitlin R. — Two Worlds and In-Between

Llewellyn, Livia — Engines of Desire

Oates, Joyce Carol — The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares

Oliver, Reggie — Mrs. Midnight and Other Stories

NON-FICTION:

RECS:

No ballot required, the following works will proceed directly to the Final Ballot. Please note these works may not be described as Nominees until the Final Ballot is formally announced.

Bannatyne, Lesley Pratt — Halloween Nation: Behind the Scenes of America’s Fright Night

Mamatas, Nick — Starve Better

Mogk, Matt — Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies

JURY:

Ballot Required

Crawford, Gary William, Jim Rockhill, and Brian J. Showers, Eds. — Reflections in a Glass Darkly

Rupe, Shade — Dark Stars Rising

Shultz, David E. and S.T. Joshi, Ed. — Letters to James F. Morton

Tibbetts, John C. — The Gothic Imagination

Wood, Rocky — Stephen King: A Literary Companion

POETRY:

RECS:

Ballot Required

Alexander, Maria — At Louche Ends: Poetry for the Decadent,the Damned & the Absinthe-Minded

Clark, G.O — Shroud of Night

Borski, Robert — Blood Wallah and Other Poems

Simon, Marge — The Mad Hattery

Ward, Kyla Lee — The Land of Bad Dreams

JURY:

Ballot Required

Addison, Linda — How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend

Boston, Bruce — Surrealities

Marshall, Helen — Skeleton Leaves

Schwader, Ann K. — Twisted in Dream

Simon, Marge — Unearthly Delights

[Night Bazaar] How I Found My Strengths as a Writer

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From my new column at The Night Bazaar, about finding your strengths and weaknesses as a writer:

I’m far from convinced there’s any such profession as “writer” anymore; we’re all multi-taskers, by definition.

But there is this thing called “writing,” yes, and occasionally I get to do it.

When it comes to writing itself, I like to believe that my strengths are far more numerous than my weaknesses.

But it’s quite possible that I’m kidding myself.

What I do find is that the more I write, the less my strengths matter and the more my weaknesses do. That’s because writing a lot of fiction puts me face-to-face with every possible roadblock in my creative process, and every roadblock is a potential “debunking” of my strengths. It doesn’t matter how great I can write X type of scene, if Y type of scene keeps me from ever finishing my novel.

As a result, all that my strengths do is allow me to get past the weaknesses, or manage them effectively. That’s great news, yeah, but if I take the time to celebrate my strengths, it only slows me down.

Here’s an example.

Read the rest of this post at The Night Bazaar.

[Night Bazaar] Heroes and Heroines

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Here’s an excerpt from my new post at The Night Bazaar, “Heroes and Heroines:”

I’m never quite sure what makes a hero, which I think is probably the key to knowing what makes a hero.

I look at it this way: if being a hero was easy, everyone would do it. But it’s not just that being a hero takes work or sacrifice…on the contrary, it takes knowing what to do to remedy a grievous situation, or at least prevent it from getting any worse. That’s actually a really tall order for most of us.

A hero is somebody who’s willing to get the knowledge necessary to understand what can be done without screwing up the world even worse than it’s screwed up. That doesn’t mean all protagonists are heroes — far from it. Many, even most, might have some heroic qualities…especially in adventure fiction. But that doesn’t make them heroes.

Read the rest of the post at The Night Bazaar.