I go into fantasy with eyes wide open, knowing that reality can be, will be, discarded if it allows a human to teleport or an invasion of space robots.  I don’t need a justification beyond this is fantasy, and that’s what makes it awesome.

I know writers who work hard to justify fantasy.  Just the other day, someone told me that if they were going to write a story with someone who turned invisible, they’d have to come up with a reason why that person wasn’t blind at the same time.  It’s a legitimate question, or it would be if becoming invisible was something that could actually happen in real life.  But it can’t, and unless the goal of your invisible man story is to make someone think being invisible would stink, then it’s counter productive.

This is the “Superman would kill Lois” fallacy.  It comes from a well-meaning place, but it misses the point.  Superman (and much of fantasy) isn’t meant to be realistic.  Superman, like most superheroes, is not intended to be a horror story about a superhuman who accidentally crushes to death everyone he loves.  It’s a mistake to approach it from that angle, even if to do so is with the best of intentions.

This is why I prefer fantasy to science fiction.  Even my science fiction stories are fantasies.  I can’t give you a reasonable excuse for death rays, robots, and alien life forms.  I just know that they’re neat, and that’s really all I need to know.

Fantasy elements should have limits, but those limits don’t need to come from reality itself which already has the biggest limit of all.

I’m sure if I tried very, very hard, I could come up with a semi-believable reason for why getting bitten by a radioactive spider would give someone superpowers.  I know there are writers who strain to justify integalactic travel against the unforgiving limit of the speed of light.  And if anyone thinks there will ever be an even remotely scientifically plausible justification for telepathy, Hulking out, or dragons breathing fire, they’re more optimistic than I.

But here I am.

I’m certainly not a household name, but I’m doing all right.  Better than I ever expected.  I have seven published novels (when the heck did that happen?).  I have three of books optioned for movies, and even if none of them end up going anywhere, that’s still pretty damn cool.  Just getting a book optioned amazes me.  I never planned on that, never even thought it worth considering.  But there it is, and I have the check stubs and fan mail to prove it.

Like all aspiring writers, I took some time to consider just where I should put my efforts.  Should I write something that spoke to me?  Or should I try to be commercial?

Initially, my choice was to write something that would satisfy me.  My first manuscripts were experimental, awkward beasts as I learned to write.  I figured they wouldn’t be any good, and that would be okay.  I gave myself permission to just write for me and see where it went.  After I got the hang of this storytelling stuff, then I’d worry about whether I was commercial enough or not.  A funny thing happened along the way though.  I never really tried to be commercial.

Writing is a tough biz, and being an aspiring writer is a rough, discouraging endeavor.  Inevitably, you will be told you aren’t doing it right or that your story is difficult to sell.  Never mind that all first manuscripts are a hard sell and that every trend had to start with someone saying something along the lines of, “Hey, maybe people will want to read an epic seven novel series about a boy wizard.”

People tend to forget that Harry Potter didn’t instantly set the publishing world on fire, and I can guarantee you that Rowling’s powerhouse success was preceded by plenty of rejection.  I don’t know for certain, but I do suspect that at least one of those rejections said, “Not Commercial Enough.”

When it comes to commercial success and marketability, I’m not sure anyone knows anything.  It’s all just guesswork.  Writers, agents, editors, artists, and marketing departments all work hard to try and figure it out, but I think everyone’s just digging in the dark.  Sometimes, you strike gold.

If we set aside the tremendous luck factor that is necessary for even the greatest artist to achieve recognition (much less commercial success,) I think there’s a false dichotomy in the entire premise that one can only be financially successful at the cost of one’s own artistic vision.  If we remove the nebulous definition of what constitutes “quality writing”, we find, more often than not, commercial success comes when an artist does what they want to do.  The quality of the Twilight novels might be up for debate, but I don’t doubt that Stephenie Meyer was writing something she felt worth writing.  James Cameron’s Avatar isn’t a surprising story, but I know that Cameron was invested, as an artist, in telling it.

Personally, I hate the question of commercial VS artistic.  I hate it because it assumes there’s a wall between the artist and the audience, that there’s an innate difference in people who fill each of these roles.  It’s true the artist’s job is to connect with the audience, but this doesn’t have to mean dumbing it down.  Commercial success doesn’t have to mean “stupid” or “soulless”.  Just as commercial failure doesn’t automatically mean “avante garde.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to editing my moon monster novel.  Not only do I fully expect it will make me a billion dollars sometime in the near future, but it’ll also touch your soul.

“Avert your eyes, mortal.  For I am a blessed demigod with muses whispering sweetly in my ears.”  Then I usually throw a smoke bomb, ninja-style, and vanish, leaving the questioners to ponder the imponderable.  Sometimes, if I’m in the proper mood, I’ll leave a haiku poem folded in a paper crane and maybe an autographed photo emblazoned with the wise words, keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars! I’m cool like that.

Okay, let’s get real.  I like what I do.  I’m good at it.  It’s true that I am creative, but being creative isn’t some gift from above.  It’s work.  And, if I can go ahead and let the cat out of the bag, it’s work almost anyone can do.  Just as long as you’re willing to put in the time.

Stories in general, and novels in particular, are a great assembly of pieces, and it’s impressive to take a look at all those pieces once they’ve been assembled into a whole and marvel at how beautifully they fit together. This is the illusion of order, of plot, character, scene, and narrative thread, created by plenty of hard work behind the curtain.  If it’s done right, then it shouldn’t look like work. The seams should be invisible, and all the effort should remain unseen. But this doesn’t mean that the work wasn’t done, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the obvious stuff, like creativity and originality, should be assumed to be the hard part.

Storytelling is innate to humans. We’ve been doing it forever. Every culture ever to rub two sticks together has a rich history of myths and legends, of heroes and villains, parables, fables, tall tales. The form varies, but the result is the same. Stories are everywhere, ever-present. They always will be. Yet for such a ubiquitous activity, it strikes many of us as mysterious and almost magical. Probably because we’re so distanced from it.  We’re given our stories now. They’re pre-packaged and pre-sold to us, just like our music, television shows, and movies. We love stories, sure, but most of us are so removed from the act of telling a story that it might as well be magic.

Television, movies, and music at least involve props.  They’re usually a great group effort.  Writing books, on the other hand, is something any of us can do.  (Although I’d like to take a moment here to thank all the editing, marketing, booksellers, etc. that make any commercial publication a success.  I might be a genius, but I couldn’t do this without all your hard work and support.)  But if you want to tell a story, all you really need is a pencil, a notebook, and you’re good to go.  Honestly, you don’t even need that.  Oral storytelling works just fine.  It might not be the commercial commodity it once was, but if you want to test your storytelling ability, it’s the bee’s knees.

The parts of a story are available to everyone, and, to take my house-building metaphor to the next step, they are infinitely malleable and user friendly.  To build a modern house requires you have a blueprint and that you know where every piece goes before hammering a nail.  If you screw up along the way, it’s usually not so easy to fix the problem if you don’t catch it right away.  Yet the parts of a story can take a beating and bounce right back.  Don’t like a character?  Get rid of him.  Usually no one will even notice he was ever there.  Don’t like where the plot is going?  Give it a good shove.  Realize that you shouldn’t have done that?  Shove it right back.  Everything in a story can be worked and reworked without fear of damage or irreversibility.  Everything can be done and undone to your satisfaction.  In the end, whatever story you wind up telling will be just fine.

I’m not suggesting that anyone can tell a good story or that storytelling isn’t an art.  I’m just saying that anyone who thinks the creativity, the Where did you come up with that idea? question, is the hard part of storytelling is mistaken.  Just as suggesting that the hardest part of building a house is buying the lumber is underestimating the real efforts that make it happen.  Anyone can buy lumber, and anyone can come up with an idea.  Or even a thousand ideas.  You’d be surprised at how easily one idea leads to another to another and another.  Putting those ideas together, driving the nails into them, making sure they all fit together properly, that’s the real work of writing.

At this point, I would probably use my grappling hook, Batman-Style, to swing away now, leaving you all the wiser for reading this, but this is the internet, so you’ll just have to imagine me doing it.

Novelologist, Away!

If I want to blow up the universe, I can.  If I want to glue it back together immediately afterward, I can.  If I want to write a scene where two gods sit on a couch and talk about dating, no problem.  Done.  And if I want to make a giant space squid eat the moon, no one can stop me.  

It’s easy, relatively, because I don’t have to worry about budgets or special effects.  And readers are a versatile group.  For the most part, they don’t mind watching a good conversation take place or an exploding universe.  And they don’t mind them in the same book.  Just as long as these elements fit together and are engaging.

That freedom is a beautiful thing.

But it comes at a price.  Just because you can write something, that doesn’t mean you should.  The burden of the novelologist is self-control.  Not just the self-control to make yourself write at a reasonable pace, either.  I’m talking about the ability to take a good idea and not use it.  Movies and television have a natural control mechanism.  They have budget and time constraints that make some things impractical.  The original Star Wars films are infinitely better than the prequels, and it’s not because of the writing (which has never been the movies’ strong point).  It’s because the originals were made with a budget, without CGI.  Just because someone could imagine it that didn’t mean it could appear on screen.  And that made the original Star Wars trilogy stronger versus the prequels, which are overindulgent, so crammed with visuals and ideas that none of them really get the time they deserve to get us invested.

It’s not easy to put aside a cool idea, but sometimes, you have to do just that.  I use Star Wars as a shining example, but really, it’s all over the place.  CGI has allowed movies a freedom that previously only novels and comic books enjoyed.  Personally, I love CGI and that ability to make amazing monsters and worlds right on our screen.  But I hate it too because it can become an obstacle.  So if I might offer a bit of advice from a pro who has had to wrestle with this freedom with every book . . .

Don’t overdo it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to write a scene where a Neptunian supervillain and his pet giant centipede fight some death cult assassins from Atlantis.  But, really, it makes sense in context.  I promise.

Don’t get me wrong.  I enjoyed it.  I thought it was pretty good for what it was.   But can we just admit that it was a decent sci fi animated film and leave it at that.  Honestly, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was a better movie.  It was funnier.  It was more creative.  It had more heart.  It wasn’t melodramatic.  It didn’t have long, boring segments reminding us that nature is good (a message I do happen to support by the way).  And, of course, Cloudy had Mr. T, who is even cooler than a twenty foot tall battle robot and a space jaguar combined.

Some people think Avatar isn’t good because its story is predictable and cliched.  They’re wrong.  People don’t want unpredictable.  People like cliches.  They think they don’t, but most people would rather watch something that’s safe and easy to understand than anything too radical.  And that’s okay.

Some people think the acting is bad.  It isn’t.

Some suggest that the dialogue is clumsy.  I don’t know about that.  It’s certainly not going to stick with you after the film is over, but it gets the job done.  The mark of truly bad dialogue is dialogue that is quoteworthy.  But what’s there to quote about Avatar?  What line sticks with you after all is said and done?  Nothing really.  So it can’t be that bad because, as a fan of the bad movie genre, I know bad dialogue when I hear it.

Avatar has its flaws.  It’s way too long.  Easily half-an-hour could be trimmed from the film.  But at least Cameron doesn’t overindulge in the slow mo too much.  Although, really, once you’re movie is over two hours, you really shouldn’t be allowed to use slow mo at all.  That should be a law.  Lobby your congressperson today.  Together, we can stop slow mo abuse for a brighter tomorrow.

For me, it’s too long because I’m not really watching the film to get to know the characters.  I already know them.  The natives are nice people.  The invaders are jerks.  Nature is nice.  Shooting people to take their land is wrong.  This is all pretty standard stuff.  Rarely, if ever, is the low tech alien the bad guy.  Whether it’s Ewoks in Star Wars, the natives of Avatar, or even the humans of Independence Day, the guy with the gun and spaceship will always be the villain versus the guy with the spear and space dragon (or fighter jet).  That’s just in the cosmic rulebook, set down before the beginning of time.

The story is fine, but the point of the film, just as in Cameron’s Titanic, is to get to the spectacle.  Titanic is about watching a ship sink.  How do I know that?  Because I’ve never seen Titanic.  But do you know what I have seen a million times?  That scene of the boat going into the water, and that poor guy who falls, hits his head on the railing, and hits the ocean like a dead fish.  I’ve never seen the protagonists kiss.  But I sure as heck have seen that guy fall to his death enough to know it by heart.

That’s why I’m watching Avatar.  I am there to watch a space rhino step on a battle robot.  Or to thrill as a space dragon knocks a hovercraft out of the sky.  It’s outer space, and outer space is supposed to be filled with cool stuff like that.  Avatar delivers on that, but it takes too long to get there.  By the time it happens, I’m almost too bored to care.  Maybe that’s just me though.

As for my final criticism, I’m just going to suggest that Avatar isn’t groundbreaking.  It’s a friggin’ cartoon!  It’s Tron with a bright new coat of paint.  It’s Monsters Inc with a few live-action people thrown in to make it seem legitimate.  But if you consider that 95 percent of what you see on that screen was created via animation, then you have to admit that this qualifies it as a cartoon.

I like cartoons.  That’s no secret.  I think animated films have consistently been some of the highest quality, most underappreciated films of the last few years.  I’d be plenty cheesed if Avatar scored a nomination and Up didn’t.  But Up did, so my rage is quieted.  For now…

Avatar is a cartoon that doesn’t have the guts to be a cartoon.  See Beowulf for another great example of a cartoon that refuses to take the label, even though it’s even more of a cartoon than Avatar.  Still, as a cartoon, Avatar isn’t groundbreaking.  Many recent animated films have succeeded in creating ultra realistic environments that can fool the eye.  The scenery in Kung Fu Panda is breathtaking.  The ruined earth of Wall-E is almost indistinguishable from the real thing at first.  And even the largely forgotten Surf’s Up(that surfing penguin movie that’s better than most people give it credit for) has a lush, tropical island environment that I found every bit as inviting and beautiful as anything on Pandora.  The only difference between Avatar and these films is that one hobbles itself with realism while another takes full advantage of its limitless possibilities.

Avatar is a good film, but it isn’t unique.  It isn’t even particularly original in what it accomplishes.  It’s just a good animated film, and that’s a worthy accomplishment.  But, all things considered, I’d rather watch the latest Justice League direct-to-DVD movie (“Crisis on Two Earths” is fantastic and highly recommended by this humble writer) than sit through a film like Avatar that ends up taking itself a little too seriously.  Both movies create fantastic worlds.  Both tell larger than life adventures.

But only one has a man dressed like a bat fighting a man dressed like an owl for the fate of the universe and has the bravado and integrity to do so without apology.

And that’s a beautiful thing.

This is why I used to like comic books.  The Fantastic Four are good guys.  Doctor Doom is a bad guy.  I know this going in, and I’m cool with it.  I might respect Doctor Doom (more than I really should probably), but I also know that no matter how awesome his robot army is and how justified his egotism (the guy does build time machines in his spare time), he’s a jerk and evil and deserves to get his armored butt handed to him.

This is why I hate Watchmen.  It’s not because of the writing (which is rock solid) or the character studies (which is masterful).  It’s because it ruined what I used to love about comics.  Namely: good guys vs. bad guys and thrilling adventure that I can enjoy without having to realize that life is complicated and messy and has an irksome lack of doombots.

Don’t get me wrong here.  I do enjoy sympathetic villains.  I like bad guys with complex motivations and interesting personalities.  And I don’t mind if a good guy has a dark side but in the end, I like it when the good guy, no matter how flawed, is the guy I’m rooting for over the bad guy, no matter how justified.

I know it’s not fashionable.  I know even admitting this will label me as naive to some.  But this doesn’t come from a denial of the complexity of the world, but rather as a bit of colorful escape from it.  Escapism is not a bad thing.  Escapism is not automatically dumb.  And a villian who deserves to get smashed in the face isn’t always worthy of disdain.

I honestly don’t get it when we decide to ruin perfectly good characters in the name of sophistication.  My Batman might have some emotional baggage, but at the end of the day, he’s just a guy trying to make a difference.  If that difference means throwing batarangs and driving around in a cool car, well, good for him.  My Superman isn’t a dim-witted boyscout.  He’s just a man with extraordinary powers who elects to fight the good fight because, when a giant asteroid is hurtling toward Metropolis, somebody’s gotta take care of it.

Of course, I love Lex Luthor.  I really do.  How can you not?  He’s ruthless, charismatic, and he’ll do whatever it takes to win.  He isn’t a cartoonish villain who wants to destroy the world because he’s Evil with a capital E, but he’s still a jerk who I love to watch get his comeuppance.

Life is gray, but fiction doesn’t have to play that game.  Of course, I’ll never win a Pulitzer with that attitude, but I can live with that.

“Balderdash!!” I shout.  I shout it so loudly that it does indeed require two exclamation marks.

The ancient roots of the terms comedy and tragedy were much less rigid.  Comedies had happy endings.  Tragedies had unhappy endings.  A girl looks for her missing dog and finds it.  That’s comedy.  A girl looks for her missing dog and finds it’s going to law school.  That’s tragedy.  The stories could be identical, really.  It’s just the end that defines them.

The problem is that somewhere along the way, comedy became lesser while tragedy became greater.  And you only need look at the Academy Awards or any number of literary merits to realize that this is true.  If you’re movie doesn’t have someone bludgeoned to death in a tragic accident in the third act, then you probably aren’t going to win an Oscar.

I don’t like unhappy endings.  I just don’t.  It’s not that I find them distrubing or annoying.  Although sometimes that is the case.  It’s because life is already full of unhappy endings.  Tragedy is all around us all the time.  The world is one, huge relentless unhappy ending, and if you don’t believe me, just ask the dinosaurs.  Except you can’t.  Because they’re all dead, and we’re using the sludge they left behind to power our cars.  So hooray for us, I suppose.  Until the mole people rise up and harvest our brains to feed to their pet morlocks.

A story with a happy ending is not automatically slight.  A story with a bit of humor isn’t either.  Perhaps my favorite movie of the year is Up, the delightful Pixar film about a lonely old man, a lonely young boy, a flying house, and an army of talking dogs.  The story is as heartfelt and beautiful as anything I’ve seen this year, and (I hope that this isn’t giving anything away) the ending isn’t unhappy at all.  Yet it’s richly satisfying, touching, and above all, emotionally resonant.

Also, did I mention the talking dogs?

As a guy who writes about monsters, weirdness, and raccoon gods, I struggle with the burden of comedy, of percieved slightness.  On the one hand, why should I care if someone thinks of my books as just “silly” if they enjoy them?  On the other, I have to admit a bit of a resentment toward “literary” fiction for often being overwritten, dull, intentionally dissatisfying storytelling and yet getting all the praise and awards.  I’m human.  I can’t help it.

I take pride in what I do.  I work hard at it.  And I’m not in this for awards or praise.  I just do my job, take my paycheck, and hope for the best.  Considering how lucky I’ve been so far, it would be dumb to even care if I ever get recognized as anything other than a “silly” writer.

But I do care.  Every time one of my books is labeled “funny”, I bristle.  I can’t help it.  It’s a reflex.  I’m almost ready to take it as an insult, even when it’s always offered in the sincerest, most complimentary way.  Then I realize that I’m just falling into the same trap we all do.  I’m assuming that funny means slight and unimportant.  I’m assuming that comedy is easy, that tragedy is something a good writer aspires to and comedy is something an adequate writer accepts.

Comedy ain’t easy.  Unhappy endings do not a great story make.  And if I can make someone laugh that’s terrific.  Given a choice between making someone’s day a little brighter or darker, I’ll choose brighter every time.  It might keep me from being a “serious” novelist, but it sure as heck helps me to be the best novelologist I can be.  And really, what more could I ask of the universe?

Maybe laser vision.  Yeah, laser vision would be awesome.

It didn’t matter.  Godzilla speaks the universal language of butt-kicking, city-stomping action.  I’d seen the movie before, of course.  Several times.  Even if I hadn’t though it would’ve been easy to follow.

That’s something I love about Godzilla flicks.  They don’t need complicated plots to be exciting.  They just need Monster A to fight Monster B until one of them is defeated.  The why is largely unimportant.

This isn’t just true of kaiju films though.  This is true of many stories, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.  I’ll admit that every time I hear someone complain about an action film’s “lack of story” I get a little cheesed off.  It’s an action movie.  Too much story just gets in the way.

Too often a complicated plot is mistaken for a sophisticated plot, but I’ve always believed a story should only have as much plot as is necessary to keep it going.  If an alien spacecraft comes to Earth and decides it needs to absorb Godzilla’s life force to take over the world, I’m cool with that.  I don’t need a complicated explanation why this is true.  I can just play along.  As long as I get to watch Godzilla blast the alien to cosmic dust along the way.

Sometimes, we overthink.  Probably because we’ve been convinced that if you’re not overthinking, you’re underthinking.  But there is a middle ground, I feel.  Something can be thrilling and fun with a very simple story without automatically being stupid.

And then there’s movies like Up and Kung Fu Panda that are incredibly intelligent and superbly crafted.  The characters and their motivations in this films are absolutely essential to the story.  There are subtleties here that pay off in fantastic ways.

Godzilla isn’t subtle.  Nor should he be.  He’s a giant, radioactive lizard who destroys all opponents that get in his way.  That’s what I love about the big lug.  You can call him stupid if you want.  Godzilla cares not for your insults.  He’s too busy saving and / or destroying Tokyo.  Because that’s what he does.

And damned if he isn’t great at it.

I am not asking for a change in the type of stories being written.  I’m not asking for experimental fiction or a stories written from the perspective of the face-eating alien.  These things already exist.  More of them couldn’t hurt, but it’s not what I meant.  My point is much more superficial.

While most of my protagonists are inhuman in appearance, they’re rarely inhuman in attitude.  Trying to write from a truly alien point of view is difficult, albeit not impossible.  (See The Bug Wars by Robert Aspirin for a great lizards versus insects sci fi story that hasn’t a single human in it.)  Such experiments can be wonderful, even fascinating, but they aren’t necessarily what I’m looking for.

In my own stories, my protagonists, while usually inhuman in one way or another, are still basically average Joes.  Mack Megaton might be an indestructible smashing machine who doesn’t always “get” human reasoning, but he’s still a good guy.  Lucky, the raccoon god of Divine Misfortune, might be immortal and irresponsible, but he has enough of a human perspective (as the original gods themselves did) to bridge the gap between mortal and immortal.

My current project is all about weird monsters from other dimensions who get trapped in our own universe.  While they might be bizarre in appearance and struggling with sinister desires, they’re also victims of circumstance and trying to make the best of those circumstances.  This alone makes them readily identifiable from a human perspective.

I’m just suggesting that there is more to being human than being human, that what can make a character sympathetic and interesting is deeper than how handsome they are.  It’s not even a radical idea.  Animated films have been doing this for years.  Wall-E is a fantastic love story all about robots.  Doug the dog from Up is very much a canine, yet a wonderfully animated and written character.  Kung Fu Panda is filled with anthropomorphic animals who are all very human in motivation, but also very fun and cool to look at without having to be classically attractive.

This is not a call to revolution.  This is just a suggestion that if you’re writing about a tough-as-nails space cop who fights marauding aliens that maybe, just maybe, you’d think about giving him an extra set of arms or bat wings or possibly a bug head.  At the very least, it’d be cool if he didn’t automatically come with a lantern jaw, a broad chest, and abs of steel.

Unless those abs are actually made of steel.

I get why attractive people dominate film and television.  That’s no mystery.  People like looking at pretty people.  It’s built into us.  I’m not being judgmental here because, heck, I love looking at pretty people as much as anybody.  I’ve enjoyed sub-standard entertainment far more than I should because of a pretty face.  Anything with Kate Beckinsdale will usually win me over, even if ninjas or dinosaurs aren’t involved.  Strangely, this doesn’t apply to the Underworld films, even though they do have some awesome werewolves in them.  Still, every rule has its exception.

Books, however, are not a visual medium.  But this doesn’t change the fact that most protagonists in any kind of adventure fiction are usually good-lookin’.  There are exceptions, especially in literary fiction which takes a special point of pride in being contrarian to everything genre fiction does, but they are few and far between in genre.

This is why I like to write about average or odd characters.  The freedom of working in novels allows me to do that.  Why write about a ruggedly handsome P.I. when I can write about a seven foot robot with no face?  Why write about downtrodden, yet secretly beautiful, peasant girls when I can instead use a three feet high dog creature?  Sure, I could tell a story about beautiful gods who descend from Mount Olympus with bronzed skin, perfect abs, and shiny teeth, but I’d much rather play around with raccoon gods in Hawaiian shirts and Aztec feathered serpents with a fondness for tomato juice.

I suppose it’s just another reason I’m drawn to fantasy.  It allows me to be truly distinctive with my characters.  And this is why I consider myself a novelist first because it gives me the flexibility than an innately visual medium does not.

A big reason I don’t read much fantasy / sci fi is because I want the weirdness, the monsters, the inhuman, and for the most part, that stuff is shuffled to the side.  Almost all fantasy / sci fi is from the human perspective because almost all of it is aimed at a human audience.  (Very few dinosaurs buy books these days.)  But I don’t want to read about people.  I know people.  People are everywhere, and while they’re generally pleasant and I have nothing against them (for the most part), I’d much rather read about the ogre than the knight, the robot than the astronaut.  That probably goes a long way toward explaining why I write what I write.

I’d like to give you some complicated reason why it appeals to me, but for the most part, I find complicated motivations to be nonsensical just-so-stories that we create to try and make sense of ourselves.  Some things aren’t worth analyzing.  Some things you just accept.

I guess I’ll keep writing about monsters, robots, goblins, paper gnomes, and raccoon gods.  It’s not always glamorous, but somebody’s gotta do it.