Welcome all you superheroes and ghost whisperers. You citizens of the great beyond. You’ve found Lisa Burton Radio, and I have a real treat for you today. I’m your host, Lisa the robot girl, and my guest today is Lizzie St. Laurent. She’s a twenty-one year old college dropout working multiple jobs to keep her head above water. “Welcome to the show, Lizzie”
“Hi Lisa. Hi everyone.”
“Lizzie, it looks like your parents are fairly well off. They were able to buy you a car, and pitched in for your education. How did you get to this point in your life?”
“College was always in the plan. To pull it off, I was going to live with my grandmother, and did up until she died. Then a college friend talked me into moving in with her, and that was okay until she bailed and went home to her parents. I…
So, I’ve been sitting here trying to think of different types of ‘silly’ stories and I keep coming up with movies. That being the only thing I can think of, I don’t know if I’m going to have a really good list. Still, I’ll work with what I have because I think it would be useful to people who are curious. Feel free to add others in the comments since I’m sure I’ll have missed some.
Full Blown Insanity
Let’s get the most challenging one out of the way. The reason this is the hardest is because you can easily lose the plot and all coherency. Rapid fire zaniness can be fun for a short cartoon like the Dodo in Looney Tunes, but you can create exhaustion in your audience if you go on for too long. A full novel might not work at all unless you find a way to maintain the story. One anime series that I think could fall into this is Excel Saga, but that is a tough one to get through. The overall plot of world domination is barely touched while each episode is some ridiculous scheme that goes haywire within minutes. As I said, this one is hard to pull off.
Protagonist Causes the Silliness
This is more doable because you really only have one character that’s acting silly while everyone else is able to ground the story. There are different degrees with the hero being capable while silly in some stories and more hazard than help in others. I’m thinking of the BBC series Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agencywhere the main character is a source of comedy while able to carry the plot. You can run into a problem here if people get too annoyed at your protagonist who will be in more scenes than other characters. So you need to add in some positive traits to counter the craziness.
Antagonist Causes the Silliness
Unsurprisingly, this type of story isn’t too hard to pull off. You have an agent of chaos who needs to be stopped. It’s usually done with more maliciousness though. Sure, the Joker makes some good jokes, but he’s still a psychopath. To get a real comedy out of such a villain, you need to find a balance between silliness and serious threat. Much of this can boil down to goals. If you make them simply mischievous like the Gremlins then you can get away with killing and destruction while adding comedy. You still end up with an action or horror movie. A better example could be Mister Mxyzptlk from Superman. He is a powerful imp from the 5th dimension who enjoys messing with Superman. This can be destructive, but there isn’t as much evil behind the comedy, which will be a big part of the story.
Calm Among the Insanity
I’ve seen this pretty often as I was growing up. A lot of movies had the main character be serious while strange things happened around them. Even if they said something ridiculous, they did it deadpan. Frank Drebin of ‘Naked Gun’ is a prime example of this where even if he’s the source of the comedy, he doesn’t react. Authors and audiences might find this fairly easy to work with because the protagonist acts as an anchor. You can see the comedy happen and laugh since it’s through the eyes of someone who isn’t going along with the crazy flow. In a simpler way, this is the reason why so many comedies require a straight man. That person who doesn’t get the joke or acts as the wall for the joke to bounce off of. They give a sense of normalcy to compare the silliness too.
So, can you think of any other types of silly stories?
Amazon self-published authors: Our books were banned for no reason
In recent weeks, Amazon (AMZN) has taken down e-books written by at least six self-published novelists who say they did nothing wrong and depend on the platform to make their living, those six novelists told Yahoo Finance.
The six authors published many of their books through Amazon’s online self-publishing platform Kindle Direct Publishing Select, and they expressed shock and frustration over losing their livelihoods without understanding why.
Amazon, for its part, has been cracking down on KDP Select authors who supposedly game the system in order to get paid more. But the authors Yahoo Finance spoke to insist they haven’t engaged in this kind of fraud, and that Amazon banned them without sufficient explanation of wrongdoing.
Here it is! The first teaser for War of Nytefall: Lost and we’re going to see how it opens. Went for a big chunk too. It’s been 17 years since War of Nytefall: Loyalty, so a lot has changed and stayed the same. As usual, there’s a cut in case people didn’t want to catch a few potential spoilers.
With all of the serious stories out there, one has to wonder if there’s still a place for some silliness. I’m not talking about a story that throws in puns and sight gags, but one that sets out to be off-the-wall. Thinks like ‘Naked Gun’ or ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. You still have great and coherent stories, but there is a zaniness to events. I guess we still have comedy movies out there, which seem to be predominantly about crudeness or determined to have a message. They still typically take place in reality and don’t try anything that makes an audience laugh in a WTF moment.
I tried this with Crossing Bedlam and its sequel, but I don’t think I was as successful as I thought. It was still very much an action adventure with some bizarre elements thrown in for laughs. Maybe that’s the best we can do too since comedy might require a secondary genre to help it along. ‘Naked Gun’ had crime adventure, ‘Hitchhikers’ had science-fiction, and most sitcoms tend to be a slice of life or coming of adventure thing. So, you probably do need some stable elements to make the humor hit harder. If all you have is craziness then you can lose people who would like some kind of plot. Even an anime I watched called ‘Amagi Brilliant Park’ had a story, which was trying to save a magical amusement park by getting 250,000 guests in 3 months. It was off-the-wall crazy and I can’t even find a gif to do it justice. I mean, it started with the female lead asking the male lead out on a date at gunpoint. Even with the insanity, it was a pretty good story that made the comedy work in its favor.
Maybe we tend to sacrifice silliness for the seriousness of adulthood because we take our jobs as authors so seriously. We want to be seen as a mature professional, so we might instinctively shy away from things that go too far. Kind of like we establish ourselves and then we can let our guard down. I didn’t even consider making a character like Lloyd Tenay until I had a lot of Legends of Windemere under my belt. Makes some sense since we don’t always release our full zaniness with friends until we’re comfortable enough to feel that they won’t turn us into the men in white coats. Still, it does feel like we’re seeing less and less in terms of silly stories. At least in books, which could mean that people are becoming more accustomed to comedy been seen or heard instead of reading about it.
I’m genuinely trying to think of the last book I read that had a lot of comedy, but I’m coming up blank. I don’t want to say it was ‘Hitchhikers’ because that was a very long time ago. So, I’m going to open up the floor and see if anybody knows of some good comedic books. At the very least, maybe we’ll come up with a few thoughts on silly stories in general. Do people even like them? Is it because people have become very critical of comedy?
My latest book is now officially live! For anyone who has missed the news, it’s called A Heaven For Toasters, and kicks off what will hopefully turn into a fun new series.
I also have the first reader review, by the amazing Linda McDougal:
I just finished A Heaven For Toasters. What a fantastic story. Please tell me you’ll be continuing Mika & Leo’s story. I finished this book in one sitting (minus a bathroom break and making dinner for my family). I found myself immersed in the adventure and hoping it would turn out right. Thank you for allowing me to escape for a few hours and share your futuristic world.
Linda McDougal
A science fiction crime adventure with plenty of humor and romance, set in the near future
A souvlaki and some sun. That is all Detective Mika Pensive wanted from her fun weekend away on the…
This is going to be brief and to the point. Check out the teaser cover:
Art by Alison Hunt
War of Nytefall: Lost will be released on September 7th, so I’m hoping to get some bloggers to help promote it. I’m on the fence about if this will be the standard ‘Book is Live’ or personalized ones. If you have an idea for a blog post that you want me to write then feel free to make a request. If not then we can do the standard post. I will point out that I can’t do a back-and-forth character interaction or interview because it’s summer and I have a 9-year-old to chase around until September. Thank you in advance for anyone who is willing to help promote the new book.
Add on: People may have seen yesterday’s post, which means this release will end up being my last hurrah for the year. I’m hoping to release books in the future, but I can’t guarantee. So, this might just be it for me.
So, this is a sticky because I want to make sure people see this. Everything else is still below and I’m writing this with a heavy heart.
Due to financial issues and personal developments, this looks like it’s my last year of publishing. I have to put my time and energy into something that brings in money with the hope that I can return. Maybe I can release a book or two throughout the year, but I can’t guarantee it. At best, I can do War of Nytefall: Lost in September and pray that I can get War of Nytefall: Rivalry out in December. After that, I can’t make any promises.
My blogging is scheduled until end of October and I might not add much onto it. I’ll do a Saturday update, try to keep up with a few friends, and make a post or two throughout the week once November hits. Other social media sites will be even more difficult to keep up with in the future. That’s really only Twitter, so we’ll see what happens there.
I’m not happy about this and I’m crying. I wish I could have gone the distance and find that lucky break, but my time ran out. Thanks to everyone who supported me. The published will always be available, so I hope to not be forgotten. Maybe things will turn around and I can return. To everyone else who is still in the fray, good luck and feel free to send me a guest post that I can share. I’ll try to lend a hand to others when I can.
So, I have a friend over for the weekend as long as nothing went wrong between me scheduling this and him showing up. There are 4 hours to go, but this has been a visit that we’ve attempted and failed at for 2 years. Fingers crossed that things go smoothly, especially since I have a bag of birthday presents to hand over. I’m going to categorize the week since it was bustling:
The Heat
I’m just going to point out that the heat and humidity was a factor. That’s really it for this category.
Mystic, Connecticut
Last weekend, we did a family trip to Mystic where they have an old-fashioned seaport and a big aquarium. This was my parents’ birthday present to my son and he had a blast. The heat was rough on the first day, which was the seaport, but he enjoyed riding on a steamboat and got an iron wall hook from the blacksmith. We had a little trouble when we went into the building about whaling because he thought it was about whales. Once he figured out it was about killing them, he got a little upset and then lost interest. Honestly, he is his father’s son because I don’t have patience for museum stuff either. So, we had our hearts set on the other trip.
The thing with the aquarium day is that it was raining . . . a lot. We had to take cover under a canopy at one point alongside another family. One person wasn’t able to get entirely under and was partially drenched. It was the poor sap who is currently typing this blog post. The comedy continued when we got inside and I bent down to pick up an umbrella that I dropped. Felt something tear and had to get to the bathroom to see the damage. This angered my wife because my ‘I need to step away’ whisper came just as my son was petting a bamboo shark. She missed the shot, but I had a crisis. Thankfully, it was only my underwear that split and not my pants. I will take that victory over the alternative.
The two big events at the zoo for my son was feeding a ray, which he’s done before, but this time he had instruction. Now, we know what to do when we go to the local aquarium. He was a little scared, but they don’t have teeth and they’ve rather soft to the touch, which calmed him. The other ‘event’ was him seeing beluga whales and we even caught a feeding before we left. There’s a spot where you can go low enough to see them swimming underwater and he waved every time the female passed. He walked away from the trip with a beluga plushie named ‘Iceberg’ too.
Parenting
This is going to come first because it’s what I’m focusing more on than writing. I’ll touch on that topic later. This week, my son finished the library summer reading program and got to pick a new book. He keeps trying to stick to picture books, but I found one in the chapter books that I knew he’d love. ‘Bunnicula’ was one of my favorites as a kid and the idea of a vampire bunny was enough to get his attention. We also have been working hard on multiplication and division to avoid him regressing. This is really tough and I’m getting him to understand how to do them to some extent. He hasn’t memorized all of his multiplication tables even with me saying them when I give him a shower. It’s slow progress, but it’s progress. The heat had us resting inside with the Legos and video games too. I had a bunch of doctor appointments that made it hard to do anything else with him as well, but next week will have more activities like a cow eye dissection at the Children’s Museum.
Health
As stated, I had a bunch of doctor appointments. Needed to adjust my sleep apnea device thanks to the new crown. It isn’t perfect, but I got 6 hours of unbroken sleep for the first time in a month instead of the 2-3. The biopsy stitches on my legs are out, but we aren’t sure what the marks are. They don’t like chlorine or humidity and the tests said ‘new drug reaction’ or bug bite. I’m not on any medication and these don’t look like anything left by a bug, so more tests are needed. I’m supposed to find out next week. The last appointment was the anxiety therapy, which is rough. Without going into details, it feels like I have to upend my life to start the healing and I keep thinking that such an act isn’t fair to my son. Seems the suggestion of me giving up writing is coming from all corners too.
Writing
First, I’m posting a teaser for the War of Nytefall: Lost cover tomorrow along with a call for volunteers. I’m aiming for September 7th unless I’m wrong that releasing a book on a Friday is a bad idea. Seems there isn’t a sweet spot time these days.
I tried to start editing Derailing Bedlam and got through the first chapter. That was 2 weeks ago. Doesn’t make any sense to continue, so I gave up. September is going to be my editing and October post prep month. People liked the idea of a Dawn Fang interview on Mondays, Guest Post on Wednesdays, and Monster Maker on Fridays. I’ll probably use Sundays to announce each one.
Before I get to the goals of the week, I will admit that I tried to work on another project and it left me crying. I began working out short stories for the first Windemere superhero book, but my wires were crossed. I couldn’t decide if Windemere or Super Earth would be best even though I was confident a few months ago. Characters were thrown out, retrieved, and put on the shelf like I was a tornado of self-doubt. In the end, I erased nearly everything I did. All I have is the first story premise where the heroes are awakened after centuries of being reincarnated with no powers or memories. I can’t figure out what’s wrong with all of this and half of my notes are gibberish.
So, goals of the week?
Cow eye dissection.
Multiplication and division practice.
Lego Star Wars game.
Keep reading Buso Renkin.
Possibly test War of Nytefall: Lost blurbs, but might be best to wait a week.
Schedule Sunday posts for the October stuff.
Cook, eat, laundry, sleep, etc.
Start watching Digimon with my son.
Keep watching Battlebots with my son. Anybody know where to find more than the current season?
Please give us a brief outline of who you are. (no more than 250 words).
I’m an enigma wrapped in a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt, with a secret yearning to go back in time and become either a stand-up comic or a chef. Otherwise, I’m just trying to enjoy my life as a copyeditor and fiction writer.
You’re a writer/editor – how is this reflected in your typical day?
Wearing a few hats means I have to be mindful of my time and energy. That includes keeping myself as healthy as possible, with regular exercise, stretching, and a good diet. If I’m working on my own writing, I’ll do that first thing in the morning, since that’s my best window of creativity. When I’m doing client work, I make sure I’m giving it my best focus. Everything else gets fit in around that.
Legends of Windemere 