Hameji Cycle – Page 8 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Addicted to typesetting

So I just realized it’s been a looong time since I posted anything besides Trope Tuesday posts on this blog. A lot of things have happened, and I’ve got a lot of things I want to blog about, but really all my spare time has been spent happily typesetting for Stars of Blood and Glory and Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I).

I always tell people that if I wasn’t a writer, I’d be a typesetter because I enjoy it so much. I’m not sure if that’s true, because it can get a little mind-numbing after a while, but as an indie writer who only has to do it every now and again, it’s really fun! The best part, of course, is getting to that finished product, a book full of words and paragraphs and chapters that look so beautiful on the page, which you can flip through and say “wow, I wrote that!”

The whole process is great, though, even with the frustrations like computer crashes and formatting struggles. Fortunately, those don’t happen quite as often since I’ve more or less figured out the tools. I use LibreOffice almost exclusively for the interior (yes, I know In Design is awesome but LibreOffice works well too), and The Gimp for the cover art.

Yesterday, I started on the cover art for Stars of Blood and Glory, thinking it would take me a few days to finish it. Well, one thing led to another, and a few hours later I had this:

Not bad. I think I was able to do it so quickly because I followed the same basic pattern as Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars. Once you know what you’re doing, it doesn’t take very long to do it. It also helped to have such great art (shout-out to Hideyoshi)!

So yeah, the only thing I have to do now is order the proofs and approve them. After that, the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory should be up on Amazon in just a couple of days, so keep an eye out for that!

Also, I don’t think Amazon has announced this to the general public yet, but this Christmas they’re starting a program where you can get the ebook edition of a participating book bundled with the print edition of the book for an extra $2.99 or less. It’s called Matchbook, and I’m happy to announce that all of my novels will be in the program! They’ll be priced at either $1.99 or $.99, so if you’re looking for a Christmas gift, you can buy one of my print books and get the ebook for yourself for more than 50% of the price. The Star Wanderers books, when I have the print versions up (and I’m working on that now), will bundle the ebooks for free!

So yeah, that’s what’s been taking away from my blogging time. Salt Lake Comic Con was also pretty cool–it was my first Comic Con experience, so I should probably blog about that too. Also, some book reviews, some stuff that exploded on the internet recently that I want to react to … yeah, I’ve fallen a bit behind.

But above and beyond all this blogging / typesetting / publishing stuff, writing is still my #1 priority. I started the first Sons of the Starfarers novella just last week, and have been working on it a little every day since. I’m way excited about this next project–it’s going to be amazing! Like a spinoff of Star Wanderers, but sooo much more. But I’ll wait until tuesday to talk about that.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory! It should be out in the next week or so. And as for Star Wanderers, the print editions should be coming out this month or next, depending on how effectively (or not) I can manage this typesetting addiction.

Later!

Back in Provo!

Wow, do pageviews drop off sharply if you don’t blog for a while.

So after spending the last couple of weeks visiting family across the country–literally across the country, from Massachusetts to Iowa–I’m back here in good old Provo, Utah, surrounded by the mountains once again (I can just hear my grandma … “what’s so great about a pile of rocks?”).

Here were some of the highlights:

Seeing my parents (yay!) and spending some quality time with them.
Babysitting my niece and nephews and spending time with that side of the family.
Beach bumming on the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Eating fried clams and lobster in Wellfleet at Moby Dick’s.
Playing Shanghai with my parents every night for a week and a half.
Beating my brother-in-law at Settlers of Catan for the first time (he’s good!).
Watching the entire Ken Burn’s Civil War documentary series.
Touring Nauset Light and the Three Sisters.
Touring the Cape Cod Potato Chip factory.
Hanging out with Mom in Downtown Hyannis.
Acquiring an awesome new Indiana Jones style hat.
Going to church with a bunch of high priests sporting crocs.
Picking Monsanto corn and getting the whole corn experience.
Browsing a bookshelf of Ursula K. Le Guin novels I’ve never read.
Getting a bunch of awesome new story ideas (see previous post).
Taking the California Zephyr across the country–twice!

So yeah, it was a pretty awesome summer vacation. It’s good to be back in Utah, though. As much as I have a love/hate relationship with Provo, Utah really is my favorite place on Earth.

I’ve only been back a couple of hours, but it seems that it’s been an eventful two weeks since I’ve been gone. One of my former roommates ran off without paying his share of the utilities, after jacking up the AC all summer (lovely). After filing a police report, however, we may be able to get some of that back.

My tomatoes have been growing like CRAZY. Only one has been harvested, but there are dozens hanging off of the vines. Anybody want to make salsa?

As far as church goes, the ward boundaries have been completely rearranged. Seriously, the map looks like a shredder went to it. On our block, it’s us and the house two doors down from us (we think), then one of the apartments from Liberty Square, then another random house a block north of us. Crazy.

I don’t know yet if I’ll be sticking around in my current place for the fall or not. It’s a good situation, and the roommates are great, but the neighborhood is full of freshmen and sophomore college students. I need to find some more people my age to hang out with. Next month marks the beginning of the final year of my twenties, and I plan to make it count.

I got a lot of work done on Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) while traveling on the train, but I still need some of my first readers to give it another read-through before I’m confident enough to publish it. Hopefully, that shouldn’t take too long–I’m shooting for publication before the end of September. Also, the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory will hopefully be finalized before the end of the month as well.

That’s just about it for now. I’ll leave you with some folk music from the Caucasus Mountains, this time on the accordion:

Rousing stuff. I wish I could play the accordion like that.

Take care!

Trope Tuesday: The Beach Episode

I’m so glad my Mom doesn’t read this blog.

I’m at Cape Cod this week, at a condo that doesn’t have internet, so it’s going to be a quick and dirty Trope Tuesday post this week (no, not like that) because I’d rather be on the beach than at the Dennisport Public Library. Speaking of beaches …

One of the commonest beach tropes, at least for most anime and TV shows, is to take the cast of characters and put them on the beach for an episode. This rarely has anything to do with the actual plot of the show, and is usually just an excuse to parade the characters in swimsuits and/or give the audience a little fanservice.

Actually, that’s not entirely fair. There’s a bunch of ocean related recreational activities that the characters may participate in, such as beach volleyball (or other games), surfing, making sand castles, burying each other in sand, and getting a suntan (or an embarrassingly painful sunburn). There may even be a single-episode romantic subplot that results in a beach kiss.

Basically, the beach episode is a chance for the audience to take a breather from the main story arc and hang out with their favorite characters at the beach. Because really, who doesn’t like to go to the beach every now and then? And if you can tag along with a bunch of fictional characters who have come to feel like friends, so much the better.

I’ve got to admit, most of the books and series that I’m a fan of don’t really have a beach episode. The only one that comes to mind is the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and that one’s a bit unusual because the beach episode(s) turn into a murder mystery that actually ties in pretty well with the main plot. Also, the episode is based off of one of the original Japanese novels, so it’s a lot closer to canon than what you’ll see in most anime adaptations from manga (or so I’ve heard).

The beach episode doesn’t pop up in science fiction or fantasy a whole lot, probably because of the secondary world aspect. I’m sure there are beaches on Middle Earth, but if I see a bunch of hobbits playing beach volleyball in bikinis, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to throw up. Most fantastical worlds don’t have room for modern-style vacations, because so much of the setting is so far removed from the world we live in. The last thing you want to do is throw your reader out of the story, so for most sci-fi and fantasy, a trip to the beach is probably a bad idea.

Of course, there are exceptions, depending on the story and the appropriateness for such an excursion in the fictional universe. If you guys have any favorite examples, please let me know.

Needless to say, since most of my stories take place on alien worlds in the far-distant future, you won’t usually find this trope in my own stories. However, there is a beach chapter in Desert Stars, where Mira spends some time out in nature, walking along the ocean and taking in the gulls and the waves. She doesn’t wear a swimsuit, though. In Stars of Blood and Glory, there’s a planet that’s nothing but ocean, with giant floating cities populated by people who are half Japanese, half Polynesian. Not any beaches, though–at least, not natural ones.

Quick update from Massachusetts

Hey guys, this is just going to be a quick update since it’s midnight here on the east coast and I’m pretty tired from the three-day train ride. Sleeping on the train is like skipping stones, where all you’re really doing is seeing how far you can go before you crash (and I’m due for a crash). So anyways, here goes.

First, I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done on the train, partially because of the sleep issue but mostly because I started reading STRAY by Andrea K. Höst and holy crap, I could not put it down. Seriously. It got to the point where the only thing I wanted to do was read this book, which was fortunate because riding the train, there’s not much else to do anyway. So I finished it in a little over 24 hours, which means you can expect to see a review here soon, either before or after I get back from vacation (probably before, because I plan to read the next couple books in the series at the beach and on the ride back).

Second, I’ve decided to spend the next week or so working exclusively on Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII), while the feedback is still fresh and my enthusiasm is still strong. Also, after burning through the first chapter in the last couple days, I think I can get this done pretty fast. After that, I’ll send it out to a couple of other first readers, probably make another pass, then figure things out from there. If all goes well, it should be out by mid-September-ish.

Third, I’m thinking about releasing print editions of the Star Wanderers series. At first, I thought I’d limit the print editions to the omnibuses (omnibi?), but now I think it would be cool to do little pocket-sized editions of each novella. What do you guys think? If there’s demand, I’ll try to put them out a little sooner, hopefully before Christmas. And since they’re small, I can probably price them lower, like around $6 to $7 or so (and of course, Amazon will discount them).

Third point one, before I do that I need to release a print version of Stars of Blood and Glory. Which shouldn’t be too difficult, since I’ve already typeset about half of it. Mostly I’ve just been lazy and/or busy with other stuff, but now that I check CreateSpace it seems that people are actually buying my print books, hmm. Better get on top of that.

Fourth … actually, there is no fourth. I guess I should say I’m on vacation, which means doing what I usually do except from Cape Cod, spending my non-writing time doing fun things with family. But since I’m home, I plan to go through my high-school / middle-school papers and hunt down my first novel attempt, if for no other reason than to destroy it. I may keep a page or two as a curiosity/souvenir, but that abomination really needs to die.

And that’s about it. The stone has begun to sink, and I really need to hit the sack.

Trope Tuesday: Curiosity is a Crapshoot

Is curiosity a bad thing? Well, it depends how genre savvy you are. It seemed to work out pretty well for Alice, but not quite so well for Pandora (or the rest of the ancient Greek world, for that matter). Curious monkeys seem to come out all right, and their constantly curious counterparts also seem to do okay in the end, but anytime you run into schmuck bait you know that things aren’t going to turn out well.

The truth is, for just about every stock Aesop warning about the perils of being overly nosy, you can find another one exalting it as a virtue. In fact, you could say that curiosity is a crapshoot.

But what is curiosity exactly? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “desire to know,” and “interest leading to inquiry.” As you can imagine, there are situations where this could be good or bad. Thus, what a story says about curiosity often changes depending on its genre.

For example, in most horror stories, curiosity and nosiness are usually bad, leading the protagonists to go places where they shouldn’t and uncover things that should never have been uncovered. At the same time, a lack of curiosity can also be fatal … in fact, a lot of things can be fatal in a horror story.

In mythology and folklore, curiosity is often even worse. From Pandora to Eve, Psyche to the proverbial cat, curiosity leads to Very Bad Things. Perhaps this is because these kinds of stories are mostly tales of warning, passed on from generation to generation as a way to preserve our collective knowledge about the dangers of the world, rather than inspire us to go out and face them.

(As a side note, there are a few exceptions in the realm of folklore. In the Bluebeard myth, curiosity killed off all of Bluebeard’s previous wives, but combined with cleverness, faith, and friendship, it saved the last one’s life.)

In fantasy, curiosity is often a mixed ~~box~~ bag. For example, take the hobbits: most of them are perfectly content to live out their lives in the shire, but the few who are inquisitive enough to venture outside end up saving the world in a way that the elves, dwarves, and humans never could. At the same time, it puts them through a great deal of pain, even after the world is saved–neither Bilbo nor Frodo are ever able to be content in the shire again.

Curiosity, in other words, is complicated. It’s not just a quirk or a character flaw–it’s an underlying quality of the hero’s journey. Without curiosity, either of the world around him or the internal struggles within, the hero would be content to live out an unremarkable life. Certainly he wouldn’t have the capacity for the cleverness, guile, wisdom, and sensitivity that he needs in order to descend into the darkest dungeon, face his own nadir, and return with the elixir of life. Curiosity may lead to sorrow, pain, or even death, but it also leads to adventure.

As a subgenre of fantasy, many of these issues carry over into the realm of science fiction. And yet, as a genre unto itself, science fiction has a distinctly positive view of curiosity compared to other genres. Science is nothing if not the primary process of human inquiry, where curiosity is not only a virtue but the virtue, one of the most important aspects of humanity. Consider these words from Adam Steltzner, one of the leading engineers of the NASA Mars Curiosity mission:

Likewise, curiosity is a staple of science fiction. In Star Trek, it’s the basis of the entire mission: “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.” In Doctor Who, it’s how the Doctor finds his companions. In Babylon 5, it’s Delenn’s curiosity about the humans that ultimately saves all the alien races. And in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it’s the gift from the black monolith that helps monkeys to turn bones into space stations (well, not literally, but you get the idea).

Curiosity isn’t a central theme in most of my books, but it is a major part of Genesis Earth. If anything, that book is about the importance of balancing curiosity about our universe with curiosity about ourselves and what it means to be human. In Star Wanderers, Noemi’s curiosity is a huge part of her story, helping her to turn around a horrible (not to mention awkward) situation. In Desert Stars, curiosity is complicated; it leads Jalil far away from home and puts a schism between him and the girl who loves him, but it also leads him to discover the truth about who he is, giving him the strength to return.

In general, I suppose it all comes down not only to genre, but to the underlying worldview of the author of the story. Since I have a very positive and enthusiastic view of curiosity, it usually works out for the best in the stories that I write. Then again, perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to science fiction … how about you?

Do you like your chapters named or numbered?

There’s an interesting article linked on The Passive Voice blog about the importance of a table of contents, especially in ebooks. The article is geared mostly for non-fiction, which is a whole different beast from novels and novellas, but the discussion on TPV got me thinking: for ebooks, is it better to name chapters or to merely number them?

In the comments section on TPV, Jamie makes an interesting point:

With e-books in particular I think there needs to be more care taken with the TOC. I can easily find my place with a print book even without a book mark, but with an e-reader, it’s possible to lose your place very easily, and “loc 4950″ is not going to be committed to my memory banks. I know what happens in the chapter titled “His Grace of Avon Takes Command of the Game,” but I’m not sure if that was chapter 16 or 15 “loc 1730″ or what. I won’t remember the number.

For organizational purposes for my own use I title my chapters, and I believe that readers will appreciate that habit, too, and will be more forgiving if they use the Look Inside feature and see those headers vs. if they just see “1, 2, 3.”

I try to make sure the titles are enticing and pique the curiosity of anyone who would see them in a TOC. They’re not spoilers, because unless you’ve made it to the end of the previous chapter, you’ll likely have no idea what the next chapter’s title is referring to (and if it is obvious, it simply increases the suspense/curiosity). The titles Makes Sense in Context (TM).

When I first learned how to make an ebook, the concept of a table of contents for a novel seemed pretty weird. I was used to reading print books, which you can flip through much easier and find what you’re looking for just from the feel of the pages. But with ebooks, obviously that’s much different. A table of contents is more than just a list of chapters, it’s an important navigational tool that can’t be overlooked.

But if chapter hyperlinks are perhaps the only way to flip through the middle of the book, does that mean that merely numbering the chapters is insufficient? I have to admit, the concept of naming each chapter seems a bit old-fashioned, but the technology has changed and as writers, we need to change with it.

In the context of a hyperlinked table of contents, numbers are practically meaningless. They can even be quite ugly, if there’s a huge list of them that sprawls beyond the screen. Chapter titles can sprawl even more, but they at least provide some idea of what lies on the other side of the link.

I’ve done it both ways. For example, the table of contents for Genesis Earth looks like this:

Table of Contents

Author’s Note | Acknowledgments

Most of the chapter titles are pretty mysterious, but I was kind of going for that. And in any case, is it possible to make them completely unambiguous without spoiling key parts of the story? It seems like the art of naming chapters is much subtler and more complex than you’d think at a first glance.

In contrast, the table of contents for Desert Stars looks like this:

Table of Contents

Prologue
Book I: Dome and Desert
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
Book II: Sand and Stars
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

Author’s Note | Acknowledgments

I kept the numbers for the chapters, but divided the novel into two sections or “books” and listed the numbered chapters as minimally as possible, to save space. I suppose it looks all right, but as a guide to navigating the book, I’m not sure how useful it is–not to mention how hard it can be to click on a hyperlink that’s only one character long, especially on a touchscreen.

For Journey to Jordan, there were so many entries that I didn’t bother listing them all in the table of contents. Instead, I divided each part into sections based on location, then listed the locations in the table of contents and the posts/chapters at the head of each section, complete with hyperlinks.

As a side note, it’s actually pretty amazing how internal hyperlinks can change the experience of the book. For one thing, it opens up all sorts of possibilities for alternate endings and “Choose Your Own Adventure” type stories. Is it possible to list a chapter in the <manifest> without including it in the <spine>? I don’t think it is (at least, not in a well-formatted ebook), but if you could find a way to do that, you could add all sorts of hidden content and Easter eggs …

In any case, for my shorter Star Wanderers novellas, I think I actually prefer numbered chapters. The stories are short enough that the numbered subdivisions still have meaning, and the chapter lists aren’t long enough to look too cluttered. Besides, I’ve already started the series in this particular format so I think it will be better to keep it this way.

But for future books and future series … I don’t know. What do you think? Are ebook chapters better off named or numbered?

Last chance to get my books 50% off on Smashwords!

Hey guys, just a heads up that tomorrow and Wednesday are the last days to get all my books 50% off on Smashwords for the annual summer sale. Everything is under $2.50 USD, and the $.99 stuff is free! That might seem like a pretty steep discount, but I actually earn as much from each sale as I would for a trade paperback sale if my books were traditionally published, and I don’t mind passing on the savings to you.

Also, my friend and fellow writer Ben Keeley did a blog post about our low-key backpacking trip up Rock Canyon, so if that interests you, you can check it out on his blog. That rattlesnake was pretty freaky! Good thing he was about as eager to get away from us as we were to get away from him. We didn’t climb any mountains on this one, but we did find a gorgeous campsite on the side of a steep ravine. I definitely want to go camp there again sometime.

I’m taking it easy as far as the writing goes, but making some progress on The Sword Keeper. A lot of it right now is gathering ideas and reviewing what I’ve written so far (eleven chapters, or about 50k words). The first chapter requires some changes, but the rest I’ll probably let stand as it is and pick up where I left off. Once I’m fully immersed in this story again, I think the rest will come quite readily.

In the meantime, here’s a video of Mariam Elieshvili singing “ჩვენ ახლა ერთურთს,” chven axla erturts. I have no idea what the lyrics mean (something about looking for love in each others’ eyes), but Mariam’s voice is amazing and I think I may have a small celebrity crush on her. All this Georgian music definitely puts me in the mood to work on The Sword Keeper, kind of like how all that Arabic music helped me to write Desert Stars.

… and now I want to go back to Georgia. Again. :'(

July Smashwords sale–all books 50% off!

Every summer, Smashwords does a sale in which authors can enroll their books. This year, I’ve enrolled all of mine at 50% off, so all of them are under $2.50. Check it out!

Genesis Earth
A boy and a girl on a voyage to an alien star.
Price: ~~$4.95~~ $2.48

Bringing Stella Home
He’ll go to the ends of the galaxy to save his brother and sister.
Price: ~~$4.95~~ $2.48

Desert Stars
A tale of adventure and romance from the fringes of an interstellar empire that has forgotten its holiest legend: the story of Earth.
Price: ~~$4.95~~ $2.48

Stars of Blood and Glory
The only hope for the last free stars now lies on the path of blood and glory.
Price: ~~$4.95~~ $2.48

Star Wanderers: The Jeremiah Chronicles (I-IV)
He wanders the stars in search of a home. Instead, he got a girl without one.
Price: ~~$4.99~~ $2.49

Star Wanderers: Fidelity (Part II)
Is fidelity worth the price of freedom? Can love take root beyond the stars?
Price: ~~$.99~~ free!

Star Wanderers: Sacrifice (Part III)
She gave up everything to wander the stars with him. Now, he must do the same.
Price: ~~$2.99~~ $1.49

Star Wanderers: Homeworld (Part IV)
They’ve finally found a world to call home. But first, they have to fight for it.
Price: ~~$2.99~~ $1.49

Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver (Part V)
He saved her from death, but to save him, she must command the power of dreams.
Price: ~~$2.99~~ $1.49

Journey to Jordan
Travels of a young Mormon writer to Jordan, Egypt, and the Holy Land.
Price: ~~$2.99~~ $1.49

Decision LZ1527
A boy, a girl, and a whole crew of matchmakers.
Price: ~~$.99~~ free!

One of the great things about Smashwords is that these prices are the same throughout the world–no extra surcharge for international sales. So if you live outside the United States and don’t have a US bank account, these are the best prices you’re going to find.

These books will remain 50% off on Smashwords through the month of July. Just use the coupon code SSW50 to get the discount. Smashwords does accept Paypal, so you don’t have to sign up for an account or share your credit card information to purchase.

If you’ve been meaning to check out some of these books but haven’t gotten around to it, this is a great way to try them out. And if you want to sample them first, the first 15% to 25% is available on each book’s Smashword’s page.

Enjoy! 😀

No new books this month, but the next few should be stacked.

I’m working on Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) right now, and it’s coming along swimmingly. Where the other novellas are pretty much character dramas in a space opera setting, this one is more space adventure with the character / relationship stuff under the surface. It’s all about Mariya and Lucca, how they meet and end up falling for each other in some very extreme circumstances. I think they crash-land on Zarmina in chapter 3, and things just get crazier from there. Today, I wrote a scene with some giant reptilian bird-monsters, and I think I pounded out 1,000 words in 20 minutes.

So yeah, I’m having a lot of fun with that. The next one I’m going to publish, though, is Benefactor (Part VI), and I still have to do a lot of revisions on that one. So it probably won’t be out until next month sometime, probably closer to August–I want to make sure it’s as good as I can make it. But since the first draft of Reproach (Part VII) is already finished, it (hopefully) shouldn’t be much longer than that for it to come out, maybe in August. And Deliverance should come out soon after that.

For now, my goal is to finish Deliverance this week, and start the revisions for Benefactor immediately after that. It would be awesome to get these books out in July > August > September, though it might be more like July > September > October. Definitely, I’ll have Part VIII out before the holidays, perhaps even Part IX or X as well.

In the meantime, I just started typesetting the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory and set Desert Stars and Genesis Earth for expanded distribution through CreateSpace. There’s been some interesting developments in print-on-demand in the past few months, which may make it possible to get my books in bookstores through that venue. I still need to do some research on that end, but I do want to get the print versions out there at least. My first priority, though, is definitely writing.

There’s been a great deal of interest in my Star Wanderers ebooks, not at blockbuster levels but certainly more than I was expecting. And it’s growing, too–June is already my best month ever sales-wise, and most of the reviews have been quite positive. If the momentum keeps up with the next few books in the series, I might (might!) be able to go full-time before the end of the year. Worldcon 2013 is definitely looking like a possibility, and if I can find some friends to room and/or drive down with, chances are good that I’ll be going.

So yeah, thanks for all your support and interest! This has been my dream for a long, long time, so it’s really gratifying to see it finally within my grasp. I definitely don’t take it for granted, so I will do all I can to write more and better stories for you guys. My goal is to write more than a hundred novels & novellas, and I’m already on track to do so!

I’ll leave you with this video from Georgia, which I still miss almost every day. Man, I need to find another place that I can fall in love with as much as I did with that country. A small part of me wants to say “screw it all” and go back … in any case, here’s the video:

Naxvamdis!

Trope Tuesday: The Last DJ

In any vast bureaucracy, you’re bound to find obstructive bureaucrats and professional butt-kissers. But if you look long and hard enough, usually somewhere towards the bottom, you may be lucky enough to find one of the Last DJs.

The Last DJ is a man with integrity, who often puts honor before reason and cannot be bought, no matter how much his superiors try. Consequently, he usually ends up somewhere at the bottom of the organizational hierarchy, no matter how competent he may be. In extreme cases, he may be reassigned to Antarctica. Either way, do not expect to see him kicked upstairs–that’s for insufferably incompetent idiots who are promoted to an administrative post so everyone else can get back to the real work. If anything, expect this guy to get thrown under the bus.

Depending on the story, he may be a brotherly mentor figure for the main character or play some other sort of supporting role. However, don’t expect him to be much of a plot driver, unless the story is specifically about him. Because of his refusal to suck up or play office politics, he’s rarely in a position to effect change or become a whistle-blower.

Over time, this character may turn into something of a sour knight, developing a thick skin of crusty cynicism to protect his idealistic heart from all the crap he continually has to put up with. Like the Obi-wan, if he’s a mentor figure, he will probably die. If he’s the hero, though, or part of the ragtag bunch of misfits, expect him to be vindicated, possibly in a crowning moment of awesome. Rarely if ever will this guy be the villain–that’s the obstructive bureaucrat, whom this guy hates.

Lieutenant Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist is a good example of this trope. He’s a good soldier who was passed up on all the promotions because he refused to go along with the war crimes done against the Ishvalan people. His sister, who WAS reassigned to Antarctica (though probably by choice), is a whole other story.

Another good example of this trope is Lucius Fox from Batman Begins. The interesting thing about this one is that he’s a mentor figure who actually survives. This is probably because the story requires a lot of badassery from the hero, and Lucius is in no position to fill that role, so there’s no threat of him outshining Bruce Wayne. This is also a good example of the last DJ getting vindicated in the end.

In my own work, the best example I can think of is Tiera from Desert Stars. She’s fiercely stubborn with an uncompromising sense of honor, which results in her being stripped of her claim of inheritance due to her stepmother Shira’s wiles (although ‘stepmother’ isn’t quite the right word–how do you describe your father’s evil second wife, when he’s still married to your mother?). I’ve got some interesting plans for a sequel where she’s the main character, but that book is still in the early conceptual stages.

In my own life, I’ve actually fulfilled this trope. I don’t care to discuss the details of it publicly, but back when I was interning in Washington DC, I had a very negative experience that this trope describes perfectly. It’s one of the reasons I hate Washington so much, and decided to become a global nomad who makes a difference on the ground, rather than pushing papers in someone else’s petty empire of personal influence. It’s also one of the reasons why I started the Star Wanderers series–because I wanted to tell a story about people on the space-bound frontier, as far away from the galactic empire as possible.

I may not write many stories about vast bureaucracies or other hierarchical organizations, just because that doesn’t interest me, but whenever I do, you’ll probably see this guy pop up. As someone who’s been there, I have a lot of sympathy for this character. You’ll probably see him (or her) pop up in my work from time to time.