Saturday, February 06, 2010

A Bit More on Love and Revolution

Love and Revolution is off on the submission circuit. (There's nothing like a deadline to get your creative juices boiling.) One of the things I really like about this story is the hero I've created. For years now my protagonists have been serious and somber and, you know, heavy. I've been wanting to create a hero that's funnier and more flippant yet still heroic. A few attempts here and there have just been failures because I couldn't capture the right mood or the plot developed around the hero hasn't lent itself to that kind of interaction. This time, however, I think I've nailed it. The hero is named Izan and he's a North African Berber trying to rescue a princess from the clutches of the murderous Roman pigs who've taken over their land. Young and rakish, Izan is mostly light-hearted throughout the tale, only becoming dark and murderous himself when it's most convenient. As for the princess, well, she doesn't start out as enamored of him as he is of her. That makes for good fun right there.

3 comments:

J.M. Martin said...

Jeff! This sounds very interesting. I'm a fan of this type of setting. Care to tell us who you sent the submission off to?

Jeff Draper said...

Over the last year or so I've dialed back on which markets I'm sending specific tales to. I usually wait until the acceptance is announced to make the exchange public. But since rules were made to be broken, this story was sent to RBE's Roar of the Crowd. The requirements for this anthology were a bit more constraining than the previous ones and I really didn't plan on sending anything in. Then I started reading through the slush pile in my position as Associate Acquisitions of Awesomeness Editor with RBE. There's nothing like wading through slush to make me step in like Charlie Daniels in the GEICO commercial and say, "That's how you do it, son."

J.M. Martin said...

Heh. Love that commercial.

The premise for ROAR OF THE CROWD sounds fun. I was thinking about submitting, but too much schoolwork got in the way. Your outline for "Love and Revolution" sounds awesome. I'd love to read it sometime. Good luck getting it in the book. I don't think you'll have much of a problem!

Keep us updated on ROAR'S progress.