​
Buuuuuuuuut. For $600 million (some estimates), we should be angry so much of it was bad, and the reported terrible box-office takings are their own gods-damned fault. So here's my two suggestions for anyone who wants to go back in time and fix it: 

1. Stop giving creative control to Zack Snyder. Stop letting Zack Snyder write stories. Stop letting Zack Snyder make movies. Stop Zack Snyder. I never want to bad-mouth another writer, but he's big enough and rich enough to take it. He's a heavy-handed, grimdark storyteller with no subtlety, who takes what should be interesting ideas and strips them of all pathos, depth and meaning. Also, he's a terrible director who probably thinks Michael Bay is good. I spent way too much of JL thinking "That was a bad shot. That's terrible editing. That's a stupid directorial decision. That's going to give me a headache. Someone please take away half his cameras." I started assuming that all the scenes that were easy to watch were the ones done later by Whedon (who... not perfect). I'm still convinced that half the bits I didn't like about Wonder Woman were Snyder's fault. Also, did anybody try to tell him that tridents have tri tines? 
2. Don't bring back Superman. Don't. Bring back. Superman. Do not bring back Superman. Henry Cavill does absolutely nothing for me as an actor, but he's serviceable and nice, which I guess is perfect for Superman. No, the problem is Superman, who, as usually conceived, is a stupid god-level Mary Sue of a character in any case, but in this movie he ruined the climax. The entire line "Is this guy still bothering you?" is everything wrong with Superman. The world's being destroyed, Earthlings are putting aside their differences and risking their lives, Wonder Woman and Aquaman are facing up to their responsibilities and learning to cooperate and having an important moment of shared battle, Flash is learning to be a hero, Batman is fighting despite being so far out of his weight class he can't be seen (because he's hiding in the shadows. Get it? I'll stop now), but hey! Ignore all that because we've got Deus Ex Machinaman! Suddenly drama gives way to spectacle. They had to throw in fleeing civilians just to draw things out a bit and give the rest some screen time. He's super-strong and he's nearly indestructible and he can fly and he has laser vision and he can freeze intergalactic axes with his breath and he's as fast as The Flash. Give me a fucking break. 

Bonus: Use Aquaman properly. Arthur Curry is a good character. His setup, as someone who is low-key local aquaman hero because he felt abandoned by Atlantis and hasn't played any role in it, has potential. He was growing. He was becoming Aquaman. You couldn't understand half of what he said because the sound design in this movie was Not Great, but Jason Momoa is perfect for the role. But after he put on the armor he had precisely one moment as Aquaman, and the rest was "generic super-strong super-tough punchy guy, but with a fancy spear". Wasted. Have the climax on a radioactive island, or something. This is the entire reason people think Aquaman is a silly character - no imagination for how to use a character who has dominion over two thirds of the Earth's surface. 

Also: Every second shot of Gal Gadot was the reason feminist film critics use the phrase "male gaze". I felt dirty just being in the audience. Somehow, I don't remember any panty shots or buttock creases in Wonder Woman. Maybe I was just distracted by the movie not being cheesier than King Island (or Wisconsin, for Americans).

Also 2: Fuck whoever thought Lois Lane's entire story should be "I'm a Pulitzer-winning journalist who's gone to war zones, but now I've lost my boyfriend I'm doing puff pieces because all I can cope with, sigh." Fuck them in the head. You want to give her grief or PTSD, fine, but you show that, don't relegate her to "sad girlfriend".

You may now go ahead and disagree with me.

I've been in a writing slump, with some spurts of motivation, for what feels like about a decade now, which means approximately six months of objective time.

So far so not so unusual: I deliberately stepped away from writing for a brief period last year while home ownership stuff was becoming frantic and I just couldn't afford to spare the time, as an amateur writer, to write.

More to the point, however: The world just became too damn depressing. And I'm not alone in this: In my (mostly lurking) time on Twitter, I've seen more than the usual background venting of writers currently stuck not being writers, and it's usually the same cause: Fuck this shit.

Which is of course exactly the wrong response, because at a time when the politics of fear, division and selfishness has swung back into the ascendancy, now more than ever we need artists of all stripes to be defiant and show what humanity could be like if we tried.

Unfortunately, minds don't work to what's ideal, otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

So, basically, as soon as I felt I had time to take a breath and start writing again...

...

...

Yeah. That.

With one exception: During a particularly bad day, I started writing something so outrageous and trashy I knew that as soon as I had finished venting my current mood, I would never speak of it again. It was inspired by something specific and a whole bunch of other stuff, and it made me laugh, and that would be an end of it.

Until I finished the story, which for some reason had a cliffhanger ending on it because my brain hates me.

And started on the sequel. And then started plotting (which I never, never do. I am a pantser. Apart from the fact I prefer kilts to pants, I am a classic pantser. I never plan anything, least of all my life). And then I started on, hang on, is this section 4? How did that happen?

And now it's up to 80,000 words and 13 parts and I'm desperately trying to work out how to end this bloody thing, and it is still so trashy there is no way in hell anyone is going to see it under my name. If I ever publish it anywhere, it'll be an exercise in self-publishing under the most untraceable pseudonym I can come up with.

But, it's kept my fingers moving, and kept me going, and kept me in a position where I can think about starting a proper, meaningful project. 

There' s just one problem: I can't concentrate on anything else right now, because I keep trying to work out how the next bit goes.

Which means I have to finish it. Which means writing like mad to get it out of the way. Call it an exorcism.

​So that's something, at least.

Most of the games I pick are first-person, fantasy, and preferably open-world, when I can get it. I return to Skyrim regularly, I have Witcher 2 (one of these days I'll decide I can afford a discount Witcher 3) and I have copies of Riven and Gothic 2 lying around on my hard drive, which I occasionally return to, when I rediscover how infuriating Riven's combat system is - at least partly because it feels hugely more realistic than most others.

Different things about them annoy me, and a common one is how skill and stat progression is handled. Skyrim: using skills acquires points until you level up, when you get to pick one of more health, more mana, or more endurance/carrying capacity. You can pay trainers or read books to improve skills. In Riven, you have to pay trainers to upgrade your skills. In Gothic 2, you get training points when you level up, then you have to spend those points, plus gold, to improve strength or individual skills.

And that all really bugs me. You run around using weapons, having fights, killing things, and success gets you points but you have to pay to get stronger? Or you run around constantly, carrying all your loot, but you don't get stronger unless you choose that stat increase? That makes no sense at all. Acquiring new techniques from trainers makes sense, but only to a point. I remember in Skyrim's predecessor Oblivion, there was a stat for agility, and jumping incremented it. That makes sense. 

I think I'd find a game more interesting if all the skills were organic, and rewarded effort and practice. So I spewed out those thoughts onto Twitter: 

I started a steampunk world, and it was good, and it sort of grew unexpectedly and I realised I had made a few amateurish mistakes, and that I had made a rod for my own back, and also that I had some characters I loved and a world that could expand.

The first story, that started the whole thing, was also my first decent sale as a writer, and it went to Less Than Three Press as We Will Make More Mischief Together in the If You're Reading This anthology. (I have a thing for rococo titles).

The second story I sold in that world went to the second volume in Nicole Gestalt's Valves & Vixens series, as Her Humble Servants. At the time, I was deliberately trying to make every romantic/erotic story I wrote have a different pairing, so that one was bisexual MMF, and very fun it was to write, too.

I wrote another story that is in this world but doesn't really count because it's not really steampunk, so I'll mention it elsewhere.

The third story has been written, sold, and is going through the editing stage, and I'm allowed to tell you about it.

I give you:

Ship With Me, in the upcoming anthology Valves & Vixens 3, still from Nicole Gestalt:

(Spoilers, sweetie, below)

Spoilers, sweetie:

It ties in strongly with We Will Make More Mischief Together, as in: It features characters and situations established in that story. It introduces two new central characters and a couple of ancillaries.

The focus is on an MF pair of lovers devoted to each other since they were shipped out to the colonies as orphans and promised to stand together.

The whole love, attraction, erotic drives thing happened much later, but that's the sort of thing that does happen when all you have is each other.

I loved writing this. It allowed me to expand upon my favourite aspects of the world, and to give a sort of postscript and development to Franc and Kat from We Will Make More Mischief Together.

It also made me cry when I went back to it after a couple of weeks of separation, so there's that. Damned characters and their emotional turmoil.

Of course, I put them through all that in the first place, creating a bastard of a situation just to see how they'd respond, and I'm proud of them. I really am.

I hope you all like them, too.

Seven stories of "vampires and ice demons and stern dominatrix united in one goal: giving you the best erotic fantasy and science fiction that we can," in the words of editor D. Mark Alderton.

Preorder! https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/574549

Win a copy! (And a whole stack of other titles) https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b8b23a841/ (Also through the widget right down the bottom of this page.)

Read more excerpts from other contributors! http://www.circlet.com/?p=1701

Wait, more excerpts?

Read on, dear reader:

The floor of the basement was covered in a thick and soft carpet, apart from two neat circles cut through to the concrete floor.

He put the folder, cash box, and candle on a small table, took a deep breath, then opened the box.

It contained a thick stick of chalk, a cigarette lighter, a scroll, a tiny candle, and a complicated little metal cage with a padlock and a key.

The table held a box containing more candles—these ones plain white supermarket sticks of wax.

It took him an hour to prepare properly. He ran down a check list that extended to three pages. Then he carefully checked the runes for a fifth time.

Yes, everything was correct.

He checked the folder. That looked like the entire short-list.

Yes, yes, everything seemed to be in order.

He couldn’t put it off any longer.

He lit the regular candles. He stripped, so he was entirely naked. He buckled the chastity cage over his cock and balls. He sat cross-legged in the circle, closed his eyes, then intoned the 16 barely pronounceable, completely unspellable syllables.

It was a little while before anything happened.

He felt sweat spring out all over his body before he heard her voice slither into his ear, slide around his skull a couple of times, then tickle its way down his torso.

“Mmm, hello lover boy. Are we going to have some fun?”

He had to swallow several times before replying. His cock was already straining painfully at its restriction. “I have summoned you, oh Veshoulieres...”

“Yes, yes, I know that, I’m here now. Let’s skip straight to the part where you unlock that naughty little thing on...”

“I have summoned you, oh Veshoulieres!” he gabbled, sweat bursting out on his forehead, desperate to avoid her saying the word “cock” or any of its synonyms.

“You’re no fun when you’re on the clock, you know that, don’t you?”
 
There was such tragic disappointment in her voice he wanted to cry. He wanted to fling himself on her mercy and on...

The part of his brain that was still functioning correctly hurled itself on that line of thought like a bodyguard on top of a grenade.

“I conjure and command thee...”

“Take your time.”

He choked again. Every word she uttered, no matter how banal, twisted his guts in knots. The metal cage over his cock was the only thing letting him retain any sort of self control. His nipples were like pencil erasers. He had known women who never got such erect nipples. He felt as though sex was being done to the individual cells of his body, and they were all rebelling and refusing to accept his casting vote.

“I conjure and command thee to do our bidding under the covenant agreed to...”

“I know this bit, I’ve heard it all before, you know.”

He desperately plunged on, the world swimming in front of his eyes. “... between yourself and my founding editor at this place. I have your seal and sign upon it.”

“Yes, alright,” she snapped as he finished the terms of the summoning. “What is it?”

I'm a romance author. I wasn't expecting that, entirely. I mean, erotica, sure, but what I always thought of myself as, was an author who used speculative settings to explore humans and how they might behave. But as Vonnegut said (paraphrasing) - leaving out sex and leaving out technology both misrepresent life. Romance is part of life. So is horror, and jealousy, and hatred, and all sorts of other passions.

It turned out that romance is a very good way of exploring quite a lot of speculative themes.

And that word, "themes", became central to the thought process I'm about to lay out.

What, exactly, is 'romance', as a genre?

The simplest way I can put it is: A story where a romantic relationship is central. Deep, I know. The point is: Take it out, and the story is different. It may still work, but it will be fundamentally different. It's not, and I wish to make this very plain, so pay attention at the back, it's not a story where the relationship is the only thing. My first romance story was a self-actualisation road trip. My second, a supernatural coming-of-age search for absolution. My third, a violent search for revenge. They were all romance, because the first one was a road trip to the relationship, the second was the attempt to repair and continue the relationship, and the third, the discovery of the relationship. I followed them up with the story of a woman whose secret past became the only way for her to survive her violent future. Yes, that's a romance story. Set in space, by the way. With pirates.

The relationship in each case provides the motivation, meaning and development, to varying degrees. It drove two stories, it was a surprise discovery but ultimately vital part of two more.

Here's the thing: The first story was steampunk. The second, contemporary supernatural. The third, fantasy. The fourth, space opera.

(probably should put a sub-heading here)

Which has lead me to consider what this bloody term "genre" even means.

This question has been greatly kicked along by a a very good and interesting editorial blog post contemplation thing on the World Weaver Press website, here, which I strongly advise you to go and read if you haven't already. The thesis is: Horror is not a genre, it's an aesthetic. It infiltrates and inhabits other genres, and the tools and themes of horror are used widely in movies and stories not traditionally described as horror - qv Tim Burton, if you can stand to (well, I like him).

Well, I go beyond and say that horror is not alone in that.

Here's what I propose: Genres are divided into setting genres and story genres.

Genres such as science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, historical, etc. define the world: They place limits and opportunities in terms of how the universe is constructed. But they say absolutely nothing about the story. The world is ever present, but "science fiction" is not a story theme. It's the stuff of which the set is made. It provides ways to tell stories, and frequently the setup is a crucial part of the point of the story, but it does not provide the story itself. It offers otherwise unobtainable ways of making metaphors, but doesn't determine what those metaphors are.

On the other hand, genres such as horror, romance, mystery, etc., define the nature of the story but say nothing about the setting. A romance story has strong romance themes at the heart of it, but can be set in the middle of wartime in ancient Pompei with the involvement of mythological creatures (pretty sure that one's been done). A mystery story contains within it a mystery which must needs be solved, but that can take place in a parallel contemporary noir Chicago with magic and a girlfriend with justifiable reasons to be jealous (I know that's been done).

Let's not even get into format genres, like poetry, saga, graphic novel, first person ... (you can argue with me about these some other time)

And so on.

Mix and match.

• Science fiction horror (Alien)
• Historical mystery (In The Name of The Rose)
• Contemporary action relationship counselling (Die Hard)
• Noir romance philosophy.
• Cyberpunk comic war satire.
• Alternate history murder mystery.
• Steampunk zombie fetish murder porn.

Fun for the whole family.

Now: Obviously, this is quite simplistic. And there are Conventions, and Usual Story Lines and Expectations, to which I say: Fuck that, have fun. Break the conventions.

I don't believe for one second this distinction is absolute. I believe in shades of grey. One of my strongest beliefs is "Rule #1: Reality is more complicated than you think it is". I tend to immediately discount the opinions of anybody who claims that any given situation has a simple and absolute cause, explanation or solution.

But I do think the basics are pretty much right, and I'd like there to be a little more realisation of the fact that "science fiction" doesn't have to be about space battles or comic alien encounters, and "romance" can include things like blood, high technology, or bloodthirsty vampires.

I know mine does. If you wish to read any of them, go here, on www.lessthanthreepress.com.