I Know Why The Buffalo Are Exploding

I have so much fun writing. But when I read the posts in the r/writing and r/scifiwriting subreddit on Reddit.com, and so many of them are about all the stress and unhappiness people go through when writing, I have to wonder.

For example, I am really enjoying putting my hot female Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin characters through the wringer in “Conquest of Incel World.” In the Rex Stout novels, Nero Wolfe really hates driving (or being driven, he can't drive) in cars, being certain that the car will crash momentarily. Archie is of course a very capable driver, the only one Wolfe trusts, and enjoys Wolfe's discomfiture enormously.

Well I decided that Nitro Wilde, my Nero Wolfe prototype, should also have a terror of being driven. And so should Moxie Maven, my Archie Goodwin character, because on Collar World self-driving cars are the norm, and accidents are exceedingly rare. They're both terrified when they wind up in a car driven by a human, what's even worse, a car driven by a human in heavy traffic made up of cars and trucks driven by humans. Moxie is much less terrified than Nitro, but she feels it, and for this reason is sympathetic with Nitro's terror, rather than simply enjoying it as Archie does with Nero.

(Well, also, Moxie and Nitro are women, who tend to be more empathetic than men.)

As a long-time voracious reader, it's pure pleasure to get in there and really fuck with favorite characters like Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. And doing it in a way that many Nero Wolfe fans would find deeply distressing, well that's just icing on the cake! How can you not enjoy that?


When I read other authors whining about how HARD it is to write and edit, I just have to roll my eyes. Get in there and have some FUN with what you're doing, maybe your readers will have fun with it, too.

Then again, sometimes I wonder if I'm like the Ed Wood character in the movie “Ed Wood.” Ed clearly loved his job, every bit of it, he enjoyed filmmaking, even though he was objectively just awful at it. Maybe when I write my stories, I'm like Ed, looking at random film clips and exclaiming: “The buffalo are exploding, and no one knows why!”

Or maybe I'm the one who knows why the buffalo are exploding.

"Conquest of Incel World" Goes Nero Wolfe!

 I'm getting back on the track of “Conquest of Incel World” the exciting sequel to “The Visitor From Incel World.” I'm enjoying this one a lot because I had some fun with the main characters.

I've long been a fan of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels, you see. Stout was an incredible writer. His prose style was smooth as silk. He got away with a lot of flaws in plotting because his books were a pleasure to read and his characters were some of the most engaging people in fiction.

Chief among those is Archie Goodwin, assistant and chief flunkie to the great detective Nero Wolfe. It's an open secret that Archie is the real appeal of the Nero Wolfe novels. He's the everyman through which we see Wolfe and the parade of familiar and fantastic characters that move through Wolfe's office in the course of a story. Goodwin is smart, sharp and would undoubtedly be a successful detective on his own if he wasn't in thrall to Wolfe's genius. He also has a cynical appreciation of Wolfe's flaws, because in addition to being a genius, Wolfe is lazy. Really fucking lazy, like “won't work until he's about to get thrown out of his comfy New York City brownstone” lazy. And Archie understands that perhaps his most important job is prodding Wolfe into working when he needs to. Goodwin understand that he's definitely a second banana intellectually to Wolfe (along with practically everyone else) but that he has qualities that Wolfe needs to be successful.

Well I think that with just a LITTLE bit of tweaking, Archie would make an EXCELLENT bratty slavegirl. His gender would have to change, but that attitude: perfect! Respect combined with cynical knowledge of the Master's flaws. Or in this case, Mistresses' flaws. Because of course Wolfe's gender has to change, too.

Except that I thought I'd make Wolfe asexual. In the Rex Stout novels, Wolfe is heterosexual but celibate by choice, fearing the effects that sexual passion has on him. (Wolfe's got a bit of a control dysfunction, too, I kept that for my version.)

At this point you may think my approach to characterization may be very similar to Jerry Lewis' approach to sculpture in The Bellboy. And I can't blame you. But I had fun with it, and I created a couple of interesting characters in Moxie Maven (aka Archie Goodwin) and Nitro Wilde (Nero Wolfe). Moxie is Nitro's slavegirl, but it's strictly a business collar, as Nitro is asexual. Moxie would fuck Nitro in a heartbeat, but she's not dying to have sex with Nitro, she's just a free use girl at heart, hence will do anyone she can hook up with. Just like Archie Goodwin, she's promiscuous, but she's got good taste.

Oh, there's also a plot about the invasion and conquest of Incel World, as it's known on Collar World (or Earth as we call it) mixed in there. And Moxie and Nitro will be squaring off with a team of agents from the CIA's Exceptional Cases Department, Felix Munger and Diana Stark. They do mostly paranormal casework, and they get called in on the Collar World (as Moxie and Nitro's timeline is called on our Earth) because although it's not strictly speaking paranormal, it is WEIRD, and Munger and Stark know their weird.

(And if you are thinking that Munger and Stark sound a lot like a certain Mulder and Scully … bingo!)

So, yes, I'm having great fun with my characters. Hopefully, readers will, too.

"Incel World" Explained

Cover for "The Visitor to Incel World." Barry Anderson is a psedonym. Explanation forthcoming soon.

“Road to Aquibonya” is finished and will be working on editing it today. This may seem amazing to you, but I proofread my stories three times before I publish them. Yes, and still mistakes get through. Sigh. But not nearly as many as used to get through.

Once I get through with editing “Road to Aquibonya in a day or two, it will be time to return to writing “Conquest of Incel World,” the non-awaited sequel to “Visitor from Incel World.” “Conquest of Incel World,” is non-awaited because I haven't published “Visitor” yet, so how could people be waiting for the sequel when they haven't read the original?

I'm eager to get cranking on “Conquest” though, but more about that later. I should probably explain what “Incel World” is. “Incel World” is what the inhabitants of Collar World call Earth … us, in short. They call Earth “Incel World” because their only contact with Earth has been through a feminist graduate student from a New England women's college, and so their understanding of Earth is filtered through her biases and perceptions.

You see, the Collar World books were the product of a thought experiment, which was initiated after some online discussions in the Sex Positive discussion group on Reddit, where I observed that real sex positivism was hard to even conceive of, because being raised in our current sex-negative culture, we all feel that strain of sex-negativism even when we strive to be sex-positive. It's like a constant cold wind blowing in from offshore, that you constantly have to lean against whenever you go outside. You get used to it, maybe you don't really feel it, but it's there, always.

So I thought about what it might be like to live in a world where everyone was kinky and sex-positive, and thus was born Collar World. I've got four stories published set in Collar World, an alternate world where everyone is kinky and sex positive and having a very good time, thankyewverymuch.

But after writing four stories set in Collar World, all of them erotica with strong science fiction themes, it occurred to me that much of the effect of Collar World was being lost because everyone took all the very strange goings-on for granted. If I wanted to get the contrast between Collar World and Earth as we know it to the max, I needed to bring in a character who could see Collar World through Earth eyes.

And thus was born “The Visitor from Incel World.” But when I wrote the story, something strange happened. I'll save that for tomorrow, though. Enough blathering for today.