Blog Entry 1/4: Through the Timestream

Welcome to part one of four of the official author’s blog of the dystopic novel, Tombstone Philosophy. The reason for these blogs is so that you, the reader, can get the opportunity to peek inside the author’s mind with the thought process and chronicling of this novel’s creation.

For those of you not familiar with Tombstone Philosophy, it is an eBook written by Bryan Miller about a world where the United States is being governed by a twisted incarnation of the Catholic Church, and of a group of freedom fighters whose goal is the return of separation of church and state by any means necessary.

The reason why I wrote a book on such a sensitive subject, is because I wanted to explore the dangers of church and state with a worst-case dystopic scenario, similar to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four with his exploring the dangers of communism and the scenario of an utter takeover in Britain’s fictional Oceania. There aren’t too many medium that dare play on the topic of religion, but to me, the writer, a story’s a story, no matter what its content consists of.

Tombstone Philosophy is a book that depicts the corruption of even the most reputable of religion organizations, and of its corruption (and the reader’s view of that corruption) going as far as I dare through the depths of my imagination. It’s a book where the reader can have different interpretations on its plot elements, whether you’re in favor of the anarchist Crusaders and their mission to free the country from the Church’s grip on it, or the Catholic Church, whose actions saved the country from itself and ushered it into a new era of order created by its new leader, Pope Alexander IX.

While there are works of fiction that describe the lower echelons of the Catholic Church of their wickedness, with Tombstone Philosophy I wanted to go straight for the source and make the Holy Father himself be the main antagonist of our story.

Keep in mind that I, the author of Tombstone Philosophy, have an absolute respect towards all religions that respect life and that of others. In Tombstone Philosophy, it can be viewed that the Catholic Church is a tool, and that all its resources and influence have been taken over by a man with a twisted belief on what is just, and how he can save the whole sinful world from damnation.

Tombstone Philosophy is not an anti-Catholic novel, nor is its intent to make offense of Catholic doctrine. Tombstone Philosophy is a work of fiction, a product of my imagination.

All I ask, reader, is that you keep an open mind.

Cover for PDF Three-Chapter Preview

Tombstone Philosophy is now available through Amazon Kindle

Blog Entry 2/4: Past

Welcome to part two of four of the official author’s blog of the dystopic novel, Tombstone Philosophy. The reason for these blogs is so that you, the reader, can get the opportunity to peek inside the author’s mind with the thought process and chronicling of this novel’s creation.

For those of you not familiar with Tombstone Philosophy, it is an eBook written by Bryan Miller about a world where the United States has been governed by a twisted incarnation of the Catholic Church, and of a group of freedom fighters whose goal is the return of separation of church and state by any means necessary.

During Tombstone Philosophy’s development, bits and pieces of media entertainment and historical events had influenced certain plot points of my novel’s creation. Some of these plot elements have been majorly influential to Tombstone Philosophy’s creation, while other elements have not quite so much.

The idea for using the Catholic Church as a major plot device originally came from the premise of John F. Kennedy’s early presidency during the 1960s. As a devout Catholic, many people feared that Kennedy potentially could be controlled by the Pope at the time, Pope Paul VI. Kennedy eased their tensions by assuring the country that he would never let his faith take priority over his leading and later backed up his commitment when visiting Paul VI in ‘63, declining to kiss the Holy Father’s papal ring during his visit to Vatican City (kissing the ring was considered an act of respect most devout Catholics would preform when greeted by the Pope). In Tombstone Philosophy, I wanted to create a scenario where the what-ifs of a religious figure manipulating a major political power for his ends would come to fruition, whether his intentions were selfish or selfless.

President Kennedy meeting with Pope Paul VI.

The basis of a social science fiction novel from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four also helped with the layout of a dystopic society. Orwell’s depiction of the book’s setting, Oceania, was of a totalitarian police state with a dilapidated, decaying setting where chaos was never more than a chance away for its soul-sick citizens. Tombstone Philosophy’s setting (cosmetically) was almost the opposite, being what I often coined a ‘dystopic-utopia’. In my dystopic-utopia, order reigns through obedience and fear by this version of the Catholic America, but with the stereotypical sternness of ‘old school’ Catholicism being alive and well among our day-to-day lives.

A dilapidated ghetto of Oceania with Nineteen Eighty-Four's everyman, Winston Smith.

The concept of the Catholic Church organization as a tool for the Crusaders’ antagonist, Pope Alexander IX, came from Garth Ennis’ Preacher series. Featherstone, an agent of the Grail (a 2,000-year old organization formed to engineer the Second Coming), had described her group and its vast resources as merely a “tool to do a job”, no matter how old or how sacred that tool appeared to be.

The transforming cross weapon, the Crucifix, used by Father Joel early in Tombstone Philosophy, was inspired by the composite zip gun used by John Malkovich’s character in 1993’s In the Line of Fire. The Crusaders, in name, have been inspired by the group of youths in 1968’s if…. (Malcolm McDowell’s first major appearance in film), who in the end credits of the film are categorized as “Crusaders”. Most notably among Alien film buffs, the name “quinitricetyline” from the Q-bombs used by the Crusaders, is a homage of the toxic compound “quinytricetyline” used against the xenomorph in 1992’s Alien 3.

Tombstone Philosophy is not an anti-Catholic novel, nor is its intent to make offense of Catholic doctrine. Tombstone Philosophy is a work of fiction, a product of my imagination.

All I ask, reader, is that you keep an open mind.

Tombstone Philosophy is now available through Amazon Kindle

Blog Entry 3/4: Present

Welcome to part three of four of the official author’s blog of the dystopic novel, Tombstone Philosophy. The reason for these blogs is so that you, the reader, can get the opportunity to peek inside the author’s mind with the thought process and chronicling of this novel’s creation.

For those of you not familiar with Tombstone Philosophy, it is an eBook written by Bryan Miller about a world where the United States has been governed by a twisted incarnation of the Catholic Church, and of a group of freedom fighters whose goal is the return of separation of church and state by any means necessary.

The creative process behind Tombstone Philosophy’s development has been an odd one. As a visual thinker, one of the things I did while outlining the chapters for Tombstone Philosophy was draw out sketches and storyboards with brief descriptions to help illustrate the overall plot. Of course I had written layouts with paragraph-sized descriptions of each chapter and the goal/reason behind the chapters. About seventy percent of the original content survived the editing and fleshing-out of the storyline, the thirty percent scraped because it either didn’t flow with the story or was replaced with newer, better content.

The one author whose writing style has helped me flesh out Tombstone Philosophy was Thomas Harris. Harris, famous for his crime/suspense novels Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon and the creation of fictional serial killer Dr. Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter, has helped me develop my own writing style, more specifically with his 1999 novel, Hannibal. Despite the mixed reviews Harris’s novel has received, it’s still one of my favorite literary pieces; Hannibal has certainly kept me entertained with the story’s pacing and character development, and inspired me to incorporated most of those elements into the groundwork of Tombstone Philosophy.

The Hannibal audio book (narrated by Harris himself), was particularly helpful in making sure the words and dialogue in Tombstone Philosophy flow properly. My greatest weakness in writing has been maintaining the flow of words that often resulted in run-on sentences and jagged dialogue. I must’ve read Hannibal and listened to the entire damned audio half a dozen times before the writing and editing of Tombstone Philosophy reached my level of satisfaction.

As a graphic designer, it is important to me to have the layout of my book’s content be as appealing as its exterior design. S.D. Perry’s novelization of the Resident Evil series was helpful in modeling the internal structure of both Tombstone Philosophy’s eBook and limited paperback edition. In her first RE novel, The Umbrella Conspiracy, it was one of the rare books that could make Times New Roman a surprisingly adequate font for its content. Out of the seven books she’s written of the RE series (five based on the games, two original), the first one to me was the best in terms of internal layout.

(l to r) Orwell, Harris and Perry, influential to Tombstone Philosophy's development.

Like a lot of fledgling authors, we believe that after reading enough books that we can write one up ourselves. It is, however, rather difficult to not only come up with original material, but to make it enjoyable for your potential audience to read. One of the greatest difficulties I’ve encountered when tackling a sensitive subject like religion, was how to set it up without deliberately offending my readers. Thankfully (as far as I can tell), I haven’t besmirched Catholic doctrine as much as I had feared, despite the risky circumstance involving the Church that has been documented throughout the novel. In Tombstone Philosophy, I discovered that the reader can potentially root for either the Crusaders or the Church. Both groups possess traits that can clarify them as both good or evil because of their actions, leaving the reader to root for either party; that was an unexpected bonus that had formed a life of its own.

Tombstone Philosophy is not an anti-Catholic novel, nor is its intent to make offense of Catholic doctrine. Tombstone Philosophy is a work of fiction, a product of my imagination.

All I ask, reader, is that you keep an open mind. 

Tombstone Philosophy is now available through Amazon Kindle
 

Blog Entry 4/4: Future

Welcome to part four of four of the official author’s blog of the dystopic novel, Tombstone Philosophy. The reason for these blogs is so that you, the reader, can get the opportunity to peek inside the author’s mind with the thought process and chronicling of this novel’s creation.

For those of you not familiar with Tombstone Philosophy, it is an eBook written by Bryan Miller about a world where the United States has been governed by a twisted incarnation of the Catholic Church, and of a group of freedom fighters whose goal is the return of separation of church and state by any means necessary.

The future of Tombstone Philosophy has been set since not so long before I penned out the epic conclusion to the fight between the Crusaders and the Church. I have no such intention of expanding my world of Tombstone Philosophy, despite the possibilities of exploring an epilogue novel(s) following the events after Tombstone Philosophy, the assimilation of the United States with Vatican City or the Breadbasket Crisis. Tombstone Philosophy’s ending to me was satisfying enough without the need of any further expansion.

As far as future projects outside of Tombstone Philosophy goes, I have no desire to create anything with religious themes as strong as Tombstone Philosophy has depicted. My future works shall be far away from the spectrum of religion, despite the knowledge I’ve gained on Catholicism while working on Tombstone Philosophy. As for future novels, as soon as I come up with anything original and worth writing will I renew the clicks and taps on my laptop keyboard in Microsoft Word.

At the moment, I have three upcoming projects that I’ll be working on as part of Lunar Indie Studios’ creative development. I will continue my role as Art Director for LeeMichael Charboneau’s Four Horsemen tetralogy. The Four Horsemen is a series of military fiction novels written by Charboneau about a secret paramilitary unit and their quest in restoring democracy to a future America. Book I - I am the Fourth, is available in paperback, hardcover and eBook format from online retailers such as Amazon and Lulu.

Books one and two of Charboneau's The Four Horsemen tetralogy (book two still in development)

My own project starting after Tombstone Philosophy will be a video available on YouTube called B.O.W. Battle Data - Tyrant. It is an info video on all the Tyrants created by the Umbrella Corporation in the Resident Evil video game series. After seeing a lot of tribute videos on YouTube on the Tyrants, seeing how they’re mostly still-image slideshows and low quality compilations, I wanted to try and take it up a few notches with one of my own (being the diehard Resident Evil fan that I am). It’s expected to be released by spring 2015; so go to the Lunar Indie Studios YouTube Channel if you want check out this video and others created by yours truly.

Screenshots of the upcoming video B.O.W. Battle Data - Tyrant

Lastly, I will be revitalizing my long dormant illustration skills with the digital comic, Genre. Genre is a comic about a high school freshmen who enrolls in a school for music, realizing that his teachers and classmates are all personifications of different music genres. It will involve the main character, Cal, and your typical high school drama involving fights with super-powered bullies, girls, midterms, battle of the bands and more! It’s Scott Pilgrim meets the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (but without the whole espers, time travelers, aliens or gods thing!). The first issue’s expected release date is fall 2015 and will be available in digital media (and eventually paperback) wherever I can get hands on an online retailer and sell for real low cheap! Look for updates on Facebook and Twitter, simply search for Lunar Indie Studios.

Logo for the upcoming Genre digital comic

Thank you for reading my four-part blog on Tombstone Philosophy, I hope you enjoyed reading my dystopic novel as much as I did making it.

-Bryan Miller

Tombstone Philosophy is now available through Amazon Kindle