The essential Ghost F.A.Q. (12/10/2005)

This comes from John's new "Amazon Connect" blog page. It's mostly a response to the, many, people who were offended by Ghost. He tried to put all of his thoughts on Ghost along with a history of it into one document. While not comprehensive, it's got most of the major questions answered.

INTRO

This is the whole story, more or less, of Ghost. I've posted this in plenty of places but apparently just as many  people have not seen it. For those that have issues with my reasoning or actions, fine. If you choose not to purchase any more of my books, also fine. But this is the history and some background. What you take from it is yours, not mine.

THE HISTORY

This is taken primarily from an interview on another website. I'm going to expand on certain points.

I went through a huge burst of creativity in January and February of 2004. I write outside and during a month and a half period I wrote Into the Looking Glass (in twelve days), We Few (in fourteen days), finished a third novel (East of the Sun, West of the Moon, IIRC) and started a fourth (Princess of Wands). All of this in weather dropping down to the 20's. I found I wrote best between 42 and 24 degrees; below 24 no matter what I did my fingers shook too much.

Then…it stopped.

What had happened was that the story of Ghost , lurking in the back of my head for a long time, jumped into the queue and said "WRITE ME!" And then the jerk stayed there.

I'm a professional author. I write for a living . It's what pays the rent, so to speak. I couldn't afford to spend time not writing. But I struggled against Ghost for months . During that time it expanded, hugely, a series with multiple different plotlines, alternate stories, alternate endings. And I couldn't write anything else. Any time I tried to think about all the other stories I was getting paid to write, some scene from Ghost or its sequels jumped into the picture.

This was a huge financial problem. The way that I, and most professional authors, make their month to month money is from advances. Generally, when you contract on a book you get half of your advance. Then, when you turn it in, you get the other half. Figure that a normal book takes three months to write, you get half the advance one month, have a month or two in between and then get the second half when you turn in. (There is far less method to the reality than here, but it works as an example.)

Due to Ghost locking me up, I had no "turn-in" checks for months. And I wasn't contracting for anything. Fortunately, I'd turned in three books at the beginning. But by summer I was financially getting a bit strapped.

Finally, I gave up and wrote it, firmly intending to never publish it. I thought it was as bad as any review on the site. (I've changed my mind, but that was after rereading it.)

However, when I was first writing on it I was complaining about it on Baen's Bar. People there wanted to see what my "c**p" writing looked like. I posted the first three thousand words and the response was...enthusiastic.

Now, at this point I was looking for an out to get some cash. Again, I'd been without the "normal and customary" turn-in checks for over six months. So I decided to "shop" it to other publishers, preferably under a pseudonym. I contacted an agent (I don't have one at the moment), showed it to him and he was also enthusiastic.

Jim Baen, however, became aware of it (his site, duh) and told me I owed him at least a read of the book. I pointed out that it wasn't SF, that it was raunchy and all the rest. He wanted to read it anyway. And when he read it, he wanted to buy it, offering an immediate advance, even before we signed a contract. (And all of it up-front, since it was complete. The term for writing something without a contract in the industry, by the way, is "spec" or "speculative.") He also insisted on using my name. Although he got pretty jovial about it from time to time. The worst iteration of the discussion was "Ghost by MAX Ringo". I threatened to start punning on Baen (homonym for Bane) if he didn't back off. I was strongly in the "put a middle initial in there, at least, please" camp but that never came to fruition. The sales people and a couple of buyers lobbied against it. (And the buyers are, from the POV of the publisher, their market. The actual readers are way down the chain.)

So Jim bought it and published it with my name on it. The one point that I insisted on was that he had to persuade people to place it under General Fiction or Thriller or whatever, NOT as SF. On Amazon, of course, there is no distinction. The internet has benefits and weaknesses. People who had bought my books had no earthly idea that this was so different unless they read any of the many posts I made about it or one of the reviews that pointed it out. (This wasn't a dig, I don't do that either. If it's by an author I've read before, I expect more or less the same. That's why I KNEW some of my readers were going to be torqued off to an enormous degree. I felt the same way about Pyrates and for less justification.)

So that's the history. For good and ill. I hope you liked the book. For those who did, the explanation is probably pointless (or maybe interesting, I dunno.) For those who hated the book, I'm sure they won't care an iota. But "that's the way it is."

COMMENTARY

I've read many books over time that I thought were bad. Some of them by authors I rather like or liked. Depending on whether it was a trend (length and boredom quotient in Tom Clancy, just plain weirdness in Stephen King) or an aberration (Road to Gandolpho by Robert Ludlum) I either decided to forego them or took it as an aberration and continued reading.

I never "blamed" the author. In the case of books that simply shouldn't have been published, (K-9 Corps comes to mind) I blamed the publisher. But authors I never blame. Why?

Because even before I started writing, I recognized that books are not like building a widget. With a widget, someone gives the builder a design and the builder puts the parts together. Even with things with more "skull sweat", very rarely is inspiration the be-all and end-all.

In writing, that is all there is. It's not "1% inspiration and 99% work." It is, from beginning to end, inspiration. (And one hell of alot of work, for values of work. I'm not one of those who whines about the work of writing, mind you. Digging ditches is a hell of alot harder.) If computers could write reasonable dialogue, I'd be the first person to buy the program. "The two military characters there are discussing entering this building. Come up with the plan and then write the dialogue."  But they don't. It has to come from what Algys Budris called "the idea bucket."

And the big ideas ("I've got a great idea for a story...") aren't the hard part. As Dave Drake pointed out, they're a dime a dozen. The hard part is the day in day out struggle for the next line of description, action, dialogue. You have to have the fire in your gut for that. And if you're not interested in the story, your readers will feel that. Even if you can manage to write it at all.

Writers can only write what inspires them. For better or worse, the story of Ghost (and Megan's Tale in Emerald Sea and the opening of Cally's War, which was to my basic outline) all caught me. The dialogue, the scenes, the violence, the sex came from _my_ fount.  From my "idea bucket."

I won't cop to Mike Harmon being "misogynistic". Mike is something else, somethign more subtle. His treatment of Amy vs Brittany in the first book points that out. To Mike, Amy deserves respect, Brittany does not. And the two girls in the Keys deserve respect, although less than Amy and maybe even less than Brittany. (Note, of the forty-eight girls functional in the room, Bambi, Thumper, Amy and Babe were the only ones that volunteered to help.) Mike even respects, more than is obvious, Magdelena. He probably respects her more than he respected most of the girls he rescued in Book One. The reason for his actions, and for where he places his respect, I leave as an exercise for the reader.

:-)

A writer can choose to _not_ publish something. Perhaps I should have chosen to not publish Ghost, despite having a very sizeable advance waved under my nose. However, I was strapped and had a mortgage to make. And the advance was contingent on it being a book by "John Ringo."

There is a philosophical argument here, one that I've had with other writers, regarding what a writer "owes" his readers. Many writers state that readers are owed nothing. They can read the books or not and the writer should not consider then when writing at all. I fall on the other side. I try to write things that my readers will enjoy. What's the point otherwise. But some things just ask to be written and, as described above, will interfere with other projects to the point of needing to be written. Whether they are published... Ah, that's where it gets sticky.

The flip side to the, many, people who did not like Ghost is that there were many people who liked it very much. Not publishing the book would have been a disservice to _those_ readers. Not an easy call either way.

Ghost is not an easy book; it raises many troubling issues. Those that have trashed the book or hated it would be amazed how many e-mails I've gotten saying, in essence, "you nailed it. Thanks for finally writing about it." There are many people who live every day with the demons of Mike Harmon and Herzer Herrick. They "grokked" the book very well. Others, including close friends who are also veterans, did not. They don't carry those demons. (And I disagree with the people who say that the demons are a result of the stress of his training. Mike had them from way before he was a SEAL. I would venture to guess that they were part of his motivation for joining the SEALs.)

Nothing in Ghost is easy to describe in black and white. Even the scene with Magdelena has some gray to it (albeit not much.) Mike Harmon is not Simon Pureheart. The reality is that many MANY members of the military, even great heroes, are not Simon Pureheart. There have been serial rapists found amongst the ranks of Delta and the SEALs not to mention other less elite groups. Several of the women I've talked with over the last few years who were in abusive relationships, the abuser was a military member. (This is not to say that members of the military are more likely to be abusive; the sample is skewed due to the nature of my fans.) Rape rates near military bases are invariably higher per capita than in areas that do NOT have military bases.

"Single men in barracks don't turn into plaster saints."

The point is that just because someone is a hero, it doesn't make them a nice guy. In fact, generally, the opposite is the case. Audie Murphy was a nasty person in person, very bullying, very violent and an abuser of his various spouses. Alvin York, on the other hand, was considered the Gentleman's Gentleman. Wade McCluskey was brusque to the point of rudeness. John Mullins is a great guy to sit down and shoot the bull with and very much a gentleman. But you invariably come away from an evening of talking with him with the vague sense that you got away alive and are happy about it. (The guy, despite being in his 70's, scares the bejeezus out of me.)

I'm pretty much done here. But to clarify some things:

Yes, I'm a heterosexual dom. (Wow! I'm out of the closet! Seriously, that's the first time I've written that on the internet. I suspect, like when Boy George came out, that it will mean a fall-off in sales. Oh, well.)

I also have done research for writing about it with rape counsellors, a former Harvard professor of abnormal psychology and victims of rape and abusive relationships. Most of the hard research was done for the Dragons series primarily intended to accurately cover Daneh's rape and recovery. I've used it since for Megan's Tale and Ghost. (Waste not, want not.)

I strongly support counselling (by good counsellors, mind you, there are some out there that do far more harm than good) for victims of abusive relationships and especially rape. I've tried to make that a subtext of my books that have those sorts of things happen. Among other things, if I can help one person recover then all the carping is worth it. And "you get over it" (a line from a Steve Stirling book) is the one stupidest thing ever written in the English language. I said that to Steve, personally. He disagrees but we're civil about it. We trade books prior to publication. His Fall series has some good stuff in it. Dies the Fire is awfully grim, but Protectors War is easier and both are damned good.

I've never been a member of the BDSM "scene" nor do I intend to become one.

I have had dom/sub relationships.

I've never comitted rape or "stalked" anyone. I've never had sex with anyone under the age of 16 nor have I had sex with anyone under the age of 18 since I've been over that age. (When you're seventeen and she's seventeen, and she's your first, the concept of "statutory rape" gets tricky. Does she get charged? Do you get charged? Let's call the whole thing off.)

I have had sex with prostitutes in countries in which it was legal and in third world countries where I'm not sure if it was legal or not but nobody cared. At least one of those prostitutes stated that she was brought into the industry against her will. (Colombian girl in Panama. All of this was pre-1986 or so.)

I've never enacted the scene in the third book.

I was a sexually active bachelor from the age of 17 until 28 when I got married. During that time I had sex with approximately 38 females. Three of those were mild BDSM relationships. (Bondage only.) One of them could be construed as abusive. I'm still in contact with that person and we've discussed it at length. I construe it as abusive, she does not. That is what makes the entire discussion tricky.

IOW: I've never done anything sexually that was illegal and only one thing that still troubles me. And it troubles me more than the female who was involved.

Just thought I'd get some of the more idle speculation out of the way.

John says: I do not believe that any such group exists in present day. But Caucasus (and Afghanistan and the Anatolian mountain ranges) are host to a wild polyglot of cultures left over from others that passed through the area. The Ghurkas, for example, are ethnic Mongols. There is a tribe in Afghanistan (I believe they're still around) that appear to be descended from Alexander's Greeks. And so on and so forth. So the basic premise is sound.

So I found this link from a reader fascinating. For anyone who is interested in the ethnology of the Keldara, this is an example of such a tribe: http://www.swordhistory.com/excerpts/crusaders.html

Note that the Caucasus are also the probable origin of the original Indo-Europeans, which is why they are called "Caucasians." The interesting thing about that is that linguists have pieced together "original" Indo-European and found that it has a huge multiple of names for rivers and mountains. Yeah, they're from the Caucasus... :-)

John

John says: The actual warning should be:

If you have any problems with reading books in which:

Islamic terrorists are bad guys with very few redeeming features who should be killed like rabid dogs...

Women are all good looking and young, because that's what's fun to look at...

Sex is graphic, kinky and in some cases frankly wrong...

Violence is presented as a pretty damned good solution to most of the terrorism in the world...

PC is represented as being fuzzy-headed, idiotic, ignorant and a useless appendage upon the body of humanity...

Red meat is eaten in quantities with no moral qualms whatsoever...

The "good guy" who does really good _things_ is really not a nice person, not a nice person _at all_ in so many ways you'll agree by the end of the book...

THEN DON'T PICK UP THIS BOOK!

July 25, 2005

SECTION: REVIEWS; Fiction; Pg. 53

LENGTH: 172 words

HEADLINE: Ghost

BYLINE: Staff

BODY:

Ghost, John Ringo . Baen, $25 (416p) ISBN 0-7434-0905-4

Fans of Ringo's military SF epics (Into the Looking Glass ) may at first think Mike Harmon, the hero of this unusual novel, is cut from the same cloth as Mike O'Neal from the Posleen War series (Watch on the Rhine , etc.). Like O'Neal, Harmon is a former Navy SEAL trying to adjust to civilian life who gets sucked back into action by circumstances, in particular by his witnessing the kidnaping of a college coed by jihadists. It becomes clear, though, that Harmon has a darker side, to which, by late in the book, as illustrated by a shocking scene in a Bosnian brothel, Harmon has almost completely surrendered. More techno-thriller than SF, this is a picaresque tale about a modern Barry Lyndon who resists, with equivocal results, baser instincts brought out by extreme stress. It's refreshing to find a successful popular writer who's not afraid to try something different, and the adventurous reader will find Ringo's latest insightful, exciting and outrageously funny. (Oct.) (James B)

John says: It was supposed to be.

John rants: In the case of this series, and this series only,
I've more or less ignored any reality that wasn't universally known that got in the way of the story.

I generally don't do that, working sometimes very hard to get what I want to fit reality (Orcs in Space is a great example of that). But in this story, I just ignored reality when it didn't fit my desires.

Why? Well, a. I wasn't originally planning on having this story published and b. it fits very well with the genre I'm writing in. Why do I say that?

There's a writer that's been writing in this genre for years called David Morell. (Man on Fire, Brotherhood of the Rose, etc.) Now, Morell has alot of strong points. For one thing, he's a frickin' page turner.

I used to have a meeting I had to attend that was at 8am in a different city than where I was living. (Was in Orlando , I lived in Melbourne about two hours away.) Instead of getting up at O Dark Thirty and driving, I'd go over to a friend's house in Orlando and stay the night.

We'd talk for a while then about 11 I'd head to bed. And there's always be the newest Morell sitting around somewhere. And I'd look at it and say to myself, sternly, "I will not pick up that book!" But I always did. Then at 4AM I'd throw it across the room with a cry of "What CRAP!"

But, then again, he has some weak points.

Morell told BOSS stories that had very little or no connection to any
reality you could name. There are dozens of examples in the books, but I'll hit just one, the "dogs" scene in Brotherhood of the Rose. The Brotherhood of the Rose is one hell of a book but it has so little connection to any reality you'd care to name, it can't see it from several light years.

Herewith the "dogs" example: At one point the main character and a female Mossad agent are running away from some American spec-ops guys that are hunting them (for "Yeah. Right!" reasons central to the otherwise very good plot). And they can see the dogs that are tracking them but not the men.

American former CIA contractor who has gone straight and is now in danger from his former employers (hereafter, Standard Character One or SCO): "I can see the dogs. Alsatians. It's Special Forces."

Beautiful Female Mossad Agent in mental aside to herself:
Yes, Special Forces. SF used Alsatians, Force Recon used Dobermans and SEALs used poodles...
:-)

Now, this is a good and bad example of Morell. The good is that the guy slips in dry humor (or wet in this case) such as SEALs using poodles. (And don't start with the "well, poodles have a bad rap." I know that. But the rap is part of the humor and quibbling on it simply points out that you overthink humor. My kids have a "full-standard" thank you very much.) But the bad part is that:

SPECIAL OPERATIONS GROUPS DON'T USE DOGS AT ALLLLLLLLL!!!!!!

Dogs are handled by specific dog handler teams that are part of the MPS.

The thing about a Morell book is that, even with all the ignoring reality, they're like Lays Potato Chips: you just have to eat one more.

I'd simply like people to feel the same way about the Ghost books. If you want "reality" and "careful research" then I'll try on the rest of the books. But NOT in Ghost. I'm just gonna tell the story and ignore any reality that gets in the way*.

Deal.


*The one that really gets me is the island in the Bahamas that the terrs were using for a transshipment point. THERE ARE NO ISLANDS IN THAT AREA. It's a gigantic shoal that rarely gets above water level and doesn't have "island" one, much less channels you can get a 40ft Bertram through.

Sheesh...