The Steven Seagal Effect (Because It Takes Someone Else To Make You Famous)

If you've watched more than the 3 or 4 Steven Segal movies that are actually enjoyable, you've probably noticed that he isn't much of an actor, or an onscreen presence. And if you've listened to any of the behind-the-scenes stories about him, he appears to be a bully, a misogynist, a homophone, and he has both physically and sexually assaulted a huge number of people. You add in his cozying up to dictators, his likely ties to organized crime, and more, and you might wonder how the hell a man like this ever rose (even briefly) to the top ranks of Hollywood action stars.

Well, if Hollywood legend and Fact Fiend are to be believed, it's due to a guy named Michael Ovitz.

We're talking about the Hollywood machine, but rest assured, this applies to writers as well.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

The Myth of The Kingmaker

If you've never heard of Michael Ovitz, it's probably because you're not the sort of person who pays attention to the doings in Hollywood. However, with a roster consisting of a real who's-who of actors, directors, etc., Ovitz was thought of by many as a super agent. He had a real talent for finding people, and turning them into stars that dominated the box office.

And according to the stories told about Mr. Seagal, Ovitz is the reason he had a movie career at all.

Because we're about to get into a story of ego, power, and influence.

As the stories go, Mr. Ovitz had quite a high opinion of himself, and his abilities. An opinion backed up by results, but a high opinion all the same. He even went so far as to boast that he could make anyone a star. No matter how unpleasant, how unlikable, or how uncharismatic they were, he could make it happen. This supposedly got a little out-of-hand, and someone bet him to prove it.

And it just so happened that at the time, Seagal was Ovitz's personal trainer, as well as being one of the more uninteresting and unlikable people he knew.

In Seagal's own words, he had no real interest in acting at the time Ovitz picked him to use in this bet. But Ovitz made him the offer, laid out a handful of scripts, and told him whatever one he picked they would get made, and he would be the star. And this led to Seagal starring in the film Above The Law. Which, if you've seen it, does not scream "new action hero of a generation".

Seagal did become famous though. Film after film came out with his name on them (also due mostly to the influence of his agent), and even to this day he produces tons of direct-to-DVD garbage. This illustrates an important point. In short, even if someone has no talent, no charisma, and the work they produce is drek, if you put someone's name in front of an audience's eyes enough times, they're almost bound to succeed... sometimes even despite themselves.

What This Has To Do With Authors

Now, as I said, the above account of events is a long-time Hollywood rumor. However, it also illustrates a very important point when it comes to being an author. Namely that it doesn't matter how much talent, drive, dedication, skill, or charisma you do or don't have, if no one knows your name, and your work doesn't get pushed into the spotlight somehow.

Numbers... it all comes back to numbers...

Consider, for a moment, the sheer amount of pull, power, and influence that having a big-name publisher at your back can have. Because if your company decides they're going to make you famous, they could pick up the phone and get you on TV shows, popular podcasts, talk radio, and a variety of other venues. They can put commercials for your book on TV, they can reach out to reviewers at important publications, and they can make deals with bookstores to ensure that you are front-and-center in their store setup.

They can make it all but impossible for you to fail, in terms of sales figures and return on investment.

Even if your book is middle of the road, or outright bad, that amount of hype is going to draw people to it. And there are going to be people in that audience who like it, and become fans of yours. If the numbers get big enough, you may even get a movie, TV, or streaming deal out of it. But don't forget that your sales numbers are not a reflection of your skill, craft, or story. Sure, all of those things help, but how well you sell is (more often than not) a reflection of the amount of resources put into promoting you.

And that is why when you're a self-published author, or you're published by a small company, you basically have to depend on social media, creative marketing, and the support of your audience.

It's All Up To You, The Readers

I know this is a soap box I climb up onto in most of my blog entries, but it's a message that not a lot of people seem to understand. Because most of us as authors aren't going to be lucky enough for a super agent, or a huge publisher, to pluck us up and decide to make us into the next big thing. As such, we need people to all combine their voices, and help us claw our way up onto that kind of platform so that people can find out about our work, and we can keep doing what we do.

As an example...

Take my novel Old Soldiers. Novus Mundi is a relatively small press, so they can't exactly act as a kingmaker, even if they did give me a great new cover, and a snazzy blurb to re-invigorate my novel's second release. However, of the folks on my social media lists who've seen it, let's say that even 500 of them got copies. E-books or paperback, both are equally acceptable for this example. Now, that's not a lot of sales when compared to what big publishers can manage (though it would be a lot for me), but let's say that each of those people also left me an Amazon review, and shared it on their social media platform of choice.

That would be colossal in terms of giving me a boost. Not only would that mean I'd have a pretty sizable royalty check (likely the biggest I've ever received), but Amazon starts promoting your book when it hits 50 reviews... so if it had 500 reviews, that would kick the algorithm into gear, and make sure my book started showing up on all kinds of people's shopping pages. At that point the rolling stone could potentially cause an avalanche as more people check it out, tell their friends and family members about it, and so on, and so forth.

A lot of small actions, if they happen close together, can be the boost we need. Just something to keep in mind.

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Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects! You can also check out my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary for free audio dramas!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

No, "Suffer The Children," Is Not Some Secret Sign of Q-Anon Support (A Rebuttal)

For folks who don't follow my fiction releases as closely as my other work, I've been slowly creating audio dramas of several pieces of short fiction over on The A.L.I.C.E. Files (which you should subscribe to if that sounds like your bag). The project started with Dead Man's Bluff (a weird Western about a gambler whose past comes back to haunt him), which is a short story out of my collection The Rejects which dropped back in 2020. Since that story seemed relatively popular, I figured I'd follow it up with another story from the collection, Suffer The Children. A modern-fantasy noir story about an angel trying to do his job among the dark hearts of Hollywood, I figured it would be a nice, self-contained tale to add to the collection.

Until Q-Anon people started showing up in the comments. Which is why I wanted to take a moment to talk about this story, what it's actually about, and why I'm disturbed at this particular reaction.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

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What Is "Suffer The Children"?

I wrote this short story perhaps 5-6 years ago when I was trying to get into a modern fantasy noir anthology. My story didn't get chosen for that collection, sadly, and I didn't have much luck placing it with other publishers. That's how it wound up in The Rejects in the first place, as that book is an anthology of stories that never quite seemed to get picked up, but which I didn't want to sit on any longer.

What's the story about? Well, the story follows Malachi, an Old Testament angel stalking the streets of Los Angeles. He follows a guy carrying what seems to be a stolen baby to a sketchy building that absolutely reeks of wealth. A cult made up of big-name executives, highly-paid entertainers, and others are there, worshiping the god Moloch. The baby is to be the latest sacrifice made by this newest acolyte. Malachi manages to invoke old laws, and make a point that there are certain lines that are not to be crossed, while avoiding an all-out war with another god whose worship extends back to the time when the world was young, and many powerful entities walked the earth.

Every time you save an innocent, you get a new feather on your wings.

Ideally I wanted to dip a toe into the water to see if Malachi was popular enough as a character (and if folks wanted to see a modern fantasy setting that focused on Middle Eastern gods and mythologies rather than the usual Celtic, Norse, etc., gods that permeate the genre) to warrant writing novels about. Since The Rejects is a relatively small short story collection that hasn't gotten a lot of reads and reviews, I figured that making an audio drama version of this tale might breathe a little life into Malachi and get folks interested in more of his adventures.

Then The Q-Anon People Arrived

If you don't live in America you may be less familiar with the political movement/crackpot conspiracy referred to as Q-Anon. An extremely truncated version is that an anonymous person claiming to have/be a secret source in the United States government started dropping tidbits of information they claimed revealed deep-seated wickedness not just in the government apparatus, but around the world. The conspiracy reads like a greatest-hits of the most unhinged ideas that people have ever believed in America, rolling up the remnants of the Satanic Panic, The New World Order, antisemitic conspiracies like the Protocols of The Elders of Zion used by the Nazi party during WWII... basically, if you can find something absolutely absurd that Americans have used to make themselves feel in on some kind of worldwide secret, its DNA has wound up in the Q-Anon movement somewhere.

Buried in a lot of the various parts of this conspiracy is an obsession with protecting children. Not in real, meaningful ways like backing policies that would improve schooling, or fund community centers, or ensure that school lunch is free to all, or preventing school shootings, though. Rather, Q-Anon uses children as victims of extreme situations that are just as absurd as the monsters in most fantasy novels. Perhaps the most ridiculous of these is the Adrenachrome conspiracy theory, which posits that leaders of the Democratic Party, so-called Hollywood elites, and others who aren't aligned with Q-Anon's politics, kill children in Satanic rituals in order to harvest their blood, and then either drink or inject it in order to keep themselves younger and extend their lifespan.

This conspiracy theory states, with a straight face, that anyone who isn't ring-wing enough in their political believes is a literal devil-worshiping vampire. I could not, in my wildest imaginings, come up with something that utterly ridiculous... so I'm more than a little annoyed that this seems to be the crowd that was most responsive to my story.

Moloch Isn't The Democrats... It's Capitalism

Judging from the comments folks were leaving, they completely misinterpreted the symbolism I was trying to go for, and what was being said in this story. All they seemed to see was that an angel (which they identified as a hero) kicked open the door to a cult meeting, killed a guy who had kidnapped a baby to sacrifice it, and then left, saving that kid from a grisly demise.

And that does happen... but it seemed like a lot of their takes were that this was a, "Hollywood is full of groomers," story, or, "Yeah, show those liberal elites that God is coming for them," story. It is, to be very clear, neither of those things. What it is however, it an indictment of capitalism, the power of the wealthy, and how most of those who abuse their authority are never punished for their actions.

You know, noir shit.

Rank has its privilege, as the saying goes.

I could have set this story in Chicago or New York just as easily as Los Angeles, but I chose it primarily because L.A. is one of the cities with the richest history of noir stories, and because a literal angel in the City of Angels amused me. I did not choose it to make some statement on the so-called liberal corruption of Hollywood, and how it's a godless place that's lost its way.

Is Hollywood corrupt? Absolutely! From abuse of performers, to sleazy backroom deals, to the exploitation of children, Los Angeles is famously corrupt... and that's just in the real world. But that corruption doesn't just come out of nowhere. It is, by and large, caused by pursuit of the almighty dollar. It's caused by people trying to take land, to exploit their workers, by always trying to double-cross someone in a business deal, or to get special exemption for their particular sins. The very reason Hollywood is the center of the American film industry, after all, is because people making movies didn't want to pay Thomas Edison the fees for using his camera, so they set up on the opposite coast and told him to come and get it if the money meant so much to him.

But back to the story.

Who is Moloch? As a god, he's a king that gives wealth and material success to those who sacrifice to him. In the old days this was rain, crops, and good animals, but in the modern world it's become gold, record deals, movie contracts, and high-yield stock portfolios. And people who come to him sacrifice children for his favor... but the driver Malachi is following isn't one of these elite. He isn't some hungry young star trying to make a name for himself. He's a down-on-his-luck social worker kidnapping kids to try to trade them for a step up the ladder.

It's a single, throwaway line, but in it we see a lot about the L.A. that Malachi lives in, and how it isn't too far from the one in the real world. We see that social workers aren't well paid, and that they don't have either upward mobility in their field, or any kind of guarantee on basic necessities. We see a system so overcrowded by orphaned and unwanted children that when they go missing no one seems to notice or care. We see a world where people are desperate, and where if they lose their jobs there's nothing to stop them from ending up on the street before they can try to get back on their feet. We also see that it's the guy on the bottom, the one who didn't have the money, resources, or prestige, who gets punished when he gets caught by an authority figure. The rest of the cabal did far worse than Manny did, and while they might be scared of what Malachi could do to them, they know they're functionally untouchable. They have the protection of their king, and angel or no, Malachi can't take that head-on even if he might want to.

Moloch represents a corrupt hierarchy of wealth, and those whose power insulates them from the consequences of their actions. He's capitalism, and the way that those who climb high enough in the pecking order are basically above the law more often than not. It represents everything an angel of the lord should be against, given how the gospels demanded giving away wealth, feeding the people, caring for your neighbor, and loving one another.

So, if that sounds like the sort of thing you'd get a kick out of, give the video a watch, and subscribe to my Daily Motion channel! These things are hard as hell to put together, so getting the numbers to justify the time and energy to put together the next one would help. And if you find yourself in the market for even more audio dramas, check out the Azukail Games YouTube channel where I've got 20 some-odd more of them for your listening pleasure!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Maybe We Should Avoid Writing Copaganda For a While?

For those of you who don't know, I actually got my bachelors degree in criminal justice forever and a day ago at Indiana University. I worked as a security guard through most of my later college years, and though I had some vague notion of maybe going into law enforcement post-graduation, my real motivator was because I wanted to write more accurate detective stories. Since doing all the research on laws, police procedure, and figuring out how things worked behind the scenes was going to take a huge amount of time and effort anyway, I thought I might as well get a B.S. for doing all that work.

When I first started my degree I already knew academically that cop shows, procedural crime novels, etc. were skewed in how they showed events. Much like how war movies and action films hyped things up and made them more exciting, I knew you had to keep the audience entertained if you wanted them to keep watching. It wasn't until I got into the nitty-gritty details of how law enforcement did (and sometimes didn't) work that I started noticing patterns in our entertainment where cops feature as protagonists.

That it is, for the most part, fucking propaganda.

In position, we heard there was a guy with a sign.

What is Copaganda?

The short version is that copaganda is the focus on police-friendly narratives that play up the idea that they are here to help, and that they are heroes. Stories about how cops kneel in solidarity with protesters are often run by the mainstream news, who leaves out that the same cops then attacked protesters once the cameras were off. It's how most of us had no idea what civil asset forfeiture was until John Oliver ran a piece on it on Last Week Tonight. It's about how over and over again we hear about "a few bad apples" when behavioral reports are repeatedly hidden from the public, and officers fired for violence or abuse of authority are often hired back at different departments, no questions asked.

Copaganda applies to fiction, too, and we have swallowed a lot of it over the years.

For those who haven't seen the above video, the short version is that cops (the sort we think of today), were often subjects of ridicule during the early part of the 20th century in fiction. Even before that, they were usually seen as problems to be dealt with, if they were mentioned at all. While Westerns might have a heroic sheriff or deputy, that was a very different kettle of fish. Private detectives, amateur sleuths, and even criminals all got leading roles, while police were usually the comic relief.

As the era of Prohibition came about, though, Hollywood and the police entered into a kind of devil's bargain. Hollywood was riddled with morality scandals (as well as actual crimes committed by many of its leading figures), and they needed somebody on their side to clean up after them and keep it out of the public eye. Police had been losing a public image war pretty hard, and they needed help polishing up their appearance in the eyes of the public. So one hand washed the other.

This didn't lead immediately to police detectives becoming leading men you could trust, but it did mean that cops were often treated as serious background characters in Hollywood's pieces (especially where the LAPD were involved). Even if the film focused on a private eye, such as the infamous Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, the actual police would be seen as doing their jobs and trying to actually fix things. This, of course, exploded when Dragnet basically invented the police procedural, first as a radio show, and then as a TV show.

Side note, while Dragnet claimed the cases presented were based on real police cases, Jack Webb was often more than happy to buff out some details here, or sweep problems under the rug. In return the LAPD was far more open with case files, equipment, personnel, etc. that could then be used to help stage a "dramatic re-enactment" of one of their cases. This is a lot like how the U.S. government is happy to provide gear, techs, training, etc. to Hollywood film studios for action movies as long as they aren't overly critical of the U.S. and its foreign policy decisions. Same shit, different Hollywood day.

Follow the money, as they say in mystery novels.

Dragnet, of course, is the granddaddy of a lot of today's copaganda entertainment, and the "special" relationship that TV shows and movies have with the police hasn't stopped since. If you're looking to see exactly how strong that relationship is, ask yourself how many times Internal Affairs agents are depicted as the good guys, how often "extreme" interrogation methods yield bad information, or how often police brutalize the wrong suspect (especially when that isn't a plot point, but rather just something that happens on the regular). These things, along with the stereotype of the, "loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules but gets results!" are all distinct flourishes that frame our fiction from a usually pro-cop frame.

It also contributes in meaningful ways to how we think of cops, and what they can and can't do.

That is, after all, the goal of copaganda.; to make us think of them as heroes putting their lives on the line (even though they're 16th on the most dangerous jobs list behind taxi drivers, roofers, and truckers), or to immediately try to see things from their perspective. If you find yourself rushing to defend a cop who hit his wife, or who assaulted a suspect, or who shot someone who was unarmed, ask yourself why. Then ask yourself if the assumption you're operating off of is a product of facts, knowledge, and experience, or if it's because it fits the narrative we've seen in our cop stories (which are all the information a lot of us have about police work).

Let's Take a Break From The Badges, Shall We?

Police, as characters, are really easy to write. It's one reason you can barely flip more than five channels before coming across a Dick Wolf show that's been running for nine seasons. After all, it's the cops' job to walk right into your plot, and to solve it as best they can.

But even that part isn't actually realistic if you look at the numbers, sadly.

Can you still write stories about cops? Absolutely you can! It's your book, and you can do whatever you want. However, it's important to look around at the world you're living in, and the facts in front of you, and to ask how much artistic license you're going to need to take to make this story work... and then how much more you'll need to make it palatable.

My advice for folks who don't want their work to be classified as copaganda (or to be ignored as just another pro-cop novel, if you're looking at things from a sales perspective), is to go back to the pre-1920s days and change the protagonist's profession. Make them a private eye, a gun-for-hire, or even an ex-cop who does work on the sly for people who can't get the regular police to look into their cases. If you want to go crazy with it, though, change the setting entirely so your main character is a cat who solves problems regarding packs of dogs putting the squeeze on local residents (the plot of my upcoming book Marked Territory from Ring of Fire Press, for those who are curious). Failing that, make it a sci-fi or fantasy story about police work (though this is not a guaranteed fix, and works best for stories like the film Robocop where the work has a lot to say in the subtext).

The stories we tell have messages, and they can resonate with our readers. That said, one of the most honest things you could do if you wanted to write a cop story for today's audience would be to give us something unvarnished, and which doesn't put a spit shine on things. Let the reader see the corruption, the grift, the power games, and the compromised morality, even if the story isn't about that. Talk about political pressure, and about the true masters the police have to serve in society. And if you really want to catch readers' attention, talk about what actually happens to good cops who try to make a difference.

Because those stories are heartbreaking, and are rarely told.

Also, since I mentioned it, don't be afraid to watch Robocop again in a post-ACAB world. It holds up quite well, and as I recently said in Robocop is Lawful Good, you can use him as an ideal mold for making a heroic, though tragic, cop character... at least in the first film.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!