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 available now through Amazon Kindle 

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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 available now through Amazon Kindle 

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