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How I Got My Agent: A Story Even I Can Barely Believe

8+ years
7 finished manuscripts
200+ rejections
1 dream come true

Honestly, this is about the level of chill I have regarding all this.

After more than 8 years of queries and 7 manuscripts, I’m happy to announce that I am now represented by the wonderful Melanie Figueroa of Root Literary! I’m thrilled beyond belief to have found an agent that believes in my voice, writing, stories, and self. To have reached this milestone floors me. I still can’t believe it.

As writers often do when they get an agent, I wanted to share my journey to reach this point. Both because I hope it can offer some information and encouragement to others still looking for their agent and because I think my path was a little stranger than most. You see…

I never planned to write books.

I was a poet. And I don’t mean, “I wrote poems for fun when I was a kid” (though I did 100% do that). I mean, I deep-dove on poetry all through high school and college, including writing an Ars Poetica for my degree’s senior honors project to go with a true epic poem. Not to mention that I really, REALLY wanted to be a poet for my career. I’d been writing since I was a little kid—it’s been my passion for most of my life—but the only prose I wrote were fragments of short stories and the occasional start to novels that I never finished because I didn’t believe I could write a good book.

‘Poetry,’ I thought to myself as I graduated with degrees in English and psychology, ‘poetry is a stable career into which I can launch myself!’

Nope
Have I ever mentioned that I’m an idealist… and sometimes a hopeless optimist?

Yeah, that didn’t work out. Shockingly, there weren’t a copious supply of full-time, well-paid poet positions available on the market in 2011. Or, y’know, ever. So I did what I needed to do in order to help support myself and my (awesome) wife: get a terrible job at an insurance company. I was an Agency Sales Support Assistant (or A.S.S. Assistant). Weirdly, no one at the company wanted to call it by that acronym. The job was absurdly boring. I worked hard, did well, but my brain was dying from lack of stimulation, so I decided to do something crazy: write a book.

I couldn’t do this on my work computer, of course, so I took the sheets of used printer paper (the to-be-recycled cover sheets from faxes and such where one side just had a date on it) and started writing one line at a time with a pencil. Finish a work task? Write one line. On my single 15-minute break for the shift? Write a few more.

Ultimately, I wrote a 123,000-word epic fantasy that way. My first finished novel.

I adored it… It was full of big ideas and over-the-top action. It was great, dense, and definitely terrible.

In anticipation of this post, I dug through old emails and found evidence that I had sent some queries (all form rejections, of course) before I tried to write something new. And hopefully better.

I’d gotten bitten by the book bug. Bitten BAD.

I'm in danger

My 2nd book came not long after. My first kids book (a YA fantasy), it had a lot of great ideas that were all executed pretty poorly. Also it ended on a horrific cliffhanger. But I learned A LOT in writing it. Most especially, I realized that I loved writing kids books. Something about the dynamism, joy, realness, and wonder of kids books really clicked with me. Still does.

I queried my 2nd finished novel around 15 times. All rejections. Bummer, but I already had a new idea.

My 3rd novel took much longer than the 2nd. It was my first science fiction outing (I adore sci-fi), built around AI and questions of humanity centered on a kid protagonist. For the first time, I felt like I’d crafted a complete, engaging story that others could enjoy. It was also a lot more grim and intense than anything else I’d done. In part because that fit the nature of the story, but I also had an incredibly stressful job as the Research Director and Managing Editor for a healthcare advisory firm at the time. When I started the novel we were cruising upward in success, working with healthcare leaders across the country.

Then an outside firm purchased our start-up and I was forced out by a change in management. It was mid 2017. I thought I would get another job in 1-3 months. My wife and I could handle that.

It took 15. 15 months of looking at jobs every day. Applying for everything I could that fit my experience and skills. Hundreds of attempts. 15 months.

And to keep myself sane during that time, I worked on what I loved: my stories.

I wound up finishing my 3rd novel in the immediate aftermath of my healthcare position. I threw myself into the work: revising, editing, polishing, striving every day to make it the best story I’d ever created.

I made a writer Twitter account and participated in my first Twitter Pitch events. I made my first Twitter writer friends. And then I queried my 3rd novel, a YA Sci-fi, 20+ times. I don’t know the exact number. I wasn’t keeping the best records yet; that came later. I submitted to PitchWars and other manuscript/editing contests. I tried as hard as I could.

(It’s worth noting that I queried 20+ times, but I closely considered and researched WAY more agents than that. I’ve always been really picky about who I submit to as I tried to find someone who seemed like they would love my stories and fit well in a working partnership with me.)

All rejections. No requests. Just rejections. It was the best thing I’d ever written. My beta readers loved it. But it still wasn’t getting any success outside of my small circle. And yes, I know I could have sent WAY more queries than that, but throwing myself into what I felt would be more rejections on top of the job rejections I was getting was too much. It hurt.

No matter how many rejections you get, they ALWAYS hurt. That vulnerability is simply part of sharing your creativity and art with the world. And it’s worth it.

But anyway, as I waited to hear back on those queries, I threw myself into writing the sequel to that YA Sci-fi. Most of my books (at that time) took over six months to write. This one took 1.5 months, flat. It was crazy. Time and a desperation to find satisfaction in creativity really drove me forward.

But no one wanted that book either. ~30 queries. Many, many pitch events. No requests. All rejections.

Cool (sarcastic)
I definitely felt like a winner.

All of this takes us from 2012 through 2017. By the beginning of 2018, I came to a decision that would change my life: I was going to write something just for myself. I wouldn’t worry about genre, age category, or comp titles. I wouldn’t even think about what anyone else would get from it. This new book would be just for me. Only for me. Because I needed something to go my way. I had nothing to lose. With my incredible wife’s support, I started on a book featuring a character some of you may have heard of: Iri.

Iri’s story would be a secondary world fantasy inspired by the style, themes, and tone of North American Indigenous oral mythology. I wanted to celebrate the ancestry I carry. Embrace a world filled with people whose skin looked like mine. A world full of stories and beauty and wonder.

I started writing Iri in March of 2018. Finished in less than 3 months. Edited the whole book immediately afterward. I got my first agent request for Iri from a pitch event in July. Then came the big fall pitch event combo: #PitMad and #DVpit, barely a month apart. Iri blew up. I got dozens of agent requests, received likes from editors at major publishers, and met a bunch of really great writers that I’m still friends with to this day.

I wound up with a bunch of full manuscript requests. FULL MANUSCRIPT REQUESTS!

To someone who had gone 4+ years without even getting a partial, I cannot express how revolutionary this felt. People—cool, publishing industry people—wanted to read something I wrote. And many of them enjoyed it… but none of them loved it “enough.”

All querying writers know the line: “I just didn’t fall in love with [BOOK]”. I also got some “this would be great if it was traditionally written.” And a few, “your voice is wonderful BUT…”.

In the end, despite all the successful pitches and queries, I didn’t get any offers. I realized something that had been true from the beginning: my books leaned literary, which could make it hard for them to push an agent over the “offering line”. But I knew I was close, so I kept working. And anyway, I love writing stories, so why would I stop? Honestly, if you had told me at any point over these years that I was destined to never get an agent, I still would’ve kept writing purely for the enjoyment and satisfaction of it.

My 5th book, an MG portal fantasy built around video games like Pokémon and Jade Cocoon, was drafted before the middle of 2019. 21 queries.

1 full request from an agent named Melanie Figueroa.

This would prove to be very important.

I waited for a reply on that full with an enormous amount of anticipation. Melanie was from a terrific agency (Root Literary!) and her interests leaned literary, just like mine. She seemed upbeat and excited about kids books. A few months later (April of 2020, no less), her reply came: a rejection… but the BEST kind of rejection. The kind where she told me what she loved and what didn’t quite work for her. She encouraged me and told me that I had a wonderful voice for middle grade. Even better, I could tell from how she described the book that she got it. What the story was really, truly about.

I’m a firm believer that fantasy and sci-fi novels should use their fantastical settings to tackle real world issues that can be difficult to address in contemporary stories, and I could tell Melanie understood. She instantly shot to the top of my list of agents to query with other projects. A lot of writers talk and joke about their dream agents; Melanie became one of mine. She was on the shortlist from that day forward. (Fun fact: around this point, my wife decided that Melanie was her preferred agent for me to get someday!) In the last line of her rejection, Melanie said she would be happy to see something else from me, and I just so happened to have this one story about a girl named Iri and an adventure across two worlds.

Now, this wasn’t the Iri that I’d first queried to agents in 2018. Nor the completely revised, rewritten, and queried version from 2019. This was a third, brand-new version that I’d been working on since the pandemic started. Now an MG fantasy, I’d worked SO hard to bridge the necessarily complex style of storytelling with easier-to-approach narration and a smoother runway to the core plot and conflict. With her permission, I sent the first chapter to Melanie. She asked for the full the next day.

I may have been a little hyped. Or a lot. Okay, very much a lot.

This was it. This had to be it.

Here was an agent who got my style. Loved my voice. Enjoyed my work. And I’d just sent her the best thing I’d ever written. This HAD to be it. I’d sent ~90 queries for Iri. Pitched it in at least 15 events. Gotten 15 full requests plus requests from editors at five major publishers, including an open invitation to submit Iri directly to one. I was SO close. I just needed to wait a little longer.

Of course, 2020 interfered with everyone’s everything. We all fought to survive the disease, our anxiety, our fears, our depressions. We lost loved ones. We grieved. We struggled to be creative and hope even as the world around us seemed dim.

I started writing a new book—a YA space opera—and got 40,000 words in before something more joyful stole my attention: a modern YA fantasy involving a magic food competition. Still waiting for Melanie’s reply, I spent the last months of 2020 feverishly drafting this new book.

And then the email came in the first days of 2021. It started so good. Again, she loved my voice. Loved the beauty of the descriptions and the stories. BUT…

She had some concerns. She wanted to know if I would consider revising and resubmitting.

I admit, that hurt a little. Sure, it wasn’t a No. But it also wasn’t a Yes. Still, I know that one of the most important things to reaching your dreams is perseverance, so I told her I was interested because of course I was. She was still one of my dream agents.

Still, I know that one of the most important things to reaching your dreams is perseverance

I had finished my edits on my new YA Fantasy—my 7th finished manuscript—and gotten that querying as I waited. And despite my and my beta readers’ sky high hopes, my queries weren’t doing great. With Melanie’s Iri email in mind, I started reworking Iri.

I had a small number of queries still out on the YA Fantasy as I worked on revisions. No other prospects. Nothing particularly promising to talk about. 4.5 months had passed since Melanie’s last email. I was thinking about how I would pitch my new book in the June #PitMad. And then, one Wednesday afternoon utterly out of the blue, I got an email. It was Melanie. And she wanted to talk to me on the phone about Iri and some other things like my new project.

An agent. Wanted. To talk to me. On the phone. HOLY CRAP.

This had never happened before. In the eight years since I sent out those first queries, no agent had ever asked to call me. Let alone an agent I liked.

Some of you may immediately have thought, upon reading this, AND YOU KNEW SHE WAS GONNA OFFER.

But you’re wrong. I didn’t know that. Sure, I had the crazy, distant hope that she was calling to offer… but offer on what? She loved two of my books, loved my writing and my voice, but she’d gently declined both full manuscripts. I convinced myself she wasn’t going to offer in anticipation of our call a few days later.

And I was wrong.

Actually my face during the call.

Melanie went on to explain that she couldn’t stop thinking about the voice of my stories and the way I write. She explained the potential she sees for me and my career. And it was everything I’d been waiting more than 8 years to hear. I notified the few agents still considering my material, some of whom asked for (and got) full manuscripts and shared glowing words with me, but none of them held a candle to what Melanie offered. Like I (and my wife) felt over a year ago, Melanie gets my stories. Gets why I write. She understands what I’m trying to do and agrees that kids books (especially MG) can have such a big, positive impact for their readers. She wants to help me bring my stories to the world.

Of course, I accepted the offer.

And now, here I sit, writing this gargantuan post to tell an honestly short version of a gargantuan story. There’s so much more I want to say; want to explain. So many moments of triumph and utter heartbreak. So many times I was cut down by someone and uplifted by someone else. So many times I watched friends who started querying long after me succeed long before me as I cheered them on despite the part of me that hurt. But that’s the way of things. Everyone’s journey is full of uncountable details. Innumerable little moments where we choose to go forward when we want to give up. Choose to try again even though the last 200 attempts have failed. And sometimes that feels like insanity. That’s what people will say, of course: that doing the the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. But in the words of activist Olga Misik: “I guess hope is insanity.”

Everyone’s journey is full of uncountable details. Innumerable little moments where we choose to go forward when we want to give up. Choose to try again even though the last 200 attempts have failed. And sometimes that feels like insanity.

And I along with my wife, my parents, my sister, my in-laws, and my friends, have had so much hope throughout this journey. Even in the darkest, hardest days.

We have even more hope for what wonders the future will bring.

With all that said, I want to end on gratitude:

Thank you to God for making all this possible and inspiring me to write.

Thank you to my wife, Reneé, without whom I would be lost. I believe in the you that believes in me. I love you so much.

Thank you to my mom, who always treated every story like a good one… even when they definitely weren’t.

Thank you to my in-laws, who have become such fierce supporters to me on this journey.

Thank you to my friends, who have been cheerleaders, beta readers, and all-around cool people.

Thank you to Melanie, who believes in me and my voice. Who has a vision for the stories I’ve dreamed about for so long.

I can’t wait for what comes next. I can’t wait to show you all the worlds I imagine and the characters I love. It’s time to find out what the future holds.

-Christopher

(If you have questions about querying and my journey or simply want to discuss, feel free to comment here or find me on Twitter via @Dreamertide!)

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Thoughts from Isolation

So I’ve been living the isolation life for almost a week now, experiencing the strange mental state that some have called plague mindset. The easiest way to summarize the feeling is the innate sense that something is very wrong. So very wrong, in fact, that you feel an urge to act…except that the best thing you can do is nothing. Nothing at all.

It’s a paradox of panic and tedium. Anxiety and boredom. DO SOMETHING and do nothing.

All of this is to say that I’ve had a lot of time to think and to try to write. (I say “try” because it’s a little more difficult to get into the appropriate creative mindset during a pandemic.) As I wrote poetry last night, I put together some words of hope and shared them with my wife. She thought it would be a good idea to share them with you.

Afterward

We all breathe
and wait
and listen,
pining for the normalcy
we always dreaded;
the burgers we’d grown used to,
the sights that had grown old.
And though all this is terrible,
though considering it in full
reaves my soul,
I can’t help but think
of that moment
when this dismal pall rises,
and we return to the world
we’ve left behind.

That world will be different.
The old will not
have grown new,
but it will have become beloved.
The small gifts and
pleasures of the city
and the country
will be received
anew.
Every smile will be welcome
and well-earned.

And, perhaps
for the first time in many years,
we will all remember
the childlike joy of
stepping through the front door and
feeling the world unfold around us,
decked with trappings of
sun and summer, and
in that moment,
we’ll begin to heal.
To live,
truly live,
again.

Feel free to come say “Hi” on Twitter using @Dreamertide. The sun will rise, my friends. In the meantime, let’s get through the night, together.

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Sometimes Great Beginnings Start with Stops

I’ve been writing for many years. If you want to be very specific, the first creative work I specifically remember making of my own accord was a three-page poem about wolves that I wrote in the third grade. I kept going after that, writing predominantly for fun until I suddenly found that writing was an excellent way of processing everything going on in my life as well.

I didn’t start seriously writing novels until the year after I graduated from college. In the months leading up to writing that first manuscript, I wrote basically nothing. I had been depressed with difficulty in finding a job (Yay, Millenials!) and deciding whether I wanted to pursue graduate school to become an English professor.

For years, I had written nearly every day, but over this span of arduous months…

I stopped.

And from that stop came a new beginning.

Since then, I’ve drafted six novels in about the same number of years, steadily improving from quaint narratives that seemed fun to a story crafted in the style of Indigenous oratory mythology featuring a teen trying to decide who they are amidst a world full of people with countless expectations. (To those familiar with my Iri, that last one will sound familiar.)

I’ve written a thousand poems, too, in margins or texts to myself or actual dedicated notebooks that I lose sometimes.

What’s my point?

Maybe we don’t need to be so hard on ourselves when we take a break.

https://giphy.com/gifs/xYHscQ1Np55i8
Crazy, I know.

Burn-out. Fatigue. Exhaustion. I’ve seen them a million times. I’m sure that by the end of this week (I’m drafting this on a Tuesday), I’ll have seen at least one person posting about it on Twitter, asking if it’s okay that they haven’t written in an hour or day or week.

Of course, it’s okay.

Stopping is not always failure. A lot of VERY famous and wonderful authors have quotes about the merit of “writing every day.” I’m not here to dispute that. And I’m definitely not here to encourage your (or my) procrastination.

The point isn’t to stop writing when it gets hard or you don’t know the solution to a problem. Often, the best and only solution to writer’s block is to keep writing anyway. Even though it may be bad. Even though it feels icky.

Stopping as a way of avoiding our challenges only makes those challenges seem more imposing. Before long, you can create a scenario where you never write at all, even though you have all the talent and ideas in the world. The mountain you’ve created seems so vast that beginning anew feels pointless.

I’m not advocating for that.

What I want you to consider are the occasional breaks from creative output that we ALL need to settle back into who we are. These may be evenings goofing off. Or a week away. Or a month spent pursuing something completely different. The usage of the “stop” matters less than how you approach it.

What matters most is that you commit to yourself that you’ll come back. The fine line between learning from defeat and giving up is whether you’ve chosen to try again.

Life is complicated. Being creative adds more complication, especially for those that use their creative works to tangle with difficult topics. It’s normal and healthy to want a break. To need a pit stop amidst all this goingoingoingmorefollowersmorewordsmorechaptersmoreEVERYTHING.

To summarize this rambling, I’ve been consuming a few books recently about the video game industry and the effort that goes into game development. The making of Stardew Valley certainly aligns with these ideas. A single developer devoted himself to the work over the course of years, and regularly found himself drowning in a growing frustration with the process until he took time to step away. To catch a breath.

A word I hear a lot in these books is “grit,” meaning a dedication to a goal regardless of setbacks or obstacles. Many people celebrate grit, and I agree that it plays a huge role in the successful pursuit of dreams.

But remember that grit doesn’t mean you can’t take a break every now and then. Grit does not require you to make yourself miserable for the sake of word count or imagery or “showing-not-telling”.

And remember: (if you’re not a full-time creative writer yet) your day job is not a break. So don’t do that, “I’ve been working all day, that’s enough of a break from my creative output, so it’s time to write for 12 straight hours before another shift.”

That’s burning the candle from both ends and also putting it in a microwave. Be kind to yourself.

If I’ve learned anything from my journey so far, it’s that everything comes with time and practice. The harder I am on myself, and the more I give in to that feeling that I will never be enough, the worse of a writer I am.

So every now and then, take a break. Try to see things for what they are rather than what you think they might be.

As a character says in a lovely TV episode named “The Visitor”: “Well, I’m no writer, but if I were, it seems to me I’d want to poke my head up once in a while and take a look around, see what’s going on. It’s life. You can miss it if you don’t open your eyes.” You can miss it if you never blink, too.

Take care of yourself. I’m rooting for you.

Thanks for reading this rambling return to posting more regularly. Also, apparently, a return to alliteration. I’d love to hear what you do to take breaks from writing. As you may have guessed, I love to dip into gaming as a way to unwind. How about you?

Answer in the comments below or find me on Twitter: @Dreamertide

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Past Due Review: Transistor (2014 Game)

Sometimes, you miss the party on something in pop culture, whether it be a game, book, show, or movie. Years later, you finally get around to experiencing that whatever-it-was, and then you start a new series on your website where you write story-focused reviews for those things.

Or at least, that’s what I’m doing!

Today, we’ll be reviewing Transistor, the 2014 indie release from Supergiant Games.

Seeing as I’m a writer, it makes sense to primarily focus on the characters, story, and worldbuilding. Don’t worry, though, I’ll have a section for all the gameplay elements as well. Let’s do it!

This review is MAJOR SPOILER FREE.

Basic Game Overview

Transistor takes place in a futuristic world where every aspect of society is governed by the will of the people. Red, our protagonist, makes her living as the most popular performer in the city; a singer of incredible ability. Following her performance one night, a strange group called the Camerata attack her with an odd sword known as the Transistor…

But a man intercepts the blade before it can claim Red as a victim.

And there, the game begins.

REVIEW

Worldbuilding

Transistor‘s greatest achievement is its world. Without exaggeration, this is the most a game has reminded me of exploring Bioshock‘s Rapture in many years. That is not to say that it’s similar to Rapture in an overt way. Rather, the similarity comes from the dynamism of the environment, where every piece of the world, as seen and described, contributes to the overarching narrative. Indeed, the raw appearance of the world often does a better job of creating tension than the story beats themselves.

A beautiful cyber-metropolis at its heart, Transistor‘s world drew me in. While playing, I wished numerous times that this title had been a major studio release so that I could have more to explore. Fascinating, engrossing, terrifying, and beautiful, the world of Transistor tells a gorgeous story all by itself.

Music

I won’t always include a separate music category in this part of the review, but Transistor demands it. Since Red, our protagonist, is a singer, music takes on great significance throughout the narrative. In fact, a simple gameplay feature even allows you to directly connect to the soundtrack in any given area, creating this visceral blending of player and character.

Does it break the 4th wall? Very much so.

Will you mind? No. Not even a little. In fact, you’ll do it regularly, if you’re anything like me.

I probably spent 10-15% of my playtime just enjoying the music and Red’s performances. Each track fits the area for which it was written, mirroring the ongoing developments in the story, becoming more driving during moments of tension, and capturing the degradation of a society with mourning.

Darren Korb’s work on Bastion was terrific. His work on Transistor is sublime. Much credit to Ashley Barrett as well, for her wonderful vocal performance. The soundtrack of this game forces you to invest in the world and its characters. You can’t avoid it. Without a word, you are made to feel. And that is great worldbuilding.

Characters

Transistor focuses primarily on only two characters. There are others, throughout, but they primarily exist only as mouthpieces for exposition or background for the greater conflict at play. While I believe the game would be better served with a more memorable antagonist (the final foe lacks any real gravitas), the two most important characters succeed enough to overshadow these faults. Ultimately, you won’t remember any character’s name besides Red, but I think that’s okay.

Red, her voice stolen by the Transistor, exists as a mute protagonist who still ably demonstrates complex emotions and character development. Through her actions, you feel her fear and sadness. When she gets the opportunity to type comments into the city’s moderation system, you witness a sharp-witted survivor determined to discover how to free her savior from the Transistor and rescue the city from the Process. Admittedly, these basic traits are not unique to Red, and her memorability as a protagonist comes more from the unique qualities of the game as a whole compared to her own personality and choices. (Compare to Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn, who bears enough unique characteristics to exist in your memory without the addition of plot.) By the same token, this is a small game: only ~8 hours to 100%. So we can’t be too critical of character development time, when so little is available.

The other main character comes as the Transistor itself. Nearly all the spoken dialogue in the game reverberates from the glowing blade, which has taken on the personality of the man who sacrificed his life to save Red’s. He speaks to her almost constantly, but never in a way that becomes annoying. He is no Legend of Zelda fairy.

Instead, he shares his thoughts, fears, and hopes. The strongest emotional beats of the story come by virtue of this voice trapped within a sword that you will care for by the end of the game. I will always welcome an emotionally forward male character in a video game, and Blue (as the voice is affectionately called), definitely qualifies.

Speaking of the end of the game…

Story

Now, I won’t say an enormous amount here because in a game so short, any in-depth discussion would require spoilers. Thus disclaimed, though, I will say that the end of the tale left me mildly disappointed, and I believe that much of that disappointment comes through the limited scope of this title.

Throughout the narrative, you follow a tightly-woven trail. No branching choices exist here: you are a passenger aboard the story the developers wish to share. Like a novel, for this type of story to succeed, the reader/player needs to “buy-in” to the characters’ choices. Hopefully, by the end, you understand why certain things took place, even if you didn’t agree with choices themselves. Context aligns with action. Decision with emotion.

Yet this story ends with a moderately strange choice that feels more like PLOT than the choice of the character. The best narratives, as you’ve heard me prattle about before, create real characters and document their decisions. The overbearing intent of the writer (otherwise known as PLOT) should never be noticeable. Every twist and turn should make sense within the context of the characters making them.

In Transistor‘s ending, I felt as though I were reliving an early draft of a novel I wrote a few years ago. In that draft, a character makes a dramatic choice that certainly got the attention of readers but did not really align with the characterization of the individual up to that point. Red’s final decision struck me in the same way. Can I justify her final choice? Certainly. Like all of you, I am more than capable of filling gaps in the narrative with my own suppositions, creating MY version of “correctness.”

But, frankly, we should never have to do that. The climax of a narrative should never leave enough gaps for speculation to be required. Ultimately, Red’s climax left me wanting more context. More explanation. More characterization that set up a relatively dramatic decision. We’re led to believe that enormous stakes hinge on her choice, but she makes a choice without hesitation…and I was left dissatisfied.

This moment aside, the rest of Transistor‘s storytelling had me consistently pleased. Since so much characterization and exposition comes through the music, visuals, and hidden information to be unlocked, you constantly feel rewarded for paying attention. By the same token, however, you need to pursue these activities to fully understand what’s going on. It is possible and rather easy to simply miss crucial pieces of worldbuilding exposition simply by not using certain weapons or skills during combat.

Other Bits (Gameplay, Visuals, Etc.)

Honestly, Transistor is a joy to play. It’s combat can be handled through both real-time and pause-and-plan mechanics. You are free to customize your combat tactics as you please, with considerable story incentive to mix up your move set on the regular.

While the game hits satisfying levels of difficulty, I never felt upset at the balancing or ran into an enemy that straight “cheesed” me. Even better, when completing difficult encounters, I often succeeded or failed based on my own choices, not on unseen interactions or luck. Unlock Bioshock, the final boss encounter pleasantly surprised me. A tweak to the game’s systems for that fight made it very memorable (and solidly difficult for my loadout).

Visually, the game’s style had me stopping to goggle at the environments quite often. Gorgeously done. Kudos to Supergiant for achieving such loveliness. Combined with the music, I’ve never spent as much time sitting in a game doing nothing and being satisfied.

As far as overall length, as I said earlier, the game is short. If you main-line the story and stick with the strongest abilities, you could probably complete the entire thing in 4-5 hours or so as a first-time player. In my efforts to see as much as possible, I got a little over 7 hours out of my run.

Conclusion

Transistor is a beautiful game that tells its best story through setting, music, and art direction. While the story’s conclusion left me disappointed, ultimately that disappointment arises from there not being enough of the game. I wanted more time to get to know these characters and their world. More time to learn their idiosyncrasies and understand what makes them tick.

I wish there could be more, but I am extremely glad for what already exists. If you haven’t gotten around to Transistor yet, I highly recommend it.

—

Thanks for reading! Be sure to leave your thoughts on the game and this review below. Or drop over to my Twitter (@Dreamertide) and chat with me there!

See you next time!

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Make Believe (Poem)

First: it’s been far too long since my last post, and for that I apologize. This new novel I’ve been working on has really been gobbling up my time (in the best possible way). Still, I wanted to ensure that some of my writing consistently finds it way into the world, so here’s a new poem for the day.

With my new novel being an exploration of the kind of story I’ve always wanted to write (while ignoring the insecurity that leads artists to hedge bets instead of committing to their vision), I’ve been ruminating on why I write and what I hope my stories can achieve.

Ultimately, I want my work to spark conversations, challenge, and inspire. But most of all, I want my writing to offer hope. Though Milton said that hopes springs eternal, I feel like we’ve been running low of late. With that, here’s a poetic Ars Poetica of sorts. Make sure to let me know what you think in the comments here or on Twitter (@Dreamertide).

Make Believe

Stories live in me.
I didn’t expect
everyday spent scribbling
out a better world than this one,
but, God, it’s fun
to make believe,
finding some reprieve
from imaginations gone rogue.
They say it’s old-fashioned
to double down on hope,
that cynicism reigns
and many praise the refrain
that echoes “Pain to all,”
but I say “No.”

I rest on secrets never told,
a million journeys on distant roads,
on magic rings and pirate gold,
I will stake my claim.
By ships among the sea or stars,
potato farms and queens of Mars,
in war-torn heroes, seedy bars,
I can find a way
to remind you all
with words and deeds,
regardless of colors, kinds, or creeds,
that best we have
and all we need
is to make believe.

So give up lies and come alive,
set down your torch, take up as scribes
that sacred duty here advised:
to say something worth saying–
not words of hate or empty rhetoric
that try to find the zealot or heretic.
I want your stories
for love
for glory
just say something worth saying.

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Deep End (Poem)

Another day, another heavily rhythmic poem exploring the themes I find most frustrating in the current national debates. We need conversations; not yelling matches. We need understanding; not “agree to disagree.” The longer this goes on (and it’s already been going on for quite a long time), the farther we’ll get into the:

Deep End

We have enough villains
without making more
or pretending that facts
like rich or poor
can define
whether you, I, or them
have any value in this system.
Stop and listen–
or don’t, frankly I don’t care–
I’m writing this to keep
from drowning in air
on the rich oxygen filling
each lung to bursting.
You know the worst thing?
Conversation cures all
but you won’t have one,
short of more rage
you refuse the salve.
Gun in hand,
you proclaim
this your age of freedom
but I think you know
that’s sad.
One question:
what if you didn’t talk down
to people unlike you,
unsubscribed to the false truths,
and left your comments in your head
rather than anywhere
the future’s soothsayers will see and judge?
I prefer words I can see and touch:
the ones still dangling with emotion
like a tooth pulled hard and soon.
But the way you talk…
I can’t tell if anything
means something
or nothing.
Hell, you could offer me everything,
and I still think you’d be a liar.
The fire you’re burning
ran out of fuel
long ago,
short of the shit you’re piling
made from the gruel of easy falsehoods
you want to be true.
I get where you’re going,
or at least where you’d like to,
a safe place unified against
those unlike you:
strawmen and snowmen and costumes
rigged on mannequins
to usher in again
some illusion that safety
comes to those who fortify,
but you can’t deny
that richness in life
comes in the variety
of mes, yous, and thems;
the colors of eyes
that can smile
in every language,
tongue,
and tribe.
Even you celebrate the sight
of family, but real kinship
comes from knowledge,
not blood,
and in the quiet,
I think you know
we all share the same blood anyway.
So concede your way–
screaming or not–
but know that concession’s
the only end of this rodeo.
Your bull ran out of muscle
back before I ever took breath
and only artificial ties
keep its limbs hustling
and lithe in death.
I’m not saying your voice doesn’t matter,
far from it;
most can’t hear a thing
over your clattering demands,
but we want to talk, not prattle
or battle in petty words
that, by next week, won’t stand
for much besides a waste of time.
Here’s the line–
an offering of communion,
bonding over bodies broken,
to take up this token of friendship
not brinksmanship
because loose lips sink,
you know where I’m going.
So get rowing.
This ain’t the Delaware,
and God knows we don’t have a captain
yet out there
to stand at the bow,
but still we start now.
You take one oar,
we the other,
and together
maybe
we can keep this boat from spinning
until we sink
because if we fail,
no one will get the chance
to swim.

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Middle Ground (Poem)

As promised, I’ve returned with another poem to share. Like the last, this work is driven by my ongoing heartache and frustration with the way many prominent political leaders have responded to the tragedy in Parkland. More than that, though, today’s poem takes a stab at the breakdowns in communication that have been ongoing with these issues for years.

Unlike yesterday’s piece, today’s fits into a category I call rhythmic poems: best when read aloud, this type of poem is built around combining meaning with an accelerated flow of language to pull you from the start to the finish like a snowball, gaining speed and mass all the time.

Middle Ground

What’s left after outrage,
when the moment, cold and vacant,
sublimates under our gaze
and we’ve still not been placated?

Will their thoughts and prayers find answers
for interrogations old and new?
Will we find some ground to share
or dare to stand accusing
those who in care of self recuse
our words of air?

We say “enough’s enough”
and stuff ourselves with platitudes
meant to smooth the rough
discussions sloughing
to the wayside–
giving up to pride, on either side,
the notion that only our opinion matters;
but God, I see the same words
sputter and cough from lungs burned
black by repetition,
digging into fiction that there is no middle ground,
backed by our decision
to sanitize those found
abounding in conviction.
Where’s the interdiction?–
the questions of the answers
of the queries of our time–
the sensible souls between
emotions, words, and lies
who, with unveiled eyes,
parry the notion that we’ve got too much
or little to say,
standing on the ground of the slain.
Have you seen the graves?
Not the tombstones, no;
rocks never gave a woman, child, or man
a damn–they just carry on.
I mean the actions of their hands,
the things these kids can and can’t:
the unbound love of life,
the beauty, the fight,
that made each one shine?
Do you know their names?
I admit I don’t;
I’m more afraid to make this more real
than to sit in shame that I have a voice
but have said nothing.

So I’m saying this:
staking a claim on empathy
beyond me,
a heartache too big to hide
but we compartmentalize
it anyway.
Even if you don’t agree
with the cause–
and I pause here
to say that I understand
fear
of
change
or rearranging the paradigms,
you know those things we find
when we interrogate ourselves–
agree with the hurt,
hurting, and scared.
Repair some element
of this bridge between us all,
not “giving up your right
to stand tall,”
but admitting that right now
no one’s attacked you,
only asked you why your right to have
can outweigh a right to live.
I’m not demanding you give
“yourself” away
or betray some iron credo
you repeat at sunrise each day,
merely that your intent
shift from zealously cemented
defense of an amendment
to a question of what we mean
and meant when we declared
this nation a safe place for any child
to face tomorrow.

I don’t intend this to change your mind,
God knows better speakers than I
have already started to bring
all sides to a middle ground.
I’ve just found my fill of silence
broken by more violence
that we could have brought
to an end long ago.
Again, I know, you have your own fears
held dearly,
often sincerely, with a good heart,
but so do the rest of us,
and until we find a place
for the best of us to agree,
we’ll repeat this conversation
with rising frequency.
We need less questions
of who’s behind
this or that line;
less time paid away
to those who only want to say
what they’ve been paid to.

Real people settle grievances,
bonding over beliefs and instances
of shared community,
not accusing or using these tragedies for gain:
let no malice remain.
Let voices resound
that though we cannot claim peace
we’ve at least aimed
for middle ground.

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Ad Nauseam (Poem)

It’s been over a week, now, since the tragedy at Parkland. If you are at all like me, you were devastated that such horror could happen again…and again…and again over these last years.

Though I cannot imagine how those directly affected feel, in the days that followed I read the burgeoning crop of stances, responses, and outrage with heartache. For me, heartache means writing. Especially heartache on a topic so vast as this. Thus, I started drafting poems and after rereading them separate from the emotion in which they were written, I’ve decided that they’re worth sharing. Each day this week, I hope to share some new piece of writing with you, starting today with a poem titled, “Ad Nauseam”.

The first of the pieces I put together based on my feelings in these last two weeks, “Ad Nauseam” focuses on those who–in response to the terrible pain these teachers, parents, and children have endured–want to fight “righteously” by degrading, denigrating, and seeking to trivialize/ignore those who are in pain. Most specifically, it’s aimed at those who have the most direct power to make a difference, but have written this situation off like countless others without truly having even a conversation about why. This is a heavily metered, rhyming poem; very archaic in style and inspired by my favorite poem of all time “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen.

Ad Nauseam

There are no glorious battles,
though there are causes worth our lives.
Every fight begun unravels
the goals for which we strive.
Yes, there may be times
when, in defense of our ideals,
we set aside our pencils
to take up our swords and shields,
but there are no glorious battles,
despite whatever you have read.

We pay by incremental lot
a tariff on the soul
for every battle fought
that we could not avoid.
And that’s not even speaking
of that direst of crimes–
letting others suffer
because you could not grow a spine.

So do not claim in gladness
the righteous cause that you stand for,
if you are not prepared
to march and fight your own damned war.
Children should not suffer–
whether fear or something worse–
merely for the preference of some,
and others, for their purse.

There are no glorious battles,
though each true hero earns their place,
through strife and courage persevering
in hope to make us safe.
Sadly, most such heroes
go forgotten but by few
who will remember when we fail again
as we seem content to do.

There are no glorious battles,
despite whatever you have read.
There are no glorious battles;
only tragic dead.

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Syntax (A Poem)

Thought I would share another poem that I put together. Lately, I’ve been meditating on myself and what gives my strength. Naturally, love–both God’s and my family’s–sits foremost on that list, but writing comes very close after. With that in mind, I wrote this:

Syntax

Phonemes crisscross
my injuries,
binding ragged-edged hopes
fraying into doubt.
My self fluctuates,
brave and cowardly,
forgetting and forgotten,
much and nothing.
I cannot see tomorrow,
hidden amongst definitions I have not learned,
but I can find amongst the world’s tongues
syllables enough to render it in my voice.
A canvas of my imagining
wrought by every letter
I have ever learned,
arranged a hundred
million
billion
ways–
once for each of us
and then once again for who each of us wish to be.
I cannot explain tomorrow,
but I know enough eternal words–
hope, love, faith–
that I can believe tomorrow
will be a day I write
I speak
I sing.
That when I do, tomorrow will listen.

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The Greatest Gift Is Hope

I greet you somberly on the morning after a terrible tragedy that, in combination with recent natural disasters and artificial discord, has left many people reeling, overwhelmed, and lost. Nothing can remove the hurt that many feel, and confusion will be the theme of many lives for days to come. I do not say that to depress, but to affirm that it is okay if you’re feeling low, sad, angry, depressed, or even grateful that you are not currently suffering in the ways that so many others are. All of those thoughts and feelings are normal human responses to grief and pain.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, however you are hurting, know that you prayed for, cared for, and loved. Know that there is still, always, hope.

I recognize how hard that can be to believe. I have been lost in despair and suffering. I have wilted under the fiery heart of those who would oppress and harm me. Those who did. I have considered tomorrow with the abject fear of someone who feels that they barely survived today.

What I want you to know is you can do this. There is always hope.

Hope is, after love, the single greatest currency humanity could ever possess. With it, we can stand defiant in the face of enormous loss and fear. Without it, the loss and fear consume us. But what I want to tell you, what you NEED to know, is that there is always hope.

No one can take it from you, though they will try. Often the loudest voices are those that seek to deprive you of even the basest hopes, reminding you of what you have lost and how difficult it will be to reclaim that which you have held dear.

Do not listen.

They may say that things are too far gone. That too much damage has been done. They may try to convince you that your hurt will never heal.

Do not listen.

Hope remains so long as you believe in your heart and the heart of those around you. Hope remains so long as, acting out of love and common decency, you give of yourself to aid others. If you are one of those most directly hit by any of these crises, know that you are not alone. You do not face this alone, though it may at times feel as though the walls of your world have caved in: pressing you from every side.

In the face of darkness screaming your name, do not listen.

You can and will rebuild. You can and will overcome. You do not have to do it alone. You will not have to do it alone.

The hearts and minds of millions are with you. Their prayers, support, and hands reach out to you. We will get through this together.

There is always hope.

A final thought to the writers out there, like me: Use your words, now more than ever. Language is the most powerful force ever devised. It exceeds the might of weapons and storms. It stands unrivaled as the shaping force of history.

It is history.

As a writer, you bend that power to your whim. Do not for an instant wave away such strength as meaningless in a time such as this. It is more meaningful than ever. When the world darkens and we as the combined peoples of this Earth grieve, writers must be there to offer hope. To remind us that every night has an end. That every darkness will be broken by light. That we can and will overcome.

Writers, let’s do that together.

Thank you.

-Christopher