As I Walk These Broken Roads Part IV

[Atomic Cowboy]

w00t! Broken Roads is a frontpage Hot Nuclear File!

As I Walk These Broken Roads Part IV

Part I, II, III.

Plot Summary: a man calling himself Wentworth wanders into a small town from the East - a barren, desolate area stretching for kilometers, with nothing but a rifle and a duffle bag over his shoulder. A trader named Vince suspects that he may be the source of a rumour that some of the Northern Traders have been talking about, a dangerous man with a bounty on his head that some force in the far East, beyond the barren wasteland, is pursuing full force.

Raxx is a mechanic. One of the few people who actually understand the old prewar tech. A wanderer who's only recently put down roots in the town of Blackstock he finds a drinking buddy in Wentworth. Events over take them, and the two of them are forced into an alliance.

Part IV: The resolution to Hope's raider problem. Part's II, III, and IV are really all Part II divided into three sections - divided so that people wouldn't have to wait as long before reading it.

Leave your comments telling me what you think, and any constructive criticisms you might have. This messageboard has at least doubled the quality of my writing, so thanks. If you don't have any criticisms, but just liked the story post that too! It's a longer read than most, and if you think others should spend the time to give it a shot tell them. Cheers!

PS I'll be addressing some of the questions/comments from the other threads later today, I want to get the phrasing right. Plus, I feel like I'm cheating at self-promotion if I respond frequently on the same thread, bumping it up.

 

[Atomic Cowboy]

It's Q&A Time! Sorry it took me a whlie (a month) to get to this, but I wanted to put things right. This will be a long post.

So what is this, exactly? It seems a tad more elaborate than normal fan-fic.

As I Walk These Broken Roads is a novel I’m working on. The first of three, actually. Without giving away any spoilers, Broken Roads establishes the characters and setting, the second book has the characters confront and investigate the main dilemma, and in the third they orchestrate the decision reached in the second. Overall it is a Man vs Society story.

I’ve always been fascinated with lawless societies – whether it be the Wild West, the Dark Ages, or the Post-Apocalyptic setting. This stems from my own dislike of laws and rules. I’m a libertarian at heart, and I feel stifled in this “tyranny of the majority” that I find myself in. Not that I actually want to live in an anarchy, you understand, one of the things I try and stress in Broken Roads is just how miserable life is after the bomb. Sometimes I just think I’d be better suited in my mental faculties to live in such a world.

That’s one reason for deciding to write a Post-Apocalyptic, Fallout-esque novel, another is that it is a genre where the demand is not being supplied – at least, not well. I could name a dozen Post-Apocalyptic, dystopian movies or novels that fall short of being “good” – if I could remember their titles. Because they’re so damned forgettable. None of them have a good story, but I’m fairly certain that there’s a lot of interest out there for this setting (why else would NMA still be up 7 years after Fallout 2? Not just because it was a great game, I’ll wager).

So is this a fallout setting? I noticed you mentioned Brahmin in the first part, called Vince Vic once.

When I first started the larger story was very vague in my mind, so I decided to write a beginning which could go either way. On the one hand, if I could get Bethesda (well, really whoever the holding company for the Fallout franchise is, they’ve only licensed it) to let me write a Fallout ™ novel then that would give me a big boost with sales and promotion, but on the other hand I would feel like I was copping out if I did that – selling a logo not my writing ability – and also it would limit me to writing within the Fallout Universe. And besides from what I’ve heard from people working in the videogame industry, trying to convince whoever owns the franchise that a good novel would help both them and me would be next to impossible.

So Part I was written with a Fallout Universe as backdrop, but when I redid the first part based off of this board’s constructive criticisms I subtracted Mutants, Swing music, and miniguns (…at least not hand-held ones). It is still a Roadwarrior/Falloutish setting, but with my own style. More cowboy, rock’n’roll, seventies’ truck stop, if that means anything. I’m usually listening to The Doors while writing.

And as for the Vince/Vic thing – originally I hadn’t planned for Vince to become as major of a character as he has become (what can I say? It just sort of happened). The name was intended to be an Easter Egg of sorts, just a random trader who dressed similarly. On another level, I always liked the character of Vince in F2. One of things most lacking in the game, I thought, was how little interaction there was with your party members. As a result I found myself imagining what they would talk about before going to sleep at night, what kind of hobbies they had, etc., fleshing them out. That’s probably why Vince became a larger character than he was intended to be – because I always wanted to flesh out Vic.

So why are you publishing online for free?

I won’t pontificate at length as to my philosophy here – basically, it’s free advertising! Baen publishing house has started giving away some of their books for free over the internet (in pdf format) because most people are reluctant to try new authors, and if you go there you can find their statement as to why they think giving it away for free will benefit them and the authors in the long run. I agree with them.

http://www.baen.com/library/

(I appreciate it NMA, and if this hits print I will be mentioning you guys in the "Thank You" section)

Second, the feedback I’m getting is incredibly helpful in improving my writing ability, but possibly more important is the encouragement. If somebody here says they like Broken Roads it means a lot more than when one of my buddies who I’ve forced to read it says the same. I feel much complimented that I’ve received emails asking when the next part would be up. (and again, I apologize for being six days later than I said!)

But to be honest, I’m probably only going to post the first half of the book - about another hundred pages or so. The main reason for this is because I don’t know how the publishing industry would feel about trying to sell a book which has been completely given away for free over the internet. I might think it’s a great idea, but the traditional media is drastically behind the times.

So to finish off, thanks again to everyone who’s read it, everyone who’s commented, and to Silencer for offering to host it. I appreciate people reading it in electronic format – I know what a pain pdf can be compared to a good old book, but I think it’s worth your while.

Cheers!