New Blog Chain Post: Dinner with an Idol

It's blog chain time again!

This round was started by the magnificent Michelle Hickman. She asks:

If you could dine with any author, and I do mean any whether alive or dead (yes,
we're going into the realms of time travel - but hey, we have science fiction
writers on this chain so we can always ask for them to write up the time machine
specs), who would you want to dine with? And if you can ask them for advice on
one writing element you feel you might be struggling at, what would it be?

Interesting question. Luckily, I'm near the end of the chain and had plenty of time to think about my answer. This may be cheating because he's technically not an author, but he's close enough and one of my biggest idols. My answer would be the Generalissimo himself, leader to all Brigadiers and True Believers:

Stan Lee.

As writers of fiction novels, there may be some of you who think that, since Stan Lee wrote comics, he may not have contributed anything to fiction. But that's where you'd be wrong. Think about some of your favorite book characters. Aren't they the ones you relate the most with? Don't they have problems just like you? Not enough money? Trouble getting a date? Ect. and so on? In the comic world, Stan Lee understood that before all others.

Before Stan Lee you had perfect hero after perfect hero. Think superman. In the early comics the man didn't even lose his temper. But Stan Lee came along and changed that. All of a sudden you had adults and teenagers losing their tempers, facing moral dilemmas with sometimes negative consequences. Believe it or not, before Stan Lee, comic book heroes never even got SICK. Stan Lee also went on to challenge the board of comic book ethics. Before, you weren't allowed to mention drugs in comic books. That may sound like a good thing but Stan Lee realized that his readers where kids and that kids have to deal with drugs. So, why not show someone using drugs and show the negative consequences? Comics could be used to speak out against, drugs, racism, and hate.

If I could spend a dinner with him I'd love to pick his brain on character depth and morality issues in writing. But if I were lucky enough to meet Stan Lee my meeting would probably go something like this:




Please check out Abby's blog for her dinner date and check back with Shannon tomorrow for her answer.

As Stan Lee would say: EXCELSIOR!