My stories take place in a post-apocalyptic dystopia setting. A large portion of my reading queue is guess what? That’s right; Post-apoc and dystopian novels. It’s not just because I love these genres. Researching the competition is important business.

I recently found a post-nuke series called Deathlands. Is it good? I don’t know yet. I just received my copy of Deathlands #1 ‘Pilgrimage To Hell’ today. Maybe I’ll dissect it here when I’m finished. Something interesting is that GraphicAudio, the publisher, has a specific marketing strategy. There are seventy or so Deathlands books, and a large number of them are audiobook only. They state their target as long-distance commuters. I find this interesting as it’s not often that publishers have such a narrow target audience.

More important though, I like to go through everything within my genre to make sure that my ideas haven’t already been exploited by someone else. In most cases, they haven’t been. My configuration of setting and character elements has enough of its own identity that it won’t be confused with others. This is good, but it doesn’t make the fear go away. I have this paranoia that one of these days I’ll pick up a novel and read exactly the novel I was writing. This is mostly an irrational fear, but in some ways a healthy one. It’s good to know what’s out there.

Is anyone encroaching upon your ideas?

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The latin roots of the word context mean “with text.”

In our creative endeavors we often strive to be clever. I came to storytelling after a thorough mentorship in marketing from my bosses at 3D Realms. Positioning is everything, which is why the soon-to-be-released game Prey features a Native American character named Tommy Hawk. Get it? Har har.

However, there can be a shortsightedness in trying to be so clever.

For every Tommy Hawk there is a James Bond. Ian Fleming explained that he chose the name because it was the most generic name he could come up with. It had no pre-built associations–a blank slate.

It worked out pretty well, don’t you think?

This Design Observer article agrees.

So which do you prefer? Ideas with pre-built associations? Or the blank slate?

If you prefer the blank slate, how do you propose to build a healthy, marketable context for your brand?