Devilish Humor

Now you might be wondering what I mean by “devilish” humor. It’s not “evil” humor, like mainstream comedians promote today. I mean humor in the ranks of devils.

                “What?” You may be saying. “How can evil beings joke or be humorous?”

                It’s true when you think of devils, you think of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, or Satan tempting Jesus. Satan is the Father of Lies, a Deceiver, a Tempter, an Adversary. So how can he be humorous? Well, Satan isn’t humorous, but he does have minions and I’m not talking the little yellow guys in the Despicable Me movie franchise.

                In The Paladin Awakens, the devil Atasaya is the mastermind of all the bad things which happen to the hero Eric D’Tra’val. Atasaya is in a chain of command and one of his underlings is Coyote. I didn’t originally envision Coyote being one fry short of a Happy Meal, but my own sense of humor sort of demanded it.

                The relationship between Atasaya and Coyote is like many straight man/funny man duos such as Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, or Steve Martin and John Candy, with less slapstick and more…evil. The type of humor isn’t intended to get you laughing your head off at Coyote’s antics but at least lighten the mood of the scene. They are still devils, after all.

                To give you an example, I’ll set the scene. Atasaya and Coyote finished watching/listening to a debriefing meeting when Atasaya’s boss, Mammon, summons him to give account for his disobedience.  The end of the scene and chapter goes like this:

“Glad I’m not in your sandals,” Coyote smirked.

“Coyote, to me,” Atasaya growled as he streaked away.

Coyote’s shoulders slumped as the summons pulled him with Atasaya. “Oh, sh…”

        Now, you might be a bit concerned about what Coyote was going to say at the end there. In fact, one of my critique partners commented about it being too close to obscenity until this partner read the beginning of the next chapter:

“Sugar and Shinola,” Coyote finished.

Atasaya swatted away the Nameless, clearing his view of Coyote. “What did you say?”

“Sugar and Shinola,” Coyote shouted. A Nameless flew into his mouth like a gnat. Coyote choked and coughed out a cloud of smoke. “Ack! Brimstone. It’s an old phrase I picked up from a World War II vet. I never could tempt him to use the other word.”

Atasaya stared at Coyote, shook his head and mumbled, “No wonder you are still just a lord.”

I dodged an obvious swear word and added a little humor to the situation. So far, Coyote’s presence in scenes have been seen as “what stupid thing is he going to do this time?” He’s still a devil and will tempt humans to commit sins, but he’s just not quite all there. Everybody knows someone like him. In my book, he’s mine.

Website Update

Completed:

1.      Yeah, nothing added this month. Sorry.

In the works:

1.      Reading List page

2.      Eric’s world timeline

3.      Canthany system

4.      Psionics System

And many more.

The Paladin Awakens Progress Report

It turns out my work to complete the manuscript by March 1st was in vain. I don’t qualify for the Genesis contest because I self-published Eric’s War. Bummer. There may be other contests I could shoot for. I’ll have to check around.

I am up to chapter 18 with the ACFW Scribes critique group. The halfway point! Well, almost the hallway point. I need another half-chapter, so as soon as I submit chapter 19, I’ll be over the half-way point. If I'm able to keep up with the chapters, the critique group should be complete by the end of April.

Next up: A brief description of the psionics system I’m using.