Runs in, finds a seat at the back, and hopes no one noticed

Okay, this is late, and it's short on top of that. The cool, insightful post that I had in mind is currently only half done, and I need to go to bed.

Roja is coming together. I can't tell you how cool that is.

The other day I got an e-mail from Grey Matters Press, letting me know that 'Dirty' passed the first culling to be in their Dark Visions anthology. When I read that, it was like getting a shot of adrenalin right in my heart, after someone left the hypo in the freezer overnight.

I asked for a Kindle for Christmas, if only so I can join the Brave New World of publishing and see what poor, innocent victims are available to flog my wares to. Now I just have to figure out how the blasted thing works.

Wow, this post isn't short. It's a severed stump.

Don't blame me, I was writing

Reacting, and preventing.

I had an idea for this week's post, a good one about a necessary quality of horror. I was going to make a few points, then complain about how hard I've been working on Roja.

But on Friday, a twenty year old boy in Connecticut killed twenty-seven people, including his own mother and twenty children. The police are working on trying to understand why he did it, but I'm not holding out hope for a reason that makes sense. Despite my odd interests, I think I can grasp the concepts of 'sane' and 'normal' that most people use when they get up out of bed in the morning and go through their day. I may not live there, but I can see it from my window.

The problem, as I posted not too long ago, is that people's hand-made realities don't include everything that everyone else's has. They can't. Your world may not contain a reason to go do what that boy did, and mine doesn't either. But I guarantee you, his did.

People are naturally wanting to do something to prevent this from ever happening again, and already some are calling for more gun control. After all, if the boy hadn't had guns, he couldn't have done it, right? Look up the news from China, about how they've started posting guards at schools because of recent attacks on kids over there. The same damn day of the attack in Connecticut, a man went after kids in a school in Henan province with a knife. Not too long ago, another man did the same thing with a machete. 'Doing something' about guns is an easy answer, and I'm sure the people of China have their easy answers, too.

How can we keep this craziness from ever happening again? We can't. Take away guns, cars, planes, and baseball bats, and the people who think they have a reason to hurt children will use sticks and stones. People have their own reasons to do everything, and we're pretty clever at finding ways around obstacles. We wouldn't have survived as a species if we weren't.

How can we decrease the chances of it, then? Well, I thought of a couple of ways, but you tell me how likely they are.

First, we mind each other's business. I pay attention to you, you pay attention to me. Instead of just waving to the old man across the street, you walk over and say hello some Saturday afternoon, and ask to meet all the people who live under his roof.

Quick note: You show up at my door and try that, and you'll be soaked with the garden hose before I throw a plugged in, frayed, extension cord at you.

The other option? Well, we listen. All of us, to all of us. We also sincerely, completely accept one another. You take the guy next to you at the bus stop, who likes to have sex with women's purses, as he is, and I listen to the woman in front of me in line at the DMV as she tells me what really bothers her, so that then she won't go home and cut herself under her clothes where it won't show. Would the boy in Connecticut have told his reasons to someone, if he knew in advance that they might listen? I don't know, because I don't even know his reasons. But the next one might.

Tonight, during a break from writing, I made my regular call to my daughter. I told her I loved her, and that she means the world to me. Please go do something similar.

Date night, Santa Claus, and truck owners without chainsaws

So my wife asked how the book was coming. After pondering for a good, solid metaphor, I asked her if she had ever heard of someone carving a statue from a tree trunk using a chainsaw. Because my wife is someone who can appreciate the level of skill required, she said yes, she had. Then I asked her to imagine if that person had been really inspired to create something, only to find his chainsaw was gone. Does he give up? Obviously not. He uses what tools he has, a pick up truck that can go a hundred miles an hour, and a buddy who's willing to drive it. He puts the tree trunk in the bed of the truck, hops in back with it, and has his friend take off down an asphalt road. By strategically leaning the trunk out and letting it rub on the asphalt, he slowly and laboriously grinds away anything that doesn't belong on his statue.

My wife gave me one of those looks.

Because I've been cooped up here in my study pretty much non-stop this month, she also took me out to the movies Saturday night for a date. Our local Alamo Drafthouse was having a graveyard shift double feature of 'Rare Exports' and 'Silent Night Deadly Night.' I hadn't seen either before, so at the very least I was expecting a bit of a treat.

Alamo Drafthouse is a fun place. They have good theaters, serve good food, and really do kick people out if they talk through the film or can't/won't control their children. They also make a point of having interesting pre-show entertainment up on the screen. Last night they showed bits of a Christmas themed 'Tales From the Crypt' episode, as well as a hilarious short from Yer Dead Productions titled 'Treevenge.' For this holiday-themed show, they also had a couple of audience participation games. My lady love declined to enter the eggnog chugging contest, (though she did initiate the cry of 'chug chug chug') but when they announced the 'wrapping competition' she went right up to the front of the theater. They gave her and another girl each a tee-shirt, and the one who wrapped theirs the fastest won. For extra points, my wife busted into some free-flow rapping, which got her an extra shirt of her choice. Then she gave them both to me. She always finds a way to make my life better.

Rare Exports is a fun movie from Finland about the real nature of the Santa Claus figure, and Silent Night, Deadly Night is a reliable 80's slasher flick that came out the same time as Nightmare on Elm Street. The former was a nicely original story that was almost, but not really, safe for kids to see. (Honestly, it would probably be considered safe for kids in Europe, where they seem to have a few less hangups) I initially wondered about the wisdom of showing Rare Exports first, since it looked to be the film with the higher production values. But it's definitely the 'softer' of the two movies, and seeing it after you've seen jolly old Saint Nick decapitate someone would be a bit of a let-down. It was a fun evening.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I need to get back into the bed of that pickup truck.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

When I can't write, I think about writing. I imagine myself talking to someone, anyone, who wants to know what it's like. I explain that I write in chunks, little scenes and bits of scenes. Those bits are like bricks, and I try to build a wall with them. Problem is, they're not all the same size, and they don't fit one right after the other. I don't always know how a story ends before I start writing it, but I usually know by the time I'm half-way done. That means I have a starting point, and an ending point. Then the story goes where ever it damn well pleases, never mind the fact that it's supposed to be headed toward the ending. I also write pieces that get put down in the middle, never mind where the beginning and end may be.

So I have a bunch of bricks spread out all over this big field, and I need to make a wall out of them. To do that, I make a map of where each of them is. Open Office has a spreadsheet function, and I've made one that's set up like a calender. Now I'm going through the draft that I have, and putting each important scene on the calender. You know how you say, 'The next Saturday, the family gathered again.' Well, I need to make sure that the next Saturday wasn't the very next day, and that one of the family members who gathers is still alive to show up. This will help me get a better grip on the whole book.

Claudia and I finished season one of 'Bedlam' this week. It's a series about the old Bethlam Royal Hospital being converted into an apartment building. Unfortunately, some of the prior tenants aren't quite as dead as they should be. (See? If they'd just had a spreadsheet, everything would have worked out fine) So far it's a good series, but it's also another reason to hate the Brits for only having six episodes to a season. In the last episode, you get the sense that things are just starting to heat up.

Kind of ironic that a post about keeping track of days is a day late, don't you think? Don't blame me, I was writing.

It's not my fault.

Don't blame me for this week's entry being late. Blame Ryan Murphy. Him and Brad Falchuk are the ones at fault. You can also blame Alexandra Breckenridge.

Neither my wife or I have any family in town, so for Thanksgiving we have our own tradition. We prepare a huge pasta meal and invite over friends we have who are in a similar situation. On Thursday, one of them brought over the first season of American Horror Story. You should probably blame that friend, too.

On Sunday, we were sitting around the house about to go a little stir crazy, and my lady love suggests we pop it in and watch an episode or two. I was game, because I'd heard good things about the series on Fearnet, and had been careful to not read any spoilers. At around one thirty in the morning, I went to bed cursing and grumbling that we hadn't started two hours earlier, because then we would have been able to finish the series. As it was, I had to wait all day today before I was able to get back home after work and we could sit down and pop the last disk in. I wasn't disappointed in the ending.

If it's hard to write good horror, it's really hard to do it so that it comes across effectively on the screen. Now shrink that screen to the size of a TV, hide the body parts that give the folks at the FCC seizures, and realize that you have to appeal to not just your discriminating horror fan, but John Q. Average.

Now try and do it as a series, juggling characters, plot, and keeping things rolling at the same time that you maintain those senses of isolation, dread, and excitement. As I've said before, 'Good luck.'

AHS hits us where we're most vulnerable, where we need to be ourselves, in our loves, our hates, and all the nasty little bits that we keep hidden in our own heads. It takes the people we love, the sort of people we hate, and the people we can't get away from because either we're their parents or they're our parents. That person who lives next door, the one you'd like to bludgeon to death with a spoon? Yep, that one's there too.

It does have weak points. As I said, it's hard to do a series about horror, and a couple of times I thought that it was losing that sense of the strange that is really, really important. But is that it, my only complaint? Sitting right here, having just finished the series a little while ago? Yeah, it is.

It was also great to see a least one familiar face from an older, beloved series that was canceled way too soon.

Not bad for not giving away any real plot points, eh? Now let me get back to my own writing, now that I have something else to be envious of.

Roja, Mortal Kombat, and a genuine tragedy

This day started off on a bad note. The alarm went off, I hit the snooze, then said to myself, 'In ten more minutes I have to get up and get ready for work. That stinks.' It took me a long while to fall asleep last night, so I was already in bad shape. During those ten minutes, I lay there trying to build up the will to keep existing. Then I said, 'Hang on. I saw Skyfall with Claudia yesterday, and we saw it on Saturday.' Then I accused my alarm clock of being the male child of a female dog.

Part of the fun of writing is you're always exploring new ideas, places, and people. The downside of that is unless you already know everything, you need to do research to address your ignorance. Earlier today, I needed a name for a skin condition that would be a likely suspect for something in Roja, and browsing around, I thought of something I heard in the new Mortal Kombat trailer. (I'm a huge fan of the original movie, even though I only played the game a few times and got my backside handed to me) So I looked up Harlequin Ichthyosis.

I have learned so much over the years from writers who put little tidbits in their stories that were about something I had never heard of before. I need you to hear me say this next part in a grumpy old man voice, because it won't have the same impact if you don't. Back when I first started writing, if you needed to know something, you went to the library, and you hoped it wasn't something so exotic that the librarians wouldn't know what you were talking about. Today, we have Google, yet people on the whole don't seem to know much more than they did those few decades ago. I looked that skin condition up, and I got one of those shocks where my head is screaming, 'What the hell? How can something that disturbing exist and we don't regularly hear about it?' Babies get born with that condition, and life sucks from that point on. Usually, not for long.

Part of the way we deal with the world, is to build a picture of it in our heads. Let's say I have a brain saw, and I pull out your gray stuff and pop it into a scanner. A lot of the info that I read is going to be interconnected into an overall picture not of this world, but how you think this world is. Each brain world is going to be different. If you're a physicist, your world is made of atoms and quarks and semi-real strings, as opposed to a stockbroker, whose world only breaks down beyond physical matter when you think about it really hard, but that has this dynamic, chaotic system of how money works. If you believe in psychic powers, then some people show up too late to board planes doomed to crash in your world because on some level, they know what's going to happen. If you believe we went to the moon, then your world has a moon with leftover pieces of spacecraft on it. If not, it has governments that lie about those spacecraft.

This world building comes in handy for those of us who build new worlds all the time and then try to sell them. All we have to do is make worlds that you want to read about. Simple, right? I can hear Hollywood knocking on my door right now. Oh wait, that's my supervisor, wanting to know why I'm not at work. People are funny when it comes to what we like to experience, and what we want to know.

Does your world have babies that are born with skin that comes in plates, with weak gaps between them? Do those babies usually die of infection, or suffocate because that skin is too tight over their chest to let them breathe? Does your world only include women and men, and not people who are born with characteristics of both, or neither? Human beings are funny things, and the parts that make us up, physical, mental, and spiritual, fit together in all kinds of patterns. Is it possible for us to understand all those patterns? Maybe, maybe not. But we're aware of a hell of a lot more patterns today than we were yesterday.

Still mixing the patterns around. Still writing.

How to steal and be complimented on your theft

So today (Saturday) the internet is being a bit wonky. So I'm going to use this time to get this week's entry typed in a head of time. I'm clever like that.

A friend and I once got into a spirited discussion about fanfiction, which ended with an armistice rather than a real peace. We had started discussing Sherlock Holmes, and the story, 'The Seven Percent Solution' came up. This is a story not written by Doyle, but considered so good that it gets treated as cannon, meaning all the little details in it are considered just as true as those from the books that were written by him. That's when hostilities began.

There are a lot of created universes. Harry Potter, Holmes, Michael Moorcock's, Discworld, and yes, Twilight. They get a lot of fans reading them, and most people who read have enough imagination to take the stories and wonder what else could happen in this strange, exciting place. If the story really reaches out and grabs us, (and that's and individual response, so I'm not going to get into whether or not a universe has to be widely considered 'good' for this to apply) then it's fun to just daydream about what our life would be like if we lived there, too. This real world can sometimes suck, and a fantasy world only sucks in ways we can handle.

Is it wrong to imagine? Hell no. Everyone should do it. Imagine enough, and you might start to come up with a story of your own, something where the hero (gender neutral usage) finally takes care of that one twit in the story that you really hated. Since this is your version of the world, there's a place for you, too. You can be the hero's next door neighbor, his confidante, his backup, and you can be a hero too, when the main one is off doing something else. So far, so good.

Should you write all this down? Why not? It can be fun, and if you write other stuff, it can kick-start that part of your head if it ever gets sluggish. I've done this, and takes me in directions I might otherwise not go.

Then you decide to go out and make some money with this story. That's when I ask that you pause for a minute.

As I've said before, writing is work. You start with an idea, an image, a bit of dialogue, or something else that gets the brain juices flowing. Then you take that seed and plant it in the (hopefully) fertile soil of your perception of the world, either the real one, or the one you're thinking about. It takes root in your own concepts of how people talk, whether or not we landed on the moon, whether that shy guy at the back of the classroom is going to grow up to be the inventor of a faster than light drive or someone who collects other people's spleens, and whether or not something creeps out from under your bed while you're asleep. You start that seed growing, and you prune it when it goes in directions you don't want. Get your plant big enough, and you've got a story.

When someone writes fanfiction, they're starting with a big chunk of someone else's plant. Again, not a bad thing, but recognize where that part comes from. Assume there are no copyright issues. (BIG assumption. I know very little of that field, and I know enough to say that it can be really, really messy) This is a moral argument, not a legal one.

When you make a character, and you either put enough work into him or her to make a good one, and/or you get lucky and create something that pushes people's buttons in the way that they like them pressed, you've made something good. Holmes is the standard by which all other literary detectives are judged, and with all the movies and plays that have come out, we've seen multiple interpretations of the character. Then someone went and wrote, 'Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula.' I saw that title standing in line at the library when I was ten years old, and I've never been the same since.

So what do you do if you have an idea that was spawned in someone else's flowerbed? Grow it, of course. Let it grow as big and as beautiful as it can. Then step back and look at it, hard.

Is it good? More importantly, is it strong enough to survive on it's own? If not, keep it and enjoy it. If it is, take a cutting from the part that you made, transplant it, and see it it will grow. One of my major complaints about the 'I am Legend' movie, wasn't all the tweaking that they did with the setting, it the fact that both of the endings were completely contrary to the ones that Matheson wrote. If you're going to borrow that heavily from someone, do what George Romero is supposed to have done with Night Of The Living Dead. He got the idea, and the scares and suspense, of a lone house surrounded by undead from I am Legend, and built his own story around it. It's great to get seeds from other people's plants, just do your own growing. 

I've finally made a profile over at Fearnet. One of the bloggers that I follow, Drew Daywalt, had some trouble happen to him recently, and I tried to offer a bit of encouragement.

Still writing, although the fact that this isn't getting posted until Monday might seem to call that into question.

Oh what fun

  Just a normal update. I got through the first slog through Roja, where I needed to make sure all the chapters together. Now all I need to do is make sure that all the bits and pieces that make up the chapters do the same thing. Nothing much else has happened.

Oh, wait. Halloween.

Our neighborhood had a couple of other houses decorated, but most weren't. My idea to use chem lights in the balloons didn't work as well as I thought it would. When I tested them in the darkened garage, they looked fantastic, but my neighbor has a really powerful floodlight, which washed the glow out. Oh well. So I got Applebones put together, and my wife took a few pictures, then I parked myself out in front of the house and waited, sitting completely still.

Shortly before it got dark, the first batch of kids came up. They ooo and ah at me, but then go right to the door. As my wife opens it and begins letting them grab the candy, I turn and face them, but since they're all looking at Claudia, they don't notice. As the last one gets his loot, they all turn to go. That's when one of them notices I'm not in the same position that I was a minute ago. He stops to look, and everyone else does, too. When I reach out with my stick fingers that are a couple of feet long, the whole bunch of them shriek and run away as fast as they can. Not too bad of a beginning.

We got a decent amount of trick or treaters. Most of them in groups, and most with a parent or two along for the ride. One man saw me move when his son didn't, and he called the boy over to him so he walked within my reach. He laughed when I reached out and his son yelled. One mother screamed along with her kids, and when Claudia asked for them all to pose with me so she could get a couple of pictures, she put her children between herself and me. The next mother screamed when I moved the first time, and when her daughter looked away from the door to see what the fuss was, I extended a hand toward her, and she howled like she was being skinned alive.

We got one bunch of older boys who stopped by, three of them with hats on but otherwise without costumes. Claudia commented that they might be a bit old, but handed out some candy. As they walked off, they said 'Goodnight.' I waited until the door was shut, then I said, 'Goodnight.' One of them stopped walking and said, 'Who said that?' I didn't move or say a word.

One boy who came in with a group seemed to like my costume so much that he announced to me that he wasn't afraid. Then he poked me in the chest and tried to lift my mask to see if I was real. Maybe next time I should have makeup on under my mask.

Other than going to a friend's party on Saturday, that's pretty much the week. Verdict? Best Halloween that I've had in a long time. Can't wait for next year.

If could ask one thing of you folks, please get out and vote. People fought and died to give us that right.

Still writing.

Why I don't read Ray Bradbury

Actually, I do. So should you. If you read his work, hopefully you'll know what I'm talking about here. If you don't read his stories, you should. Right after you finish reading this posting would be a good time to start.

I do read Ray Bradbury, but I don't read him the way I read King, Matheson, Poe, David Nickle, and most of the stuff in Cemetery Dance. With those guys I can put myself into the story and just enjoy a good scare. That's the purpose of a story.

But Bradbury wrote damn well, and he wrote in a way that made each story personal, and brought it out into this life as opposed to the paper one. That's the purpose of a story, too.

At Fen-Con I picked up the graphic adaptation of The Martian Chronicles. I haven't read the print stories themselves yet, but I saw the mini-series that came out on TV many, many moons ago. So I thought I had an idea of what I was in for.

Yeah, I was wrong. Bradbury hits a nerve that no one else does. He makes us remember what it was like to be a kid, and to dream like a kid. Then he makes us remember what it was like to get too old to hold on to all those dreams. He shows us how beautiful we all are, and all the hideous things we do. He makes us happy, sad, and scared all at once. He feeds us every flavor of life, and reminds us that the last course is graveyard dirt.

Compare him to another great writer that I can only take in controlled doses, Robert Heinlein. I recently finished Starship Troopers, and although Heinlein was able to keep from preaching to the reader at the beginning of the book, he gets right to it toward the end. By the time I finished it I wanted to get out the ouija board, bang on it with a complete edition of Stranger In a Strange Land to get his attention, and ask, 'What crack pipe did you dream up this version of the military from? Everyone in here is good, honest, clean, honorable, and mindlessly loyal! They're goose-stepping boy scouts with bazookas!' Heinlein loves to tell us how great the world would be, if only we would all give up our own opinions and follow his vision. Bradbury is more honest with us, and he won't tolerate us being dishonest with him, or with that person we always see in the mirror.

The reason that I don't regularly gorge myself on Ray Bradbury, is because his stories always feel so sad. I have a mental image of him, (blissfully formed without checking any facts) as a really happy person. How could he not be happy, when he bled all his sorrow out on paper and send it straight to everyone else in the world? For personal reasons, I don't like sad thoughts. Ask me why sometime, and I'll either say, 'I'll tell you later,' or, 'I already told you,' depending on what books I've written.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to writing them.

The wife has returned!!

Okay, short update this week. My Lady Love just walked in the door, returning from Oni-Con, where she rocked. She dutifully reported all the cool sights to me, including the ridiculously cute Little Red Riding Hood that she would have sent to me just to get me to blush. (She has done that in the past with everything from little Japanese girls in French Maid costumes to REALLY nice-looking Wonder Women)

I spent pretty much the whole weekend pounding on Roja, including filling in a gap where I looked at the outline I had made, after writing the book, and realized, 'Oh, there's a whole chapter where one character seems to stop existing.' I'm borrowing, in the Doctor Who sense of the word, a technique from IT where I tell two different story lines at once. One part had what happened in the spring, but not in the summer.

I was finally able to find some of the mini-chemlights that I've been looking for. The plan is to pop them in some helium filled balloons on Halloween night, and let them sway in the wind. If I can figure out how to post pics on here, I'll show you how they look.

Still writing.

A bit of real life

Took a bit of a breather yesterday. My wife and I went down to Galveston, and after driving around for a while, we found a spot by the sea wall where we could just sit and look out over the ocean. It was warm, but the wind was blowing that fine salt spray in our faces, and I think a small storm was brewing out there too. It's nice to just sit down every once in a while and do something to remind yourself that you're on a planet, you're on a ball of earth and stone with a good amount of water on it's surface, and that ball is spinning and whirling through an empty, cold void. It puts a lot of what you have to deal with into perspective.

Tor turned down 'Welcome Home,' and I'm probably going to send them 'Stilling the Demons,' today when I get a couple of other things done. Stuff keeps piling up faster than I can do it.

During the week, I came up with an idea for my Halloween costume. Now all I have to do is make it.

Just a minute ago, I watched a vid on Youtube that showed Felix Baumgartner jumping out of a balloon that was up so high, when you looked up, you didn't see sky, you saw space. You could see the curve of the earth instead of it looking flat. Incredible doesn't even begin to describe that.

Still writing, and about to get back to it.

What would they do if...

Hey there! Good to see you again. Let me introduce you to a couple of people. This is Dale. He works out at the beef-packing plant as the loading dock supervisor. He's been working at that place for over thirty years, at first to support his mother and sister, and then later his wife and son. He's not quite as content with that fact as he used to be.

And this is Frank, a deputy with the local sheriff's office. Back when he first joined the department, one seriously evil SOB was running it. But he stuck to his guns, even though it cost him his marriage. Now he wants to be sheriff.

Whats going to happen to them? Well, that depends on you and me.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but it's more important that you know your characters during the rewrite than when writing the first draft. On your first trip through the story, you're seeing the big picture, and making sure the ground under your feet is solid. The characters are there to prop up the plot. Whereas you and I (unless the Rutan are reading this) get our structural support from our skeletons, these folks start with what they contribute to our tale. If you took a close look at them the first time they get mentioned, they would probably look like wax statues, not even shaped into good detail on the back. They don't have any life of their own at that point.

On the second pass, they need more life. We're not just appreciating the scenery at that point, we're taking note of how clear the path is, whether the plants look green or brown, and if the area smells like rainforest or store-bought fertilizer. Assuming you're writing something that you want people to read, you better make it a worthwhile investment of their time. If you say the mailman did it on page 483, say it was done with a knife on page 101, and say the mailman faints at the sight of blood on page 257, someone's going to notice. Heck, some people will notice if you misspell one word out of a hundred thousand. People are like that. (See an older entry about writing or filming crap)

What will they do if you get it wrong? Depends. If you're Stephen King, and you put an electric chair in a novel set a few years before they were actually used, every amateur critic and rabid fan in the civilized world will take to the internet and froth at the mouth over it, and it won't affect your sales one bit. If, on the other hand, you're an unknown, and you write 'cleaver' when you mean 'clever,' or worse, you miss-type it and your autocorrect changes it to the former, the editor may well throw your story in the trash, and you'll only get a form letter with 'not what we're looking for at this time' pre-printed on it.

So think about those characters. Wait until you have the story set in your head and the frame of it on paper first, but try this thought in particular: What would they do if you didn't use them as cannon-fodder? If the martians didn't land, or the dead stayed content and quiet in their graves, or that little piece of a deadly crystal didn't show up at just the right time, what would those people do on what would otherwise be the opening day of your story? As far as the two men you met a few paragraphs ago, Dale would get a little more bitter, just as he did yesterday, and the day before that. His birthday's coming up, you see, and he hasn't lived quite as much as he expected he would have at his age. What about Frank? Well, I told you he wants to be sheriff. I might have glossed over the fact that he's already run once, and that he actually held the office for a short while under less than ideal circumstances. He already has a firm picture in his head about how the people in town feel about him, and he tends to ignore anything that contradicts that image. Frank won't be disillusioned any time in the immediate future. He'll just go about his business, being wrong about some very fundamental facts.

But of course, we know what's really going to happen. We've known all along. But also knowing what they might do if they existed without us lets us plot their actions a little more consistently, and it makes them a little more sympathetic to us, which helps us make them more sympathetic to everyone else.

Speaking of which, could I ask for a bit of sympathy? I went through all that chest-puffing last week about how The Red Man Burning was going to be my next book, but between then and now I pulled up that other one I mentioned, In The Dark, and used the word count function. It pulls up at around 43,000 words. At that length I might as well fatten it up and serve it with some flourish. Dress warmly if you read it. It's a bit cold out there in the dark.

Still writing.

Good news and bad news

Some time, back in the distant past, I had a spiral notebook in front of me and I was trying to figure out what a middleaged-plus dockworker would do if he suddenly became near-omnipotent, when I had a giddy rush and thought to myself, 'Holy crap, I'm writing a novel.' It was a major power-trip. I mean, a novel? War and Peace is a novel. Jurassic Park is a novel. The Shining, 'Salem's Lot, and Hell House are novels. Those are examples of novels, and I'm writing one?

Of course, the reality is, writing anything that size is serious work. Writing anything that size that is coherent is a lot of serious work, and writing anything that size that's any good, well, I'll wait until someone hands me money for Roja before I make a claim to knowing what writing a good one is like. I will, however, say that rewriting a novel, even before you know whether or not it's any good, is like breaking a hole in a brick wall by throwing individual grains of sand at it.

Now imagine how I felt last week as I started scribbling on the top of a blank page and thought, 'Oh wow, I'm writing my second novel.'

I've actually had the opening section written for a while, now. But thanks to my 'special' method of organization, I may have to re-create it. The first full-sized chapter opens with two young boys enjoying their summer vacation, and that's where the wholesomeness ends. Pondering a couple of events that I want to put in it, I realize this going to be a really nasty one.

If you've read the title of this entry, you're no doubt waiting for the other shoe to drop. On Monday, my wife got up after getting one night of sleep to recover from FenCon, including the moment when some idiot in one of the elevators hit the fire alarm, and she went to work. An hour or so later, she came home. Seems the higher ups at her company decided that had a few too many employees on the payroll. They laid her off.

To say that she is upset, or that I am upset, is a bit of an understatement. They were actually pretty nice about it, giving her a bit of a safety net. But as I told her, that's like someone putting a pillow under your head and applying ice to your nose after they've kicked you in the face. It's a nice gesture, but it's a nice gesture from someone who has just kicked you in the face. Now she's looking for a job, and at the same time prepping to run her booth at Oni-Con. She's pretty damn incredible.

Still writing, and by the way? I still get that same, 'Holy crap, I'm writing a novel,' feeling as I rewrite Roja.

By the way, this week is Banned Books Week! So go read something you shouldn't!

From the weekend

Okay, slightly different setting. I'm writing this (on paper at least) on Friday night, in Dallas, in the bar of the Crowne Plaza Hotel. The bar has already closed down, and I'm in a comfy chair tucked in a discrete corner where the bartender hopefully won't come over and kick me out.

I'm up here for Fen Con, a literary convention that Claudia introduced me to a few years back. She usually vends at it, and I often come up to help out. I wasn't able to come last year, and I missed a lot of fun. While not as closely related to what I do as World Horror Con is, this is still a good opportunity to touch base with other writers.

One of the panels that I was able to attend was about going to Mars, and it was given by an honest, no-bull, astronaut. Stan Love was up there in space for thirteen days, and he came to the con to talk to all us geeks about the really grounded problems that space travel presents. According to him, the international space station is only 250 miles up. I drove three times that distance just going from Houston to Las Cruces.

Which brings me to a piece I have that's sitting in the rewrite pile called 'In the Dark.' It's the first, and so far only, bit of science fiction that I've written. I don't want it to be horror set in space, but I do want it to have a very specific sense of lurking menace. This is a place where isolated pockets of humanity are huddled around their campfires, seeking shelter from the cold darkness that really wants to eat every single one of them. Those fires just happen to be nuclear-powered, and built inside protective shelters, which are designed to hold in what little air is available.

So how do you spice hard sci-fi with a dash of horror? Since 'you' in this case is me, it's a question to ponder. Horror uses reals threats presented in impossible situations to induce a fear by proxy. That (usually) makes it easier to deal with. With science-fiction, you're dealing with threats that are semi-possible, what the Mythbusters would call 'Plausible.'

Part of how we become afraid when the people around us are afraid is that we pick up on little clues that they give us. We see them breathe differently, we notice that their pupils are dilated, and we get uncomfortable when their movements become jerkier.

I suspect this is why a lot of folks give themselves away when the police interrogate them. All the cop has to do patiently sit there and gently poke a few mental buttons on their suspect, and then watch for results. In a situation like that, there is no visible, present threat, but people react as if there was. It's not likely the cop is going to draw their weapon and shoot, but if they just hint about all the terrible things that could happen, they get the result they want. If they can pull up something solid and concrete that the suspect really did, to crank up the pressure, so much the better. But it's the vague possibilities that do the job. Put in too many concrete details, and holes can be poked in the scenario.

What sorts of vague hints could I supply about a place where food, water, heat, and shelter from solar radiation is the exception and not the norm? I'm smiling just thinking about them.

This has been another of those posts where I sort of think through the eyes of my blog, with your help of course. You may not realize that you help, but you do. I thank you for that.

Still writing

So near, and yet so damn far

These days checking my e-mail is done with a mix of hope and trepidation. I have stuff constantly floating around in the nether, and each time, just before the screen shows my inbox. I can't help but imagine I'll see something with a subject line like, 'Where do we send the check?'

I haven't seen something like that yet. Yesterday, when I checked, I had another rejection letter. This one was from Bloodbound Books, telling me that they're passing on Tracks. They said it was in no way a reflection of the quality of the story, which they enjoyed. Seems I just missed the final cut.

As my wife put it, it sucks, but it's a good suck. Personal rejections like that are a good sign.

A few hours later, I got a little message from Glimmer Train. It was an e-mail form letter, offering a polite refusal on Stilling the Demons. The line that immediately sprang to mind was from the episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit where Penn is narrating through the plagues that rained down on Egypt. He exclaims, 'Yeah, whatever, God. Bring it on.' So I went out and celebrated with a Monte Cristo at the newly-resurrected Bennigans.

Roja is coming along. The more I read through it, the more I realize just how many breaks in the narrative and inconsistencies I have in it that I need to clean up. But it's still fun. There's still that sense of joy as I weave more ideas and connections into it. At present count it's about five hundred pages long, so I'm going to have to do a major hack job on it near the end. But for now, I can make it everything I want it to be.

Still writing, and yes, part of it is the power trip.

Deadline

Has an ominous ring to it, doesn't it? If the ghosts, vampires, and ghouls in this world ever decided to start their own telephone network, that would probably be the name they would give it.

Roja has been my main focus for a while now, and as much as I love it, I'm getting anxious to move on. Earlier this week, I popped a fresh sheet of paper on my clip board and started the opening for 'The Red Man Burning.' The prologue's been written for a while now, though it might have been lost a couple of computer crashes ago. I like the story, and the more I think about it, the more I want to start pounding it out. I have short stories sitting on people's desks and waiting in slush piles out there in the great abyss, but they aren't books. Roja is a book.

Technically, I'm rewriting Roja and writing a short story called 'Explanations of a Pedivorous Umbrella,' but the way Roja is going, I'm needing to write brand new chapters of it, from scratch. That takes large amounts of creative mana, not leaving enough to give EPU what it needs.

So I'm giving myself a time limit. Roja will be done, cleaned up and spit-polished by the end of this year. In less than four months, my first novel will be ready to leave the nest.

I got an e-mail from Bete Noir about my short story 'Mine.' Seems they 'enjoyed reading it,' but it's not what they're looking for. I had submitted it for their Seven Deadly Sins anthology, under pride, and felt like it was a pretty strong fit. Damn. Moving on.

My daughter's birthday is this week, and I've got her main present already sent. Now I just need to get what she really wants, a big musical keyboard that a friend gave me a while back, out to her.

Still writing, now with a deadline.

Something positive from something negative

At least twice a week, I wish that I had time to go back to school. The list of subjects that I want to know about includes (but isn't limited to) engineering, physics, chemistry, history, and psychology. The reason that I don't take the time is because as much as I want to learn about damn near everything, I want to write even more.

Psychology, in particular, seems fun, and it has a more direct application to writing than the other subjects. Way back when I first discovered the Horror Writer's Association, I browsed through their website and found an article written by Nancy Etchemendy entitled 'Writers and Depression.' You can read it here, http://www.horror.org/writetips/writetips-etchemendy.htm.

One of the points that the article makes is that the very nature of writing, that is, sitting on your butt all day, working alone, getting constant impersonal rejection, and the fact that few of your friends or family seem to understand that what you're doing is real work, can be pretty depressing by itself. Then there's the very real possibility that creative types are a bit more prone to it than most. I can't remember a solid source for that, so I'll leave it as a maybe.

Also a maybe is the odd little thought that the writing process goes through the same part of the brain that our negative emotions come from. I went through a bunch of my books trying to pinpoint where I heard that, and I couldn't find it. That's why it's a maybe. Expect to hear this subject again when I find the source.

I mention it because it feels right, especially for what I write. When I write the story about some coarse, greedy bastard who commits one evil too many and dooms himself to live in terror for the rest of his life, I'm tapping into the egotistical part of me that would gleefully crush such a person under my heel, and I'm remembering every person like that who I have encountered in real life. When I write about hate, pain, loss, dread, and rage so hot it boils your blood, I'm feeling them. Not the real things, understand, but some safe-looking version, emotion by proxy. Now consider the following:

I write damn near everywhere I can get away with it. In the car, on my lunch break, on my fifteen minute breaks, and often in between my breaks. (Sorry Larry) Despite the fact that I know perfectly well that I'm going to be interrupted, by the clock if nothing else, every single time something or someone interrupts me, I really want to scream at them to get the ---- out of my face. Maybe it's just part of their personae, but when I think about the writers that inspire me, the majority of them are known for some really negative traits. Stephen King is a recovering addict, Robert E. Howard committed suicide, and Harlan Ellison frequently channels his inner SOB. Richard Matheson once wrote a book where a magician explains that the audience is a hostile entity. Guess what? The writer can be one, too. If he or she does it right, you'll never even notice.

Yet after going through all that, look at the result. The Shining, The Bloodstained God, , Demon with a Glass Hand, and Hell House. Now if those don't put a smile on your face, I don't know what will.

Because it's worth sharing: A DJ giving a weather report for us down here in Houston today summed it up perfectly. 'Hotter than the hinges of hell.'

Still writing.

Finish the blasted thing

Normally, I try to be writing one thing, and rewriting another. That way, when my brain freezes on one story, I can just switch over to the other one and pretend the first problem doesn't exist. Then a day or so later, I can say to myself, 'Oh yeah, I need to get this piece finished too. Let's see where I stopped. Oooo, I know what happens next.' I stole the idea from a character in The Midwich Cuckoos.

Walking away really helps. I used to work on each story really intent on finishing it, until I got the next idea. That idea would seem like the coolest thing that ever existed, and I would put the first piece aside, just for a little while, I promised myself. Then I would pound away on the new one, until I got another idea. It was only when I applied some self-control to how I wrote that I started finishing things, and being able to send them out.

These days there are even more distractions. I write, read, play Wow, maintain some semblance of being a social animal, and keep up this blog. Just sitting down at the computer tempts me to go look up all the trillions of things that I want to know, articles that I've heard of, seeing what crazy new list Cracked dot com has put up, and googling my own name. Anytime you feel like wasting time, the opportunity is there.

But the whole reason I write this blog, or look up what new markets are taking submissions, or any damn thing else, is to write. I want to get to that point where I get up in the morning, having slept till I'm done, and climb up the stairs to sit right where I am now and start making worlds, again.

That's the point.

By the way, all you ID thieves out there? When I can, I'm coming after you, with a rusty speculum.

You and me verses everyone else

I like horror. That probably doesn't come as a shock to you, but I need to start this piece with that fact.

I like reading it, watching it, talking about it, and boy do I enjoy writing it. I like good action, Sci Fi, and an occasional mystery, too. But that cold shiver that tickles all the nerve endings at once is my bread and butter, and my meat and potatoes. It's the syrup on my pancakes.

The other day I had an encounter that felt like a recurring dream. I've had it before, and I'll probably have it again. Each time I have it, I expect to get the same part of my brain 'pinged.'

Someone said to me, 'I don't read horror.' I nodded, and life went on. A few people who know me know that sometimes it takes me a little while to fully process the personal stuff.

About ninety-nine percent of the time, it isn't that it's said, it's the way that it's said. Like it's a claim of territory, or the way a recovering alcoholic will mention they don't drink any more. Most of the time, they don't say that they don't like it, or that they prefer something else, or that they've never read/seen anything that was worth their time. They say it, in my humble opinion, like they're better than that.

I've heard that same feeling expressed elsewhere. I think it was at a convention that I overheard someone saying that the reason Rachel Weisz didn't do the third mummy movie was because she felt she 'didn't have to do those kinds of films any more.' Note that this is the same feeling, coming from the other side of the fence. As true believers, (My apologies to Stan Lee) we feel that we have the good stuff, and all those other fools are living in ignorance. Now, I conducted extensive research to find out if Ms. Weisz actually said that, but IMDB and Yahoo Answers both denied it. With no definitive evidence, what do we believe? What we want to believe.

I don't read or watch romance, tear-jerkers, or comedy. I have watched each of these in the past, and ended up wanting my hour and a half back, and usually my money too. This is not the same thing as saying these genres are 'beneath' me, though. I don't get anything out of them, so I don't invest time in them.

I've heard some of the other genres talked about in the same way, too. Science fiction and fantasy often get lumped in with horror, as in 'I don't watch that stuff.' An odd attitude.

This post is a bit of a ramble, but there's nothing wrong with that. This is me thinking at my keyboard the way some people talk to their pets. But unlike Spot, the keyboard, and you, will remind me about this again someday, and we'll continue the discussion.

One last note, I have to think up some really horrible story to tell me wife. She bought a box of mint chocolate pocky the other day, and those damn things are evil. (and gone)

Still writing, obviously.

A Roja by any other name

Okay, you're probably sick of hearing about it by now, and you know what? I'm close to getting sick of writing about it. I want the rewriting to be done, and I want to be able to move on to other things. I'm behind on getting stuff typed in, and I want to start working on my next book. Claudia is off at a convention this weekend, so I've spent most of it spewing threats at my keyboard.

Just a few minutes ago, I sent in a request to Black Belt magazine to try to track down a tidbit from my past. During Desert Storm, ( it still feels funny to call it that. It was named Desert Shield to begin with, and we were told only the air assault portion of it would be named Storm, then when the ground war started, it would be referred to as Desert Saber) the ship I was on docked for a while in Dubai, and we got some liberty there. By a happy coincidence, the world karate championships were going on in the city at that time, so some friends and I attended. While we were sitting in the stands and talking, and sort of sticking out like sore thumbs with pink, sparkly balloons tied to them, this guy comes up to us and asks if we are Marines.

It turned out that he was a photographer, there to cover the tournament for Black Belt Magazine. He not only got us down to the meet the American team, but he took our pictures with all of them. That was one of the coolest moments ever, and not just because the two ladies were damn hot. It was nice to just talk to someone from the U.S. for a few minutes. Most of the citizens of the U.A.E. were polite and friendly, and it was a fantastic place, but you could tell that even the ones who hated what Iraq had done had mixed feelings about us being there.

I forgot about the whole thing soon after getting home. As the years wore on, events like that have taken on a surreal quality, and not just for me, it seems. Folks act funny when you talk about wars. A while back, I started trying to track down what issue those pictures might have appeared in. I know the article might not have even made it into the magazine, and I know that my picture might not have been printed even if it did. But I'd like to know, and if they were printed, get a copy.

Still writing, just like I've been doing all day.

Challenge accepted, and met

Okay, I officially call wow on myself. That bit that I noted a couple of weeks ago about Stephen King being able write a short story in a few hours really stuck in my head. So on Saturday when Claudia and I went out for lunch, I took a notebook and pen with me. As we ate, I started scribbling on an idea that had come to me a while back, about a guy who stays young-looking. I didn't stop to talk or look around or anything else.

I had it halfway done by the time we left, and I picked it back up when we got home. I finished an hour later. At about 2800 words, it's short, which is good. Shorter means it has more markets that I can send it too.

I've hit the point on Roja where I've got to start chopping some of the old stuff, the good, squirmy images and concepts that I came up with long ago. It has to be done to make the whole book cohesive with how I've decided it ends. I think that somewhere earlier I explained that I started writing this beast years ago, only to put it on hold until I got some short stories published in order to get my name out to the public first. The plan was I could take the finished book to a publisher and say, 'This'll make you money. See, people are already reading my stuff.' Hindsight being ever so clear, that might have been a mistake. Of course, when I actually read those older paragraphs and scenes, the writing is crap. So maybe it wasn't.

I don't want to just throw all that original stuff away, so I'm going to save the whole book with a new file name, and then wade into that fucking thing with a machete.

I've already decided what book is going to be next: The Red Man Burning

Can't wait to write it.

The ending is where you hit, or miss

If I write all the way up until it's time to go to bed, I won't be able to sleep. So I try to knock off in time to be able to watch a movie most nights before I need to crash. Lately I've been giving Netflix it's day in court, trying to find out if their stable of horror movies is up to par. Part of the reason I don't watch more movies than I do is because I hate getting my hopes up and then seeing a finale that makes me think the director suddenly realized he only had ten more minutes of film.

So what are some of the elements that make a good ending? It should end the story, it should give us resolution. We should know what happened to all the major characters, and, if they're still alive, we should have a good idea of what they'll be doing in the next few weeks, or months.

(I'm including the denouement in this discussion. That's where we usually get hints of the future)

The questions and issues that have been brought up during the story need to be answered. The ending is where the reader gets the return on their investment of emotion in all the characters and places that we've created, and as such, needs to speak to the reader's needs and feelings.

Most of us have ideas about how the universe/fate/God's will should behave. Even if we believe it doesn't work like that, we know it should. These are the feelings that the end of a story works on, and what makes us think about it with a smile when we're driving to go see someone we like, or snicker about it with our friends while we're doing grunt work at our day jobs. If the character whom we all love makes it to the end with a few scars, we'll feel our bond with him was justified if we already believe that a person like that should be able to survive. If the sleazy dope-peddler gets eaten alive by rabid maggots, then that makes our feelings of inherent justice in the universe feel vindicated. The old Twilight Zone episodes were good at this.

Question to ponder: are we limiting ourselves by using stereotypes like the sleazy drug dealer? The reality is that people who make their livings like that are human beings, with their own complications, their own hopes and dreams. We might wonder how they can sleep at night, but the obvious answer is that they sleep pretty much just as well as the rest of us, or they wouldn't be able to get up day after day and keep selling. When John Grisham writes about sleazy lawyers, he also writes about young, honest lawyers who fight the good fight. We've seen all the tropes used over and over again. I wonder if someone could make a sympathetic protagonist out of a character that would normally be a villain?

Which brings me to one more thing I want to say. A good ending doesn't have to stay neatly within people's beliefs. I've felt for a long time that most of us don't sit down and reconcile all the millions of individual things that we believe, ideas that would be single notes in a bullet point outline of our psyche. If the ending of a story points out a small contradiction or two, and ideally recommends a resolution, then we're happy. That's an ending that gives us something new that we want to believe in, which I think would be one we all would like.

Do I need to come out and say that all of the above is my opinion? Hopefully not, any more than I need to say that you're welcome to express your own.

Still writing.

Deciding what to read next

I finished The Hunger Games on Thursday, and after a few days to let it settle in my head, it's time to start something else. There's a paperback copy of Stephen King's 'Cell' in my overnight bag, along with Terry Pratchett's 'Darwin's Watch.' Of course, it's been a while since I've re-read The Shining, or Salem's Lot. The latter might help me hash through some difficulties with Roja, come to think of it.

About The Hunger Games, it's good. Damn good. Worth every bit of your time and money. That concern that I had about the same type of group dynamic that was used in Battle Royale turned out to be unfounded. My wife and I discussed the book, and as usual we each had our own take on the story, and they were miles apart. Her primary focus was on the government, and how they use the games as both punishment and control. My biggest impression was how much the other people in the book, the regular citizens who would never set foot in the arena, were involved in the game. It's a huge production that seems to touch just about everyone. I hope the next couple of books develop that aspect in more detail.

To me, that's one of the characteristics of good writing. When two or more people can arrive at separate conclusions about a story, and each can pull facts from it to support their views, and the views don't necessarily contradict each other, that's a good story there.

Watched the first episode of SyFy's 'Tin Man' last night. It wasn't what I expected, as I had gotten the impression (and was hoping) that it was a bit darker. Then again, that reminds me that I haven't read the book itself yet.

Still rewriting Roja, and writing 'A room.' The Stephen King bio that I read, Haunted Heart, described how he can churn out a short story 'in a few hours.' My reaction? Envy, disbelief, and more envy. I want to build up where I can do that.

The odds are definitely in your favor, Ms. Collins.

So Tuesday I stop by Wal-Mart on my way home to pick up a copy of The Hunger Games. I try to avoid getting books there, because even big places like Barnes and Noble's need all the help they can get these days. But the B&N closest to me isn't open before I have to be at work. So I hit Wally World, buy the book, and start reading it that night. Wednesday night I mention to my wife that it's pretty good, and that she may want to read it when I'm done.

Friday, I get to work, and not only is one tire on my car low, another is damn near flat. The tires are still under warranty, and my wife has the day off, so she grabs the car, and takes it to the tire place. While she waits, she finishes her Song of Ice and Fire book, and picks up Hunger Games, which I had left in the back seat.

She finished it that night. I haven't finished it yet, so we can't discuss it from beginning to end, but she said it was a lot better then she had expected. Both of us agreed that somehow we had each gotten the impression that the mood and style was going to be similar to Twilight. In a nutshell, it isn't.

Disclaimer: I have not read Twilight, but have seen one of the films when I took my daughter to see it. I also tried to read The Host, but couldn't slog through it. Miss Meyer has her strengths as a writer, but they don't hit any of my buttons.

I got the book to compare it to Battle Royale, because when I saw the trailer for the film (I had never heard of the book before) that's what it reminded me about. I'm not quite halfway through the book, and I can see a world of difference. Battle is about all the kids, though there is a clear hero and heroine. HG is about one girl. They're both set in the future, but BR is more current, while HG, though set seemingly farther ahead in time, feels more like a story set in Roman times. I'm also reading a bit of Biblical influence, comparing the districts to the tribes of Israel.

Right now, my opinion is that Hunger Games is well worth the time and money. Will I be buying the other books in the series? I won't have to. I'll just read the copies that my wife has already said she's going to get.

Still writing, and hoping write something this good.

Not a good week

Okay, this entry is going to depart from my normal format. All the previous postings, and hopefully all the postings that come after this one, have been me talking to you, my readers. You, the person who reads what I write and hopefully who also has an interest in the movies and other weird bits that I discuss here. You're the whole reason this blog exists.

But this one is different. This is me talking to the whole world, especially to the people who don't read my stories. This is me venting. I want this statement engraved in both cyberstone and collective consciousness, where it will remain for all ages.

With the exception of a few good moments, this last week has been the worst of my life. The exceptions shine pretty brightly, but I'm so glad this week is over.

My mom died on the 3^rd. She had been on a ventilator for a while, and my sister had been handling her bills and such. My sister had a long talk with my mom's doctor, and then she called me. A while back my mom gave my sister both a power of attorney and a document which spelled out her wish to not be left hooked up to artificial life support if there was little to no chance of a recovery. My sister decided to have the machine turned off, and I backed that decision. My mom died a half-hour before I left the house to drive out to see her.

Because of the holiday, a plane ticket would have been almost impossible to get and ridiculously expensive. The eight-hundred mile trip took me almost two days, partly because I wasn't in the best frame of mind.

When I arrived, I hugged my sister, met and shook hands with her husband, and said hello to my two nephews. I hadn't seen the oldest since he was a baby, and had never laid eyes on the younger. I signed paperwork and tried to comfort my sister. We both went to my mom's house and I picked through artifacts that I hadn't seen in decades.

On the trip back, I was in the middle of Nowhere, West Texas when I got a flat. Luckily I had a signal for my cell phone, and my fantastic wife was able to not only add me to her AAA account, but to get them to call me. I'll write about the experience later, but I got to sit out in the desert for an hour and a half while it got dark.

When the tow truck driver arrived with a flat-bed (the flat was on a rear tire) his winch malfunctioned as he was pulling my car up on it, so I had to drive it up on the bed. We talked on the way to the small town up ahead, and it took us not quite an hour to get there. I had called a couple of motels while I waited, and found one right across the street from the tow business. Somehow in the time between my call and my arrival, they had filled all their vacancies.

Now I had walked across the street to get to the motel, and the the tow driver had taken off in the meantime. This was late Friday night in a small town, and the lights were all off and the streets were deserted. I headed up the road to where I thought the tow driver had shown me another motel, but after a few blocks I arrived in the middle of town and realized either I was going in the wrong direction or it was too far away for me to even see it. Off to one side, I noticed a sign for a Holiday Inn. Still carrying my bags, I walked a few more blocks, and staggered in to ask the nice lady at the desk if she had any vacancies. She shook her head sadly at this sweaty stranger who looked like a drifter and said that they were full, but she did call the Best Western for me, which was just a few more blocks away, up the highway.

I stopped off at the gas station next door to grab a beer, only to find that they didn't carry singles of any of the kinds that I like, and they couldn't let me break a six-pack. I had to buy a forty-ounce bottle of a watered-down brand while everyone stared at the weirdo in line carrying a backpack and a duffel bag. It was probably a smart idea of mine to zip up the bag so no one could see the case for my Beretta. (It's illegal down here to carry a weapon into any place that sells alcohol)

Then I walked those three more blocks up the frontage road of the highway, in the dark and hoping I wouldn't get hit when I had to walk on the asphalt because there wasn't a sidewalk. When I got to the motel I was tired, reeking of sweat, and thirsty as hell. I put in for a seven AM wake up call, wondering how soon I would be able to fall asleep.

After less than five hours of sleep, I got up and started making phone calls to make sure that the tow company would get my car to the tire place and that the tire place would sent someone to pick me up when they were ready for me to drive my car off the flatbed. Then I watched brainless TV and tried to doze. About ten AM, I was finally back on the road.

Eight hours later, I was finally back home where I had started. Now I can try to settle into the thought that my mother has died. We had a strained relationship, but her loss still leaves an empty hole.

By the way, about the futile hunt for quality beer? Blame my wife. She's the one who has introduced me to the good stuff and tried to wean me off of what she calls 'canoe beer.' Don't tell her that I still like that stuff too, okay?

Teenage Paranormal Romance must die

So it was time for another visit to Barnes and Noble's. I've been busy as heck recently, as well as having some family issues, so I haven't been able to stop by for a while. Wednesday night, I headed over after work, and the news was not good.

In the fiction area, the shelves are three segments wide, front and back. There was still no horror section, but incredibly, there was a section solely for Twilight and assorted rip-offs. There were dramatic rip-offs, romantic rip-offs, and light-hearted rip-offs. To be fair, some of them weren't rip-offs at all, they were stories about kids falling in love and/or lust, and about all the complications that always follow. The fact that the characters were vampires, werewolves, ghosts and cheerleaders just gave added flavor to the stories. These books were on one shelf, taking up all the sections on one side and two of the three on the other side.

I'll snicker about it, but I also have to think about it. My gut reaction is to say 'back in my day, if it had monsters in it, it went in the horror section.' But that's not completely accurate, is it? People have been using and misusing monsters ever since they stopped being genuinely afraid of them. Predating my day were movies like 'The ghost in the invisible bikini,' (with Boris Karloff, no less!) 'The ghost and Mrs Muir,' and of course, the many relevant films of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello. These are movies and not books, true. But I suspect my inability to name similar books off the top of my head is due to my ignorance, not lack of material.

Rather than get into the sour grapes of how well Stephenie Meyer's little sub-genre is doing, (because I think the whole rest of the human race has already seen to that) I'm going to admit the reason. Much like why the damsel in distress is still on the market, this sub-genre is getting the royal treatment because it's selling. B&N wouldn't give up valuable shelf space if it wasn't.

What does this mean for me? For those of us who prefer hearts pounding in terror, or torn out while still beating? It means we need to realize that a good chunk of our potential audience likes that stuff, and decide whether or not to include it in our work.

I spent the day putting together an outline of Roja. I don't like doing this before I write the story, but now that I'm doing the rewrite I need it to keep all the points straight. To make the outline, I had to skim through the whole book, and I still like it. That's a good sign.

Still writing like a horror junkie.

Advocating for the dumb heroine

Yep, her. The pretty girl who can't run ten feet without falling on her face. The gutsy woman who, despite having a PhD, doesn't have the brains to stand with her back to the wall so that the hideous thing that she's hunting can't sneak up behind her. The resourceful young co-ed who, despite getting stalked multiple times (Are you there, Sidney?) has never thought about moving to a state where you can get a license to carry a concealed gun, or three. Yes, this weeks little chat will be about the women who we all curse and mock, even as they skip merrily to their doom.

Claudia has speculated that in the world where these stories take place, these poor ladies have no examples to learn from; that in the world of horror movies, they themselves have no horror movies. There were no Grimm's Fairy Tales to terrify young children into obeying their parents. No one ever told scary stories to nervous campers huddled around a hand-built fire. Nor are there any urban legends warning innocent virgins about the dangers of parking along a deserted road with their boyfriends. That, to me, sounds like a pretty scary world. ('Who? Stephen King? Oh, you mean that schoolteacher up north somewhere? The one who went crazy and chewed his own hands off in front of his class? What about him?')

But that's too easy an answer. The movies are made and watched in this world, so we have to assume the rules of this world apply to them. You can't say that the hero was able to get to the heroine in time by breaking the speed of light, when everyone knows that you can't do that. We need to empathize with the people on the screen, and we can't do that if they have superpowers or otherwise don't have the same worries that we do.

So assuming there could be an attractive young lady, (wearing only panties and a dress shirt, of course, but that's a different discussion) running from a knife-wielding maniac somewhere in a neighborhood near you, why exactly is she doomed to trip over her own feet at some point? Why didn't she notice him staring at her through the window? Why didn't she run screaming out the front door when she heard the floorboards upstairs creak?

Do a little thought experiment for me, would you? Sometime this week, pick one day, and try to notice every, single, detail that might mean something.  Do this from the time you get up in the morning until you finally fall asleep at night. Take note of all the little sounds, (My co-worker just walked by me a few minutes ago. The spare blade that's stored inside his box cutter clicked with each step. I wonder why he was still wearing his box cutter on his belt this late in the day?) sights, (Strange. I never noticed dirty fingerprints on that part of the door before. Looks like they’re from a lot of different people, too) and other minutiae that you encounter every day, and then automatically forget. Make yourself aware of every single thing that whoever writes the next 'Saw' or 'Sherlock Holmes' movie could turn into one of the secret 'Ah-ha' moments right at the end.

Good luck getting to sleep.

As for why our heroine can't walk and chew bubblegum at the same time, imagine this: What if the very next time you got a call, or page, or text, you had to run. I mean you had to go balls to the wall, full power sprint, and you couldn't stop until you encountered someone wearing a beret. I'm not asking, or even recommending that you really try this, but just think about it. You have to run, and you don't know how far or even how long. There's no nice, even track for you to use, and there WILL be lots of things lying around for you to trip over. Life is like that. Oh, and the consequences of falling, or not running fast enough? That's where that big, shiny knife comes in, and you won't get the benefit of a fade out. Your version of the scene follows all the way through.

Now you can say that individuality will play a big part here. Some people are damn good at running, and other people wouldn't run, especially if Mister Spookface shows up in our heroine's home. That fight or flight response is unpredictable at best. Just today I read where a fourteen year old boy shot a man who broke into his home. That's the kind of news story we love to read, but would it fit in a horror movie?

Which brings me to the last point. All of the above, when you really consider it, is another answer that's just too easy. Hollywood and the writers that fuel it have been churning out hapless heroines for over a century, and they show no sign of slowing. There are exceptions, but they're only remarkable because they contrast to the norm. Horror requires that certain buttons get pushed, and the archetype of a damsel in distress pushes them. Are there other things that push the buttons? Of course. I, and my colleagues/competition, are constantly working at hunting them down. That doesn't mean we're going to stop using what works, not any time soon.

Is that archetype demeaning? Does it insult not only all the women who could outrun our killer, but also the ones who would outwit him, not to mention the ones who would blow his fool head off? (Have I mentioned that my wife can shoot?) Only if they were supposed to be models to live by. But these are fables, not news stories, and they function under different rules. There's a reason our heroine has a face, and why the killer wears a mask of some sort. We have to relate to her in one way, and to the killer in another. From a guy's perspective, the heroine is that girl who got away, and who will now run eagerly into our arms, because we can protect her. The killer, partly, is all the rage and hate we felt toward her, which is why he wears a mask. We don't want to be recognized as hating her. What is it from a woman's perspective? I can speculate that it's about the fears a woman has, of men and of the parts of life that she can't control, but I'm in unfamiliar territory here. A lady's response would be welcome.

My this post has a dark tone, doesn't it? Try to think about a cardboard box full of puppies and kittens for a little bit. That should clear your mental palette.

Still writing.

Edit:  Vagina.  See?  I say it, and the world doesn't end.

Movies, books, and a maze.

I finished reading 'Battle Royale' on Friday, and I have to say I liked it. I saw the movie some years ago, and except for changing some small (but not minor) details, I now know it's pretty true to the book. There's that same dark, bleak hopelessness that hits you in the face right at the beginning, and just builds through the rest of the story.

With the Hunger Games movie out, I've been pondering the comparisons between the two, and may pick up the Hunger Games book series so I can judge for myself. (I'll probably read something unrelated first, just to start with a fresh mind) I've read conflicting accounts whether the author of the latter has said she read Battle Royale, but just a bit of browsing, being careful to avoid spoilers, seems to indicate that Games ends up having the exact same group dynamic as Battle, which would 'strain credulity,' to quote Captain Barbosa.

Claudia and I saw 'Prometheus' Saturday, and it's going to take a bit of pondering to be able to say what I thought of it. There's a lot of subtle imagery and heavy questions that it asks. Sad to say, it seemed to waste Charlize Theron.

We also went looking for a van so we can start having steady transportation for all the grid and other stuff for Pan-Gaia designs when we go to conventions. If I ever had doubts that inspiration for good horror can be found anywhere and everywhere, one place we stopped at killed them. Along the highway, there are a lot of car dealerships, and these are one of the businesses that have been hit pretty hard by the recession. A lot of them are closed and deserted, and there is something really creepy about wandering through a lot with plain white vans, (some with bars and metal grid over the windows) vans with mechanical arms mounted on top, and old ambulances all around. There were no salespeople to be found, and all the vehicles were parked in rows that seemed like they had been designed by somebody studying modern art. The word 'labyrinth' came to mind more than once.

Yesterday was Father's Day, and it wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be. My mom is in the hospital, and I didn't get to talk to my daughter.

Am I still writing?  Hell yes.