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.