No news like bad news

When you create horrible events and want your poor, unsuspecting reader to gasp and shudder, you need them to know the people who have all those terrible things happen to them. Watching 'Alien,' we cringe when the helmet is cut away and we still can't see John Hurt's face, and we squirm in our seats when that very Freudian alien pops out of his chest. Why? Because we've spent the last thirty or so minutes getting to know him. Yes, his best scenes come after the facehugger drops off. But by the time that 'leathery object' opens up, we at least have a good idea of whether or not Kane would be getting a Christmas card from us, and whether or not we could kill some time with him over a bottle of beer and a conversation about politics.

That's part of how we get involved in a story. Relating to characters, seeing and understanding how they relate to other characters. It's not the only way, just the most well-established. There are one-person plays, and movies and stories with only one character. But even most of those have phone calls or letters or whatever so that we know that our hero is not the last human on earth. Maybe one of the great masters can do it, but fortunately for me there aren't enough of them to give the rest of us regular competition.

That caring is important, because it's what keeps us reading the story or watching the film. It may or may not be set up as such, but the tale is a recording of that character. A slice of their life, and maybe the last one.

You can argue with me, but my humble opinion is that bad news connects us with characters like good news never will. Most of us achieve a kind of equilibrium in our lives, and if we're climbing whatever ladder we're on, we climb it one rung at a time, according to plan. To us, 'normal' is either continuity or slow progress. When we're introduced to Bob and his wife Jane, who are getting started building a life for themselves, we get to know them pretty quickly. New beginnings are a blank slate, one that we often read our on lives into.

In a book or a movie, when someone wins the lottery or has their rich uncle leave them millions, most of us scream 'plot device.' Now, everything is a plot device, because if it isn't, it gets edited out (or it should). But if our heroes move into the creepy mansion not because they inherited it, but because Dad lost his job or Mom is blacklisted for blowing the whistle on the local PTA's cocaine fundraiser, and it's the only place they can afford, then we understand that they're having hard times, and hard times are something we can all relate to. We can give a family who's in a middle of a run of bad luck some sympathy, because we hope that someone would give us a bit of sympathy when we find ourselves in that same situation. A person or family living high on the hog only makes most of us feel envious, which is why you don't see a lot of millionaire protagonists. I remember the hero in 'Bag of Bones' was worth quite a lot, but King is a lot better at this than most of us, and even he had to kill off the man's wife.

Maybe part of it is selfish, too. Empathizing for people in need makes us feel good about ourselves, but envy is a false comfort that only makes us colder. Everyone is a hero in their own mind, and the good guys don't wish a bus would run over their lucky neighbor. Only flesh and blood people do that.

This isn't strictly a random post. Some people that I'm close with decided to call it quits recently. Again, it's a bit selfish, but it seems there's a little less happiness in the world right now. Time moves on, and life changes. It doesn't ask how we feel about the changes, either.

Boy, sounds like the perfect set up for a horror movie, doesn't it? Maybe I'll write something and put one of the characters in a similar situation.

Picking up the stick again

Okay, the break's over. Time to hit the keys again. Way back when, when I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, I used to head to the base library on weekends. We didn't get every weekend off, and even during the ones we did get off someone had to sit in the duty office and answer the phone. But when I could, I spent twenty or so Saturday or Sunday afternoon minutes walking across the base to that one building that smelled of age and paper, and found the dusty table where a single typewriter sat. What makes me uncomfortable is the fact that I'm not sure whether or not it was the first typewriter I ever used. I wrote a small game module when I was younger, based on the ridiculous exploits of the gaming group I belonged to in middle school, and I have a half memory that it was typed and a half memory that it wasn't. But that old chunk of metal on base is what I think about when I picture typing. Carefully feeding each sheet of paper in, hitting the lever when you came to the end of a line, and keeping a few pieces of correction paper close by and living with the fact that the whited-out letters never completely covered up when you hit a 'w' instead of a 'q.' You couldn't just touch the keys and expect the lever to make it all the way up the paper. You had to pound on those fuckers, like you were Bruce Lee rupturing some villain's spleen by poking his earlobe. That's how I write to this day, wearing the letters off the keys of my keyboard before I need to replace my computer.

It's time to get back to treating this like my primary business.

Sort of fitting that I'm currently reading something from Stephen King. I like his stories, and they roll across your brain at a smooth, easy pace that's so comforting that you don't notice when they pick up speed. You can sit down to read a few pages before bed and when you finally close the back cover you have to say, 'Oh hell.' Not because the story was that good, which it (probably) was, but because you now have about twenty minutes to sleep before it's time to get up and go to work.

I have also dragged my poor wife into the dark world where the series, 'Penny Dreadful' takes place. I bought the first season a while back, and we finally sat down to watch it together. One episode became two, which then became three and 'Oh hell, I need to get to bed.' I don't expect the rest of the season to last much longer.

So it's back to horror, back to fun things like mental isolation, subtle xenophobia, and what the devil might look like as he tries to seduce a medieval nun. Time to think about bad childhoods and the cold-blooded bastards they sometimes produce. This is the now of the whisper in the dark when you're alone, and the dying sigh at sunset. Know what?

It's good to be back.

Gobble gobble. It's done.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Now all the remaining turkeys can come out of hiding, weep over the dead, and start plotting their revenge. Sure, what do you think they do all the rest of the year? Turkeys have long memories, too.

Claudia and I had our traditional pasta, as neither of us really wanted to go through the ritual of bird immolation. I like to think that the pilgrims would have approved.

Oh, and we also shared a bottle of wine. In celebration. At about two in the afternoon, I typed two words at the bottom of a file that I've been pounding on for over a year. The End.

What did I do then? I cackled like a junior mad scientist who's just invented his first death ray. That was one of those moments when I wish I owned a camera that could have been pointing at my face, just so I could see the sort of dazed, manic expression that I was probably wearing. Then I wandered around the house, probably working on odd chores like loading the dishwasher or putting a load of laundry in, though I can't day for sure.

Then came time to print a copy for Claudia to read. I've been holding off replacing my printer cartridge, even though the few times I've had to print something I get a pop up saying something like, 'Warning! Anti-matter explosion immanent!' I got the first fifty pages of 'In The Dark' out before a newer, simpler message appeared. 'End of cartridge life.' My mental rendition of “Taps' turned into the theme from 'Psycho' when I took out the old cartridge and compared it to the new one that's been sitting on the floor still in it's box, collecting dust for a while. They didn't match. Not even close. Remember that crazed laugh? Picture it turning into the guttural scream that the Predator releases as it clamps it's wound shut. I feel like a fool for having to admit that I didn't realize the printer uses a hard plastic 'sleeve.' The sleeve pops put of the printer, and the cartridge pops out of the sleeve. The problem wasn't really solved, because it never existed in the first place. I had to replace the cartridge on my old one so many times that my hands knew how to do it all by themselves. Time marches on.

What now? Now I beg, borrow and steal all the friends I can find that are willing to beta-read for me. Now I put a bit of extra polish on Roja and look for an agent. Now I get my website built.

I've also started rewriting a short story that I've had on the back burner for a while, a really nasty one. I've also started writing my next book, 'The Red Man' burning.

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Please get out and vote. It may not seem like it matters, but low turnout just makes each one that gets cast matter that much more.

Spooks' night out

So another Halloween has come and gone. I hit the hardware store the day before for some wood and paint, and one of those megastores that pop up this time of year for a kind of fake flaming cauldron that I'm going to be putting to good use for years, and did some minor redecorating to the outside of the house. The day started out warm, which to my mind is not really a good thing for trick or treating. Most costumes involve a layer or two of material, and down here heat builds up on a body a bit faster than in other places. Luckily it cooled down, and soon there was a nice breeze.

Sadly, there was a pretty thin crop of kids this year. I have a suspicion as to what caused it, because last weekend Claudia had a booth open at a convention up in Irving, and due to the panicked attitude people have about a certain virus, attendance was light, a lot of the guests canceled, and the ones who didn't cancel adapted a 'no-contact' policy. They wouldn't pose with people for photographs. Yes they would still sign autographs, but the people paying good money had to select the pictures from pre-made stacks, and wouldn't get to handle them until after the guest had signed them. I can understand caution, but that's over reacting.

Makes the fact that I dressed up as a plague doctor seem tame, doesn't it? No? Oh well.

Still writing.

A small update, and ideas.

It hasn't been a slow two weeks since I last posted. Far from it. I've dredged through most of 'In The Dark,' have checked out some other author's stories, and just today got an idea from an odd source. Not an unlikely one, mind you. Odd.

While I think I'll always bear a grudge against the SyFy channel for making us suffer through wrestling, they've been able to come up with one or two interesting shows. Case in point, a little series that I caught the trailer for last night. Zombies are hot these days, and there's a small town in Alabama which is trying to take advantage of that. A home-grown production company has been trying to make a film for a while, and if the trailer is any indication, they're having mixed results.

With absolutely no idea what the movie is about, I can see potential in the setting. A quiet town, life at an easy pace, and suddenly – mayhem. American pie meets today's metaphor for cannibalism, with all the Freudian overtones. Yummy.

As I said, this is a short update. I had a longer one in mind, but just before I finished it, I read through it. Crap. Worse, it was self-indulgent crap. So it's gone. Better short than garbage.

I've been thinking of my end of the month plans, too. I wonder what the well-dressed plague doctor is wearing these days?

Still writing.

Fear and ray guns, and books that other people fear

Maybe I've said it before, but I watched a lot of TV as a kid. These days I pass on it unless there's a show on with two guys named Adam and Jamie, and even then I get them either on disc or streaming. Neither I nor Claudia can stand it when we watch something, the tension is built up to a near climax, and then we have to sit through a commercial for hemorrhoid ointment. It sort of kills the magic.

One of the shows I used to watch was Space:1999. I think that even when I was watching it for the first time, I could tell that it had a different pace, and a different presentation. The focus is more on the choices, usually moral, that the characters make, and less on the monster of the week. The challenge of space isn't presented in bold, heroic terms, but in human success and failure. It isn't about exploring space, but growing as human beings, and it spoke in more mature language than Star Trek ever did.

Some episodes of it were also scary as hell. They had an atmosphere that was darker than ones from the original run of The Twilight Zone. In those stories, reality wasn't as solid as the characters, or as we the viewers, needed it to be. The problems were dragons, ghostly parasites that floated through walls, and immortals who wanted to be gods of chaos and destruction. The humans have been tossed into the dark void, and they don't have the greatest success in dealing with it. People die, and even though the series never had long story arcs, we feel those deaths, because we get to know the people before they die.

One of the characters, Professor Bergman, is supposed to be the head scientist, and there's something about him that makes me think. I'm not done re-watching the whole series yet, but through what I've watched and what I remember, he is consistently wrong, a day late and a dollar short, and so blasted useless that it's almost funny. Except of course, his errors get people killed. He's the one that the commander always asks for an assessment, and most of the time, he shakes his head and admits that he has no clue. Or his opinion is the sort of good, solid advice that science-fiction fans are used to hearing, from the grumpy old man in authority who doesn't have the imagination to believe in spooks and wonder.

Ponder that. This is a science-fiction show. In this genre, our worth as a race is symbolized by our accomplishments. As the show opens, we've gone to the moon, built a sustainable presence there, and are planning to send explorers to other worlds. There are rays guns to shoot monsters with, artificial gravity generators so our heroes don't have to skip down the halls as they rush to defend the nuclear power generators, and ships that protect our heroes from the cosmic rays that in real life are the reason most space missions stay in low earth orbit. There's never (that I remember) any mention of faster than light propulsion, but if we can zip from the earth to the moon in one episode, we're going pretty damn fast. So in the show, we've made progress, and a lot of it.

So in the show, when the smartest man in the room doesn't even have a clue how to proceed, what the hell are we supposed to do? Martin Landau does a fine job as a rugged commander, and a hell of a lot of his tough decisions fall into the twentieth-century (remember the title) equivalent of circling the wagons. He's always willing to be the one to lead the way into the darkness, and frequently is in damage-control mode, so there's no questioning his courage. But his strength is in contrast to the hideous things that defy his understanding and tear his base apart.

The show itself is in constant contrast to Star Trek, for good reason. In a weird dance of character/actor juggling, Landau and Barbara Bain had quit Mission: Impossible a few years prior to starting this series, and Leonard Nimoy took over Landau's role as the IMF's master of disguise. Hold the two shows up side by side, and you'll see a lot of similarities. Plots, some settings, and even the three familiar roles of commander, adviser, and doctor are used in both. But, as I said a few paragraphs up, Space: 1999 is different. A heck of a lot of scenes in it are dark, as opposed to the nearly always well-lit halls of the Enterprise. Commander Koenig is an everyman's hero, where Kirk is Shakespearean down to the way he sits in his chair. There's a mission behind all the wandering in Star Trek (even if it was tidily ignored when it got in the way), but the crew of Moon Base Alpha were blown into deep space because mankind used the moon as a nuclear waste dump without knowing the consequences. Brave explorers versus lost victims. Which do we dream of being, and which do we fear becoming?

For something completely different, Banned Books Week started Sunday. I don't care if it's written with ink, clay, or pixels; the printed word is something to be valued. Go read something that people don't want you to read.

Yep. Still writing.

Not Just Blood

“Don't waste it. Now sign.” - The Devil, 'Phantom of the Paradise'

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King did something that made a hell of an impression on me. He grouped the monsters of popular literature into a sort of supernatural tarot deck, doing a nice job of analyzing the deeper meanings and symbolism behind each one. He did it so well, in fact, that every time I have ever tried to use his theory as a stepping stone in this blog or elsewhere without first going back and brushing up on it, I have made a royal mess. I keep adding cards of my own (no jokes about me not playing with a full deck to begin with, please), and turning his concept into something it isn't. I love the idea, and constantly play with it. Needless to say, I keep a copy of Danse Macabre on the shelf in my study. Needless to say, I had to rewrite this damn entry because I didn't consult that book first.

King's deck includes these cards: The werewolf, the ghost, the thing with no name, and the vampire. But these cards tend to bleed colors, and if you shuffle them quickly the differences blur. Two of them are undead, and some of the old legends held that if you were a werewolf in life, you would rise as a vampire after you died. The 'thing,' as personified by Frankenstein's monster, burns with a bestial wrath that we also see in the werewolf, and is driven by an intangible hunger that will never be satisfied, like the werewolf. Missing from the deck, because he has wider implications than our concepts of what it is to be human, is the devil. But very frequently, Old Scratch makes a guest appearance in a story, usually in a mood to make a deal. When he steps on stage, he's cultured, articulate, and plays on all our suppressed insecurities and desires. He offers so much, but takes more than he ever gives, and his pacts are sealed in our own blood. Like the vampire.

Part of what seems to set a good vampire story apart from a mediocre one is the type of threat that the bloodsucker represents. The vamp in a monster-of-the-week show will stalk you down a dark alley and stab you in the neck with two razor-sharp fangs. But will it attack your bank account and credit score, draining them drop by drop? Does it hunger for your job, your house? Will it feed on your friendships and your family ties, weakening them until you call someone close to you to spend time together, and they say they're busy, maybe dropping a hint how much it annoys them when you always expect them to change their plans at the last minute?

In 'Dracula,' the count is a slow, deliberate predator. He first attacks Jonathon Harker, a clean-cut young man with a bright future, and that first attack doesn't even break the skin. The isolation of Dracula's castle, and the fact he's the only living person in it bites Jonathon's sense of self, his sense of identity as a cultured Englishman, easily capable of dealing with an eccentric European noble. In a very real way, Dracula attacks Mina, by taking Lucy before her. In existing in the first place, he hurts that sense of pride that a good Christian man and woman must feel at knowing that God is on their side, and that he has granted them stewardship over the whole earth.

In the films, 'The Moth Diaries' and 'Let's Scare Jessica To Death' (both examples of movies where the vampire never shows a fang) the monster strips the heroine of her support structure first, sending friends away or turning loved ones against her. She goes from being part of a loving group to an isolated loner who doubts her own sanity almost as much as those around her doubt it. Of course, the whole time the damage is being done, the vampire wears a sympathetic smile, offering a friendly ear and a shoulder to lean on. She's stealing the heroine's life, all of it. Not just the red stuff that keeps oxygen circulating through her body.

There's a subtle hint in that storytelling technique, one that shows the reader or viewer something about this monster. If it feeds on intangible concepts, how can it be natural? A virus or bacteria can (in this world we shape with a tap of our fingers on a keyboard) alter someone's biology so that they can only subsist on blood, sure. Just as another bug can make someone shapeshift into a wolf when they're exposed to enough lunar radiation. (Yeah. I know I'm reaching) But to feed on friendship, let alone someone else's friendship? How can anything like that be real in the sense that we understand the word? How would you fight that attack? If you say 'well, I'd just tell people. You can't trick someone who knows what's going on, and this is worth the risk,' then do this. Call up someone close to you, and tell them. Get out your phone and redial the last person you had a long conversation with, one that made you smile and feel happy. As soon as they answer, warn them not to talk to anyone named Elson. Tell them this man is at least two hundred years old, and that you personally saw him crawl like a roach up the outside wall of your local courthouse. Tell them you'll give more details later, but that this threat is real.

That cold sensation you got in your stomach when you imagined doing it? Yeah. That image you have of how that person would never look at you the same way again? Of all the calls they would make after you hung up? That's what would happen, if you didn't make the call, and even if you did.

Here's something to think about, too. This depiction of vampirism? It lets us use it with monsters that love to eat garlic, walk in and out of people's houses without an invitation, and who wear crucifixes while they sunbathe. That's where part of the horror comes from, knowing that those results can happen in our world, not just the ones we escape to. All it takes is us cracking up under the strain of modern life, or one semi-clever sociopath. Either cause is very real, and very human.

So vampires don't exist, you say?

To end this on a cheery note, I found out the other day that a friend of mine has started a YouTube channel, and is posting videos of his tips and mods for the game of Minecraft. I've been curious about this game for a while, ever since I was randomly browsing YouTube and found a video of a young man showing off this huge house that he and his friend had built. He then tried to build a fireplace in the house, and burned the whole thing down. On camera.

Go check out my friend's channel. His name is Vaygrim, and the vids are called 'Vaygrim's Chance.' I watched a couple of them, and even if you have no clue about the game, it's fun to watch someone slap together an underground bunker right in front of you, complete with a lava-powered forge.

Still writing.

One of those random kicks in the teeth

When it comes to how I spend what free time I have, I'm not very consistent. I have more hobbies and interests than I could ever explore, even if I was one of those people who go around with a katana tucked under their trench coat and who only really worry about whether or not whatever threat they're facing will decapitate them. I'll get on Facebook for a few weeks, get bored with it, and move on to World of Warcraft. When that gets repetitive, I'll catch up on all the channels I subscribe to on Youtube. So on, and so on. Interests and desires are the sorts of things that grow faster the more you indulge them, so I'm not going to start listing things because then that's all this post would contain.

No, the above paragraph is my clever way of not looking like a clueless idiot when I just now notice something that happened a few months ago. I've mentioned Fearnet a few times here, and just today I pulled it up, wanting to see what movie they're showing and what news they have of the cool and the creepy. The answer is none. No movies, no news, no photosets of graveyards where someone is having a teddybear picninc. There's none of that, because surprise! There is no Fearnet. It seems one of the companies that owned it bought out the other companies that owned it, and folded it into the ChillerTv website. I have that one open in one window on my computer while I write this, but I'm not getting the same 'wow, look at all this cool stuff!' vibe that I got from Fearnet. Yep, change happens, and it loves to happen when we're off doing something else and relying on them to not change. If I hadn't gone back to playing WoW semi-regularly, I might have noticed that this happened back in- um, *cough* April. What can I say? I was working on upgrading my battle pets.

This is not a rant on how much this new situation stinks. I'll take some time and get a good sense of Chiller. If it ends up doing the same type of job that Fearnet did, I'll use it. Media is what I use to promote my stuff, so I use whatever roads and sidewalks will get me from point A to point B. This is a rant about how good Fearnet was. I'll keep it as short as I can.

That vibe I mentioned a couple of paragraphs up? That was what I loved about Fearnet. It tried to cover everything, and as a result it was the sort of website where you could spend hours just browsing from link to link. They had streaming movies that I'd never heard of, and they put up photosets that showed everything from deserted villages around Chernobyl to graveyards that were supposed to be gates to hell. It held a very personal interest to me, and to this little occupation of mine, because they also had reviews of soon to be and recently released horror books. I found a lot of small press publishers that way, and those same reviews gave me a bit of a hint on who my competition for getting my words in print is. They had articles on film directors like Argento and Bava, introducing me to movies I had never heard of, (but that I made a point to get) and giving me little insights into the way those people thought, what gave them their vision. Little, important things.

Poof. Gone. Cue the sad music and zoom out so we can see the empty void left behind. Pan over the crowd of gawkers long enough to register their shell-shocked expressions. Fade to black.

Life moves on, and we need to move with it. I'll give ChillerTv its day in court, and we'll see what the verdict is. I might even finally see about setting up a links section here in this blog, to point out other cool sites while they're still around.

Oh, good news? It's September. Sing with me. “Two more months to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Two more months to Halloween. Silver Shamrock.”

Still writing.

The clay takes a while to dry

Ah, yes. That's what summers in Houston are supposed to be like. Air so humid that it feels like you're wading through wet cement when you go outside, and temperatures so high that after a few minutes you look like someone has dumped a bucket of water over your head. How could I have ever forgotten?

We've had a bit of respite from the heat these past few weeks. Lots of wind and rain, coming once every two or three days, kept things from being too bad. It was almost bearable.

All that's over and done with. I can get up at eight o'clock to take the dog out for a walk and be sweating before we make it to the gate. At work I have a fan blowing on me, a cup of ice water within reach, and find a reason to step into the air-conditioned part of the building every thirty minutes or so, and I can still feel sweat running down the backs of my legs where no cool air reaches them. It's hot.

I'm making what will hopefully be the last or next-to-last run through In The Dark. Getting the brackets cleaned out and making sure I don't have our hero sneering at someone at the beginning of a paragraph and they're best friends at the end of it. When you have to change what people say throughout a story because you've altered a small part of the plot, it can happen. In fact, I can't remember a story that I've written where it didn't happen. This is why it's so important to have a new set of eyes look something over before you send it out into the world in the hope that it will convince people to support your writing habit. Which brings me to my main point.

I still have an idea of how In The Dark was supposed to run. Way back at the beginning I thought I had a nice, clear plot all made up that would grip the reader and pull them in at the very first page. That perfect plot lasted right up until I had to put it down on paper. (well, a screen that's made to look like paper) Anything that only exists in your head may or may not be able to stand on its own two feet after being born. I've had one or two short stories that could do it, but nothing longer than a few pages. Ideas are little dreams that you have when you're awake, and as anyone who has ever tried to live them has found out, reality is very unfriendly to dreams.

In this reality a lot of characters that I never even thought of have come to life, wearing faces of people that I used to know. The place where they live is a little bigger, and no longer reminds me of my old high school. Little details, like knowing the color of the sky, and picturing parts of the world that none of the characters will ever see, bring it into sharper focus. Those details make it real.

I was able to change it because it hasn't been all that long since I first typed in the last words of the last sentence of the last paragraph of the first draft. (and I have to tell you, typing those words felt damn good) Of all the conflicting versions and explored possibilities that I've written down and erased, no one story has shoved the others out of the nest and let them die. Time or inactivity will do that, and both together will do it faster than you think. Form the clay into a shape that nudges your imagination, but your first result probably won't match what you pictured. So reshape it. Step away from it for a little while, to give the first image and what your hands have made a chance to merge into one entity. But don't wait too long. Picking up something you once smiled at and finding it shriveled into a dead, lifeless lump will kill something inside you. You'll feel it die.

That's why you'll probably never read any of the first stories I wrote. I remember the shivers that came when I was gathering my clay, going over bits of the stories just in my head, usually when I couldn't sleep. But that first time I finished a story and really read it with as much detachment as I'll ever have, it was a hell of a shock to get that sour taste in my mouth that comes whenever I read something that should have been quietly smothered at birth. I didn't walk away, I ran. I started other things, but I never came back to those first attempts. See my entry about crap if you think you want to read them anyway.

Now here's where I hedge my bet. I did say probably. Letting those stories die still gnaws at me, and I'm possessive enough that I will never let anyone take the seeds of those stories and write their own versions of them. We'll meet with drawn swords on some moonlit beach before that happens. Could I hook those withered things up to a taser and shock them back to life? That's a scary thought.

But not as scary as not writing.

A funny thing happened on my way here.

Thanks to Netflix, I have something of a nightly ritual now. I found out a while back that if I get really into working on something and then try to go to bed, mental inertia keeps my head running in the same direction for a couple of hours. Lying there in the dark, I keep getting ideas for new stories and little insights on how I could improve existing ones. So I'll turn on a flashlight (I accidentally turned on the over head light once in the middle of the night when I thought Claudia was still up and in her study. The sounds she made convinced me that between midnight and six AM my loving wife is replaced by some alien life form that is both homicidal and photosensitive. I now use the flashlight) and write my new ideas down. Then three minutes later another idea will pop up. You see where this is going.

So I enjoy some TV reruns to shift my brain into neutral before closing down. I watch shows I saw and loved when I was younger, and some of the shows that gave the seeds of ideas that are still banging around in my mind today. One of these was the original Mission: Impossible series, truly a gem if there ever was one.

I started at the beginning, and got a shock when I discovered that stoic Peter Graves has not always been the infallible leader of our team. Steven Hill was originally in that position, and did a good job of it. But I'm noticing something else, too.

As I work my way through them, I'm re-watching some of the ones that made a big impression on me. That's where I got another one of those moments where I have to admit, just to myself, that I'm not a kid any more.

You know the premise of the show. Mister Phelps gets a set of instructions on a tape-recorder that's been stashed in an abandoned car somewhere, or hidden in a phone booth marked 'Out of order.' He briefs his team of super-spies, and then they dive right into the action. We know what they need to do, but because a detail or two from the plan never gets mentioned, we don't know exactly how they're going to do it. Somewhere along the line, something seems to go wrong. But more often than not, it turns out to have been part of the strategy from the beginning.

I never questioned how none of those tape recorders were ever discovered and vandalized by kids, or how Phelps’s car was never stolen when he left it parked in the street with the top down. Having studied a bit of electronics engineering and a smattering of statics, I now look at all those neat toys with a bit of skepticism, wondering how much range a detonator with no antenna would have and pondering what metal that expanding beam has to be made of to go all the way across a room without collapsing under its own weight. But the biggest shock is coming from the tension in the scenes. Most of them are repeats for me, and at some point over all the years I'm sure I've gone over them all in head at one point or another. I've probably even used them as a model when I'm trying to give to readers the same effect that these shows had on me. What you take in when you're young forms your framework.

Good grief but some of those lines are campy. Peter Graves sounds like he's reciting Shakespeare, and Martin Landau hams it up enough to be a three course Christmas dinner. Peter Lupus and Greg Morris now seem just a little stiff, though I've found one episode where they both get a bit more of the spotlight.

On the other hand, damn but Barbara Bain seems to be made of ice. She's got a lot more on screen presence than I ever remember. It really is a pity they didn't let her get a little more hands-on with the dirty work. She could have pulled it off. On the other hand, it probably would have made people's heads explode, back then. The TV watching audience of that time likely wasn't ready to see a ruthless female. Might be part of the reason that real-world female agents were so effective.

It's like someone went back in time and made them all re-film every episode, with none of what really mattered to me in the show. I have my memories, and they don't match what I see. How? Well, it's difficult to admit this, but the obvious answer is that the change isn't in the show, but in my head. Some of the episodes were made before I was even born, so I couldn't have been too old when I saw them. The thought of having once been naïve enough to worry whether the team would survive, let alone succeed, is, well, let's just say I plan on claiming my blog was hacked on the day this post was written if I ever get asked about it.

Am I going to stop watching? Heck no. Even with the mismatch, to me this series will always be the standard that all the others are judged against. This show emphasized wit over brawn, and the agents are more like con men than soldiers. Without Mission Impossible, I don't think there would have ever been shows like Hustle, or Macgyver. It had, and still has, the appeal of being a little more sophisticated than what the James Bond franchise became for a while. Unrealistic gadgets or no, there's a lot of the real here.

So I'll watch it, after I write.

How to become a mechanic, whether you want to or not.

If you've been a reader here for any length of time, then you've heard me rant a bit about the summers here in Houston and their poor manners. They give you plenty of notice that they're coming, true. But they show up at exactly the worst time possible, bring uninvited friends like humidity and bugs, and often stay a lot longer than they were supposed to. When they finally leave, it's with a sincere promise to be back next year.

Just the right time for a surprise issue with a car, right?

While driving around town yesterday, Claudia noticed the battery light come on. We headed for home, and crossed our fingers. Then we muttered under our breath as the gauges and displays started shutting off and turning back on. Finally we both cursed loud and long when the engine died, at a red light. When the light turned green, the honking began.

I hopped out and tried to wave cars past so we didn't end up receiving a rear-end collision, while calling a number for a twenty-four hour towing service. I got a recording saying they weren't open, and started wondering how long I could stand there waving my arms before somebody paid more attention to their cell phone than to me and sandwiched me between two automobiles. By luck, a guy drove by who was a mechanic, and who had a tow chain in his van. He hooked up, and while Claudia rode with him and gave directions, I stayed in out car and tried to brake at the right times, (you have to keep the chain tight, or it can get chewed up from dragging on asphalt) remembering why I hate trying to steer any vehicle that has no power. If you've never done it, don't. It's like wrestling with a tree.

One trip to Auto Zone later, I spent a long, miserable time figuring out everything that needed to be done to hook up my new battery. I've done it before with the vehicles that I drove in the Corps, but that was a few years ago. When everything was put back together, the car seemed to be working. Until I drove it today, that is. The battery light came on again and I drove back as fast as I could, imagining having to push the car a mile or so by myself in the same heat. So now I have an early trip to our mechanic planned, first thing in the morning.

Well, if worst comes to worst, I can always use the experience in a story, once I get the situation fixed in real life. Oh, bit of irony? I have royalties coming, but they're in such a small amount that I asked to just receive a copy of the book so I can hand it out or use it for a display at a convention. Which book? Why, 'Hard Luck', of course.

Enough miserating. Time to get back to writing.

Playing Whack-a-Mole

That's really what it feels like. Every time I think I'm coming to the end of the rewrite of In The Dark, I notice three or four more places where I've started to say one thing and then finished some completely different sentence. What if you had to take an existing house of cards, and go through them to make sure all the faces were oriented the same way, without just knocking the whole thing down and starting over. Oh, and when you get halfway done, you realize it looks better with them facing the other way. Yeah.

A bit late posting this. Claudia was vending at San Japan over the weekend and just got home. I wasn't able to get the time off to go with her, so I got this weekend to myself. Nice, but I'm glad to have her back.

Next part may get a bit self-indulgent. Be warned.

I'm also getting to that point where I'm doubting every single thing about the book, from the title, through the opening line, and all the way to the part where nothing look the last sentence that I was thinking 'Damn this is good' when I first typed it. I've read and reread the same lines over and over again, and am nearly at the point where I want to pull up the file and just click 'Delete.' My thoughts keep coming back to something I saw back when I regularly watched TV. I don't know if it was a one-shot show or part of a series, but at some point a few years ago I saw a documentary about the struggles of a salvage crew as they tried to float a ship that had run aground somewhere on the coast of Alaska. They planned out their tactics in good detail, had enough experience to know what they were doing, and were ready with a backup plan if something went wrong. They went in there ready to take charge and kick some butt.

With a set up like that, you know what happened. Everything, and I mean everything, went wrong. The ship was deeper in the sand than they had thought it was, equipment failed, and the weather turned against them. After trying everything they could, the captain had no choice but to cut his losses and head for home. Before he did, he said, “Right now I'd just like to take this thing out to the middle of the ocean and blow some holes in it.” I keep seeing an image of what the captain's face would look like at that exact moment. The troublesome ship is floating in the water a safe distance away, his crew have planted the explosives and are back on board to stand with him, and the detonator is in his hand. He takes a long, deep breath to savor the moment, then he pushes the button. Flash, boom. Sound and fury. How long would a big ship take to go down into that cold, black nothingness? I have no idea, but I know what expression would be on the captains face while he watched, and I have an idea that it would last for quite a while.

Click, select 'Delete,' click. Close my eyes and breathe a long, contented sigh. I am free.

Yeah. Then spend every remaining second of my life regretting that one click. I know myself that well, at least.

Now let me get back to rewriting.

Getting in touch with our inner ghost

I mentioned 'The Woman In Black' in my last post, and if I hadn't been distracted by the thought of Christmas I would have gone on about ghosts themselves. Funny creatures, those unquiet spirits.

The basic idea is this: We live here, in the sunshine, the summer, and the morning dew, then we die. Our family puts us in a box, cries and huddles around it for a while, then it goes into the ground. Our grave gets flowers put on it once in a while, and people tell stories either about how nice we were, or what a mean fill-in-the-blank we were. The living move on.

We, on the other hand, don't. Not in this case. Our house feels cold, no matter how much wood gets put on the fire. Silence hangs in the air, strangling laughter. People get up suddenly to look behind them, and then can't explain why. Conversation is hushed, just because.

The reason is us, of course. We're still there, haunting the house or the churchyard, or the where-ever. But our behavior isn't what it used to be. These days the phrase 'unfinished business' gets used a lot, and there's the concept of a spook hanging around to point our hero or heroine to all the obvious clues which show just who helped us unwillingly shuffle off our mortal coil. But those are more convenient plot points than anything else, and ghosts like that don't seem to truly terrify us.

It's the other sort that we're talking about here. The kind that can also be neatly summed up in a sentence or two, but who are a lot harder to portray effectively. This is the more dangerous kind, because they don't give a damn.

What can the word haunted mean? In a B-movie or a B-grade book it means sharing a house with someone who walks through walls, clanks a really long set of chains, and wears clothing that went out of style two or more generations ago. But we also use it to describe someone who has had Death pay them a recent visit, someone who has lost some person in their life that they loved so dearly that they took all the meaning of life with them when they died. Someone left alone only in the sad ways.

That's the human part of the equation: pain, loss, fear. Not the normal sort that is everyone's portion in life, but the sort of gut-wrenching injustice that kills a person's soul. In a lot of the classic stories, our heroes and heroines are halfway dead, bringing their own ghosts with them into the story. With that door already open, what else can come through?

Why would it come? Why would it have never left in the first place? Anger. Blind, mad, rage. The sort of virulent soup that you get when you mix hate, loss, regret, and fear together, and then boil. Not very sensible, is it? To stay here where people weep and get hurt, when we have a ticket to a better place? Seems a bit petulant, doesn't it?

That's why I said part, and only part of us stays. That's why we feel ghosts before we see or hear them. That's why our belief in them is stored down in our gut and in our spine, while our head is full of reasons to not believe in them. Could non-believers, say atheists, be afraid of them without believing in them or in any of their related bumpers in the night? Oh hell yes. That's how people's heads work.

Ghosts like this live in our ID, where we whine rather than ask, scream instead of explain. They're what's left of a person when you strip away reason, and then strip away every flavor of love. Imagine a spoiled child that no one can control, and that no one can stop. Ever sat in a restaurant, a bus, or on a plane with an infant that did nothing but howl? Perfect. That infant is now somewhere in your house, waiting for you to relax. Pleasant dreams.

As you can see, my thoughts tend to ramble a bit when I explore a concept. Maybe I'll do it again.

Still writing.

Ghost stories in front of the Christmas tree

A few days ago I finished reading 'The Woman In Black.' As I've probably said before, one of the regrets of my miss-spent youth is that I never dove into a lot of the classics that make up the foundation of my preferred genre. Rest assured, I'm slowly chipping away at that deficiency.

I saw the recent movie first, and I deliberately avoided reading anything about it or the book, to avoid comparing the two until I had finished both. I'm not going to get into spoilers. Go read the one and see the other, in that order.

What got me thinking, and now writing, is a minor bit at the beginning, a tiny little piece of the setting. The image of a large, proper Victorian family sitting in what we would call the living room, staying warm by the fire while winter gusts and blows outside, telling ghost stories.

This is going to be another stroll down the trail of 'maybe,' like I strolled not to long ago when I pondered what might have sparked the first belief in vampires. We're going to meander along this twisted path where ever we may, not minding the destination as much as enjoying the journey. It's not going to be the last word, the first word, or even necessarily a coherent word. This is my word, one of many.

I really wonder what the average person's views on family was, back then. I like having my own house, and I like choosing who comes and goes. Some days it's nice to just sit in the middle of the house and listen to silence.

Things were different, way back when. You might have three generations living under one roof, and everyone sharing bedrooms. Add to that cozy scenario folks coming in from across town or a different town, and you're going to have company no matter where you are in the house. It's a happy time, and even if it doesn't really feel like a happy time, you've got little choice but to act happy. There's whatever version of a feast your life can afford, and probably a bit of wine or gin. You get the renewed love of seeing your whole family together again, and all the petty old quarrels that are part of the same package. Since we're talking about Victorian England here, there's the added stress of it being colder than a witch's pointy hat. Everyone wants that perfect spot by the fire.

At the end of the day, people are going to be tired, maybe a bit grouchy, and groping through the house by lamp or candle-light. Christmas Eve is the traditional time for the stories, though I doubt they were all kept until then. So when the big night comes not only have we had a few day's buildup, but there's the anticipation of wondering just what's in that sock you nailed up by the chimney. The perfect setting to provide a bit of escape.

Why ghost stories? Again, it's dark, which is always scary, and it's cold. The caveman part of our head tells us there won't be as much food running around for us to hunt, and that the days themselves will be shorter. Because of the time period, our family unit has probably seen one or two of its previous members pass on during this season of coughs and chills. If they haven't, they've seen or heard stories of the 'unfortunates' who die from cold and starvation this time of year. Merry Christmas.

The connection is subtle to us, but in those days the relevant themes were more prevalent. The story from the handy family Bible is about death, resurrection, and hope. Father Christmas wasn't so fat and cuddly back then, so in each person's head, he would have that nebulous quality that people associate with a universal father figure: loving, but stern. If that grouchy old man in the big house came back as a ghost when he died, then that means that death isn't the end, no matter how much we fear that it is. It also means we better bite our tongue when Aunt Bertha steals the last bit of pudding, no matter how much we want to call her out on it. We don't want to end up a ghost and miss out on Heaven.

I'll close with that, but I think we can talk about ghosts again, and discuss their emotional well-being or lack thereof.

Still writing.

“One of my favorite blog authors is a lazy bum.”

Okay, guilty. I had plans to at least get something down the weekend before A-Kon, but didn't, obviously. I did some odd chores around the house, and then Claudia and I saw the new X-men movie with some friends that Saturday, which was fun. The verdict from the ladies is that it's worth seeing for the sight of Hugh Jackman's ass alone. This is coming from the same ladies who refer to '300' as 'Beefcake on parade.'

We drove up to Dallas on Wednesday, set up on Thursday, and started selling on Friday. All the rest of the days sort of blur into one long sales pitch with breaks for napping. There were a lot of fun costumes to see, including a Dalek, a battleaxe that was too big to fit in the back of a pickup truck, and the first time I've ever seen a person cosplaying Jigsaw. I was able to get into the Artist's Alley for a bit, too. My daughter had requested that I pick up some buttons for her, and I discovered that there is a small, niche market for art based on the TV series, 'Hannibal.' Curiouser and curiouser.

There were also rumored to be some 'odd' goings on, the sort that you're never able to find anyone willing to confirm or deny that they really happened, but that stick in your head and pop up like bad music from your teen years. Would kids really dig a grave-sized hole in a walkway area and try to spend their nights sleeping in it? Could a vandal desecrate a historic piece of art and expect his excuse of 'I didn't know there was paint in my can of spray paint' to be believed? Is someone warped enough to use a koi fish for a purpose that I'm not going to name in a blog that doesn't screen out minors? Maybe. True or not, they're going to get used at some point.

When my head is working on selling shiny things to pretty ladies, it doesn't wander well, so I've got some catching up to do. In the Dark is reaching that stage where I'm reading the dialogue, listening to the voices of each of the characters and finding uneven spots. These are where it sounds like some deranged brain surgeon attacked them while the other person was speaking and performed impromptu trepanning, because all of a sudden their entire attitude and pattern of speech changes. I know this is what has happened in some books that I've read, and that if I just re-read them enough times I’ll get all the subtle clues that point this out. Rest assured, if you ever notice this problem in one of my stories and you don't get to read about the hero catching the surgeon, it's all the book-printer's fault, because obviously they used an inferior glue and all the pages that would have had the story make perfect sense popped loose and fell out.

Oh, the title of this post? You can that Claudia for that. I can always rely on my wife for subtle hints. Maybe I should have her read all those stories and look for the mad surgeon.

Still writing.

How well do I draw? Umm...

One of the things that I need when I write is at least some idea of the setting. Is everything taking place in the cab of a truck? I need to have a clue how much room there is to move around, what angle the steering wheel is at, and whether the seats have a lot of padding or if they feel like a wooden bench with fabric stretched over them. When I wrote 'Roja' I sat down and drew a map of the town, naming all the important streets. When I wrote 'Stilling the Demons' I got my wife to put me in touch with a friend of hers who sometimes drives a snowplow up in Maine, because I wanted to know the layout of their cabs. Good thing I did, too. I had no idea that there is usually only room for the driver, since the controls for the blade take up the passenger side of the seat. I had set a minor event occurring on the passenger side in the first draft, and had to rewrite it.

Unless you've been in a coma for a few months or are just now reading my blog, you'll know I'm rewriting my second book. This one is science fiction, taking place a long time from now in a solar system far, far away. (Nope. Couldn't resist) Ninety percent of it takes place in one base, located on a dry, hostile world with barely enough of an atmosphere to keep you from popping like a balloon if you walk out the hatch without a pressure suit on. In my head, the base is about the size of my old high school, and all the sections are arranged in a rough square so that almost everything is connected to everything else. It makes a kind of sense, since patterns that work get reused.

I've had a vague idea of the layout for a while now, knowing which side most of the airlocks are on and figuring out where they would put the solar cells to protect them from the blowing wind. But I have scenes that include walking through one section while our hero subtly looks around, taking in the details that will mean something later. I have elements in the plot that hinge on whether or not a person can get from point A to point C without going through point B. So I need to define if those points are in a straight line or not.

Doing this also gives me a better sense of the story happening in a real location, a sense of place. I may end up creating a dozen or more details that never get used, but if all of them are interconnected, and if points two and eleven make it into the book, then after a person reads it and the story is settling in their heads, they just might connect all those invisible dots themselves. Then out of the blue they'll say, 'Ahh, that's why everyone thinks the carpet is made from human hair.' When a person makes a discovery like that for themselves, they invest a little bit of their heart in a time, place, and setting. Call me greedy. That's what I want.

Today was memorial day, and while my time of getting shot at was quite a few years ago, the memories are never very far away. Some of our men and women are going through times like that right now, and some of them have already come back in boxes. Others may ask more, but I just ask that you remember.

My wife and I got out to see Godzilla today, and I liked it. It's a good retelling of what has become a modern myth that has its roots back in the days when trees were black, noon-day skies were off-white, and every person in every movie and TV show had skin that was a shade of gray. They kept a lot of old and good, and added a thing or two that was new and cool, too. The roar remains the same.

Oh, the title of this post? I'm drawing out a map of the base, with all the important places that are used in the book. Looking at it, I have to admit that except for my descriptive text being more mature, and no longer being obsessive about words being complete and spelled out (well, not always), it looks a lot like the ones I used to draw in grade school, showing all the weird and fantastic places I dreamed about seeing and building. So the answer to the question is no, not very well. But the map will do what I need it to do.

It will help with my writing.

It's in my hands

On my way home from work today, I stopped off at Barnes and Noble. I had put in an order a few days ago, and it finally arrived. I walked in and, after getting distracted in the movies section, headed to the counter to pick up my books.

My books.

They belong to other people too, of course. Steve Berman's name is on the covers, where it should be, because he's the one who put out the call for stories, sifted through what was probably a deluge of them, and went through the whole process of turning all our crazy ideas into a book. Richard Bowes's name is on top, followed by Pat Cadigan. There are others, including Tanith Lee,and 'AND MORE...' at the end of the list.

I'm part of that 'AND MORE.' I found my name in the table of contents, and flipped through the book to find 'Dirty.' There it is. But now I'm reading it on paper that someone else printed, in a mass of folded and glued paper, that was put together by a professional printing company. This is my book. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Be glad you're not in the room with me, because I'm discovering that I cackle whenever I look at it. Yep, cackle is the word for it.

So after I post this, I'm going to take a sheet of paper and go downstairs to watch 'Suspiria.' It's what distracted me as I walked in the store, and while I watch it, I'll keep rewriting the last scene in 'In The Dark.' I expect to be cackling while I do it.

That book contains my writing.

Still not real

So when I decided I wanted to be a writer, what did I know about the craft itself? Why I knew everything, of course. You have to tell an interesting story, and tell it in an interesting way. What else could I possibly need to know?

So a lot of today has been spent looking up what units a Geiger counter displays, how many different types of radiation there are and what they're made of, and what the minimum number of people you can have on a generation ship if you need it to actually be self-perpetuating for more than one generation and how likely it is that those people will decide to throw the plan out the window after the third generation of children who grow up never seeing a planet, or a star. Could I just make all of this fun stuff up and get on with it? Sure, and everyone who put any time and effort to study those subjects would drop the book in the trash when they reached that point in the story. Will I put more than a couple of hours into researching these points? No, especially not at this stage. If I discover any big facts about these subjects that contract what I've already written, will I change the storyline? Only if I see a really cool possibility that I can put in without too much rewriting. Otherwise I'll just include some minor plot point to get around that barrier and get on with the story. That's the whole point of all this pounding of the keys.

So it's now all over the Facebook page. Burnt Offerings Books has released 'Hard Luck,' and 'Dirty' is the next to last story in it. Just now I looked the title up on Amazon, and there it is. I have the page up while I'm writing this, and it's causing another of those weird moments where it feels like the ground has dropped out from under my feet and I'm falling in slow motion. There's the title of the book, there's the title o f my story, and there's my name. I'll let you know when it starts feeling real.

Guess what I'm doing, right now.

Another step

So, two days after my last post I got an interesting e-mail. A while back I had submitted a fun little story to another anthology that a different company was putting together. This story I had actually talked to my daughter about a few days ago, and I ended up describing it as part noir, part drama, and part creepy crawly. I'm still pounding at In the Dark, and was only sending things out to keep my foot in the dark, murky waters of story submissions. They can be a pretty treacherous place, and if you don't stick a toe in every once in a while you're likely to hit a rock or an unexpected deep spot when you really need things to go smoothly. I only stick a toe in because it's wise to not put anything in that you're not prepared to lose.

Then I got the e-mail. My story was accepted.

Remember how I described how it didn't feel real when Dirty got accepted? Yeah, again. The pay situation will be different this time, so I still won't be walking into work tomorrow with a lemon meringue pie to surprise my manager with. But this is another bit of polish on my 'brand,' another tool I can use when I go stalking the wild literary agent in its native habitat. This is me feeling maybe a little bit less like a pretend writer, and a maybe a step closer to making my living as one.

Other than that, the weekend was too short, as they always are. Convention season looms, and the wife and I are making plans to run her booth at some. Houston weather is heating up, and I'm already missing winter.

As soon as I get the okay, I'll post the name of the book company, and the name of the anthology. Heck, if you live anywhere near Texas you'll probably hear me singing the name of it from my roof. Friends and family who have heard my, shall we say -striking- singing voice can tell you that it leaves an impression on the listener as they run away as fast as they can.

Still writing? Oh hell yes.

Well, that was an interesting time

Hi! Welcome back! I sure as heck didn't mean to be gone for so long, but I had one problem get thrown at me, then another, then one hit my wife and I and knocked us both down for a bit.

Our most recent addition to the household, Diamond, hadn't been feeling good for a while. I take her outside at night because I'm up later than Claudia, and seeing a fifty-pound dog gorge herself on grass, then throw it all back up right in front of me was one of those moments I need to use in a story. I only hope I can capture it well enough to make all you poor readers feel it as intimately as I did. I didn't throw up, but I'm glad I hadn't recently eaten.

But one day her stomach got really hard, and my wife got home, found a 24 hr vet, and loaded her up in the car. A friend of ours went along to help hold Diamond, and Diamond showed her gratitude by puking all over her. I don't think Claudia and I are going to be living that one down anytime soon.

The vet was closed, despite what their website says, and after some more hunting around (and dropping our friend off to take a shower), we found one and got the bad news. Diamond's stomach was twisted, and she needed surgery right then. Over four thousand dollars worth of surgery.

We don't have that kind of money sitting around waiting for us to give it a call and ask it to come over. So we had to break down and apply for a line of credit, over the phone, and talking to a machine. I really, really, really hate credit cards, and so does Claudia. We buy what we need or want with money that we have, and save up for or do without something if need be. Credit cards have their uses, I know, but (my opinion, of course) they use the holder more than he or she uses it.

But we got it, racked up more debt than either of us had possessed in a long time, and handed our dog over to the vet. Surgery went well, and after a few days of observation, we brought her home with a doped-up smile on her face and a scar full of staples that went the whole length of her underside. The staples just came out Friday.

So I've been coming home on my lunch hour to let her out of her crate (cage) and allow her to stretch her legs for a little while, then locking her up and going back. Claudia has been giving her extra TLC before and after work, and we've both been taking turns sleeping with her on a futon to be there in case she had problems.

I never knew a dog could snore. Did you?

I've still been writing this time, but not at the same pace or with the same zeal. Knowing you suddenly owe that much puts a new light on little things like a cantankerous refrigerator or a headlight that's out. It's worth it though, especially every time Diamond smiles, runs up to get affection, or thwaks the floor with her tail because she's wagging it and she's also too lazy to get up. It's worth it.

Then, good news. I got paid for Dirty. The check arrived, and I sprained my lips from grinning and bruised both ears because I did it so fast and wide. I got paid. I'm in print, and I got paid. Words? What words? This is emoting and floating and running down the street shouting 'Eureka!' I got paid.

Did it cover the vet? Oh heck no. It'll put a scratch in the bill, is all. But I got paid. If I drop dead tomorrow, I'll be talking about it to the valkyrie who picks me up or the ferryman who gives me a ride. No one ever actually came out and told me that I wouldn't make money from this, but a look that lets you know someone thinks it's just an indulgent fantasy, especially from someone close to you, sticks, and not in a good way. I ended up divorcing the person who gave me that look.

But I got paid. For writing.

What the hell am I doing?

Yeah, I missed an entry. Not the first, etc.

I'm chipping away at the unfinished bits of In The Dark, and I just had one of those moments where I feel like not only did I show up at work without my pants, but I left my keycard at home and I can't even get through the door. Some very unhelpful voice in my head is asking, “What are you doing? You've never written a science fiction novel before! This doesn't have any cool monsters or ray guns! It doesn't even have warp drive! How can you write a science fiction story were no one can go faster than the speed of light?”

I know that voice. It was with me just before I signed my name on the dotted line that would send me off to boot camp and guarantee that the next four years of my life would be planned out by someone else. It told me I was making a mistake by getting married, divorced, and then married again. That whispering, shrieking, laughing voice is with me every time I make an important decision, have a chance to take something back, or see someone better or worse off than I am now. Sometimes it offers good advice, so I can't just tell it to go get lost. Hell, sometimes I listen to that voice, write down what it says, and then go use all of it in a story. Sometimes it talks like my mom or dad, or schoolteachers who I never quite saw eye to eye with. Sometimes it's even the voice of people I see every day, and who I know would say those exact things if I asked for their opinions. Maybe someday I'll stop hearing that voice, but maybe not.

In this particular case, though, I am telling it to get lost. It spoke to me while I was writing Roja, telling me I would never finish it.

Still writing.

Voices in everyone's heads

You know, one of these days I'm going to reach the point where I never miss a scheduled update on this blog. Obviously, I'm not there yet.

Burnt Offerings Books declined on my story, but with kind words. Naturally, I sent them another story, just to teach them a lesson.

I'm at the point in 'In The Dark' where I'm looking at each character and seeing if they actually have a voice, or if they sound like some offstage player reading his lines while getting a massage. If I don't see their faces in my head when I read their words, I'm not done. This is one field where movies have an advantage. You can see each person speak and hear their real voice. I was about to say radio has it too, but the days of fiction being a regular feature on the airwaves are definitely receding. Of course, now we have podcasts, so the same lesson applies.

I have no way of testing this, but I think that everyone makes up their own voices when they read a story. We patch together a hodgepodge of TV actors, people we know or used to know, and voices of random strangers that talk on their phones in public. All those voices go into our heads, stored on the audio track of our lives. So when we need to hear Mack Bolan or Roland speak, we draw on that vast, randomly-organized data bank. What does that have to do with what I'm talking about? It means that no matter what I do, no one is going to hear the gruff, plainly-speaking sergeant of the guard in exactly the way that I imagine him. He'll be their big brother, the cop that pulled them over when they didn't see that new stop sign, or the drill instructor that they lived in fear of for three months. They take the bones and flesh them out all on their own.

So, I can slack off? Nope. I still need to tell them what type of person that sergeant is. Does he sound educated? Speak with an accent? Does he monologue because he loves the sound of his own voice, or because he has something he feels has to be said? Or does he only say five words in the whole story because he just doesn't talk much. I need to give my readers a full set of bones. Can you imagine a sergeant of the guard with one leg, only a few ribs, and half of a mustache? Well, I can, but not for this book.

Still writing.

The Lemonade Stand

Okay, normally I avoid politics because I don't like the divisive effect that the issue has, but a recent law pushed a button because of all the assumptions it made. Here's your warning sign. This is not safe for work, church, or any other circumstances where where it could get you into trouble, and it is graphic as hell. If you go past this point, I am not responsible for hurt feelings. We're all adults here.

A man and some of his friends open a lemonade stand on a street corner downtown. They sell cups of lemonade and soft drinks for fifty cents. They do a brisk business, until a certain law goes into effect.

That morning, a lady walks up. “Let me have one cup of lemonade.”

“Um, are you gay?”

“What?”

“Are you gay?”

She looks at him, shocked, as if he had just asked her if she was gay.

“Are you serious? No! I am not gay!”

“Okay, sorry. I can't serve you. Let me find someone who can. Rick, do you have a problem with straights?”

“Not as long as they're kinky.”

The first man turns back to the woman. “He wants to know if you're into BDSM. You know, spanking, dominance, stuff like that.”

The second man leans over to say, “Dom or sub, doesn't matter. I don't even care if you switch. I believe in equal opportunity.”

She screams, “I don't do any of that!”

The first man, the owner, holds up his hand. “Ma'am, I need you to lower your voice. I'm not going to ask any of my employees to serve someone if it would violate what they believe in. If you can't accept that, you can take your business elsewhere.”

“My boss wants a cup of lemonade, from this stand! Do you have any idea of the hell I'll catch if I come back without it?”

“No, but it sounds like he's using this errand to find out something that you'd be able to sue the hell out of him if he asked for himself. I'll bet he plans some way of getting you to tell him which one of us sells it to you.”

They start going down the line, asking all the employees if they're willing to sell the woman a cup of lemonade.

The woman who runs the register says, “I'll serve you if you're polyamorous, but only poly. I don't agree with swinging. Oh, and don't even ask me to serve you if you cheat, ever.”

The boy who stocks the water and ice says, “Ma'am, I'll be happy to serve you, just as long as you're celibate.”

The grumpy old man mixing the lemonade says, “Forget it. If you're the sort to leave the house without your husband, I don't even want to talk to you.”

A man down at the end smiles and yells out, “I'll serve anyone, as long as they practice bestiality!”

“Jesus, Clive, keep your voice down! Sorry, he went to school with my mom. Let's see who else we have.”

A woman who has been counting the cases of soft drinks waves them both over.

“So you're straight.”

“Yes.”

“Monogamous, not perverted, and not into animals.”

“Definitely not.”

“Married?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, this is your first marriage?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You said you don't cheat,either? By cheating I mean sex with anyone but your husband. I don't care what you call it.”

“No, I have never cheated.”

“You're not a furry, are you?”

When the other woman just looked at her with a blank expression, the employee said, “Never mind, never mind. You don't look like one, anyway. Let me see your neck.”

“My neck? What for?”

“Some people, mostly women, do something I think is absolutely abhorrent. They choke themselves. They think it helps get them off, but it's just sick.”

“My god, I've never even heard of that.”

“I'm sorry you had to. One cup of lemonade?”

“Yes! Finally!”

“Fifty cents please.”

“There's no tax?”

“We eat the tax. The way business has dropped off, we have to.”

The woman puts two quarters in the employee's hand, and just before she hands the cup over, the employee asks, “Wait, you don't masturbate, do you?”

When the woman just stands there in embarrassed silence, the employee shrieks, ”Oh my god, you touched me with your hand! Get out of my sight!”

Near tears, the woman starts to walk away. But the man on the end, grinning, draws another cup and runs up to her.

“Look, I know you don't like animals, but just say you do.”

“No!”

“What'll it hurt? You don't have to mean it, just say it. Then we'll both be happy. Hey, just tell your boss that some new kid served you, and he didn't ask a damn thing.”

The woman looked at the cup in the man's hand, and thought of the casual way her boss had asked her to pick it up on her way back from lunch.

“Okay, I like animals. I absolutely love them. I do them morning, noon, and night. Satisfied?”

“Here you go. Don't worry about paying, I'll take care of it.”

She walks away, but before she gets to the street she turns around and comes back.

“Let me ask you something. You really have sex with animals?”

The man chuckles.

“Lady, I ended up with cancer four years ago. They had to take both the family jewels, and I haven't gotten it up since. Messing with people like you is one of the few joys I still have.”

Laughing at other people's terror

My first marriage was a rocky one. We moved up to Dumas, a small town in the panhandle where my wife was born and where her parents lived. Being suddenly thrust into a town where I knew no one and where there were none of my usual interests put me in a bit of a spot. Everyone was friendly, but there weren't many people I could connect with.

At one point, the company I worked for changed their vacation schedule to synchronize it with the calender year instead of the fiscal year. Those of us with days left to take had to take them before the end of the period. I took four Fridays in a row off, and spent the extra time with my daughter.

Those were good days. I would sleep in (my insomnia was worse back then), write for a few hours or drive down and explore Amarillo, then pick Maddy up from the babysitters a couple of hours early. My wife was in a work-study program at the time, so we had the rest of the day to ourselves. These were Maddy-Daddy days.

We would go to the park, stop by the library to return books and check out new ones, play games, and read together. We had fun. Being the skilled chef that I am, when it was time for dinner I would boil water to make macaroni and cheese, and open a can of corn or some other vegetable that we both enjoyed. Before bed, we would watch some TV together.

Around that time, MTV came up with a new reality show called 'Fear.' They would gather a group of young, enthusiastic kids and drop them in an abandoned prison, hospital, or some other place that would make a good setting for a B-list horror movie. I've never had a taste for reality shows, because the concept has the same flaws that you'll find in true crime books and movies 'Based on a true story.' Reality doesn't make a good story, not unless you chop out a lot of the relevant facts.

But Fear, and all the similar shows that followed it gave me something I could use: an illustrated guide on how people scare themselves. I don't think that any of those kids found real ghosts, and I'm highly suspicious that it's become common practice to have some member of the production crew hidden at the location to slam doors, move objects, and open windows when no one else is looking. But the show, and the current shows, often managed to get the mood and tone down near-perfect. The kids were the stars, and deservedly so. They made up their own reasons why the spirits are either trying to communicate with them or telling them to get out. They nervously crept down into basements with rats, leaking pipes, and broken windows, wondering where those squeaking, dripping, and whispering sounds were coming from. Clutching each other in the dark, with one light right on each person's face (so the camera could get a good shot) and one focused light that only let them see a few feet ahead, they never let their night vision build up. Take away the scary back-story, or just let them perform all their tasks during the day, and the series would have been like every other reality show. Just overacting drama.

You haven't gotten the impression I didn't love watching it, though, have you? Or that I don't take advantage of the fact that SyFy has episodes of a similar series up on their website? Sorry, but when it comes to scaring people, I'll get out the Dots and the popcorn. My daughter got her share of giggles and smiles out of it, too.

Wow, thinking about that makes me want to write.