Cruelty, casual and ignorant

Once, when I was way too young, I saw the 1965 version of Agatha Christie's famous 'Ten Little Indians.' I was probably about seven or so, and my sister and I were spending our days at a babysitter's house. I assume this was during the summer, because I think we would get taken over there shortly after breakfast, but the truth is I can't remember. My recollection of childhood is blurry like that.

The film is good, and while there's no blood shown, it's still a bit darker than I would want a child to see. There are four versions of the film, and even though the '65 incarnation isn't my favorite, it's fun to watch. I have it on DVD, and when I watched it the other day I wondered if they had released my favorite version on to DVD yet. That's when I did a Google search.

I found out that they have released it, but when I looked at some of the titles that were coming up as translated versions of the film, and book, the names didn't make sense. I've picked up a bit of Spanish over the years, and what I was reading under the Spanish and other Romance language versions substituted a word for the color black in the title. With a 'WTF' look on my face, I followed up.

It seems when the book was released it had a slightly different title. I found a copy of the book in a library sometime during my time in the Corps, and it had a title of 'And then there were none,' which I recognized from a poem that is used in the book, so these many years I've thought that was the title. But when Ms. Christie sent her story out into the world back in 1939 the poem wasn't about Indians, and the island it takes place on wasn't named Indian Island. The original title was Ten Little N*****s. That's why the Spanish version came up as Diez Negritos.

I was born and raised in Dallas, and spent time growing up in smaller cities and some small towns. I know enough about the South to connect with the pride that a person can feel in claiming it as where their roots come from, but I do not feel that it will ever clean itself from the taint of slavery. No matter what else happened, from the culture, through the courage, to the full facts of who did or didn't own slaves, the South has a permanent stain on it that comes from stolen lives, shed blood, and the attitude that let people sip their tea or whiskey while other human beings were getting bullwhipped just up the road. There were people on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line who saw it as an abomination, to be sure. But not enough of them to prevent it or change it. The founding fathers of this country didn't outlaw it when they put together either the Articles of Confederation or later, the Constitution. They kicked the can down the road, with results that are history.

I know that attitudes in the past were different. One of my favorite writers, H.P. Lovecraft, and some of his contemporaries, had that same attitude. The problem is that the attitude was based in ignorance, the kind that lets an intelligent person see themselves as 'better' than other human beings, if not by divine providence, then at least by inherent nature. If any of those writers had simply sat down and put in the time to get to know these people that they were dismissing so casually, they might have had one of those epiphanies that make life so interesting.

That laxness comes at a price. How many young people who are black have heard of Ms. Christie and picked up one of her books, and after enjoying it, might have decided to find out more about this lady who told such great stories? When they found out that one book's original title, do you think they kept reading any further? When we keep our ignorance out on the kitchen table where anyone who drops by can see it, those visitors are going to stop listening to what we have to say.

That's how this connects to writing. If you want someone besides just the people who think exactly the way you think to hear your voice, you damn well better be someone worth listening too. Good points are valuable. Ignorance is cheap and plentiful, you can find it on most radio and TV channels.

So with that in mind, back to writing.

Reminded of a line about Cliff Burton

One of the bands that I discovered when I was at Camp Pendleton was a fun group called Metallica. This was back in the days of cassette players, and while the hand held ones were common, a lot of folks carried 'boom boxes' of various sizes. The main difference between the two was while the smaller ones had a speaker, unless you wanted your music to sound like a handful of marbles in a clothes dryer, you used headphones. The boom boxes were designed with better speakers.

So I was wandering around the squad bay one Sunday afternoon, on firewatch. This meant I was in uniform, I couldn't sit down and read, and if something awful happened, I was supposed to be the one who dealt with it. What it meant to me was that I was walking around an open room the size of a small airport lounge and bored out my skull. So of course, when I heard some guy's boom box vibrating with sound that made me think of a mob hit squad bludgeoning some poor fool to death with guitars and drums, I asked, “Hey, what is that?”

“Master of Puppets.”

The next time I went to the PX, I looked in the music section. There was a tape with cover art showing rows and rows of white crosses used as gravestones. The dead grass that grew among them was thick and neglected, and puppet strings connected the stones to hands that were way up in heaven. I forked over some of my hard-earned money, and listened to the whole tape that night. That's how I got hooked.

While I was, and remain, a fan I wasn't a devoted fan. I didn't join the fan club and I wasn't in a position to take leave whenever I wanted so I could go to a concert. This also took place in the days before the web, and so it was a while later before I found out that one of the guitar-bludgeoners, Cliff Burton, had died. When I got back from the nine-month deployment that was my share of Desert Storm, I was hanging around in a friend's room, and he had one of the popular music magazines sitting out. Inside was a tribute to Burton, and the writer had summed up his feelings in a simple phrase: Death sucks, and there's nothing you can do about it.

The other day Fear.net had an article about Richard Matheson dying. To me that doesn't just suck. It means the circle of people I would enjoy spending time with, sharing ideas with, and getting inspired by is now smaller. It means no more books, or stories period, by a man who could write tales that would stick in your head and pop back up just as you were trying to sleep. It means I can never shake hands with the man who scared the holy **** out of me.

My favorite horror movies and shows are a diverse bunch. The Legend of Hell House is up near the top of the list, and goodies like the old Twilight Zone episode where William Shatner scares everyone on the plane by trying to get them to look out the window will never get old. Stir of Echoes was just creepy, and Last Man on Earth scared and saddened me. I saw The Incredible Shrinking Man when I was a kid, and it really bugged me because it touched on real-life themes and problems that even today you don't see in horror movies. (and it still didn't do the book justice, as I later found out) Most of these were movies or episodes that I encountered when I was young, and it really never occurred to me to notice who wrote them. I can look back and say maybe I thought it would be like looking up a magician's sleeve. Once you know the trick, the magic is gone.

Once I did connect all the dots, the hunt was on. Every time I went browsing at Barnes and Noble or Borders, I made sure to check the M section of either the horror or general fiction. I went back to the video store and rented Trilogy of Terror and watched it with fresh eyes. When I heard that someone had once asked George Romero where he got the idea of people being trapped in a house and surrounded by the undead, and he (supposedly) said, 'I stole it from Richard Matheson,' I must have split my own face, grinning.

Well, the magic may not be gone, but the magician sure as hell is. There will be no more tricks from one of the greatest of conjurers, someone who not only made us shudder but made us think. Forgive me if I stand up one more time to applaud.

Then I'm going to get back to writing.

Wait, I wrote this?

After enjoying Saturday as the first day off I've had in two weeks, I spent Sunday running Welcome Home through a rewrite, trying to get it ready to submit before I called it a night. According to my spreadsheet (yes, I keep track of these things. Don't you?) the last time I sent this story out was three months ago. Shame on me for letting it sit idle that long.

This was an annoying rewrite for a couple of reasons. First, this is one of the older stories that I have. I worked on this thing when I lived up in the panhandle, and part of the reason it sticks in my head so well is because I busted my butt researching it. It takes place in North Carolina, an area that I have a passing acquaintance with from my days of being stationed at Camp Lejeune. But it covers a lot of past history of a fictional small town, and I wanted to do such a place, and the state it sits in, justice. So I checked out books from the library and dug into online databases for information on everything from the logging and tobacco industries to what kind of birds might be found in such a place. Now imagine how I felt when I gave this story, which I think is damn good, a read-through Sunday and noticed how all that liberally applied knowledge was dragging the tale down like a lead weight tied around a sprinter's big toe. I chopped the history and wildlife down a bit and saved three hundred words. It's still a large story, but the smaller size makes a wee bit more sellable. That'll help ease the grousing over the feeling, maybe justified, maybe not, of so much time going to waste.

Second? Well, as I just mentioned, I like this one. When I finally put the last comma on the last rewrite, I got one of those rare highs that you sometimes feel when you can look at something you've made and you can't help but channel your inner Keanu Reeves and just say, 'Whoa.' Maybe it's vain, but I sometimes read my own stuff after enough time has passed from writing it. I know the story, but the little details get lost in day to day life, and that's a good thing. It keeps me from obsessing over something I've put the 'finished' stamp on, and it lets me write something else. Only this time when I went back, all those really cool details were there, but so were a hell of a lot of things that quickly earned the label of 'What is this crap?' There were descriptives and ramblings that sounded like a fourth grader wrote them after discovering Edgar Allan Poe. If they were in published books, they would be the books you shove under the couch when company dropped by. What made it so damn annoying is that I have submitted 'Welcome Home' to more than one publication, and proofread it. This story has gone out with my name on it and with me singing its praises in my own head each time. Either my doppelganger crept up here and screwed with the file, or my viewpoint has changed in the years since I wrote it. Now that could be a good thing, sure. Hell, I can't think of any circumstance that would keep it from being a great thing. But looking at the story as it was, I have got to admit that the editors were right to reject it. If I was in their shoes, I would have rejected it too. That makes me a bit less confident that all the other stuff that I've sent out is up to par.

But enough reflecting. Time to get back to writing.

Done, with a couple of things

Okay, A-kon is water under the bridge. Wowza, that one was not easy. My lady love was in charge of the Artist Alley and all its inherent drama, so her number one minion, Alex, and I got to set up and run her booth. We had invaluable help from some friends, but even then it was work. The con was in a new hotel this year, and finding parking was a royal clusterfuck. We supposedly got the right to park at the hotel that we were staying at, but they didn't have enough parking for all the people they rented rooms to, so we ended up having to pay to park at the bigger hotel across the street, and walk over there each morning.

Since none of the usual distractions were available, I was able to catch up on some reading. I got through a couple of stories of the issue of Glimmer Train that I picked up a while back, as well as check out an old issue of Rue Morgue that's been collecting dust in a bag. I also was finally able to finish Lionel Shriver's 'We Need To Talk About Kevin.'

First, this is going to be a negative review. I really really doubt I'm ever going to read any of Mz. Shriver's (she changed her name) stories again. But it's the reason why I'm not going to that I think is important. This is a very well-written book, with solid, well-developed and mostly believable characters. Mz. Shriver has a lot of valid points to make, and she makes them with hard, solid truths.

But finishing that book was like using a dremel tool on my own teeth. A few months ago I read the preview on Amazon, and got intrigued by the concept. Having a Kindle means a bit of instant gratification is (nearly) always within reach, so a couple of clicks and a bit of money later, I had the book. Right when I started reading it, I got that old warning sign of 'just let me get through this one part and then it will get interesting.' Too many times I've pushed through a movie or story with that hope only to turn a page or come to a scene and there's THE END.

There was absolutely no joy in reading this book. It wasn't fun, it was work. Now, that could be because I just don't speak the same literary language as Mz. Shriver, because I picked up the book with my own feelings about the subject matter somehow already well-established in my own head, or because I don't agree with what the author was trying to say. But even if all of that were true, I can usually find some connection with a story. With this, there was nothing.

I went back and reread the post I put up when I was halfway done, and aside from the happiness of being finished, my feelings are exactly the same now as they were then. The characters are all well-established, but they're cartoons. The only parts of them that are believable are their negative traits. Let me be clear on that: I didn't like ANYONE in this book. If I wake up one morning and find myself living in the world of this book, I will steal a car, then go drive a hundred miles an hour on the wrong side of residential streets. I'll get away with it, too, because everyone in this world is fucking blind.

Still writing, and now I have another example of how I do not want my books to turn out.

Back on the wheel

Okay, enough vegetating. I got into a bit of a funk there and let this blog, as well as a couple of other things, fall by the wayside. Well, that's done with and there shall once again be pen put to paper. I'm pounding at the rewrite of 'In the Dark,' and while I'm letting 'The Red Man Burning' gel for a while in my head, I'm also taking another look at the gaming module I wrote for Manapunk.

Comicpalooza is this weekend, and I'll be with my sweetie at her booth Saturday and Sunday. Then we get to work our day jobs for a few days before hitting Akon.

Still writing.

Books books books

There were a bunch of other things that I wanted to put in the last entry, but none of them really fit on a post that's about a human tragedy. I write horror, but there's a difference between written horror and real life.

Despite having lived here for nearly a decade, I'm not really familiar with downtown Houston. Like most large cities, it has alternating one way streets, whole sections of city blocks that are set at forty-five degree angles to the rest of the area, and spots that have been under construction since Nixon was in the White House. If you don't know where you're going, you better make sure you have plenty of time to get there and you better not mind taking the scenic route.

Because I didn't want to walk in to some judge's courtroom an hour late with no better excuse than, 'Sorry, yer honor. I got lost in traffic,' I made a couple of practice runs on the weekend before I was supposed to show up. With my able wife playing co-pilot, we followed a set of left-right directions from Google maps and discovered that getting there wasn't as hard as it could have been. We did end up driving around a bit, and one of the places we passed was a business called ¼ Price Books. On the weekends, both of us are in the mood to explore bookstores, so we took a look. They've got a really eclectic mix of everything from old and new science fiction, books on politics, and books in foreign languages. The owner was a nice guy with a sense of humor that he doesn’t mind inflicting on passers-by, and the front door was propped open to let in fresh air.

One of the books I picked up was Demon Seed, by Dean Koontz. I get annoyed with Koontz sometimes, mainly because he comes up with fantastic stories, but them populates them with the exact same sensitive tough guys and smart, strong women. I saw the movie ages ago, and loved it, so I figured I may as well see what they changed from the book. Oh boy did they change some things. It's not just that the focus of the book is between the woman and the computer. Except for a few minor characters, the woman and the computer are the only ones we ever see. Also, the woman is a lot more complicated than we see in the movie, and a hell of a lot more so than the ladies Koontz would later write. When I checked the book's listing on Wikipedia, I discovered that Koontz wrote it in 1973, then in 1997 rewrote it and re-released it. From the one-paragraph synopsis, it seems that the one I picked is the original, and that the rewrite pulls out a lot of the really disturbing elements. The computer seems to get neutered in more than one manner.

That's a pity. I may at some point pick up the newer version, but I'm not looking forward to it. Reading Koontz' entry about the book on his website, he says that one of the things he changed was that he added a dry sense of humor to the story, because his readers appreciated his humor in his other books. Note: Item number 85 on my time-traveling checklist is to go back to the early seventies, convince Dean Koontz to write me a dozen novels that contain complex characters and not a damn bit of humor, and then brainwash him to forget all about the books so he can't rewrite them. It's just me personally, but I like that kind of story. I remember the fragile, beautiful creation that the child is revealed to be at the end of the movie, and when I read the description in the book, I got a cold chill. That thing was Lovecraft minus his inhibitions as filtered through silicon.

Speaking of books, I'm recording here my feeling about a book that I'm not quite halfway done with. I picked up 'We need to talk about Kevin' for my Kindle a while back, and I want to get my feelings down now and see how they compare to when I finish.

I really, really want to be done with this thing. Reading it is like slogging through hip deep mud with razorblades mixed into it. It isn't that it's not well-written. The writing is fantastic, but the main character is such a selfish, self-centered twit that I want to reach into the story and smack her. No one else in it is much better, either. A peek at Lionel Shriver's Wikipedia page claims that she prefers to create characters that are 'hard to love.' If this book is an indication, that's a bit of an understatement. The novel is about a mother whose son has gone on a spree-killing, and how she deals with that fact. But her own negative traits are getting in the way of the story, and the boy himself is simply too evil. He's one of those black and white characters that just aren't human enough to connect with, and (in my opinion) we need to connect with everyone in a story, especially the villain. The hero makes the choices that we like to think we would make under stressful circumstances, and the villain makes the one we're afraid we would make and then regret when it's too late. In this book, the protagonist and all the other 'normal people' are simply weak and shallow, and a few of their characteristics seem to be there simply because the plot couldn't advance without them.

That's how I feel now. I'll compare my thoughts when I'm done.

Still reading, still writing.

A taste of real life

So Monday morning I got up about three hours earlier than I normally do, dressed up like I was on my way to a funeral, and braved downtown traffic to show up for jury duty. Due to a succession of disqualifying factors like the Corps, school, and then having a child to take care of, I have never served on a jury. The closest I came was shortly after I divorced and while I was still living in Dumas. I got a summons, made arrangements to be off of work, and showed up at the courthouse to do my civic duty. I was herded into a small room with a bunch of other people, and waited. Just before noon we were called into the courtroom, where the local prosecutor announced to the judge that the state was ready to proceed with four cases, and that the defendants in all four cases had decided not to show up. Her honor issued warrants for all four idiots, and thanked us for showing up before telling us we were dismissed. I ended up going in to work.

This time it was a little different. I was due at eight AM, but not trusting the downtown traffic I got up at six, bumped into the walls a few times, and then drank a large Coke while zipping along the road and trying to remember which streets I was supposed to turn on. I waited to go through a metal detector, found the room where I was supposed to wait in, and waited. Some numbers were called, and people were pulled out in groups of sixty-five. Eventually, my number was up.

We walked along an underground tunnel, passing through what I guessed were anti-flood doors or something that they close if there's a threat, (whenever I saw them I heard a storm trooper's voice in my head yelling, 'Close the blast doors!') and coming into the courthouse itself. We had to go up the elevators in groups of fifteen, and I got to use my infamous question, “Okay, who here has seen that movie by M. Night Shyamalan titled 'Devil?'” It wasn't an encouraging sign that no one knew what I was talking about, but when I explained that it involved a bunch of people trapped in an elevator I at least got a desperate yell of, “Don't even!!”

We were all given new numbers, lined up against the wall, and the bailiff explained that in a little while the judge would call us in and probably talk to us for about an hour, then turn us loose for lunch. He suggested we take some time and get to know our 'new friends' in the group. When we got in, the judge introduced himself, and thanked us for showing up when we got our summons. Maybe I'm a bit idealistic, but it did make a difference to me for someone to admit that a lot of folks just phone in a phony excuse.

He, the prosecutor, and the defense attorneys asked us, as a group and singly, whether we thought we could be impartial. The case was an old one, and the charge was murder. The questions were as specific as they could be without giving away any real details. Because the charge was murder, would we still presume innocence? Would we have a problem imposing the maximum sentence, or the minimum? One man asked why the death penalty wasn't on the table, and the attorney explained that in Texas the death penalty is reserved for what is called capital murder, which means murder committed during some other crime. Some people admitted that they couldn't see giving a person only five years for murder, even in the hypothetical case of someone raping that person's child, while others said they couldn't sentence a person to what would amount to life in prison no matter what the crime. One poor woman was in there with us having just been carjacked and getting a gun put to her head the night before.

There were about sixty-five of us, and the judge said that the first thirteen of us that weren't removed from the pool by one side or the other would be placed on the jury, and that the others would get to go home. As my number was fifty-nine, I was pretty doubtful I would end up serving. When the judge asked us to sit and be patient for as bit while he and the attorneys conferred, a few others in the jury pool were called up to talk to them. When they started calling numbers off, we realized very quickly that the spread was a lot wider than we had imagined, The entire first row of about fourteen people were jumped over, and I don't think that there were less than five people between any of the ones picked. The last number called was sixty-three. I don't know which side called to strike me from the list, or why. On my form I put my job down as Selector/Writer, and when given the opportunity I asked a technical question, about whether those who got chosen were going to have the full range of five to ninety-nine years to choose from or if the judge or anyone else could set a different minimum or maximum. I guess someone didn't like something I said.

I came home, exhausted and hungry. It had been a really long day, and the only place close enough to go out for lunch had been a Quizno's across the street with less than tasty food and a lot of people hanging around outside of it that would make really good characters for some of my books. It's taken the last couple of days to get back into my schedule.

Today when I got home, I checked Yahoo news like I usually do. Under the local section, I recognized the name of the man who had been sitting with his defense attorneys that day while we all waited around to find out which of us were going to end up judging him. The ones that were chosen ended up giving him life in prison.