Truth and Fiction

Something that I've believed for a long time now is that you're never too old for new experiences. I don't care if you manage to live to be a thousand, if you think you've seen it all, I suspect that most of what you're seeing is sand from the patch where you've stuck you head in it.

This relates to my chosen trade because it means that there's always more fodder for the next story out there. Getting inspired is a separate matter, yes. But there's always new material out there.

One of the stumbling blocks to tapping this vast resource is that truth (real life) isn't just stranger than fiction, it's only partially connected to it. The connection is primal, and strong, but it isn't all that wide. Fiction is clearer and cleaner than life will ever be, which is part of its appeal. Life is what we live, and it is not, nor has it ever been, simple and easy to orient a compass in. One of the reasons I have yet to like a true crime book that I've read is because people aren't characters, and to make them fit into that finely-cast mold you've got to skew some facts and throw others out the window. A look at which facts get chosen for which treatment usually reveals the writer's 'fingerprints,' their own feelings and prejudices, which don't belong in a book that's supposed to be giving us a slice of real life. The people who can't differentiate between where fiction and truth connect and where they don't often end up as the subjects of those true crime books, either as criminals or victims.

I spent this past weekend up in Dallas, at AnimeFest. My wife went up Thursday and I took a bus Saturday because I couldn't get the time off and because I needed at least one full night of sleep. Saturday night, after helping at the Pan-Gaia Designs booth until the dealer's room closed, I was a bit restless so I went down to the hotel bar for a beer. It turned out to be a sports bar, which is not normally my preferred place to spend time, but they had Shiner Bock on draft. (Well, they did until I drank the last of it)

I'm sitting at one of the counter tables near the bar itself, sipping my beer and reading an e-book, when two attractive young ladies walk in. Now, there's no shortage of attractive young ladies at an anime convention, but while I don't like stereotyping anyone, most young ladies do fit into certain patterns. Most are in costume to one degree or another, or in comfy, casual clothes. They travel in groups or with their significant others, as sadly there's no shortage of asshats at an anime con either. If they wear jewelry, it's simple, or something related to their favorite show or game. They also have an abundance of happy enthusiasm, if they haven't just crossed paths with an asshat.

The two ladies who came in weren't wearing con badges, they were dressed up nicely, and wore a bit more jewelry than is normal. They came in as a pair, and when they stepped into the bar they scanned the room. Not with the sort of look that someone has when they're trying to locate a familiar face, with the look you have when you're sizing up an opponent. They grabbed a menu from the bar, and sat next to me.

Now I like to think I'm good shape, but I'm in good shape for someone who's lived my life and has reached middle age. Unless there's a reason, I don't dress to impress. I dress for comfort. I had my e-book reader with me, but I don't think that these days that's an indicator that the owner has a lot of money. Have I also mentioned that the oldest I would put these two is in their mid-twenties?

The one closest to me smiles, holding up the drink menu, and asks if there's anything I could recommend. I ask if she likes beer or mixed drinks, and she just smiles shyly and says that she's a lightweight. Her friend, sitting on the other side of Miss Lightweight, leans forward and studies me with a serious look. If I was writing the scene, I'd describe the look as hard and calculating.

I say to the girl near me that she might try one of the beers, recommending Shiner. She smiles again, and asks me what I'm doing here. I change hands with my book so my wedding ring happens to show and say that I'm here at the convention helping my wife, who has a booth in the dealer's room.

Her smile changes to a polite one, and she turns away to confer over the menu with her friend. They catch a waiter as he walks by, ordering some nachos. Then they get up, and a few minutes later are seated at a table with two guys, and everyone's smiling.

I couldn't tell you just when in that chain of events that it dawned on me I was talking with, as Terry Pratchett put it, Ladies of Negotiable Affection, but the experience was a surreal one. Everyone has to make a living, and I don't place those ladies higher or lower on the 'scale of worth' than I would anyone else that I don't really know. But I can tell you that until that moment, I would have never written any scene like that. In the world I was living in, it just wouldn't happen. Now I live in a broader one.

Shortly thereafter, the bar ran out of Shiner. I went upstairs, and told the whole thing to Claudia. She laughed.

Still writing.

How to work a screwdriver

Contrary to what some people who know me might think, I don't just read horror. I also read about horror. This is not only fun, it also gives me insight into the heads of people who've been able to be successful writers.

(By the way, if you want to write good horror, don't read H.P. Lovecraft's 'Supernatural Horror in Literature,' Stephen King's 'On Writing,' or the introduction that Mary Shelley wrote for 'Frankenstein' where she describes her thought process as she came up with her ghost story, and talks about the need to 'awaken thrilling horror'. I don't need any more competition than I already have.

< End sarcasm>.)

Another benefit is that I get to hear about all the good stories that other people have read. Part of my ongoing education is catching up on all the classics that I skipped reading when I was younger. A short while back, I bought an e-copy of Henry James' 'Turn of the Screw.' My Kindle tells me I've gotten though about seven percent of it, and from what little I know of the story I think I've gotten a thorough idea of the introduction.

Note: I will try to not give away spoilers, but my first priority is to make my point.

Damn, that thing is solid. The initial setting, what I'll call the sub-setting, gives us a summed-up idea of the mood of the story, and a rough clue about who is going to survive. Then we start with the account of the real narrator, and she tells us who she is, where she is in her life, her thoughts on this new job, on the guy who hired her, and on the people she's going to be spending this next part of her life with. We even get that first little hint, the one that we recognize because we know we're reading a horror tale, but that our heroine ignores because that's what people do with little details in a situation like hers.

Here's our first lesson, a screwdriver is not a hammer. You don't start out by pounding with it. You place the screw where you want it, carefully fit your tool to it, and apply just a little bit of pressure to hold it in place.

Though it seems idyllic, our heroine's situation comes with a bit of pre-supplied pressure. She is out on her own for the first time, in the real world. At a tender young age, she is put in charge of property and children, something that would be daunting by itself. She dives right in, though, and sets her mind on steering the ship.

Then you apply a little more pressure, and twist.

Just as she is getting her feet under her, something unexpected occurs. Not something that has us screaming 'Ah-ha!' It's something strange, and we don't get a full explanation right away. Also, it really doesn't make sense, not according to everything we understand about this place and this people. I have a personal hunch it will end up making a lot of sense when we get a fuller sense of things, though.

This is actually my second attempt at this story. Right after I divorced, I became a steady patron of the library in the town where I was living, and they had a multi-cassette tape (remember those?) set of the book. I tried to listen to it as I puttered around my tiny apartment over a cold Thanksgiving weekend, but couldn't get past the first ten minutes. Maybe it was just the narrator's voice, which sounded very solid, stoic, and very British. It was too easy for me to shift it into the background noise.

I'm looking forward to reading more of this, and writing more stories of my own.

If I was head of PR for the church of Satan

Claudia has been off at San Japan this weekend, so I have the house to myself. I would love to say that I've been frantically pounding away at something the whole time, but I suspect my nose might knock a hole through my monitor. What I've been doing is wasting time playing Wow and watching some old movies that I appreciate seeing once in a while.

Bittermint is creeping along. I never realized how something gets set in my head until now. Doing a partial rewrite on a story or even on Roja wasn't this hard. I had the initial idea for it, and that idea stayed the focus until I had to change it to give the adventure a little more zing. Now it's like any time I have it in front of me and my fingers are about to press the keys to change some of the words, the me from all those months ago opens a time-portal right behind me and screams, 'What are you doing? Leave it alone!' Because when I write something, I will pound on it until I think it's pretty good. Then I think about all the stories that I really like, the ones that I re-read once every couple of years. Then I take a long, honest look at this thing that I've created. More often than not, I quietly close the web browser window where I was about to submit what I had written, then start ripping it apart again. It's hard to do that, so I don't stop until I can read the whole thing and not say to myself, 'Maybe it could be better there.' Not once.

That's not just a matter of principle. It's to keep myself sane. If I send something out, unless it's to one of the VERY few places that will give you a yes or no within a day or two, I have to sit and wait. I get up in the morning, go to work, and have a few hours after work before going to bed. The whole time, there's this little voice in the back of my head that's whispering, 'Did you fix that one comma? Sure, you thought about fixing it, but did you ever really get around to it? Also, now that you've had time to consider it, wouldn't that one scene sound better from the other guy's point of view? It wouldn't take long to fix it and send it in again. I'm sure they wouldn't mind.'

You get my point. When I send it, it's my brave little story, and it's ready to go out into the big mean world. I don't want to be one of those parents who hover, and then turn on the TV years later to hear all about how my little baby has driven a bus full of nuns into a wood chipper.

It could happen, I'm sure of it.

So that's how Bittermint Tea and Ironlace Orchids is shaping. Some point in the near future, I'll finish it, it will hopefully come out, and if I get it right, I'll be inspiring some of the same kind of hate that I felt for all the folks at TSR who wrote those AD&D modules when my character overlooked something that was staring me in the face the whole time.

Oh, the title of this post? One of the harsher facts about living in Houston is that we have quite a few folks down here who don't have a roof over their heads. Drive pretty much anywhere in this town and you'll see them standing by the side of the road, asking for money. We also have some people who stand there asking for money who wear clean clothes, who don't have a bag or bundle of their possessions tucked nearby, and who might be unshaven but never have that built up coating of sweat and dirt that you get when all you have to wash yourself with is some water and a cloth. These people are the ones who usually have a sign that contains the phrase 'God Bless.' Seeing a guy with one of those signs today, the same place I've seen him before, I got a seriously warped idea for a commercial. A picture would open with one of those guys walking up and down a line of cars waiting at a stop light. He holds up his sign, and then a man in an all-black suit with a blood red tie steps in to view, speaking right to us. He says, “Seems everyone who's down on their luck these days is a devout follower of you-know-who. But you never see anyone begging with a sign that says, 'Hail Satan,' do you? Have you ever wondered what we've got that the other guy doesn't? Why don't you stop by some time, and we'll talk.” He walks up to the first man, puts his arm around his shoulder, and they walk off. Fade out.

If you laughed at that, you're going to hell. Don't worry, I'll hold the door open for you.

Still writing.

Bacon is NOT the same thing as ham

Okay everyone, have a seat and get out a pencil and a piece of paper. Write down this formula: Something horrific = horror. Now is that right? It does look like it, I'll admit. 'Something' could be anything, and 'horrific' even contains most of the letters of horror. But I hope everyone here has the same feeling in their gut that I do, that there's more to it than that.

Straight up, in-your-face horror only scares us so briefly that the length of time might not be measurable unless you use one of those branches of math that's built on unreal and irrational numbers. The kind of horror that makes us feel better when it's over contains a measured amount of ambiguity and a measured amount of certainty, in the right proportions and added at the right time. To use a cooking analogy, something I'm just as qualified to use as I am to repair Model T's, the dish isn't dependent on the meat as much as it is on the spices and the preparation.

Let's compare two dishes. They both contain the same meat but follow two different recipes, and end up with two very different results. The meat we'll use will be something solid for this genre: the slow, agonizing death of a child.

The recipe in one story is from a movie my wife told me about that starts off with an exceptionally gruesome scene. An innocent little girl is trapped in a small space, and the space is flooded with wet cement. She screams for her daddy the whole time, and the scene cuts just before we see her die. She could be anyone's child, yours or mine.

I watched the whole movie, Walled In, and while the girl's death is mentioned later, there's no direct relevance. She isn't the only one to die that way, and that was the only scene that the young actress has. That whole gut-wrenching event was a throw-away.

The other recipe comes from the Japanese movie 'Ringu,' and its American remake. In this example, we see a little girl thrown into a well and left to die of exposure. Though the death is later explained to be slow and terrible, we're only given a few seconds of the attack and seeing her fall.

This little girl has supernatural powers, and those powers make life hell for the people around her. Her death isn't revealed until we're halfway through the movie, and the person who kills her is a family member driven to the act out of desperation. She's a central character and the protagonists spend the movie trying to find out just what happened to her. One item to note is that in the Japanese version, it's hinted that she might be of non-human origin, (and in a horror movie that kind of hint is pretty reliable) and that she kills a man with her abilities even before she becomes a vengeful ghost. This makes her something alien to us, and even though we cringe at seeing her killed, we can move on.

So set these two entree's on the table next to each other and compare them side by side. One has the meat dropped on top where it's the first thing you'll taste when you bite into it, and the other has it further in. Why does this matter?

In real life, the death of a child horrifies us, as it should. Whether we read about it in the news or hear about it in a conversation at the water-cooler, it means something to us. Using that connection when you tell a story, either on film or in print, is like using explosives to blast a tunnel through a mountain. You damn well better know what you're doing, or this shit will go off in your face. The meat needs to blend in with the rest of the dish.

The silly thing is that the throw-away wasn't needed in Walled In. The movie was good, with what I would call solid acting and a fairly good story. I'll guess that the girl's death was put in to shock us right off the bat. Well, it does that, but it makes the whole rest of the movie seem like it's waiting for the real action to begin. When you get the spiciest part in the first bite, the rest can't help but seem bland.

I loved The Ring. It's a good, well-paced ghost story that pushes the right buttons. It has the meat mixed in with the spices, and things blend. It leaves us wanting more of the same taste.

That's why we cook.

That's why I write.

Polishing

Last weekend was fun. My wife and I had friends over Saturday for a game of Mana Punk (http://mana-punk.com/) and in between my character recovering from an attack by something called a grave grub and dodging a gorilla sheathed in fire, our group discovered that we were going through one of the new modules for the game, Aria of Sorrow. Jeremy gave me a copy a few weeks back so I could go through it and get more familiar with the game, and now I'm glad I held off on reading it.

Also, summer has firmly settled in to Houston. This is noteworthy because the summers down here are not like summers anywhere else. If a Houston summer decided to go on the road for a while and seek its fortune, I can only imagine the horror. When it took I45 north and explored Dallas and Fort Worth, both cities and their many suburbs would declare emergencies and shut down when people discovered that their clothes were sweat-glued to their bodies. When it got to the dry panhandle, people wouldn't mind the heat but they would all stop what they were doing and take pictures of cars, buildings, and everything sinking into the mud that used to the southern edge of the high plains. If the traveling summer (I need to use that as a story title) got all the way to the north pole, then you, me, and everyone else would get washed into never-never land by the resulting tidal wave. Then the Elder Ones would thaw out and get the planet back.

But then I wouldn't be around to see Handsome Devil in print, so forget that.

Jeremy asked me to give Bittermint Tea a bit of a rewrite, saying it needs a smidge more atmosphere. Initially I was thinking that the GM would be able to pull that off from the framework I had lain, but I'm a bit spoiled in that regard from being raised on old Hammer Horror movies that starred people like Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Those two and their peers could give you a chill by just looking at their watches. So I'm tweaking the adventure hook and adding what was going to be just a children's story but is quickly growing into a creation myth. (that'll teach him to send something back to me, dammit!) I've set myself a possibly ambitious deadline of having it done this weekend.

So I need to get back to writing.

Next

So, while I'm on pins and needles waiting for January to hurry up and get here, what am I doing?

I've just sent off a query to The Dreadful Cafe, telling them what a fantastic fit 'Stilling the Demons' would be for their Membrane anthology. The last time I tried to sell that story to anyone was back in October, and Tor graciously declined, so it needed some air. Yesterday my lady love and I had lunch with our friends Jen and Jeremy, who own Hot Goblin Press and the Mana Punk gaming system. He's looked over Bittermint Tea and Ironlace Orchids, and he had some suggestions about ways to tweak it. One bit of advice he gave sticks with me. When you're writing an adventure module, if you can get the players to say WTF in the first five minutes, you've got them. Jeremy's been doing this for a while, and I'm pondering ways to follow his hint.

It's bugging me a bit to have In the Dark and The Red Man Burning sitting on the back burner, but I already have one book finished, and I need to work on getting it sold. I saved a copy of it to my Kindle so I can read it during my lunch breaks, and I'm seeing a place or two where it could be stronger. I was rushed to get it ready for the Amazon contest, and I have to admit it's not as good as it could be. I still get to grouse, though. They rejected it on the first past, meaning they never read anything but my pitch.

Oh, I'm also waiting on the contract for Dirty to arrive in the mail. I can not put into words how cool it is to type those words.

Am I still writing? Hell yes.

I am going to be published

I got the e-mail last Monday. Actually I got one before that, asking for a bio. That set a nerve in the center of my brain twitching and made all the tiny bones inside my ear canal vibrate. But I didn't want to say anything in case things fell through. It's on.

It still doesn't feel real. I've seen the table of contents for the book, and my name is right there alongside some pretty distinguished company. But some unhelpful voice in my head keeps whispering, “That doesn't mean anything. It's just some words typed into a file and then that file was posted. What if you go around claiming you're going to be in this book, and then Godzilla wades ashore and destroys the city where the publisher lives? You're going to look pretty silly, aren't you?”

What, the voices in your head are logical?

Part of this lurking dread comes from a decision I made a while back. I didn't want to be one of those people who go around claiming to be a writer when in reality they hardly ever put words on a page, or who blogs endlessly and expects that to count. When 'I am a writer' is a functional reality, I will write more often than I don't, and send those words off to a publisher. Those publishers will send money back, and I will spend that money. I don't plan to quit my job just yet, but if I can make enough money throwing nightmares and daydreams at people, I'm not going to keep moving boxes and wire in a warehouse where it gets to be a hundred degrees during the summer. I've introduced myself as 'a writer with a day job' once or twice, but that's a placeholder. If I were to smile at someone and say, 'Hi. I'm Stephen Pope, and I work a forty-hour week at a regular job and then come home and alternate between pounding on a word file and walking around muttering to myself,' I might be a bit more honest, but I'm going to get even more funny looks from the people around me than I do now.

The anthology is called Handsome Devil: Tales of Sin and Seduction, and it's due out in January from Prime Books. My piece, Dirty, involves a young girl coming of age while living in a Civil War-era house who hates the new boarder that her mom has taken up with. If you think you can guess where the story goes, I would say you might be on track. But this track is longer and more twisted than you can expect, even if you've been around a few tracks before.

In a way, it's probably a good thing that this doesn't feel real yet, a very good thing. Every time I think about it and make myself believe that it's actually happening I start giggling like Jack Nicholson's version of the joker. I creep people out enough as it is.

I'm not going to stop writing.