Another old gem

Recently I got another of those urges to to revisit one of the old movies that stuck in my head when I was younger. These are the films that I watched either lying in my bed with the lights off some night during the summer or the weekend when I could stay up as late as I wanted, or sitting on my mom's bed on a Saturday morning taking advantage of her larger TV while she was at work. During those years I probably watched hundreds of movies, ranging from the high-quality, professionally made ones to the films where you could see the actors standing there, waiting for their opponent to throw a punch or kick so they could scream 'Ugh!” with Shakespearean passion.

In that odd mix, a certain group has always had its own special place. They're not only horror movies, but they have a certain flavor and style that comes from being made in England by Hammer and other companies that knew what they were doing. This is where I got a lot of the images and situations that eventually gelled into the protoplasm that I pull my ideas from. This is the stuff that nightmares are made from.

'The blood on Satan's Claw,' from what I've read, came from trying to follow up on the success of 'Witchfinder General.' It takes place in an isolated country village, where an innocent/naive farmer plows up an inhuman set of bones. From there, the whole village is affected by something that we never get a good look at, and in ways that are more subtle than you will see in most other movies, past or present.

Not having seen it in many years, when I sat to down and watched it last week, it was all the details that made it stand out. Aside from good acting, there are subtleties that make it feel bigger and richer than its contemporaries. The evil corrupts the young people in the village, and they seem to take to their new lives with wicked enthusiasm, with passion that everyone else lacks. The local reverend loses control of the children in his Bible class, and ends up reviled and accused of murder. The only adults we see as part of the unrest are the truly old, part of an age that this bright, shining country worked hard to bury, and is working harder to forget. There are references to England splitting from Catholicism and creating their own church, as well as to generation gaps and the slow struggle out of the dark ages. We get the sense of larger events that overshadow the villagers and their problems. If they die, and darkness takes them and everything they know, it's doubtful anyone in the outside world would even notice.

All that in ninety-seven minutes, made back in nineteen seventy one. They didn't have CGI, or digital watches, or Pac Man. Star Wars had not yet come out, and Elvis was still alive. They just had film, actors, and a script.

That's writing.

The world's biggest marshmallow

So yesterday, my wife and I brought home a new addition to the household. She's named Diamond, is a boxer/retriever mix, and in the first hour she had established herself in the pecking order somewhere below our long-haired cat. A single paw-swipe at her nose sent her running away and hiding behind my wife, who was trying to be supportive while laughing so hard she had to sit down.

The book is coming along, slowly, but it's getting where I need it to be. I'm also looking at new markets where I can submit some of the stories I have sitting around on my hard drive. Also, I'll probably go through Roja at least one more time before I consider it ready to use as agent-bait. It's nice to have a plan of what to do. Now the only thing left is to follow through.

Some small part of my brain is also going back to The Red Man Burning. I haven't worked on it in a while, not since I missed getting In The Dark done on time (which still annoys the hell out of me). I'm having to go back to all those weird, awkward moments from when I was a kid. That's a time when you have to find your own way in a world where you have almost no say in what goes on in your own life, the people who have power of life and death over you have a set of priorities that they created long before you ever showed up, and everything from doorknobs to grocery shelves are designed for people who are six inches to a foot taller than you. Childhood has been romantisized in our culture into some magical, beautiful period in our lives when the world is fresh and beautiful and there's no lesson so hard that we can't get through it. I'm sure someone, somewhere, grew up in a place like that, but the more people I meet, the more I think that childhood is when spirits are broken and psychopaths learn just how well they're going to fit in. We all go through that period, and then we selectively scrub our memories of it until we're left with something we can tell ourselves and other people.

That's what I need to capture.

In the middle of writing this, Diamond started whining, which we've figured might be her signal for 'Could I step outside for a moment? I have some business to attend to.' I was only planning on taking her out into the backyard, but right now it's cool and misty out, with something that's not quite fog thickening up to the point where anything farther than a block away is hidden in soft gray clouds. I grabbed her leash and we both took a tour of the neighborhood while her toe nails clicked on the sidewalk, and every other sound was muted by the mist. Beautiful.

To end this on a cheery note, if I can get this to work right, I'll be posting a picture of our new dog right here. She's a big, furry lump of woof, and she's dozing in front of my desk while I'm writing this.

Still writing.

Getting better, and getting back to work

Well, after laying in bed for three weeks or so, it actually felt good to get out and hit my day job Thursday and Friday. Exhausting, but good. Coming home Friday I felt like I had worked forty hours straight, and was ready for another three weeks of recuperation.

It's slow getting back into 'In the Dark.' There are parts where I can see what it needs, but the words are coming out in a gradual trickle. I reread scenes that I've considered part of the foundation, and now I'm not as sure of them as I used to be. Worse, some parts do nothing, absolutely nothing. They don't grab me, advance the story, or even flow. What they feel like is damp paper that's been lying out in the rain because they fell out of a folder while I was thinking about something else. Yet you know what? I wouldn't trade one bit of it for pages of the same thing pressed in gold leaf, because they're mine, and because even if I end up plowing all of it up and starting over, it'll be the soil that the book grows from.

My wife and I were able to get out of the house over the weekend, despite a sudden drop in temperature and some rain. She hauled me out to go see 'I, Frankenstein,' which is not an intellectual movie, but was a heck of a lot of fun. I had read some reviews of it that were less than kind about the fact that the flick seems to recycle the plot from 'Underworld,' and it also sort of recycles Bill Nighy in a role similar to the one he played in that movie. But you know what? It was still a good watch. Sometimes it's nice to just let the higher parts of your brain relax and enjoy, as a friend of mine puts it, some “kicks and 'splodes.”

Still writing.

Night of the (maybe) living dead writer

Okay, this was not how I had planned to start off the new year. Getting sick as a dog and being able to just lay in bed, sweating and shivering, was not high on my list of fun things to do. It still isn't.

This crud has wiped me out so much, I've even fallen behind on reading, let alone putting any of my own words down. 'In the Dark' still needs to be finished, and yet the only thing I feel like doing half the time is crawling back in bed. Through all this my incredible wife has patiently nursed me, making sure I ate enough to keep from wasting away and drank enough water to keep from crumbling to dust. Seriously, if it weren't for her I would be in some really bad shape.

Prime Books has the release date for Handsome Devil as February eleventh. If I keep checking it, some part of my head tells me I'll freeze the passage of time and be forever locked into that infinitely smaller moment just before it comes out. Don't look at me like that. If you're expecting logic, how the heck did you find my blog?

Let me get better, and then we'll see some real lunacy. At some distant point before I contracted this bug, my wife and I got to talking about a genesis for the vampire myth, one that tells a whole new creation story.

Let me get better enough to write.

Don't trip and fall. Don't trip and fall. Don't trip and fall.

Yeah. I haven't been posting. This time of year is crazy enough, and on top of all the normal things I have a self-imposed deadline of the end of the year to finish In The Dark. So I'm running that last lap, seeing the finish line get ever closer and closer, and the image of slipping and planting myself face first into the dirt is the one that keeps popping up in my head. So I haven't been posting.

I have taken some time (small amounts) to do something besides sit and curse at my pc. My best beloved took me out to see the National Museum of Funeral History the other day, and that was a really fun place to visit. They've got hearses and carriages and vehicles to haul people, living and otherwise, that I never knew existed. Their exhibit on mourning clothes should definitely be seen, preferably when you're the only one in the building, and it's late at night.

We have good friends over to celebrate New Year's Eve, something that's a tradition in this house. Let the revelry commence just as soon as I and my wife get home from working that night.

Let it commence when I'm done writing.

Edit:  Wow, this is my 100th post!  Onward and upward!

When Shoplifting Is Encouraged

Part of the reason, I think, that it takes me so long to rewrite something is because when I write it, I only write the story. Here's the hors d'oeuvre, maybe something light to keep things going, try this meat and before you finish it there are vegetables of course, are you ready for something hot and sweet as a desert? There, wasn't that a good meal? What else could you want?

Oh, that's right. I need to put all of that in dishes before I serve it. Those clothes weren't expensive, were they?

I tend to not make an outline of a story until I'm either done or almost done, and even then I only make it to get all the time-lines straight and make sure I haven't had someone die before they do a chain-saw ballet. Maybe at one point I'll try outlining something before writing it, but sitting here writing this, just the thought of deciding how a story is going to develop more than two or three points ahead of time feels like getting locked into a box and mailed to France, but for real. I can feel a small space getting smaller with me in it, being dragged and shoved to someplace foreign where I don't know the language or the people. If someone forgets to put the right stamps on my box, I'll end up collecting dust in a corner of an empty building.

You see, the unknown is part of the fun. As I write, I may have some idea of where I want to end up, but it's only an idea. Half the time I get there, half the time I discover someplace better to be, and the third half of the time I find out the spot I once had in mind was never there in the first place and I have to plan the trip all over again. It's a journey, one I enjoy taking and inviting you along for the company. In real life I try to plan trips ahead of time, because I don't like getting lost. When I write, I love getting lost.

So when I'm done with the first draft of a story, or even better, a book, it's got no dish to sit in. It's a big pile of meats, vegetables, and scoops of ice cream, sitting together on the table. I've taken a fun journey, but I've also made a mess. The food needs dishes, and my story needs a world, a time, someplace to happen where the people and events can stand out from all the background. It needs all the things that it isn't, so we can clearly see what it is.

This is where shoplifting comes in handy. The person next to me at that inconvenient red light has no idea my story even exists, nor do the three women ahead of me in line at the restaurant I once ate at, nor do all the people who post remarks online on the websites that I get my news from. All of these people drive, walk, make conversation to pass the time, and scratch the backs of their ears when they have an itch. They have jobs, pasts, love lives, and their own outlooks on life and death. Their minds are as filled as yours or mine, and everything they do puts those minds on display. All you have to do is open your eyes and ears to catch those tidbits that are useful.

Now there is a line between picking up useful tidbits like how those ladies refer to their medications, and violating someone's personal space. When I shoplift words, phrases, or mannerisms from people I do it hit and run style, and I do it in public where I reduce my chance of getting sued. If you do it some other way you might just find out what the stalking laws in your area are like. Remember, you're not the one who decides when you're too close, the other person is, and they might be toting mace or a pistol.

(Oh, and if I get a call from your lawyer, asking me to appear as a witness for you? I'm deleting this post, and when I call him back I'll pretend I only speak Russian. Привет !)

Remember, the point is to add to the story.

The point is to write.

Today's lesson: Goats Don't Grow On Trees

Sorry about not posting last weekend. I was working on In The Dark, and because I'm the head of the safety committee where I work, I also had to put together an action plan for next year. All part of making sure no one gets killed which is something I do believe in, despite rumors to the contrary.

As opposed to my writing, where people regularly get killed. Speaking of which (writing, not killing), I'm at that point on In The Dark where the going is slow and grinding. All those little bits where I just wrote disconnected action sequences? Well, now I have to not only fill in all the bits between them, the whole thing has to make sense! I forget who said it, but the adage of 'Books aren't written, they're rewritten,' has proved itself twice in a row now. I really think it takes more work the second time around.

Oh, the title of the post? My wife has a sense of humor something like mine. I frequently tell people that I just don't have a sense of humor at all, especially at work. That's because at work I'm usually focused on something, and because I work in a warehouse environment, that something is often the sort that can get you seriously hurt. So I don't let my mind wander.

But I do have something that I call a sense of humor. Today my wife and I were out and about, and we saw some people begging on the side of the road. We both sometimes give money to people in need, but only when we don't feel like we're being taken advantage of, and this time we didn't give. But we did start talking about it, and I started putting different scenarios to her, trying to find the point that she would part with her money. I got to where the hypothetical beggars were kids in a school band, and one of them was out on the median, in a kilt and playing a set of bagpipes. Then, she admitted, she would contribute. “Because goats don't grow on trees.” Makes perfect sense, right?

Still writing.