With cable/satellite channels increasingly becoming an interchangeable array of pointless reality programming, Netflix is increasingly my refuge when I find sofa time. Wait five minutes, and some films below might become unavailable, but as I write this, Netflix "Watch Instantly" has an array of film noir classics available for streaming.
Laura: One of my favorites, a true mystery with clever plot twists, based on a novel by Vera Caspary. Dana Andrews, who'd later cope with dark runes in the horror classic Night of the Demon, is the detective hero looking into the murder of the title character played by Gene Tierney. An also pre-horror Vincent Price rounds out the cast.
Experiment in Terror: A late-era noir and FBI procedural based on the novel by The Gordons, who also penned That Darn Cat. It's directed by Blake Edwards. Glen Ford is The Gordons' recurring Agent Rip Ripley, out to help bank teller Lee Remick thwart a psycho's push to force her help in embezzlement.
Elevator to the Gallows: French noir from Louis Malle, this is James M. Cain, Jim Thompson-style crime drama with the focus on scheming lovers and the slow unraveling of their perfect murder.
Gilda: Source of the iconic, Rita Hayworth hair-tossing moment, this is grand-style thriller with a young Glen Ford looking like Jake Gyllenhaal. Set in South America the tale revolves around double crosses in a casino and around a tungston mine.
The Dark Corner: Lucy before she was loved is secretary to a wrongly accused private eye. They have to solve a murder together before they can move on with their lives.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers: Van Heflin's the good guy. Barbara Stanwick's the femme fatale, and Kirk Douglas is a crooked D.A. When Heflin returns to the town, his potential knowledge of a years-old crime stirs trouble and complicates his romance with good-girl-with-a-criminal record Lizabeth Scott.
I Wake Up Screaming: Worthy for the camera work alone, Victor Mature and Betty Grable cope with a tough cop and a bum rap.
For the rental que:Detour, signature noir unfortunately requiring a disk from Netflix though free on archive.org. Directed by The Black Cat's brilliant Edward G. Ulmer on a real shoe string, this stars Tom Neal as a traveller with a sad tale of a dark encounter with misunderstanding and an exploitive blackmailer.
I received an e-mail yesterday from my master's program. How would I like my name to appear on my diploma?
And the angels sang.
Seems like a good time to break radio silence, or blog lethargy.
A few things could still go wrong, but I think that's a guide with a candle at the end of the tunnel and not the express train.
A few other things are looking positive also, so while life's never perfect, it's nice to lean back for a moment this weekend and draw a deep breath, even as beyond all the times insist on being interesting.
I wish I could find the exact quote, but Alexander Solschenizyn once wrote of looking at apple trees after a rain.
As long as there are moments like that, he noted, it's possible to go on and persevere a little longer.
OK, I'm kinda back. Stewart Sternberg, whose The Ravening everyone should already have on pre-order, gigged me a bit a while back about repurposing Twitter tweets, but I've been a little swamped of late, and I did want to preserve some of those thoughts.
Hopefully I'll be back to the blogosphere full steam soon and fresh with ideas and energy. I've just been busy with school, work, and well that's about it, but that's been plenty.
For those of you who still have me in your RSS feed, let me get a few things on record on things nerd. I've managed to keep up with a few things in spite of the swamping.
Iron Man 2: liked it but the critics aren't really 100 percent wrong.
V: Like it, glad it survived, sorry it had to be between it and FlashForward which I liked marginally better.
Lost: Looking forward to the finale. Is The Source the same thing that's in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction or that box Mike Hammer had in Kiss Me Deadly?
Inception: Looks interesting and I like Christopher Nolan.
Reading: The Outside Man by Richard North Patterson.
Next Up: I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond. Wish me well.
Before they're lost, I thought I'd save for posterity--or the life of blogspot--a few of the tweets that have erupted from my brain over the past few weeks:
My body's vertical, but my brain's still horizontal.
If John Krasinski is cast as Captain America, I'm trying to imagine him rolling his eyes in response to Nick Fury.
When did reconciliation become so divisive?
What is the deal with Facebook's news feed? I just wished happy travels to somebody who's back already.
I'm pretty sure the coyote I'm looking at isn't as scared of me as I am of him.
Die unneeded sentences. Die!
The one rule that's really set in concrete at our house is "No Brando Impressions."
Spartacus: Blood and Sand = Original Spartacus + Red Shoe Diaries x 300.
Apple is introducing a new device for activists. It's called the iMad.
I'm having a nosebleed. I may be unstuck in time. How'd they fix that on Lost?
Passive sentences do vex me.
Not 'aints no more.
"Select theaters" usually means nowhere near you.
A lot of warnings tell you caffeine will make you more tired later, but I live in the now!
My fortune cookie today read: "A peaceful mind is a source of power." Good sentiment, especially today.
Keyser Söze is rumored to be using an iSlate. (Note: That's what everyone thought the iPad was going to be called when rumors were flying.)
Why do they call them car coats? I have a heater in the car. I need my coat when I get OUT of my car.
You are not in Kansas anymore. This is Pandora. Please select a song or artist to create your playlist.
You can call me Sid if you're feeling monosyllabic.
I drink so much green tea I should be invincible by now. Wait, I think I just saw a demonic monkey.
Below is material from what may seem an esoteric exercise from my last MFA residency, but I kind of liked what came out of it. This is actually just a part of the whole process, which involved the insertion of some other text between sections.
When all of it's said and done the process winds up being a bit of a psychological exercise that mines your thoughts about your writing. It really provides insight. I was amazed.
Our assignment was to seek out signs or words in our environment then write a few lines about each. Made me notice things I was walking past, for sure.
Outside the process, as a mixture of found art and text, this is what came about:
We have a new episode of Fear on Demand live. I guess an "at last" should be added. I was so fried after the past academic semester that I found it hard to lift a finger for most of December.
Happily, now that it's time to start writing school again, I have an episode ready and a couple of more I can launch down the road in timely publication fashion.
This episode features a tale called "The Color of My Wounds" by Martel Sardina, who has several Twilight Tales publications, making her contribution a nice fit for FOD. Wayne Sallee who is a dear friend of mine and who contributed a story to Episode 2 of FOD, is a Twilight Tales alum as well, and many other Twilight Tales contributors are friends or friends of friends.
All writers who put pen to the darker genres share a certain kinship, and more roads lead to the Chicago Mafia of horror writers than many people realize.
Anyway drop by the FOD blog or search for it on iTunes and stay tuned for some more chilling tales in the near future.
I don't know that you can call my first effort at making iPhone wallpaper steampunk with 100 percent accuracy, but I had the spirit of steampunk in mind as I crafted it for the SidiPhone with the help of a few tutorials and Photoshop accessories.
I'm not sure why I felt a desire to trick out my new phone with steampunk touches. Maybe it was the new Sherlock Holmes movie, which felt a little steampunky and drove me back to the Sherlock canon for a December/January binge, or maybe it's just that turbulent times always make us look in different directions, namely backward.
There's a poem called 221B Baker Street, written in the '40s after the 20th century had been shaken by two wars. It celebrates the simpler time and world of the canon, a time where it's "always eighteen ninety-five" and where Holmes can always tie up things in tidy fashion.
Perhaps the constant improvement of technology and it's encroachment on our lives fuels--if you will--some of steampunk's current popularity.
At any rate, it resonates with me a bit at the moment. My effort above is ready for right-clicking if you're inclined to use it. Or if you want to make your own here's roughly how I got there, though this is by no means a step by step tutorial.
Resources
A tutorial from Abduzeedo on creating a vintage travel diary was my starting point and has links to stock art and many of the great Photoshop brushes that made it an easy job. The background is done with a brush from this Waterlogged Map collection.
Some of the gears and tools are from a couple of sets of steampunk Photoshop brushes found here and here. A few I didn't use are here. Maybe for Steampunkwallpaper 2.
I really just added a few bevels, texture touches and drop shadows to make the tools and gears look more real.
More steampunk fun
I ran across quite a few bits of steampunkery as I researched resources. Here are a few more links for browsing enjoyment.
So we’ve got the “Big Bang Theory” paused on the DVR while taking care of a couple of things around the house when the sound of thumping begins...
This was one night last week. You may have read my Twitter posts about it. Thought they might be my last words if not just a chance to get more handy with Twitterific.
“The weather’s really getting bad,” Christine said from across the room.
I was thinking I must be hearing pine needles hurled at the house like darts. My brain didn’t process hail as a possibility for a few more seconds.
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” I agreed.
Then the sirens started.
The next voice you hear This burg’s early alert system looks like alien technology atop strategically placed poles. One stands about 30 feet from our back door. When they test it, it sounds like the voice of God booming through the evergreens.
I didn’t hear any spoken word messages. The howling winds must’ve drowned them out.
Please stand by We flipped back over to broadcast TV to see if there were any reports, but the howling winds were interrupting the satellite signal.
Generally I feel invincible where weather is concerned, but things started to seem a little hairy. Christine, who is likewise not particularly skittish, said: “Maybe we should go a central location.”
I shrugged and followed her to the hallway. Something had to be making the sirens go off, right? Sitting on the floor, we called the cats to join us. You may recall from previous posts there are four of them. They sauntered in as if to ask: “Why are you sitting on the floor?” Then they sauntered back out.
“Maybe we should get in the bedroom closet,” Christine said.
“I’m getting the laptop,” I said, thinking wireless might work even if nothing else did. I’d already checked the weather on my iPhone, but the outlook for Cupertino was fine.
So we took the laptop with a streaming report from a local TV station to the closet, and I started catching cats one at a time.
The phone rang as I cornered the last feline.
“Let it go,” Christine said, thinking it was probably her father who lives one state over. He calls about the weather. He called once to see if we had snow seconds before I started seeing flurries outside. I’ve never figured out how he managed that.
Portents Actually we learned later that omniscient early alert service telephones you to tell you you're doomed, just in case howling winds are drowning out the outside audio message. I’m kind of glad I didn’t answer. That might have made things seem serious.
So we found ourselves sitting on the floor watching the weather man report circular swirling motions detected on radar about five miles south of where we were sitting.
The cats didn’t like the sound of hail on the roof and wondered why we’d imprisoned them in the closet, but otherwise they seemed calm. Ash was particularly happy to have Christine’s polar fleece robe spread out for him.
That'd be, you know... I looked toward the ceiling where boxes of comic books were arranged on a top shelf. The Joker’s face from the back of The Killing Joke grinned through the hand-hold of one carton.
How ironic it would be, I thought, if my comic book collection fell and crushed me to death.
Otherwise nothing really profound flashed through my brain, no PowerPoint show of my life, no real panic. Guess I wasn’t really convinced by the Sturm und Drang usually reserved for a night Lost is new.
The web stream continued to work through the whole period we sat there on the closet floor. I guess it was about 45 minutes.
In the old days—early 2008—we would’ve just had to sit in the closet until we stopped hearing sirens. Instead, we watched the orange and green Rorschach pattern gradually move East on th Doppler radar.
Happily I don’t think anyone was seriously hurt, though some surrounding areas experienced property damage. Eventually we crawled out of the closet and set the cats free and went on with the evening routine.
We finished The Big Bang theory the next night when things were quiet. By then, we could laugh.
Bones is proving to be an excellent way to catch up. The collection came out in the fifties and many of the stories appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. They have the feel of other short stories of that era.
They remind me a little of the slightly skewed weirdness of Shirley Jackson, meaning they're chilling in very subtle ways.
The title story is science fiction horror with a twist, recounted by a narrator who has just encountered a man from a lost expedition. The man details encounters with the men without bones, leading up to startling and eerie revelations.
My favorite story so far is one called "The Shady Life of Annibal," another as-told-to-story in which a scandal sheet journalist interviews a famous actress. She reveals secrets of her parents and her slightly askew early life.
It's a really nice find for the new year, and I'm looking forward to turning a few more of the e-pages.
I used to say, in those ancient days of 2005, it would certainly be nice to have my iPod and my cell phone wed.
Around that time Christine crunched some numbers and determined we'd come off well going to pre-paid cell phones.
They announced the iPhone, right after we bought these really nice LG phones that looked like racing cars. Alltel apparently sponsored a NASCAR driver. Who knew?
Anyway, with new phones and an insanely cheap payment plan, let's just say we weren't going to be moving to mechanized looms very quickly in our household.
Flashforward. I've finally worn Christine down. I got an iPhone for Christmas, so 2010 will be my 2007.
I promptly seized the 21st century technology and downloaded a couple of 19th century novels via an app called Stanza, though I got an app called Epi from Epicurious.com shortly afterwards.
That puts recipes and beer ads at your fingertips, so if you find great mahi mahi at the grocer--no more regretting you didn't look up a mahi mahi recipe before you left the house.
I'm hopeful that Christine will see the value in that just like The Bob Newhart Show reruns on Hulu helped her understand the virtue of an HDMI cable stretched across the living room from computer to TV.
I don't know if it will radically revolutionize my life otherwise, but utilizing the Twitterrific may soon improve my ability to type with my thumbs.
If you look hard enough you can find negative reviews of James Cameron's Avatar, and I suppose some of the notes about cliches and obtrusiveness of theme are not inaccurate. For me, the sheer joy of Avatar as a moviegoing experience outweighs any of that, however.
It wasn't a scene of flying creatures that wowed me most. It's a long movie, and 3D had already become part of the landscape by the point the first mountain banshee appeared.
The subtle 3D use in a scene in which a crippled Marine is extricated from a cryogenic chamber piqued my imagination first and foremost. With floating orderlies and depth of field, it made the world on the big screen a little different than anything I'd seen before. That's really what's needed in our universe if the movie going experience is to be more than a marketing campaign for Blu-Ray sales.
It really felt like I'd been sucked into the universe of science fiction novels where zero G was a norm.
Flying creatures, jungle landscapes, spiritual indigenous humanoids and rampaging monster dogs only supplemented the experience.
They are really cool, though. It was like being in a fully imagined Edgar Rice Burroughs universe. It's clear James Cameron really did draw on all of the books and movies he experienced as a kid in crafting Avatar as he said in his Studio 360 interview.
It's a wonderous amalgamation, and as Roger Ebert states it's worth seeing if you can get to a theater to be part of the conversation.
I think it's good when we have an occasion for shared dreams, and if something gets us off the sofa, well that's staving off the couch potato universe of WALL-E a little longer isn't it?
Got this on Facebook from a buddy of mine from way back. OK, way, way back, but I thought I'd bring it over here since these things are essentially blog posts and the blog allows for a little enhancement.
The original argument:
Here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!! Just copy this entire note and paste as a new note on your Facebook page blog. Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then tag this note to a bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person that sent it to you...'Tis the Season to be NICE! OK, if you're reading this, feel free to cut and paste for your own blog.
My answers:
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Gift bags when I can make them work, wrapping paper as a last resort.
2.Real tree or Artificial?
It’s been artificial for a few years, but we have opened negotiations on a real tree for next year.
3.When do you put up the tree?
Somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. This year we were a little early.
4. When do you take the tree down?
Pretty quickly after the New Year, coinciding with the post-Christmas letdown they always discussed in "Peanuts."
5. Do you like eggnogg?
Yeah, but I may pass this year. We always wind up with a little left over in the carton.
I do all right with everyone. The key is just not to put too much thought into the items you pick up from those novelty racks in big department stores. Unless someone I buy for is reading this. In which case, I put thought into your gift, just not the other gifts.
8. Easiest person to buy for?
My wife gives me a list, calculated to stay within budget, shipping excluded, though.
9. Do you have a nativity scene?
One that’s been in my family for ages. The paint’s worn off the figures, but I like it. OK, truth to tell it's put up so that it won't have cats rampaging through it like Godzilla through Tokyo.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
I’m going to go with e-mail this year, though a Christmas letter was planned.
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
Let’s see which ticked me off more, the McDonald’s ornament I got as a gift at the office once, or the 59 cent compass I got in fifth grade.
12. Favorite Christmas Movies?
It's probably passé now, but it's "A Christmas Story.” I was flipping channels the first year that was on cable, encountered the “triple-dog-dare” scene and have been hooked on Jean Shepherd ever since.
I love "It's A Wonderful Life" too. Come on, what are you heartless? It's great.
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
I had better get started, hadn't I?
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Not that anyone can prove without investigation and affidavits.
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Either the duck or cornbread dressing. Tough to say.
16. Color of Lights on the tree?
Multi-colored enamel-coated C-7s. We’ve learned through experimentation this Christmas that four strands is what a single outlet can support.
17. Favorite Christmas song? This year, “Elf’s Lament” by BNL.
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
We work our way back from relatives’ homes to celebrate at our house.
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?
Let’s see there’s Donner, Blitzen, Comet, Cupid, Siegfried?ah, I know how to look it up if I need to.
20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
It’s an angel, kind of stylized glass with wings.
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Well, some things have to be charged up or assembled on Christmas Eve so they’re ready for Christmas Day but generally it’s Christmas morning, a deviation from my childhood tradition. We opened family gifts on Christmas Eve. Santa's gifts were available upon waking Christmas Day unless they required assembly by my cousin who arrived around 11.
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
I'm sure there's something about traffic and crowded stores, but I'm OK at the moment.
23. Favorite ornament, theme, or color?
My parachuting teddy bear ornament. It’s a parachuting teddy bear, need I say more?
We're well over a year past the chronic renal failure diagnosis for my cat Daisy. The initial news was devastating, as you know if you drop by here often.
Daisy's been our pet since she was only weeks old.
Weeks following the diagnosis were trying as we struggled with our vet's help to stabelize her condition. Subcutaneous fluid treatments and appetite stimulants helped restore her to a better state.
I wrote a year ago about her first post-diagnosis holiday season. This season's beginngs brought a reminder of her condition. She threw up last Saturday. Apparently renal failure produces stomach chemicals that lead to nausea and vomiting.
She'd been doing so well that I'd become complacent, the knowledge of her condition pushed to a back room in my mind. Then, a while after dinner, she sat up on my lap with an odd look in her eyes. Never let it be said cats don't have expressions.
A few minutes after the odd look, she hopped to the floor and tossed up her dinner. She kept throwing up through the night, turning to dry heaves and continuing on Sunday, making me fear she'd begun some kind of drastic decline.
We pulled out some anti-nausea medication she hadn't needed in a while and began to give her doses. On Monday morning she began to eat again, and was perky when I checked on her on a break from work. The vet suggested keeping up the nausea medication a while before deciding if we needed to bring her in.
By evening she had resumed her usual behavior. She curled onto my legs when I went to bed, then after a while she began to trot out all of the acts in her repertoire.
Around 11, she got in a fight with our oldest tom, Monty.
Around 11:30 there was the cold nose on the face. It's her way of asking for fresh food.
A couple hours later she was crying out in a shrill voice. I thought it was the prelude to getting sick again and jumped up to discover her walking around with her favorite toy in her mouth. It's a Beanie Baby knockoff of a mouse, and she's known to walk up the hall with it, whining softly.
Now she'd chosen to do it at 3 a.m. or so.
If she could play a musical instrument, that would probably have been her next feat, but she let things i.e. me rest after that.
She's on Christine's lap now, a week later, dozing as I peck keys, though moments ago she was pacing back and forth across my keyboard.
That's another act of hers. I'm happy to have her for each show.
I usually wait until after Thanksgiving to kick off my personal holiday traditions, but I began a little early this year. Thanksgiving was a little late after all.
I started playing my iPod holiday playlist in my office late last week, and for my morning cup of tea I've turned to my seasonal tea of choice, Red Zinger.
I suppose it's because I've been ready for a break for a while. I've had time for nothing but required reading since August. I've had great books to read, but there's something to be said for reading what you want.
There's something to be said as well for things like going to the movies. Christine and I went to see A Christmas Carol, not a bad flick for a holiday mood.
I also picked up Garrison Keillor's A Christmas Blizzard at the library as well. It's a slightly zany account of a Chicago millionare who finds himself by going back to his snowbound home in Looseleaf, North Dakota.
Sometime in the '90s, I guess, I realized the old Emerson, Lake and Palmer lyrics from "I Believe in Father Christmas" are true: "...the Christmas you get you deserve."
So as December creeps on, I always endeavor to make it feel like the holidays.
We started assembling our tree over the weekend, though a decision for more lights delayed the completion. Soon we'll have it in the window, and snow men and Santas are already dappling mantles and bookshelves.
It's my own personal celebration, but it works. Here's hoping it's a great season for everyone.
I'm nearing the end of the semester. I knew this was going to be a busy time, but things have been brutal beyond my wildest expectations in my MFA program.
I suppose any program includes a bit of deconstruction. I passed that a while back, polishing prose and re-thinking scenes under an advisor's whip. Often I found myself combating my own hard-headedness.
I think I shook off my own form of writer's block this semester. I've long worried about writing scenes of too much brevity. I let go of that, and I agreed to reconsider the complex sentences I tend to love a little too much.
I reached the conclusion of my first draft on Saturday. I think I tied up all the pieces, though I have a great deal of revising to do. I need to move the beginning of one plot ripple back a little, and I think that will improve the overall pace of my story. Then there's the pruning of extra words and all of those other tweaks.
It's good to have an end in site, and good to have a moment to check in here and say hello.
Hope everyone's well, and that we can talk more frequently, at least for a while.
Interesting creative writing class last night. I called the segment my "Pulling It All Together" session. I originally conceived the class as a beginning writing course for retirees ready to pick up their pens, possibly for the first time.
My student makeup quickly expanded beyond that when it moved outside the junior college continuing education setting, so I have a mixture of people with varying degrees of experience. I've been working to make sure to show how the techniques I'm espousing relate to memoirs and creative non-fiction as well as fiction. Happily I have students honing creative non-fiction pieces that read like short stories.
I started with developing original ideas, moved through plot, character and the importance of polishing prose.
Theme, suspense and dialog seemed like the next points to hammer on the journey. Those seriously developing new works as part of class are at the point of adding nuance to some excellent works, so my goal was to suggest ways to hone the spirit of work so that it offers more than just a recitation of facts or events.
I quoted various sources in lecture, and we examined a story by John Cheever called "The Sutton Place Story" that's both suspenseful, thematically rich and reliant on characters. I was afraid it was a little esoteric, but it resonated.
Students asked if the class has to end in another week.
Oh yeah, it does, if I'm going to remain standing. But it was nice to have that response.
I'm making slow progress on many fronts. Blogging obviously hasn't been one of them for a while, but I thought I'd check in which a quick update and get back to profound updates when possible.
I have just two classes left in the teaching practicum that's part of my MFA. I've held onto about 10 students for five weeks now. I was worried since it was free I wouldn't get a commitment, but people are hanging in.
We're working on the art of re-writing outside of class and writing theory in class. Exercises, lecture by me and discussion of short stories and brief creative non-fiction. It's tough to do a lot of novels in six weeks, but I think short pieces have been helpful in exemplifying technique.
I've tried to give them a variet of readings including "An Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Marquez and Cheever's thriller-like "The Sutton Place Story." It's a great look at how character affects plot and plot informs theme. Or at least I think it is.
I found a Photoshop contest picture that was surreal and used that for a writing prompt and spurred some people to creativity that was wonderful.
On the novel front, I'm working on rewrites and polish and aiming toward a final draft for readers for next semester.
There's goodness in it at the moment, though it's not perfect.
Really wanted to get something on record since my Oliver film was my last entry. Hope all is well for everyone.
I have to teach a class in creative writing as part of my MFA requirement. In academic parlance it's a practicum. Every field has its jargon, I guess.
Bottom line, I have to teach at least three people for 15 hours. I called up the junior college in this burg a while back to see if I could do that in their continuing education program. I thought a class that was part of an established program would be more fun and more beneficial to me. I also figured since they had a marketing program in place it would go smoother i.e. I wouldn't have to do the marketing.
Turned out they hadn't had anyone to offer creative writing in a while, so they signed me up. But it seems the class didn't "make." That's another use of academic parlance. We all know what make means in the more colloquial parlance. Yeah, "make" is what I seem to be left with a big pile of for what seem to be a variety of Catch-22s.
Happily, sometimes things seem to fall into place even when make happens. I discovered three people in my day-to-day encounters who were interested in taking the class. When one of them called to register that's how we found out it had apparently been cancelled. I'd worried about that happening, but I really stayed pretty subdued when I got that word.
The potential participant noted almost instantly that her minister is extremely community minded and opens the doors to provide a venue for many different groups and issues, so I called him up, talked things over, and he said he was down with it and that he'd be the observer I needed for one session.
So, after a little coordination with the other guys who'd expressed interest, looks like we have a creative writing class for the month of September.
While I'm a writer, I can't deny the virtues of direct sales techniques.
The Lesson Plan
My plan is to focus on wringing the cliches out of ideas, look at how to build a story from the nucleus of a core idea then focus in-depth on character and plot development and how character and plot feed each other.
I'd planned to look a little at how John Goodman's character drives the story in "The Big Lebowski," but we may forego clips from that since the language is maybe a little indelicate for a church venue.
I'll start putting flyers around to see if we can attract a few more participants to, er, make things interesting.
With any luck, this project will turn out to be "The Make!"
My current MFA advisor has a reading list that was given to him by a professor of his, though he's refined it a bit. It's a wonderfully eclectic collection of titles, and I'm happy to have learned of a book called The Lime Works from that list.
It's a book that may not be to all tastes. It's a rather eccentric work, and I had to get it via interlibrary loan because it's momentarily out of print, thus used-copy costs have sky-rocketed, but I believe it's scheduled for re-publishing next year as a mass market paperback.
Originally published in German, it is the tale of Konrad, an eccentric scholar denied formal education by his parents but determined in later years to craft a masterwork on the science of hearing.
Toward that end, he thwarts a cousin's efforts to prohibit his purchase of a vast, abandoned lime works and moves his invalid wife to the dark, cold plant to conduct hearing experiments to contribute to the perfect book he's convinced resides inside his head.
Author Thomas Bernhard tells Konrad's story in a manner that virtually puts the reader inside the character's twisted mind, though it's not a point of view story exactly. Instead the virtually stream-of-consciousness narrative is the amalgamation of several accounts compiled by an insurance man after Konrad's murder of his wife, which occurs on the opening page.
It's a twisted, dark tale of obsession, madness and one of the worst cases of writer's block ever. If you see a copy for under $40 grab it, and immerse yourself for a little while in the chilly, shadowy world of the lime works.
I think the gist of Michael Pollan's New York Times Magazine piece "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch," which coincides with the release of the Meryl Streep movie about Julia Child, Julie and Julia, is that more people are watching cooking shows than actually cooking.
Sometimes that's not a bad thing.
I do a fair amount of culinary work at home, so I might not fit the pattern described, but I had occasion to watch The Food Network a good bit a few years ago. It helped pass the time as I sat with my mom in hospital rooms on a few different occasions, and I recalled that as I perused Mr. Pollan's article.
My mother was a home economics teacher for most of her career, an expert on food preparation, and sewing. Her memory had faded by the time she neared the end of her days, so I sought things that might seem familiar to her such as food preparation.
She never really developed much of an interest in the shows, but I sat watching, whiling those endless hours between doctor visits as she fought one condition or another. In a trapped situation, any diversion becomes more engrossing.
It winds up being an oddly fond memory now that she's about a year gone, not the best of memories by far, but a pleasant moment. Sitting with her, watching Emeril prepare a chicken dish or one of the other hosts dishing pasta or barbecue rubs.
Watching those shows provided peaceful lulls between the strife-filled moments. They were just entertainment, not instructional shows. They were something we could share in a strange way, something my mother might once have appreciated but couldn't fully on her slow journey toward the end.
I printed out some of the recipes from the web later. They're in the folder with all of our recipes, but I've never attempted any of them.
Brett's story is read by Julie Hoverson a writer and actress who is the creator of the fabulous and award-winning audiodrama podcast 19 Nocturne Boulevard.
Julie and I met online because she heard my Southern accent on a FOD introduction and asked me to play a gambler in a weird Western installment of her show.
Age of the Zombies
The second episode of Age of the Zombies is currently live, featuring me wearing a different hat. I'm the voice of Jake, ex-Master Sergeant and current and future zombie-fighter. Again, the Southern accent is serving me well.
I've just learned AOTZ is a finalist for a Parsec Award for speculative fiction in podcasting, which is kind of exciting.
You can listen to any and all of the stuff mentioned above online without an MP3 player though it's also fun to download them and take them with you.
Necropolis Studio Productions, producers of AOTZ, also have a new podcast coming soon, Call Me Jack, a show about THAT Jack.
Check them all out and enjoy, but be warned, they're not for the squeamish.
My MFA advisor and I have had a mini-debate about revision. Nothing serious. It's been intriguing.
As roughly the midpoint of the book I'm working on as a master's thesis made its way down my fingertips, some epiphanies about the main character occurred that meant some changes would be required earlier in the narrative.
He's in the midst of solving a mystery while trying to pick himself up from a failure and cope with what prove to be strange surroundings, secrets and ghosts.
My advisor and I have agreed a slightly different approach in how he goes about things will strengthen the narrative. It's not drastic, but it means some manuscript surgery, and all surgery is major isn't it?
For the defense My thought was that I should push to the end of the manuscript, solve the mystery, then work on the changes. Both practical and philosophical considerations led my advisor to disagree.
My advisor promised to fight whatever prevailing opinions might arise in faculty meetings on my behalf, but urged that I think about reworking now. The program I'm in requires a change of advisor after two semesters in order to get a fresh set of eyes on a work.
The rebuttal Practically, the change in advisor without change in manuscript would mean a reader coming to the material cold without a full understanding about how it was "gonna" change, save with a lot of talking to him or her.
On the philosophical front, my advisor felt the final stretch of the work whether sprint, hike or long haul, would benefit from adjustments made earlier in the tale.
I resisted because I've always written first and revised later. A first draft for me is like a minutely detailed outline. (I heard Joe Lansdale say something like that once, but I agree with it.)
After a while, I relented, though. From a pragmatic standpoint, it makes sense to hone now so that over the next several months as I approach a finish, if the universe is willing, the manuscript will be closer to complete and ready for the second reading to really fine tune.
My advisor was right, in part about the benefit.
It's a bit exhilarating, I must admit, to be making some of the surgery now. It's not as easy as having the whole piece to hammer and carve, but, as always with revision, I'm finding small tidbits in the narrative that I can utilize in later chapters. A wink here, a twist there.
In a way, it's like creating an alternate reality or a parallel timeline to the original vision, but that's not so bad. Eventually I should be able to pick and choose the recast scenes, hopefully crafting a stronger and more meaningful work.
It's also a little terrifying. A work of fiction is after all a house of cards. A millimeter change at one point could throw something off at another. To mix in another meataphor, the flapping of a butterfly wing....
Happily that only means more revision, and since "more meaningful" has been a key goal for me in this endeavor, the experimentation is worthwhile. It also demands a little more devotion from me, and challenges additional commitment.
That's a little angst inducing, but, as Christine notes, good things, and creative growth, don't come easy, so a little more commitment from me, meh, couldn't hurt.
My writing energy has been focused on the MFA novel/thesis of late, hence the dearth of blog posts.
Sometimes there are just so many words in the fingertips, and writing with the help and attention of mentors makes for a different experience than working alone under contract or not.
I'm mainly endeavoring to weave in a significant character thread that's come up as part of the crafting of the work, while moving forward as well. I probably have another 30,000 words of new material or so to finalize the first draft. Piece of cake, right?
Just means staying focused on writing and away from anything other than 140 Tweets to expel random bits of material in my brain that don't really go anywhere else.
The benefit of the revise and move forward method at the same time should mean the manuscript should wrap up around the time that it needs to, if all goes well, knock wood.
Happy Fourth Everyone. Stay tuned to the Tweet column at right for the random expulsions of thought plus the occasional interpretations of what my cats are thinking.
The June episode of Fear on Demand is now live. It's Episode 7. I'm kind of pleased to have made it this far. My grad school advisor observed that a podcast seemed like an open-ended, sort of living anthology, and I suppose that's a good analysis.
A few more stories and we'll make it to 10 episodes, which has kind of been the goal in the back of my mind. If I make it to 13, that would be an interesting number for a horror podcast as well. I think I'm technically better yet again on this episode, though I do say "uh" a lot in the intro. Sorry, I'll work on that next.
Good Kids
This month's story is "Good Kids," one of mine, and it was originally recorded by Thayne Multimedia for a planned audio-anthology of non-supernatural horror stories. It was going to be a follow-up to the War of the Worlds adapatdation I wrote (available at right from iTunes), but it was delayed by various factors so Troy Thayne agreed to let me use the story, and two others, for the podcast.
Original publication
The tale originally appeared in an online magazine called "The Boneyard." It was written in the nineties and was interestingly sort of the inspiration for a novel.
I described the tale of good students facing a bully to my then editor.
"What if the supernatural were involved?" she asked. "What if one of the kids were a witch and what if things with her got out of hand?"
That nucleus became my young adult novel, "New Year's Evil," which appeared under the pseudonym Michael August. Happily that was one of my books that was later translated into German. (Apparently used copies can be had for about $1 from Abe Books.)
It followed a group of students who enlisted a witch's help to thwart persistent aggression from a troublesome kid. She helped deal with him, but then she turned out to be an evil witch who was out of control.
"Good Kids" is quite different, a dark tales of misguided young people pursuing relief and revenge.
It's out there now. Hope everyone likes it if you drop by and give a listen.
(Warning: Some content could be considered spoilers.)
(Oops, in the first iteration of this post, I was partially asleep apparently and attributed The Lost World to Verne and not Doyle)
Christine suggested Up for a weekend movie. She is more selective about what she wants to see than I, checking reviews first and weighing the quality of the experience against the time viewing requires.
I read reviews after movies. I pretty much see everything if I can, if not in the theaters, well there's Netflix, but it's always good if she wants to go to the movies. Saves me the persuasive speech.
We both agreed Up was incredible, an offbeat, often funny and wacky adventure that's infused with the spirit of the pulps and the memory of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. What more can you ask for from a summer flick?
A really warm and sweet love story? It has that too, perhaps the best surprise--that in an animated feature you have an elderly hero still in love with his wife's memory. Happily and in bittersweet fashion we see their married life unfold, all before balloons hoist the old man's house heavenward.
Both the elderly hero, Carl, and his wife, we learn, were enamored in their youth with newsreel reports of an adventurer of the grand scale, Charles Muntz, who brought back fossil evidence of a giant bird from a plateau in South America. Sound a little like Conan Doyle's The Lost World?
Faster than you could say Professor Challenger, that evidence was questioned, and Muntz set off in a Jules Verne-like Master of the World style airship crewed by hounds--ya gotta loves dogs in this movie--to find more evidence, leaving the young Carl and his wife longing to head for the same destination.
It's a path Carl pursues only in later years, and there's lots of fast-paced excitement, fun and perfecto plotting along the way once he takes off.
Meshing a new Disney/Pixar flick with the roots of Verne adventures past seems a wonderful homage while unfolding an all-new, colorful story that's unlike anything else, as fresh in its own way as WALL-E.
It's imagination unleashed, and it proves how a unique story can soar.
It's well worth the time and has a wonderfully sweet and complementary animated short attached.
I sent my in the final packet of the semester for my creative writing program at Goddard College Wednesday, putting me at about the halfway point on my manuscript/master's thesis/novel and the program for that matter.
As I mentioned to my advisor in one of the five writing packets of the semester, it's like writing a novel as a serial or at least it's working on a first draft with at least one person watching you.
It's an interesting way to do things. You get constant feedback and discussion and have opportunities to discuss--in writing--plot points, themes and characters. For me, it's proving to be a very positive experience.
Writing and Reading
Reading and critical analysis of other books is a significant part of the effort as well, and as you know if you come here often, I've been doing a lot of that too. I heard going into the program that it's a little like that old Far Side Cartoon in which a scientist has an equation sprawled across his blackboard. Numbers and symbols lead step by step through a theory up to step 4 which reads: "Then a miracle occurs."
It's not quite a miracle, but there is something in the process that brings enlightenment, and it's not easy to define. It's not just reading and writing, which I've always done. It's the mixture, with the analysis and the discussion and the periodic gatherings for residencies, which are kind of like extended coffee houses with clusters of writers.
Somewhere around that last packet, it really hit me, and it exorcised some of those demons that torment all of us with fingers on keyboards.
In part, I was reading a book, and a good one, by an author I've known for sometime. I don't think he likes me very much, but that doesn't really matter. It might not matter that I know him, but perhaps it did, knowing he's a flesh and blood guy and not a theoretical Great Writer laboring somewhere with quill and cup of tea.
As I read, I had the epiphany -- the brilliance wasn't all accomplished in the first draft. Every supporting character wasn't as crisp and multi-faceted the first time around. The action at the midway point didn't fall right into place at first. The plot probably wasn't as perfect and precise as he wound things up.
But he got there. He finished the race with a hell of a novel, an achievement both popular and literary, entertaining and thematically rich.
"Forgive yourself your first draft," my advisor told me as we had coffee in one of our official meetings as the semester began.
It's something I've learned even Wilkie Collins might have said. Apparently there was a serious plot/timeline issue with the serialized magazine version of his brilliant page-turner The Woman in White. That was corrected when the story was published in book form but speaking of working in public...What a challenge that must have been.
I knew that fact about first drafts. I've lived through that before, but now I KNOW it, and I understand it in fresh ways, and it's coupled with all of the discussion of character development and through stories that have come from the the time in the trenches the last few months.
It's an interesting journey. My feet are tired, but I will keep walking, because there another half a dessert to cross, one step at a time.
I ran across a blog contest via Twitter and decided to enter for the fun of it. I had a little trouble with the entry form, so I think a few people dropped by to read a January post of mine instead of the piece on Ceremony and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but it's always nice to have new friends, and the contest results offer links to some cool writing of many types.
Zorlone – “The Ice King's Vow” - "The message of the poem is slowly unravelled in exquisite lines. First it deals with thoughts and desires, then flows unerringly into the climax/denouement and finally the explosive ending or rather the chilling final lines..." -- JenaIsle
Jennifer M Scott – “Icicles” - A picture poem comparing ice to love.
Roy – “I Thought I Was Tough” - Another poem borne out of frustrations of not being able to beat what life has to dish out tome.
Zorlone – “Shy Guitar” - "Melodious, a story about love and music intertwined." - Strawberry Girl.
Dragon Blogger – “Icy Passion” - Challenged to write a poem about love and comparing it ICE without using the words heart or love, I came up with this poem about "Icy" love.
Webbielady – “What's the True Measure of Intelligence?” - A recent call to two of her friends made Rogue question what is the real meaning of intelligence... Why? Why? How can we tell if a person is really intelligent? Can we really measure this thing?
Presenting the finest of the writer’s blogs by the bloggers who write them. Highlighting the top posts as chosen by the May 29, 2009 WOOF Contest participants. Want in to join the next WOOF? The next contest ends June 12. Submit a link to your best writing post of the last 3 weeks using the form on this page. Participants, repost the winning link list within a week and you’re all set.
Other WOOF Contestants for 05/29/09
Prose
Sidney Williams – “What's on the iPod? - Montego Bay” -As I drove through another rainy morning cloaked with a grey, wet blanket, Bobby Bloom's Montego Bay popped up as my iPod shuffled songs.
Roy – “I'm A Bad Liar” - A satirical poem about earning money online.
Jennifer M Scott – “Garnet Teardrops” - Inspired by a art created by a fellow blogger.
Dragon Blogger – “You've Got Mail” - Poem crafted from random words about a spam email.
Dragon Blogger – “Strength of Loss” - Memorial Day poem about losing a loved one in the service.
When I Wander – “European Patent Office (EPO) Experience, Cherished” - I have so many good things to tell about my previous colleagues and how I wish I still work with them. Now that I am in another company, all I can do is to thank each of them in a form of poem.
Deeptesh Sen – “Boatman and some love songs” - The divine, a girl and a boatman.......the air of surreal tunes.
Deeptesh Sen – “Angel of dark” - Surreal love and fear....and some soft magic!
Pamela K. Kinney, whose Cthulhu mythos story is featured in my horror fiction podcast Fear on Demand, has a new book called Haunted Virginia, and she's doing a blog book tour since the book's official release is today.
I'm happy to welcome her here as a guest here on my corner of the web today, and I hope you'll seek out her book. Part of my goal with Fear on Demand is to promote the authors who are contributors, so let's help make her appearance on the 'cast worthwhile. And of course, feel free to share this information with anyone who's interested in the paranormal.
Haunted Virginia sounds interesting. Apparently even Mothman, one of my favorite monsters, has put in an appearance within the state's borders.
From Pamela: "Today, my new nonfiction ghost book, Haunted Virginia: Legends, Myths and True Tales is officially released. You can find it at brick and mortar bookstores and online retailers (like Amazon). If it is not in the bookstore, they can order it for you.
So, if you like ghost stories, monsters, myths, legends, urban legends, little known myths of famous Virginians like Edgar Allan Poe and George Washington and much more, then this might be the book for your summer beach read.
Be prepared to take a journey into Pamela K. Kinney's fantastic dreams of horror, science fiction and fantasy, plus the ghosts and legends of two nonfiction ghost book, Haunted Richmond, Virginia and Haunted Virginia: Legends, Myths and True Tales."
From the back cover ISBN: 978-0-7643-3281-4 $14.99 256 Pages
Virginia is unique with haunting myths, legends, and yes, even true stories that may sound like legends.
Take a ghostly tour of this historic state to learn about the Bunnyman urban legend and what happens to mortals at his Bunnyman Bridge in Clifton at midnight on Halloween. Discover the myths that surround Edgar Allan Poe and other famous Virginians.
See why Natural Bridge is actually a haunted tourist attraction; and what makes the Great Dismal Swamp so creepy: Is it the ghosts or Bigfoot? Meet the Witch of Pungo in Virginia Beach.
Find out that Mothman and the Jersey Devil weren’t just seen in their own states, but actually visited Virginia at one time.
Read about witches, demons, monsters, ghosts, pirates, strange animals, and Civil War legends. Visit an amazing, frightening, and even intriguing Virginia that you never knew existed.
A little about Pamela Pamela K. Kinney is an author of published horror, science fiction, fantasy, horror, poetry, and so far, two nonfiction books, Haunted Richmond, Virginia and Haunted Virginia: Legends, Myths and True Tales, both published by Schiffer Publishing. Using the pseudonym, Sapphire Phelan, she has published erotic and sweet paranormal/fantasy/science fiction romance, also poetry and a couple of erotic horror stories, including the current ones, erotic urban fantasy, Being Familiar With a Witch by Phaze Books and erotic Lovecraftian horror novella, Unwitting Sacrifice, by Under the Moon. She also has done acting on stage and in films. Find out more about her at:
A long time ago, I mean that, a long time ago, I decided my artistic leanings such as they are, tilt toward writing rather than acting. A lot of people should probably appreciate that. The world's been spared me as a performer, until now. But as you know, as opportunities come my way I've been doing a little acting of late.
Not too long ago, I got a chance to do some voice acting. I'll be heard on an episode of the audio drama podcast 19 Nocturne Boulevard in the near future, and I'm Jake in a new ongoing audio series called Age of the Zombies.
I wrote an adaptation of War of the Worlds--$5.95 on iTunes--a couple of years ago, and that was recorded in the usual radio way with actors together in a studio, but digital audio and iPod popularity are making all kinds of new dramas possible.
Vocal talent extraordinaire Glen Hallstrom, aka Smokestack Jones, who's doing intros and reading some of the stories for Fear on Demand, discovered the Age of the Zombies auditions and suggested I send in a tryout. They needed a Southern voice.
So, I sent in my mp3 files, and they asked me to be an ex-military guy in a world overrun by zombies.
It's really a cool zombie story, written by Dave Frizzell, and it's fun to play in his sandbox, participating in the storytelling by giving voice to a character he created.
Check it out for a great Romero-esque universe narrated by a young woman caught in the midst of the madness.
My critical paper is in the mail. Funny, for as much as I hammer keyboards and churn out words, sometimes it's tough to switch gears and slip into critical mode.
We'll see how the paper flies with my advisor, but regardless of the outcome or requests for second drafts, it's been an interesting experience.
The novels harness the incursion of magical elements into realistic settings in quite different ways, though both follow heroes on voyages, postmodern journeys to adopt the patois of academic speech.
Toru, hero of Wind-Up Bird is an unemployed thirty-year-old slacker in '90s Japan, a man out of step with Japanese culture given his laid-back style. When he's faced with finding a missing wife, he isolates himself at the bottom of a dry well and is drawn into a dreamlike world to rescue wife Kumiko, after discovering his marriage is not as mundane as he thought. Ultimately he's faced with breaking curses of many kinds from the past in order to save the present.
The Silko novel is about a different journey. Tayo, a native American veteran, is struggling to recover from his experiences on the Bataan Death March. He must meet with a shaman who has modified and modernized sacred Native American stories to help him heal from the modern witchery of war and loss. Ultimately he's drawn into the stories of his people and meetings with sacred, legendary figures that put him on the path to recovery.
Both books are great, immersive stories, and after reading my paper Christine had observations about the works as well. She'd read an article a while back about the dangers to the humanities in troubled times that quoted Yale professor Anthony T. Kronman:
“...the need for my older view of the humanities is, if anything, more urgent today,” he added, referring to the widespread indictment of greed, irresponsibility and fraud that led to the financial meltdown. In his view this is the time to re-examine “what we care about and what we value,” a problem the humanities “are extremely well-equipped to address.”
In Wind-Up Bird and Ceremony, Christine observed, the authors are looking into the soul and the core of what it means to be human.
It's certainly meritorius effort, and I'm glad to have spent some time working to understand the novels better.
Novels reject the pat answers, the party line, the rhetoric and the pablum of doctrinaires, and they explore the heart of existence, and those explorations should not be shouted down by the shrill voices that fill our universe and refuse contemplation while repeating tired mantras.
Kafka said we should read novels that wound and stab us. It's true, because they seek truth, challenge complacency and take us on quests toward questions that open new understanding.
Wrestling a week with words, I feel a little stronger.
I have come out the other side as I promised, standing perhaps a little straighter.
As part of the MFA program, we have to write one long critical paper. It's a 20-pager. We all write 20 pages in our sleep, right?
Still it's a tough 20 pages to craft, must be thoughtful, analytical and meaningful.
I'm looking at how magic realism is harnessed in the books The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Ceremony. One is Japanese, and one is Native American. I recommend them both.
They're both great novels, fantastical and thoughtful, perplexing and engaging. Formulating all that into critical analysis is a little rough.
I'll be back when I come out the other side. In the meantime, like the protagonist of Wind-Up Bird, I'll be down a dry well confronting demons.
Pamela is author of several books including Haunted Richmond and Haunted Virginia. Visit her website here. I don't want to give too much away about "Dark Eyes," because it's a really cool, Lovecraftian story with some surprises.
