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.
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.
