Monday, December 28, 2009

Year's End

A new short story idea came to me while driving about today:
  • Roadkill
It's gonna be fun. The story was busy trying to write itself while I was driving, and I made mental notes and plan to work on it this week, maybe as soon as tomorrow.

I'm going to try to be super-industrious and do a short story a week in 2010. We'll see how it goes. I like the challenge of it. It's not so hard coming up with the ideas, as it is getting the time to write them. But all part of making 2010 a good year.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Crush: Princess Aura




I stumbled across the 1979 animated "Flash Gordon" series on DVD at Target today. Something I hadn't watched since I was nine years old! I used to love that show, could remember the theme song, all of that. Along with "Johnny Quest," "Battle of the Planets," and a few other shows. The same production team for "Flash Gordon" did "He-Man," I think, judging from the look of it.

Anyway, watching it again, I remembered Princess Aura, Ming's naughty daughter, and the impression she made on my nine-year-old male psyche! Simply put: Princess Aura was hot. I hated that she eventually liked Prince Barin -- she was way too much woman for a Robin Hood wannabe douche like Barin. Aura was pretty hot stuff for a children's animated show!

Princess Aura was certainly nicely-realized in the live-action "Flash Gordon" that came out the following year...

But the animated Aura was my first experience with the women of Mongo.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Crush: Ann-Margret


Mmmmmm. Ann-Margret was killer in the 60s. Total bombshell. I think I need to post two pix of her, methinks.

Writ Wrote Rote.

I'm going to punt my plan to try to bang something out for the Amazon competition. I just don't want to do that to myself! If I didn't have a full-time job, sure, I'd try it, but I don't have the time to really shoehorn a book into my schedule in the coming month. So, I'll just sling the two finished works I have handiest and hope for the best.

I need to get back in gear on some of my projects. The holidays always throw things off a bit, so I need to get my feet back under me.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Crush: Julie Christie

In her 1960s Swinging London prime, Julie Christie was amazingly hot. She just had this elemental hotness to her. Aries babe. Hmmm. Fucking hot.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Write On.

Okay, so Amazon and Penguin are having their third annual "Breakthrough Novel" competition, and I totally want to submit a thing or two to it. They have two categories: General Fiction and Young Adult. I have books that could go in either category. One of them is perhaps a reach for "General Fiction" but I may submit it, anyway, just because it's very good, and if people actually gave it a fair shake, it could get there. It's good stuff. Another one is a shoe-in for "Young Adult." So, I'd like to submit them both. I have to read the official rules to see if it lets me. They take a total of 10,000 submissions before they close.

I'm also highly tempted to whip up a novel that is squarely within the General Fiction category, just for insurance, should the other two not make it through -- I'd have to bang that baby out quickly, as the deadline for submissions opens on January 25. No time to waste. I know people like to entertain themselves with National Novel-Writing Month -- hell, I've done it a couple of times as a lark, so I know that dance. But this would be a serious effort intended to get into that competition. I don't know if I can make the deadline, but I'm tempted to try, just to push myself. If nothing else, I'll have another book ready to sell.

And, I admit that I'm a little scared, unsure whether I can do it, and I like that. I like that it makes me sweat, makes me wonder if I can swing it. So, that makes me think I need to do it, need to take that risk and swan-dive into this one.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Cocky

What evolutionary advantage is served (if any) by the ability to cock one's eyebrow? I've often wondered that, being able to cock my right eyebrow (but not the left) my whole life. Not everybody can cock their eyebrows. Some can do one, some can do the other, and some can even do both. So, clearly there is a gene or something at work with eyebrow-cocking. And as such, what is the selection process for it? How does it get passed on? Is it a favorable adaptation/mutation in some way? I joked with Leona, my anthropologist friend and former coworker, suggested that the cocked eyebrow was intended to convey bemusement and/or smugness, and perhaps it served some evolutionary advantage in that regard. But we had no conclusions to be derived from it. I don't know if anybody's ever done a study on it. I do, however, wonder about its origins. Who can do it and why they can.

Certainly, you can speak volumes without saying a word with a quizzical cock of the eyebrow, usually conveying irony, smugness, amusement, disbelief, incredulity, bemusement, awe, flirtatiousness, slyness. Anything else I'm missing?

But I'm especially amused that some people are unable to do it at all -- how do those poor souls adapt to the inability to cock their eyebrows? And what about the ones who can do both eyebrows? They manage to look extra-impish when they get them both upraised (conjuring images of Jack Nicholson, here).

Fascinating, one might say.

Magic Number: 6.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Icky

From the RedEye:

Cry babies

Kate Gosselin says her eight children just aren't happy without the near-constant presence of cameras.

"They cried in the van on the way home from school the other day. ... They kept asking: 'Where's the camera crew? Where's the camera crew?' We miss them.' And I said, 'Our show is over,'" Kate tells Barbara Walters on "The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2009," airing Wednesday on ABC.

Ick. That whole crew creeped me out when they first appeared; I saw their narrative arc from the outset, and I'm sure the super-exposure inflicted on those kids is going to haunt them for the rest of their days. Nice going, there, parents. They are very creepy, and for Gosselin to be deemed one of the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2009, what the hell is everything coming to? Yeesh.

The Big Board

This may seem so old-school, but I swear I need to get one of those whiteboards, like a status board, for my writing. On one hand, I could use the databases on the old computer, where everything's still kept, but as the old computer is being slowly mothballed, I have yet to impose a new order on the iMac. I don't want to upload everything on there.

Anyway, I'm tempted to whiteboard my various stories to indicate what's where, so I can just look on the board and react accordingly. I feel like I need that kind of a concrete thing, instead of it just being confined to electrons in the old computer. I haven't done it, yet -- I may just get a notebook and have that be the equivalent, but I haven't fully decided, yet.

Another short story idea, rendered through a title...
  • Milking Human Kindness
A kind of SF/Horror story, this one is. Just jotting it down, so I don't lose the little chip of paper I write upon. As ever, I'm behind on my output, need to do that, but with Writing Season (e.g., Winter) riding high in the skies, it's a perfect time for me to propel myself forward on my schedule.

Magic Number: 6

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Buh?

I had a topic to blog about this morning, but put it off, and now I can't remember. I hate that. Hopefully it'll occur to me later.

Magic Number: 5

Monday, December 7, 2009

Movies: The Matrix -- Bum Watching

Funny how "The Matrix" -- which was so influential for a little while, in terms of style, how, I dunno, dated it is, too. I enjoy it more now than I originally did. I actually found it very disappointing when I saw it on the big screen. Trinity reminded me of Abby Normal, a character I'd made at least a decade before (herself my own kind of take on Molly from "Neuromancer" -- a recurring character William Gibson used in a few tales). At any rate, "The Matrix" blew its wad after the first movie, staggered, stumbled, fell.

One thing that amused me with it, however, something that was never really dealt with in the pseudo-scientific spackle that made up the story was the Matrix itself. One image in particular (and a minor one at that) always stuck with me -- it was near the end, when a bum in the subway sees Trinity and Neo do something extraordinary, and that alerts Agent Smith, who appears in a few moments to attack Neo. Well and good.

But the bum in the subway always amused me -- Smith talks about how suffering and strife appeared to define humanity's existence, and how perfect Matrices led to the loss of "whole crops" (as he termed humanity). So, the concept of struggle was introduced, and the Matrix ideal archetype was set, with late 20th century civilization set up as civilization at its peak.

So, there's the bum in the subway, and I always found myself wondering: who gets to be the bum? Who's the lucky soul who is the Designated Bum in the Matrix world? For much of the movie, you see this very clean corporate world -- lots of movers and shakers, a few working-class types, some shadowy cops, even some rain-slicked streets and derelict buildings.

But who gets to be the bum? How does that work out? In this world, a variety of situations can lead to that, sure -- mental illness, terrible sustained misfortune (?) -- both? It takes something pretty bad for somebody to end up a bum. However, in a created universe, one that is administered as the Matrix is, something (the Architect, I guess?) is deciding who does what. I guess the program decides that X% of the populace gets to be bums, Y% gets to be famous and rich, Z% occupies some middle niche.

In the movie, you see Cipher talk to Smith about what he wants to be, when he gets plugged back in, and so you can see that there, at least in theory, is some process of allocation in the Matrix, at least for those who are aware of it as a construct.

That being said, say you are one of the unlucky sods who ges to be The Bum. Since the system is a program, since your Bum archetype is effectively your programming, is it possible for you to rise above your "station" -- to become more than a bum, more than a derelict? Or is that guy resigned to his condition, drinking rotten booze and laying there in a subway with his newspapers and his filth because he's lacked the willpower to move beyond his programming.

Given the ghetto Nietzschean values that underpin so much of "The Matrix," it's very hard to look at the Bum and not think that this guy is just a complete human waste, and if he only had the Will To Power(tm), he'd be a player like Neo and Morpheus and the other Matrix Kool Kids(tm).

All the same, I find it funny to think of these constructs with their apparent lot in life, just because it's one thing to have a construct of a playboy club kid, or a restauraunteur, or a tycoon, or fashion model or a rock star -- but the bum? How much does that suck? Big-time. So, is that an expression of the inhuman cruelty of the Matrix in action, or does the Bum(tm) serve a purpose within the Matrix itself, as a cattle prod to ensure that the constructs within it are all busy working hard so they don't, themselves, end up as bums? Since nothing in the Matrix is truly accidental (since it is a program, we have to assume this, right?) -- then the Bum exists for a reason.

Still, I can't help but laugh every time I see that hapless bastard in the subway -- it's somehow an extra screw-job to be a bum in a virtual universe. Bad enough to be one in the real world, and somehow an extra kick in the teeth to be one in a virtual world.

Calendar Girl

I loved Calendar Girl from the Batman animated series. She was only in one episode, but she had such a great look, such killer Gotham villain shtick, and put Bats through his paces...



A pity the character was only conceived as a one-off for the show, because she was great.

http://www.batman-superman.com/batman/cmp/cgirl.html

The only flaw with the episode is the chronology of it -- we're to believe she's attacking seasonally, kidnapping these people and holding them for months before finally planning to dispatch them? Crazy enough, sure, but the practical difficulties of that are daunting, since some of the victims would have been kept on ice for like seven months (?)

But otherwise, it's a great episode.

What are words for?

1733 words (for "Old Hickory", which is currently just under 6000 words).

First proper snow of the season last night and this morning. It looks pretty. The writing weather begins in earnest! Love it!

I didn't get enough sleep last night. Have a bit of sleep-debt going. But had to get some words in this morning.

Magic Number: 3

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Stegner

I'm going to try for a Stegner Fellowship next year. Their time of eligibility is September 1 through December 1. I'm going to go for it, will craft some fiction for it. They typically get around 1400 applicants for it each year, so those 1:1400 odds feel pretty good to me! We'll see. That's not for awhile, obviously. Plenty of time. They are primarily about Literary(tm) fiction, so I'll do something Literary(tm) for them.

Still working on the revisions for TGO. I'm about two-thirds done with that. It'll probably take another week to iron them out. I still have to sort out the ending for it, get it right. Then I'll whip up a query for that one, see if there are any takers. More irons, more fires.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Unimog

This is a glimpse of my desk. I have this little Matchbox Mercedes-Benz Unimog truck there. I love the Unimog. It's just very cute. I first saw one at a Target, bought it for B2. He played with it awhile, then lost it (I think it was on his stroller, tumbled away at some point). I was saddened by the loss of the Unimog, and bought myself one (pictured, above). I stumbled across two of them at a Target in Northlake last weekend, and bought both, gave them to my boys. There is something very agreeable about the squat shape of the little trucks. And I love the all black tires, instead of the black-and-silver which is a toy car staple. And I love that the little bed in the back can be put to work.

In my case, I put a Flamingo Casino dice in there. Each morning, I roll the dice, and put that number in the bed of the Unimog. No rhyme or reason to it, just chance.

The number today is 2, incidentally. I'll include the number at the bottom of any post henceforth on this blog. It'll be right at the bottom of the post. That's my number of the day. Of course, only 1-6 will be represented, but that's alright, isn't it?

2

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Visions: Chris Cunningham

I think the video director, Chris Cunningham, has a real eye for an arresting image. The Horrors' video, "Sheena Is a Parasite," is magnificent! A snapshot horror movie, full of compelling, arresting images...



It makes me think of my story, "Rotgut." Like a "Rotgut" dance party, basically! Good times!

I'm intrigued by his work, his approach, and his vision. Curiously, he directed a few Aphex Twin videos, which amuse me, because an Aphex Twin tune is referenced in one of my books.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Are We Not Males?

The title of this book makes my mental wheels turn a bit...


It achieves a slightly transgressive flavor, but it castrates itself a little with "Males." That single word fatally undermines the title, by weakening the impact of the overall phrase. "Males?" Who says that? Sounds like something space aliens would say, or robots. Now, of course it's alluding to the Praying Mantis, where the female often bites off the head of the hapless male during sex, which helps facilitate ejaculation, thereby perpetuating the species. Oh, sure, sure.

But two other titles scream out at me from the above phrase (and, of course, beyond the purview of the book itself, which is focused on the biology of sexual cannibalism)...

HEADLESS MEN MAKE GREAT LOVERS

Now, that title immediately makes me smile, makes me think "Huh?" It calls to mind all sorts of images, like what the hell the speaker of such a phrase could have in mind -- some kind of militant feminism? A dystopian future where men are fully reduced to their sexual function in the waning days of the sex (since we all know men-as-we-know-them are likely gone in another 150,000 years, at the rate the Y-chromosome keeps declining). Men who lose their heads make great lovers? Some psychotic radical romantic babe who beheads her lovers for whatever reason? All kinds of possibilities in that. And also...

HEEDLESS MEN MAKE GREAT LOVERS

This one almost qualifies as a sophistic manipulation (putting the MAN in MANipulation) of language, perhaps a retrosexual manifesto (haha -- MANifesto; it never stops, does it?) Something that attacks the Death Cab for Cutie school of Wussified Man(tm), seeks out the Natural Man(tm), tosses out Emo Man in favor of the Retrosexual Man's Man, who boldly goes where no man has gone before (or where other men have gone before, but not nearly so well). Perhaps an anti-intellectual screed praising ignorance as strength as the final solution in the war of the sexes. Again, such a phrase is pregnant with possiblities. This one would be strictly nonfiction -- it's a little more declarative than the other one, stakes out a kind of falsely assured tone inherent in those kinds of books. Whereas the first play on that title screams out for some kind of darkly comic horror novel -- a gleeful misandry right out of the starting gates.

It's fun to play with words.

Movie: 2012 (cont'd)

I had a few additional thoughts about "2012" -- the problematic character of John Cusack's daughter in it, the child actress whose defining characteristics are her problem with bed-wetting (thankfully not much more than an opportunity for some goddamned Pampers product placement[tm]) and her tendency to wear hats. But I found it odd, like that parents would pimp their daughter out in such a role -- "Oh, yeah -- you're the bed-wetting girl, right?" Couldn't be sleepwalking, no; had to be bed-wetting. WTF? I dunno. Just seems like that would be an embarrassing first film credit for an aspiring actress. Maybe that's just how it goes in Hollywood.

Cemetery Dunce

Looks like CEMETERY DANCE isn't taking any new stuff until 2010 (if that). We'll see. It's frustrating how tight the short fiction markets are.

Had another short story idea. I'll just put the title down
  • Fuggedaboudit
It's not what you think, but I liked having that in the title (and it is relevant).

I need to buckle down this week and get the rest of TGO done, edited, revised, and what-not. Then query it, see if I can get any interest.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Not a creature was stirring

I woke up this morning to the radiator hissing and the heat the great thing churns out. The living room has a long radiator in it, and that thing can belt out the heat. It was something like 3:30 in the morning. Seeing that the boys were asleep, I snuck outside to the car (noting that my building had finally done something about the bad lighting in the alley -- the are now strong lights shining there during the night hours), and I grabbed the toboggan I'd gotten for B1 -- he'd wanted one since last winter. Hopefully we'll get snow this year. When I bought it at Target, one of the employees quipped "You know we're not getting snow this year, right?" and I said "Probably just because I bought this thing." Anyway, he should be very pleased to get it, and it's big enough for him and his little brother. Good times, if the weather obliges!

I snuck the toboggan into the master closet. The thing is pretty dauntingly long, so I had a bit of inspiration and hid it in one of the garment bags for my suits. The thing actually fit in there! What a perfect hiding place! B1 isn't the type to even think about rooting around, hunting out presents, but even if he were, he'd be unlikely to suss out that hiding place. I was very pleased, since I wanted to get that thing into the apartment without the boys getting wind of it. And they're none the wiser. Christmas Commando operation successful!

Doing a lot of revision and editing on "second" novel (I say "second" because it's not really my second -- it's one of many book drafts, but it's the second one that I've gotten ready to sling out to publishers, so it's my "second"). I can't get my hopes up about it, yet -- I am so luck-averse, but I'll try. It's all I can do.

I was pleased to see that CEMETERY DANCE is still churning out magazines. I may send them a story or two. I have done so in the past, to no avail, but think maybe I'll do that again, see what, if anything, comes of it. Several of the venues I want to send stories to don't accept submissions until January 1, so I'm cooling my heels for the moment for a lot of my pieces.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Movie: 2012

I saw "2012" yesterday, on a whim. It was an odd juxtaposition with "The Road" of the day before, since both serve up apocalypse -- one monochromatic, bleak, and cold; the latter, exuberant and hopeful.

Having no expectations of cinematic excellence with "2012," I wasn't disappointed. I knew critics had panned it, but it hardly matters with a disaster movie like that -- what moral message are you going to get from a movie like that, anyway? It's good to be alive? Family's important? Know the right people? Everybody matters? (easy to say when you're one of the survivors)

It was hokey, had a lot of famous people cameos that felt a bit like "Naked Gun" (oooh, that's supposed to be the Governator! Ooh, there's Queen Elizabeth II!) and so on.

The effects are massive and astounding -- an orgy of mass destruction, annihilation on a grand scale, with little people tumbling into gaping holes in the ground, or being smashed by tsunamis (or by aircraft carriers tumbling -- the symbolism of a black President being killed by the carrier John F. Kennedy was not lost on me, whether Emmerich intended it or not, and I think it was intended, since the carrier broadsides poor, ashy Danny Glover, the name of the carrier visible across the flight deck as it nails Glover).

John Cusack and Amanda Peet don't really gel as a couple, and the kid characters are predictably annoying (the character sketches with them are laughably slight -- the boy has a cell phone! The girl loves wearing hats and apparently diapers because she wets the bed -- something that reappears near the end in an all-time terrible line of dialogue). Woody Harrelson's hippy-dippy deejay loves to eat pickles (that's his character quirk, I guess).

But the characters are entirely beside the point with a movie like this -- the only point is the massive destruction, which gets a bit repetitive as you wade through it. Three airplane near-escapes, lots of waves, tumbling mountains, human dignity (and shame) in the face of certain doom, and so on. I can imagine a grad student doing studies of disaster movies, the evolution of them, the arbiters of virtue and villainy.

A few thematic flourishes rubbed me the wrong way -- several times a kind of tooth-sucking about the futility of modern technology and civilized life in the face of ancient prophecies and crackpot "wisdom." Those little bits happened several times, which was annoying. People might think it, but nobody wants the world to end quite so badly as the crackpots, and few are more disappointed (yet undaunted) when the world fails to end on cue -- the world is bigger than the world's religions, but don't tell that to them (or to Emmerich).

Bizarrely, Africa survives the apocalypse, and appears to be the hope of the survivors, owing to some geological quirk. Not sure the point of that, exactly, except I guess come-uppance for Western Civilization and Africa's turn at bat (I imagine malaria will make very short work of most of the survivors who make landfall there, but it's beside the point of a movie like this).

Still, it does its thing -- massive destruction, the aesthetics of apocalypse, like a gaper's delay in traffic, everybody peeking at the car accident as they go by. Move along, move along -- nothing to see, here.

Movie: The Road

I saw "The Road" on Thanksgiving Day, which was either the worst day to see it, or the best, depending on what one is thankful for, precisely. It's a grueling, grim, bleak-as-fuck movie that offers two slivers of hope in it, sort of like being a starving man finding a peanut in your pocket, and carefully halving the peanut, eating one half earlier in the day, and saving the other half for later.

I won't throw any spoilers into this, but it's a terribly dark movie, and you know what's going to happen to one of the characters almost from the outset, as Viggo does some "acting" (he's a good enough actor, with a penchant for extreme roles like these, but he telegraphs something early on that is like a pulmonary Morse Code for "DOOM(tm)" in movie terms -- from the first exhalation, you know where that's going to lead).

Both Viggo as The Man and the boy who plays The Boy (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Charlize Theron, who plays his mother) do a good job conveying the dismal nature of their existence -- it's like a concentration camp without walls, a world-gone-foul in some unnamed, unspecified apocalypse that has claimed the world-as-we know it. Everything is dead and/or dying, with trees falling and not an animal to be found in the wild, or so we're led to believe.

The world seems divided between varying shades of survivors -- good, bad, and ugly -- with the ugly being the cannibals and slavers, in no uncertain terms, and the bad being the merely ruthless and/or opportunistic predators and/or scavengers. I put a lot of and/or in the mix because in a world devoid of hope and trust, it's hard to know friend from foe, since everybody's brandishing a knife or a gun, without assurances of who's predator and who is prey.

Viggo's quest for hope in the South, and his pathological concern for his son's security point to how strongly human safety is bound up in solidarity -- that is a curious thing. Only the cannibals and slavers appear to work together -- Viggo is very much a go-it-alone type, and there's some kind of editorial point to be made in this. Maybe The Man is too much of a control freak to be willing to trust anyone else, but three groups of predators are all doing pretty well for themselves (in relative terms) by banding together. I feel that maybe McCarthy and/or the director/screenwriter might be chalking that up to the predatory lifestyle of those groups, but that they are in groups is exactly how and why they succeed. That, and guns. Work together, and Man can prosper in almost any setting -- work alone, and you become something of a hermit and a vagabond. Viggo the Vagabond wending his way through a shattered world.

The Boy offers a strong moral counterpoint to some very questionable decisions and actions by The Man, which is valid and vital, makes the Boy's presence in the world all the more vital and necessary. Despite the bleakness of their life, he maintains the hopeful promise of a better world in his heart. That is one half of the sliver of hope in this movie.

The other half, as I saw it, was the presence of a beetle, flying free. They discover it in an empty chewing tobacco container, and the bug flies off for parts unknown. I liked seeing that, since we're to believe the world is dead, and no animals live within it (which feels like a cop-out of sorts, or a narrative convenience -- since wild animals would likely be better able to survive the post-apocalyptic holocaust than man). That beetle, not unlike the sprig of green in "Wall-E" showed to me that all was not lost -- that man may have destroyed his civilization, but the world would, in time, heal and move on, long after we were gone. In the (Cormac) McCarthyite world, even that sliver of hope is better than none at all.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Food: The Gemini Bistro

I ate at the Gemini Bistro last night, and really enjoyed it. It's on Lincoln Avenue, and has a lot of dark wood and old-school kind of elegance and ambiance. Everybody's impeccably-attired and the service was tip-top. It classifies itself as an "American bistro" -- which to me means a bistro with fast service, for which I'm grateful, not being one who likes to wait.

I had the Prix Fixe menu (served from 5 to 6:30 p.m.), which is three courses for $31 ($49 if you want wine with each course). I opted for the lobster bisque, short-rib ravioli, and German chocolate cake.

The bisque was really tasty, with very tender lobster chunks in it, great color and seasoning. I could have probably had that bisque the whole evening, just with some bread (the bread is served in shiny metal cones with attached butter caddies). Great flavor. I savored it.

The short-rib ravioli was tasty, qualified as a "medium" plate serving (Gemini does small, medium, and large plate servings, depending on the menu item), and while it was maybe a half-dozen round raviolis nicely seasoned and accompanied with shards of aged parmesan, it was enough, I found, to fill me up. The taste was good -- rich and hearty, but also very delicate.

The dessert was beautifully plated -- a three-layer German chocolate cake, a square of reasonable size (in Chicago terms -- everything here is served in bistro portions), and a pretty little dollop of hazelnut ice cream atop a hazelnut fruit spread (I asked the waiter about that, and he told me what it was, but I forgot the fruit that was representing, there), and a sprig of mint. The cake was tasty, if not mind-blowing, but the ice cream was a nice treat, served very cold and it kind of upstaged the cake a bit.

The bar is a nice, long, broad thing, and they do full meal service there, too. I had the best Old-Fashioned I'd ever had in Chicago there -- their "Velvety Old-Fashioned" which was a blend of Maker's Mark, Cointreau, and Bitters, with the requisite mulled cherry and orange wedge garnish. It was fantastic. I often use the Old-Fashioned as my benchmark beverage for a bar, to test their mettle -- not because it's a complicated cocktail, but because it's such a simple one. And I am pleased to say that they nailed it -- strong and flavorful, I had two of them, and had a little trouble putting my jacket on when it was time to leave, and my head was spinning for about an hour after leaving. That is one good cocktail!

I had no complaints about the food or the service -- both were very good. I don't have any complaints at all, really. The Gemini is a nice place -- very Chicago, in its mix of elegance coupled with a lack of pretension. The only discordant notes (and they're minor, truly) were the music -- when I came in, Cream was playing, which just doesn't fit with the decor and overall ambiance of the place. Not that one wants the trademark Smooth Jazz(tm) or whatever, but it just didn't fit with the beauty of the place -- the music changed later, but it still wasn't quite right. Also, the television in the top corner above the bar seemed out of place. Sure, I get it -- a bar with a television -- who doesn't have that? But at the same time, the place seems too sharp for such a common contrivance. Maybe its absence would be felt, but something about the Gemini Bistro, to me, makes it seem a classier place than that.

But those are very minor complaints. I enjoyed the food, loved the cocktail, savored the ambiance, and appreciated the setting. All in all, I'd say it's well worth your time, if you're in the area. A great place for brunch, lunch, and most definitely a place to take a date.

Four out of five stars: * * * *

http://www.geminibistrochicago.com/

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Thanklessgiving

I'm going to take advantage of the current situation to get a lot of writing done over the weekend.

An agent took a pass on one of my books. No big deal, it was, perhaps, a longshot, anyway, but I had to try. I'm putting together another proposal for him, another book I have that is very nearly ready to go (I'll finish that up this weekend). This one may (?) be closer to what he's looking for, and I hope he appreciates that I'm slinging another work his way this soon after corresponding with him on another work. He's a good agent, gets those deals, so that's something I can look forward to, if I luck out and he considers this other proposal.

I need to organize my writing station more -- I have several file boxes for my hard copy, but I need to consolidate, have it in one place, in a cabinet with a lock and key. Something portable, but larger, and more centralized. Just for the sake of organization.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Putting the Horse Before the Cartwright

I have accidentally had a Veronica Cartwright filmfest going, lately. Kinda funny, really. It started with watching "ALIEN" the other day, where she plays the rather emotionally-fraught Lambert (curious bit of trivia -- the shot of her death, when the alien's tail appears to be suggestively snaking oh-so-sinuously between her legs -- that shot was actually of Harry Dean Stanton's feet from an unused bit of footage. The reveal is that Lambert always wore cowboy boots, not sneakers, as is seen in the shot. Plus, if you watch the deleted scenes, you'll see it. So, oddly enough, Ridley Scott, I'm guessing, was looking at the footage and decided to slip that footage in there, and I guess they forgot continuity with the boots or something. Or the desire to have that sort of rape imagery was so strong that they didn't fuss with the details of it). But Scott's choice is kind of curious, really -- it points to them not thinking about the continuity of that until afterward, and, I guess, not being able to reshoot a sequence with Lambert's boots on. In that day of non-CGI movies, directors had to do what they had to do.
Anyway, after that, the other day, I watched "The Birds" -- which has a teenaged Veronica Cartwright in it, doing what she does best: being emotionally fraught! I saw her name in the credits and was like "WTF?! She'd have to be very young in this." And, sure enough, she was. She played the hero's daughter, Cathy. And sure enough, watching it, it's her, alright. The same frail, fragile, cracking-apart-at-the-seams kind of performance.

Finally (and this one isn't due, yet, as I ordered it, and it has not yet arrived) is the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" -- in which Veronica Cartwright plays a role as an emotionally fraught human being who is memorably "outed" in the end.

Just funny -- I didn't plan on this, but just stumbled into it, as is my way. I think there is a kind of typecasting that can work for you in Hollywood, if you're able to find a workable niche. It certainly worked for Veronica Cartwright. I'm kind of wanting to look at what other movies she's starred in, to see what other roles she's played.

(searches IMDB)

Wow, she's gotten a lot of work -- 120 acting credits to date. April 20 birthday. Taurus? Hahah, figures! English, but grew up in America. Okay. Stuff I've seen...

"The Right Stuff" -- she plays Gus Grissom's wife, Betty. I am sure she was emotionally fraught when she finds out what happened to Gus.

"The Witches of Eastwick" -- she plays Felicia Alden -- I can almost remember that. I vaguely recall an emotionally-fraught woman who is plagued by the witches at some point. Maybe a Bible-thumper? That rings a mental bell with me. Something about her spitting up cherries? Some sympathetic magic?

In "Nip/Tuck" she's Mother Mary Claire -- I'd need to see that episode she was in again, but I'm betting she's some kind of emotionally-fraught nun in that.

Still, she's got a shitload of credits, so good for her, workin' her thing.

Movie: Robots

My boys like the movie, "Robots" -- it's a cute movie, beautifully computer-animated. Really very impressive along those lines. But I watch that movie, which is a perky parable of capitalism and a son finding his way and following his star, and, of course, me being me, my mind spins the story into something dark and dystopian.

I mean, this world resembles our own, but it's populated entirely by machines. Everybody's a robot. Robot dogs, robot birds, robot everything. But they're still doing very human things -- having families, eating "ice cream," going to parties (drinking evocative oil martinis with nuts in them in lieu of olives), frequenting corporate board meetings, and so on. They're machines pretending to be human beings (and they have emotions, too, mind you).

So, I look at it and cynically spin the story -- that this is a world where humanity fully managed to replace itself, having done so in a manner so completely that the machines that replaced us (since there are no organic lifeforms on this world -- even the trees are robots) don't even behave as machines would. They are living machines, and, thus, are imperfect creations, now, or appear to be.

Like why would a robot walk a robotic dog? Why would a robot own a robotic dog? When you think of robots (the word literally meaning "worker" in Czech, I think), volition and free will are not part of the equation. I write a lot about this in stories, one way or another.

You want to walk your dog, you get up and do it. You're doing it because your dog has to take a piss and could use the exercise. Hell, you could use the exercise, too.

But a robot dog owner would have to have been programmed to be a dog owner -- it wouldn't be something it just simply decided to do. And what point would there be to being a robotic dog? At one point, there's a moment when a robot dog tries to pee (?) on a robot fire hydrant -- the robotic hydrant then fights back, repelling the dog. A simple gag, played for kid-laughs.

However, it amuses me along different lines -- if you invent a robot dog, why have the dog need to pee to begin with? That's a biological function, not something a machine needs to do. These robots are busy simulating biological life, across the board. On face value, it's done so children can relate to the pretty robot world. But philosophically, it gets the gears (!) turning in my head, this simulation of life that is inherent in robotics. Man using technology to, in effect, recreate himself mechanically. Robots can't create themselves (at least not initially); they must be created. Once they are created, then they can do something about it, but they must be invented, first, before they can recreate themselves.

Simply put: WHERE are the humans in this world? Robots come from human beings, so where are the people? Did the machines replace humanity (e.g., wipe us out) and then, because we'd programmed them to be like us, just mechanically performed what we would have done? Or are these robots humanity themselves? That is, are they, in effect, the fullest expression of cybernetics, where people migrate themselves from biological to technological, until all trace of the organic is gone? Humanity's presence and absence from the movie is fascinating to me, and is bold. Clearly somebody had to have made these machines, long ago. Unless this is a world that was always mechanical (it's never said what this world is). But illogical contrivances like metal buttons on a robot's "suit" point to an illogical origin to the machines -- e.g., organic. Makers who created these machines in their own image. But where did humanity go? The absence of flesh-and-blood in the movie fascinates me, relative to the machine, since so much fiction with robots depends on the interaction of Man and Machine -- and in this movie, there is no Man, only Machine. The Machines won, and became us. Fascinating!

There are two competing philosophies in the movie -- the Good Guys are about finding yourself and following your dreams; the Bad Guys are about feeling bad about yourself and casting off the old in favor of the new (and, again, the notion of robots with low self-esteem is particularly ripe for exploration). Eventually, the Good Guys best the Bad Guys (of course), although nobody really gets hurt too badly (except for the baddest of the Bad Guys).

Anyway, the movie is light-hearted, is a comedy, but I find a lot of the questions it brings up very curious, compared with a far more self-serious movie like, say, "Wall-E" (which itself has a lot of consumerist criticism in it, but allows for humans in it). Without perhaps intending it, "Robots" is a bolder enterprise, since there simply ARE no humans in it -- just humanlike robots, doing humanlike things.

Check it out if you have the time, and watch it with a philosophical eye, and you'll see what I mean about it, that sense of the uncanny in watching robots interact in a clearly post-human world, yet doing very, very human things.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Wrongful Logic

I am going to try to sell a collection of my short stories. A longshot, to be sure, but everything is, where writing is concerned, and I'd like to think that anything will increase my odds. Something really is better than nothing.

The collection will be entitled "Wrongful Logic." I picked 12 of my short stories for it, mostly horror, a little science fiction and literary. A good cross-section of my work:
  • Bait
  • Chosen
  • Maenad
  • A Monsters Sleeps Inside Me
  • White Meat
  • Entropy's Vestal Virgin
  • Pigeon Man
  • Airlock
  • The Atomic Baby
  • Mermaid's Smile
  • The Shape
  • Living With Syn
I think that's a decent sampling. I have enough short stories for a couple of anthologies, but this would be a nice "how do you do?" from me to a casual reader, before they dove into some of my long fiction. I should tally it up, see how many words that would be.

79,602 words. So, that'd be a decent-sized book.

The challenge will be getting the interest of anybody in the publishing world on that. But it'll be another iron in the proverbial fire, so that'll keep me warm in the coming winter months.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Querulous

I sent another query out. This one directly to a publisher. I'm sure nothing'll come of it, but I have to try, anyway.

Albedo 1

Looks like Issue 37 of ALBEDO 1 is finally available for the reading public. My second-place Aeon Award-winning short story, "Aegis," is in there, if you're jonesing for some kickass fiction...

http://www.albedo1.com/

There are some reviews out there for my short story, "Rotgut," which was in Issue 36 of ALBEDO 1. Here are a couple I found. First, from Colin Harvey...
"D. T. Neal's 'Rotgut' takes the theme of alien infestation to its furthest extreme, and maybe beyond. A terrific story."
Also, from Stephen Hunt's SF Crowsnest...
'Rotgut' by DT Neal was a rather frightening story. A man explodes on the train and infects everyone with a strange alien parasite. We know the man in the story is doomed from the start but we follow his progress, analytically from a microbiologist's point of view, to witness the parasite take hold of his body. I've read many stories in the past before about parasites, including 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers', that have always been from the perspective of an observer. Neal gets right inside the host to realistically let you know what's happening. Chilling to say the least!
Finally, from Tangent...
“Rotgut” by D.T. Neal is weird. A man on a train blows up. No, he’s not a terrorist, he’s been infected or infested. I can’t say a whole lot more without spoiling the story, and I don’t want to do that. I liked it, in a morbid sort of way.
So, that's nice, although I'm very curious how people receive "Aegis." I think it's one of my best short stories to date.

Definitely give ALBEDO 1 a look, if you get the chance.

This and that

1424 words this morning for "Old Hickory." It's coming along very nicely. I think I'm about two-thirds of the way there with it. A short story. I think it'll be a sure bet to be published, just because of the nature of the tale. May need a bit of revision when I'm done with it, but that's all part of the dance, yes? Heh.

Oh, another story idea came to me yesterday. Here's the title, so it doesn't get lost (I always put my ideas down on paper slips, but sometimes I launder them or whatever. This way, they're at least likelier not to get lost)...
  • It Takes One To Know One
I won't tell what that one's about, because that would spoil it. But it's fucking cool, rest assured. Another short story, that.

I'm pleased that my idea factory in my head seems to be humming along. I was preoccupied in 2008 with a lot of things, and was wrapping up one of my books, which ate up a lot of attention. I'm just pleased to "take a break" with a batch of short stories for 2009. I enjoy short stories as much as I enjoy novel-writing. It's a very different discipline, demands clean, lean prose; there's precious little fat to trim in them, not so much wiggle room. I like that.

Not that I don't enjoy a good wiggle, mind you, but in fiction, clean and lean is the way to go -- lush descriptions, but economy still rules the roost. Every word must matter. Not quite as much as with poetry, but nearly so.

I may take to writing longhand during lunch. I'll just drop down to the cafe and write down there, tune everybody out. Lately, Bossie has been coming by brandishing lists and what-not, taking advantage of me being at my desk (usually) during lunch, so I figure if I'm not there, am down in the cafe writing, I gain the benefit of an extra half-hour of writing time AND the benefit of not getting bothered by Bossie.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Bobbing, Weaving

I should be sleeping. But one of the boys was sick, so I was taking care of that. Poor little guy. He's sleeping, now, but I'm awake. Or half-awake, anyway.

Watched "Nip/Tuck" last night. Glad they brought Julia back -- her absence was keenly felt. The show isn't nearly where it was in the first three seasons, in terms of everything. The writing is thinner, and that bugs me. I can always tell when something's been written well, versus somebody just going through the motions -- thinly-plotted contrivances and what-not. I can just see it. But Julia was integral to the dynamic of the show, so hopefully her return will up it a little.

Same thing with "It's Always Sunny..." -- it has not found The Funny so much this season, unfortunately. All too often, when comedy writers come up short, they opt for The Zany when they should be finding The Funny. For a lot of people, Zany IS Funny -- but they're not the same. The Funny doesn't have to be Zany -- it wins you over on its own merits, whereas Zany -- well, it's the comedic equivalent of blood and gore in lieu of terror or horror. It's what a writer of comedy reaches for when they are coming up short, are out of ideas. "Arrested Development" did it by the end of the second season. Lord knows when "The Office" (US) did it. But all comedy shows do it when they lose sight of The Funny, lose that vital edge. Once lost, it's often hard to rediscover -- it's like trying to explain a joke to somebody, the punchline is invariably lost on the listener, or they'll politely say "That's funny."

No, it's not. If you have to say it's funny, it's not funny. The Funny finds you; if you have to find The Funny, you're screwed. It's the Zen of The Funny, The Tao of Laughter. And so far, I've been very disappointed with this season's "It's Always Sunny...." -- I really, really, hope they find The Funny again. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of crossed fingers, I spent much of last night jotting down contact information for publishing my book. I found about a dozen potential homes for it, so now I have to work on those pitches and see if anybody has an iota's interest in it. They should; it's a good book. But it's very hard to pitch a book as a complete outsider -- I needed a pedigree, like coming from an Ivy League school, or having gone to the Writer's Workshop, or be related to a publishing czar -- an in-road like that really helps. All I have on my side is talent and persistence -- I just need that opportunity, need to make that opportunity, and a fistful of luck. So, we'll see how it goes.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Bric-a-brackish

I sent "Spare Tire" to WEIRD TALES. We'll see how quickly they reject it. I also sent "Living With Syn" to the NEW YORKER. That's a total longshot, sure to be rejected, but I wanted to at least give it a try. It may be useful for me to note submissions in this blog, so I can keep track of them. I have a database at home, but with the computer migration thing (e.g., moving from a PC to a Mac), I haven't moved things over -- many things, including all of my writing, are on the old PC, including the database, etc. Soooo, we'll see. As long as I have my jump drive, I'm good. Have jump drive, will travel.

Had an idea this morning for a new story:
  • Deuce
That's the title for it. Not going to say anything else about it at the moment.

If WEIRD TALES rejects "Spare Tire," I'm going to send them "The Atomic Baby" and see how they handle that, assuming it falls beneath their word requirements (<10,000 words for unqueried fiction). And if that falls, I'll send them "Living with Syn." And so on. They don't like multiple submissions, so I have to wait for responses before sending another. The usual dance.

I want to wrap up "Wash, Spin, Rinse, Shoot, Repeat" this weekend, if at all possible.

Make Your Own Luck, Inc.

I have got my feet under me again, and am going to spring at the publishing industry and sink my teeth into its leg, and hold on until the end of my days. Just been doing some research, and it got me all fired up. It's hard to wrestle with the ardent apathy of the industry and not have it sink into you a bit, but I'm back on my feet, and am swan-diving back into the fray. I always get extra-busy in the Fall and Winter, anyway.

One great thing about Chicago is the long winters -- people complain about them, but to me, long winters = Good Writing Weather. It's why there are far more great Russian writers versus great Hawaiian writers. Bad weather makes for great writing, because: a) you're indoors, and b) you need something to get your mind off the bad weather. Both situations are extraordinarily conducive to writing a lot, and the more you write, the better you become (ideally).

So, the descent into the short Fall and the long Winter that is Chicago ignites my spirit, gets me in full writerly mode -- I write year 'round, of course, but in terms of the business of writing, that kicks up for me during this time, since I need to find homes for things I've written in the Spring and Summer.

It's all very cyclical. ; )

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Street Music

One thing I like in Chicago, during the blustery, wintery-windy times, particularly in Fall and Winter proper, is how the wind can make street signs sing. Basically, any of those hollow-bore metal poles that support things like "No Parking" signs and what-not -- when the winds are strong enough, they become like giant flutes, and will carry the sound, resonating up and down them, like how you can make a beer bottle sing, only this is galvanized metal being played, not glass.

Now, it requires a pretty strong wind to do it, but when you pass several of them, all sounding at once, it's neat -- this ghostly city song played, a duet between Man's works and Nature's whims. A chorus of banshees. Usually the poles dance a little, too, buffeted by the winds. It would be fun to find one of the reliably windy areas and put a tape recorder there to capture the sound, although without the poles for context, it's probably not quite the same.

Leaden Skies

Music: "A Passing Feeling," Elliott Smith

Love that song. Most of Elliott Smith's stuff I find I like. A shame he snuffed himself, since he had talent to spare, a great synthesis of songwriting and lyricism. I always hear the Beatles a lot in his sound, like their late era. Perfect music for the leaden wannabe winter skies over the city today.

I never complain about the weather -- to me, any weather is wonderful. There are joys and horrors in all things, and I don't whine about weather. I snapped a photograph of an old building in my neighborhood. It was perfectly framed by the overcast skies and the clawing branches of the leafless trees around it.

My headphones (which I wear nearly all day at work, when at my desk, playing music), catch the static electricity when I move my feet, and make little hissing sounds and popping noises if I deliberately move my feet about on the old workaday carpet here in Bizarroworld.

I'm going to bundle various short stories into a collection and try to pitch that to some agents. Figure might as well have a couple of things going out at the same time, by way of big projects. I've got more than enough stories for a sizable collection, and individually, the stories seem to not be catching the interest of what few venues there are for my fiction, so maybe compiled they'll have some appeal. Have to try, right?

Monday, November 16, 2009

Movie: ALIEN

I watched "Alien" on DVD the other night. I haven't watched that movie in a very long time. Of course, the scares associated with it are long faded, so I just watch it out of appreciation of Ridley Scott's former cinematic skill as a director (I say "former" because I think he's sold out a bit over the last decade or so). The movie holds up well, still looks futuristic, it's nice seeing those various actors younger, and the alien's monstrous as ever.

One amusement for me was how the lifeboat shuttle only can take three crewpeople -- this on a ship that has seven people aboard. That little details amused me. It's a space freighter capable of lugging 20 million tons of ore, and the Company puts one lifeboat aboard that can only handle three crew? That little detail speaks volumes about the Company's priorities, where the crew is concerned.

That's something I explore in some of my own SF stories -- a kind of "fuck you" attitude toward its astronauts on the part of the sponsoring agency. I like that sardonic flavor of it, versus the old-school "Men In SPAAAAAAACE" grandiosity of the 50s and 60s. I like the idea of the poor bastards being hurled into space and screwed over by the people who are ostensibly there to help them -- I explore that in my story, "Mission Control."

Anyway, I liked that little detail, along with the ship's computer, Mother, being all but nice and kind to her "children" among the crew. The mission's a setup from the outset, the Nostromo is intended to pick up the alien organism from the get-go. And I loved the voice for Mother (which you only hear on the auto-destruct sequence, as she counts down her own death with machinelike precision -- that moment always resonates powerfully with me. I like that detail, since it is just so inhuman and haunting). The voice for Mother isn't the typical sexy female computer voice, but rather, it's the carping, officious tone of a mean old matron -- you can just hear it. Again, Scott's attention to detail back then was wonderful, and yielded rich rewards.

Further, the age of the crew is a nice touch -- nobody's really young aboard the Nostromo. That is a great detail, this sense of mortality and age among a weary, worn crew. It wouldn't have worked if everybody was young and strong and pretty.

Also, I love how most of the crew smokes. In the close confines of a space ship (even a gigantic ore freighter), where oxygen is, at least in theory, at a premium, having them smoke was great.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Scene: Shoplifters of the World

I was waiting in line at CVS, a long line, since they only had two registers going, behind this cute young thing buying herself a knee brace, and I heard a commotion behind us in the store. Apparently some guy had been caught stealing eyeliner, and was being confronted by someone -- this sharp-voiced Latina. I wasn't sure if she was an in-store Loss Prevention type or what, but she confronted the guy about the eyeliners, told him to empty his pockets. We're all turned in line to watch this fracas, and the guy, who looks to be perhaps Latin, himself, or Italian, or some other olive-complected soul, with a heavy black coat, a ball cap, and a black goatee-type beard, walks slowly out of the store, with the woman on his heels, telling him the cops were coming, and that she got a good look at him. She was on a cell phone at the time.

The babe ahead of me looked at me like "Huh?" (I could see she had braces on her teeth, which was a nice accompaniment to the knee brace she was getting) and I just said "Busted."

Nobody stopped the guy from leaving the store, although the Loss Prevention people (?) kept after him, watched him slowly walk down Armitage, busy trying to be inconspicuous. After purchasing my stuff, I went to the curb and last saw him near the Irish bar down the way, the River Shannon.

Meantime, I wondered: Eyeliner??

Scene: Furry

The other day, on the bus ride home, I saw a gay guy clearly out cruising. It amused me, because he was pretty old, but was ogling everybody who boarded, looking for play. That, and his outfit. Oh, my. First, he was balding at the top of his head -- so, he had that bit of a tonsure going, but that didn't stop him from zazzing up his gunmetal gray-silver hair with some product, so he had it spiked up ahead of the tonsure, which was an odd image if you saw him from anything but head-on.

He was wearing some pointy-toed shoes (maybe calf boots? I can't actually remember that), and some fashionable jeans. But the real cornerstone of his ensemble was his fur coat -- waist-length, not a long fur coat, but a brown fur coat -- beaver? Not sure. It was clearly the centerpiece of his get-up, accentuated with some shiny rings. The grizzled rooster hair and that fur coat, oh, man -- priceless! I wanted to photograph him for the sake of fashionable disaster posterity -- a sartorial Hindenberg, he was, and yet he carried it off with a flinty-eyed, hard-won kind of swishy dignity, I suppose: he didn't pretend to be anything but exactly what he was, and he was so clearly out for whatever he could hope to get that night.

Quite a look he had going, like some European sexual tourist run amok. He got off in the Gold Coast, for parts unknown.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Scene: Grrl Freitag

I was writing on the bus, on the way to the HP, and a hipster chick sat next to me, dug out her copy of the New Yorker and briefly read it, before popping on some headphones and chilling out. She was average height, black hair, slightly sallow complexion, assiduously plucked eyebrows, black knitted beret, black leather jacket, black skinny jeans, melon-colored socks and black Keds-style canvas sneakers. She had a big turquoise ring on her left middle finger that was two triangular pieces of turquoise pointing toward each other, off-center, like two ships passing by. The overall ring was fairly big. She had a worn, dusky silver-toned messenger bag with "FREITAG" as the label, which amused me, made me want to snap a picture of her -- especially with the whole black ensemble going, except for the nerdy socks. I would have liked if her name was "Tuesday" -- that would've been perfect, seeing Tuesday with her Freitag bag on a Thursday morning.

She sipped at her coffee, kept stealing glances at my notebook while I was writing. Normally it bugs me if people are trying to read over my shoulder (HATE that), but my handwriting is nearly incomprehensible, so I doubt she could read much. Reminds me of when I used to take the South Shore train line, and a couple of teenaged girls marveled at my handwriting, watching me write in a notebook, and one said "What LANGUAGE is that?" in that nasally teenaged way of talking, and I told her it was English, and she asked to see it, and I showed her, and she said "Dude, that writing should be a font!"

Details about Grrl Freitag, let's see... her hair was a brown-black shag, from what I could see, since she had on that beret. The eyebrows stood out to me, just because she'd definitely worked them over a bit -- just short of the point of being too much, in my view, with my whole eyebrow thing. Her upper lip was utterly hairless (a good thing in my view, and if her eyebrows got that kind of attention, no doubt the mustache had no chance!) -- I bring up the upper lip only because she kept nursing her coffee, kept venturing tentative little sips, because obviously it was hot, so it was this kind of dance with her lips perched atop the white Starbucks coffee lid, a beverage tango. With the sun streaming in, her face had turned to gold, which showed a lot of detail, the steam rising from the cup.

That's about it. She loped off the bus, and I kept writing.

Yessssss

I worked on "Wash, Spin, Rinse..." all morning. It's hot. It's humming along very nicely. It is very much in the spirit of Richard Matheson, one of my influences -- it's my own thing, in my own style, but somebody who likes Matheson would find a lot to like in this story.

It tickles me, writing longhand again. While I don't write as quickly as I type, I like being able to write at will. Of course, with a laptop, I get the best of both worlds, so that just puts a laptop at the top of my to-get list.

But anyway, the story's humming along beautifully. I should be able to bang this one out and then delve back into the PC at home and wrap up the ones I'd mentioned the other day.

Writerly

I started working on "Wash, Spin, Rinse..." yesterday, on the bus ride home. Writing longhand, as is my lot for the moment, until I can afford another laptop. It's going to be an interesting story, I think. The voice of the character flew out of me, male protagonist, snarky, sarcastic, cynical -- sound like anybody you know?

I know I was going to wait on it, but the character's voice started going and I just had to take dictation, get it down. I have these fab Papermate pens I bought at the store the other week -- they're click-pens with black and white patterns on them. Love the patterns and the black and white. Just kinda Mod, I think. I may have to buy a few more packs of them, just to have, before they disappear.

I know I was going to read "The Road," but I paused in favor of an "American Gothic" anthology compiled by Joyce Carol Oates. That's keeping me entertained at the moment, keeps a shade of Halloween alive well past the holiday itself.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Not On My Hands

I find when confronted with Halloween-hued Peanut M&Ms (said hues being: black, orange, purple, and chartreuse), I selectively eat the purples and the oranges, getting them out of the way, saving the black and chartreuse ones for last. There are only two left, now, in my little dish: one black, one chartreuse. Those colors, together, look lovely to me. Wicked, like a witch's kiss.

Their time at last has come....

Idea Man

I was surging last night, just had a ton of ideas. I kept jotting them down on a slip of paper, which I kept on me all night, just in case more came (they did). Love when I'm on the creative upswing, surfing the waves of my subconscious. Stories I have to finish...
  • Smartbomb
  • Vista
  • Old Hickory
Story ideas I jotted down last night (for me, titles kind of mentally flag the story)...
  • Deadline
  • Wash, Spin, Rinse, Shoot, Repeat
  • Statuesque
So, I'll finish up those three first ones and then dive into the next three. Keep the conveyor belt going. I love when I'm in short story mode. All of these new ones qualify as horror stories, and/or Midwestern Gothic, my own lil' genre.

Of course, I have to repeat the process of pimping stories out to markets, which is proving a little more difficult. I may bundle a baker's dozen of my short stories as an anthology and see if I can get any agency's interest for those.

Speaking of that, I sent out another query for the book. Fingers crossed. I really, really hope something clicks for this one.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Scene: Poke-Poke-POKE!

I didn't recognize Muttonchops McGee when he first got on the bus. Actually, I think I almost recognized him, but couldn't quite place him -- red-haired guy with an Edwardian kind of visage to him -- somehow, familiar. I realized once he sat down that it was Muttonchops McGee, but he'd shaved off his signature 'chops. It was his thing. He was a regular feature on the Hyde Park bus. He'd habitually grow his hipster hair out very big, would have these massive muttonchops going, and then at some arbitrary point in the year, he'd get shorn like a sheep and would repeat the process all over again.

Today he looked almost respectable in his blue jeans (holes in the pockets that may have gone all the way through the jeans, not sure), well-worn white canvas sneakers with black laces, a suitably autumnal sweater and an oxford shirt, and a windbreaker. He boarded the bus with his characteristics stone-faced and drowsy bearing, and I would have ignored him but for one thing: he had a woman with him. Girlfriend? Lover? Both?

Bride of Muttonchops McGee was smartly attired -- brown herringbone jacket, navy blue knee skirt, zebra pantyhose, shiny black ballet flats. She was pretty in a bitch-mouthed kind of way -- blue eyes, thick brown hair in a shoulder-lengthed shaggy cut that was tousled just so. Not bedheaded, but just city breeze-blown, or something. Her nose was prominent, eyebrows sculpted, expression someplace between weary and contemptuous. The perfect bookend for Muttonchops McGee.

I watched them while I half-read my Hawthorne ("The Man of Adamant;" and I have to say that while Hawthorne in youth was my broccoli-and-medicine, I have come to strongly admire him over the years, his work and boldness to stick a thumb in the eye of the Puritan morality -- maybe the rise of the fundamentalists makes it extra-satisfying, and that Hawthorne had the courage to call out their hypocrisy way back then. Very bold. Bravo!) -- anyway, the couple dozed in their seats, both of them, side-by-side, their heads bobbing. Muttonchops McGee looking grave even in half-slumber, and his babe's expression not much changing. I noticed she had headphones leading to her bag, a black iPod or equivalent MP3 player of similarly slender and sleek design. She had a claddagh ring of silver on her left middle finger. Maybe that meant they were fuckbuddies? Not sure the code of the claddagh, only know that it's a fun word to say.

On and on the bus went, their heads like gyroscopes, tracking the passage of the vehicle toward the HP. Sometimes one of them would half-awaken, only to drowse off again. Eventually, she laid her head on his shoulder, and he did not react.

Finally, reaching the University campus proper, she basically woke up, her expression not much changed from what it was when she was dozing, and Muttonchops McGee just stay there, eyes shut. Then she poked him in the ribs with an elbow: Poke.

No reaction. Poke-poke.

I could see her eyes on him, head turned.

Poke-poke-poke.

McGee did not acknowledge, did not react.

Poke-pooooooooooooooooooooke.

That last one a long poke, like an extended Morse Code poke rendering, the telegraph operator leaning on the switch awhile. McGee finally opened his eyes, looked at her in annoyance, then leaned a bit away so he was out of range of her elbow.

She smiled to herself, resumed poking. Although the poking was surely annoying, it made me smile, the playful way she was trying to wakeup her douchebag boyfriend. She continued, not realizing I'd noticed this whole little exchange:

Poke. Poke-poke. Poke. Poke. Poke-poke-poke-poke.

McGee did not stir. Then the bus reached their stop, and she got up and walked past him, and McGee opened his eyes and got up, and the two of them walked out, her slightly ahead of him, not reacting overmuch, and then he caught up with her, was talking. My bus went on its way, leaving them behind.

Scene It

Alright, here's how it goes: a title with "FICTION:" on it is exactly what it says it is. Whereas, a title with "SCENE:" on it is something I've seen that I'm recounting. Get it?

Counting

1092 words. Not bad for the underside of an hour, although just a sliver compared with what I used to be able to turn out, with time and space (e.g., a 1.5-hour commute each way -- that was the time of 5 to 6000 word a day. God, I loved that).

With time and space, I can go and go and go. During my glorious time of unemployment in 1999 (I can't remember how long -- maybe three months?) I'd write hours daily, uninterrupted. I loved that. That was when I knew that's what I wanted to be. Christ, hard to believe that was ten years ago -- what a difference 29 to 39 makes. When you're 29, you're still in the most-favorable demographic, the 18 to 34 age group, the "youth market" -- but when you're 39, you're halfway to being forgotten, at least to the lame marketeers that slice up the populace into audience demographics.

Gen X is screwed, relative to earlier generations, because we have beans for earning power -- in the past, you turned 39 and you were entering your peak earning years. I'm sure that's true for some, but for most of us, it's just not there (at least going the conventional 925 Grinder route).

Now, however, fewer and fewer of us "make it" by this age. So many of my peers depend heavily on their folks to float them, one way or another. God help you if you don't have that to fall back on.

It's very warm in the apartment this morning; the radiators are hissing and I'm sweating. Steam heat is great, but it does tend to make a place like a sauna, if you can't get the valves just right. At the moment, that seems to be the case.

Working

I'm working on the short story this morning. I have to use the old computer; well, I suppose I could use the iMac, but all of my writing is on the old Dell, so I use that, just to keep all of my work in one place. Having that old, slow computer after being used to the speedy Apple is sort of like having a bag of unpeeled carrots in the fridge -- you want to eat'em, but somehow peeling them seems like sooooo much work. So, I make a big deal about turning the thing on and hearing the old processor grrrrrrrind to life, wait forever for MS Word to open.

It's nearly there, nearly ready....

Sunday, November 8, 2009

House of Leaves

I HATE "House of Leaves." I've read that book off and on for the better part of a year, and I hate it. Just to be extra-wanky, I'm doing what they did throughout that book, which is color the word "house" blue every fucking time it would show up in the text. Ooooh, are you scared, yet?!

Look, the book became a bestseller, has some kind of cult status associated with it, but the fact is, it's a shit sandwich of a novel. I've found it almost impossible to get through, with all the nonsense addenda the writer threw around the core of the story.

I'm not going to summarize it. If you want a good haunted house story, check out "The House Next Door" by Anne Rivers Siddons. That's worth your time, and is more scary than anything in "House of Leaves."

If, however, you love, I dunno, "Ulysses" and want to feel like you're not just reading a book, but experiencing it, then by all means read "House of Leaves" and blabbity-blah.

It was a debut novel, okay, I get it. An audacious debut, but in my opinion, for all the wrong reasons. This book is editor bait! I can just see some jaded New York editor reading the manuscript and going "HOLY SHIT! I've never seen anybody do THIS before with a novel."

And there's a reason: it's a gimmick.

Of course, now you're wondering what's incensed me so about it, right? Now you'll want to read the fucking book, see what I'm talking about. Go ahead, if you want. Fool that I am, I think a writer has an unspoken covenant with their reader, to take them on a trip worth taking. And this book subverts that covenant -- it is the literary equivalent of a one-man band, with the jackass standing there with a bass drum on his back, cymbals on his knees, a trombone in one hand, a harmonica necklace, a kazoo in the corner of his mouth, and a trumpet in his other hand. He can make a lot of noise with it, might even be able to make a little music with it, but I look at something like that and think "Why not just play one instrument REALLY well, instead of trying to impress us with all the fucking shit you can do? You look like a jackass, you are a jackass, move along, wankbag."

The book is bullshit. And it's just exactly the grade of bullshit that there are douchebags out there who will cleave to it and revere the book in a totemic kind of way, as an art object. It's the kind of book that a writer can get away with once -- because it is a fucking gimmicky contrivance -- you can't make a career out of that, unless you want to be a one-hit wonder.

So fuck you, "House of Leaves." Fuck you very much.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Weather or not

Pretty autumn day, great weather, although very windy, as it usually is in Chicago this time of year. But all of the sun made it nice.

I'm a bit sleep-deprived. Had a surreal dream last night where I had acquired a Sly & the Family Stone picture holder, one of those multiple-frame holders, and this one was festooned with silver glitter and other brightness, and had pictures of Sly featured. I remember in the dream thinking that was pretty great, touting it as the funkiest frame, ever. And it came with a bonus Sly lapel pin.

What a goofy dream...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBIA7hZE0l0

Guilt by Association

I swear, The Association might be the most evil band in pop music history. It's bad enough that they did "Cherish" (among other smash hits of mawkish sunshine pop) but they also did this one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXN7wkSRVZg

I am so going to write a scene in a story where something absolutely horrifying and/or terrible happens to a character while that song is playing. It simply must be done.

Friday, November 6, 2009

See?

Toldja I'd be back.

I'm working on several stories right now, long and short. Short story of the moment is either horror or perhaps black comedy. I'm hoping to get that done in a week or so. Long fiction is alternately real-world ('adult contemporary' -- is that the bogus term for it?) or perhaps horror. Maybe a bit of both.

Also, I'm going to throw a few stories the New Yorker's way. Why not? I haven't done that in awhile. Keep'em entertained.

It's a challenge being noticed when you're in Flyover Country (e.g., that vast expanse of land between New York and LA). Sue me, I live in the Midwest, in Chicago.

I'm not doing National Novel-Writing Month this year, after having played a few times at that in previous years, completing books in a month's time. It's doable, and I've done it, and while it's fun having a kind of deadline gnawing at your leg a bit, I have nothing to prove where that is concerned, so I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year, and never will again.

I'll move at my usual choo-choo train locomotive pace, racing along, banging out words, and hopefully folks will read them.

If you're really nice, I'll even put some of those stories here, although I haven't decided what, yet, will go here. You'll know. I'll preface the subject line with "Fiction:" so there's no uncertainty.

And if you try to steal my story, I'll take your thumbs, simple as that.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Using "wicked" in the old-school way, like "Damn, that was totally wicked, Dude!" Like "gnarly" only more so. More to come....

"We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance."
--Japanese Proverb