Nerd Goulash

[A Mysterious Romance]

2010-08-14T14:11:00.007-04:00

Ah, the romantic(ized) life of a writer...

I just spent the past two hours doing this:

She was Destiny, by name and nature. She was many other things: Grace, Joy, Charity, Hope. But William had no choice in her name. She was Destiny long before William built her out of rusted building girders, discarded tins from canned meat, and useless car parts whose purposes had been forgotten since The Drying.

She was Destiny, in name and nature. She was many other things of course, but William had no choice in her name. She was Destiny long before William built her out of rusted building girders, discarded canned meat cans, and car parts that had been useless and forgotten ever since The Drying.

She was Destiny, in name and in nature. She was many other things of course. But William had no choice with her name. She was Destiny long before William built her body out of rusted girders, discarded canned meat tins, and car parts that had been useless ever since The Drying.

I even went to the gym to get my mind off syntax and semantics.

[New Story]

2010-06-21T11:51:00.008-04:00

My story "How to Make Friends in Seventh Grade" is up today at Strange Horizons. This is a story I've wanted to tell for a long time now -- and didn't write until a year ago. It's quite a personal piece because it's autobiographical (except for the fantastic elements: the aliens, the spaceship, &c). In my life, the "Tyler" actually died, but in the story, I wanted to give him the ending he deserved.

Anyway, enough ranting and enough spoilers. You can read it online here.

[My Life on the X-List]

2010-05-11T13:35:00.003-04:00

I feel like I've been making this rather half-hearted disclaimer a lot lately, but I swear I won't only blog about lgbt stuff.

Anyway. Ahem.

Last night, after drinking half a glass of wine, I was ready to go to bed. But I flipped on the guide channel on the TV, and right there, at the 3:00 mark was an episode of the X-Files that I hadn't seen in a loooooong time. It was the episode with Kathy Griffin. You know, the one where she plays half twin sisters with psychokinetic powers.

Yeah. Kathy Griffin. Re: disclaimer above.

The episode was, just as I remembered it, a tonne of fun. But while I was sitting there on my couch, sipping my Riesling out of a mason jar, I also remembered how drawn to Kathy Griffin I was when I was, oh, fifteen years old, when the episode first aired. In my mind, she was a diva. And this was before My Life on the D-List, stand-up jokes about "her gays," and her guest spot on RuPaul's Drag Race. It made me think: Is diva power something one cultivates over a long career? Or is it something one is born with? In Kathy's case, I think the latter.

[The Future Fire]

2010-04-30T13:05:00.007-04:00

It's been awhile, but I decided to pop over to my blog to drop the news that one of my stories, "Titanium and Silk" went live today. Though simple, it is probably one of my favorite stories to date. It's weird, alternate-future, slightly alarmist / paranoid, and as my brother once said about much of my writing, it has an "anime" feel to it. Anyway, I enjoyed writing it a lot, and I fell in love with it. You can read it at The Future Fire, a fantastic zine that publishes socially conscious / political sci fi. I'll write more here soon, but for now, I'm off to enjoy the gorgeous weather.

[That's what SHE said]

2010-04-03T17:44:00.018-04:00

I don't often blog about gay subculture, because this is my "nerd goulash" blog. But quite often, nerd culture and gay culture intersect (especially in my life. RE: birthday gift idea).

The story I'm working on right now is called "Pretty" and although the primary themes don't revolve around gender or sexuality like some of my other stories, two of the main characters could be interpreted as allegories for opposing ends of the 'masculinity spectrum.' I'm currently at that stage of the (re)writing process where I'm trying to get the characters' individual voices to stand out from one another -- to find each character's manner of speech... so to speak.

It brought to my attention something that I've never really thought about before. When straight men refer to inanimate objects as "she" (using a feminine pronoun), they are often referring to a car, plane, ship, boat, or any other piece of loud, powerful machinery. Motorhead straight men will often give their car a female's name, something racy like "Tatianna. " Or "Sonique." It doesn't even have to be a piece of loud machinery. Take, for instance, the Simpsons quote from the episode "Dead Putting Society" in which Homer explains to Bart the need to name one's golf putter.

Homer: That putter is to you what a bat is to a baseball player, what a violin is to the... the guy that... the violin guy. Now come on! Give your putter a name.
Bart: What?
Homer: Come on, give it a name.
Bart: Mr. Putter.
Homer: D'oh! You wanna try a little harder, son? Come on, give it a girl's name.
Bart: Mom.
Homer: Your putter's name is Charlene.
Bart: Why?
Homer: It just is, that's why!

Whereas, when gay men refer to inanimate objects as "she", it's often an object like... a wig, or a handbag, or chocolate, or a pair of high heels. Example: Gay Guy A is visiting Gay Guy B's apartment and spies a pair of shoes in the corner with a broken heel. Gay Guy A says, "Don't you think it's time for a new pair of heels?" and Gay Guy B responds, "She's broken, but not old." Okay, not an example. True story.

When gay men assign women's names to objects, it often has a link to the drag subculture. Drag queens generally prefer to be addressed with female pronouns while they're in drag, regardless of their transgender or cisgender identity. Gay men are so accustomed to calling drag queens "she" that it only seems natural to refer to a fetching handbag seen while strolling through the mall as "she." And as far as naming conventions go, drag queens (and their paraphernalia) often adopt powerful, racy female names. Like Tatianna. Or Sonique.

Now say what you will about how our disparate female anthropomorhisms reveal our society's attitudes regarding femininity. I'm not touching that with a ten foot pole... named Shirl. There are plenty of academic essays that delve into these issues, especially in the realm of science fiction. The film Metropolis, and the television show Ghost in the Shell provide particularly revelatory research material.

But I'm not that smart. At the very most, all of this will provide my characters with some rather uninspired dialogue about the table saw and the hair curler. Kudos, me! Now back to the word mines!

[But Uncle Sam WANTS me to waste my time!]

2010-03-24T23:41:00.004-04:00

My income tax refund is coming soon, and trust me -- I know the importance of saving any money that comes my way. In the past I've lived off savings for months at a time, because I was between jobs or whatever. But I think I need to spend just a little bit of my refund this year. I'm allowing myself to buy ONE video game before I stash the rest of it into savings to be used for car insurance or groceries or clothes or medical expenses -- yeah... important things.

Limiting myself to just one video game is responsible, yes. But it's also frustrating. I've been trying to decide on which video game to buy, and I just can't. I've come to the conclusion that I'm addicted to video games. Because living in a fantasy world where everything can be quantified by leveling up, character statistics, or "achievements" is far easier than living in the real world where everything is, you know, complicated.

Anyway, I've narrowed the choices down to thrrrree. I want the most bang for my buck because who knows when I'll be able to buy another game. So here they are. Ta-da.

1) Final Fantasy XIII
I've been a Final Fantasy nutcase since the very first iteration of this game back in the '80s. I even remember playing "We're the Guys" as a tyke, running around the backyard, throwing nerf ball "Ice3" spells at imaginary Fiends, and finding the noble dragon lord to grant me a class change. I've stuck with the series through the ups (FFVI through X, hello) and the downs (XI and XII shall be stricken from the record!). I've completed each game multiple times, exploring every digital nook and CG cranny they have to offer. But with the aforementioned let-down of Final Fantasy XII, I just don't know if I'm willing to give XIII a chance. I've become jaded in my old age, it seems. The reviews seem largely positive. And the videos I've seen are stunning. Plus, it's the first Final Fantasy since VI to feature a female protagonist. Rock on. Maybe I need to give it a chance. I just don't know if it should be a $60 chance...

2) Dragon Age Origins
Ah, Bioware. I love me some Baldur's Gate (and have even been re-playing those games in all their olde timey glory), and I can only imagine that Dragon Age Origins lives up to the name. It's gotten stellar reviews, and it looks very shiny indeed. It's right up my alley with the pause-and-play combat system, interesting characters that can join your party, and high fantasy setting. But, like Final Fantasy XIII, this one will set me back a few (thousand) pennies. I don't want to buy a game that is just a prettier version of a bunch of games I already own.

3) Diablo II Boxed Set
An oldie, for sure. I just never got around to playing it when it first came out, largely due to the fact that I was discovering that I could be popular if I pretended not to be so nerdy when the game came out. Hm. Now that I'm in my 20s, however, I've given up on popularity. Popularity is for chumps and coke-whores. Social maladroitness is where it's at, people! Diablo II will allow me to get back to my roots so to speak. It'll allow me to hack-and-slash my way to greatness without fear of the unsettling aspects of real-life greatness (You know... sex scandals and alcoholism). The entire boxed set includes the expansion as well as a nifty strategy guide, and I think it's around $30... which is quite a bit cheaper than my other choices. The online play, however, will be lackluster I'm sure... since this is a 10 year-old game and all. The hackers have totes ruined it by now.

[New Stories!]

2010-03-01T16:22:00.005-05:00

It's been awhile since I've posted. I've been meaning to do a review of Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, but I'm still letting it all soak in. Plus I've been busy catching up on watching the episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race that I missed. Yeah.

So while I wait for my brain to shake off the gin and glitter, have some stories to read! Two of my stories went live today. "Ewa and the Last Changeling" is up at Electric Spec, and "The Hattercap and the Comic Book Artist" is up at Mirror Dance Fantasy. Exciting! Both of them involve faeries and changelings, but with a different take on the matter. Yes, I'm that nerdy! Enjoy!

[Addictions]

2010-02-02T22:38:00.007-05:00

I normally don't carve out specific time during my week for leisure (since my life is--fortunately for me--a lot of leisure). But recently, Ian and I have instituted video game night. Our plucky XBox 360 has seen plenty of action, but we just purchased one of the best two-player splitscreen games to date, I think, and we needed to exalt this game to its worthy place by declaring Last Work Night "Borderlands Night." (Last Work Night is akin to Friday... except it's not always Friday... given the unruly nature of work schedules...)

Yes, Borderlands. That explosion laden trailer accompanied by the song "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" by Cage the Elephant. You might have seen it on TV. You might have thought, Now there's a nifty looking game. Or you might have turned off the TV, disgusted by the hype and seemingly unoriginal game concept. I was a member of the latter camp, that is until I bought the game. It far exceeded my expectations, and here's why:

1. The game plays like a shooter, except you can't throw caution to the wind, a la Doom or Duke Nukem or something. Your character is fragile, and often times the game requires you to actually strategize -- to think about your actions before you rush in screaming, "PWN'D!" A shooter game that makes you think? There's something new.

2. The RPG aspects of the game are streamlined enough that they don't beleaguer the fast-paced action, yet complex enough that you feel like you've accomplished something after playing. If obtaining a 3-shot rocket launcher doesn't give you a sense of accomplishment, I don't know what does.

3. The multi-player! Split screen. XBox Live. 'Nuff said.

4. The graphics: Now, XBox 360 is capable of some mean looking graphics. The direction video games seem to be going these days is toward ultra-realistic, and I have no problem with that. But consider for a moment that you're playing a video game. You know, not real. Borderlands does what most well-designed, thought out games do, and that's stylizing the look. Borderlands' environments are beautiful, 3D, alien worlds with startling terrain and atmospheric details. But the characters are flattened, sort of like comic book characters. They're outlined with thick black lines and look like they've been ripped off the pages of a Ghost in the Shell manga.

5. The worldbuilding: Now, obviously, this is a video game. So to laud the storyline and writing would be pretty laughable. Even the very best video games can't hold their beans to a novel. But Borderlands has some pretty cool ideas running through it. An inhospitable frontier planet with mysterious alien artifacts, being fought over by greedy metacorporations and privately funded treasure hunters? Pretty cool, albeit cliche. But Borderlands has so much more to it. It's got a dieselpunk feel to it, and that aesthetic runs through every facet of the game, from the characters' speech to the technology to the themes (progress can be a grimy thing).

Anyway, that's enough praise. I'm off to fire up the XBox and send Mordecai into the wasteland.

Let's just hope this doesn't turn into another World of Warcraft debacle. That thing sucked four years of my life away. Just think of the things I could accomplish if video games were all replaced by books and pens and paper...

[Winter]

2009-12-02T08:04:00.008-05:00

December in Florida is quite lovely.

For the first time in months, I woke up to see the sun rise, and it was incredible. The palm trees' leaves are spiky and dry right now, and they look like giant feather dusters, which beats the sickly looking deciduous trees you see in Midwest winter. Those things just remind me of dead, black veins, clawing at the sky. And the sky! The sky is a rolling orange and pink... it looks like melting sherbet. Nothing at all like the lead-colored nonsense you get in Michigan. Oh, and did I mention that it's in the mid-70s? Yeah. In December. At 7:00 AM. This, of course, feels even sweeter after reading an e-mail from my dad in which he informed me that it's 30 degrees in Michigan. My snot hasn't frozen to the inside of my nostrils in so long. And you know what? I don't miss it.

A sunrise walk to the mailbox was just what I needed. I've had a major case of isuckitis lately, and I was beginning to fear that it was chronic. December is supposed to be a time of depression for writers, but it's turning out to be a time of rejuvination. It's not even lunchtime, and I've already fired off a couple submissions and cracked into a new story. I'm looking forward to the winter, tepid air and loamy beaches.

[Published story, and NaNo]

2009-11-09T23:00:00.006-05:00

NaNoWriMo has only been going on for little more than a week, and I'm already rummaging through the refrigerator late at night, staring through milk cartons and bundles of kale, wondering how the heck I'm going to feed this novel.

I'm not panicking. I just hold myself to a very high standard when it comes to fiction writing, and so far, the overall quality of my nano writing is a 5... 6... at best. I spent the past two days writing a chapter that I know will see the chopping block when November's over and it's time to re-write this silly thing. But, such is writing. It's a lot like necromancy: You find a corpse. Spruce it up a bit. Stick a corsage on its collar. Chop off some limbs. Sew on a new nose. Spruce it up some more. Maybe give it a stylish hat with a jaunty angle. And then when it's passable as a living thing, you give it a nice coat of polish and send it off into the world.

Okay, bad analogy. But writing is both a constructive and destructive craft. You build ideas, you tear them down. All in the name of story. Truth be told, I love it, and I'm having a blast writing Foxglove for NaNo.

In non nano news, one of my stories ("We Were Born With Blue Eyes") has been published in Fusion Fragment. I want to thank the super cool Cavan Terrill, the editor of Fusion Fragment, for thinking my story is neat and giving it a home.

Also, I have a couple more stories that have found homes. They'll be popping up as 2009 comes to a close, and in early 2010. Super-exciting, but more on that later!

[October writing goals]

2009-10-01T12:48:00.008-04:00

Yikes. I've been extremely lax in my updating. So here's a post to encapsulate all of September-That-Was.

September was a good month for writing. I saw the tip of the iceberg for not one, but two novels. While I didn't start any new short stories, I did have one accepted (more on that when it appears... I'm always nervous about posting acceptance glee). And I have more of a grasp on the actual plot of The Biologist's Son... finally. Still, not much actual writing got done. This displeases me. Gr. I spent quite a few hours staring out my window, running my hands over my face, and frowning. I think the problem can be chalked up to a lack of focus. I have way too many projects on my project-plate. There's my gay cyborg soldier novel, The Biologist's Son, my dying Earth / geothermal hive city / biopunk gothic romance novel, Mender, my alternate universe steampunk quest novel Skyship Nancy, my postreligious angels vs. necromancers comedy of errors novel, The House of The Stitched Angel, and a short story featuring my favorite Skyship Nancy charater, Helvetica, the automaton without a divine cog. Yes, October will be the month of focus.

In other news, fall has settled over Florida. 72 degrees this morning. The alligators are retreating.

[Bent to trusting darkness in the night / She claws at mold and digs in blight]

2009-09-05T02:15:00.011-04:00

Work on my biopunk-not-a-gothic-romance novel, Mender, has been picking up a lot of steam lately. I actually like the protagonist! (My MCs are usually so flawed and abused that their villainous sides seep through a bit too much.) Yep, Ashley Raven Seventhfrost is pretty kick-ass. And also fragile. Why, right now she's just opening up to Cottar Forster about her controversial past. Controversy! Yarr!

I think one of the things I like most about this novel is that it has a distinct flavor--a definite voice that the other novels I'm working on lack. I don't have a very strong writing style, but there's something going on in Mender that tickles me in all the right places. It feels like an alternate history piece set in 19th century England... even though it takes place a thousand years in the future, in a self-contained hive-city in western Illinois. Today someone asked me how to describe the feel of the novel, and I told him that it's like The Castle of Otranto meets Aliens. Meets The Wonderful Wizard of Oz... book, not movie.

Plus, my prologue is a villanelle. A freakin' villanelle! I lurve eet!

[Yo ho ho and a goal of 1,500 words!]

2009-09-02T19:04:00.002-04:00

A list of the (not-so-clinical) symptoms of The Swamp blues:

1. You have no friends
2. You have no family
3. You have no day job, and no prospects
4. You live in one of the only states to explicitly ban gay adoption.
5. Mike Huckabee was signing books at your local Borders bookstore. Yes, that Mike Huckabee.
6. Everyone around you owns a monster truck or is a monster truck enthusiast.
7. You have to keep up with Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, and Erika more than you have to keep up with your aforementioned (lack of) friends and family. (This is why I refer to my current location as "The Swamp" and not "The Sunshine State" like the octogenarians who side-swipe you on the roads.)
8. Octogenarians side-swipe you on the roads.
9. Did I mention tropical storms? Oh yeah, right. Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, and Erika all came over for dinner... and they didn't wipe their feet.
10. Fire ants
11. Cockroaches (affectionately referred to as "palmetto bugs" by octogenarians)
12. Book mites
13. Moth-looking bugs that do. not. die.
14. Alligators.

Okay, so that last one hasn't affected me. Yet.

But a trip to the library, Barnes & Noble, and the liquor store solved everything. Yep, I'm set for at least a week. Embrace the hermitage. Time to go look for the first line of chapter 3 of Mender in my freezer, behind the bottle of rum.

And people wonder why writers are statistically more likely to be alcoholics.

[Outer Alliance Pride Day]

2009-09-01T01:29:00.002-04:00

What a wonderful thing the internet is, that a scattering of writers from every corner of the globe can come together and use the power of their collective voices to shepherd change. It boggles my mind. Here, in the steamy reaches of The Swamp, where I have no friends or family with which to socialize, there's a group of like-minded writers just a mouse-click away.

Speculative fiction, in my mind, should always be a genre that accommodates a vast multitude of identities. It is the exploration of worlds unlike ours and worlds so close to home that they reveal the spark of light (and the shadow of darkness) inherent in our everyday lives. It is the exploration of times long past and times in the future--what we have to hope for (and what we may come to dread). It is the exploration of "what if?" and "why not?" and "who are we?" It is the exploration of the human soul.

May our words become steel.

As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.

* * * * * * * * * * *

What follows is an excerpt from a work in progress currently called "The Biologists' Son." It tells the story of Adam, a synth--an artificial human created to be a soldier. However, Adam doesn't turn out to be the supersoldier the military planned on. He's gay. Because of this, he--along with other synths turned "symps"--is forced to resign from the military and work in a brothel house that serves the human soldiers' husbands and wives.

This is from a very, very rough draft, but like I said; it's a work in progress. Bear with me here.

I was assigned to the Scrap Factory after three years of killing. "Service," they called it. It was the most prestigious brothel in the country. No one got assigned to the Scrap Factory without pulling a few strings. I had no strings to pull. No connections. But apparently, they needed a worker with my features: male, long dark hair, tea colored skin, and the ability to get along with everyone else that worked there. I wasn’t a knockout like most of the other employees, but I was the kind of guy you could see yourself falling in love with, or so I’ve been told. And that’s what over-idollators really want. Someone to fall in love with. Someone within reach.

Denyys, the manager of the Scrap Factory, was easygoing enough. He had this great laugh that blasted twice, like a friendly car horn letting you know that you can cut in front. His skin was the color of that pickled ginger you get in clear plastic sushi boxes at the supermarket, and he was enormous and bald. He looked like Santa Claus after a good, long shave.

“Kiddo,” he always called me kiddo, “Kiddo, you’re gonna love working here. Your partner in crime and everything fine is Jason. He’s around here somewhere, getting ready for tonight. He was a lieutenant in the Osprey division--” Denyys laughed. Toot, toot. “Guess you two already have something in common. Aside from being sympsynths, that is.” No laugh this time. Just a pink and apologetic face that looked like a prawn’s.

[My Love-Hate Relationship With Urban Fantasy]

2009-08-29T13:52:00.002-04:00

Ever since I was a kid, I have loved urban fantasy. Mind you, I'm older than some people think. When "I was a kid," urban fantasy wasn't even called "urban fantasy." I'm talking about Vampire: The Masquerade, The entire World of Darkness, shows like Kindred, the Embraced, &c. I was fascinated by things that go bump-in-the-night. I loved reading about them and telling stories about them.

So why do I not read urban fantasy nowadays? The answer is simple:

It's all the same.

The darling subgenre of the SFF world is a despicable homogenization. I've read a few books here and there, sure. But if I have to read another "pretty white woman" urban fantasy novel, I'm going to puke. I hate it. I hate urban fantasy. My roots. My core.

I remember going to the bookstore a year ago to check out the state of the subgenre. Maybe I haven't given it the chance it deserves, I thought. Maybe it's changed, I thought. Wrong. Dominating the shelves in all their black-and-red glory were dozens of books with the same cover elements: Pretty white (straight... or bisexual-of-convenience... that's a rant for another post) woman. And looking at those covers, I already knew what the books would be about. Every single bloody one of them would be about a pretty white woman who will do battle and/or fall in love with a pretty white supernatural man.

This is not why I adored "urban fantasy" so many years ago. I adored the subgenre because it let me explore worlds that weren't so different from my own, worlds that were just a shade darker than my own. But they were worlds where anything was possible.

Apparently, "anything" means sexy white female is a vampire/werewolf/magic-user/hunter who wears leather pants.

So what's the point of this post? Well, I've been wanting to write an urban fantasy novel for awhile now. But I'm stuck. I haven't written it. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's disgust, maybe it's just excuses. I don't want to write my urban fantasy novel because I know, deep down, that it will never see the light of day. I don't like writing for myself. I want to write for other people. But what happens when the story I want to tell is a story that publishers won't touch with a ten-foot pole?

I know there are plenty of people out there who feel the same way that I do. Maybe even enough to deem the idea of publishing a "different" urban fantasy novel a worthwhile endeavor. But let's face it: Publishers aren't in the business of making change. Publishers are in the business of following trends. And the trend in urban fantasy is "pretty white woman does battle and/or falls in love with pretty white supernatural man."

Personally, I would LOVE to read an urban fantasy novel about a black lesbian and HER conflicts. I would LOVE to read an urban fantasy novel about a gay male teenager and HIS conflicts. I would LOVE to read an urban fantasy novel about a latina asexual female and HER conflicts. I would LOVE to read an urban fantasy novel about an elderly man and HIS conflicts. And you gotta write the kind of book that you want to read. Maybe I'll give it a go. NaNoWriMo is coming up. It'll be a perfect excuse to finally do it. Even if it never will see the light of day.

And if it does... bet your bottom dollar that even if my novel is about a 50-something year-old heavyset black woman, the cover will feature a 20-something year-old supermodel white woman.

There's a great youtube video that illustrates some of the points I'm trying to make:
Urban Fantasy Book Covers

[Am I Crazy?]

2009-08-28T19:04:00.003-04:00

As August winds down, and with it the last remnants of summer, only one thing is on my mind:

NaNoWriMo is coming up.

Okay, okay, in November. But a boy's gotta get a head-start on these kinds of things.

NaNoWriMo is an annual, international event that brings writers--professional and fledgling--together by forcing them to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. For one month, disgruntled secretaries, middle-school English teachers, data entry clerks, and stay-at-home-leeches become novelists. It's a catharsis that occurs only when the participant relinquishes their social life, self-inhibitions, and sanity. Imagine fervently writing 2,000... 3,000... 4,000 words per day, whittling your brain into a novel, like a bar of soap into a crude shiv... all the while, snapping at everyone who calls your cell phone: "CAN'T TALK! NEED TEN THOUSAND MORE WORDS BY FRIDAY!"

I can't wait.

So why am I getting a "head start" on this? I need to narrow my ideas down to ONE novel (I dread the thought of what might happen if I tackle two... or three... or more... novels in one month. My brain is a primeval soup from which ideas spring like single-celled bacteria, simultaneously hopeful about their place in the universe, and hopelessly lost without nurturing.) So yeah. I have to decide what to write a novel about. I'm leaning towards werewolves in spaaaaace!

It's deeper than that, I swear.

[Cheerleaders and Arterial Spray]

2009-08-24T20:00:00.001-04:00

1,444 words on "Memorial High" today. Not bad considering I got an early start on my rum-and-cokes.

Probably end up deleting half that come tomorrow, but meh. I really like this story. The main character is lovable, even if he is a zombie. Even better, I kind of know where the plot is headed! Kind of.

[Like a shot of steroids]

2009-08-21T21:43:00.002-04:00

I've decided--after spending almost two hours oo-ing and ah-ing over the awesomeness that is goodreads.com--that I haven't read nearly enough classic sci fi. Since college, really, I haven't read many books... maybe one or two a month. This realization bothered me. :-/ Here I am, trying to write silly little stories about hive-cities and druids and robots and unicorns, and I haven't even read The Man in the High Castle.

So, to remedy my lack of background in the sci-fi classics, I've decided to do a whirlwind "50 books in a year" tour of the 50 sci fi books I should read, that I've always wanted to read, but that always got put on the backburner due to my thirst for pulpy books about werewolves and vampires and hotness and sex. It doesn't feel good to admit that I haven't read a lot of these books. (1984? 1984?! I KNOW what it's about, and I even know the characters' names, but I've never actually read it from cover to cover...) I'm pathetic.

I'm about 3 weeks in, and I've read 4 of the books on the list. Now, some of these books aren't "classics" but rather books that I squeezed in there because I really, really want to read them; re: Hammered by Elizabeth Bear. So, it's not actually a "50 classics" list, but rather a "50 books I won't allow myself to make up excuses to not read anymore" list.

I know, disgraceful. But in my defense!: In middle/high school I read pulpy trash books, in college I had to read L-I-T-E-R-A-T-U-R-E (ie, not sci-fi), and after college I went back to reading pulpy trash books. Don't judge me for my shortcomings. I'm working on it.

Oo! Also, I added my goodreads.com widget to my blog so everyone can see what I'm currently reading! (Because all my family members teutally care.)

[Avatar]

2009-08-04T03:25:00.003-04:00

I am very excited about this movie.

The trailer I watched gave a "summer 2009" release date, but I think imdb pegs it somewhere closer to Christmas. Either way, I can't wait. It's about a group of humans entrenched on a distant planet and their contact with its indigenous population. Sci Fi Wire gives another brief synopsis with a cool new poster.

At first I couldn't figure out why this logline grabbed my attention and filled me with the anticipation that this might be one of the shiniest sci-fi movies to come out for a long time. But then I thought about it a bit; most sci fi movies, as of late, have been thematically about "the other" as an extension of ourselves. Or "the other" is only examined through our very narrow lens. They're all about humans essentially looking within themselves for what it means to be human. For instance, the new Terminator movie? About a man-made machine wondering what it is to be a man. X-Men Origins: Wolverine? About some mutated humans who wonder why humans treat them poorly. District 9? Puts aliens on our turf so they can show us how disgusting we, as a species, are. Star Trek? 'Nuff said.

I loved these movies.

But...

Avatar (I hope) will give us some insight into the human condition from a completely new perspective.

High hopes, Pandora, and Sigourney Weaver: here.

[Evolution of a Genre]

2009-08-01T23:26:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine let me borrow his DVDs of the old X-Men cartoons. Gahd, those are fun. It's a real trip down memory lane to watch all my favorite episodes... I even still remember some of the quotes. (Whenever I see shopaholic mallrat shoppers at Somerset mall, I HAVE to say, "Mall violence. Film at eleven.")

It got me thinking about something though. In the past 10 years or so there have been a ton of comic book --> film translations. In addition to the X-Men movies, some of my favorites have been Sin City, Ironman, V for Vendetta, and yes, Ghost World (though that's a bit different). Every time another comic book movie is released, it seems like there are those reviews that tout the movies as "brilliant translations" or "stylistically like the comics." But really, they're not.

Don't get me wrong; I love these movies. But when the critics say "stylistically comic" they mean chiaroscuro lighting, sepia/black-and-white/limited color filters, or realistic-looking special effects... things the movies have all come to include through some sort of twisted evolution of the genre. The old X-Men comics, for instance, had none of these things. The artwork was bright, the depictions of their powers were cartoony, and the "camera" angles were standard. Since when did "stylistically like the comic" come to mean nothing at all like the comics??

I would LOVE to see an ANIMATED comic book movie released. And not that 3-D Pixar junk (It has its place, but NOT with my beloved X-Men). I mean hand-drawn, nitty-gritty, "I can count the individual abdominal muscles on Cyclops's stomach" animation. Kinda like the cartoons from Saturday mornings... only maybe with more than 12 frames per seconds. I'm willing to give up some purity here.

Ahh... childhood.

[Oh, Saturdays]

2009-08-01T15:44:00.002-04:00

Gonna get a whole lotta 'commplishment done today with Ian being off work and nice weather...

/sarcasm

Anyway, time to go to the pool. (It's too hard to get any reading done at the beach what with all the jellyfish to look at.) Then it's time to get cracka-lackin' on some actual writing.

[Blood Run]

2009-07-29T02:33:00.002-04:00

Ok, revise that last entry: Change "Polish folklore" to "Polish vampires." I'm getting tingly.

[Rusalki and Protection Circles]

2009-07-28T19:12:00.002-04:00

I've been going through a period recently -- and I know it's just a slump -- where I can't finish anything I start. I have about five short stories in various stages of nurture and decay, because there's nothing about them that I feel is particularly good.

People always ask me why I write. It takes a long time to hone talent into skill and skill into greatness, and even with greatness, there's a hefty amount of luck and perseverance involved before you can make any money off of writing silly stories. Sure, there's the knowledge that what you're writing might entertain someone. There's the hope that what you're writing might enlighten someone. But there's the personal benefit as well: I can't explain the sense of accomplishment and joy I get when I finish a story that I really love. It even extends far into the re-writing process. When this happens, I know why I write silly stories. I can't find anything that makes me happier, to craft something that I love, something that other people might love as well.

But lately, I haven't gotten that feeling very much. The stories I've been writing the past few weeks seem so flat, so tired. Now, I don't really believe in "writer's block." Writing is hard. Bottom line. You just have to write through it. I have a handy-dandy book of writing exercises for the really rough times, so that I can just let words flow out. It helps, to be able to write something every day, even if it is just gobbledygook.

Well, I was e-thumbing through some of my old exercises today, cursing under my breath that I'm doomed to living with stories in my head and not on bookshelves, when I came across one that caught my attention. The exercise was: Write about an event your grandparents went through, something you've heard about second-hand but haven't asked them about specifically. I remember the exercise was easy enough, since most of my grandparents died when I was a baby. I wrote about something my parents told me concerning my grandpa: That he was a rum-runner during prohibition. When the Detroit river was frozen in the wintertime, he drove a truck north from Canada to Detroit (Yes... Canada is south of Detroit... I'm a third-generation Detroiter).

Well, I've started writing a story that expands this writing exercise I did about my grandparents. And I've got that tingle again. No, not that tingle. The one I was talking about, the one where I'm in love with what I'm writing. It's totally a story I would want to read, and not just because it's based on my ancestry. It has Polish folklore AND mafia goons with tommy guns. I just hope that when I hammer out the god-awful first draft and it's time to trim it down, that I don't want to just scrap this story like so many others I've written recently.

[A Hermit With a Chainsaw]

2009-07-27T21:15:00.002-04:00

I used to be so good at this online stuff... keeping everyone in my life up-to-date through a stream of endless witticisms. But now... now I just feel so old. I'm 25! But I deleted my LiveJournal a few years ago, don't go on my myspace, find facebook to be entirely too confusing, still have no idea how Twitter works, and have only recently (now!) resurrected my blogspot blog. At one point in my LiveJournal's career, I had something like 400 friends, and my "journal entries" would get upwards of 50 comments in minutes! Minutes! *Sigh* That seems so long ago... almost four years, but a generation as far as the internets are concerned.

So man the cannons, 'cause here I go again!