Work In Progress

Okay, not really.  I like prologues.  I just wanted to use this picture of a monkey wearing a demonic baby-mask on my blog, and, people see “DEVIL” and think, “yeah, I gotta go read that.”

I heard a strange thing the other day.  Some people skip prologues (and epilogues).  This is a world driven by “instant gratification.” Of course people are going to skip prologues.

But, I don’t read just to “get to the finish line as fast as I can.” If I like an author, I want to stop and smell the roses, enjoy the prose, see how they are building character and theme. A prologue may not be 100% necessary, but is every scene or chapter 100% necessary? Is every sentence necessary? No, we’re artists who do things like setting the mood, establishing theme, setting rules of our world(s). Showing our style, establishing voice. I don’t consider these bad things.

I’m of the Neverending Story mind. As much as I am judging a book, the book is also judging me. I like reading it all. Bad and good. Why not? But, why in the world would I try to browbeat a prologue-o-phile into my system? Highly uncool.

You can’t tell people how to read something, just like you can’t tell them how to watch a movie or how to enjoy their music. If reading a prologue would wholly diminish their experience to the point of ruining the book entirely, then should anyone care? If they do it because they assume it will be bad. Why should anyone care? If they do it because they ran out of newspaper and needed something to start a fire in the fireplace? Don’t care.

As an author who writes prologues, hey, if someone wants to skip stuff, I certainly won’t lose sleep over it.

Write what works for the story. People have passionate feelings about prologues, and epilogues, and thong panties. Make it count. Use your page space wisely. Leave the “reader habits” to the readers. You won’t please everyone. The sooner you stop trying to cater to the minority, the better off you’ll be.

Remember Captain Kirk. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. The few might be very vocal and a bit “in your face” about their prologue hating. Still doesn’t matter. It’s their choice. Nothing you do or say OR write will ever change that. You could probably fill your prologue with a garden gnome orgy and they’d roll their eyes and move to chapter one. (ha HA! The things they missed!)

Nobody likes a crappy prologue. Nobody likes infodumps. Nobody likes an “intro” where a knife-wielding, serial killer chimp wreaks havoc on a quiet Hampton locale only to have chapter one show us the main characters getting on a spaceship to go fight aliens. But, nobody likes reading shoddy dialogue, bad pacing or super-purple prosey muck that makes you poop emo children with bad Steampunk outfits out of your no-no hole.

Do it well. All of it.

My pal, Greg Leunig published his first sci-fi poem, Love in the Quantum Era, on Strange Horizons.

Kudos to him!  Sci-Fi Poetry, eh?  I was a bit turned off by the concept until I read his poem.  Nicely done!  We fought the good fight in undergrad, my friend.  Now, we are writing genre.

Winning!

2nd Person POV.  Why all the hate, folks?  It amazes me whenever I visit a writing message board/internet forum and read a bunch of weirdos flap their arms and start pissing themselves about the 2nd person.

Don’t y0u DARE TRY IT.

I can’t read it so YOU SHOULD NOT READ IT.

It is a sign of the apocalypse.  Behold there was a story written in 2nd person and from the sky rained frogs and locusts.

Get over it.

Seriously.

I’ve come to realize that people who bitch about 2nd person can’t write it.  Can’t read it and by poo-poo’ing it, they inevitably feel better about their lack of writerly mojo.  It’s the only explanation I can think of.

If you can’t shut your trap about how it’s “not okay to write in 2nd person,” do me a favor and stop writing . Stop reading.  Just watch Survival or Grey’s Anatomy or whatever it is that 2nd person POV haters watch, because it’s not the cool shows I dig.  Only cool people watch those.

Anyway, rant over.

I gots myself a new gig.  It has nothing to do with writing.  Okay, there will be writing, a little bit of writing, but not the fiction kind.

No, not poetry either.  Sonnets make me pee myself in fear that Shakespeare will rise from the cold earth and exact zombie vengeance upon me.

See, here’s the deal.  I’m a research assistant now. There’s more, but in the tradition of story-telling, I’ll get to all of that in a minute.

The research project is funded by IARPA.  Wow, here’s what I found when I went I google-image’d IARPA:

Naked WoW  gnomes aside, the project is badass.  We’re working on a video game that will teach government agents about certain cognitive biases.  Cool, right?

(Cues Sydney Bristow/Paul Oakenfold techno music)

I can’t go into too much depth, but I will say this, the position offers me free tuition and a monthly stipend (and health insurance).  So, what does that mean?

Wait for it . . .

It means I’m applying to the doctorate program at the university (where the research is being conducted).  In what, you might ask?  How can that MFA in fiction NOT have gotten you a brilliant job?

Gaming Scholarship

Yeah, you heard me.  I may very well earn a doctorate.  You may call me Dr. Train, gaming scholar.

Dr. Train.

I like that.  I have to get into the program first (and earn the sucker), but the possibility is pretty damn cool.

And, I’ll keep writing (as I am now).

Here’s what I found when google-imaging “Dr Train.”

Some doctors checking out a guy’s butt.

I’m not sure what kind of omen this is, but I’ll take it as a good one.

Okay, not really.  Don’t do that.  I mean, maybe you really liked diagramming sentences back in 8th grade.  Maybe you got so excited about it that you would lock yourself away in your room and diagram your Sweet Valley High books in a ratty old notebook that you hid away under your pillow.  Maybe that’s you.  Maybe not.

What I’m talking about is repetition at the sentence level.  For me, I’ve been noticing a lot of Noun (or pronoun) + verb repetition.  Lots of it.  She walked.  He walked.  She touched herself.  He watched.  She screamed.  He ran away.  She laughed.  She called the police.

See where I’m going?  I don’t do it all the time, but enough to annoy myself.  Greatly.

So, that is my homework during revision this weekend.  I have a girl boner for N+V and I must quell it.  I must purge it from my soul.  You know how they have camps where gay Christians go to become straight?  Maybe they have camps for people who abuse the N+V thing.

The future is uncertain, but at least I’m aware now.

Like a group of writers scorned.

One of my favorite haunts, Absolute Writer Water Cooler, is a great place for writers to hang and chat.  But, it’s much more than that.  It’s a tool for vengeance when people do something naughty in the literary world.

One of the board’s members made this post: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=234452

Apparently, someone chick found the poster’s story on another message board and started selling it on Amazon as her own.

LINK

Once the folks at Absolute Writer got wind, a wave of action washed over the internet.  Author, Stacia Kane, started a Twitter campaign.  Others went to the Amazon site and asked to have the title removed. Some posted “reviews” about the story stating that the work was plagiarized.

This “Robin Scott” had apparently plagiarized before.  M.E. Hydra had similar experiences herself as stated on her BLOG.

This is something I’ve wondered about with self-publishing online. How easy is it for someone to take another’s work and pass it off as their own?  Thankfully, Amazon no longer lists the title as “available” but after Robin Scott was nailed for plagiarizing another piece, Amazon ups and lets her do it again?  No reprimand?  No ban of the account?

How much money did this “author” make before the title was removed?  It’s hard to say.

I mean let’s face it.  I have a hard time believing that this is some perky little chick in a superhero costume (as her Amazon profile suggests).  Probably some hairy, skeevy dude in a wifebeater sitting his mother’s basement fwapping off to his own cleverness.

Either way, I’m grateful for the internet today, and I’ll bet the author above (victim) is even more grateful.

This is how I feel lately.  I’m on fire!  Give me a cape and some badass spandex and shoot me out of a window.  It’s ON.

I rewrote 4 chapters in the last few days.  Rewrote the hell out of them.

Had a great writing group a few days ago.

I want a Kindle Fire.

I have a dentist appointment today.

I’m just randomly throwing out things you probably don’t need to know.

That’s how Rambo w/a keyboard rolls, yo.

Look what I found!  A flash fiction challenge on Chuck Wendig’s site.  This one called to me and I answered.  I know for a fact it’s not a BON-a-FIED story because I can’t find a plot to save my poor, pathetic life, but hell if it wasn’t fun to write.

From this list of six sub-genres, choose two. Then mash them together into a single piece of flash fiction, no more than 1000-words long. Here, then, is the list:

Dystopian Sci-Fi!

Cozy Mysteries!

Slasher or Serial Killer!

Lost World!

Spy Fiction!

Bodice Ripper!

Not sure what one or some of these mean?

Demand answers from the Lords of Google.

Storming the Pentagon

 (Dystopian Sci-Fi mixed with Shameful Attempt at Bodice-Ripping)

I got the bomb shelter ready for them gray sons-of-bitches, the ones with the big black eyes, you know the kind I mean.  I hear the stories.  They slip into a person’s house, I swear to God, like a ghost or a vampire’s mist or Jesus, only Jesus doesn’t take you up in his spaceship and strap you down on a medical table or screw implants in your head that make you stupid like one of those beehive girls on the Jersey show.

I got enough room for a few of them in the bomb shelter–back by the canned peaches Arleese and I bought for two bucks a case at Costco before the shit hit the North American fan.  I even put a padlock on the outside of the lead door because maybe they can’t get through lead, or beam out or call the mothership–kind of like Superman only these things aren’t from Krypton and they don’t fly around in a fancy blue super-suit.

If we had a republican in office, this never would have happened.  No way Bill O’Reilly would have welcomed these things in, had peace talks with them, discussed technological advances with them and stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the paparazzi.

“If Bill were the president, he’d have strapped an MK to his back and gone ape-shit Rambo,” I told Arleese two weeks after the aliens came.

“I know, baby,” she said.  “It gets me hot thinking about it.”

“Oh yeah?” I told her.  She pulled open her faded pink terry cloth robe and showed me one of her titties.

“You and Bill rushing the Pentagon with half the Carolina Panther football team backing you up.”

“Keep going,” I said.

“And you got an ax in each hand like some kind of Mohican.”

“Yeah.”  How could a man not get hard after hearing those words?

She put her hand on my southern manhood and rubbed.  “I’m a democrat,” she said.  “I’m here to talk to you about global warming.”

“Not in my house you don’t.  Get on the table and spread those legs.”  She didn’t move so I picked her up and put her there and forced her knees apart and told her to shut her dirty, liberal whore mouth.  Then she pushed me over the edge.

“I don’t even believe in Jesus.  I’m an atheist.”  And that was it.  I tore her panties off and start fuckin’, and she was tight and wet like a brand new faucet seal and all I could think about while she was panting in my ear was Bill with his MK and he’s smoking a cigar and giving me a thumbs up.

But, none of that was going to put my mind at ease, not about the aliens.  The new technology stupefied the eggheads plenty.  Ooo, a floating car.  Ooo, a robot that looks human.  Ooo organic weapons.  Bad enough we got a Whole Foods trying to build where the Pig n’ Poke used to be but now they want organic weapons too?  Bullshit, all of it.

I did what any red-blooded American would do, I got on the internet and started looking around for where the other shoe was gonna drop.  It was then I found a website by some guy named Jenner Vogle from Canada. I know how that sounds.  A Canadian, right?  But Jenner Vogle has ideas, has theories.  Jenner says there’s different types: grays, blues even reptiles.  The grays are the ones here now and they come into your room and take you away and stick probes in places that probes shouldn’t go.  I know what you’re thinking that I should just come out and say A-hole.  It’s not because I don’t like saying A-hole in general but being a guy and having to think about things going in there, well, how about we just let that whole thing alone?

Jenner’s radio show kept getting kicked off the air.  Technical difficulties they say.  Alien conspiracy more like, and now the Canadians were getting the shaft too. Turns out Jenner has friends in Europe, people who could set up his website up on some kind of floating server, but every now and then the site goes down for a day or two.  You see where I’m going now?  He’s a dangerous man and he knows things and those alien gray bastards know it too.

You’re probably rolling your eyes about now, saying, “This guy’s been sipping the shine or maybe he’s a meth-cooker and the fumes have turned his brain into battery acid.”  Here’s the thing: Arleese and I know people who’ve gone missing now, people who speak up too loudly about the aliens, people who disappear and don’t come back or (worse) come back all cross-eyed and don’t want to talk about the aliens anymore.

A little bit of freedom gets taken away every day and hell if America gives a damn.  Why would they?  Now they have a cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s and herpes.  And don’t get me started on the babies–alien hybrid babies born with powers of the mind that can probably laser your face off and do ESP.

It’s only a matter of time before they come for me and Arleese, but we’ll be ready for them.  It’s not like you can schedule a time for them to pop on in, like you’re having a family reunion, but you can store up the ammo, get your bomb shelter ready, put razor-wire around the perimeter of the house, board up the windows and push the Lazyboy in front of the door.

Until then, it’s me and Arleese and her pink robe that still smells like sweet, kitchen sex from the other day, and the channel’s turned to Bill O’Reilly.  Even though you know he’ll be off the air soon or wearing that same alien-zombie eye-glaze that the neighbors got, he’s there now, and every time he comes on the screen Arleese starts whispering in your ear about the Pentagon job and before you know it you’re crying out for her and Bill and the Carolina Panthers and the world is somehow right again, even if only for a few hours.

Here We Go . . .

I once read (on a writing forum) that some people purposely give “mean” or “rude” critique of a writer’s work because they were trying to “toughen” that writer up and prepare them for the big, bad world of publication.

To this, I’m left utterly baffled.  I always try to follow the golden rule: do unto others.  That means not calling someone a worthless piece of monkey-poo and telling them they should take up one-armed knitting instead.

In short, if you can’t be a professional in giving critique, maybe you need to hang up the towel.

Ms. Camy for the WIN

I’ve been writing for over 20 years and thanks to good ole Ms. Camy who I took multiple writing classes from back in my early college days, I learned from the get-go that unless you are willing to use all the professionalism and maturity in your written communication arsenal, don’t bother.  Her job was to send us out into the world with the ability to write thoughtful, well-constructed sentences.  ”You are your writing,” she used to say.

You can only imagine my shock and horror when someone (on the internet) wrote that he is doing bad writers a favor by telling them how much they suck.  I saw this tactic on Dr. Phil.  A skinny girl went out of her way to belittle and shame fat girls.  ”I”m helping them to NOT be fat anymore, Dr. Phil.”

Dr. Phil doesn’t play that game, honey, and neither do I.

HULK SMASH? 

Now, what you may not realize is that my initial (knee-jerk) reaction is not to brand this heretic a witch and trot after him with a blazing torch.  No, my friends, we must consider that beautiful four-letter word that should guide us in all things:  I’m talking about LOVE.

You can’t really get down on the a$$monkeys who prance all over your ego. Like bullies, they’re sad, broken, pathetic human beings who are desperately searching for someone to tell them: “you’re okay, baby!”

I mean, you wouldn’t walk over to Artie from Glee and shove him out of his wheelchair. He has a physical limitation here. You couldn’t slap this type of person upside the head either. What is broken for these sad folks lies deep inside of them, in a place where even Baby Jesus can’t go. And, well, that’s just not very nice to make fun of those less fortunate than us.

Whenever I get the shitty comment that’s obviously a dig on me as a person (and not my craft), I imagine God throwing thunderbolts at their heads, thunderbolts of TIGER SHEEN LOVE. Then, I say some mantras and hope they heal up. Someday, they could end up at my front door working on step 9 for the douchebag recovery program.

So, do not fret, but pity these poor souls. They are the love children of hatemongers like Fred Phelps and that stupid blonde chick from Saturday Night Live who’s bashing gay people in the name of Jesus. And, you know what? We can’t help who our parents are, can we.

Started a few new programs, dropped a few, added some more.  Overall, television has been pretty good to me over the last few months.

Revenge

I have to say it.  This is one hell of a fun show to watch.  Have you ever watched a show where the main premise is set up–girl wants revenge for her falsely-accused dead father–and the entire first or second season is dedicated to almost getting there, multiple contrived obstacles and tease after tease while the viewers follow that perpetually dangling carrot into never-never land?  You end up forgetting why you started watching in the first place, why you keep tuning in and, most importantly, why you care.

Revenge has our cunning heroine Emily Thorne played by Emily VanCamp, but she doesn’t flounder around weeping and whining, wondering if she’ll ever polish up her dead father’s tarnished name.  Instead, we get to see her succeed–over and over again.  We get to cackle gleefully as one foe after another falls to her meticulously-laid plans.  Yes, we mutter.  Yes, precious!  Obstacles arise in the form of nosy benefactors (Nolan), a pesky grifter and a deliciously evil baddie played by Madeleine Stowe.

It’s fun, but above all else it ditches that tired old story where one obstacle after another must be piled onto the character until there’s really nothing left to care about. Oh, a hurricane blows them to an island.  Oh, the island is full of man-eating chickens.  Oh, the chickens have superpowers.  Oh, the heroes are tossed in jail.  Oh, the jail is set on fire. After a while you give up.  External conflict overload.

Revenge goes deeper, shows us that despite Emily’s successes, she is her own worst enemy and the biggest conflict of all is not what’s going on around her, but what’s happening at the soul/psyche level.  The first line of the pilot series says it all:

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

The Walking Dead

I’m usually the last to get on the bandwagon with shows like this.  Part of me wonders if it’s all hype.  Another part of me doesn’t want to get pulled into a series only to have it yanked away.  (I’m looking at you, FOX network for your ill-timed cancellation of Firefly.)

Thanks to Netflix, season 1 of The Walking Dead made its way into my living room.  I watched about 5 minutes before I shut it off.  It was one of those shows–one that I had to share with my hubby, and if I started watching it without him, I’m finish the whole shebang in a matter of two days.

We were hooked from the start.  The episode “Vatos,” has to be one of the best episodes of any television show I have ever watched.  My mouth was so slack by the end that I needed help picking it up off the floor.  (Insert Daffy Duck image.)

Thoughtful, grueling, creepy, everything I love in a television series.  Oh, and zombies too.  Lots of zombies.

Season 2 started off with a bang.  Unfortunately, it was very easy to see where the creativity changed hands.  It went from being a smooth, well-paced show to something else . . .

Exposition.

And more exposition.

Dramatic monologues to each other, to nobody, to one’s self, to dead people, to Jesus on the cross.

Now, it seems to have taken an upturn again, gotten away from the 5-minute long speechy nonsense.  That’s good.  Very good.  More Daryl.  More zombies.  It would be nice to have a female lead that didn’t make you want to throw yourself onto a large spike, but I’ll tolerate that . . . for now.

Falling Skies

I’m working my way through episodes on the ole DVR.  I like it.   A little slow at times, a little too much of the angsty teen who has to be shitty to his parent(s), even during the alien invasion.  Okay.  Whatever. But, overall, I’m liking it.

30 Rock

I’m late on this one too, but very happy to have started it.  Alec Baldwin, you are America’s Treasure.  Don’t let some uppity flight attendant tell you differently.