Today, I worked on the novel until just after noon, extending one scene and finishing a second, particularly difficult one. 1500 words in all, which makes this an above-average writing day. I also managed to get down to the gym (four times this week!) AND did a bunch of shopping up in Oregon.
Dinner tonight: spanakopita and bastilla. Gotta use all that phyllo dough; it turns to dust in the fridge.
Thanks to Crystal for turning me on to Apple iTunes. I’ve stayed away from music downloads for years; as an author-wannabe, I’ve had no desire to violate another artist’s copyright. (Hey, did you catch that? Another.) But iTunes is LEGAL. A buck a track, and they give you some nifty software for free. Here’s my first CD, a big 80s / big 90s compilation:
Blue Monday – New Order
It’s a Mug’s Game – Soft Cell
Mirror In the Bathroom – The English Beat
How Soon Is Now? – t.A.T.u.
Heroes – David Bowie
Cities in Dust – Siouxsie and The Banshees
Fire and Ice – Pat Benatar
Gone Daddy Gone – Violent Femmes
Tears of a Clown – The English Beat
Hand in Glove – The Smiths
Sex Dwarf – Soft Cell
Precious – Pretenders
Pretty In Pink – The Psychedelic Furs
Mirror In the Bathroom – The English Beat
Behind The Wheel – Depeche Mode
Blister in the Sun – Violent Femmes
Yes, I burned Mirror in the Bathroom twice. It’s that good.
Are there some omissions here? A few. No B52s, Boomtown Rats, or Madness. No Clash (intentionally — I got tired of them in the dorms), no Talking Heads, no Chicago. (Hee hee. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.) Next time around, I’ll leave out Bowie’s Heroes. Good song, but it just doesn’t fit.
Now, Crystal, I ask you: looking at a list like this, don’t you feel a bit like my facilitator?
For the folks: relatively more recent photo of Jake below. This picture is only four years old.
Cheers, kids.
D.
Who says research isn’t necessary for soft science fiction? At the moment, I’m working on my novel (okay, technically I’m goofing off) , and I need to know what to call the name label on the breast of a military uniform. Surely they’re not called appliqués. So far, I’ve settled unhappily on calling it a label. But my Google search led me to these grinning, realistic-but-fake-gun-toting Cimmerians here.
What, you ask, is a Cimmerian? As best I can tell, they’re fun-loving Americans who like to hammer each other with paintballs, except these paintballs are tiny enough that they don’t sting. They dress in full military gear and they use weapons that (the website reassures me) are indistinguishable from the real thing.
No snide comments from this quarter. Seems to me, if their weapons are indistinguishable from the real thing, they might take live rounds just as well as micro paintballs.
Reminds me of a story from my indentured servitude in the Kedes Lab. Our lovely dishwasher once put us in line by relating that she’d purchased an ouzi by mail order. It was a bee-you-tiful gun, she said, but so difficult to put together. Still, she’d managed . . .
Maybe it was true. Maybe it wasn’t. We didn’t bitch to her much, after that.
D.
Surgery day for yours truly here at St. Mammon Community Hospital. This means I hustled my butt out of bed at 7, skipped my coffee, and got into the hospital by 7:20. When will I learn that it’s okay to get in a few minutes later and not skip the coffee?
For a few months now I’ve had trouble working on the novel at night. I’ve been productive on the weekends, but my evening writing has slowed to a crawl. (Oddly enough, though, I wrote “Troll Lover” mostly at night.) This annoying problem coincided with our purchase of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. I doubt this is coincidental.
WoW is an MMORPG, in case you were wondering; however, if you know what an MMORPG is, you surely don’t need to be told that World of Warcraft is one of ’em. (Okay, okay. My parents are reading this. MMORPG = massive multiplayer online role-playing game. Doesn’t that help loads?) My preferred character is She Witch, a rogue troll, but occasionally I slum with the Alliance in my other guise: Scyther, a Night Elf huntress. When you play in the Night Elves’ realm, WoW plays this dippy music that is PLAINLY a rip-off of the incidental music used in Lord of the Rings whenever those dippy elves are on screen. I’ve tried to make Scyther as butch as possible, but that’s a tough gig when you’re an elf.
Need I mention that we bought this game for my son?
Tonight the muse is as dry as a baby-powdered ass. I’m outa here. Gotta go collect mushrooms or chop off a paladin’s head . . . some damned thing.
D.
No one emailed me today, asking me what my master plan might be for Shatter*. No one asked this question because, as of this writing, you’re all content to lurk. Nevertheless, I felt no one’s question warranted a well thought out reply, and here it is. I fully expect no one to respond to this column to let me know his (or her – hard to tell with no one, that oddball) reaction.
As with all great plans, I’m starting small. Page by page, I have been editing my medical website, placing eye-catching icons** linked to Shatter at the bottom of each page. The Medical Consumer Advocate generates a good number of hits. Some of those folks are bound to wonder what on earth a guy like me will write in his blog.
When I get some sense that folks are actually reading this column, I’ll move on to step two: my discovery of the Virgin Mary in a square of matzah. That’s right, I’m going to find a matzah cracker with the Blessed Virgin’s image in it, and I’m going to post that image exclusively here, on THIS page, along with an article urging all readers to email this link to seven of their friends. If they do so, they will have good fortune for seven years; but if they fail to do so, they will be cursed with ill luck for the same interval.
I believe this to be a sound marketing strategy.
But to what end, no one asks? Well, once I have a real readership, I’ll serialize The Brakan Correspondent on my website. Periodic appearances of You Know Who – perhaps on rye bread, or in the iridescent sheen of an old slice of roast beef – may be necessary to drive my readers that way. We’ll have to see about that. In any case, the inevitable will happen. Tor Books will offer me a sweet contract, and my novel will become a smash overnight sensation.
And then (says no one) all will bow down before you? Foolish, puny nobody. Not yet. Does anyone bow down to J. K. Rowling, John Grisham, Stephen King, or Dan “Well it was just a Cracker Jacks rebus†Brown? NO. Authors get no respect.
Except on The Daily Show. With the success of The Brakan Correspondent, fellow yid Jon Stewart will have to invite me on the show. He’ll have read my book, naturally, and he’ll zoom in on one rather embarrassing detail, that the spider god’s name (Obrah, translated, ‘she who eats’) sounds suspiciously like Oprah, as in Winfrey; and, furthermore, didn’t I call Oprah Winfrey the Troll Queen in the story, “My Troll Lover� And what do I have against Oprah, anyway?
I’ll save the situation famously with some smart and snappy reply, so winningly in fact that Oprah, watching at home, will be quite charmed. She’ll have me on her show, and the repartee will make my stint on The Daily Show seem like a wake. Ratings will soar. Oprah will offer me a regular spot.
And THEN all will bow down before you?
Pipe down, you. No, my friendship with Oprah will merely ensure inclusion of my novels in her Book of the Month Club. I will become fabulously wealthy***. I’ll be offered movie contracts on my books weeks before I’ve penned the outlines. I’ll become close friends with Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and Tim Burton; they’ll put me in the movie versions of my books – bit rolls at first, supporting rolls afterwards.
I’ll suck, naturally, but that will hardly matter. What will matter – and this is the important bit – what will matter is, people will forget I’m a novelist. (My original profession will show up as a Trivial Pursuit question circa 2015.) They’ll know me only as a familiar face. That little, old, bald guy who always gets the girls. (What? Oh, come on! nobody says. And yet, if Jack Nicholson can snag Helen Hunt, why can’t I have Heather Graham?)
At some point I’ll be elected president of the Screen Actors Guild; shortly after, Governor of California. I think you know where I’m heading.
With my feet up on some big oak desk on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue**** and with my finger on one of those infamous buttons – you know what I mean, you’ve watched Dr. Strangelove – then, all will bow down before me.
D.
*This BLOG, okay?
**Okay, so I drew this lame bird on Paint Shop Pro. If I manage to win the Fantasy Challenge with “My Troll Loverâ€, I’ll win the prize: Saborra will do some commissioned artwork for me. Then I’ll have a delicious icon at the bottom of each page.
***Michael Crichton will spare change me as I leave my Bel Air manse. Bill Gates will ask me to float him a loan or three.
****They say that in this country anyone can become President. Ample proof can be found by studying the careers of every US President from Richard Nixon on.
I got up at 7:30, futzed on the BBS for an hour, then settled down to work on The Brakan Correspondent. This chapter has been a bear. Cree and her father have reached a pivotal moment, and it’s essential that each of their actions be not just understandable but inevitable. Yesterday, I doctored Cree’s scenes; today, I cut away to General Voss and his hijinks. Much more fun to hang out with the Dobolu horde than the poor doomed Huurans anyway.
It took me three hours to write a little over 1000 words. Not bad, not great. Afterwards, I finished getting whupped by Jacob on the Warcraft boardgame (yes, there’s a boardgame), and then I rewarded myself by cleaning the kitchen. Next, I hopped over to the BBS, did some critting, then got started on dinner. On the menu tonight: beef shank ossobuco and focaccia. I added too much olive oil to the focaccia dough, which led to a pleasant discovery. The end result was much airier than usual, almost cake-like. The ossobuco turned out well, too, even though I didn’t have any lemons.
While waiting for the ossobuco to cook, I played a bit of World of Warcraft, but Jake took that over as soon as I figured out how to buy a pet. He’s upstairs right now, training his newly purchased scorpid, Jeff. Tossed off that computer, I came downstairs and started a mammoth project: I’m revamping Medical Consumer’s Advocate. I’ve added some cool links to the ear candling page, in case you’re interested, including a link to the infamous butt candling website. Anyway, with over 160 articles to edit, this is going to take some time.
Karen’s taking Jake to the neurologist tomorrow. With a normal CT, MRI, and labs, it’s unlikely Dr. Ali will find anything. I just hope he’ll have some useful treatment recommendations.
I promise to be more interesting next time.
D.
For the past two months, I’ve been bruxing over “Cornucopia”, my first story to make the Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine’s almost-but-not-quite-yet cut. Today, I received my ASIM: Sorry email. They have a policy not to keep stories — even stories they love — for more than a few months. All this is depressing, naturally, BUT, and I paraphrase their email, ‘if you’ve made it this far, we’re sure you’ll have no trouble placing this story.’
Ahem. Surely they know how tough the fiction market is (not to mention the humor market)? With Planet Relish defunct, where else can humorists go? Yeah, the occasional funny story shows up in F&SF or SciFi.Com, but when it comes to my personal brand of raunchy yucks, ASIM’s the best market. I’m tempted to email them back:
Look, guys, if you want to hang on to “Cornucopia” a few months longer, go right ahead. I’d like to see the story published where it belongs.
I like that where it belongs bit. Up until that moment, the underlying message reeks of desperation. But with where it belongs, I’ve placed my lips firmly upon their collective editorial asses. I’m told this works sometimes.
On a not-quite-unrelated note, I’ve posted one of my older short stories (“Omega Point Books”) on the website. OPB is a homeless waif of a story . . . until now. John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever, inspired me to do this. Scroll down to John’s April 11 post — he has some very interesting thoughts on copyright, fair use, and fan fiction. He’s made me realize the wisdom of giving stuff away for free.
Why post “Omega Point Books” and not “Cornucopia”? Hey, if I’ve made it this far, the ASIM editors are sure I’ll have no problem placing my story. Do you think I’m nuts?
D.
Sometimes I wish we lived in a world where you didn’t have to be Stephen King or Neil Gaiman to get a short story collection published. Shorts come out of me like nobody’s business. It took three days to write “My Troll Lover”. Would have been two, but last night I left it with a lame ending, and that had to get fixed. Spin the penultimate scene like so, add a new last scene, and voila. The result made me feel all gooey inside — a good kind of gooey.
“My Troll Lover” is a sober meditation on sexual identity in the postmodern adolescent demimonde. Here’s an excerpt:
Mitzi Gaines and the rest of the Spirit crowd had started in on me as soon as the Ghost was out the door.
“Troll tramp, troll tramp . . .â€
Yeah, on and on like that. Bitches. They kicked me off Varsity Cheer when I first began dating the Ghost. If he were Negro I could sue, Daddy said, but the law gave no protection to trans-species . . . relationships. And the way Daddy said that, I could almost hear it. You know what I’m talking about.
Troll tramp, troll tramp . . .
Proper girls don’t date trolls. We don’t touch them; we don’t kiss them; we certainly don’t allow them to rake their pointy triangular teeth through the frizz above our Holy of Holies.
Okay, so it’s really just a fluffy bit of mind candy about horny* kids. Fun to write, fun to read. I had to break away from The Brakan Correspondent because, honestly, my poor birdies are taking it in the tail right about now. I needed “My Troll Lover” to pull out of this funk.
Steamy troll-foo is up at the BBS, if you’re interested (Fantasy Challenge). Let me know what you think.