Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Writer’s Life
Best tiramisu
I cut the pound cake into thinner slices, and that way I was able to have six layers instead of four. Since the slices were thinner, they soaked up more of the espresso mixture. Thus, there’s a higher volume of espresso per bite of tiramisu.
I can’t eat too much of this stuff, but it makes Karen happy.
***
A dead blue whale washed up on South Beach in Crescent City. Since I will forever be the kid who turns dead animals over with a stick, I had to go see. (Nope. Couldn’t find a big enough stick.) This poor bastard had to have been forty or fifty feet long. Biologists from Humboldt State University came out and carved specimens from around the flipper, or whatever you call the structure that’s homologous to an arm.
It was freshly dead, not decomposed in the least, and yet the smell was viciously strong, the kind of thing that took up residence in your sinuses and made itself known for hours after. I’m wondering how deeply into town that smell will penetrate, especially when decomposition sets in — and most especially when the warm weather returns. Will it wash away? I hope so. If it doesn’t, it could take years to disappear.
***
Today, I wrote nearly 3000 words and finished Chapter One. I think it flows pretty well. As I’ve said countless times, my number one writing rule is, “It has to entertain ME.” That way, I have an audience of one at the very least.
It’s a creepy feeling, knowing that my muse has something in mind and isn’t sharing with me, not in any conscious way. “Come on,” I want to say, “how can I start Chapter Two if I have no idea what’s going to happen after the first sentence?”
To which my muse responds, “Fuck you. You haven’t given me hardly any air for MONTHS. You expect a detailed outline?”
But I guess I’m not being entirely truthful. I know what has to happen (an alien abduction). The details, my muse keeps to herself.
***
Live Blogging tonight . . . I’ll shoot for 7 PM PST, but I still have to go to the store, shop, come home, make dinner. See you soon.
D.
Writing
On the way to work, I thought of — well, not an opening paragraph. Not even an opening sentence. A clause.
On the morning of the day of her alien abduction,
Strangely enough, I could still remember those words when I got home this evening. I fired up the computer, figuring I would finish the sentence and save it to a new file. I finished the sentence, then started another, which turned out to be a longish one . . .
The morning of Lisa O’Keown’s alien abduction was much like any other morning. She pounded on Cyrus’s bedroom door to get him up, dished out some Gerber’s Peaches ‘n Cream for Billy Ray, picked the lock on Cyrus’s door, dropped the fourteen-year-old’s backpack on his sleeping groin (not all of him was asleep, she noted), loaded Mama’s whites into the dryer, cleaned Peaches ‘n Cream spit-up off Billy Ray’s shirt, brushed her hair, ate some dry wheat toast while wondering how her ass managed to stay so huge even on a sixteen hundred calorie diet, dodged Cyrus’s Pre-Algebra book, and broke up with her boyfriend, Henry Davies.
Granted, the breaking-up part of her day was a novelty, although not as much of a novelty as the alien abduction part, but she didn’t know about that yet. Just that by noon, she figured this had to be the worst day of her life, ever. (and so forth)
. . . and before I knew it, I had written over 1200 words.
No, I don’t know where I’m going with this. All I know is what I’ve already told you. I don’t even know if I can finish one chapter in this same voice. I’m not even sure where this voice is coming from — is it authentic Muse, or am I ripping someone off without realizing it? (Trust me, you would need to see more to get the flavor.) And I really don’t know if Gerber’s sells Peaches ‘n Cream baby food!
Blueberry Buckle. That was my favorite as a baby; I can remember the taste.
I’ll keep you posted.
D.
Next year for sure
Every year when they announce the Bulwer-Lytton winners, I think, Damn. I can do that.
The SF winner for 2007:
What a pity Dave was too young to have seen “2001: A Space Odyssey,” for he might have been able to predict what would happen next, when the ape standing next to the big black slab picked up the tapir bone.
Ann Medlock
Lenah Valley, TAS, Australia
I love it. And the SF Dishonorable Mention is a hoot, too.
D.
P.S. If that link is not enough badness for you, suck up the 2007 Bad Sex Award Winners.
The 1001 Nights
For tonight, I thought about reviewing Christopher Moore’s Lamb, which I’ve finally finished. But I’m afraid I can’t give Lamb a favorable review, and it’s such a good-natured story, I’d end up feeling like a bully. Yeah, yeah, Moore can take it, but I don’t feel like being a bully. Not tonight.
Then I thought about telling the story of my first sleepover back when I was a kid. It’s not a bad story, but the high point is the fact the host family were the Wieners and they had a dachshund named Hot Dog, whom I couldn’t help but call Wiener, not out of brattiness but as an honest mistake. And that really isn’t much of a high point.
So when Lyvvie took the bait yesterday, and I quote,
Dish the story.
. . . I decided to leap at the opportunity. Just so we’re all on the same page: this is a new idea for a novel, kind of a big deal for me since I haven’t had any fun ideas in a long while. I don’t know how bright it is to start a new project when I still have old projects in need of editing, but that’s another post for another day. Besides, I’m not starting a new project; I’m only talking about a new project. Ain’t the same thing.
Follow me below the fold if you want to get in on the ground floor of something BIG.
(yeah, right . . .)
Sunday Flickr babe: Writer Victoria Redel
I began by searching Flickr for “writer,” and after ten pages, found this page of photos for Writers Revealed. From that whole set, all those faces, I picked Victoria Redel. Here’s an interview with Ms. Redel. Snippet below the cut.
Serenity, Firefly, and alignment drift
In the past, I’ve argued that the Dungeons and Dragons concept of “alignment” provides a useful framework for character development. Alignment describes a character’s intrinsic ethics and morality. There are two axes: lawful-neutral-chaotic, and good-neutral-evil, providing a total of nine character types. Lawful good = Superman or Dick Tracy, Unlawful evil = The Joker, and so forth. By “character development,” I mean both the author’s first conceptualization of the character, as well as the character’s moral and ethical evolution over the course of the story.
In D&D speak, “alignment drift” refers to the way a character’s behavior might change over the course of a game — usually because the player develops a deeper understanding of his character. But in fiction, “alignment drift” might be a useful way of looking at deep-down changes a character undergoes, those subtle and not so subtle shifts which make for a satisfying novel.
Still with me? Then follow past the cut . . .
The Lapses of Lynch’s Locke
I don’t want to piss off protected static and SxKitten, both of whom recommended The Lies of Locke Lamora, so let me first speak this novel’s praises. First: phenomenal cover art.
Either the artist read the book, or he received (and paid attention to) specific directions from the publisher. Look! Five towers! And they’re the right colors, and they have those little gossamer threads between them representing those thingies the nobles use to travel between towers! Damned impressive.
Belief
I suppose my son should be considered Pope of his own Church, the Church of the Lucky Penny. I’m sorry, Jake, but I cannot bring myself to pray to the Lucky Penny, not when the Flying Spaghetti Monster makes so much sense.
Been busy reading some of your suggested books. Made it about 100 pages into The Lies of Locke Lamora when Pat’s suggestion, Towing Jehovah, showed up in the mail courtesy of Paperback Swap. This particular book has had an interesting past: it used to belong to the Georgia Public Library, but they discarded it! Now, what could make them do a thing like that? The spine isn’t broken. No one has defaced the pages. The plastic-protected dust jacket is in top shape. No reason that I can see for the Georgia Public Library to discard a novel about the towing of the dead body of God to His final resting place in the Arctic Circle.
Like anyone who wants to believe, I would prefer to believe in pleasant things. Especially in light of yesterday’s rejection from the folks at Ellora’s Cave, I don’t want to believe in anything to gloomy or too doomy. Thenceforth, I shall believe in fortune cookies. I had two in today’s lunch-cookie (truly an auspicious sign, all by itself):
You will be rewarded for your efforts within the month.
The month of November, or a thirty-day interval? Please be more specific.
There will be many surprises; unexpected gains are likely.
Since I expect to get picked up by an agent or publisher, this last one could only mean that a movie deal is imminent.
I like my Church of the Fortune Cookie.
D.
PS: Really, really apropos: Catholic League’s William Donohue has his edible thong in a twist over the upcoming release of Golden Compass, the movie.
Bet you always wondered what we keep beneath those lab coats.
Listen. Publishers. To sweeten the deal, I have arranged for my own cover art.
Yes, I know my heroine needs to make an appearance on the cover. Perhaps my publisher would be kind enough to photoshop her in?
D.
Sleepy Saturday
I spent the morning making tiramisu and cleaning the kitchen. Afterwards, I took a trip to the grocery store for some much-needed kitty litter. Got home to find Karen asleep, and she’s still snoozing, two hours later.
A nap sounds nice right about now. Instead, I forced myself to do some brainstorming on a new-old project. Or is that an old-new project? It has been my “intended next” for the last three years: a novel using grown-up versions of my characters from “The Mechanic.” First thing that happened, my muse decided to scrap the idea of Russ and Carl in their 30s. (Leave that for the sequel.) If I stick to my source material, they cross paths again when Russ is 23. This would put him in the third year of med school — a clinical year, conveniently enough.
Russ isn’t really a sociopath, nor is Carl. They both have their own code, and in Russ’s case, his rules are anything but Hippocratic. He’s loyal to friends, old and new, even to the point of committing murder. A mercy killing, really, one which pulls Russ into the middle of Norteño vs. Sureño gang warfare.
Yup, I think I’m going to have Russ euthanize one of the Norteños respected elders, their poet laureate, at the old guy’s request. I wonder if I need to change all the gang designations? Wouldn’t want to walk in Edward James Olmos’s footsteps, after all.
So Russ runs afoul of La Eme, and maybe someone else on the medical staff has figured out what he has done; I have in mind a troublesome girlfriend, too, but that’s all very nebulous. Since Russ’s friend Carl has always been the more clever of the two, Russ brings him in to help fix the mess.
I have in mind something which begins funny and poignant, and ends with a lot of bloodshed.
Live-blogging tonight, maybe. If I’m completely exhausted, I can use the laptop’s camera; that way, I can live-blog from a nearly horizontal posture.
* * *
Eh, forget it. I’m too wiped. Check back tomorrow!
D.