My Mother

I haven't written much lately. I should, I know. I have basically given up on NaNoWriMo for this year at this point. Why? My mother is ill. She went into congestive heart failure a few days ago and nearly died. She has since stabilized and they are talking about moving her out of the CCU in the next day or so, but my brains are all kinds of out of sorts.

I love her to death, my mother. I do. But I can't help but be entirely furious with her because this situation isn't out of left field. In 2006 it was out of left field. At that time she could have had the surgery done and started taking care of herself that would have prevented all of this. She chose not to, however.

Why? Religion mostly. She decided to be a Jehova's Witness a few years back and has been following that rock stupid path ever since. This includes all the idiotic medical nonsense that goes along with it. I cannot tell you how frustrating I find this. My mother has, over the last three years, slowly deteriorated in appearance and overall quality of life. She has refused to give up smoking though it is killing her, refused to accept the treatments that will save her life, and now that we've reached this level of things they have finally started to see that they are going to have to either let her die or make the compromises they need to make.

Because prayer is great and all. And I think homeopathic medicine has it's place in the world, to be honest. I do. I've taken herbal remedies on occasion and had them work to good effect. But here's the thing, kiddos. There is no amount of prayer and herbal medicine in the world that is going to cure what's wrong with my mother. None. I don't care how hard you pray. I don't care if you get half a million people together in one place to pray for my mom, it's not going to cure her. It just isn't. What's going to help my mother is, as much as I distrust it, medical science. That's it. The operations she needs are going to help her and nothing else will.

All prayer and herbal remedies got her was a couple years of declining health culminating in a giant clusterfuck of blocked arteries and pain and blood. And I'm tired of it. And the next time they try to pull some religious bullshit over her health I am gonna punch a motherfucker square in the face. Got that? Square in the fucking face. Then you can pray that your shattered fucking jaw will miraculously repair itself.

Under the Dome Contest

Ooooo... Big giveaway over at BOOKS for a copy of Stephen King's new giganto book, Under the Dome, a lovely tale of weirdness about a small Maine town suddenly and inexplicably cut off from the world by a giant invisible dome. The edition in question is the extra special pan fried edition with all the fixin's (it's seriously pretty awesome) so if you're interested in maybe getting a copy, click that link and do what you gotta. Personally, I hope you don't win it. Because I want it. You can go to hell.

And if you do win it, I'm going to sneak into your house at night and poop on your favorite chair. And I'm a big guy. I can poop a lot.

Just sayin'.

Excerpt

Here's my current excerpt from my NaNoWriMo story:

“I don’t have time for this bullshit,” I said, drawing fast and firing from the hip. And I am fast, you know. Not the fastest ever, by any means, but fast enough. I practice a lot and I have good reflexes. The Reverend’s boys barely had time to flinch. The one on the right lost the top of his head and toppled over. The one on the left had a rose suddenly bloom in the center of his chest. He looked down at it, uncomprehending at first. Then he looked up at me, confused. He turned to the Reverend and opened his mouth to speak. Blood bubbled out and he too fell over, landing square on top of the Reverend.

I took advantage of that to run over and grab Captain Chaos’ reins, but the horse wouldn’t budge, “Come on you stupid horse!”

The reverend, swearing under his breath, was rapidly extricating himself from the larger man. His clothes were dirty, wrinkled. His hat knocked off to reveal the fine platinum blonde hair. I could see the tattoo clearly. The eye that had so obviously been a tattoo when I had talked to him in the restaurant swiveled up to stare at me. It was so full of rage and murder it actually made me physically ill. If I had thought about it then, I’d have just put a bullet directly into that eye and hoped for the best, but at the time, I was too shaken. I’d faced down werewolves, an unnameable horror named Crenshaw (who actually isn’t that bad a guy), a vampire or two and even once a dragon named Santiago (though in that case it was just over a poker game and it was resolved pretty quickly without violence) but nothing had shaken me like that eye did. I had been trying to get out of town because I was vastly outnumbered and had little hope of defending myself. Now, I just wanted out so I could get away from this lunatic.

On the ground in front of me, the Reverend had gained a sitting position. His head snapped to stare at me with all three eyes. The tattoo eye swiveled up slightly and I knew it was looking at Captain Chaos. A fact confirmed by the horse’s sudden movement behind me. The horse began to make a noise similar to the one the little girl had made. So quickly I had no time to react, the sound spiraled up and just as I was clapping my hands over my ears, I heard a sound that doesn’t have an onomatopoeia. It can simply be described only by what it is. A horse exploding.

I was pushed down to my knees by the force of it. Horse matter spattered my back, a terrible warmth engulfing me. The splashing and splattering of blood, bone, and meat lasted only a second or two. I was somewhat prepared this time so I only screamed a little. Mostly I was just glad that he didn’t seem able to use whatever insane power this was on me directly. Admittedly the only evidence I had that he couldn’t was that he hadn’t, but as angry as he was it seems like he would have by now.

“FUCK!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

“Animals are easier,” the Reverend said, laughing that mad little twelve year old boy laugh. It was disconcerting.

He was still on the ground, miraculously not covered in horse gore, “I liked that horse, you little shit. He was my friend. He was my house! He was my house and he was my friend!”

“And now, Mr. Crouch, You are homeless and friendless.”

Not exactly, said a voice in my head. It was a friendly baritone.

The Reverend’s eyes grew narrow. All three of them, “No. You can’t come in here. This town is mine. Your power ends at the line.”

Curiously enough, the friendly voice said, So does yours. And what do you know, he’s about ten yards from it. Hey, Crouch, how fast can you run the 30?

“Pretty goddamn fast,” I said, bolting from my position on the ground like someone had just fired a starter pistol. To his credit, the Reverend didn’t scream or throw a fit or let out a cartoonish “Nooooooo!” He simply stood, brushed himself off and watched as I passed the sign marking the town line. I stopped and turned to face him, standing as close to the imaginary line as I possibly could, taunting him, covered in horse gore and little girl brains and mud and I must have looked like hell, but I felt a bit triumphant.

The Reverend strolled up to the line, red silk suit still glimmering, and smiled at me. We were no more than a foot apart with just that line keeping him from me.

“Can’t touch me, kid. Old man. Whatever. I’m out of your jurisdiction now, right? You murdered a little girl and you killed my horse, but you didn’t get me.”

Hey, Crouch, I dunno if you want to- the friendly voice began to say, right as the kid’s foot connected with my groin. I fell back hard, clutching my bruised and rapidly swelling scrotum, that sick nausea rising up from the ground floor of my guts. The Reverend just glared down at me with his three eyes and turned and walked back into town.

“Someday,” he said.

Next time taunt the villain from a little further away, Kid. Just saying, the voice said, laughing.

“Go… to… hell…” I managed to wheeze out. I had killed five men, my nuts hurt, my horse was dead, a small elderly tweenager with people exploding powers wanted me dead, and I had lost everything I owned, save for my guns and a few dollars I had in my pockets, in an explosion of horseflesh and terror. I was grateful to the voice, but I wasn’t in the mood for being harassed.

NaNoWriMo 2: Electric Boogaloo

Today was the fourth day of National Novel Writing Month. I've been keeping myself on track so far and am currently just a couple dozen words ahead of where I need to be at this time. I ended day one with 1413 words, just a couple hundred short of my first day goal, but since then I've picked it up. I'm 6740/6680 words and counting.

Today was a bigger deal than the last few have been, though. Today was the first day that everything I wrote was entirely new material. The first three days, the material I was writing I had already been over once. I was starting from scratch, of course, but I was able to use the previous stuff as an outline for what I was writing. It was sort of like having training wheels.

Well, today the wheels were off and I was making it up as I go (like you do) and it went very well. I'm pretty happy with what I managed to hammer out and introduced a few new plot points that I quite liked. I was able to work in some mentions of characters that will appear later, and finally solved the issue of introducing Jerry the horse and how to get my protagonist to where I need him to be. Whether he actually makes it there on time or not... well, that's something I'll have to work on.

Nevertheless, I think today wraps up Chapter One entirely, which is exciting, and I've got Chapter two sort of mapped out in my head a bit. It's still rough, really rough, and I'm not sure if first person perspective is the right way to go, but all that can be dealt with later. The real important part is that the story get written. If I can do this once I can do it again. I have about six book ideas floating around in my head and, counting the one I'm currently writing, three of them are about the same characters. Trilogies are popular with the cool kids, right?

So anyway, tomorrow is another day and another 1600 words or so. I'm trying to just stick around the minimum goal and not push myself too much beyond that because I think if I did, I'd probably burn out. I know there are people out there who have already written 20,000 words for this thing, but I think many of them are probably sitting on a lot of superfluous junk adjectives. It truly makes me wonder if there's another BRONWYN: Silk and Steel in the works. My money is on "yes".

NaNoWriMo

You may or may not have noticed that the Joker's Tale stuff has been yanked from the site. I did this entirely on purpose, I assure you.  You see, the thing is, I've decided to completely rewrite it from scratch. Why?

Well, first of all, it needs it.  It's missing some things that it desperately needs. It sort of runs into the first few conflicts far too quickly and needs to really be punched up and fleshed out. I've already changed the main character's name, added a few scenes as he arrives into town, and introduced a new minor character all in less than 1500 words and I'm way happier with it than I was before.

The second reason is NaNoWriMo.  That's National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words in thirty days.  That's the goal. That's how you win. What's the prize? Dick squat. You get a little certificate you can print out but that's it. That's not the point. The point is doing the thing. Getting it done. This is the time to really make an effort if you've ever been planning to try writing a book.

Is it cheating to use a previously written piece? No. Mostly because it's not physically possible to cheat because there's no real prize. I'm rewriting it from scratch. I started over from word one and while I did reuse a few bits and pieces, the point is that I don't want to write just any novel to get the word count done. I want to write this novel.  I've wanted to write this novel for probably fifteen years now, though it's completely different than it was when I first conceived the idea.  So, I hammer out this novel.  I know the general plot, I know most of the characters, and I know where it's going for the most part.  I'll worry about the stuff I don't know as I get there. I mentioned on Facebook that I had recently figured out some plot points that had been stumping me, and I'm happy to say that's what prompted this total rewrite. I hope when it's done you all enjoy it.

When I rebooted the piece, I had about 3000 words give or take a few hundred.  Now I have 1,413 and counting and while that's a little less than it could be, I'm comfortable with it. I'll get it up there. Having a deadline helps immensely for getting things done, you know?  Need to hammer out about 1670 words minimum every day (or the equivalent) to make the deadline, but hey, I can do that.  That's really not that many when you think about it.

So, Endless Fen is a go and I'm hoping I can keep this up.  I'll post regular updates, but you can keep up with my progress at the link above.  Wish me luck guys.  It's gonna be rough, but I'm gonna hang in there as best I can.

Happy Halloween

From we here at There Is No Such Thing As Half A Stick.  Stay safe out there and try not to get eaten by anything or anyone.  It's a constant threat this time of year, between the ghouls and goblins and me personally all ravenous for the taste of human flesh dripping with your delicious juices.

You make excellent fajitas is all I'm saying.

Anyway, I was working on a little something to post for today, but just couldn't make it come together in a way that I found pleasant.  So instead of that, please enjoy the goofiness that is

Shadows

Seeing them again, from the corners of my eyes.  It always happens when I have prolonged bouts of insomnia.  After a week or so, I see them crawling along the floor, the walls, the ceiling.  Dark little shapes scuttling at the edges of my vision.  You ever have a cat?  You know how sometimes you see it walking by out of the corner of your eye as it strolls under the table?  Like that.  Only when I glance over to look at the cat, the cat's not there.

The cat's laying on the stairs and hasn't moved for an hour.

It's easy of course to tell myself it's just my imagination.  I mean, of course it is, right?  Just a symptom of being overtired and needing to get some sleep.   Also at times I think maybe... maybe I heard something too.  Maybe.  Just a quite little scraping sound.  A soft chittering.  A slight squeaking gnashing of teeth perhaps.  I don't know.  Of course I know that it's so quiet, it too must be part of my imagination.  The house is dead silent.  If there had been a sound I would have heard it not at the edge of hearing, but as the only sound to be heard.

Right?

So of course it's just my imagination.  What else could it be?  It certainly isn't that sleep deprivation edges me closer and closer to a thin spot in the world.  It certainly isn't that the shadow men are watching me with their shadow eyes and whispering with their shadow mouths.  It certainly isn't that they're following me.  Biding their time.

Waiting.

Certainly.

Raining

A steady downpour outside my window when I can't sleep. No blowing wind or torrential flood, no lightning cracking and banging out thunder to wake the dead and it's all quite peaceful. Restive even. If not for this blasted insomnia I would likely find a quiet joy in slipping off to dreamland to the sound of water dripping off my rooftop and down into the tree.

I've had a hard time this week. I have not been at my best physically, largely due to being over tired. That in turn has made it quite difficult to concentrate properly. Even though I have actually written at least a little almost every day, it has been almost complete garbage quality-wise. Which means it just gets deleted.

What has actually survived is just a few paragraphs that have something good in them at the core, but just aren't worth posting. They need work. I'm happy with the ideas, just not the way I've expressed them. It all feels a bit too...simplistic, I guess. Still, I kind of know where I am going with it all, so that's something.

Also the last couple weeks I have been semi-excited about a possible paying writing job. I found out today that it won't be happening and that's kind of a bummer. I didn't really have high expectations about getting the gig, but I was hoping. Minor depression over that.

In the end I don't really think I was ready for it, to tell the truth. Maybe in a year or so, maybe sooner even, but not now. I'm still working on being consistent and just getting where I want to be. Developing a voice and really deciding what it is I'm trying to do. It was something on the the journalism side of things and I admit that I'm really more of a fiction writer.

So I have to ask myself, if fiction is really what I want to do, is even thinking about dedicating myself to something like this the right thing to do? I don't know.

On the one hand, having the money would be nice, no doubt. It would really go far to validate me as a writer as well. I could use that word with a lot less embarassment if I was actually getting paid. Plus it would indeed make my name more visible on the whole. Yet...I think I might find doing it distracting from the larger goal, which is fiction. My name on a book. Not the paycheck, just the accomplishment itself of being able to walk into a bookstore and see it there on a shelf. That would be amazing.

So, yeah, bummer that didn't work out. Maybe it's for the best though.

The rain continues and so do I. Sometimes in fits and bursts and sometimes in a deluge. Letters and words and sentences and paragraph after paragraph and someday, maybe, a dustjacket with my name on it.

I'll even autograph it for you.

With my penis.

5 Things That Scared The Piss Out Of Me Before I Was Even 10

My childhood was quite different than many people's.  I had almost no restriction put on me as to what I was allowed to watch.  This is largely because my parents felt I had enough grip on the difference between fantasy and reality to handle just about anything Hollywood could throw at me.  My mother, being a fan of horror herself, read me my first Stephen King story (The Raft, which was used in Creepshow 2) when I was but seven or eight years old.

What I'm saying is, I have been watching and reading horror, real horror, since an age when most kids are still looking at picture books.

It's not that I didn't get scared.  I did.  Frequently.  It's just that I didn't mind being scared.  I understood that that was part of it.  That's what the movies and stories were for.  Even when I was laying in bed at night, unable to sleep because I was scared, I knew that if I wanted to keep watching/reading these things, it was just something I was going to have to put up with.  Most of what happened on screen had little effect on me, but there were certain things in certain films that always stuck with me.  Little moments that stood out in the middle of the night when I was huddled beneath the covers.  So, in no particular order...

Zombieland

In the not too distant future, sometime after November 13, 2009 (which you'd know if you paid attention) a man eats an infected hamburger and all hell promptly begins to break loose.  Slowly at first, of course, but eventually, unstoppably we've gone from the USA to the USZ.  Welcome to Zombieland.