Review: Green Arrow #7

Posted: March 18, 2012 in Random Geekery
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Green Arrow and booze--of course.

I don’t often review comic books. They go by so quickly, that often I only feel the need to comment on something large in the comic or in an over-all arc. So what is about Green Arrow #7 from DC Comics that has me rushing to the interwebs to get all lippy?

I’m a Green Arrow fan. I have been since I was a kid. I even got into an argument with an older cousin when we were playing superheroes in their yard back in Dodge City far too long ago. (Jesus…probably over 3 decades ago, now that I do the math.) Of all my favorite superheroes in my long association with comic books, he has always, and I mean always, been in the top 3.

Problem is, oftentimes, his book sucked. I’ll admit, I got tired of that long run kicked off by Mike Grell’s Longbow Hunters, and quit reading round about when he and Black Canary were having relationship issues. I only started paying attention when they killed Oliver Queen off and replaced him with his son, Connor Hawke. I really got back into the book again. Sure, it wasn’t Ollie, but it was Green Arrow, and it was fresh and fun. And I genuinely enjoyed it.

Then Kevin Smith brought Ollie back from the dead and…well, I read it for a bit, but it just wasn’t the same.

But when DC did their big 52 re-branding seven months ago, I figured, “What the hell? Why NOT Green Arrow?” I was already picking up about 1/3 of the new books, so let’s see what the new guys could do? After all, I was familiar with the artist, and I wanted to see what a new writer could do.

Notice I didn’t blog about it then?

I was probably drinking away my tears.

(As an aside, I also feel let-down by how a few other books went, and of those, two of them have been cancelled as of issue #8. Despite loving the characters, and issues #6 and #7 being pretty damn decent, they never really found their pacing.)

I was ready to cancel Green Arrow after the first arc wrapped up. Then I heard some interesting news: they were giving Green Arrow to Ann Nocenti as of issue 7.

Don’t know who Ann is? Check that link to her wiki page. The woman is a legend.

Remember that list of 5 favorite superheroes I mentioned? Daredevil is also on that list, and she’s big part of the reason why. Her run, starting in early 1987 and running over 4 years was one of the best runs The Man Without Fear ever had.

I’m thrilled to report that Green Arrow #7 delivers. I was not familiar with the art team before this, but I love the layout and clean lines. And the story and characterization? Nailed it. In one issue Nocenti shows why Green Arrow is no Batman. I mean, think about it–both are wealthy heads of large companies, both are gadget based heroes, and highly trained and specialized. The big difference to me is that Bruce Wayne never struck me as wanting to be Batman. That’s a mantle he feels like he needs to be. But Oliver Queen wants to be Green Arrow–not just to make a difference, but because it’s fun.

Oliver is a hothead, ruled by his passions. Sure, he’s smart, but he’s also reckless. And he bores easily.

But he isn’t to be under-estimated, either.

I suggest checking the book out.

And I hope for a long, fruitful run on a book that I think Ann Nocenti seems perfectly suited to make one of my favorite DC titles.

Album Review: What Comes After by The Honeydogs

Posted: March 6, 2012 in Music
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On my third listen through What Comes After, the 11th album by The Honeydogs–Minneapolis’ other favorite sons (The Replacements and Prince being the others), I couldn’t help shake the feeling that Adam Levy and The Honeydogs have no interest in making popular music. The pieces are all there. Alert ears can pick up a wide range of musical influences fused with lyrics that are smart without sounding elitist and poignant without being sappy. The end result is a logical outgrowth of the ten albums which preceded it, a singular work that couldn’t have been recorded by any band other than The Honeydogs. But they didn’t record it to tap into some niche pop-music zeitgeist—they recorded it for themselves and their fan base.
This makes for fabulous listening, but a frustrating time trying to describe the album to the uninitiated. In one moment, What Comes After evokes the Beatles with clever song construction and undeniable pop hooks. In the next, it summons notes of Burt Bacharach. Here you’ll get a touch of lyrics that remind me of Josh Ritter, or piano that calls to mind Ben Folds, or a refrain that could be Bob Dylan. Or Beck. Or Hank Williams.
It is also frustrating because this album deserves to be huge. But the pop-music machine seems singularly designed to keep exactly this kind of originality out of the marketplace.
The Honeydogs serve up an amazingly perky horn arrangement on “Aubben,” then sweeping strings on track later with “Everything in its Place.” Guitar and banjo feature on “Particles or Waves,”—same as “Blood is Blood” with the added bonus of some sweet, sweet accordion. The whole album closes out with a dose piano, organ and strings on the masterful “Turning Around.” Yet despite the shifts in tone and arrangement, the album plays as a unified whole, and undeniably THEIRS. Some songs had less of an impact on me than others. “Fighting Weight” had elements I liked, as did “Death by Boredom,” but they didn’t grab me as completely as some of the other tracks. But even the weakest links on this album are better than other songs on the radio. Is it because Adam looks scruffier than Justin Bieber? That has to be it, right?
Now, a certain degree of this album is preaching to the converted. I’ve been a fan of the band since their criminally under-head album 10,000 Years. (Really, if you can find that album anywhere, buy it. Don’t hesitate. Don’t think. Just throw your money at them and run away cackling like a madman. I promise, you will thank me later.) It breaks my heart every time I recommend The Honeydogs to supposedly savvy music fans only to be met with blank stares. These guys deserve a lot more recognition than they get. Doubt me? Tell you what: go to Amazon and preview the whole album. You’ll hear about a minute or so of each song. It’s a goddamned gem.
And while you’re listening, think about the fact that What Comes After was put together in under a week in the studio. While that really shouldn’t help inform anyone’s decision, it still blows me away. Here’s what you should consider–do you value musical craftsmanship, some clever pop hooks, and lyrics that actually say something? Are you tired of the crap being forced down your throat on the radio? Did you like, oh, let’s say 3 of the songs you liked on the samples you listened to at Amazon? Do you want music that’s genuinely good, or just good enough?

Ball is in your court.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

Dreams of Getting Lost – Two Interpretations

Posted: February 25, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Guardian Sculpture

I had a less than restful night last night. Part of this was due to not one, but two separate and very different dreams about getting lost in familiar territory.

I don’t hold to the prophetic dream school–at least not as far as my own dreams are concerned. I see dreams as the subconscious sweeping up the odds and ends from the waking world, and sometimes patterns form. At the best of times, carefully looking at dreams lets me deconstruct bits my life that could stand further examination.

With that in mind, I was able to look at the dreams under a microscope this morning. In the first, I was headed to a friend’s place in the neighborhood, but instead of getting on a  bus headed south, I went west instead, and found myself in a whole new neighborhood. In the second, I was given a ride to a party, and the driver got lost in something of an urban wasteland. Let’s break those two dreams down in more detail.

Dream One: I was going to visit friends who lives about 20 blocks south of me. My bus to work for the past six years goes right past their place. I know how to get there. Yet somehow I ended up on a bus that carried me directly west along 85th. I found myself in a stretch of a few blocks with quirky shops, cafes, etc. that I had never seen before. It reminded me of parts of Portland, like around the Baghdad. If I hadn’t been on my way somewhere, I would have lingered, poked around, made a day of it. Instead, I had to call Aarron and ask (as weird as it was) where I was–as if somehow they had moved their apartment. We determined that I just had to walk 20 blocks south and I’d be to their place (which makes no sense in a geographic sense), so I struck off, knowing that I could find this new neighborhood again.

Dream Two: I was going to a small party hosted by a friend in Ballard. In real-life, I’ve been there once, and I know there is no direct bus route. I had the address, but not directions. I was going to the party with a strange amalgam of my first and third wife who had a car and claimed to know the way. That proved to be incorrect as we ended up circling this area that was part industrial/part blasted foundations and barren lots. She pulled into a parking lot of this low, beige building with strip mall shops and these sort of scavenged apartments. She went in to ask for directions and didn’t come out. After several minutes, I went in after her and realized she’d gotten caught up in a conversation with former co-workers about how shitty their jobs were. There was no resolution, no feeling that I was ever getting to my destination. I was stuck in a wasteland with no way out.

The Interpretation: In the first dream, I made a mistake, but it was my mistake. It took me somewhere I wasn’t prepared to go, but it was somewhere new, somewhere fun. Trusting my own instincts and going off track took me somewhere I wanted to explore. Most importantly, I knew how I got there, and I knew how to get where I was going from there. Both of those are vital. In the second, I trusted someone else with control of my travels, and I ended up lost and stuck. What’s important here is I knew where I wanted to go. I had the address, but didn’t take the level of control where I printed out directions.

Now, maybe it has to do with the fact that I’ve been reading The Fountainhead recently, which is, at it’s core, about following your own path. At least that’s what I’m getting out of it. (Well, that and a fascinating read about architecture.)

But I think there is a bit of fundamental truth to be gleaned from those dreams–something I can apply to both personal and writing life.

I have two paths–trust others with my destination and risk getting stranded if they fail me, or forge ahead with the confidence that if I get lost, I got there myself and can find my way where I’m going (or at least back, having discovered something new). This isn’t an excuse to take foolish chances. No matter where I go, whether it’s as a writer or as a dude living his life, making informed decisions is always better than striking off blindly.

But maybe that’s just the dream talking.

 

Art of the Follow-through

Posted: February 20, 2012 in Novels, Short Fiction
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My Seattle, the Colosseum Theater

The wisdom goes, you can’t edit what you haven’t written.

I know that as well as anybody. After all–I went a long time thinking I couldn’t write novels because I couldn’t stay focused for that long.

Part of becoming serious about my writing was finishing pieces. Not just novels, not just first drafts of stories, but really, truly finishing things. And I got pretty good at it. Novels written to completion and edited, stories given more than a cursory second-pass before sending out. (* I’m actually thrilled with the depth of rewrites/edits I’ve been doing on short fiction lately. That wouldn’t have happened five years ago!)

Lately, its been a bit more difficult.

This year, for every story I’ve finished, I’ve left two more without an ending, and maybe a third with a rough finish in desperate need of a rewrite. This has even happened to a story where I outlined the whole thing and had a theme before I put the first word down.

No dice.

Stumped.

I know it’s a cycle, or a phase, or whatever we’re calling it today. Pinning a name on it doesn’t make it any less frustrating. Neither does figuring out the root of the problem for each individual story. Let’s just focus on the three fungus-related misfires of the past 6-8 weeks.

The “isolation” story came to me when I was in a very particular mind-set, but it was too late, and I was too tired to actually start writing. When I was awake and trying to work from the notes, I couldn’t capture that same dreamy, isolated mindset, and the whole thing fell apart.

A Japanese mushroom story was inspired by a Twitter conversation and the desire to submit to a particular anthology from a publisher I really liked. I had two finished stories that would have fit that particular call, but mention was made of something outside of North America, something neither of these stories had going for it. After a bit of discussion, I had the idea for the new story. It has a strong beginning. The middle is kind of there. I love the central character. Damned if I know what the ending is, though. So for now, it sits, incomplete in the folder, the call for submission having come and gone.

The one about the cough and toxic mold was started a while ago, but resurrected recently. I finished it, but the events which were originally planned to take place over a few scenes got condensed down to a single big scene. The story was all there, but something was missing. It felt rushed. It read well. I liked the story and thought the ending was horrifying. And I’ll be honest, I really should have taken more time with it to figure out what was missing. The editor who rejected it (and rightfully so) was kind enough to point out what it needed. It was (and is) a good story, that could be, when fixed, great. Even with that final piece handed to me, have I bothered to revise and resubmit somewhere? Nope.

I know, I know, I know I should cut myself a bit of slack. I am wrapping up a massive edit on the novel. It’s not like I’m not finishing anything. I am.

At the moment, it just doesn’t seem to be very much short fiction.

In the meantime, these pieces will sit until the demand to be finished. When the time is right, I’ll go back to them. Or, if there really isn’t a full story there, I’ll strip it apart and use the pieces somewhere else.

But still, it’s frustrating and I needed the moment to vent. Now the moment is over and I have stuff to get back to.

Catch y’all on the other side of an edited chapter. You know…when it’s finished.

In Love with the Underdog

Posted: February 19, 2012 in Novels, Uncategorized
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Sci-fi Graffiti

I’ve always had a bit of a love for the underdog.  Maybe it’s because I always felt like a bit of an underdog myself. The guys at the top always had this sense of privilege that rubbed me the wrong way. So my heroes became the rebels, long before Star Wars made it cool. I’m talking old-school–Robin Hood and Zorro. For years, my favorite football team were the Green Bay Packers–AGES before they were winning games with Brett Farve. Many of my favorite bands are ones that didn’t ever make it big. And it’s been this way for as long as I can remember.

This plays out in my fiction. Very rarely do my heroes represent the status quo.  True, there are creative reasons why this is a good idea. An underdog protagonist has more to gain. The world is against him, and who doesn’t feel like that from time to time? As wish fulfillment goes, having an underdog hero the readers identify with win the day is not a bad way to go.

Imagine Star Wars: A New Hope remade from the perspective that the Empire are the protagonists. A group of rebels steal sensitive information that could lead to the destruction of a major military instillation. Vader, a disfigured hero of the ruling theocracy, is tasked with getting quashing the rebellion and keeping the empire safe. He finds out that his old teacher, who turned his back on the rule of law, has returned to aid these rebels. As the protagonist, Vader would have to be triumphant at the end, shooting down the rogue pilot who he suspects might be his own long-lost son. The Empire prevails. Order is restored.

Not quite the same impact. And I doubt it would have captured the imagination of the world in the same way if it had been made from that angle.

So, here’s the weird thing about my interest in the underdog. I love underdog cities. Seattle wasn’t my only choice for where to live when I moved out of Colorado. I also flirted with the idea of somewhere in the Rust Belt. I considered moving to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina because I loved the city so much after one short visit, and I wanted to help rebuild. I considered moving to Detroit as recently as a year ago, moved to tears by images of old movie theaters left to crumble and decay. Most recently, I’ve looked at New Jersey or Baltimore.

The heart of this, I realize, is that I refuse to deal in absolutes. There is no perfect place, no perfect city. You ask most people their impressions of Baltimore and you’re likely to hear that it’s a shit city. Corruption, crumbling infrastructure, crime rates through the roof, and other than the newly re-invigorated harbor area, just a miserable, miserable place.

I can’t accept that. I can’t accept that around 600,000 people would live in a place with no redeeming features because they can’t manage to move somewhere else. Damn near everyone wants some kind of beauty in their lives. It’s human. It nourishes the soul. Even in Baltimore.

And there’s something about seeing beauty, compassion, and community blossom under the most adverse of conditions that gives me hope that somehow we’ll see it through. It makes more sense to me to nurture these things in places that need it most.

It reminds me of a section from Cobalt City Blues where Stardust is trying to convince occultist Emil al-Aswan to return with them to their original earth, rather than stay in the evil mirror universe.

Emil closed the book and folded his hands on top of his lap. He pursed his lips and stared intently at Stardust’s visor. “First let me assure you that even if I were to be able to use any of the magic here, it is anathema to me. Secondly, let me answer you with a question of my own. Why do you seek so fervently to return home?”

“Because my wife and kids are there, my company, my whole life is in that world,” he said quickly

“And if you had no family,” Emil said. If you had no friends, no business, nothing to hold you there, you would still want to go back, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” Stardust said, sensing that he was walking into a trap somehow but not seeing a way out of it.

“Why? You have nothing there, no…connection. Why to go back to a world that would not miss you, would not mourn your loss?”

“Because there are still criminals there, still evil. People might not miss me personally, but I make an impact. I make the world a better place,” Stardust said. “I may not need anything in that world anymore, but they still need me.”

“There are other heroes there, are there not?” Emil said with a shrug.

“Not enough.”

“Not enough to do what, exactly?” Emil countered.

“To get rid of evil, to make the world a better place, to make it safe,” Stardust said. His voice was starting to climb. he was getting tired of going around and around with this chatty little mystery man.

“And you think that this goal is possible? Why is that?”

“Because we’re so close,” Stardust said. “I mean, there’s still crime, and people still exploit other people for money or power or whatever. But we’re making a difference. I’m making a difference. There is more good than bad in our world and if we keep trying…”

Emil cut him off with a wave of his hand, “…more good than bad. And in this world, it is more bad than good, would you not agree?”

“Without a doubt.”

“So it would be hopeless to try and eliminate crime, and hate, and evil here,” Emil said. “It would be hopeless. A fool’s crusade to make this world a better place, you would say.”

“Yes,” Stardust said.

“And that,” Emil said with a flourish of his hands, “is why I must stay. I must stay because someone has to. Because I believe there is light in the deepest dark if we only strive to find it. It is my calling; my crusade. It is why I came here.”

On Celebrity and Death

Posted: February 13, 2012 in Uncategorized
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This tree, visible from my window, had been daring me to photograph it for days...

I’ve talked about death a few times in these pages. I’d like to say it’s an occupational hazard. I mean, I do write horror (among other things), so it’s going to come up. But more often than not, my posts about death are about real people, and how those deaths effect me and our culture as a whole.

It used to be that when someone famous died, the news hit in waves: the immediate broadcast news cycle, then newspapers the next day, then trickle-out word of mouth for anyone who missed the first two waves. When you got the news, it was generally in a somewhat impersonal reporting of the facts. Sure, it was somber, but it wasn’t personal.

The spread of social media has changed that. Now if you happen to be online when someone famous dies it spreads like a fire instead of a wave. First a few sparks here and there posting the news, then more, then suddenly it’s a trending topic. Even in our deeply cynical age where celebrities are treated as little more than product by the media, the news spreads. Partly because the Machine feeds on misery and death, but also because the loss feels personal. This was especially apparent with the high-profile death of Whitney Houston over the weekend.

Whitney touched a lot of lives in her time. Her death was tragic, and we all saw it coming down the tracks with the inevitability of an approaching train, which made it even worse. Everyone dies–at a rate of approximately 154,000 a day. No matter your beliefs on the afterlife, that’s the one thing every person on Earth has in common–no one gets off this ride alive.

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of that. We forgot that the people in our lives–both the stars that light our way and the people who are with us daily–are not going to be there forever. Do you know what I didn’t see in the week prior to Saturday? I didn’t see a single post, comment, or briefest mention of Whitney. That’s not the case now, of course.

And I find that incredibly sad, because from the posts I’ve seen SINCE Saturday, she was important to a lot of people. It’s a shame that too often we don’t think to show our appreciation until it’s too late. After all, there’s always tomorrow, right?

Do you want to take that chance?

I don’t.

Don’t Forget to Look Up!

Posted: February 6, 2012 in Anthologies, Short Fiction
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Pink Elephant

I’m feeling all writerly today, possibly due to a few day stretch where I was unable to get any writing or editing done. (As a related aside, drivers, pay attention when you’re on the road. A car is just a slow-moving half-ton bullet. Corollary: my daughter is doing fine after getting flipped up onto the hood of a moving vehicle and thrown, limply into an intersection. They build ‘em tough in Colorado!)

So in the interest of talking writing, let’s dredge out the old chestnut of scene descriptions. Specifically, let’s talk about something that’s real easy to overlook because we’re so used to seeing it, but that can be used to really sell the realism of a scene. Take a look at that picture, the glowing pink neon of the Elephant Car Wash. That sign is a landmark in Seattle. Most cities have something like that–several, in fact–roadside beacons designed to get butts in the door or sell product. Sure, anyone can toss in the Space Needle to show their story takes place in Seattle. But that doesn’t necessarily make it feel more real. Throw in the slowly-spinning Pink Elephant sign and you achieve two things–you’ve sold locals with your insider savvy, and for those who don’t know the sign, you’ve added a concrete detail that makes the place feel more real.

This works for Sci-fi and fantasy (though to a lesser degree, or at least different degree in primarily illiterate cultures). My story “Odd Jobs” in the Space Tramps anthology took place entirely upon a space station. Even so, there were commercial districts, and at one point, our protagonist books a hotel room. The name had changed since the last time he had been there, the old name painted over in color that was a close–but not exact–match to the surrounding walls, with the new hotel name in neon above it. Was any of this important to the story? Not really. But it was important in setting the sense of place.

Signs say a lot–not just their design, but their condition. Old brick buildings used to have signs painted on the sides, and many of these are now long out of date. A mention gives a place a sense of history–the faded name of a hotel that’s no longer there, the space now turned over to offices or apartments, a 24-hr coffee shop that’s been gone for decades and is now a small bar or boutique shop.

Different communities have exhaustive rules for what kind of signage is allowed, so give that a thought because it says a lot about the place. Are the signs lit from behind or carved or painted on? Are the list signs brightly colored or more muted? Huge and gaudy or small and tasteful. To you have the Bavarian-themed signs of Leavenworth, or Seattle neon?

Placement is important, too. Seattle has this huge Pepsi sign that’s somewhat of a landmark on Aurora. Thing is, it was built back when Aurora was known primarily as U.S. Route 99, the chief means of travel up the coast until the 60′s. Filled with neon tubing, it was a sight to behold. Though it’s still there, I don’t recall the last time the sign was lit up. It’s a poignant reminder of how people move on and patterns shift when big interstates connected the country.

For homework, I want you to look up next time you’re out and about. Pick out three distinctive signs/landmarks in your town. And for extra credit, what is one thing that the sign implies other than the name of the business or product?

Class dismissed.

January Progress and a Disclaimer

Posted: January 31, 2012 in Novels, Short Fiction
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Authorial Essentials


So here we are at the end of January. I set a pretty ambitious schedule for myself this year, so let’s take a look at the scoreboard.

Edits on Ink Calls to Ink are officially at the halfway point, which was my goal. I hope to finish edits in February.

Part of the push to get edits done was to get a submission in to Clarion West. That was completed mid-month, including a synopsis of the novel (which was less painful than I anticipated).

I’m doing the Write One/Sub One challenge, but only on the monthly level. I’m going to count this one as a victory also. I rewrote an older story and cut it down from over 6,500 words to a lean submission-quality 5,000 words and got that sent out over the weekend. I also did a decent first draft of a new story last night and I hope to get an edit/rewrite on that before going to bed. I could sub it out tonight also, but I’d really rather take a little time with it to polish it up. Hopefully that will hit the mail next week.

I got one rejection and one sale this month off two different stories. The one that got rejected is going to get a slight rewrite and another polish before sending out in the next two weeks. The sale was to a newer publication called Bette Noire. “The Last Horse Out” will appear in their October issue.

All of this was done without making myself too sick, though the weather helped balance that out with a few work-from-home days to counter the days I was too sick to write.

Goals met.
Final Grade: B- (The story that got rejected could have benefited from an extra scene to make it less straight-forward. I rushed it, and the result was a rejection. Lesson learned.)

Now, to the disclaimer mentioned in the subject line.

I am going to let you down. No, really. I’m going to disappoint you. Probably not many of you, but enough merit a warning. I’m not proud of it–far from it. But the fact remains that the closer you get to my gooey marshmallow center, the better the chances are that I’m going to fail you somewhere down the road. If your interaction with me is on a fairly superficial level, you should get out unscathed.

I’ve had two voices arguing in my head about this for a while recently, both about what to say and about whether I should address it at all. See, the thing is that I gave my writing and related writerly things priority over, well, damn near everything else in my life last year. When my head started poking out of the shell this last few weeks, I realized that some pretty important relationships had paid the price. The going got tough, and I disengaged.

The cynic in me says that things change, people change, and situations change. It doesn’t look too closely at my fairly dismal track record at maintaining deep personal relationships for longer than five years. The cynic points out that the relationships that grew in the past year are a better fit for where I am in my life right now. And yes, I suppose there’s truth to that. But the sentimentalist in me is still sad for the changes and things lost. And I feel regret that there were times when I should have been there for people who I cared about, and I just wasn’t. I let them down and it’s as simple as that.

So in another few hours, I soldier on into February. Hopefully my eyes will be a little more open. I’m still a writer. I’m still planning on being productive. I don’t know how to change that, or even if I want to. Maybe I could stand to be a little less obsessive.

And I’ll try not to disappoint you.

Thoughts on Writing Horror

Posted: January 29, 2012 in Uncategorized
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I’m not certain how it happened, but my writing group all writes speculative fiction. But within that, there’s a pretty wide range of styles. The other day, one of my friends in the group posted about an interest in writing horror. Up until that point, I knew that Nicole did sci-fi and urban fantasy. But despite her quite-practiced evil laugh, I didn’t see horror as something that held much interest for her.

Then she posted asking for advice on writing horror. (I’ve included the link to her blog for the completeists among you.) And I figured, “Hey, I write horror. I should be able to answer that.”

What I discovered, much to my surprise, is that a lot of what I do when I write horror isn’t entirely conscious. Digging that out and finding a way to articulate it became more difficult than I expected. I’m not going to duplicate that advice here–for that you’ll have to click the link and read it on Nicole’s blog. I’ll touch on it a bit here, but because I’ve taken more time to think about it, this is going to be a bigger discussion.

Horror and I kind of came of age around the same time. I was 5 when Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, was published. He published over 25 more before I graduated high school. At the same time, horror cinema went through a golden age, starting with Halloween in 1978. While I was still too young to watch a lot of those films, I picked up Fangoria Magazine ever time I was in the bookstore and read all about the horrifying things waiting for me on video and late-night cable television. There were also several fantastic horror comics in those days, perfect for the developing weirdo–Creepy, House of Secrets, The Unexpected, The Witching Hour.

So it’s not a huge surprise that when I started writing short fiction, I wanted to write horror.

Except I wasn’t any good at it.

Oh, I tried. Every piece I turned out for about 5 years was some kind of horror story. And looking back, of course they weren’t very good. I was still learning how to write. Those were all practice. But I also know that the premise alone for most of those just didn’t work because they weren’t scary.

And I’ll be honest with you. I gave up trying to be scary. I still wrote stories with ghosts in them from time to time, but they were urban fantasy. And with the exception of one co-written screenplay, I didn’t try to write horror again until I was in my mid-thirties.

Even without working consciously on horror in that time, something about how horror works had sunk in. It didn’t hurt that I had been working on my writing in that time so the building blocks were in place. The two other keys were that I had been ingesting a lot of horror media, so I had an intuitive idea of what scared me and how, and that I had been running Role-Playing Games with horror elements in that time. (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now–running story-centered games was crucial for my development as a writer.)

If you made it this far, maybe you’re hoping for some kind of bullet-point list on how to write horror. Even if you were thinking nothing of the sort, here are my hints, short and sweet, for things to think about when writing horror.

  • Monsters, in and of themselves, aren’t scary. What makes them scary is what they do, and what they represent.
  • This is no story for heroes. Protagonists, yes. But no one is scared when a heroic figure is put in danger. Make him someone ordinary that the reader can relate to, and you’re golden.
  • A slow burn is the only way to cook. Take a page from Ridley Scott’s Gothic sci-fi masterpiece Alien. If you blow your wad showing the monster on the front page, you better have something bigger and scarier on the last one. Otherwise it’s a let down.
  • Curiosity is the killer. If your protagonist (and reader) have no idea what’s going on at first, imagine the horror when they figure out what’s been causing that strange sound in the closet?
  • Mind your pacing. When things get tense, try for shorter sentences. It might sound goofy, but it works.
  • Use your words. Don’t say something’s scary (or gory, or horrible, etc.) Get descriptive. Get into the character’s heads and understand why what they’re seeing is so frightening. Likewise for horror. If you’re going to do gore, you’re already treading in the Dark Lord’s domain. Don’t puss out. Get descriptive and creative. It’s what you’re here for.
  • Start small, make it big, the bring it home. Think of a small, personal fear (like ghosts). Think of what makes them scary (not a fear of death so much as a fear that even after death you’ll still be stuck in this loop of misery and pain). Now find a way to articulate that bigger concept on a personal level that the reader and maybe even protagonist can relate to.

There we go class. Hopefully some of this was useful.
Again, check out Nicole’s page for the full discussion. There was a lot of good advice that ended up getting posted by a variety of smart writerly types.

Why I Oppose SOPA

Posted: January 17, 2012 in Uncategorized
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My Seattle, the Colosseum Theater

There’s an argument made about the rise of police powers, that you only have to worry about it if you’re breaking the law. I can understand why people would want to believe that. The idea that we live in constant threat of unfair persecution from powers far beyond our control is a terrifying one. But the un-nuanced view that only the guilty are punished and the innocent have nothing to fear is, at best, naive.

To say that government doesn’t have your best interest at heart isn’t paranoid, nor is it unfair. I’d do believe that government in general has what it thinks are your best interests at heart. And they’re going to miss the mark occasionally. And, in several proven incidents throughout history, our government, which is supposed to protect us all equally, has done some really unconscionable things “for the greater good.”

So why do I fear that Stop Online Piracy Act? I’m a creative content provider, after all, right? Don’t I want to stop piracy? Sure. But I think there are much, much better ways of doing it than resorting to jack-booted thuggery.

Surely our nation can do better, right?

I mean, it’s not like we nuked our own country 210 times over the period of 17 years, then tried to cover it up. (Yes, in fact, we did. It might have been at least partially responsible for the cancer that killed John Wayne, the most American of cowboys.)

At least we never secretly conducted experiments on the effect of mind-controlling drugs on civilians. (We did that too, actually. It was called MK-ULTRA.)

So, giving drugs to people, that’s kind of bad. Thankfully we didn’t actively withhold medical treatment by way of experiment. (Holy doodle, we did that too. In Macon County, Alabama, the U.S. Government participated in a 40 year study of syphilis in a poor black community without their knowledge.)

We also imprisoned a large ethnic group for a period of time because we were at war with their native country. But the internment camps weren’t exactly secret. We just don’t like to think about them. Maybe because we don’t want to consider that it could happen again. (While this could be the height of paranoia, the REX 84 plan has been heavily researched and documented. Sure, it might never happen, but it at least looks like it’s been considered as an option.)

And let’s say nothing about the irony of our country waging a war on drugs while flooding L.A. with crack cocaine. Because using drugs to undermine threats has been a proven tactic since Britain did it to China in 1817 through Canton (starting the First Opium War), if not sooner.

So we dabbled in drugs. These things happen. It’s not like we killed or deoposed world leaders to create more favorable diplomatic conditions. (Sigh. Of course we did. The Church Commission uncovered it while looking into the Watergate mess and put together a quite damning report.)

So, the Stop Internet Piracy Act is harmless. As long as we don’t pirate anything we’re fine, right? There are safeguards in place. Not exactly. If someone else posts a link on your site (Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) that infringes on copyright, your site can be shut down from afar. This doesn’t affect real pirates, because the site is taken down by domain name, not IP address, and pirates don’t give a shit about that. Even if it’s not something you’d recognize as piracy, like you singing the latest Metallica song and it gets put up on your site (or again, just linked to your site), you could have 5 comfortable years in prison for the infringement.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In even the most optimistic reading of the bill, SOPA sucks out loud. In the more paranoid reading, we’re all one bad link away from being bent over the counter by some entertainment lawyer in a Mickey Mouse mask while the government that’s supposed to be here to protect us watches with polite golf claps.

I’m not paranoid.I love my country. I really do. It’s not perfect, but it’s damn near the best game in town. But I know my history, too. And I know better than to trust them blindly.

So my site will be going dark on Wednesday the 18th in protest. I know I don’t get enough views for anyone to care. But that doesn’t excuse me from doing nothing.

 

 

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