Tales from the Ragged Edge

The Year Behind, the Year Ahead

Posted: December 31, 2012 in Anthologies, Novels, Short Fiction

It’s the end of year and it seems everyone is putting together a year-end retrospective. And why not? I suppose the end of the year is as good a time as any to reflect on what has come before and where things are headed now.

I had anticipated the year to be focused on the business side of novel work–the editing, rewriting, shopping it around. While that took a big chunk of my head-space this year, I’ll admit, I was unprepared how much waiting was involved in the process. So much waiting. 2012 has taught me patience, and how to distract myself with projects I can make progress on instead of obsessing over things I cannot control.

As a small publisher, I got to see the culmination of some long-in-works projects: the Cobalt City Double Feature and the Cobalt City Rookies e-books featuring five authors deserving of a much larger readership. I love all five of the novellas that we published, as have everyone I know who has read them. 2012 has taught me that publishing great stories isn’t enough, and that successful marketing is everything. (Hey, they’re available on Kindle and Nook also at the appropriate stores! Stock up your e-reader now!)

Carefully managing my queue of short fiction looking for a good home, I started actively sending out submissions again. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friend and fellow author Dawn Vogel who cracked the whip on submissions, because I doubt I would have placed quite so many stories this year without her. Halfway through the year, I was averaging a story a month, which for me felt kind of huge. It slowed down, mind you. Stories got picked up and I wasn’t writing enough new ones, and even most of those that I did finish in 2012 were placed. Unless my math fails me, I found homes for seven stories. This includes a few somewhat darker, stranger, pieces that I had almost given up hope on. My India-flavored fantasy piece, in fact, my only pure fantasy piece of the year came out in November in Sword & Sorceress 27, and my moody story of a crumbling marriage and an unusual lake comes out in just under a month in Blood Rites. And then I culled the list, retiring anything over five years old to the drawer. 2012 taught me that if you keep working at it, you get better at it, and while the ideas of half-decade-ago might still be good, some stories should be redone from scratch rather than “brushed up.”

It has also been a good year for personal growth. I’m more at peace with my place in the world. I’m better able to find my Zen and work through problems. I’m a better diplomat, both at the day job and in my personal life. I’ve taken more time to enjoy the quiet moments of honest, quiet, one-on-one connection with close friends and that’s brought me a lot of peace. I’ve gotten better at separating my “needs” from my “wants” and have made smarter choices as a result. Despite a year that has included no small share of hardships and setbacks, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The last year has had so many moments that are nothing short of magical that I couldn’t list them if I tried. 2012 taught me that the more skin you put in the game, the greater the risks and the greater the reward.

Spiritually (yes, I went there), I’ve reaffirmed the value of certain core principles in my life: honesty, empathy, clear communication, compassion, and the value of a simple task done well. 2012 helped teach me how by to improve my own inner life and in turn make the lives of those around me a little better as well.

I look forward to what 2013 will bring. My current agenda already has a few things piling up: I need to start paying attention to the agent hunt again. I have a novel I started in November that I need to finish, and one from a few years back to edit. I have a few short stories I want to write, a few to polish and submit, and more ideas come to me all the time. I need to look at what we’re doing as a publisher this year–audio books are likely, more back catalog on e-book are all but certain, and more marketing is essential. I’m planning on a trip to Thailand sometime before my birthday to visit one of my best friends who will be there teaching, and who knows what kind of story ideas that will inspire. And finding out that three of my top five posts of this year were about candy, I guess I should really keep up on the Fringe Candy posting. Maybe even a new one to start out the year.

Bring it, 2013. I’m ready to eat you alive.

Soundtrack for Writing – Asa – Beautiful Imperfection

Posted: December 13, 2012 in Music, Novels

Let’s talk the impact of geography on influences for a bit, shall we? Let’s take Blues for an example. From the outside, it’s easy to look at the musical form of Blues as just a blanket term, but within that category things are much more fine-grained. For instance, you have Chicago blues, which has a heavy horns influence, as opposed to Delta blues which is guitar-centric, as opposed to Texas blues which is more electric guitar-centric. All three are, undeniably, the blues. But sprouted from the same seed, they grew up to reflect the other influences, both musically and culturally, that were going on around them.

This is particularly relevant when discussing Asa, and the new-soul revival. Grown from the same seeds of old-school soul (Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, etc.) the new-soul movement has slight variances in flavor/style, small, but to my ear undeniable. Maybe it’s the production style, but there’s no doubt that American musicians such as Jill Scott or Fitz & the Tantrums or Mayer Hawthorne are drawing from a different playbook than British musicians like Adelle or Rumer, despite the common origin point. Same too with Asa (pronounced Asha), who was born in Paris before moving Nigeria with her parents. Her father had an extensive collection of records containing many of the same seeds as the other new-soul artists, but also a deep catalog of Nigerian artists such as Fela Kuti and Ebenezer Obey. When she returned to Paris around the age of 18, she was on her way to defining her own sound.

There’s something cosmopolitan about Asa’s second album, “Beautiful Imperfection” that has me listening to it on constant repeat the last few days. It is both comfortable and familiar at the same time that it’s undeniably alien. The inclusion of lyrics in Yoruba contributes mightily to this. There’s this perception by a segment of the western world that African is one big primitive wasteland in constant struggle, decades behind everyone else. While there are regions that are certainly suffering from war, famine, corruption, and general collapse, Africa is a BIG place. The continental United States can fit inside the Sahara desert with room left over. And there are more countries, language groups, and cultural identities than I could conveniently list here.

So when I say the music on “Beautiful Imperfection” sounds cosmopolitan, I don’t mean it sounds Parisian. No, there’s no denying the influence of Nigeria here, though at the same time, it’s absolutely a western new-soul album. It doesn’t sound like anything else I’m listening to right now. The closest parallel would be how I felt about Sade’s first few albums…but less sultry. In fact, the first song on the album, “Why Can’t We” is a bouncy joy that seems more influenced by Bob Marley than anything else. Then you get to “Be My Man,” which was the first single that calls to mind Amy Winehouse and the British new-soul sound. Only to switch with the next song, “Preacher Man” that I’ve linked to above–a live recording for German TV…so forgive the minute or so intro, because the performance is excellent. Then a few songs later, my personal favorite, “The Way I Feel,” which is the whole reason for this post.

“The Way I Feel,” feels like a song from a slick, noir spy film. Timeless, the way a good Bond theme is timeless. It makes me want to write cyberpunk thrillers set in Lagos with Asa playing in the background. Now, keep in mind, I’ve never BEEN to Africa, much less Lagos, so I’m probably not the person best suited to this task. So I’m putting this idea out there to the universe. I’d love to see some more sci-fi coming out of Africa. I mean, we have this outstanding-looking anthology out this month, I believe? But other than a handful of novels (Zoo City and Moxieland by Lauren Beukes, both of which are excellent, btw), there’s a lot of room in the market.

And if someone writes that Lagos cyberpunk novel before I get to it, let me know. I’d read the HELL out of that! In the meantime, I’ll just continue enjoying the music.

None Left Behind

Posted: December 11, 2012 in Short Fiction

Taksara abides

Several years ago, I went to New Orleans for the first, and only, time. It was early in 2005, in the spring if I remember correctly. I was only there for about four days, but it was long enough for me to fall in love with the city. In August of that year, Hurricane Katrina hit. I’d seen hurricanes destroy places on the news before, but never somewhere I’d been, and that made it strangely personal. The hurricane and everything that followed stuck with me. I ended up writing three short stories inspired by New Orleans as a result. This one, “None Left Behind,” won the Hauntings writing competition at the Hugo House in 2007, and appeared online at Absent Willow Review two years later. It has been, pretty much since it’s inception, one of my favorite all time stories to read.

It’s an older story. I’m in the middle of trunking a lot of stories written around the same time, and the reprint market is not what it used to be. But the story, like the ghosts of New Orleans, refuse to go down quietly. So I decided I’d share it here, the way it was intended, in audio format. Maybe at some point I’ll do the same for the other two stories in my New Orleans cycle. Maybe then, they’ll let me rest.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m no audio podcast master. But occasional mic pops aside, it’s still a heck of a good ghost story. And with intro and outro music, under 12 minutes in length. Consider it my Christmas gift for you.

None Left Behind

Written and read and mixed (if you can call it that) by Nathan Crowder

The audio recording of “None Left Behind” is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Creative Commons

Mixed in audacity 1.3.3

Intro and outro music is “Rainwater Blues” by John Constantakis and Drew Roberts. Music was found using the fantastic search function at Community Audio.

The Next Big Thing

Posted: December 5, 2012 in Novels

Look at those classical lines!

Last Wednesday I was tagged for “The Next Big Thing” by the supremely talented and gracious Folly Blaine. 10 questions. 10 answers. It’s about to get real up in here, people!

1) What is the working title of your next book?

INK CALLS TO INK

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

Originally, this started with a discussion between friends of “What would happen if literary characters ended up dumped in modern London? How would they survive and adapt?” That turned into a short story which appeared on WilyWriters.com, featuring one of the novel’s central characters. It was the editor for Wily Writers, Angel Leigh McCoy, who suggested there was a whole novel there. I thought she was crazy. Then two weeks later I had the outline written.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

While it’s decidedly urban, I prefer the term Contemporary Fantasy, or better yet, Lit Punk.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Mads Mikkelsen would be perfect as The Steadfast Soldier, Franklin. Of the other two key POV characters, Juliet Capulet would best be played by Saoirse Ronan from Atonement, but we’d have to get before cameras fast. And I’d love Karen Gillan to bring the same spark she brought to Doctor Who to the role of the Reader, Kate. Plus, I need Naveen Andrews to play Judas–no exceptions.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Refugees from their works of fiction living on the streets of modern London must prevent a coming holy war that threatens all of England.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

INK CALLS TO INK is currently being reviewed and considered for representation, but it is not yet locked down.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I started the novel in March of 2009, and the first draft took me until December of 2011 to finish, but there was a significant vacation from the book right in the middle–roughly a year when I didn’t even look at it. In actual writing time, it took about 9 months to write the first draft. It’s now been through four drafts.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

INKHEART by Cornelia Funke, the FABLES comic book from DC/Vertigo written by Bill Willingham, but mostly THURSDAY NEXT by Jasper Fforde are the closest comparisons in how they involve the intersection of our world with the worlds of fiction.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Other than the fact that Angel convinced me I needed to start it, my driving force was to do justice to the stories of these favorite characters. Ultimately, INK CALLS TO INK is about redemption and free will, and I loved the idea of characters like Medea and Judas getting another chance under different circumstances. The thought that concepts such as Antagonist and Protagonist are fluid and subject to perspective and circumstance was intriguing. All the hard work was worth it seeing the conclusion to these character’s individual arcs. Plus, I’ve always thought King Arthur was a bit of a tool, so being able to use him as a key bad guy was VERY attractive to me.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

The appeal of seeing familiar characters through new adventures and strange circumstances, should be enough to get them started. But ultimately it’s the humor and humanity of the characters that will keep them reading almost as much as seeing where everything is going.

Next Wednesday, visit the following writers’ blogs. I’ve passed the Next Big Thing buck to:

Jeremy Zimmerman

Rosemary Jones

Erik Scott de Bie

Going to Keep This Short…

Posted: December 4, 2012 in Random Geekery

I’m gonna let my geek flag fly here for a bit, so if that’s not your scene, keep on moving.

There we go. We’re alone in here?

Good.

When I was 12, I played Dungeons & Dragons for the very first time. My character was a Dwarven Paladin, which turned out to be against the rules. This was OLD school D&D, back in 1st edition, back in 1981 or so, when people thought it led to Satanic worship. That was my first Role Playing Game, and I have rarely taken a long break from gaming since. A lot of characters have come and gone, but you never forget your first.

I was living in Seattle, playing at the Game Center in the U-District, owned and operated by Wizards of the Coast who now published D&D, when the 3rd edition came out. My first 3rd edition character? A Dwarf. His name was Oztangiel Craghelm, Cleric of Kord. He learned to craft beer and used it as a base for his healing potions that he also brewed. He was known for being…adaptable. When fighting a gargoyle without magic weapons, he chose to wrestle the thing to the ground so the rest of the party could whale on it with their charmed weapons. While fighting a hydra, he had only his mace, ill suited to cutting off a head–so he pumped up his strength as high as he could and hacked a head off with the edge of his shield. Ah, I miss Brother Oz.

I’m currently playing in only one game that meets every-other week. Yeah. I’m playing a Dwarf, this time a Barbarian who happens to be the smartest member of the party. He has a sunny personality and likes to carve little sleeping cats with wings out of stone. He’s a sweetheart. And a tank. And a murder-machine when necessary. But a sweetheart nonetheless.

I guess you could say I enjoy Dwarves. I really don’t know where it came from. Honestly, no clue.

As much as I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there’s something else that has my heart swelling about The Hobbit.

I don’t care that it is being split into 3 movies. I don’t care that Peter Jackson is directing (though I would have loved to see what Del Toro did with the material). I only care about one thing.

Epic fantasy with a HEAVY Dwarven focus. And holy crap…that song…I can’t wait for it to show up at karaoke because you KNOW I’ll be belting it out.

Beards are back, baby.

Fringe Candy: A Wunderbar by any other name…

Posted: November 18, 2012 in Fringe Candy

An Irish candy with a German name from Canada. What’s not fringe about that?

You’re looking at the business end of a Wunderbar, one of many candy treasures I brought back from Canada for, um, research purposes. I don’t write candy bars that often, but the Canada trip offered me the chance to try some new stuff, and I jumped at it. Take a good look at that picture. Delicious chocolate shell, gooey caramel, and a peanut buttery crunch that isn’t visible in the photo…I guess it’s shy.

And why wouldn’t it be shy? After all, this candy bar is living in a foreign country under an assumed identity.

Cue the dramatic music.

The sweetly sordid tale begins thusly: born in Ireland sometime in the mid-sixties to proud mother Linda Allison and a powerful sugar daddy by the name of Cadbury, it was initially given the name Star Bar. The proud parents proclaimed it to be the “Munchiest Bar Ever.” Personally, I can’t verify that any regulatory committee checks on that kind of claim, but it was enough to make the young Irish bar pretty popular in the 70′s.

Then, perhaps questioning its own identity as all young adults do, Star Bar became the Nudge Bar. Then in 1986 this bright, young candy started running with a different crowd and became the peanut version of the Boost Bar. While Boost is still about, the Star Bar eventually went back to its roots and original name for a while.

Except, that is, when travelling abroad. In Germany, this blend of peanuty-caramel goodness is sold under the name Wunderbar. Ok. Great. Very German. I can understand that. What confounds me is that it’s also sold as Wunderbar in Canada as well, perhaps to appeal to all those German Canadians. I don’t know. It doesn’t much matter as now it’s called Moro Peanut, and in Sweden (where it’s made by Marabou Chocolates) as the Starbar.

With that many name changes in less than a half-century, I’d expect to see some bodies buried somewhere. No evidence yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

So, Mr. History, how does the bar measure up?

In many ways, I’d compare the Wunderbar to the Twix or perhaps the long-gone Marathon Bar from Willy Wonka. The core is a decently dense caramel, but not so strong it’s going to rip out teeth. The texture is just about ideal. There is a crunchy peanuty layer in there that reminds me of the Whatchmacallit Bar or a Bar None, with the peanuts just fine enough to be almost crispy. And as with all Cadbury bars, the chocolate is top notch. I gotta give it to those bastards. They really do make a smooth milk chocolate. I’m sure it’s made on the backs of orphan slave children or something as most non-fair-trade chocolate is, but it sure is tasty.

If you’re in Canada, pick one up. The yellow wrapper is easy to spot. As is the letter “B” which, for some reason is wearing a horned Viking helmet. Kinda wish I was making that up, but I’m not.

And to think, I have two more Canadian bars stashed for future reviews!

Journeys in Novelling: St. and other updates

Posted: November 15, 2012 in Music, Novels
Tags: Nanowrimo, St.

Yes. I’m doing a duet to a Disney song. It was awesome.

It’s been far too long since my last post. That’s kind of a thing for me, it seems. Thank y’all for your patience.

In the time since my last post I met some of my idols and a whole mess of new and amazing people in person for the first time at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto. It was amazing putting faces to people I’ve only known online or via a shared table of contents for years. I launched an exciting and long-in-process trilogy of YA superhero novellas by some of my favorite regional authors. I started my new novel for this year’s National Novel Writing Month. We had an election, which was kind of a big deal. The San Francisco Giants won the world series. And I also said good-bye to a truly amazing friend who headed back to the Bay area this week before a lengthy stretch overseas–a trip I will not be taking, sadly.

That’s her in the picture. The one in the lei, in case you were confused. We’re both karaoke junkies. “A Whole New World” was not my choice for final duet, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it was probably the best rendition of it ever sung in the history of mankind. (What do you know! You weren’t there!)

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me back to my NaNo in progress, St. (which I am far behind on, for those of you keeping score at home.)

At the time I posted about this a month ago, I described it as “a novel about transformation, destiny, and the American west.” That’s still very much the case. But as work progresses, I’m realizing something else. At it’s core, St. is, while not a romance in any sense of the word, largely a novel about love. And for that reason more than anything else, it’s a book I couldn’t have written two years ago, let alone two decades ago. Funny how time changes a guy.

Now, let’s be honest. As words go, “Love” can be a bit over-used. We love our family. We love our favorite baseball team (Go Giants!). We love macaroni and cheese.

What gets lost in the static is that, just like the prophets said, “All You Need is Love.” (Ok, prophets if you’ve accepted the gospel of John, Paul, George, and Ringo into your heart.)

Love and romance are too often confused when people enter the equation. You can say you love a movie and people won’t make assumptions that you’re picturing that movie taking long, soapy showers. Well, unless that movie is Miller’s Crossing. But that’s none of your damn business. We as a culture need to break free from those assumptions, because then it frees up what is a truly powerful word.

I love mankind as an abstract collective, even when they do stupid shit. Even really stupid shit. Though I may shake my head sadly and say, “Guys, what the hell! Really?”

I love people in smaller but far less abstract groups, like my co-workers. Despite the times some of them drive me crazy and make me want to strangle a penguin, I wouldn’t replace them if I could. Well, maybe that ONE guy…

I love my writing group, without whom I’d be bitterly cranking out words in a dark, lonely apartment seven days a week. I’d buy them all ponies, but really, who can eat a whole pony?

And my friends…I don’t know what I’d do without them.

Really. In regards to my close friends, I almost have no words. I’d take a bullet for any of them. Admittedly, for some I’d only take a minor hit, like a small caliber in the shoulder or calf. But there are one or two where I’d line up to take a killing blow. I’d like to think I’ve done a good job of letting them know that.

But being honest with strong feelings is not an easy thing to do. Jackson Browne, in “The Late Show” once said “No one talks about their feelings anyway without dressing them in dreams and laughter. I guess it’s just too painful otherwise.” (It’s off the album Late for the Sky from 1974 which I cannot recommend highly enough.) I’d tend to agree with him, and not just because he’s awesome. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, something we’ve been trained to do by our parents or circumstances. Our emotions are part of ourselves, something we own, something deeply personal. By sharing them with others we expose them to all kinds of dangers. So we lock them up, only letting them out when we truly feel safe.

I get that. I’ve been doing it for years, but I’m getting much better. And in the interest of full disclosure, some emotions might be better off filtered for general consumption–anger, just to name one. Not all emotions are positive ones, after all.

Baskin-Robbins has a lot of flavors of ice cream, but there are even more flavors of love in my experience. I’ve learned a lot of them through close friendships over the years. And just when I think I’ve had a little pink sample spoon of all of them, a new flavor rolls out. Those evil bastards…keeping you coming back for more.

At the end of the day, deep under our cynical surface, I truly do believe that it’s love that connects us all. It’s the only thing strong enough. Not even bacon or kitten pictures have that kind of power. And it’s those connections that shape and change us, that inform who we are and what we’re capable of. It’s those connections that make us human.

So while St. is still about transformation, destiny, lost saints, angels, demons, and the American West, it is even more about people. And, well, love.

Still not a romance, though.

That will have to wait for another novel.

Reason for the Season

Posted: October 18, 2012 in Uncategorized

This tree, visible from my window, had been daring me to photograph it for days…

Halloween is around the corner. As a kid, it was my favorite holiday. Sure, Christmas was nice, but it didn’t involve costumes. Plus, we were cut loose to wander the streets on a crisp fall night to take candy from strangers. What’s not to love?

As I got older, my appreciation of the holiday grew, spurred by Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree.” This was my first introduction to Dio de los Muertos, Mexico’s “Day of the Dead” with sugar skulls and commemoration of the dead.

Because at the root of it, that’s what Halloween is. It’s a holiday of the dead. No wonder it takes place as leaves are changing color and falling, lifeless, upon the ground all around. Walking home from school in anticipation of Halloween, the leaves would crunch beneath my feet like the tiny bones of the year that was.

Living in Seattle now, the falling leaves are just a soggy mess to clog up the drains. Pretty for a while, I grant you, but a nuisance for much longer. I miss the crunch. I miss the joy of dressing up as a monster, or an alien, or a superhero, and going door to door to fill that borrowed pillowcase with sugary loot. I miss the ritual of spreading the bounty out after, comparing my haul against my brothers’. Sure, as an adult I can buy as many bags of Fun Sized (and what a misnomer THAT is!) candy bars as I want. But it’s the ritual I miss. And rituals are important.

About twenty years ago, I worked in the electronics department of a national department store. My boss was this lovely woman not much older than me named Chewie. She was from the Philippines, and had moved to the states to be with her American husband, a man I had only passing familiarity with. I adored Chewie. She was funny, and had big glasses, big hair, and a childlike spirit. The only thing she loved more than Halloween was her husband. They went all out for the holiday with a big party and joint costumes, and she planned ahead for weeks to make the most out of it.

She quit to start her own business not too long after I started there. And a few months after that, her husband left her. He had been having an affair. Possibly more than one, but we only ever heard about the one she found about. She was distraught. He had been her world.

And when the next Halloween approached, she took her own life rather than celebrate it without him.

My hometown was small. I knew the EMT who responded to the call. He was in a class of mine at college. Chewie had built a shrine to her husband in the garage–a workbench, really, covered with a tablecloth, covered, in turn, by pictures and candles.

Then she started the car.

Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Not a good way to go. Not that there really IS a good way to go, kiddies. She was found wrapped up in the tablecloth, pictures and burned-out candles studding her makeshift funeral shroud.

It’s hard to be alone. It’s harder still when you’ve made someone else the center of your world and that center shifts.

I don’t think about Chewie too often. When I do, it’s usually around Halloween, when the air gets crisp and the leaves turn red. It was when she was happiest–right up until when it was the time she was saddest.

When I light candles on my own shrine this time of year, I remember her. I remember my father, always so supportive and dead of pancreatic cancer before I had my first story sale. I remember Bill who died a few years ago, but who taught me so much in my post-teen years when I thought I knew everything. I remember both of my dad’s parents, dead of wasting illnesses that took years to claim them, and I wonder what I could have learned from them if I had only taken the time to ask. I light my candles and I think of them. And I hope they find their way to wherever they’re going next.

There are some who say the veil between worlds is at its thinnest this time of year. That’s why we communicate with the dead as the nights grow long. Maybe it’s true. The horror writer in me likes to think so. If nothing else it’s a good story. I can pour out some liquor for the Loa of the Crossroads and whisper my wishes for a safe journey, and I can think, for just a minute, that someone, something is listening.

I can observe the ritual–my ritual–any ritual–and believe that there’s somewhere better. It’s not costumes and candy. I’ll never have that innocence again, and that’s okay. There’s more to the holiday than that. There’s honoring those who came before and who have gone. There’s learning from their lives, lessons taught and untaught alike. There’s respect for the cycle.

Eventually, everyone dies.

Halloween is a reminder, all dressed up in crepe and construction paper bats, that eventually someone will be lighting a candle for us. Peek beneath the surface and you’ll see it. No one sticks around forever. So enjoy the time you have. Grab it with both hands and enjoy the FUCK out of it. Because like mallowcreme pumpkins, it won’t be here forever.

A Road Long Traveled

Posted: October 13, 2012 in Novels

2010, Lakeview Drive-in, Lake Chelan

It was the fall of 1988. It was my first year of college and I was living on campus, hanging out with a group of occultists, and locked into a challenging relationship with a member of Campus Crusade for Christ. To say it was a confusing time would not be an understatement. It was a time of reinvention–a fresh start.

See, public school was unpleasant. I had some good friends, but I was an outcast. I had taken a year off, lived in a whole other state for about 6 months to get a taste of freedom. And here I had a chance to define not who I used to be, but who I was going to become.

Isn’t that what college is about? Well, that and a degree?

I think that’s where the first “Christopher” story came from. It was about a mysterious hitchhiker who gets picked up by a woman who never picks up people on the side of the road. But she’s distracted, driving to the next town over on a mission of vengeance. Letting him into her car was never part of her plan, but their brief encounter changes the course of both of their lives.

And in a way, it changed mine as well.

By the time I wrote the second Christopher story, about a rainstorm, a Kansas farmhouse, and young girl who didn’t realize she was a ghost, the idea for a book started to form. Christopher was part of a much bigger story. These weren’t isolated incidents. This was a sprawling story of unknown destinies. Of lost saints. Of angels and demons. A love story about the back roads of the American west. And ultimately, this was a story of transformation.

I jotted down notes, did research, and cobbled together an outline which I’m pretty sure is lost to the sands of time. I mean, it was 24 years ago, after all. And even with the notes and the outline and a story that I was dying to tell, I never wrote any more of it beyond the brief opening chapter.

24 years ago, I didn’t write novels. They intimidated the hell out of me.

Jump to January 1997. I had finally moved out of my hometown for good, arriving in Seattle with a station wagon full of stuff and the future spread out before me. I moved around a lot within the greater Seattle area since then, and had a variety of big life changes in that time. It wasn’t the rural byways of SW Colorado, but it was home, and I loved it.

And sometimes my mind would turn to the Christopher novel, framed there in the rear-view mirror of projects undone and unforgotten. It haunted me. It should haunt me. It’s a novel about transformation, about taking a chance and stepping into the unknown.

I took that kind of step when I moved to Seattle sixteen years ago and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I wrote screenplays then, but the idea of writing novel still terrified me. I’ve written around ten novels since then…and yes, I’m counting the scrub practice novels which shall never escape their drawer.

The Christopher novel came to mind again today, this time as a possible candidate for the 2012 NaNoWriMo. I have done that challenge every year in some capacity since 2005. This year, I hadn’t given it any thought. After all, I’m deep into finishing out book formatting for the final Timid Pirate release of the year (due to release on Halloween), and going to World Fantasy Con in Toronto immediately thereafter. I have stuff on my mind.

To say nothing of the fact that I’m looking to step out into the void again if circumstances permit. If all goes according to plan, I hope to move to the other side of the world early next year.

What better time to spend a month writing a novel about transformation, destiny, and the American west if not now?

In lieu of my original notes (which I doubt I could find anyway), I’m constructing the novel around the core concept and initial short story. In jotting down characters tonight over a decaf pumpkin mocha, I realized there was a reason I waited this long to write it. I needed to be here at this place in my life. I needed to have some of these support characters stockpiled in the back of my brain looking for a home (like Ocho, the former drug gang trigger-man who became something else after his trigger fingers were removed.) I needed to be staring into the void again, one foot on the dirt of the past, the other pointed into the unknown.

The prep work began tonight. The writing begins in November. And between then and now, I have some things to wrap up. It’s going to be a busy autumn!

Fringe Candy: The Wayback Machine, Rock Candy

Posted: September 21, 2012 in Fringe Candy, Uncategorized

Nothing to see here. Just an everyday glowing rock.

A few important things to know about rock candy:

It might be the earliest form of candy, with records of it appearing around 2,000 years ago.

It’s pure sugar (with a pinch of food coloring)—if Pixie Sticks are the cocaine of the candy world, rock candy is the crack cocaine.

It has a string in it, so be prepared to spit that out.

Really, it’s more kid science experiment than legitimate candy, so why review it? Well, because I found it in the Sweet Factory bulk bins when I was looking to kill some time this afternoon. I had memories of rock candy from my childhood, formed on a stick rather than a string because Durango was upscale like that.

Rock candy is kind of ingenious in a way, and if you have kids you can make your own rather than give your hard earned Dinero to some skeezy street candy peddler. All you do is dissolve sugar water until you can’t dissolve no more. Add a few drops of food coloring. Get a pencil with strings tied do it and dangle the strings into the sugar water solution. Then kick back and wait a week. You’re making candy!
What’s happening is that the sugars are recrystallizing in much the same way crystals form in caves. But this is edible. And the appeal of pure sugar is not to be understated. Even knowing it’s about as simple as can be, I still enjoyed a small bag of this writing it up.

And I emphasize small. A little bit of this goes a long way unless you’re a real sugar junkie, at which point check yourself into a program. Don’t underestimate the power of the rock. The big sugar crystals are hard. Not jaw-breaker hard, but if you have issues with your teeth, chew at your own risk. You’re better off breaking off a piece and sucking the life out of it. A small piece will give you a lot of value for your money. Which is as it should be, because, let me reiterate, this shit is pure sugar.

Since there is really nothing I can say about flavor, let us discuss presentation. Rock candy is beautiful. Really, just get a clear plastic bag of it and look at it for a while. It’s like fairy crystals—all pink and purple and yellow (at least the batch I had was…actual results may vary greatly). This stuff is like Dwarven treasure. Heck, make a little cardboard treasure chest and fill it with rock candy as a treasure for your next Dungeons & Dragon game.

Rock Candy is a bit of history. It’s been around forever so there’s a good chance that your parents and your grandparents and on through the generations were familiar with it. Like the shark, it pretty much hit it’s evolutionary peak long ago, but it’s already reached the Platonic ideal of candy in some regards—a perfectly simple way to get sugar into your blood stream and look pretty while doing it. Nothing fancy for flavor is necessary. In fact, I personally feel that infusing it with a flavor would cheapen the experience.

Go pick up a few strings and share them. I just shared a few with friends and it was a bonding experience as memories of childhoods long gone came to the surface—all described around a mouthful of colorful crystal rock candy.

Tales from the Ragged Edge

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