…but not yet a story. The idea is that someone gets arrested for causing a power outage (an act thought to be impossible). The crime is Criminal Interruption of Internet Service, because as everyone knows, in the future it will be a crime to stop anyone from having access to the internet.
Category Archives: writing
Housecleaning
I just did some work to the site, moving Angel of Death to a different page, and updating the old AoD page to be my new Fiction page. The main reason for the change was to make room for more of my fictional work. Yea! More fiction, more fiction. I put up a page about an evil little fantasy piece called Wisdom, and plan to follow it soon with a longer pure sci-fi short called In The Root. I’ll provide links to the stories if I can sell them.
All of this mean that you, my dear reader, get cool stuff to read. And I ask you, what is wrong with that?
New Brain Food
I got a link today to a site called Coilhouse, which is an arthouse print magazine, a very nice one. I bought their first issue (they’ve only done 5) for a paltry $6. The pdf downloaded, and I made it to the spread of pages 34-35. On that page is a photo by a Spanish photographer named Eugenio Recuenco, who is just awesome. The photo in question was this, from his fairy tales collection. I got one look at this lovely lady stretched out in her room, and I knew I had a story. The story is about going on a hike with some friends, and suddenly running across this woman, exactly as in the photo.
Its not every day one gets such a bang to the creative brain from a new source. Looks like I’ll be buying more of Coilhouse’s work. After I get through their first issue.
AoD almost ready for show
I’ve been working on a round of edits for Angel of Death. I say “I”, but the lion’s share of the work was done by my mother-in-law, Sharon Davis. As if I wasn’t indebted to her enough. Anyway, I intend to have the novel up shortly as a full file.
Since I was under the hood anyway, I’ve gone through and switched it from 21 chapters to 70. These chapters breaks were mostly obvious. I noticed their need when I went back and read the whole novel as I would any other book. When I wrote AoD, I structured the novel around 20 different chunks of text, each about 5k words long. But when I went back and read the book, these divisions were neither clear, nor necessary. Now the chapters are much shorter, and cleaner; most are under 2k words, with two just a few paragraphs long. All the breaks, save two, come at natural points in the story. The two additional chapters break up some fairly long scenes (3500 words of more), and happen at points where some sort of a gap should work. Mind you, I’m guessing here; I have a strong sense of what works as a voracious reader, but I’m not anything like a professional editor, and will not take on that mantel to suit my own selfish needs.
The best part of working with Sharon was sitting down with her, and trying to figure out the proper spelling for “pinche pendejo”, and “culo”. Its not every day one gets to use such words around their mother-in-law, and get away with it.
Cool story idea
This morning while crossing the busy street with my son on the way to his school, I yelled as a car for like the thousandth time. The street is a busy one, and the cars simply do not stop. There are big yellow lights flashing, huge “School Crosswalk” signs, the whole works. Still every time we cross, at least one idiot isn’t paying attention. Short of a stop light, I don’t think there will ever be close to 100% compliance.
But it did make me think of an idea. The FBI enters a trained ninja into their witness protection program. To give the man a job (although I guess it could be a woman protagonist too) they start the ninja as a crossing guard. Because the ninja is low man on the totem poll, he/she get the crummy corner, the one where no one stops.
That is, until the ninja starts the job. The first car that fails to stop gets a shuriken ripping it’s tire, and a crash. The second driver gets the shit kicked out of them. Very soon every driver passing that way is VERY CAUTIOUS.
On another note. I got in a second day of work on a longer short story. The first day, last Friday, felt like pulling teeth. I knew something was wrong, but could not see it, so I kept plugging away. Man it was brutal slogging work. I even got to the point of thinking I couldn’t write a short story. Silly, I know, but there it is.
Today, in contrast, I cranked it out. I had to rip apart half of what I wrote, and about 1000 words will probably have to be jettisoned, but I managed to beat the story into some kind of shape. I’m a little over 4k words in, with most of that from today. Not bad. On a hunch, I’d guess the story will hit around 10k words. I’ll know more in a few days.
I’d still like to have a slightly more exciting beginning on the story. Right now it smells a little pedestrian. I’ll have to read it again when I’m done with the whole things and see.
The novel is still in editing right now. As soon as my mother-in-law is done with her corrections, I’ll put it up as a complete file. I’ve been reading it myself, and found a few stray spots, but for the most part it’s holding up well.
Busy, busy, busy
I’ve been working a lot lately, and doing tons of projects at home. This leaves me very little time to write, which makes me slightly bonkers. To help with this I got a copy of The Writers Journey by Christopher Vogler. As a reference, it’s been a wonderful book. Chocked full of good ideas that is helping my plot out Angel of Death. So I’ve been enjoying that part immensely.
But this is also pointing out to me the obvious, that I need to do some more research, especially on Catholic mysticism especially in rural Mexico. Anyone know a good book?
Darn that life thing, it so gets in the way.
I’ve been very busy for the past couple of months, and have neglected my poor blog. All two of my fans are now obviously despondent. Sigh.
The reality is my Father-in-law passed away a while back, and we’ve been spending all our free time out at the Davis Ranch (where my lovely Mother-in-law lives) trying to help her get a handle on the drifts of interesting stuff he left behind. And I do mean drifts.
The main priority has been to get her a running truck so she can drag stuff to the dump, and generally be more independent. Of course, because it is this family, the beater truck is a 56 Ford with a big back window. Like the photo below, only more beat, and with a hood that open the proper way. Just working on it is pretty cool, and the luxury of all that space, and the absence of computers makes it a project perfect for a poorly trained shade-tree mechanic like myself.
A real blessing is the ability to work with my delightful brother-in-law, Rob, on this project. He and I have always clicked, from the day we met, and we seem to work well together, which makes the process so much more fun. He also knows about a billions times more than me about cars and such, growing up with his hot-rodding father like he did. I got some of that growing up, but not nearly the same super sized helping of advice and tool use.
Father Juan and the novel is going a pace, I’ve got two new chapters, and a few corrections to put up. I also last week, put together a time line in which the whole novel plays out. The was needing a backbone to help locate the various bits in time and place, and I think I hit just the right mix of structure and open endedness to make it work. This will mean minor structural changes to all the chapters, adding in some details early on to fit the story to that backbone. The basic story will remain the same, but now much of it (hopefully) will benefit from a more concrete context. time will tell.
Neglected…
I’ve been neglecting my blog because I’ve been spending more time on Face Book, and writing at home. It would be nice to be able to do everything all at the same time, but sometimes life doesn’t work out that way. The good news is my novel is really starting to shape up, and I have been having the time of my life writing it. The bad news is I haven’t made a whole lot of money yet this year. We’re not hurting, at least not yet, as we’re (meaning Teri) are good at saving our excess money for the times when we’re slow.
I tend to write on days when I don’t have work, or when I have work at home I can schedule around. I do this largely because my day job, pushing pixels, is pretty demanding, and is usually done in long stretches. A typical day for me would be to drop off Trevor at his school at 8:00, catch the bus to work, and then not come home until 10:00 at night. The bus ride to and from adds to this time, but since I read on my commute instead of yelling at the cars around me, I usually come home more relaxed and happy. Alas, this doesn’t leave a lot of room for being creative and throwing down another thousand words or so. Since the novel is getting more complete, and I am learning how to write more consistently every day, maybe I’ll be able to write late into the night in the future, but for right now, that is almost impossible.
I plan on putting up the parts of my novel which are complete before the end of this month. Since the novel is more than halfway written, this should add up to a lot of words. Those of you who have professed an interest, feel free to check back, or write me to find out when and where.
More Bad Poetry
I wrote this poem/song about the experience of living in LA. Anyone who has ever spent too much of their day looking at the line of stupid cars ahead of you, will know exactly what this means.
Thousands Millions Billions Trillions
(a song)
We all live in the same town;
the town of lit-up dreams.
We all drive the same car.
We all have the same job.
We all crowd the same roads
by the thousands, millions, billions, trillions.
We all live in the same town;
thirsting for the big time.
Lusting after the same car.
Looking for the same job.
Filling up the same roads
by the thousands, millions, billions, trillions.
We all look up,
look up to the top,
and stare that the chosen few.
We fight each other
tooth, claw, and nail
for the scraps left
off their table.
fighting to fill the same job
by the thousands, millions, billions, trillions.
We all live in the same town.
We all have the same dream.
To be unique we ride the same train.
To be different we all act the same.
We all scream our individuality is real
by the thousands, millions, billions, trillions.
-Erk
8/11/97
8:45 pm
Poetry from the past
As you read this:
Words will have flown from my finger tips,
scattered amongst the electronic,
tides and eddies of the web.
Twisting into terrible lives.
Their fierce energy hitting brain tissue,
with a powerful smack.
Huge verbs and nouns,
ripping and tearing.
Prophesying with a single voice;
Doom.
Doom.
Doom.
-Erk
9/23/95
10:00 am