092: The Failure of Family Trees

I need a diagram for my family tree. I'm getting fathers and grandfathers confused. Usually the characters grow to populate a good deal of the active part of your head when you're working on a book, but I've been addled enough and distracted enough that they only occupy a tiny corner of my brain. In that corner, family trees are getting muddled. A key element of Grandpa's notebook hinges on a date that just doesn't work because Jack's Mom is Grandpa's daughter and not his wife. This isn't the Appalachian backwoods so there isn't any convoluted inter-marriage of families going on here. This is straight forward middle class breeding.

Even if Grandpa loves his daughter very much, he wouldn't base his crypto key on the day they met. And, if he does base it on the day he and his wife met, then it is possible he never told his daughter. Shit. It was all so simple yesterday.

I need a better key. I also need to consider if I'm making this too complicated. Grandpa's security on his notebook has to be simple enough that he can parse it in his head (it helps that he's a whiz at these sorts of things), but complicated enough that, without the key, it's difficult and pointless to try. Sort of a homemade version of a one time pad. The notebook is the MANUSCRIPT and it holds the key to deciphering the mysterious transmissions which have gotten everyone in an uproar. But it isn't just a written document; it has to be coded so that only the proper chaps can get to it. The bad guys took Grandpa away a long time ago. They never got the notebook.

So does it have to be coded? If it was hidden, isn't that enough?

Would Grandpa think it was enough?

« « little fictions || 08.29.2004 @ 11:14 PM

Initiate

"This is the hour I like," she said, nodding towards the weak sun. It hovered beneath the dark ceiling of the sky, drooping towards the ragged edge of the sea. She lifted the thin loop from the bottle in her hand and blew a fluttering stream of gleaming bubbles. "Just before sunset."

"The Poet called it the magic hour," he said, watching the wind play with the soapy bubbles. "But the phrase wasn't his."

"It's movie talk. That hour when they don't need all those filters, when the light is just perfect."

"Just?"

She smiled at him. "Well, as perfect as light can be."

He leaned against the worn brick of the chimney which jutted out of the roof of the building. "Not white and not black."

She dipped the wand and blew another stream of bubbles. "Just a hint of color," she added as the wind whipped through her drifting bubbles and tugged at the ends of her hair. "Russets and magentas and indigos. Their names sound deep and magical. Like you must be an initiate in the mysteries to be able to create them on a palette."

He closed his eyes. "The kind of colors you can see when you close your eyes."

"Exactly. You can't imagine yellow. But you can dream of gold and amber."

He tried to think of yellow, but, as he listened to her breath give life to more bubbles, all he could frame in his mind was the color and shape of her lips.

« « little fictions || 08.12.2004 @ 08:46 AM

091: The Manuscript That Kills

In the Apocalyptic Thriller, there is a MANUSCRIPT. I was off doing some research about the Necronomicon and realized that it, and the others like it, serve a very important function in the Apocalyptic Thriller: they are both the device which warns of impending doom as well as the means by which doom is unleashed upon the world. Convenient that. Invariably the MANUSCRIPT drives the reader mad or, at the very least, allows demons to enter this dimension who, in turn, eat the brain of the reader.

Same result, essentially, just differing special effects budgets.

The MANUSCRIPT is the last gasp effort of the good guys to not die in vain; it is their attempt to leave a record of what they learned so that the next generation won't make the same mistake. The villains win if they destroy every record which counters their version of history and, because we can't stand the idea that evil really truly does win, we always provide for a way that the heroes can pass on their wisdom to the next generation. This is the OLD MAN's last will and testament, kids, one last note about the demonic forces massing beyond this purple barrier that has been kept intact by his persistent will for the last fifty years.

Why they always write the words you shouldn't read aloud in the frontspiece before the warning label that says, "Do not, under pain of terrible and awful death, read any of this text out loud" is just part of the way stories are written. You know, it's the first law: THINGS GET WORSE.

I'll readily admit that I have a fascination with manuscripts. Not that you could tell by the way I traffic for things at chain used bookstores. Hoping I'll find a gem that won't cost me an arm or a leg, I suppose. I don't even really know what I would do if a real MANUSCRIPT fell in my lap. (Well, other than reading it out loud, I suppose.) I still get a kick out of how Sam Raimi pulled off the old manuscript trick in Evil Dead II: he had the old scientist record himself reading from it as part of his field notes. So, when our young demon fodder show up and wonder where everyone is, someone -- without fail -- has to say, "Hey? What's this recorder? I wonder what is on it."

I suppose manuscripts are the lure of the modern occultist. It's hard to find a real Master in this day and age to learn from the knee of. You have to find your way through books. And, because Master isn't there to correct your pronouciation or remind you to close the pentagram before you get started, we do what all eager youngsters do with a new toy: we play with it immediately and read the instructions later.

« « little fictions || 08.10.2004 @ 09:59 PM

090: Solstice

Summer solstice today. Up here in the Northern Hemisphere, we've got the Long Day to suffer through. I don't know about the rest of you, but it's already too warm for rational thought. Fever dreams are the currency of the nighttime hours, bed sweats where you lie like a drying fish and gasp out tiny pleas for any sort of breeze. You sleep with the windows wide open and, all night long, the outside world gets to creep in and whisper in your ear.

I used to be a night person; used to love the winter months with their eternal darkness. While I still are partial to those months, I have started to appreciate the hour before dawn, that last hour when the night has finally cooled the earth and the fog is just starting to creep across the water. Dawn will be drawing a pink line across the horizon but not for another thirty minutes yet. Everything is still and crisp.

You can get some good thinking done at this hour. If you're awake. This is like the first moment of birth when your brain hasn't started shuffling through all the things you didn't accomplish yesterday and probably won't get to today. This is the hour when you can be your own man and think your own thoughts. "We murder to create." You can imagine an entire universe in twenty minutes, revel in its complexities and Mandelbrotian edges for fifteen, and then spend ten destroying it with giant cyborg sharks or mutant space funguses or a single pissed off clown hopped up on adrenochrome and goofballs.

And still have fifteen minutes to make yourself a piece of wheat toast and eat it quietly, listening to the sound of your jaws working on the crackling bread.

The longest day has been long for me. I was too close to its beginning when I went to bed last night and too close to its arrival when I got up this morning. I'm still on the cusp of Chapter XIV. I know what Markham is going to do with the fork and I'm kind of tickled by the image. But I'm hung on the edge; too many distractions and deadlines keeping me from the book.

This soap bubble will pop soon and I'll fall back into the book. But, in the meantime, I entertain myself by creating and un-creating the world in forty-five minutes.

« « little fictions || 08.06.2004 @ 09:58 PM

089: They'll Never Survive

I've just hit the first THEY'LL NEVER SURVIVE moment in the BOOK OF LIES. It's only marginally threatening, but it should wake up all those who've been lulled into slumber by the talking heads of the last few hundred chapters. (Which isn't true. It just feels that way to me since I've been busy enough that it takes me a few days -- or weeks -- to find the time to finish any given chapter.) I'm hung on the cusp of THINGS BLOW UP.

Which, technically, isn't a structural part of the mythology of the Apocalpytic Thriller. But, come on, we're talking about the end of the world here. A little wanton property damage is just a snack in comparsion to the full course meal of the approaching apocalypse. And, if you are like me, you don't mind a snack now and then.

Anyway, in the past I've really looked forward to the THINGS BLOW UP moments because, well, things blow up. I have a blatant disregard for the sanctity of objects and the health of my characters. It's part of the law of maximum capacity. Someone -- and it may have been James Frey in How to Write A Damn Good Novel -- once posited the rule that, regardless of the intelligence or wisdom of your characters, they must operate at THEIR maximum capacity. Anything less and the audience will find them foolish and unbelievable. It's a short hop from that point to THEY'LL NEVER SURVIVE.

I don't know why I've been reticent to start this next bit. It may have something to do with a number of other writing things which have intruded over the last week that have demanded my attention. The chapter may just be waiting until I can devote my full attention to the property destruction before I get to it. Maybe. Regardless, I've left them hanging and need to get back to them soon.

I've got three guys on motorcycles with machine pistols and Markham only has a fork. The odds are more even than they sound.

« « little fictions || 08.02.2004 @ 09:51 PM

writing

BIBLIOGRAPHY
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.

THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.

SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.

LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.

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