Chin up…
March 12, 2010
Waiting on the proofs of your book is an excruciating, aggravating experience. I’ve got a few beta readers who are waiting on a copy, and if memory serves, my previous five copies arrived in under a week. This time around, it’s going on two for two. I’m about to find someone named Lulu and find some way to aggravate them back. Maybe I’ll disagree with everything they say for two minutes, or twice insult their shoes. Bah.
But I can’t stay grumpy for too long. You can’t keep your chin down if you’re looking at the stars, so allow me, if you will, to share:
1) The sWitch placeholder website is up, and there’s a blog (huge thanks to the wonderfully talented Lisa de Araujo for both) where you can bask in the darkward tone of the novel. There will also be character discussions there soon, but of course I can’t say exactly “when”. My proofs have yet to arrive, you see? Anyhow, if you’d like to become a fan, check out the Facebook page and don’t forget to say hello. There may also be cookies in it for you, so you don’t want to miss out.
2) My cooking/reality show Table 42 with Chef Darryl Harmon has a teaser trailer up, and so far response to it has been overwhelmingly positive. Shooting for the first episode will begin on March 24th. I’m excited, and I know my peeps are, too.
3) Teapott Fables has a placeholder site up, and I can tell you the real thing is going to be fantastic. Teddy‘s showed me some sketches, and all I can say is you’ll definitely “fancy a cuppa”.
4) Lastly, or fourthly I guess, I’m planning on adapting HorrorCon for the screen, with further plans to make it myself. I will be working on another book at that time, as well. Somewhere in between, I will slip into a lovely coma.
That’s the lot, I suppose. There’s some music being made, as well, but I’ll hold off on that until I’ve got something for you to hear. In the meantime, have a look at a talented, writer friend named Ryan Chin who we can expect great things from in the not-so-distant future.
A Very Special Day
December 15, 2008
Hello, all. As you may have gleaned from the title of this post, today is a very special day for me. You see, some time ago I picked this day, December 15th, 2008, as my deadline for securing literary representation.
Most of my time leading up to this day was spent writing and filling my portfolio with “product”. In the beginning, I was bold and ambitious, drafting huge titles such as B.L.O.O.M., a five night miniseries about humankind being scanned into android containers in order to escape a self-destructing planet earth and continue the race in the unfriendly climates of outer space. I was sure it was better than anything being offered on the Sci-Fi channel at the time, and whether I was wrong or right remains a mystery. If one were to deduce from my success and the success of those scribes responsible for classic fare such as “Yeti” and “Mansquito”, I would have been proven quite wrong. As it was, I could only contact a small bunch of agents as many that might have found it interesting required I be represented already; a quandary I’ve yet to get my head around. Anyway, it was too much for anyone to accept for a new writer, or such was my conclusion. Maybe it was just bad. Who knows? But it remains in a drawer where it is likely to stay until human beings really do need to escape the planet–which, if I may borrow a little cynicism to cheer me up, could be soon from the looks of things.
After B.L.O.O.M., I began to pen wildly: big budget horror trilogy here, complex, semi-animated dark coming-of-age tale there. Getting smart–or so I thought–I eventually wrote a screenplay for something that I thought fit the budget of most of those producers one finds on Inktip.com (where I listed all of my titles for $50/ea). It was a small movie, but scary in a subtle, unsettling sort of way. It was, I thought, tightly scripted, yet loose enough to include a director’s touch. It pushed the moral envelope, as I’m wont to do, but I suffered great pains to reset the compass at the end in order to include a larger slice of American movie-going public. As Hollywood cranked out remake after remake, I dared them with my story of false redemption by the sea. I even made a video about it for a contest that I didn’t win. But no matter, some projects you believe in no matter how many signs seek to convince you otherwise.
And then I got a call.
It was an honest to goodness Hollywood agent. I’ll never forget it, as it was a dreary Sunday night and I was already heading for bed. It was damn near the greatest phone call I’d ever received at that time slot: she fawned over my style and craft; she loved the characters, right down to their clever little names; she got all my inside jokes and was picking Hollywood A-listers in her head for the roles. She even shared my interest in characters with skin color anomalies! And then, after two hours, my phone’s battery began to alert me that it was about to cut off. She said no worry, we would talk later. In a few days, I think she said.
Errr…no. It was never, actually. A few reassuring emails and another screenplay sent post-haste to her door later, the romance was over. I’m not sure if it was the second screenplay I sent her (complex, semi-animated, dark coming-of-age thing) or something entirely unrelated to me and my writing. People, as it turns out, are human. And humans have shit come up all the time. But instead of getting bitter, I took the little jolts of confidence that the original phone call sent through me and decided to write something new; something that seemed a surefire sale, but without compromising the subject matter and style inherent in my other “product”. This one would be something I could almost budget over the phone, and I even had a high concept teaser to go with it. “Lost in Transfusion” I called it, in an attempt to excite another to call with dreams of pushing an indie horror film that boasted an elegant, Sofia Coppola vibe but with a large toe in the vampire zeitgeist pool. It was set at a three-day horror convention in a hotel and everything (timelock!). Young girl with tragic past meets old author dude with a horrific solution. So excited was I–and undaunted by my rejection–that I started immediately penning a character sketch of the main character, Eliza.
Two months later I had a novella. Yeah, I wasn’t feeling burned about Hollywood at all. Noooo.
But you know what, I loved it when it was finished. Still do. And it got me to do my next book, which I’m buttoning-up just now. And it seems I’m starting back at the beginning when I was writing about subjects that you will not easily find on the Border’s front tables. In fact, just yesterday I took a stroll around the popular bookstore franchise and was a little hard-pressed to work out where this new story would fit. Horror was close, but not quite right. And up front next to the new offering from the guy who wrote The Kite Runner was a stretch too far, for sure. Where do the genre-benders go? Do we have a special club where we smoke cigarettes and say clever things until the wee hours? Is their a movement about, because I’d really like to know. At the moment I’m calling it “high-camp, dark fiction”. I could just as easily call it an “over-the-top thriller with horror elements”. A part of me would love to just slip a few next to a Martha Stewart cookbook, and see how it goes over. Anyway, the queries for this one are in production, and at least I get a chance to say there’s a message under all that romp. We’ll see, won’t we?
Anyway, today’s professional specialness is running a little low. I don’t think I’ll get that call, but I’m likely to get a few others. And what is always as sure as “shit on your shoe”, I’ll be writing and querying and pushing the boundaries as I see them until it’s time to go home. Because possibly worse than never becoming a serious author in my lifetime is becoming one writing stuff that betrays those early efforts where I was bold and undaunted by the industry, the economy, remake hysteria and being just another guy in the middle of nowhere who thinks he has something to say. I think I always want to be that guy.
It still wouldn’t hurt to get another Sunday phone call that doesn’t go where you think it might, though. But like so many journeys a writer takes, if he takes them for the right reasons, where you end up may prove well worth visiting.
Rest in peace, Ms. Page.
HorrorCon Gets Reviewed
July 23, 2008
Just wanted to point you all to a review for my novella HorrorCon on Bittenbybooks.com. They’re nice folks who do a tremendous volume of reviews for “all types of paranormal fiction, urban fantasy and horror”. So if you’re interested in reading it, click here. You can also order it there, or by clicking “Order” up in my menu.
Let me also take this opportunity to say that I hope those of you who have been reading the entries for sWitch are enjoying them. It might be worth noting that the excerpts I’m publishing every Tuesday and Friday are basically brain dumps to a loose outline. When I go back to them, I’ll flesh them out more, adding more dialog and other fun details. My idea was to do a sort of “live” writing experiment, and show my work a bit. The exercise has also been terrific for keeping me on schedule, and I hope to have the entire “treatment” completed by the end of next month, with a first draft of the full length novel ready for Halloween.
So mark those undeadlines on your calendars, and feel free to comment on how you’re finding it so far.
HorrorCon – Sunday
June 6, 2008
So this is it, the final chapter of HorrorCon. I have to say it’s been really enjoyable doling these out to you, even if I had little idea how many of “you” there actually were. Regardless if there was even one person indulging my little frightfest, I figured I would learn a lot about writing and I certainly did. Among those things that I will take from the experience is a need to dig deeper into character and simplify plot. Not that complex plots aren’t valid in storytelling, because when done well they can be very satisfying for both the writer and the reader and I think I have some samples in my portfolio that represent that. But in doing HorrorCon, I was able to tap into a rich vein in my own writing repertoire that I hadn’t fully explored. I must say it felt easy at first, as I loved my characters and had been really looking forward to relaying in a narrative way my experiences with horror conventions. I do love those odd events, I have to say. And as a setting for a book, film or TV series they seemed ripe for the taking, so I took them. But as I went along and reviewed each chapter for publishing, I realized it wasn’t nearly as easy as I first thought. Every time I went back and read them, I found more mistakes and omissions as well as fat, all of which I tried to add or cut as best as I could. And I know I’ll still be doing that for many months to come.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who did visit and take the ride, and I hope that some of you will also take the time to give me feedback on both the story and the twice weekly chaptering experience. And please be honest. As I said from the start, this was my very first attempt at writing a serious story in prose and I know I’ve still got a ton to learn. What I know for sure is that I will do another at some point, and that I found the entire experience therapeutic, rewarding and fun as all hell.
One last thing before I send you off to my black Sabbath. The actress I’ve chosen to play Eliza today goes by the name of Katherine Pawlak. Unless you’re a big fan of hoaxy internet based soap operas that deal with teens and the occult I doubt you’ve ever heard of her. However, I have a feeling that someday you will. A few months back, if you remember, I entered a film concept contest called Ghost in the Machine that was being sponsored by a relatively new creative networking website called Massify.com. They were looking for a story idea that they could produce for something called Horrorfest. I didn’t win – obviously or I just might have mentioned it 
– but the exercise of putting together the pitch video really kick-started my writing in some new and exciting directions. Anyway, after the idea was chosen, they then accepted video auditions from a slew of amateur actors (and some pros, it has to be said) and registered visitors were permitted to vote for the leading guy and girl to be in the film. Katherine got my vote, and went on to win. Did I choose her because her look fit my character Eliza almost perfectly? I might have, but it wasn’t the case. She was head and shoulders above her competition, and if you check out her screen tests, maybe you’ll see what I mean. So congratulations Katherine, and good luck.
Now, let’s do this. Sit tight, dear readers, and feast your eyes on HorrorCon – Sunday:
Saturday night saw quite a bit of action for our heroes. After some tense negotiations, it finished up with a bit of a scuffle. Yes, there was some blood spilled, but at least one heart now pumped with a strange new hope and strength. Still, there are a few details yet to be resolved. And what now for our black butterfly? Click the final chapter and get your answers. To collect all nine, click here!
HorrorCon – Sunday available by request only.
Eliza Poe/HorrorCon – Sp4
May 30, 2008
For today’s entry, we invite the very capable ghost of Eliza Poe – mother of Edgar Allen Poe – to play the part of her namesake and our main character. She was born Eliza Arnold and after the death of her father, sailed from England to Boston, Massachusetts with her actress mother and made her acting debut at age nine. They joined a theater troupe called the Charleston Comedians run by a man named Mr. Edgar, and after her mother died, she married a man by the name of Charles Hopkins who may or may not have been related in some way to the man who portrays our Dr. Radan in the HorrorCon poster.
Sadly, good old Chuck would succumb to yellow fever three years later and poor Eliza would find herself a widow at age 18. She continued to perform, however, and was eventually swept off her feet by lawyer-turned-actor David Poe, Jr. Even more sadly, he sucked as an actor and would eventually leave Eliza after receiving a string of honest reviews, but not until after the couple produced two sons, one of whom we all know quite well. Eliza would also give birth to a daughter some months later, and the family would move to New York where mother would continue to perform until her death from pneumonia, malaria or tuberculosis (feeling lucky to be born in the age of modern medicine yet?) at the tender age of 24. Incidentally, the couple who would look after her children in her last days were named Mr. and Mrs. Luke Usher. If you ask me, little Edgar would have remembered this period in his life quite vividly. To see where Eliza is buried, click her miniature above. Would make a cheery family trip, no?
Speaking of cheery trips, let’s hop on over to Orlando and see how the Doctor and his charge are making out. Which is a casual, short-handed way of saying, “BEHOLD, YE WEARY WANDERERS! ‘TIS TIME TO LAY YE WEARY EYES ON HORRORCON – SP3!”:
As we all know by now, Dmitrije is a good swimmer and even better with the bedside manner. Eliza recounted for us her horrible ordeal and introduced us to a new friend named Boris. Dmitrije, like lots of us from time to time, needed a stiff shot to deal, and now must make a few more important decisions. (Remember, check the HorrorCon page in the “stories” section for previous chapters and to make sure you’re all caught up. Enjoy!)
HorrorCon – Saturday (part four) available by request only.
HorrorCon – Saturday (part one)
May 20, 2008
Surprise! I’ve decided since it’s rainy outside and May 20th (2003) is the anniversary of the final televised episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that I would get you all started on the Saturday chapters of HorrorCon earlier than scheduled. However, there will still be another chapter for this Friday, plus some info on a new story idea that is in competition with my “coyote” concept for next project to tackle. It’s my answer to the numbing popularity of slasher and “torture porn” flicks, but with a bit of family values thrown in. Yes, it will be delightfully twisted. And if you liked the bat shit madness behind Welcome to Cydonia, you are seriously going to dig this.
We are fortunate to have the decidedly natural, almost anti-Hollywood gifts of actress Sarah Rivas to lend to our character of Eliza today. I caught Sara this weekend on the Independent Film Channel in a film called Manic that did the festival circuit circa 2001 and starred a handful of really talented young actors such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, and Elden Henson. Their performances benefited greatly by portraying deeply troubled teens doing time in the juvenile wing of a mental institution under the tutelage of the incredibly committed – both in his character and his approach to the role – Don Cheadle. It’s a pretty engaging and indicting portrait of the darker aspects of today’s youth culture, which is something that interests me a great deal and informs a lot of my work. Anyway, it’s a pleasure to have Ms. Rivas join us today and so as not to take up too much of her time, let’s get to the story:
Eliza and Dmitrije greet the morning in their usual (or is that “unusual”?) way as each attempt to get on with the busy day. However, both find a way to avoid their respective tasks at hand, and a dark room makes for a “chance” encounter – the results of which reveal a few more painful secrets.
HorrorCon – Saturday (part one) available by request only.
Another Animal/HorrorCon – Fp3
May 16, 2008
Imagine the life of the coyote. As desert suburban sprawl continues to corner the species, what does it do? It learns to adapt, helping itself to our overflowing garbage can buffets, feeding on our smaller and slower pets (R.I.P. Georgia 
) and finding places to hide and raise its young. As it becomes more accustomed to its surroundings, it becomes braver and takes more chances, passing an even more audacious nervous system to its offspring. Soon, you have a creature that becomes demonized and identified as an evil pest, even when society has literally played a major role in its behavior.
Now imagine your average teenager. As modern technology and its inundation of objectifying messages isolates them and at the same time sublimates their importance by selling them images of who they are meant to be that few will likely match, they become pushed into their own set of corners where they are also forced to adapt. Sometimes they create electronic personas with which to communicate, other times they withdraw into lives of quiet desperation where any number of dead ends await including drugs, crime and massively dysfunctional family cycles. In cases all too common these days, violence against innocent people becomes another choice.
In both cases you have an intelligent creature who somehow falls in between what is expected of them and what we allow them to be. Usually what accompanies such expectations is a serious lack of understanding, and a tendency towards generalization and simple definitions of what they mean to our adult concepts of progression. In my opinion, only one generalization can be made: both mark a failure of society at large. Sure, human beings need to spread out and a cursory glance to the food chain means that little, furry fellers like the coyote need to move aside. But are we doing all that we can so that the transition demonstrates an advocacy for both species? And what of teenagers who are fed images and expectations that they can never meet because the tools of achieving them – our educational system, for one – is insufficient, or worse, itself sublimated to a culture where they are only as important as what can be taken from them. Both creatures adapt by their instincts, and to counter those instincts is to create an enemy.
Think about that for a second: create an enemy. What if all of our problems could be solved by looking forward, taking the time to understand all the factors involved, and then taking steps to avoid them? Sound like a perfect world? Am I doing some kind of tired, out-of-my-ass Eddie Vedder impression? Sadly, I guess I am.
My point here was not to soapbox but to draw parallels and relationships between two interestingly connected elements of modern society, and in particular, elements that we find every day in the city of Los Angeles. In California alone, 2007 NRS statistics put the number of crisis calls from runaways at 28,178. Needless to say, not every one of them calls. And in most cases, I gather, no one calls at all. As for the coyotes, well, there is only so much room, and it’s running out just as fast as the tolerance for these “evil vermin”.
So I got to thinking: what about a story involving – not a boy and his dog like we have become accustomed to seeing – but a boy and his coyote, and connecting it to the problem – our problem – of marginalized youth? The Lost Boys did the runaway thing to an extent with fantastic results, and to be honest, mullets never looked better. Of course, there has to be a killer, horror hook or I’m not interested. And I think I have one – but more on that later. For now, let’s get back to our story (note: parts one and two available in the “stories” section):
As Friday winds to a close, Dr. Radan is strangely compelled to work an introduction to our pill-popping heroine. Soon after, he indulges in a rather unusual happy hour up in his room while Eliza finds her own way to wind down from the day’s events. And as Friday comes to a close, we’re left with an eerie suspicion that the two will meet again.
HorrorCon – Friday (part three) available by request only.
Sumtin Fresh/HorrorCon – Fp2
May 9, 2008
And so it rolls on. I’ve finished HorrorCon and I hope those of you who have started reading it are enjoying it. I should maybe point out again that there are nine chapters in total, so collect them all! Anyway, I plan on adapting it into a screenplay later after all the posts are out, which will be some time late in the summer, so I need something new to keep me busy until then. That said, I dug into my story reserves and am kicking around a few possibilities. One of them involves a video game tie-in that might be rad.
Check out the pic above of those two guys who look like they’re showing their boring home movies to a parking lot full of no one cause everybody left. You may be asking yourself “What the fuck are they doing, showing boring home movies, etc.?” and if you are, that’s good. You’re inquisitive. That will get you far in life (provided you’re not a cat). And if you’re a writer like me, it will hopefully get you far in that, too. Now, click on the pic and come back. I’ll wait.
They can’t spell for shit, but it’s cool, huh? It’s called “lazer tagging”. These graffiti dudes use these big, fuck-off machines to blast laser light across town and put up a temporary tag on some unsuspecting building. Then they pack it up and move along cause I think it’s illegal. Pfft, like they care. But can you imagine what you could tag if you had a big enough machine? And what if the messages you were sending were exposing some kind of government corruption? I think it might be cool if they also rallied up some oppressed peeps into a big, ol’ army which then organized against their oppressors. And what if said oppressors were in orbiting space stations with crazy-ass, monk-like mercenaries that they would send down to quell the uprising? Well, I’d say you’d have one bad-ass mess on your hands. And lots of lasers. Fighting + lasers + graffiti art = cool. That’s what I’m thinking.
Anyway, I’m playing with that idea and trying to see how it might fit into a game. GTA San Andreas had some tagging in it but it was pretty low-key. Still, I might have to load up CJ again and have a chat. He’ll tell you anything you want for a slice of pizza and the chance to whup some ass, don’t you know. And Getting Up looks pretty killer, but I’m shooting for something more intense and futuristic.
Okay, onward to our next chapter of HorrorCon (and remember, if you miss a week, you can find all previous downloads under “Stories”, or just click here):
When we last saw Eliza, she was “praying to the porcelain god/talking to Ralph on the big white telephone/screaming at the ground”, etc. Being around all those people at the convention was too much for her, even as hopped-up on goofballs as she was. In Part Two we meet Dr. Dmitrije Radan, celebrated horror fiction author and a guy with some weird habits. Also, Eliza will make a new friend who just might be able to get her head out of the toilet. Enjoy!
HorrorCon – Friday (part two) available by request only.
HorrorCon
May 2, 2008
Before I start the story, I need to explain a few things. Sorry. Pretend it’s that FBI Warning screen that you can’t skip when you start a DVD.
Here’s what happened: I had all of “Friday” segmented into three separate posts, each with five pages (if you remember, HorrorCon is split into three days: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). Each of the pages went on for about one-thousand words and were, obviously, written in the tiny little type that you’re reading right now. It was brilliant…unless you didn’t feel like sitting in front of your computer for an hour and reading tiny type that is a pain in the ass to print. Also, you might not be crazy about having to wait a week for subsequent posts of similar lengths in order to read the story. At this rate of posting, it could possibly take three months – or more – to get it all in. The combination of these factors struck me as a big ask of a visitor to a blog. The chances of losing you would be very high and then what was all our work for, huh?
Also, because WordPress doesn’t allow for indentation, I had to skip a space for each bit of dialog. It worked okay, but “okay” is just “okay”. I spent about a month getting this story out of my head, so I probably shouldn’t settle for anything less than “better than okay”. Don’t you think?
So what I’ve decided to do is to make the segments available via .pdf, and kick off each post with a few words or a little “summary” of sorts as to what the reader can expect. A bit of a teaser, so to speak. This way, I could also make the posts about something current and unrelated and you could get more out of your visit. It also seemed easier to have you download a file that you could print or read on your computer later, and it would even look like a book with indentation and the correct font and stuff. To make it even easier, each installment would be concurrently available in the “stories” section of the blog in case you missed one or more of them, or wanted to wait for a bigger chunk to bring with you to the beach. Sound good?
Greeeaaat. So “attached” please find the first installment of HorrorCon (a.k.a. Lost in Transfusion) and I sincerely hope you enjoy it:
In this chapter we meet Eliza (being played above by the outstanding Blythe Auffarth), and travel with her to the hotel just as the convention is kicking off. She’s planning to set up her booth in the Dealers’ Room just as she’s done many times before, but we’ll find out she’s dealing with some pretty serious issues, and that a weekend she used to look forward to more than anything has now become one she is dreading.
HorrorCon – Friday (part one) available by request only.
Eliza Lowell was a gypsy.
April 26, 2008
Or so goes the first line of HorrorCon, my very first online serial novella. I probably would have started with something else if I had intended at all to do one of these (they exist, right?). But I was only planning on doing an exploratory narrative to help find my characters, so this all came as a surprise, really. As I kept typing, I started having fun, so I kept going and going and going. I’ve never written anything of any real length that wasn’t a screenplay, so an eighty-nine page story with actual punctuation and stuff was kind of a major deal for me. I’m fully aware that it could suck, and that’s cool. It’s my first one, like I said, and I can’t get sued for writing it unless there’s someone reading this right now whose name is Eliza Lowell (played today by the precocious Anna Paquin, the second youngest actress to win an Academy Award) and she actually does work the Dealers’ Room at various horror conventions and is a bit of a pill head. If that’s the case, please email me right away and I promise to cease and desist. And seek some help, sweetheart. Cause if what you got coming is the same as my character, you may not want to go that route so consider these words to the wise.
I should also give a shout out to good buddy Trent Reznor (I can’t stop creating spontaneous fiction!) for his recent instrumental record Ghosts I-IV. Were it not for those thirty-six tracks, I may not have finished. In fact, if you do end up reading HorrorCon, I encourage you to download the album ($5.00, a bargain) and hit play at the first sentence – which you now know cause I put it up there, see? When you run out of songs you can just start over, or you might want to try a little Nox Arcana, specifically tracks from Transylvania, Necronomicon, Cantar De Procella, and Dark Age of Reason. It’s beautifully spooky stuff and it fits the story like a custom made coffin. Oh, yes.
Anyway, I’m going to give the story another polish this weekend, check my facts cause it’s loaded with bullshit that sounded good at the time, and research some online publishing companies. I think it would be cool to have it printed as a real book with pages and a cover and maybe even a short bio on the writer that would be a blank page – as would the page with all the blurbs about how great it is. Hey, I know: if any of you read it and want a comment in the book, post it and I’ll put it in. It’ll be rad. I’ll put your real names and everything and you can be a published critic! See, dudes and dudettes, I’m looking out for y’all. This tide rises all boats, is what I’m sayin’. So stay tuned.
That’s it for now. The next blog entry you hear will be the first installment of HorrorCon, also called Lost in Transfusion by no one in particular, but I think it would be a cool pitch. I’m not sure how many pages I’ll post at once, or how frequently, but I’m thinking perhaps ten pages a week. It’s a pretty easy read, I think, but a lot of it takes place in the heads of the characters so that might get tedious. If ten is too much or too little, do let me know, children. I think of you all as my children, you know? That doesn’t mean you can ask for keys to the car or anything, but I think it means I can come into your rooms at night tanked to the bejesus on Irish whiskey and play The Pogues on the guitar really loudly. Or something.
Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you in a couple of days.
