Progress Report 4 - The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

So yeah, now I'm pretty much just waiting for August 1 to roll around. It doesn't mean that I'm idle, goodness no.

I've got the first chapter uploaded already and scheduled to drop on Sunday morning. I've completed a couple of Extras, have another one or two in progress (which means I haven't yet decided to post it as one or two pieces). And I'm debating one big step which prudence tells me I should take, but fear tells me I should not.

I've gone through a lot of stress over the past couple of years, hit some real mental low points, and during that time, I put myself into a kind of self-imposed exile from a big part of my community of friends on-line, mainly the folks from hte Codex Writers Group. I've thought several times that I should end it and get back in touch; I miss those folks.

But fear stops me every time. For instance, when I found out that Ted Kosmatka was nominated for a Nebula, I wanted to congratulate him, but I haven't said a word to him in around two years and it just seemed weird. I ended up not saying anything. I did get the nerve up to contact Nancy Fulda and James Maxey (and by contact, I mean leave brief comments on their blogs), but it was hard, and I certainly don't have the balls to ask them to link to my site, especially sight unseen as far as the book goes.

Because let's face it, what I'm doing, it's risky. I've tried to write this book twice before and done a bad job of it. I have no guarantees that this attempt will turn out any better. The difference is, very few people saw how bad those previous attempts were. Now I'm doing it in front of the world, so to speak.

So I'm fearful and yet excited. Because I'm doing something new for me, and the work and creativity is fun. I sincerely hope people like it, and that it turns into more than just another site that's visited by about three friends. I hope I can do a good enough job of it that people will be anxious to visit and see the updates. I hope that it turns out good and stays fun.

Corinne Bohrer can't wait.


I didn't mean like that. No, um, you know what? Carry on, Corinne.

Getting Bigger

So when I was originally brainstorming the new book, I had an idea that I immediately dismissed as too over the top. A couple of weeks later, I decided to go ahead and make that the climax.

Then I saw "Iron Man 2," using a free pass my mom gave me last year that I had never gotten around to using, and afterward, I dropped by Barnes and Noble, where I picked up a compilation of Spider pulp novels reprinted by Baen under the title, Robot Titans of Gotham (with a cover by Steranko, woot!). On the discount rack for five bucks!

Just looking at the cover, I immediately felt that my too big, over-the-top novel climax was now too small. I've only read a couple of Spider novels by Norvell Page, lent to me by Sargon, and his words echo in my brain. That the novels are relentless. They never let up. I don't know if Satan's Murder Machines lives up to that Steranko cover, but that's what I want my book to live up to. And it occurred to me that it would be a cool trick if I could pull it off, to make what seems like the predictable climax happen in the second act, so that people can still be surprised when the story spins into unexpected territory.

I don't know if I can come up with an idea big enough, but that's what I'm shooting for. To have a first act where people say, "No way he would go that far," a second act where they say, "Holy shit, he did go that far, but look how many pages are left! WTF?" and a third act where all they can say is, "Dude!"

Corinne Bohrer doubts I can pull it off.

But Caroline Munro believes in me.

Corinne Bohrer can't believe I'm bringing in another imaginary kibitzer.

Fine-the-EFF-ally

Typed my last revision on Death Wave this afternoon. And then did probably a profoundly stupid thing--rather than read it through again to see if it's any better, or to just to catch any new or old typos, I saved the file and sent it to Hard Case Crime straightaway.

Because I've been letting my fear and lack of confidence keep me frozen into inactivity for too long. And I needed to break out of that and not give myself another excuse to delay. I needed to get that book out the door and out of my system so I can move on to other things.

And now I have.

Corinne Bohrer is cautiously optimistic.

Thanks But No Thanks

There was no Thanksgiving post yesterday, because everything I'm thankful for right now is of the "thankful it's not worse" variety. Thankful that my separation from my wife has not been a knock-down, dragged-out screamfest of soul-killing, bank-draining hate, but simply a mellow desert of loneliness and unrequited desire. Thankful that the Biggest Mistake of My Life (TM) didn't get me killed, but only ripped-off, broke, indebted and depressed. Thankful that after four months of complete unemployment, I am now privileged to haul heavy boxes part-time for minimum wage and go broke more slowly.

That being said, it wasn't a bad Thanksgiving. I dropped by The Wife's celebration in the early afternoon to see my daughter, thinking they wouldn't be eating yet, but they were, so I had a small nosh. Then I went home to fix up some risotto mix I've had sitting in the cupboard for a while that I keep forgetting to fix and took it to another get-together, dubbed "Thanks for Nothing" by the hosts, wherein several of us who've had tough years gathered to wish this year over, in the vain hope that next year might actually be better while trying not to think of the myriad ways it could get worse. It was a nice time, with much good conversation.

Oh yeah, and you know what else I'm thankful for?

Corinne Bohrer's cleavage.

No More Big Video For Now

You may have noticed that this is the second week in which I didn't have a Big Video Wednesday. I'm kind of getting burned out on them; after all, I'm already digging through video and posting stills for Movie Monday, so Big Video Wednesday just feels like more of the same.

And in my defense, I was kind of distracted by that expedition to the Amazon I took, which didn't turn out exactly the way I had hoped. What expedition, you ask? Well, look for yourself.

Being a shrunken head sucks, frankly. Oh, an if you mouse over the head, you can play with it, but please don't. It makes me dizzy. Hey, I said, don't. Seriously. Stop it.

Corinne Bohrer sympathizes.

Quick Note

Have a job, at least tentatively. Unless the background check turns up something weird, which it shouldn't. It's seasonal help at a department store, minimum wage and temporary. Not a solution to my problem, more a stopgap, but I'll take it. And it shouldn't interfere with either my Monday night gaming or my Tuesday nights with The Girl (except for next Tuesday, when I have orientation).

Corinne Bohrer is relieved.

I may still throw up a Big Video Wednesday later. We'll see.

Pounding It Out, Day 36

Success!

Finally.

53,000 words, give or take. It sucks, but it's done.

And maybe, once I've gotten some distance from it, I'll find out it doesn't suck as much as I think it does right now. Maybe it'll be worth fixing up and submitting to Hard Case Crime. That was my ultimate goal when I started this, and until I'm sure the book is hopeless, it's still my goal.

I'm still broke as hell, but I have some cigars left from back when I was solvent. I think I'll light one up tonight after I get back from seeing my daughter. I may even splurge on a cheap little champagne split or something. I haven't had anything worth celebrating in my life for a long time, so I want to make the most of this moment.

Corinne Bohrer wants to congratulate me in a very special way. If only.

Pounding It Out, Day 27

I finally hit the wall, and in the weirdest possible place. I'm nearly to the end--only about 8,000 words to go--and instead of picking up momentum, I'm stopped dead. I'm not sure how to get from where I am to the climax.

It feels like I have overcomplicated what was a very simple storyline. In trying to set up my denouement, I've blocked myself from the climax preceding it. So I need to either work out a way to push through this quickly, or else scrap the last thousand or so words and take a different, simpler path.

Or do what I usually do and put the manuscript down for six months or so, then see if I feel like picking it up again. Crap.

Corinne Bohrer senses disaster.

Pounding It Out, Day 15, and a Vault Extra

Well, I'm still managing to stay almost exactly on pace, which is good, but at the same time...

If you read enough books about novel writing, you'll come across things like this:

Everyone, at some point, sees their novel as a lost cause. The characters are one-dimensional. The plot isn't going anywhere. The language is abysmal.

--No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty

One thing I've come to recognize is that I tend to run into a wall at a certain point in all my books...It's around that point that I find myself losing confidence in the book--or more precisely, in my ability to make it work. The plot seems to be either too simple and straightforward to hold the reader's interest or too complicated to be neatly resolved. I find myself worrying that there's not enough action, that the lead's situation is not sufficiently desperate, that the book has been struck boring while my attention was directed elsewhere.

--Writing the Novel from Plot to Print by Lawrence Block

I've been experiencing exactly that this week. It feels as if I've spent much of the last thirty pages or so just barely crawling along, marking time until the next big scene. It's not as bad as Hero Go Home, in which I spend nearly all of Act Two doing just that, but it still feels boring. The book may not be as bad as I've thought, but for the last couple of days, before I started writing, I've had that feeling of, "This is starting to really suck. Is all this effort really worth it? Who could possibly find this interesting?"

And the worst part of this feeling is that I've finally hit the big mid-book turning point. I wrote the first part of it today, and it wasn't easy. I try to write with a light touch, usually, funny and light, eliding over the really dark parts and heavy emotions, because I don't think I can write them convincingly.

And this scene is rather dark and brutal. There are no laugh lines (although there are punch lines, ha ha), and it goes on for a while. It has to go on for a while, because between this scene and the next, the emotional landscape is going to change rather drastically for the main character, and he can't just sort of be thrown there. He has to be dragged there, and it has to hurt every inch of the way.

And it's hard to write this sort of thing and not end up with some sort of violence porn, where you're dwelling on the violence for the sheer shock of it, and at some point, sort of getting off on how well you're describing it and kind of hoping the reader gets off on it, too.

Because you can't bore the reader, and you can't make the reader turn away or put it down. You have to keep the reader reading, so in some way, even when you're writing something unpleasant, you have to make it on some level compelling and even attractive. And that's hard to do without becoming exploitative.

So anyway, that's where I am right now--not just having to psych myself up for the daily challenge of "how do I link this scene into what's gone before and tie it into what happens next and keep all the characters consistent and honest and believable," but also having to pick up the considerably larger psychic load of, "how do I keep plodding through this piece of shit when I know everything I've done so far sucks?"

So anyway, to end on a lighter note, remember Saturday when I said, "No one reads Corben's comics for the stories?"

Well, here's an example of what they do read his comics for, from "Den II" in the May 1982 issue of Heavy Metal:

Corinne Bohrer is turned on...

Out of the Vault- Battle to the Death #1

Okay, if you read the post about Castle and Joanne Kelly this past week, you know that I occasionally get caught up in runs of coincidence, or synchronicity, or call it what you will (maybe just selective noticing), but here's another example.

In last week's Vault, I talked about The Realm, featuring perhaps the first published work of penciller Guy Davis. After I published that entry, I became curious whether Davis had gone on to do anything else notable in comics and discovered that he is currently the artist on the Hellboy spin-off series B.P.R.D. I have some friends who are big Hellboy fans, so I thought that was cool.

So then this morning, I realized I needed a comic for this week's Vault. I went to the "B" box since it was open and started flipping through at random. And stumbled upon a long-forgotten title known as Battle to the Death, published in 1987 by Imperial Comics.

Battle to the Death, written by John Arcudi and drawn by Jim Rohn and Dave Harrison, starts out at a rock concert being held in Hiroshima, where a bunch of mohawked punks are head-banging to the band when suddenly a zombie walks out on stage. The band flees, but the crowd thinks it's just part of the show, until...


Well, that puts a damper on the party. More zombies converge, and the police evacuate the area and cordon off the arena. Meanwhile, police inspector Tanasa has dragged the band to headquarters, where he harangues them with this rather unique monologue (click the image for a larger version if you have trouble reading it)...


Police lieutenant Katsu tells Tanasa to lay off the band, because the real answers are to be found with the zombies. He heads down to the police cordon, where the zombies have broken out and are in pitched battle with the cops. The cops are losing badly, and Katsu is in mortal danger.

But it turns out Katsu has "friends in high places" and has brought help--a gang of ninjas. The ninjas battle the zombies for a while, but it becomes apparent that, though ninja are masters of killing, killing doesn't work on zombies since they're sorta already dead.


Katsu and ninja buddy Isho head back toward the arena, but cut through a graveyard, where they stumble upon a weird mausoleum guarded by zombies in cop uniforms. Turns out, this is the temple of the Flame of Life, which is what reanimated the zombies. Katsu and Isho battle a giant living idol in an attempt to snuff the flame. They succeed, and the zombies fall.

But their problems aren't over. For when they leave the temple, Katsu and Isho encounter Inspector Tanasa, leading a group of really big dudes with rayguns and weird helmets with bug antennae on them.


Aliens?

Battle to the Death ran for three issues, but I only have the first one. I don't think I so much chose not to buy subsequent issues as I just never saw them come out, because ninjas vs. zombies vs. aliens is my kind of book, even if it never went as far over the top as I would have liked. It was fun.

But I was talking about weird coincidences. So here's the thing: when I saw that Battle to the Death was written by John Arcudi, I thought, "Hmmm. I've heard of him. He's written other stuff I liked." So I looked him up.

Turns out, he wrote The Mask, the original comic which inspired the Jim Carrey movie (the comic was much darker and harder-edged, and I'd like to see them actually make that story someday). And he wrote Barb Wire, the comic which inspired the Pamela Anderson movie (no one's perfect, although any movie sporting that much cleavage is not entirely bad--at worst, you can turn the sound off and just look at cleavage).

And it turns out (although you've figured this out already, because I set it up several inches above) he's now the co-writer on B.P.R.D. Battle to the Death was one of his earliest published jobs, and I just stumbled across it this morning after just stumbling across one of the artist's earliest published jobs last week.

I don't know how this happens, but it does. Maybe Joanne Kelly is trying to tell me to read B.P.R.D.

Corinne Bohrer disbelieves.

Castle and Incestuous Guest Stars

So I mentioned a while back that I'd started watching Warehouse 13 on SyFy. It's a fun show. Stars Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly have a nice chemistry, and Kelly handles the role of straight woman to McClintock's clown with grace. But she also sometimes has a grating quality, and there's a weird twist to her mouth that puts me off sometimes.

So then I started watching The Dresden Files, and there was this episode with this absolutely gorgeous female vampire named Bianca. Of course, I noticed early in that the lighting and make-up seemed designed to give her an unearthly sheen, almost glowing in every scene she's in, and I figured it was a subtle hint at vampire magic or something (that was really a pretty decent show). But there was something familiar about the twist to her mouth in certain scenes. I figured I had to have seen her before somewhere.

Yeah. Joanne Kelly again. But really hot this time.

Speaking of television, I decided to give Castle another shot. I caught one episode during its regular season, and I was underwhelmed. If you'd asked me yesterday what put me off about it, I couldn't put my finger on it, but something had rubbed me the wrong way about the show on the one episode I caught.

But I have friends who like it, so I thought I'd give it another chance. So I found it on Hulu and picked at random an episode titled "Always Buy Retail." I sat back determined to watch with an open mind.

And I can see why people might like it. Nathan Fillion, after all, is talented and charismatic, and has appeared on several fan favorites, like Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. And the writing isn't completely horrible; there's some witty dialogue and stuff.

But as it turns out, it the episode I picked first was the one episode I'd seen before. The series premise: Castle is a mystery writer who follows NYPD detective Kate Beckett around, with the intention of using her as source material for his next book. This episode's plot: someone is killing people and performing voodoo rituals over their corpses in the attempt to find a mysterious something. And I remembered all the reasons I hadn't liked the show.

Reason the First: the dialogue is too cute, and the writers are too impressed with their own cuteness. Early on, Castle sleeps with his ex-wife, then immediately regrets it, and in relating his problems to Beckett and her partners, Exposition Detectives 1, 2, and 3 (hereinafter referred to as ED 01, ED 02, and ED 03), describes his ex-wife as a "deep-fried Twinkie," a guilty pleasure that's fantastic in limited doses, but sickening when indulged in every day. Witty, but not witty enough for them to keep repeating the damn catch-phrase throughout the rest of the episode.

Reason the Second: this being an ABC show, the PC is so thick, you'd need a machete to hack your way through. When they discover the first body, Castle mentions that it looks like a voodoo ritual. Only he pronounces it "voe-doo," because any good PC lib nowadays has got to use affected pronunciations of foreign terms to show how intellectually superior he is, like "Pokeestan" or "Hava(choke)ee."

And then just to show that the cops aren't conservative retards stuck in the 40's (and also to fullfill the EDs' roles), they don't respond with, "What, you mean 'voodoo'? The zombie thing?" No, one ED blinks stupidly and says, "What's that, some kind of Star Trek thing?" and another busts out with, "It's a religion practiced primarily in West Africa." And it goes on like that for the rest of the episode: normal white people who, one would assume, have seen a zombie movie or two, yet are completely ignorant of even the concept of voodoo, while their intellectual betters tell them how peaceful and spiritual the religion is and how it gets a bad rap in the media (media that these people never watch, apparently). Doesn't matter; the voodoo thing is a red herring anyway. It's all about drugs and forged documents and shit.

(ETA: Rereading this, I think I emphasize "white people" too much -- it's not so much that I'm racist as I'm tired of the fictional trope that people of color are so much more spiritually aware than us white goobs, so we must constantly be preached to and educated - it's condescending)

Reason the Third: EDs. They exist for no reason other than to ask stupid questions for the benefit of the audience and to be impressed by Castle's wit, which they then repeat endlessly throughout the rest of the show (okay, that's sort of going back to Reason the First, but I just got real tired of "deep-fried Twinkie" after a while).

Reason the Fourth: Castle is an idiot. He shows up mid-episode with a Kevlar vest which he has emplazoned with the word "WRITER" (to match the cops' vests which bear the term "POLICE"). Later, he brings a champagne bottle to a gunfight.

Reason the Fifth: As stupid as Castle is, he's smarter than the cops.

So anyway, I got bored later in the evening and tried another Castle episode, titled "Ghosts." Not as bad the first one, I've gotta say, although I saw the big twist coming from very early on. But here's the thing: at one point, Castle and Beckett run into another writer who has been interviewing the murder victim. And guess who plays the writer?

That's right, Joanne Kelly again. Three weeks ago, I'd never heard of this woman, now I can't get away from her. I think she's stalking me. Corinne Bohrer is concerned.

But seeing Joanne Kelly all over the place reminded me that Warehouse 13 has its own guest star problem. Eight episodes in, and they can't stop stunt-casting actors from their other shows. Stars of Eureka and (now cancelled) Stargate Atlantis have appeared already (and maybe someone else I can't remember) (ETA: A ha! Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica also did an episode), and another Eureka star will appear on next week's episode.

I know this is a general condition of television, but for some reason it seems more pronounced with Warehouse 13 (though maybe only because I've run into the Joanne Kelly thing lately, plus the chick from Farscape on another episode of The Dresden Files- maybe they're all just running together in my head).

Took Long Enough

Two years ago, I took part in a short story contest on Codex Writers Group. I received a character sketch as a story seed and set to work. I got maybe a third of the way through the story and gave up. I had the shape of it in my head, but it wasn't coalescing on the page.

I've tried several times in the intervening years to finish the story but it always refused to gel. Today, I finally finished the first draft, making it the first thing I've written in well over a year (blogs don't count). I didn't hit it out of the park. It was more like a sad bunt dribbling down the third base line, but at least I'm sort of back on the horse.


Speaking of horse, I realized that Hell's Kitchen is back on, so I watched the first three episodes on Hulu tonight. One of the chef-hopefuls was a guy named Tony (eliminated at the start of the third episode, sadly). But the thing with Tony is, in the opening credits (which have a circus sideshow theme), he is presented as a kind of donkey-centaur, with the signs behind him reading "Half-Man! Half-Donkey!"

There's a pun about being half-assed in there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to reach for it.

Corinne Bohrer's never too lazy.

Pink Is the Color of Pain

From AOL's homepage:



Corinne Bohrer is amused.

The Rag

So I was at Best Buy today buying more phone minutes. Took a tour through the DVD aisles & noticed a film in the horror section called "The Rag." That merited a closer look. Turns out, it was actually "The Rage," but the white price sticker against the light background of the cover obscured the "e." Likewise, the horror film "Marty" was not a remake of the 1955 Ernest Borgnine film, but actually the 2008 French film "Martyrs."

Which makes more sense, but is also disappointing, because at least for guys, a movie called "The Rag" could be absolutely terrifying.

Yes, tasteless, I know. Corinne Bohrer is not pleased with me.

Flash vs. Trickster

So I've been watching this anime series called Aquarion on Hulu, which I'll probably talk about tomorrow, but got bored with it just before the final climactic episodes (never a good sign) and somehow ended up on VEOH. And while I was browsing the sci-fi episodes to see what they had, I noticed they had the entire run of The Flash, the live action series from 1990.

Well, I'd never seen Mark Hamill's Trickster episode which everyone says is the best of the series, so I figured, what the hell?

Turns out, there were two Trickster episodes and I watched the other one.

Not that I didn't enjoy it. I did, but more for nostalgia value, not because it was any good. This was the last episode of the first season, which is to say the last episode of the series, and I wonder if they knew they weren't getting picked up for another season, because the entire episode has a "what the hell" feel to it.

The episode is titled "The Trial of the Trickster," and it was written by Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore. The Trickster is going on trial for the events of a previous episode, in which he kidnapped private detective Megan Lockhart and tried to brainwash her into becoming his girl sidekick, Prank. Trickster escapes from custody during the trial thanks to the help of a spoiled rich girl named Zoe Clark, who wants to be the new Prank. Trickster and Prank then kidnap Flash and the Trickster brainwashes him into helping him start a reign of terror over Central City, including putting the judge and attorneys on trial for crimes against the Trickster.

Mark Hamill mugs and giggles as The Trickster, channeling Frank Gorshin's Riddler from the 60's Batman series at times. And just listening to him, you can hear why he got the role of the Joker in the Batman animated series a couple of years later. Of course, any appearance by Hamill anywhere gets geek interest points because of Skywalker, so there's nostalgia point one: Mark Hamill.

Megan Lockhart, the detective who won the Flash's heart but has no time for him now that she's famous, is played by Joyce Hyser, who's mainly remembered by 80's movie geeks like me for her starring role in "Just One of the Guys," a comedy about a high school girl who poses as a boy to try to win a journalism competition. She was also in "This is Spinal Tap," so she will be a hero forever. So nostalgia point number two: Joyce Hyser, playing a woman.

Joyce's high point in the episode, BTW: during the trial, the Trickster escapes his handcuffs, and she decks him. We then see our only glimpse of Hyser leg, because she switches to slacks for the rest of the show. Joyce's low point: when Prank throws a bunch of sharpened steel chattering teeth on her, and she has to lie on the floor covered with chattering teeth and pretend this is really threatening. Career note: people got paid to come up with this idea and perform it.

Prank is played by Corinne Bohrer, who has played a hundred different love interests and housewives on TV series and commercials. I developed a crush on her years ago when she played Herman's girlfriend on the pilot episode of Herman's Head. But then they never brought her back, which is probably why the show got canceled so quickly. Don't fuck with Corinne. Nostalgia point number three: Corinne Bohrer.

This is not Corinne's best work, unfortunately. Not to get all drama-criticy about a throwaway comic episode of a TV series about a cartoon character, but the big problem with her performance here is that she was having too much fun, like Burt Reynolds in "The Cannonball Run." You can tell she's having real trouble keeping a straight face, like Harvey Korman on Carol Burnett (and if you want to throw cold water on a nostalgic crush real quick, try comparing your dream girl to Burt Reynolds and Harvey Korman; brrrr).

Then again, she did rock the cleavage a couple times, so I forgive her.


Although check out the big 80's hair. And yes, even though this was technically 1990, tell me those checks and polka dots on Hamill's breastplate there don't scream 80's, as well.

Oh yeah, the Flash was in it, too. He ran fast.


Although that was the main problem with the Flash as a live action character. He moved quickly, but in order to let the audience see what he was doing, he never moved that fast. He was the slowest super-speedster I've ever seen, and certainly not fast enough to merit that long red blur behind him. Smallville does a much better job of portraying super-speed, although to be fair, they've got much more advanced technology to work with, as well as the conceptual leap of "bullet time," which was not a glimmer in anyone's eye in 1990.