Madman in the Desert

Wow, I've neglected this blog. I formally apologize to my legions of fans. 2010 shall be a year of creative...uh, magic.

In the meantime, here's an excerpt from The Greatest Story Ever Told, adapted by yours truly.

Flanked by his personal guard, Kefka stomped through the desert approaching Figaro Castle. As usual, he was not in good humour.

“Phooey!” he grumbled. “Emperor Gestahl's stupid orders!”

He gave a mad little hop and shouted at the sky. “Edgar, you pinhead!” he roared. “Why do you have to live in the middle of nowhere? These recon jobs are the pits!”

The two soldiers escorting him tried not to look at each other. They just had to wait until Kefka played this out. Kefka noticed them gawking at him and was immediately annoyed by it.

“Ahem,” he said. “There's SAND on my boots!” The soldiers snapped into action, each furiously wiping the sand from Kefka's flashy red boots.

“Yes, Sir!” they cried in unison. “All set, Sir!” They both smartly saluted, hoping they hadn't somehow incurred Kefka's wrath. He was well-known for his mood swings and seemingly random punishments.

Instead Kefka laughed his disturbing and horrible laugh. He didn't even sound human when he did it.

“Idiots!” he barked. Then he turned and strode up to Figaro's front doors.

“Sir Kefka!?” Blurted the guard there, trying to buy some time for Edgar. “What on earth do-”

“Outta my way!” growled Kefka and he simply shoved the man aside and went through the door, his own soldiers following.

Edgar met him in the courtyard. “I thought we were allies,” he said to one of Kefka's guards, trying his best to avoid Kefka for the moment. “What are you doing in my domain?”

The soldier just grinned at him. He enjoyed this part of the job at least.

“You've been busy down south,” quipped Edgar. “Looking for more cities to destroy?”

“That's for us to know!” smirked the trooper. Edgar glowered and finally addressed Kefka, hoping that making him wait had annoyed him. He put on his best sarcastic voice.

“What brings Kefka, humble servant of Emperor Gestahl, into our lowly presence?” he asked. He tried to read Kefka's expression but the man was so crazy it was nearly impossible.

“A girl of no importance recently escaped from us,” answered Kefka, trying to sound gruff and nonchalant. “We heard she found refuge here.”

Edgar turned and took a few deliberate steps away from Kefka, putting on a show that he was really thinking hard.

“Hmm,” he said. “This wouldn't have anything to do with this 'witch' everyone's been whispering about, would it?”

“Lies!” barked Kefka. “She...merely stole something of minor value. Is she here?”

Edgar smiled to himself. Kefka really was a lousy liar. “That's a tough one!” he said brightly. “You see, there are more girls here than grains of sand out there. I can't keep track of 'em all!”

Kefka gave his own smile. It was quite different from Edgar's. “I'd hate to be you if we find out you're lying,” he said. “Mwa, ha!”

He turned away and went back to the door. Then he stopped.

“I truly hope nothing happens to your precious Figaro!” he said darkly. Then he turned again and he and his soldiers left.

Locke had watched the entire exchange from the main hall's door.

“I'd say that guy's missing a few buttons,” he said when Edgar approached him. Inwardly Edgar agreed but said: “Where's Terra?”

See you next time. (Next time being soon).

Poetic Archaelogy

In the process of packing for my latest move I was able to excavate one of the better poems I've written, something I figured had been lost long ago (ok, not that long but it sure feels it).

In the summer of 2003, following my second year of university I went back to Cape Breton as I'd done the summer before. That summer I'd worked for the Cape Breton Post and this time I wanted to do something different. So I enrolled for two courses at UCCB - one on children's lit and another devoted to play writing. They were both totally up my alley and this was back in the days when I was actually still a good student. I aced them both.

Play writing was great and helped reignite my passion for creative writing and really was one of the major events to set me back on that path. We did lots of cool things and maybe some day I'll talk about more of them but for the purposes of this post I will just mention one. We walked through UCCB's art gallery and were each told to select one painting to write a poem on (it may not have just been poems, there could have been other options but as a poem is what I did it's what I remember).

I picked one by an artist named Noah Schwartz simply called "Untitled". I can't remember for sure but I think it was painted in 1979. Anyway, like many paintings out there this wasn't really a straightforward picture of something. I guess it was what you might called "semi-abstract". I can't really see it in my mind now but there were harsh lines and faint colours, lots of white, brown and maybe some pale blue and black. I just can't remember. Anyway, here's how I saw it that day.

Noah Schwartz's 'Untitled'

Modern meets ancient here
it's windswept, sun-bleached, now stripped and
sand-blasted
There's something so much older...underneath

Scaffolding against the cliff-face
archaeology uncovers secrets in the canyon
slowly but surely they scrape to meet them
Noon. The sun is high and there are
shadows cast against the rock
Men in boots and dusty fedoras come in the day with their
tools; their instruments of history
They swig their water, unroll their canvas
and chip away

They come in the day and shade their eyes
wipe their brows
what is ancient is not easily given up
The men leave at night
many secrets remain, elder gods are the most protective
This place is old

The Vampire Problem

As you know, the most major of all my projects is V World (working title), a novel that features a sprawling narrative with multiple points of view in the tradition of books like The Stand (Stephen King). It's set in contemporary twenty-first century America (2008, actually) but features many supernatural elements. The most prevalent of these elements is the presence of vampires.

I started writing the novel in November of 2006 (sad, I know) and can't really say I had the intention of writing a "vampire novel". I simply wanted antagonists with a supernatural element and I chose something familiar and comfortable. I was just going to take all my favourite things about vampires I've read in books or seen in movies and videogames and combine them. At the time, none of this seemed complicated. The novel itself seemed endlessly complicated because even from the very start I had a fairly clear idea of how many different main characters and plot elements I wanted to include. But the vampires seemed like simplicity itself really.

But now I don't know. I realize it's silly to suggest that the vampire's place in popular culture today has really changed so much in three years and yet that's how it feels. The popular Twilight novels have been made into one film so far with more to follow. The Blood Books series is now a television series, Blood Ties. The books are by Canadian author, Tanya Huff, who was actually born in Halifax. The books were written in the nineties but it was in 2007 that they were adapted for tv. Coincidence? I'm starting to think not.

Less than a year later, another television series based on vampire books surfaced. This is True Blood, based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris. The main thrust of this one is a human psychic falling in love with a vampire.

Notice how all these recent movies and shows are based on vampire books written by women? Yeah, so did I. Thanks, Anne Rice. Blah.

There's also some new show called The Vampire Diaries that's airing on MuchMusic of all channels so I figure this is some sort of blatant Twilight ripoff - can you imagine? So much of this kind of stuff creates tons and tons of horrible fan fic but probably the saddest thing about Twilight is that it reads exactly as if it was fan fic itself.

I have no idea when I'm going to finish this damn book but I vow here and now that finish it I shall. It's just that the current climate in literature and pop culture is oversaturated with stuff featuring vampires and I can just picture the reluctance of a publisher to release my novel. Even though I definitely wouldn't call it a vampire novel. Vampires are just...there.

So where will my novel fit into all of this? Hopefully far, far outside of it. My vampires regard humans as food and toys, nothing more. They do not fall in love with them or even treat them halfway decently. They enslave them, torture them and kill them. My humans will fight back, not swoon and prostrate themselves before the Almighty Sexy Vampire. Don't worry though - there's some sex in the book. Aw yeah.

V World Update

And I'll be you thought this novel was dead. Well, so I did I quite honestly. For a long time parts of it had been inaccessible to me and I still find working on it emotionally draining. But in the last few weeks I've regained it and have been reading through and editing the chapters.
The main problem now besides overcoming very unprofessional personal hangups is connecting the other stuff I've written in the meantime.

For over two years I've had lots of ideas for this story and originally projected it as resulting in something like a 650 000 word story. That's...a lot. Now I think it could be decidedly shorter. I don't really know if that's a good thing or not, we shall see. In any case, it won't really become clear for some time. The nearly 40 000 words I have written I can say I am mostly pleased with and the main challenge now besides actually moving the story forward is deciding exactly how much is needed to fill in the gaps I've left in connectivity. This is the first major work in my entire life that I've actually written out of sequence and so far I'm finding the experience quite difficult. There really is something to be said about the wisdom in plotting. Yes, I have plotted this book to a certain extent - beyond any extent to which I've ever plotted anything else - and yet, it's still not really straightforward plotting. It's more like holding ideas in my mind and then writing them down without any clear idea of how to make them all fit together.

If you've forgotten what V World is supposed to be about it's basically my attempt to do something like King's The Stand (go on and laugh; I'll wait) only with vampires being the major plot element and a uniting force for many different characters who start out having nothing to do with each other. Eventually I hope to change the landscape from normal twenty-first century life in North America to something pseudo post-apocalyptic only not quite that far. You know - a lawless world full of anarchy, dead people and vampires (and a few other super natural elements thrown in for good measure). I know what you're thinking, assuming you have in fact, stopped laughing - "a tad ambitious, no? Particularly for you, Mr. Unpublished Author." To which I respond: Absolutely. At this point in my life, ambition can only be a good thing, even if maybe I am somewhat out of my league.

I've got a head full of madness, a pretty decent laptop and time on my hands - the perfect tools for such an endeavour, I would think. Sure, talent and a better work ethic might help too but perhaps these things can develop over time. I think what held me back previously in those areas was a problem in attitude - I figured time would be required to hone those abilities but I didn't seem to grasp that didn't mean empty time where I just waited around for things to happen for me. While intrinsically I believe I always knew what it would take to get myself going I think I probably shelved such rationale while instead clinging to ridiculous hopes of perhaps one day simply waking up and realizing I now possessed the talent level and work ethic to proceed. I hadn't forgotten about hard work and sacrifice; I'd just decided to trick myself into thinking there were shortcuts past them.

Now I stand on the precipice of something truly significant. Something that will help me evolve as a writer. Whether that means success as in finishing the novel and actually having it published and finally embarking on a career as professional writer or just finishing the novel and understanding finally how it all works now in addition to maybe also understanding myself a little better too, I don't know. (Feel free to congratulate me on that ridiculous run-on sentence - I've already given myself a little pat on the back for it) But now I do know that, to paraphrase Hamlet, "The novel's the thing". Lately I've repeated this mantra while trying to remind myself that there's a lot more going on besides that and that any breakthrough with V World still only really represents one step on my road. Then I bury that because I am anything but a big picture guy, put my head down and write.

Special thanks are in order to three certain people who all in the past few months, completely separately and each in their own way, encouraged me to continue on with this book. I doubt any of you knew at the time how much your words resonated with me and shook me out of the state of doubt and defeat I'd attached to V World. So I'm telling you now: Thankyou.

V World - I should really think about a new title, shouldn't I?

e e cummings would not approve

Stubborn fool that I am, this really happened.


february 2008

huddled in the glow of a coke machine
i pretend that it gives warmth
close in two hours
minimal passers by, no security appearance since arrival

no security anywhere besides the type that tells me to move along
eyes stinging, memory stinging
this city is no longer home
and still i refuse to leave it

this happened here, that happened there
it should not linger this way
and yet it does
and so i linger also, it's become my only purpose

these streets taste like bile even in sunlight
i hate the sunny days most of all
few as they are
were there more when she walked with me?

she's around every corner
so i move in straight lines
everything has changed and nothing still has for me
my load is heavy and i am unclean
i chose this

she chose the same

Talking

Early on in my writing I discovered that I have a pretty good ear for dialogue and I think I'm good at producing both snappy and clever as well as realistic sounding conversations. That's probably at least partially why I'm such a fan of someone like Kevin Smith, who as a writer really specializes in dialogue. It's also why I like plays so much. So writing a play should be easy for me, right? It's 95% dialogue after all. Plus it's always been a dream of mine to write a play and then see it performed on stage, to see something I wrote come to life.

A few years ago on a date with Kristine I went to the Pit at King's (my old university) to see my friend Jesse play the lead in the play, Equus. I'd never read the play before or seen the movie version but I knew a little about it. And I enjoyed it a whole lot. Jesse was especially great and I'm not just saying that cause he's my friend - I doubt he'll ever read my praise here - but also throughout the whole course of the play I found myself imagining my own play being put on in that space. Even though I didn't have a play written yet, the very beginnings of one was forming in my head.

Which brings us to now and this little excerpt. This is just a small piece of an early scene in my play "Away". Just two people talking. But I hope it's a good example of well-done dialogue.


SCENE TWO

Same location. It is the next day after school. Alex and Robyn walk up the street with their book bags and stop under the streetlight.

ALEX - I was right here, taking out the garbage. There were four flashes, two really close together. You didn't see it at all?

ROBYN - Nope. I trust you to catch all these things. You're the one with the telescope.

ALEX - Well, I only really caught it by accident. I looked out my window for another hour but - nothing.

ROBYN - Meteor shower's tomorrow night, right? This couldn't have anything to do with that?

ALEX - What? How could it?

ROBYN - Well, I dunno.

ALEX - You really don't pay attention when I talk about this stuff, do you?

ROBYN - Sure I do, Alex. It's just that it's pretty much ALL you talk about, you know?

ALEX - Well, let's talk about something else then.

ROBYN - Yeah, well I've gotta get my homework done if I'm gonna make it tonight.

ALEX - Homework be damned! You are coming tonight whether you're finished or not. It sucks with just three. Not to mention it's getting harder and harder to get Ryan to play anymore and I need you there to counterbalance Jono.

ROBYN - What do you mean 'counterbalance'?

ALEX - If you're not there then Ryan will just try to get out of it by saying he doesn't remember how to play, Jono will try to help him and there won't be any real conversation. It'll just be "D&D is lame", "No, it's not" and "What's Robyn doing?" all night and I'll lose my mind. I wouldn't even want to play but then Jono would just whine and Ryan would suggest we just quit playing it altogether. So-

ROBYN - So the very survival of our D&D sessions hangs in the balance if I don't make it tonight. I get it. I'll come. Because I WILL get my homework done. You should try my method of doing it before the day it's actually due.

ALEX - My system works fine.

ROBYN - Whatever.

Here they pause for a moment. Robyn is looking at her shoes.

ALEX - Um...Robyn?

ROBYN - Nothing. Just thinking.

ALEX - Ok.

ROBYN - Do Ryan and Jono know about the meteor shower?

ALEX - Huh? Of course they do. Although I'll probably have to remind Ryan.

ROBYN - You...don't have to.

ALEX - What do you mean?

ROBYN - Just that if Ryan doesn't feel like going it's not like he has to or anything. I mean, it's not like D&D, right? We don't NEED him.

ALEX - I...guess not. It's not, like, a tragedy if it's just you me and Jono.

ROBYN - You said that Jono always talks at the wrong time and ruins the moment.

ALEX - He does. But I'm weaning him off it, I think. He's getting better.

ROBYN - But if Ryan doesn't want to go then maybe Jono could hang out with him. You know...so Ryan wouldn't be left out?

ALEX - If he's left out it'll be because he left himself out. Jono shouldn't have to miss it to babysit Ryan.

ROBYN - Maybe he'd want to.

ALEX - I'm really not following you. What's this about?

ROBYN - Uh...I just thought maybe...that...it could be just you and me at this one.

ALEX - Why?

ROBYN - If I'm going to make it tonight, I've gotta get going.

ALEX - But-

Robyn turns and starts down the street. She briefly turns back around to call back to Alex.

ROBYN - D&D at seven! I'll be there.

She continues out of sight. Alex stands at the end of his driveway staring after her.

Work

I just read the latest post on Charlie Huston's site, (pulpnoir.com) a place I don't visit as often as I should because as he's someone I'd like to emulate, I feel like so far I'm doing a really horrible job. But anyway, you can check it out here. This time I'll actually try to draw inspiration instead of simply feeling defeated. It really shouldn't be too difficult - come on, Cole, you want to be a bartender till you're forty and only sometime after that become a writer? Get off your ass.
Because so far I really haven't. I mean, this blog is pretty good proof of that.

So I will be trying to make a fresh start right here, right now. I have ideas in my head and stories in my heart - that's never been the problem. The problem has been initiative and discipline. There's no magic way to develop those things, you just have to bear down. So this is me, bearing down. And you get to see some of it. Lucky you.