Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Dark Sexyness
I've recently discovered that not only do I have a sort of knack for writing erotica, I actually enjoy it too. I have no idea where I'm going with this. Really don't think I'll post any here but it's a development in my writing so I thought I could at least mention it. Be afraid World, be very afraid...
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Talking Part Two: Ryan's Second Monologue
Last Talking I gave you Alex and Robyn so I could do some dialogue. Today I'll show you a monologue with Ryan's second (he's the only character who gets monologues). This is from my play, Away, by the way. (that's fun to say aloud)
ACT TWO
SCENE ONE
The clearing. A crude, unfinished treehouse. RYAN approaches from the other side.
RYAN - There used to be woods behind our neighbourhood so that all the backyards on one side touched it. But about fifteen years ago they cut down a big section of it and built an elementary school and added a road. So it was still pretty new when we started going there. I didn't get to know Robyn, Jono and Alex until the summer before grade six. That was the summer the school burned down. The police said it was arson but they never caught whoever did it. Most people in town refused to believe someone had purposely burned it down. They said it was probably an accident. No one talks about it anymore. I guess it wasn't interesting like a pilot and his plane disappearing. It's funny what people remember and what they don't.
The property was never sold or if it was, the owner didn't do anything with it. Most of the wreckage was cleared out, anything that could be dangerous, and that was that. The road is still in use but there's a lot of trees that separate it from the main area and without the school, there's never much traffic on it. It's usually a pretty quiet place. The next summer all four of us were friends and we built the treehouse here. Alex had some wild ideas for it that never were realized. In the end, it was barely a treehouse, really. But we still used it a lot. It was like our clubhouse, a good place to hang out without being disturbed. When Alex got his telescope he started bringing it on clear nights and we would take turns gazing at the sky. Alex tried to teach us stuff about space and we tried to learn but we were never going to care about it the way he did. As we got older, we started coming less and less but still came to use the telescope on nights Alex said were ideal. We watched an eclipse of the moon once and would look at planets when they were visible. Alex knew all the constellations and would point them out.
I said I didn't know the others until the summer of the fire. Well, I did sort of know them but we didn't hang out together. That changed the night the school burned. I was walking home from another neighbourhood where I'd been playing street hockey. It was sunset and I was cutting through the woods on the far side of the school when I saw the flames. So of course I went to get a closer look. But before I even reached the edge of the trees Robyn came crashing through, running and tripping, her knees skinned and with twigs in her hair. She smelled like smoke. I tried to calm her down but she was really scared. Even though I told her the fire wouldn't spread to where we were. I wanted to go on and watch until the firetrucks came but she wouldn't come. So I walked her home. That's how we met. I started hanging out with her, Jono and Alex shortly after that. We never spoke about that night. Sometimes I wanted to bring it up to her but always stopped myself. I decided not to tell Jono or Alex and it's pretty clear she never did either. Even though Alex liked to sometimes point out that I was the latecomer to the group, neither he nor Jono ever really questioned how it was that I became friends with the rest of them. No one ever mentioned that it was just after the fire. It's funny what we choose to forget.
Exit RYAN
ACT TWO
SCENE ONE
The clearing. A crude, unfinished treehouse. RYAN approaches from the other side.
RYAN - There used to be woods behind our neighbourhood so that all the backyards on one side touched it. But about fifteen years ago they cut down a big section of it and built an elementary school and added a road. So it was still pretty new when we started going there. I didn't get to know Robyn, Jono and Alex until the summer before grade six. That was the summer the school burned down. The police said it was arson but they never caught whoever did it. Most people in town refused to believe someone had purposely burned it down. They said it was probably an accident. No one talks about it anymore. I guess it wasn't interesting like a pilot and his plane disappearing. It's funny what people remember and what they don't.
The property was never sold or if it was, the owner didn't do anything with it. Most of the wreckage was cleared out, anything that could be dangerous, and that was that. The road is still in use but there's a lot of trees that separate it from the main area and without the school, there's never much traffic on it. It's usually a pretty quiet place. The next summer all four of us were friends and we built the treehouse here. Alex had some wild ideas for it that never were realized. In the end, it was barely a treehouse, really. But we still used it a lot. It was like our clubhouse, a good place to hang out without being disturbed. When Alex got his telescope he started bringing it on clear nights and we would take turns gazing at the sky. Alex tried to teach us stuff about space and we tried to learn but we were never going to care about it the way he did. As we got older, we started coming less and less but still came to use the telescope on nights Alex said were ideal. We watched an eclipse of the moon once and would look at planets when they were visible. Alex knew all the constellations and would point them out.
I said I didn't know the others until the summer of the fire. Well, I did sort of know them but we didn't hang out together. That changed the night the school burned. I was walking home from another neighbourhood where I'd been playing street hockey. It was sunset and I was cutting through the woods on the far side of the school when I saw the flames. So of course I went to get a closer look. But before I even reached the edge of the trees Robyn came crashing through, running and tripping, her knees skinned and with twigs in her hair. She smelled like smoke. I tried to calm her down but she was really scared. Even though I told her the fire wouldn't spread to where we were. I wanted to go on and watch until the firetrucks came but she wouldn't come. So I walked her home. That's how we met. I started hanging out with her, Jono and Alex shortly after that. We never spoke about that night. Sometimes I wanted to bring it up to her but always stopped myself. I decided not to tell Jono or Alex and it's pretty clear she never did either. Even though Alex liked to sometimes point out that I was the latecomer to the group, neither he nor Jono ever really questioned how it was that I became friends with the rest of them. No one ever mentioned that it was just after the fire. It's funny what we choose to forget.
Exit RYAN
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
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.
See you next time. (Next time being soon).
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).
Thursday, November 19, 2009
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
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
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, August 3, 2009
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?
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?
Saturday, June 27, 2009
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
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
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