Catching Up with My Own Ass

Holy asseroni, this shit’s been bananas, bee-ay-en-ay-en-ay-es.

Fortunately for you, this entry will be short — shorter, in fact, than War & Peace, which is an accomplishment all its own when we see how actively I like to have written diarrhea.  Currently — and over the next few weeks — I will be hard at work on a spur-of-the-moment short novel for Kazka Press’s flash novel call.  Regrettably, my limited brain power and my even more limited ability to focus on anything except throbbing man-bodies and episodes of Battlestar: Galactica has pigeon-holed me into barely even being able to blog while I write.

How does that work?  My brain can only allow me to write one thing at a time.  When I dig into a longer project, I can barely fathom the idea of blogging.  I don’t want to go off the handle about a bunch of dumb shit like I normally do here; I’m locked into novel mode, and any bit of my writing that isn’t expended on that project sometimes feels like an improper use of my time.  Yes, I think I may be crazy.  Thank God you’re all here to witness my slow descent into madness alongside me.

Hey, check out my writing online, or skip this paragraph with a well-deserved tl;dr:  In the meantime, you should pop over and check out my recently published story “Six Dollars” at Clever, an online quarterly magazine.  There are some other great pieces there to see as well.  Also, my seasonal story for Kazka Press — “The Replacement” — is still available for reading.  Leave a comment if you so desire, or Tweet your balls off about it.

Hey, much to your chagrin, I have more writing on the way, which is a damned upsetting thing for you to hear:  Coming within the next few weeks, Anobium will be publishing my short experimental story “Spiderblue Vacation.”  The print volume in which it’s included can be pre-ordered here.  Do it, or I’ll do a flying uppercut into the seat of your pants  Also, a short story about a spaceman who jerks off to Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, “The Extinctionists,” will be published (with art!) in the upcoming Kazka Press anthology, Bronies:  For the Love of Ponies, edited by L. Lambert Lawson.

Shit’s about to go down, and my friends Ozlem “Oz” Yikici and Keith Thompson are going to tell you what’s up.  Keep your eye out for the first Opinions and Assholes post, where I have guest bloggers come by and rant about things that piss them off, by Ozlem Yikici in the next few days.  A few weeks after, Keith Thompson of The Paraverse will be sliding by to talk a bunch of turds into your ear too.

There’s no need for random shit like this, but:  In the words of one of the world’s greatest bands The Immortals:  “Prepare yourself / Mortal Kombat’s on today / Prepare yourself / Mortal Kombat all the way / Prepare yourself / Mortal Kombat’s here to stay, wooOooOOOOOOoo-ooooooh / Johnny Cage is not afraid to die!”

 

 

Your Feet are Stupid!

I was sitting around the other day thinking about human anatomy.  The human body’s a pretty cool place.  It does lots of remarkable things, things so fascinating and ridiculous that we only actively use 10% of our brain, because the other 90% is too busy being blown the fuck away by how cool its own body is.  It can barely handle it.  I know I can barely handle it.  My pants are wet with excitement-urine as I think about the universe of the body and the cellular galaxies floating around inside my vein-holes.

For all the amazing things the body is capable of – seeing, jumping, stroking out, lifting cars off babies as a great publicity stunt, surfing, being immune to the effects of alcohol while driving, lifting the middle finger exclusively from a balled fist, yawning, thinking, surfing, high-fiving your buddies, pooping (what, you’d think I’d leave it out?), watching John Leguizamo’s The Pest without vomiting, and surfing – there’s one place where the body just got too preoccupied with creating neuroscience that it got lazy as fuck and gave us something sub-par.

Feet suck.  Look at them.  Just take off your socks and look at them.  They look like a dead seal met a hand and fucked and had a dead-seal-hand baby in a gutter.  Who wants that crap?  There are plenty of other things the body could have adopted as its preferred form of bodily transportation:  monster truck wheels, tank treads, cybernetic gyrospheres, Nickelodeon Gak, Play-Doh feet, foot-sized meteors, etcetera.  Instead, we got stuck with these stupid pieces of shit.

I’ve been studying how stupid feet are for forty years.  You can pretty much call me the best thing that’s ever happened to anthropological podiatry.  I’ve got a Ph.D. in how much feet blow.  Open your ears and let me rap at you, dingus.

Behold!  Facts You Never Knew About Feet Because Feet Bore the Fuck Out of You!

TRUE FACT:  Feet are butthurt about how much humans hate them.  Regardless of whether or not we want them to, feet have feelings too.  As part of the human body that doesn’t have functions that actually make it special, feet feel left out.  That’s why when you do something stupid like step on a button or knock your toes into a table, it hurts like a bitch.  Feet have sensory magnifiers in them that immediately activate the minute we do something to the foot that it doesn’t like.  I actually perform surgeries that remove these sensory magnifiers, which makes stubbing your toe or stepping on stupid shit virtually impossible.  I’m the only person who does it in the whole universe.  Why?  Feet don’t trick me.

TRUE FACT:  Human feet are the weakest feet ever imagined.  Every creature has feet.  Unfortunately, humans just got stuck with the shittiest feet ever.  They’re such pieces of shit that we need shoes to protect them.  Shoes.  Open your whole brain up and think of this concept:  Our feet need artificial feet to even be functional.  Have you ever tried to run across a flat field without a pair of shoes?  It sucks a fat one.  Think about feet on other animals.  Cats have evolved to have jelly beans on their feet and they still have no problem marching around in the snow.  Dogs, too.  And look at snakes and fish.  They have invisible feet.  You ever seen those fish-with-feet logos on the back of cars that are all like “LOL DARWIIIIIIN”?  That’s a veiled expression of my invisible foot theory.  People who have those stickers really know the drill.  They know who’s right.

TRUE FACT:  Foot fetishists die early deaths.  It’s true.  There’s nothing more complicated than that.  They die, on average, forty-three years earlier than vomit fetishists, rubber fetishists, and mustache fetishists, so check your loners and clutch your boners, boys, because you’re gonna die.

TRUE FACT:  The foot was invented before the foot.  Back when measurement was first invented – sometime between the invention of planets and gravity – Sir Isaac Newton said, “It’d be fucking awesome to have a convenient measurement that would multiply itself 7,368 times to be a whole mile.”  At that time, humans were rolling around Earth on their sides because feet had not yet come to fruition.  Human bowling was a popular form of game entertainment and pigs-in-a-blanket were the world’s favorite snack.  But then Winston Churchill got so sick and tired of everything that he rushed along the foreman at the Foot Fabrication Factory and stuck us with these stupid things.  Isaac Newton, struggling to find anything good about twelve inches, said, “Fuck it,” drank himself into a stupor, played rock music, and headbanged so hard that his brain turned into mashed potatoes.  The government rejoiced.

Ever since that day, my penis – in a grand ceremony of impotence and disappointment – ushered in a new form of measurement called the millimeter.

TRUE FACT:  Toenails are a fantastic source of protein.  They are.  Eat’em, ya dummy.  They’re not really there for anything else.  Just make a toenail salad and crunch away.  It’s like a crouton only a fuckton better.

There are only a smattering of the many true facts that I’ve compiled over the years.  Unfortunately for you, the Internet itself has produced a limit on the amount of foot truth I can squeeze into a single post.  Today and everyday, there’s a universe-wide Internet Superweb Infrastructure Ultrahighway Thoroughfare ban on foot-related knowledge.  Regrettably, our American government is seeking to minimize the amount of foot-related content that can be accessed at any given time on the Internet, so it’s up to you to speak out.

Fuck feet.  Speak up.  Seek justice.  Then go surfing. 

Review: The War Master’s Daughter by Elly Zupko

To suggest that Elly Zupko’s The War Master’s Daughter is merely a historical fiction novel would be to ignore a great number of its evident strengths.  Simultaneously, pigeonholing the novel into any specific genre would be to discredit its willingness to step outside its comfort zones.  The greater part of The War Master’s Daughter is confused about what genre it may actually be, but that doesn’t draw away from the novel’s overall quality.  Zupko’s book is a fantastic independent offering the intense strengths of which outweigh the few moments where its footing occasionally wavers.

After the death of a loved one, Lady Aurora of Cavalcata – the daughter of a popular military strategist – commits herself to an unlikely adventure that incubates doubts about her faith, her love of country, and her very purpose in the world.  The novel is less about the history, however, than it is the philosophy and the romance.  The philosophies of Descarte, Locke, and Socrates all make small cameos as Aurora discovers that the world around her is stranger, more violent, and more unforgiving than she could have ever imagined.

Zupko’s book is a philosophical fairy-tale – a political Rapunzel story – in which the fantastic is replaced by questions of the self and the world.

One of the most breathtaking aspects of Zupko’s book at first glance is its precision editing.  We would think that this shouldn’t even be mentioned – a book should naturally be free of spelling mistakes, grammatical issues, formatting problems, and so-forth – and the author reminds us that these are qualities we should expect even from independent releases.  The novel is masterfully formatted in its physical form and is almost entirely devoid of errors.  This allowed the most important contents of the book – the plot and the characters – to come alive without interruption.  Independent publishers and self-publishers would be foolish not to use Zupko’s book as an example of how a novel should be presented.

While Lady Aurora is an interesting and exciting character to follow, she is regrettably eclipsed by the complex characters stacked up around her.  The people with whom she comes in contact are varied, charismatic, and layered.  Storey – a young man from the opposing country Mitoch – is an ever-changing character who is equally sentimental, unpredictable, wise, and constantly growing.  Cashel, the villain, is frightening and manic, driven by a maddeningly simple principle:  the more killing that can be done, the more power to which one has access.  One of the novel’s most unsettling scenes comprises a torture overseen by Cashel himself, gritty in its details and disturbing for how blissful Cashel acts while it transpires.

Zupko’s writing knows its troughs and peaks.  Her use of detail and character insight is masterful, though it sometimes bogs down scenes that would otherwise be quickly paced (save for the end of the novel—the climax is speedy and exciting in both story and form, the way a good conclusion should be).  Her dialogue constantly moves the tale along, helping characters develop strong and unlikely relationships.  Zupko also uses time as a flexible tool, straying away from the clichéd flashback in favor of a non-consecutive storytelling form that leaps back and forth between many years without dissolving the novel’s tension.  Answers to readers’ questions appear at appropriate times.  The only drawback?  There are one or two revelations, particularly near the end of the novel, that feel less like pre-plotted twists and more like contrivances — a revelation is first revealed, and then a past scene is shown to support it.  The leapfrogging storytelling becomes more utilitarian toward the end of the novel, a means by which the whole story can wrap itself up into a neat, tight package…even if the reader knows that Zupko is intentionally doing just that.

Unlike many novels nowadays, The War Master’s Daughter is a one-and-done job – the conclusion and resolution give very little room for a sequel of any real importance.  Aurora’s story is told.  When the final page is done, readers are forced to leave the 16^th-century European fictional countries of Fairgos and Mitoch, which may leave some wanting to know more of the detailed world, its politics, its varying forms of faith, and its national relationships.  Zupko’s successful development of such a complex world merits one question:  If not through Aurora, will readers ever get the opportunity to return?  Zupko’s world seems rife with future storytelling possibilities.

The War Master’s Daughter is an extremely impressive debut novel.  It overflows with talent and storytelling ability.  It captures plenty of realism while incorporating just enough fiction.  While historical fiction fans may find less history than they expect and romance readers less bodice-ripping than they normally desire, Zupko’s book is certainly not bereft of value – it overflows with a story that stands strong on the heels of politics and philosophy.  It is a solid, satisfying piece of fiction that keeps a consistent tone and never wanders outside its realm of believability.

Elly Zupko’s The War Master’s Daughter can be purchased in both physical and e-published formats on the book’s official website, http://www.warmastersdaughter.com.

Writers are Lying Bags of Cat Puke

Take a writer – any writer, whether they’re famous or they’re struggling as a self-sustained artist – and punt them like a football into a group of people. Sit this group of people down. One by one, ask them what their biggest accomplishment in life has been. Some people will say, “My children,” and others will say, “Getting over my addiction,” or “Getting my Master’s degree.” They’ll take pride in the milestones in their life. You’ll think, “Wow, I’m sitting here with a group of people who really have their shit in order.”

Then ask the writer what their biggest accomplishment in life is, and 90% of the time, I can almost guarantee you they’ll shrug their shoulders with fake humility and say, “I wrote a book.”

Some people in said group will go, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to write but never did it,” and the writer will respond with something like, “It was a difficult process, but I got through it,” then he or she will give some witlessly transparent advice as if to help that other person sit down and write their masterpiece (“You just have to make a plan and stick with it”; “Write everyday, and read constantly!”). But you and I know that writer isn’t trying to be friendly or helpful – instead, they’re just trying to blow their own ego out of proportion. They’re trying to devour their fifteen seconds in the spotlight. They’re a writer. Best thing for us to do would be to pretty much suck their privates into hardness and recognize that they’re a higher form of human being, right?

Writers are the most self-absorbed, self-focused and downright selfish creatures that have ever lived, not unlike most other artists. They think their shit doesn’t stink. It doesn’t matter where in the process they are – whether they just finished the first draft of their book, or whether they’re about to go on an international book tour funded by some big New York publisher – they’re better than you, and goddamnit, they expect you to know it. Why?

Because according to so many writers, writing a book is the hardest thing you will ever do.

Yeah, right.

Whenever writers talk about how hard it was to write a book, or how long it took them, or even begin trying to pedestal the difficulty of the task, I want to lose my shit. I want to rip my hair out and elbow-drop a bunch of innocent children. I want to take one of those heavy schooldesk chairs and crack their teeth out with it. I want to take a leak in their vinegar and take a dump in their pillowcases. Why the fuck would I ever consider doing something that inhumane and downright hideous (except if I really had to go and that pillowcase was the only thing around)?

Because according to me, writing a book is easy as fuck and writers are lying if they say it’s hard.

Doing calculus while flying upside-down in a spaceship is hard. Holding your breath and swimming up the butthole of a giant squid is hard. Trying to turn your wiener inside-out and pull it out through your asshole, that’s hard. Learning how to shoot fireballs from your hands is pretty hard, too. Slowing yourself down out of terminal velocity with just the power of your mind is hard. Transforming from a human into a big Mack truck is hard. Writing a book isn’t hard. Anybody can do it. Everybody should do it. Whether it’s a piece of fiction or a story based off life experience, it’s easy.

There’s no special science to novel-writing. You can read every book on craft and still not write a book. You can never read a book on craft and write a thousand best-sellers. There’s no exact, specific way to write a book. You just do it. You sit down, you type, or you write. Maybe you plan it out, or maybe you don’t. All you need is enough time on your hands. That’s all – that’s the only definite, unchanging piece of the writing formula. Time. You need it. If you don’t have it, you won’t write a book. But guess what? You’ve got it. You’ve got it in the morning while you’re drinking coffee and watching Live! with Kelly. You’ve got it in the afternoon, before you cook dinner, while the kids are working on their homework.

Just like having a screaming baby fly out of your vagina, or getting a Master’s degree, or getting over a crippling addiction to whatever Walter White gave you, writing a book is something everybody has the opportunity to do. Sometimes it just takes drive or inclination; sometimes it takes plotting or planning. But most of the time, all it takes is fucking writing, and we’ve all been writing since we were stupid-ass kids with those sheets of paper that had room for a picture and all those dotted lines to write big letters on.

"Macolm, get your ass in here and write my book while I sell meth. Got it?"

Suggesting that writing is hard, difficult, or only something that special people can do? Hell, if you think about it like that, it sounds like writers are the master race. Heil, Writers! Let’s go have sex in a Viking graveyard and produce blond-haired, blue-eyed writer-babies and make the ideal race. It’s needless self-appreciation, the arrogant justification of one’s mere ability to make time to write.

Research is tedious. Editing is a pain-in-the-ass. Trying to publish takes diligence. Self-publishing takes the ability to be critical and take criticism. But nowhere, nowhere along that line, should we ever consider writing hard, inaccessible to others, or the result of some hidden supertalent. It’s not. It’s probably just the result of the fact that writers aren’t really good at anything else. It’s not because they read a whole bunch of books. Reading isn’t essential to writing (HOLY FUCK I JUST SAID THAT). Reading is essential to knowing how to write efficiently, sure, but you don’t have to read to just sit down and write. Reading is not a prerequisite. Going to school for writing is not required.

Everybody can write. We do it on a daily basis. We write e-mails, memos at work, love-letters to our beloveds, texts to our friends, eulogies for the dead, notes on the stall of a truck-stop shitter. The only different between those things and a book? A book takes longer. Big fucking deal. But it’s not hard. Not at all. It’s only as hard as you make it. Even if what you write ends up sitting in a desk drawer for five or ten years, like the manuscripts I have, you’ll still have done it. From there, it’s up to you what path you’ll take. But none of those paths are hard.

So go. Write a goddamn book. Mount ass in chair and do it. Believe in yourself. It’s the easiest thing you will ever do, and if you think otherwise, you’re dead-fucking-wrong.

#writemotivation and Ladies, Don’t Take Offense — You Know it’s True.

(This post is a part of K.T. Hanna’s #writemotivation campaign.)

You can’t do any good work if you’ve got an unclean desk.  I know it well enough from my job.  If you’ve got shit all over the place, how can you really expect to make any progress?  Now I’m not talking about those so-called clean or organized messes people talk about (sorry, guys, it’s bullshit, you’re just lazy tits), but instead about downright filth.  You know, plates with greasy pizza-triangles on your desk, stained panties from all the hookers you’ve bought, broken crack pipes, and a few stains whose origins are questionable (and just so happen to match those in your underwear).  What a shitty desk.  Who needs it?  Throw it to the sharks.  Clean that crap up.  Get your shit in order!

I did pretty much that, only with my online desk.  This website needed a bit of a kick in its clam.  Sure, the old layout was all mine, but it felt cluttered all to hell.  I couldn’t swing Stephen King’s dick (and believe me, I tried) without hitting some stupid frame or some pain-in-the-ass sidebar that didn’t do crap for me.  I would just look at the thing and get stressed out because there were sixteen-thousand-four-hundred-and-seventy-one panels to keep up-to-date on a daily basis.

I fiddly-farted around with some designs based around the original style, but it reminded me a black-and-white-colored armpit.  To make a long, boring, completely useless, and entirely uninteresting story about web-design, information reorganization, and wank-breaks really short, I Stone Cold Stunnered my old layout and started from scratch.  Now I feel like my online writing desk is a little cleaner, and it’s time to clutter it up with my usual array of cuss-words, repetitive curses, and rancid similes.

I made very little progress otherwise in any manner of writing this week, though the blog is my first step (first step to what?  Not being an asshole?).  Sans writing, I’ve been reading my face off and I’m enjoying every minute of it.  I had university work crammed so far into my ass it was coming out my mouth and punching me in the back of the eyeballs.  With that complete, I can focus primarily on work, writing, video games, and getting fatter and fatter by the minute.  I’m just taking one at a time.  I’m not a woman.  I can’t multitask worth piss.  (Read that as a compliment, ladies, and not as a crippling indictment of your clearly inferior ability to focus.  Look on the bright side, though.  What God didn’t give you in compartmentalization, he gave you in cooking prowess and baby-making capabilities.  I should know.  I’ve made like sixteen babies, and like all cool modern dads, I don’t pay child support on a-one of them, because that shit is so not gangsta.  I’m too busy sticking my nuts into light-sockets and souping up my car to NASA standards to jerk around with kids.  An entirely reliable source once told me they don’t stop throwing up until they’re twelve.)

As I once heard at Taco Bell from a very articulate young man:  “Fuck that baby.  If I heard that baby cryin’, I’d roll outside with my friends and be like, fuck that baby, leave that baby inside.”

Power Converters, Anyone?

Two years ago, I tried to play Mass Effect. I hated it. It was awful. Two hours of my life I couldn’t get back. Katie had encouraged me to give it a shot because she loved the series so dearly. “You’re full of shit; those games suck,” I said. “I’d rather spend my gaming time swinging dildos at gangsters than running around space trying to romance alien girls and get into conversations.”

"Now that was a nice workout."

BioWare’s games (not pictured above, mind you) are known for their multitudinous conversation selections. Conversations throughout the games – fully acted out by in-game characters in cut-scenes with entirely recorded dialogue – allow the plot to unfold as you make choices that better your chances of survival (or destruction). Some of their older games like the Star Wars franchise’s Knights of the Old Republic allowed for characters to fluctuate between Light or Dark side depending upon their choices. In essence, players write their own characters into the world, allowing them to develop an invisible sense of morality and code of honor (or dishonor) by which they function.

Needless to say, six months ago, I finally managed to get through the first two hours of Mass Effect. That turned into thirteen, then forty-some over the course of its sequel. I got hooked. I saved whole galaxies; I did great deeds and asked for no recompense; I punched a lady space-tabloid reporter in the face while shouting, “I’ve had enough of your disingenuous assertions”; I kicked a space-dog in the skull. I saved the galaxy and got some of my friends killed in the processes.

I realized that the Mass Effect games became one of my favorite series in gaming history. Why? Because everything I did mattered. The story is a skeleton filled by your every decision.  While the story is prewritten, the connect-the-dots of your conversations allow the world to really come alive. Not since Zork or Pirates Cove in the 80s has there been a game that’s combined writing so closely with interactive entertainment.

So when Katie said, “Hey, are you going to play Star Wars: The Old Republic with me? It’s a BioWare game,” I said, “Fuck yes,” even though I’m not as big into Star Wars as I am other things. Even though it’s a massive-multiplayer online game like World of Warcraft, there’s so much more to be invested in. Your character isn’t merely a colored template; he, she, or it is your every conversation decision, action, and choice.

This game has been consuming my last two weeks. I wanted to get some writing done. Instead, I’ve been smuggling arms across galaxies, flirting with alien girls, telling space-boyfriends that their space-girlfriends were killed in unfortunate garbage compactor accidents, launching whole engineering crews out of airlocks, saving children from starvation, engaging in ridiculous spaceship combat in asteroid fields, and generally causing galaxy-wide chaos as an agent of sort-of good. My friendly companion struggles with my self-serving ideas, but glows with appreciation at my deeply-buried desire to do good with an anarchist twist. He’s patient with me, because one minute I’ll tell him to lick a wampa’s butthole and the next I’ll be bribing him with oddly feminine gifts as if I’m trying to hint that he should wear dresses and squat on my groin.  He really likes jewelry — have I discovered his fetish?

But here’s the beauty of this game: That character I just described above? He’s not yours.  He’s mine. I make decisions for him off of a slowly growing mental list of inhibitions, fears, and desires that he develops during the game’s regular play. He won’t harm children but has no problem shooting back-stabbing women in the throat; the only person he’s ever done free work for has been a good-souled alien that he saved from an unfortunate circumstance. In fact, the best part is, you won’t ever exactly recreate how my character functions, because you’ll be driven to make different permutations of the thousands of decisions in the game. You’ll discover a history to that character that you never speak about, but that helps shape every time you click a conversation response.

It’s writing as an entirely game-based artform; it is, as writer and game-scholar Janet Murray describes, “agency” – the ability for a player to have control in the game world – at its absolute finest. I have complete control over the inspirations that drive my space smuggler. Even though he’s locked in a world where programming dictates the math of battles and conflict, I’ve got what feels like free reign to decide his fate as an architect of space-faring good or an unintentional agent of galaxy-wide evil.

So I’ve been writing, just not in the way I’ve expected.

While I’ve been crawling all over the Outer Rim, other good news has blossomed, however…

My flash fiction piece, “The Replacement,” has been published online at Kazka Press. Read it here and please, leave a comment or retweet it if you like it (or if you can’t fucking stand it). Additionally, a science-fiction short story of mine will be featured later this year in Kazka’s print and online Bronies: For the Love of Ponies anthology. Wonder how planet-hopping mercenaries can meet their greatest challenge yet all because of a copy of Black Beauty? Check back with me in spring to get your copy and learn how.

Anobium volume 2 is accepting pre-orders. This print journal includes my speculative fiction piece “Spiderblue Vacation,” and I’m honored to be able to be published alongside successful writers such as Patrick Somerville and others. Support independent presses – order your copy not just for my crap, but for the beautiful writing in it other than mine.

I wanted to extend a special thank-you to several awesome writing friends. First, to poet Louise Jaques, who was kind enough to mention me in her video reading of one of her poems. Hop on over to her blog, listen to it, and make friends – she was the first person who ever commented on my blog besides my girlfriend, and I’m so grateful for her friendship and support!

Also, check out Jamie Dement’s blog, who plugged my new story in Kazka. She’s an inspiring woman with so much to say. Slide on by, tell her hello, and see what she’s all about! She’s been published several times in the past and her stories are absolutely worth taking the time to read. You won’t regret doing so!

Finally, thanks to K.T. Hanna, whose #writemotivation tag on Twitter is growing more and more. I was supposed to put a motivation update in this post, but I’ve rambled on far too long and will compromise with a post in the next day or so dedicated solely to that! Don’t know what I’m talking about? Get off your ass and educate yourself, then!

Shit, what am I still doing around here? I’ve got bantha to herd and sith to slaughter! I hope your New Years treated you well enough that you didn’t wake up in a puddle of your own vomit, and if you did, I hope it at least tasted good.

Catching Up Little by Little

It’s my hope that everybody who reads this had a great Christmas.  I know I did.  It was a fantastic time to visit all the family and share the excitement of the season with everyone.  I’m a Christmas baby – tomorrow marks the twenty-ninth anniversary of me flying out of my Mom’s uterus – which might explain why I have an insubordinate amount of Christmas spirit flying out of my ass like a reindeer on steroids.

University is finished.  I’ve got six months off before I start back at Towson University in the Masters in Humanities program.  I look forward to leaving behind the days of general education credits – mathematics and I have had a pretty sloppy split, despite the fact that our divorce was entirely amicable.  This means that for the next sixth months, I’ll have a life again (and I’ll get to watch with a certain amount of masochistic glee as Katie goes back to school full-time to suffer the lifelessness I just got over.  I’m extremely proud of her, but she won’t know that by the way I’ll laugh at her misfortune).

What will I be doing in the meantime?  I’ll be catching up on some much-needed writing, some much-needed gaming, and probably a great deal of much-needed staring at the wall with my privates squeezed in my fist.

This also means I’ll be blogging a little more regularly.  Fucking sucks for you, right?

In the meantime, a poem:

“We speak until the bar clears out”

We went to a Spanish dance club and / the guitars sounded like rubber / stretching us until we thought it was normal / to become one / and we’d wrap and wrap ourselves in each other / until the Flamenco was gone and you were a bird / and I was a punch-drunk trout / you’d got in your beak; / we speak until the bar clears out / while the castanets click like clamshells, / keeping beats on cold winter nights when / New York’s right outside and in here, / it’s Spain, and we’re an ocean apart from the world / like explorers without an aim, / finding jewels in one another, / squeezing each other’s hearts like sponges / until all we’re left with is fool’s gold; / it crumbles in our hands, / we find out the lands have already been explored, / and we don’t want the riches anymore / because like that organ in our ribcage they’ve been scoured / and diluted with water and softer minerals, / until it’s just a silt that crumbles into our bloodstream / and it’s not worth anything, / not valuable, / just malleable; the weak, gutted innards / of a punch-drunk trout / while you dance Flamenco, / a gypsy princess without a caravan, / the Spanish guitar always in your wildfire soul. 

Review: Seminar, a play

Last weekend, I was treated to a fantastic jaunt up into New York with my Mom to see a limited-run show by the name of Seminar.  It should be known how much I love New York.  Despite all of the commercialism they cram in your eyeballs in Times Square, there’s a vibrant life to that part of the city the likes of which I’ve encountered nowhere else in my (considerably limited) travels.  I will jump at the chance to go; I will make excuses to go.  Going to see Seminar — which starred Alan Rickman and Jerry O’Connell (of Severus Snape/Harry Potter film series fame and Joe’s Apartment fame, respectively) was the second time I’ve been up there in a little more than a month.  In November, Katie and I went to see Phantom of the Opera.  Needless to say, I’m already twitching and in withdrawal, ready to go again.

Seminar is a relatively new play that revolves around four fledgling writers and their relationship with a private writing tutor, Leonard (played by Rickman).  Leonard is a sloppy drunk, an absolutely lecherous fuck, and a miserable human being.  Each of the four writers — of which O’Connell is one — has paid a considerable sum of money to go through a private, ten-week course with Leonard.  The play focuses on their struggles with Leonard’s critiques, their desire for greatness and fame, their fears of falling short and failing, their indecisions, writing insecurities, relationship problems, and their competition as writers with one another.

Rickman, as expected, was breathtaking.  He flaunts about on stage with what appears to be a stuffed crotch, slinging vulgarities left and right, verbally shitting on the talents of his students and their products.  He is flawed, pathetic, and completely lovable in his ability to make you appreciate him despite how much one should dislike him.  Yet, even Leonard has some qualities of value, though they take time to show themselves.

Connecting with this show was extremely easy for me, as it would be for any other writer.  There are, of course, plenty of references to famous literature (discussion of Kerouac occurs within the first five minutes, as well as comedic references to Emily Dickinson and others), which will tweak any lit-twit’s happy place.  Many common writing challenges are encountered by the characters, too.  By its conclusion, the play has taken a stance on writing as something to do and writing for love, the difference between writing for passion and writing for profession, the disillusionment of the struggling artist or novelist, the over-indulgence of ultra-educated writers, and the pettiness of the publishing world, and the toughness of skin a writer needs to have to succeed.

I certainly had interpretive differences with the set design (the colors were distracting and the same effect could have been achieved by a much more minimalistic design vision) and some of the blocking (I saw way too much of people’s backs), but that aside, it was a fantastic play that I encourage any writer to check out.  The run is unfortunately limited, but it’s my hope that at least some of you will get the opportunity to check it out.  Tickets are available on the website, seminarbroadway.com.

In addition to this, I also encourage all my writing friends to take apart in K.T. Hanna‘s January #writemotivation campaign on Twitter — stop by her site to check out what it takes to be a part!  Also, expect a review soon of Elly Zupko‘s recently-released novel The War Master’s Daughter, now available for purchase in e-book and physical formats.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday.  Don’t spend it here online, reading crap like this — spend it with your family, and then come back when they don’t want your asses anymore.

When You Give a Moron a Microphone

The above YouTube video not only marks my first adventure into video editing, but also acts as a semi-public introduction of several characters from my recently completed novel, His Ragged Company — you know, the thing I’ve been talking about for ages.

Be aware: the audio quality is quite low.  This was initially put together for a final in a university course, but I thought I’d share it here for any interested parties willing to get deafened by my voice.  (Do I seriously sound like that?  What the hell is wrong with me?) This was recorded courteous of the iPhone’s voice memo tool over the course of three successful takes (of which there were probably over a hundred trashed takes full of cuss words, angry snarls as I stumbled over words, rage-filled squeals, and even one where I shouted something awful at the cat who proceeded to scratch at the wall for no reason during my last two sentences (probably in reaction to my voice)).

In the future, when I manage to crack out some of the professional audio equipment from the band recording days, I’d like to retry this with a more interesting excerpt of the novel, allowing audio magic to keep me from sounding too much like a constipated munchkin.

Coming soon:  An in-depth review of the play I went to see in New York this past weekend, Seminar, starring Alan Rickman and Jerry O’Connell.  It was a play about writers, so there might be something to take from it!  But first — final bits of undergraduate university work, you will be finished. 

Image of the Future

If I were to self-publish my first Elias Faust novel, it might look a little something like this.  It’s not like it’s a final cover or anything — it’s just a concept, a little thing I pieced together in GIMP while wishing that I still had my full copy of Photoshop.  I’d let an actual artist do the hard work if it ever came down to that, though.

Also, thank you, WordPress, for the fact that your little flakes of white snow freeze over my uploaded photos in preview mode and make me think something’s gone horribly wrong with the file.