Leap Day Grinding

Grind away, people, ’cause we got an extra day to play this year.

And it’s here.  Time to celebrate!

For the majority of us, there is no celebration.  There is only the grind.  We all have it: we pretty much get up and do the same thing over and over.

Or, if you’re like me, you twist and turn in your bed for 30 minutes before you get up, 30 minutes before the alarm is suppose to go off, you make your coffee, start your computer, and begin your day.  The day that’s like every other day.

Though there are moments . . . we have small moments that seem to transcend the grind that is our life.  Mine usually come in the form of small conversations that I have from time-to-time on the Internet, which is where I spend all my time.  Oh, yeah: were it not for the internet I wouldn’t have a life.  Trust me on that.

Maybe that’s why the scene I wrote last night, the second half of Chapter 40 of Transporting, felt different for me.  It wasn’t anything heavy; in fact, it was suppose to be something of a bitch session between one of the main characters and a secondary character who has grown close to the main character in question.  The girlfriend of the first character has gone away for a while, and the first character is feeling hurt and lonely.  The second character is like, “Screw this, then.  Your girlfriend will be back in time.  Meanwhile, let go do something.  Stop your moping and start having some fun.”

Wasn’t my intention to take the story in that direction.  In fact, when I started thinking about this scene like, oh, twenty years ago, it was never suppose to be this way.  The original incarnation had the main character showing up where the secondary character was more or less working–the secondary character is a graduate student working at an observatory–and pretty much convincing the student/friend that she should throw off her crap and come have some fun.

Strange that it didn’t happen that way.  Or is it?

I was sort of struggling with the story last night, trying to get the right mood and feeling and words.  I knew where the main character’s feelings were coming from: they were pretty much my own.  Girlfriend is off, I’m lonely, boo-frackin’-hoo, feel sorry for me.  And the wise friend who really does know me better was telling me, “Just enjoy your life now, loser.  Stop being such a mope.”

Yeah, I knew where that was coming from.  The Muse . . . she be kicking my butt again.

The one thing I am happy about is that the novel I’ve been sitting on for so long, the one I didn’t think I’d ever finish, is getting closer to an end.  As of last night I’ve added about 10,000 words to the story, and there’s maybe another 25,000 to go.

Last year at this time I couldn’t have even thought about it.  Then I met the Muse, and everything changed.  The Muse was like my student in the story; they told me to get off my butt and do something.

A year later, I’m still doing that something.

Does that count for anything?  I’m sure the Muse thinks so . . .

Night Life at the City Pound

Ah, what a difference a day makes.

Yesterday was crazy.  I had a great response to my post on censorship.  I’m going to be looking into a few things in the coming weeks, and maybe I’ll find information on ways to find this sort of insanity.  Maybe, maybe not?  All I know, I’m tired of being a doormat, and taking steps to get around these buttheads is the way to stand up.  Maybe we need an #Occupy PayPal movement, where everyone creates like one hundred individual accounts based upon the ginned up names of characters from erotica–do you think Anita Hanjobe is already registered?–and then get an auto submission program to figure out a way to transfer a penny from one account to another for days on end.

For all my white knighting yesterday, the day was really something of a letdown in real life.  For one, I went from hero to zero in terms of the writing thing.  As in I wrote zero, baby.  Not a thing, not a word.  Four thousand the day before, and nothing yesterday.  It wasn’t like I didn’t want to write, but you remember those shiny diversions I talked about?  They hit.  Oh, did they hit.  Jerked me around like a puppet yesterday, and it was madness.  Not even The Muse–who was with me, at home and in the car on the way to The Undisclosed Location–could save me.

No, it was all crazy talk and time sucking games that pulled me every which way but loose.  I really need more discipline than that, but I think what really pulled me away the most was work–

Yes, that thing that pays the bills for the moment?  That work.

To day what I do at the moment is sucking away at my soul in the worst way is an understatement.  There is no excitement, no joy, no sense of accomplishment.  And no creativity at all.  None.  It’s like some nightmarish, Harlan Ellison-inspired Knox drone line where all you do is have them put small blocks into bigger boxes just so they have something to do all day long.  That’s what this feels like, and were it not for a little online diversion now and then, I’d probably go mad.

But falling away from the good fight is not the way to get out of the pound.  The stories need to be told, and they will.  A moment away from the story does not make it lost.  A moment taking a break from the struggle doesn’t not mean you’ve given up.

If anything, I am my own worst butt-kicking critic.  I’ve gotten that way with this writing gig, because I want my words to strike a cord and resound with the people who read them.  I want to stand up front where people can see me and be that person who has something to say, and have people who want to listen.

It sounds a little egotistical, doesn’t it?  Almost delusional in a way–though I assure you, I won’t fall off my unicorn.

I’ll keep doing what I do.  For, in a way, I do believe I touch people–

I feel that touch in return.  More and more every day.

Playthings in the Hands of the Arbiters of Decency

First off, just to let you know, I’m going to get rude.  I’m going to use bad language.  You know what that means:  if you don’t want to see the nastiness that’s coming, then you don’t want to go beyond this paragraph.  But, hey . . . before you leave, here’s something on Lauren Faust’s Super Best Friends Forever!  It’s really cute–trust me!

 

 

That said, onward . . .

I gotta tell you, the thing with PayPal getting all medieval on some of the ebook publishers, in particular Smashwords.  I don’t know if I should say “medieval”, because this is the 21^st Century, and you’d think by now people would actually be intelligent enough not to keep bringing up things like birth control, women’s sexuality, and erotica as things in need of control by others . . . oh, what?  Sorry, I must have set the controls to the TARDIS incorrectly; I thought we were living in the future . . .

Now, if you read the press release from Smashwords, you’ll see PayPal was all up in this thing over four areas:  bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and underage erotica.  Now, personally, I’m not too upset about bestiality and underage stories, because that’s not my scene.  Incest can be tricky; after all, that’s the corner stone of one very famous TV episode that caused viewers with easily blown minds to completely lose their shit–Home, from The X-Files–and it played a very small part in the movie, The Crow, but gave you an insight into two of the characters.

And when you discuss rape-for-titillation . . . wait a minute, Jack, ’cause I gotta ask a question here:

Who the hell really writes a rape scene with the thought in the back of their mind, “This is really good, I hope it gets a lot of people off!”?  Rape is violence, and no one should ever get off on it–

‘Cept people do.  And we know this.  So by saying “rape-for-titillation”, you’ve basically said, “No rape, ever!  Got it?”  Even if it’s something that’s essential to the plot of your story–say, like if you have this OCD-troubled genius woman who’s a hell of a hacker, but, you know, getting raped a few times really messed her up–you can’t have it.  And so, according to the hammer that PayPal just swung, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo might be a title that would need to get yanked from Smashwords.

Or any other publisher doing business with PayPal.

I’m not going to get into Smashwords shit over where what they did was right or not.  Some groups are fighting it by telling PayPal to stick it, and they’re going with some other way of giving and receiving payments.  You see, that’s what PayPal is:  they are a payment service that was originally designed to help manage payments for eBay.  That’s all they’re suppose to do.  Money in from one place, money out to another.  It’s a pretty simple process, and I can say that because my “real’ background is 25 years in IT, and I’ve worked with this sort of thing.

Sure, Smashwords says they can’t kick PayPal because they pretty much integrated into their website.  I might suggest starting to “integrate” other payment services as well, because, lets be honest . . . PayPal is screwing your authors.

See, this isn’t about incest or bestiality or, my favorite, rape-for-titillation–there is one I’m leaving off, and for a good reason that I’ll get to later–this is about The Big C . . . Censorship.  This is about someone coming in and saying, “Hey, I don’t like this shit, get it off your site or I’m gonna hold your money for ransom!”  Yes, I can imagine that PayPal put the boots to Smashwords and wouldn’t budge, but still:  this is, once again, about someone finding material objectionable.

I’m not going to lie:  I hate censorship.  I learned early from, from many of the writers who were my idols, that once you let censorship get a toe in the door, the goddamn thing is gonna keep coming until it’s all the way in your house, your business, your school . . . everywhere.  And once it’s there, it’s gonna start clucking its fat tongue and say, “Oh, my, my, you certainly have a lot of dirty books, don’t you?”

I don’t need that shit.  Why?  Because I can think for myself, that’s why.

Sure, the Smashwords release has this tidbit to justify one of their actions:  ”The slippery slope is dangerous, but I believe this imperfect decision is in the best interest of the community we serve.”  Were he a younger man, Harlan Ellison–one of my idols, and one of the people I would love to have, say, 1/100^th of his talent–would be kidney punching your ass this very moment.  You see, the censors want you on that slippery slope, because once you’re on it, pal, they can just keep pushing your ass again, and again, and again.  They don’t like something, hell, you play ball, or you get pushed right off the slope.  And they want to keep you there, forever, playing their game.

It’s how they game the system.  They get you where they want you, and then they come on like a mob enforcement team, telling you to toe their line, or it’s, “Hey, it’d be a shame if something bad happened to this website, you know?”

Right now Smashwords is catching a lot of shit on this deal, and I don’t blame them.  I do have a story there, and so do a few of the writers I know who publish erotica.  Personally, I don’t have any skin in this game–oh, wait:  I do.  I have a story there.  It doesn’t matter that it’s not erotica–what matters is that I’m a writer, and if one writer can have their works removed because of something PayPal didn’t like–like, at this moment, I’m thinking the one I saw the other night, Fucked by Werewolves, got the heave-ho–then there’s always the chance my story will get yanked as well.

So it does no good to say, “Oh, this doesn’t affect me.”  Do you write?  Yes?  Then it fucking affects you.

Let me show you where the slippery slope comes into play.  Smashwords included this little bit in their release concerning rape:

 

“At Smashwords, rape no longer has a place in erotica.  It has no place anywhere else if the purpose is to titillate.  Non-consensual BDSM – or any other form of non-consensual violence against another person – is prohibited.”

 

See, we have a couple of pushed buttons here that bother me.  One is “erotica”.  A single genre is being singled out.  Does that mean if I’m writing science fiction–which I do–I can get rape happy?  And this line, “It has no place anywhere else if the purpose is to titillate.”  Sorry, but I’ve written fetish fiction for site around the Internet, and believe me: rape will titillate some people.  Just as pregnant, lactating women titillate  some people.  Just as the fantasy of a woman getting turned into a gynoid (female robot) and being used by an owner for whatever the hell they like will titillate some people.  You make a comment like that, and pretty soon you can’t even write a mystery where a woman gets raped, because, by these guidelines, Smashwords via PayPal ain’t gonna like it.

And this last . . .  ”Non-consensual BDSM – or any other form of non-consensual violence against another person – is prohibited.”  For my friends and I in the erotica biz, one of the things you learn is BDSM is always consensual.  If it isn’t, then it’s not BDSM, it’s something else.  But wait a moment:  violence is pretty much always non-consensual!  Violence is violence, and it can have a place in a story, because the aftereffects of it can do something to a character.  To me, this is another of those, “BDSM doesn’t mean what you think it means,” definitions.  And the way the statement is worded, it’s so fucking gray it could be a Liam Neeson movie.

And this doesn’t just affect Smashwords.  Do a little investigating, and you discover Barnes & Noble can use PayPal for payments, and this makes you wonder–is PayPal going to lay a little smackdown on them as well?  I mean, if we go by Smashwords guildlines–which, in my opinion, they got handed to them by PayPal–then we can see what sort of shit we gotta get rid of . . .

 

Right off the bat, one of my favorites:  Titus Andronicus.  You got rape, mutilation, murder galore, cannibalism . . . what the hell, Willy?  What sort of sick son of a bitch were you?  Out with ya!

Lets take a look at 1984.  ”Wait a second,” you’re saying, “ain’t got none of that stuff talked about up above!”  Well, remember that slippery slope?  I know a little about BDSM, and I could argue that the Ministry of Peace is one huge dungeon, and O’Brien is totally the Master in charge of that hellhole, and Room 101–well, that’s where you take your slave you’re trying to condition–and the Ministry of Peace is all about conditioning, mind you–and you strap that sucker to a chair, against their will, and you do whatever it is that’s the worst thing in the world you can to break them–and that might include strapping a mask with a rat in it over the slave’s face.  If that isn’t non-consensual BDSM, I don’t know what is.  Look at it this way, George: people have been looking to ban your ass for decades.  Now they can!

Now there’s another favorite of mine:  the uncut version of The Stand.  If you know me, you know where I’m going:  The Kid and Transcan Man on their way to the Eisenhower Tunnel.  Put two psychopaths in a hotel room for the night, and what’s the worst that can happen?  How about The Kid totally dominates Trashy, bends him over, and sodomizes him with the barrel of a pistol?  Non-consensual BDSM, for sure, and while it’s not rape done for the sake of titillation, I can bet you that somewhere, someone read that scene and got aroused.  Or maybe PayPal will let this slide because (1) it’s a famous author, (2) it’s not erotica, and most important, (3) it doesn’t involve a woman.  Hum . . . fuck it: slippery slope and all.  Better chuck it!

 

Notice there’s one thing I’ve left out, and that’s the last category:  underage erotica.  This has be confused, because most people will tell you anything concerning sex and the underage is erotica . . . actually, they’ll tell you it’s porn or smut, but that’s another story.

Does this mean that anything that’s considered “real” literature gets a pass?  Because–and you know where this is going–since a whole hell of a lot of people consider anything even remotely touching on the subject of a minor having sex is gonna have people seeing red . . .

 

Like, oh, Lolita.  I mean, do I really have to tell you what it’s about?  This is a book that’s been loathed by a huge number of people since it was published, and even Nabokov came to hate the damn thing.  Is it going to get a pass because it’s a famous work of literature, or is PayPal gonna call it smut and have Barnes get it the hell out of their server?

Finally, let me tiptoe over to another Stephen King novel, It.  Oh, sure: shapeshifting monsters, scary murder clowns, a band of kids to take them all on.  What could be wrong here?  If I were a douchebag prude, I’d say, “How about Beverly?”

You know, Beverly?  Sexually abused girl; chain-smoked like mad; lets herself get into an abusive relationship when she’s older because, hey, that’s just how she rolls.  And lets talk about how, when they are fighting It the first time, they feel their magical bond starting to slip away, so what does Beverly do?  She has sex with all the boys.  Six of them.  Hell, even the black kid gets a ride.

Did I mention they were all about 12 or so?  No?  Humm . . . well, I did now.

And we’re not talking about action that takes place off-screen.  Nope.  We’re talking about “Get on top of me and put it in now!” sort of things, and once it’s done they all feel better and they go kill the scary monster–maybe.

Is this going to be another novel that gets The PayPal Pass because it’s not erotica, it’s just happened to have a scene where a young girl has sex with all her friends, because they don’t, the monster wins?

These slippery slopes . . . they are a bitch.

 

I’ve loathed censorship of every kind since I was young.  I was reading at an adult level when I was like five, which meant I always had people telling me what I could and couldn’t read.  Once I said, “The hell with it,” and started reading whatever I wanted, I began learning a hell of a lot more than the kids I went to school with–or even the school board.

See, the high school I went to . . . in 1976 they banned the American Heritage Dictionary because it had “inappropriate words”.  Actually, that’s wrong:  it was banned because some shit-for-brains woman in Texas, Mrs. Norma Gabler, used her influence from getting books banned in Texas to convince a bunch of assholes on the Cedar Lake, IN, school board, to remove the AHD because of definitions for things like “bed”, and “knockers”.

Yeah, great laughs.  That could never happen these days, right?  ’Cept a school board in California banned the Merriam Webster Dictionary because there was a definition in it for oral sex.  And said banning took place in 2010.

PayPal believe they are keeping the “really bad stuff” out of the hands of people.  I say they’re sticking their damn noses in places where it doesn’t belong.  Because if they can tell publishers what they can and can’t sell with this edict, does it stop here, or does it goes on?  ’Cause once they are able to do it once, what keeps them from doing it again?

I’ll make a deal with you, PayPal:  I’ll write, and you transfer money.  That’s what we do.  Don’t tell me what I can write, and I won’t tell you how I think you could improve your service.

Because once you start telling me what to write, then you’ve screwing me.

If I don’t agree to it, that’s rape.  Which would mean you’re going against your own edicts.

Does that mean you’re going to ban yourself?

Didn’t think so.

Alien Girls Make it Easy

It’s always a good thing when a plan comes together.  Or so some fictional character told me a long time ago.

Getting back into my novel, Transporting, has been a great experience, and a great time.  Here it is, Day 7 of Trying to Finish This Sucker, and I’m two chapters down and that much closer to the end.  Today I begin Chapter 40, and I’m looking through my Scrivener layout, and . . . yes.  Including this one, there are only six chapters to go before I bring this mess to a complete and complete end.

Sure, that sounds like, “Oh, you’ll be finished in a week,” talk.  Each chapter is cut up into scenes, and if I drill down like that . . . I’ve a total of eighteen scenes to complete.  If you think that, maybe, each scene is going to run about 1,000 words, then I’ve got about 18,000 words to write.  (One of these days I’ll have to get some screen shots of my layout in Scrivener and show you what this all looks like.)

Add that to 260,000 words I already have, and I’m going to get very close to the 275,000 target I’ve sent for the novel.

Chapter 38 was really the first one I’ve done in a while where I sat and thought, “Okay, what do I need to do next?” for this story.  Most of it I’ve had in my head for a long time; the chapter I’m going to start today is a perfect example of that.  I’ve pretty much known this chapters for about 20 years, give or take a few years either way.  It’s going to involve some sadness for one of the main characters, but since I’ve come to have a different view of how this novel should precede, I don’t know that it’s going to have as much of a  freak out factor as I’d once imagined . . .

Actually, that freak out factor will start in Chapter 43, and continue on into Chapter 44 . . . I know, I’m showing off now, ain’t I?  Like I’ve said, I’ve lived with this story for 25 years, so I know what’s going on.

This last chapters wasn’t part of that story, though.  It came about when I was plotting out what was going to happen as the novel finished up.  To give you the Reader’s Digest version of what’s happening, my characters have shown up on this other planet, intent on helping the civilization there avoid an Extinction Level Event.  They’ve conducted a few tests to see if they have a working hypothesis, and during Chapter 39, they’d reached the point where they needed to get the locals in on the game.

So that chapter was about the set up for my characters, a scene where they went out to select the people who were going to help them, and then the experiment itself.  The heading of this post is pretty much something one of the characters actually feels, that she–the alien girl, for my characters really are the aliens here–make it look a lot easier than it should be.

Of course it’s not always going to be that way, but it’s a good way to start.  Let’s get that hubris cranked!

Lets see if I can make this easy for them today . . .

Life’s Rich Malice

If there is ever a time I wish I was driving the last of the V-8 Interceptors, and I could just blast people off the highway with my hood-mounted death lasers, it’s late Friday afternoon on I-65 between Lebanon and Rensselaer.  Damn, but people spend all their time driving with their heads up their asses.  Here, it’s real simple: right lane slow, left lane fast.  Got it?

Really, I was trying to relax, trying to get some good thoughts in my head, listening to The Who’s Join Together, playing Disk One, which is their live performance of Tommy, and I was holding it together until I saw a small opening, and the some Cousin Kevin came on . . . and I just went for it.  Jacked the ride up to about 95 and started busting past slow pokes in the left lane before I found an open stretch on the left and ran it back to a normal, for me, 80 mph.

And all the while I was singing, very animatedly, the words to the song.  I hope the other drivers were either amused or frightened by my display of telling Tommy what would happen if I turned on the bath, or threw his ass outside, because I was thinking of them.

But far later, when I’d left the annoying drivers behind and I could cruise, another of my favorite songs from the album, Sensation, came on, and that put me in the right mood, particularly when I got to the follow stanza:

 

Soon you’ll see me, can’t you feel me
I’m coming…
Send your troubles dancing, I know the answer
I’m coming…
I’m coming…
I’m a sensation.

 

It’s sort of the way I want to feel as a writer.  You want to feel the adoration, the sense that you’re something special.  You want to think that people are just waiting for your next word, that they can’t wait to see where your characters are going to go, what new adventures await them.

I’ve been in that mood myself.  Now that I’m back into my novel, Transporting, I’m really having a blast.  All the crazy stuff that was keeping me away from it–it be gone.  It’s not bothering me these days.  Yes, I’m still only writing about seven hundred, eight hundred, a thousand words a day, but that’s an accomplishment.

Like last night: got into Chapter 39, the first one of Part Four–which I titled Instruments of Loving Grace–and just set off.  It was a lot easier than I thought it might be; I’m into new territory now, finishing the work, and even though I’ve thought about what I was going to say here, doing is a lot different than thinking.

But I’m not worried these days.  I do my blog, I write my stories . . . I’ve gotten into the grove of doing what a writer should.  Yes, I’m working on increasing the production, and it has gotten to where I make sure I have more than 500 words for my blog, and I’m working towards 1,000 words a day, minimum, on my stories.  It’s getting there, it’s very much getting there.

So far I’m pleased with how I’m going into the novel.  It’s a personal piece for me–but what isn’t these days?  Part of the reason, I think, I couldn’t get back into this work for so long was due to being very much cut off from my own feelings, my own emotions.  For the longest time I’ve been dead inside, and in the last year that’s changed a great deal.  I’ve been able to open up and feel, to admit to things that, for years and years, I couldn’t.  It’s made me a better writers–and, in a way, it’s making me a better person.

It’s also making me crazy emotional.  Because as I headed off to bed, in the dark of a silent room, I lay there, and something that had been rolling around in my brain finally hit me.  And, hugging a pillow, I had a cry out.  The reason isn’t important; it probably isn’t even one you’d understand or need to hear.

But it happened.  It happened because life can be a malicious bastard at times, and it isn’t always going to show you it’s hand.  The best you can, at times, hope for is that when the time comes, and you’ve paid to see its hand, it was bluffing your ass the whole time . . .

You never know what’s coming next.  You just hang on and hope you’re going send your troubles dancing.

Upon the Winding Path of Imagination and Desire

Yes, I did it:  I finished Chapter 38 of Transporting last night.  It was a triple finish:  the third section of Chapter 38, which was the last chapter of Part 3.  Oh, yeah.  For something I said I was going to do, I did it.

When I figured out the hard numbers, it turned out I’d written just south of 4,000 words in 4 days.  That’s not a bad total, but it’s not my best.  I could do better production-wise.  I’d need to cut out a lot of distractions, and that would allow me to concentrate on getting my mind into the stories, but you know me–

Well, you really don’t.  But I do seem to have a lot of things going on of late.  I’ve been having a few “issues” on my end of late, things that always seem to pop up.  I’ve been networking a lot more, trying to get something going for me, and for my stories.  And after all that has happened, then it’s time to write.

Did I mention eating and relaxing?  No?  Yeah, I do that a little as well.

But now I’m back into my novel, and last night, looking over what’s upcoming in Transporting–yes, I did some plot card in Scrivener; I do that–and, oi, but I got some gut churning emotions coming up.  Yeah, I do this to myself; set myself up for some stuff that’s going to make me remember and think about things that have happened to me, good and bad, and then I’ll have to do those same thing to my characters.

It’s not fair, I tell yeah.

It must be why my main character is a mess.  They don’t sleep well, either, though I’m certain they never had a dream like I had last night, where I had to deal with driving in the dark through 6 inches of snow, only to have my car taken over by Ice-T when I finally got to where I was going.  Yeah, not a good dream.

They never get a full night’s sleep, either, unless they are whacked out of their mind on something.  One of the main characters in Transporting does a lot of drugs, and when they aren’t doing drugs they’re usually drinking.  That’s another example of art imitating life, because there was a time in my life–about 25 years, to be exact–when self-medicating was the order of the day.  A lot of times it was booze, other times it was drugs, sometimes it was gaming.

These days it’s easier to torture my characters.

These days it’s easier to set yourself upon the path that encompasses all your imagination and brilliance and desires for what you want, and put them into someone who exists only in your mind and on a computer screen.  To be honest, my main character in Transporting desires a lot of the same things I desire, because I want them on the same journey I’m upon.  That doesn’t mean I’m Mary Sueing my character, though I believe my daughter might say that were she to read this story.

It just means it’s far easier to place everything you want into a fiction, because you think, in the end, they might get the happiness you truly deserve.

Today is Travel Day; I head away from The Undisclosed Location and head home.  Maybe I’ll get to some writing tonight; I hope so.  I have told myself I’m going to finish this novel:  not just told myself, but many others as well.  And there is nothing to be gained by acting like a lying punk and blowing off huge chunks of story that demand telling.  I might have to deal with snow when I get home: maybe, maybe not.  Does no good to worry about what I can’t control.

So to load up, go to work, then leave for home.  Then relax, write, sleep.

Maybe in tonight’s dreams I’ll find those same desires I so want awake.

Maybe tonight I’ll see my Annie.  I could use that . . .

Alone in a Sea of Eyes

Another of those strange nights.  Work was a bore and I kept the dinner fare simple, because I am putting on weight again.  I need to check out that salad bar across the street from work and stick with more soup when I’m home.  All the junk food is starting to kill this girlish figure.

It took me a bit to get to the writing, but once I was in it I was in it.  It was all about getting the mood right for me.  It seems like when I’m working on the old new novel, I want everything to be just so.  No, I am not getting so anal that every word need be perfect; rather, I want to evoke something correct, and I need the words to be right, so the reader will–I hope–feel what I’ve tried to convey.

When it was all over, another 840 words were down the chute, the second section of Chapter 38 was behind me, and all that remained was one more part to do before not only the chapter was finished, but Part 3 of Transporting was history as well.

There was a moment of panic as, after the writing was over, I started looking over the upcoming part, and I’m looking at these chapter cards.  The thought that came to me was, “What the hell did I mean by this?”  I’ve had that reaction before; it happened when I was working on my NaNo Novel.  After I looked things over for a few minutes, however, it all came back to me.  Oh, yes:  I’m good at that.  Just give me a few minutes to get my thoughts down and I’ll tell you where the story is going.  Or, at least, I’ll do my best to push it in that direction.

Sleep was–how to say it?  Disturbed.  Not because I kept waking up.  No, not like that at all.  No, it was the dreams that kept pounding at the inside of my head that disturbed me.

Every once in a while I get into these patterns where I’ll either have the same dream over and over–my driving in the fields of Wisconsin is one of those–or all the dreams for a night are part of a theme.  And last night’s theme was pretty simple:

You Are Alone.

I must have had four dreams last night, but in each on I was ostracized, I was kept apart from everyone, I was made to feel like an outsider.

The last one got me, though.  In it, I was walking down a street to some unknown destination.  I was wearing a light t-shirt, a short skirt (yeah, another of those gender switch dreams that I have), and sandals.  It was near-summer, and it felt that way.

I was walking down a city street, and there wasn’t a soul in sight.  It was all empty, all quiet.  But the funny thing was, I knew people were there.  I knew I wasn’t alone, but for some reason people would not come out in my presence.

And then I happened upon an abandoned fire station.  The doors were gone and it was possible to walk inside.  And there, in the gloom of sunlight, I could see the walls.  It was all graffiti, but it was all very lovely, done up in a way that made it the finest kind of street art.

I heard something and looked around and up.  There, in the rafters, was an empty space.  And though I couldn’t see them, I knew there were people above me, watching, not saying a word . . . unless you want to call the constant whisper that filled my senses “a word”.

I ended up walking out of the building, and the dream ended.  And I woke up not long after that, the covers kicked off and my body cold, because it was cold in the room.

Are my dreams telling me that I’m alone in my work?  That’s very true: I go to my job and I’m alone, and I come home and write and I’m alone.  Or is there something else there?

Sometimes this writer things makes you think a little too much, you know?

Shiny Writing Diversions

Last night was a good learning experience.  I went out to the mall to pick up a few things, then decided to stop off and have dinner.  While there I had a couple of drinks, as in I had some really good beer.  I don’t usually drink beer anymore, because the majority of mass-produced American beer is undrinkable.  Or, to quote a waiter with whom I struck up a conversation in Amsterdam in 2006, “It is like the piss, yes?”  You got it, Bunky.

But this was really good beer, and before dinner was over I had two, and came home with a pretty nice glow.  And absolutely no feeling what so ever to get into my story.

I shouldn’t say that.  I was ready to write, and I wasn’t so loaded that I didn’t know what I was doing.  But I got hung up on one thing:  whether or not I wanted to start this particular section in first or third person, and that kept my mind spinning like mad.

See, it’s like this:  part of Transporting is told in first person, in the form of a diary from one of the main characters.  When they are narrating, the story is told in third person.  So for this section of Chapter 38, I got hung up.  Which way to tell it?  Maddening, I tell ya.

It’s easy for writers to get distracted.  There is so much going on in our lives that trying to block it all out can be a major chore.  Sure, Stephen King says lock yourself in a room and do a thousand words before you do anything else, but that’s easier said than done if you have a job and kids and even . . . The Internet.

This last is something that all writers next, and we all dread.  Too many shiny things out there to distract us.  Yes, I need the Internet to do research, but when you got people on Facebook who want to chat, or music on YouTube that demands you come and listen now–or, worst of all, these damn games . . .

Life is bad enough in terms of keeping us distracted, but when you add the Internet into the mix, it’s like having the Goblin King looking over your shoulder clicking his tongue and saying, “No, no.  You don’t want to write that.  You want to come away with me to a beach where there are naked Sebacean women, and we can have pizza and margarita shooters,” and you turn around and remind him that not only is he ripping off Scorpy’s lines, but nobody has margaritas with pizza–ever!

And in case you’re wondering, I had to use the Internet to look up that last line.  Research!

To write, to really write day in and out, you need some incredible will.  I didn’t have that before last year.  I had the rapt attention of a cat in a room full of light beams.  I’m much better these days.  I get up, I get coffee, I write up the blog post (like I’m doing now), then I get ready for work.  When I come home I eat, decompress, chat a little, then write.

In the end I managed to get 747 words in.  I was going to write more, but it was getting one towards 11 PM and I was coming up on something in the story that I didn’t want to write while feeling like I was going to fall asleep, so I left that for today.

Trust me: no beer today.  Maybe a little wine, but that helps me write.

As long as I don’t drink too much . . .

Hangin’ With Friends Under the Night Skies of Sadalbari

Oh, sure, that title means nothing to you, but it means everything to me.

So, finally, after so, so many years, I got back into my very first novel/work in progress/that excuse that you can point to and say, “Look!  I iz writer!”, Transporting, and started a new chapter–said chapter being 38.  Yeah, that’s right.  Lots of works in this baby.

Now, I have said that this was the first new wordage that I added to the novel in a long time, but, just like if you were Sully, I lied.  I’d finished off the last part of Chapter 37 some time back–maybe a few months ago.  It needed it; it’d been hanging there, all alone, and it needed some termination.  So I gave it termination, and it was good.

It wasn’t until I needed to look it over so I could figure out where Chapter 38 was going that I said to myself, “Yeah, I did do this a while back,” and started writing.

Unlike a lot of my stories, Transporting has chapters that have separate sections.  Yes, it’s nice, and it works, and if you could see my Scrivener lay out, it’d probably make a lot more sense to you.  To give you an idea of how I have it set up, I have three sections in Chapter 38:  Numbers Examined; Showing Cillia’s Talent; Numbers Confirmed.  And Chapter 38 is the last chapter of Part Three, Sunrise on Sadalbari.  The way my novel is set up, there are two more parts after this one, though Part 5 is really nothing more than a coda, wrapping things up.

So how did it feel to work on this?  Actually, I jumped right in with no hesitation.  As I’ve stated here, in this blog, I’ve already written another very recent story with these same characters, Echoes, so it wasn’t jarring to get back into them.  Also, the Muse was around, doing dishes and laundry, giving me a reason to start typing away.

The funny thing is, once I started writing, the story came.  It was as if it’d always been there, waiting, and all I needed was to see the words appear on the screen.  It flowed easy–maybe a misstep here and there, but for the most part it just came out the way I expected it to appear.

These people, the one’s I’m writing about, they are very old friends.  Hell, I’ve had them around for nearly 25 years; I have a list of stories I want to do with them, which is also known as, “I’ve created a time line because I just have to know what happens to them!”  So getting back into their skin was no big deal.  Getting into what they were going to do is no big deal, either, because I’ve known this story, in and out, for the same amount of time I’ve known the characters, and though there has been a change here and there in the story, it’s the same one I began putting together back in 1988.

So here it is:  I wrote 1011 words last night in about 65 minutes, and the total count is at 253,960 words.  I’m figuring that the final count will be around 275,000 or so words, but I’ve been known to be wrong before.

Finally, in case you’re wondering about the title of this post, Sadalbari is the name of the star which the planet where the characters are currently staying is called.  Here is what we call a little research:

 

Proper name: Sadalbari

RA: 22h 50min 0.201sec DEC: +24° 36′ 5.71” (J2000). Spectral class G8 (Morgan-Keenan G8 III). Star is approximately 8.75 times Sol diameter, 45 times luminosity.
Sadalbari was the Arabic Sa’d al-Bari’, “Lucky star of the excellent one” or “the Good Luck of the Excelling One”; but Kazwini designated it as Sa’d al Nazi’, “the Good Luck of the Camel Striving to Get to Pasture”.

Distance from Terra 106 ly.

Primary Planet:

Orbit: 3.7 AU (GS) 555,000,000 kilometers
1927.8 days (GS)
1642.4 days (Local)
Day: 28 h 6 m (28.17 hours GS)

1642.4 days = 1 Vag
1642.4 / 8 = 205.3 days = 1 Ostavsa
205.3 / 5 = 41.06 days = 1 Javok

Javoks are usually denoted in some short-hand form based upon the Ostavsa they’re in. For example: they third Javok of the fifth Ostavsa would be referred to as “3/5 Jav/Ost.”

Four known planets located by Terran orbital observatories (2017). Second planet confirmed with oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere (2033). Nova Pegasus event observed July 22, 2036. Mu Pegasus expanded to nearly 20 times its former size for a period of three weeks. All local planetary ecosystems destroyed. Approximate date of nova event on Terran time line May 1935.

 

And there you go; more of my madness from so long ago.  I have to run this through some other calculations, however: I may need to change it.

So the trip has started once again.  Tonight we do a little more, and tomorrow more after that.

I keep this up, eventually I’m going to get to the end . . .

Tiptoeing Straight Into Hell

No time like the present to dive right back into my insanity.  For there’s no better time than tonight to start pulling what little hair I have left out–

Tonight I get back into my first novel.

Transporting was a work that I used to say I started about 1990, but after thinking about it over the weekend, I used to dream up stories about the main characters when I was sitting in my office at Playboy, and that was the winter, spring, and summer of 1988.  That means I probably started the novel late 1987, or very early 1988.  So this sucker has been rolling around in my head for going on 25 years, like some crazy force of nature that just won’t leave me alone.

If I had to tell you why I had this idea, I couldn’t tell you now.  Up to that point I’d written something like three stories, all of them maybe six thousand, seven thousand words.  (Yes, there was a time when I could do a short story.)  I’d already had two rejections at that point, and decided, “Hey, you know, if I really want to put myself through some misery, I’ll write a novel!”  At the time that probably was my mindset, because by then my marriage was starting to go to hell, and hell was something I was getting used to living.

So write I did.  Back in those days I’d flip on the computer–which was the huge desktop with the monitor sitting on it, and sporting a whole 256 kilobytes of memory!–bring up WordPerfect, and do 500 words before I’d get ready for work.  Which meant I started writing like 5 AM.  (Not unlike now, when I started writing this post about 5:40 AM.)  Oh, yes:  I had a great work habit of 500 words in the morning, 500 at night, and then writing what I felt like writing on the weekends.  It was during one of those Saturdays that I cranked out 11,000 words, which remains the most I’ve ever done in one day.  (I just so you know, I ended up editing out a lot from that day.  Anyone can write a lot–the trick is to write a lot well.)

All of this was done long before there was a real Internet.  The majority of Transporting takes on a planet in the Hyades Star Cluster–a quaint little burg we know as HD 23805, or CL Melotte 25 136, but better known in my story as the University System.  I needed to go to the library and hunt through catalogs to find a star that was going to stable for life, and HD 23805 is a G5, which means it’s a nice little star to live around.

In fact, let me show you the notes I created for University all the way back in 1988:

 

Forth Planet in system of 7.
Two moons: Aula (302,000 km), Melling (516,000 km)
Sidereal Day: 27 h 58 m
Length of Year: 394 days (Galactic Standard)
337.7 days (Local Standard)
Leap year every 10th year.
Deviation from GS: 1.08
GS Year: 3182 (at beginning of story)
Inclination: 37 degrees

Distance from Terra: 130.8 ly.
Closest Star: 2.77 ly.
Population: 376,152,000
First Landing: August 10, 2403
First Settlement: Penningham
First Campus: New Oxford (2568 LS)

Calculation of dates: All dates are calculated from the Galactic Standard (I. E., old-style Terran) Calendar. To calculate individual ages GS dates are used. Local calendars are normally used for intra-planetary business only. To find current Local Standard days/years the total number of days from First Landing is calculated (usually truncating the first year after landing so that it matches the Galactic Standard value), converted into hours and then adjusted by the GSD (Galactic Standard Deviation) to determine the current GS date.

For example: For University, First Landing is Aug 10, 2403, GS. GS days to end of present year (2403)–21 + 30 + 31 + 30 + 31 = 143 days, or 3432 hours. This works out to 122.57 Local Standard days, putting the last day of the LS year at December 24/25.

Local Calendar is then reset so 1 Jan, GS equals 1 Jan, LS. Dates are thn calculated normally from that point using GS deviations.

January 1, 2404 (LS) to Feb 2, 3182 (LS) is 778 LS years = (262186 + 77 leap year days + 30 days to Feb 2) 262293 LS days. Using the GSD you have (262293 * 1.08) = 283276.44 GS days divided by 365.25 = 775.57 GS years. .57 years is 208 GS days. GS date should be (using these calculations and the tables at the end of the notes) approximately Friday, 27 July, 3179.

 

Prominent Centers of Higher Learning on University:

New Oxford
Cambridge Intergalactic
New Stanford
Princeton Interstellar
Gorbochev Polytechnic
Hong Kong Polytechnic
Miskatonic Galactic
Neo-Kanto
New Glasgow

 

Other Systems:

New London: Altair Celestial coordinates in ly: 7.703, -14.68, 2.586
Scoth: 10 Tauri Celestial coordinates in ly: 26.2, 36.3, 0.31

Scoth to New London: 54.265 ly
University to Scoth: 159.088 ly

 

There you have it: notes from the past, and they still mean something to me.

Now lets see where I go with this tonight.  New writing is scary.  I haven’t written anything new in this story in about 5 years, and jumping back into it is going to be a little intimidating.  But as I told my daughter Saturday at dinner, since last July I’ve written about 250,000 words–

So what’s another quarter of a million words between friends?

Caressing the Madness

Last night was another night out with friends.  Sat and talked, watched “Order of the Phoenix” on TV, which kept me commenting on how much I loathed Dolores Umbridge, but that I can be satisfied that, by the end of the 5^th book/movie, she gets gang raped by centaurs.  We also debated what would happen if one in the HP universe stuck their wand right up to someone’s eye and did Expelliarmus.  Would it drive your eyeball back into your brain and make your head go squish?  Or would it simply knock it out of your skull?  Fun stuff.

We also discussed the fact that the magical folk in HP seem to have this wide gulf of spells with which to “defend” themselves.  You got your Stupify and your Expelliarmus, and you can freeze people . . . and then you got your Killing Curse.  Hey, nothing like going right to the big guns when your little stuff don’t cut it.  Sort of like coming to a gun fight, finding out your 9mm ain’t doin’ the trick, and whipping out a 20mm cannon to take care of business.  Although that does seem to be a standard motus in anime . . .

Then it was the drive home under the near new moon.  For once I was pretty much alone last night: not much on my mind, and the Muse was sleeping the dream-filled sleep of one that maybe had me in their dreams.  It’s been that way of late for me: not a lot going on when I travel; no discussions between characters or thinking out plots.  Which, to be honest, sort of bothers me, because I begin to wonder–am I’m running out of things as far as stories are concerned?

Maybe not entirely.  Maybe I’m looking at things from a different angle.

For a little last night, I was looking into the eyes of madness.

It might have something to do with getting back into my first novel.  One of the main characters in that story is bi-polar, and taking medication would prevent them from, believe it or not, being this tremendously huge badass.  No, really.  It’s a long story that would involve having to explain myself, and at this point I’m not ready for that.

What this means for them is they learn to deal with their ups and downs, with their depression and suicidal feelings, and their happiness when it comes along.  They learn to deal, but at the same time they learn to feel, they learn to understand their emotions . . . and they become tuned into the emotions of others.

It’s a complicated thing to do, because it forces me to dig down into feeling I’ve kept surprised and hidden for a very long time–like most my life.  And that can be a little scary, because who wants to touch that part of their psyche that they’ve denied existed for so long?

The Muse made me do that, and the Muse keeps poking me along there.  Yeah, it’s scary, but it help me understand my characters.  It helps me know them, and feel where they should go in their lives.

Notice I didn’t say “where I’m going in my life,” because my life is still a mess, and probably will be for some time.  It’s starting to make more sense, but it’s a very slow process.  You don’t spend 50-some years the way I have and just change overnight–or even in a couple of years.

But I’ll get there.  The Muse will help, I know, and the writing will help–

Last night I also touched on a little something that had bugged me for a while, but it’s an idea that has begun to make more sense . . .

It means I need to have Kerry hang out a little more at the Astria Portal.  What does that mean to you?  Nothing–

Yet.

Dirk Diggler Doesn’t Write Here Any More

This is going to be one of those posts where I’m going to say some things, and some comments are gonna use “rude language”, so you know what that means:  you wanna read, enjoy yourself.  If not, best to back out now–or, if you like, Amanda LaPergola made some really cool Valentine’s Day cards over at The Mary Sue.  Check them out:  maybe you can use them next year.  I highly recommend the Starfire card.

That said, onward.

Driving home from The Undisclosed Location was pretty nice yesterday.  Good weather, the traffic wasn’t that bad, and I had some tunes to keep me occupied.  I got home, decompressed a bit, then went up to the computer.

One of the things I wanted to check on was something that’s been in the planning for a while: an interview I was going to do this weekend for an internet radio station.  It was planned for Sunday; notice I used the word “planned”.  That’s because once I logged in and started checking things, I found a message.  Rather than give you a short version said message, I’ll just cut and paste the sucker:

 

Raymond you seem like a nice person but I can’t interview you on your book. Because it is porn and I have a lot of kids listening and emailing me questions. Sorry , take care !

 

Well now!

Now, I’ll say, I’m a bit confused.  One, I thought we were going to discuss my story Kuntilanak, which you can still buy.  (Yes, it’s a blog whore; I do that, you know.)  Now, that’s a horror story that takes place on the island of Bali, so if that’s what they’re talking about, I’m even more confused.

Here’s something you should know about me: I write in a lot of different genres.  I write horror, as you see above.  I write a bit of fantasy, which was pretty much what my NaNo Novel was.  I write science fiction, which is what my first work in progress novel, Transporting, is.  And, lastly, I write erotica. which is the genre of my soon-to-be published story.

Sometimes I mash things up.  My NaNo Novel, Her Demonic Majesty, is pretty much fantasy/science fiction.  My latest story, Couples Dance, is erotic horror, or horrific erotica, if you are of that mind.  It doesn’t matter: I start putting words into the computer, and a story comes out, and I strive to make it the best I can, even if it’s, by some accounts, pretty strange.

There’s one thing I don’t write, however:

I. Don’t. Write. Porn.

I’ve had this slam thrown my way a couple of times, and I’ve seen it shot in the direction of some other writers I know who are in the erotica business.  It appears that if you write stories about people involved in relationships that involve sex that doesn’t involve procreation, one where those involved appear to enjoy what they’re doing–hell, even having fun while they’re getting their freak out–then it’s wrong, then it’s dirty . . . then it’s porn.

Ah, hem.  Porn?  Sit down for a moment while I school your ass.

Dan Fielding, the Assistant D. A. from Night Court, long ago established the criteria between erotica and porn.  As stated when asked his opinion about an adult movie, “It isn’t any good: it’s got a story.”  Not to elaborate, but porn is about getting off.  It’s about getting two, or more, people together, getting it on, and getting the money shot.  You don’t need to worry about characterization: like in Logjammin’, when the hunky blond repairman with his open shirt is standing at the door, and said door is opened by Asia Carrera, you know Asia isn’t getting her cable fixed in the next ten minutes, Jeffery.

When you’re looking for porn, titles are easy:  Spank Happy Coeds 6; Big Bountiful Bucks 12; Horny Housewives of Moaning County.  Or, just for fun, they’ll play on the classics, just to keep it interesting.  You know, like Saving Ryan’s Privates, or ET: The Extra Testicle, or one of my favorites, On Golden Blond.

The end result is still the same, however: something simple to give you the necessary titillation to make said “story” a worthwhile addition to your spank bank.

If I was really writing porn, I’d be doing my damnest to get it out there on the porn market . . . except I don’t think you really “write” porn, not these days.  I knew a guy who used to edit porn tapes, and he said scripts were never used, just outlines.  I mean, really:  do you need a script direction to tell the director that in this next shot Bunny is going to get a facial in close up?  No, I’m guessing porn scripts are a lot like giving direction to Robin Williams: you just say, “There’s fucking here,” thrown in some names, and go with the flow.

Erotica is way, way different.  It’s an art form, and there are characters, there is a plot, there is a story.  In erotica there are going to be sexual situations–notice I didn’t say “sex”.  Like any genre there are numerous sub-genres, and you could easily be writing a story about someone who is training a submissive, and while what both dom and sub go through is a sexual situation, and can make for a very interesting story, there may not be any “sex” in the whole story–at least not in what some people would consider the traditional sense.

Let’s face it: people are hung up on sex.  A lot of people can’t get over the idea that sex is suppose to be fun.  You can use your imagination and share with others.  You can try things that don’t involve laying in bed and doing the ol’ Missionary Bump and Pump so the “happy” couple can fertilize an ovum.  Erotica can be about exploration, it can be about discovery–it can even be about finding out that you’re not the person you thought you were, you’re really someone else, and your sexual awakening has set you upon another path.

Oh, sure: it can be about getting off.  Not going to lie.  But said getting off is usually done not only in the context of story, but in the context of the characters gaining something from the experience.  With porn, when it’s all over, all the characters have usually gained are sore genitals.  In erotica, you find out that you may love someone, or hate them, or you want to be with them, but only to control or be controlled.  You may find out that after twenty years of marriage to the same person, what you really needed to spice up your relationship was to invite the bisexual neighbor over more often.

It’s all about the story.  And, yes: some stories will be better than others.  Some will titillate more than others, or describe the sexual situations better, or even convey a sense of sensuality in terms that are far more interesting.  Hey, it’s like that in every genre.  On one hand you have Hunter S. Thompson, on the other Glen Beck.  Their books discuss politics and current affairs, but one was a master of storytelling, and the other is a scumbag who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the balls.  Writers be writers, and some times you get the bad with the good.

I know a few writers of erotica.  They are female and male; single and married; straight and gay.  They all love to write, and they love what they do as much as any writer can enjoy sitting down before a story and tearing out their guts with the intention of entertaining other people.

And not one of them writes porn.

They create stories.

I’m not ashamed of what I write.  My name is on my stories, and if one of those stories should start out with a husband walking into the bedroom and finding his wife hard at work masturbating with a dildo, and he decides to join in the fun, then hell yeah, I’m still putting my name on it because I wrote it, and I liked writing it, and I want you to like reading it.  In fact, you’ve just seen the opening scene to Couples Dance.  Hope I didn’t give too much away . . .

Just know: there is more to that story than just getting one’s freak on.  But you have to read it to find out what is happening–and if you think you can’t enjoy it because you can’t get past the idea of what happens in the first scene, pity to you, my friend.  You’re missing out on what I think is a very good story.

Like I said to myself last night, it’s not my problem that I’m not getting interviewed: it’s your problem that you’re not getting the chance to have a charming, witty, intelligent, and a little crazy, writer on your broadcast.

Your loss, my friend.  It’ll never be mine.