Without You

Some days I feel just like poor old Psylocke here:  no matter how bad assed I am, no matter how mad my skills are, I gotta get into the vacuum-sealed latex uniform and spend all my time hyper-extending my knees and breaking my spine for the entertainment of others.  At least she’s not in heels–this time.

Today isn’t so bad.  I slept well, got up at 6 AM, had to deal with a cranky computer but managed to whip it into proper form, and I’m finally getting my butt in gear here at somewhere close to nine-thirty.  I have my plan in place for today, and it doesn’t involve playing games or suffering for strange things, though the later isn’t completely out of the question.

No, what I have to do is get some writing done.  I need to get this Fantasy story finished, because I want to move onto something else.  What, I’m not sure yet, but I do want to get onto something else.  It’s been a while since I wrote an erotic fantasy that jumped into this sort of word range, and I’ve felt strange about this development.  There’s that little trip hammer of doubt tapping away in the back of my mind that’s saying, “Nope, you shouldn’t be writing this, it’s going to suck, you’re going to find people laughing at this shit.”

I’ll admit, I’m sensitive to this sort of stuff.  Sure, a few days ago I said it was okay to think you’re going to suck, because people with talent tend to fall into that trap.  Then I take my own advice and kick it to the curb because, hey, I suck, and this story sucks . . .

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Stop being so hard on yourself.  Why are you writing if you feel this way?

I came to a realization yesterday that I get way too wrapped up in my work, that I have a difficult time disconnecting myself from the story in the sense that when I’m given advice, I need to step back and look at it critically, and not get depressed because of something I don’t like.  It’s a sucky thing to start spinning because you start beating up on yourself over things that other people blow off.

Being critical is good, to a point.  You have to look at your work, all your work, with a critical eye.  If you didn’t, you’d churn out crap, which happens a lot:  that’s why we have Sturgeon’s Revelation.   When you eye turns into a frickin’ shark with a laser, however, it can kill your creativity faster than said fictitious shark.

This is what’s been happening with me that last month or so.  The Doubt Wagon pulled into town and won’t leave my driveway.  It feels like every time I touch something, it turns into fail.  It’s easy to be ripped apart by that–

What you need is someone who’ll give you honesty.  Who’ll point out some things that need correcting, but at the same time tell you, “Your story is amazing.”

Writers are their own worse enemies.  Stick to killing your characters–

It’s so much more fun to watch your readers suffer.

Hot Chocolate and Mountain Stars

One project ends, another begins; it’s how you do it, really.  Suggestive Amusements is in the can–or on the hard drive, as this case may be–and my information for a book cover for Her Demonic Majesty is off to a friend for her appraisal.  What is left to do?

Edit, what else?

Replacements is under the literary knife again.  I’m giving it another polish in, preparing it for it’s own publication date.  That will mean getting a cover for it as well, and prepping the manuscript for ebooks, but that’s easy.  Well, the formatting is:  not sure on the cover yet.  But it’s all coming together.  If anything, as I edit, I can format.  I did Chapter One last night; I’ll likely edit Chapter Two tonight, then start doing a format on Chapter One–which is a small chapters–to get back into the swing of getting an ebook ready.

Even with all this, there are always things going on in my mind.  Are those story ideas you’re talking about, Cassie?  Why, yes:  yes, they are.

There is a set of stories that I’ve developed of a particular set of characters.  As of this moment I have three stories written about them that amount to three long novels, one short novel, and a novella.  I’m so tied into these characters, in fact, that I have a time line of their lives figured out, and that the stories that revolve around those lives.

Last week I was thinking about one of those stories, one that takes place further along in their lives, and it’s an event that, as they say in the business, changes them forever.  It really does, because it’s needed for later in their lives, and for the stories that follow.  As I want to do, I thought out things from a meta standpoint, with the intention of figuring out things later.  As for the meta, it goes into a file, or my head, both of which are pretty good for that sort of thing.

Here is the kicker, though:  the night before, I had a dream that revolved around what I’d been thinking about, as well as some of the research I’d done, because I’m all about the research . . .

I know it was about a place I’d researched for this story, because I just did.  It was in the mountains; it was night and the air was crisp, with fall approaching.  I was sitting alongside someone, both of us wearing thick sweaters against the mountain chill.  There was wine, just a small glass each, because you want to enjoy the alcohol-infused warmth that comes from sitting a sweet white wine.

Then, after the lateness of the hour became apparent, inside we go to sit before a fire, stretching out upon an overstuffed sofa–

Which is where my dream ended.  But the writer in me–ah, I see thing going beyond that.  Because the overstuffed sofa reminds me of two people in a very different place, with their own sofa, their over comforters, their own fire . . . and plenty of pumpkin juice, hot chocolate, and cheese banitsas.  All the things meant to keep a couple warm . . .

All the things they’d need to remind them of their love.

Lingering in the Past to Come

Finally, finally, finally, I have finished Chapter Fourteen of Suggestive Amusements.  Lots of strange things, lots of kinky sex, lots of things left hanging at the end.  I thought I had some hard chapters to write in Diners at the Memory’s End, but this last was eight thousand of some of the toughest words I’ve ever penned.

It’s behind me.  On to Chapter Fifteen.

I have found a few moments during the work on Chapter Fourteen when I’ve wondered if this story should just go away.  I spoke with a friend the other night, and they told me to put it in a drawer and walk away.  I told them that wasn’t an option, because I’m over fifty thousand words into the tale and the Good Doctor Asimov always said to finish what you start.  They told me I was stubborn;  I told them I’m a writer–which is sort of the same thing.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t felt like walking away at some points.  I like the story, I like the world, but the characters are really sort of dicks in their own rights.  Am I projecting some of my own feelings?  Hell, yeah.  They’re my characters, so they have a little bit of me in them.  Which means they’re not always good people, because I’m not always one.

This winter has been a pain in the ass, however.  It started out being out of work, then finding something after completing a seventy thousand word novel, then falling into a lot of long hours with work, travel, and more writing.  It’s taken a bit of a toll on me, as I’ve been tired, ill, and generally feeling as if I’m out of energy.

It’s easy to want to give up.  I’ve done it before, so why should now be any different?  I’ve given myself some crazy things to do, chasing after banners I may never catch.  I have little or no support on my end for my creative endeavors, and if I do get any props it’s to keep workin’,  ’cause gotta pay those bills, yo.

I felt a bit of elation last night, though, because before I got into the last thousand words of Chapter Hell, I helped someone through the process of formatting a project that will eventually become an ebook, and the juice you get when you lend your creative ability to someone who is using theirs, it’s a good feeling, and one that I needed–for I haven’t felt that way in a while.

Before I headed off to dream land, I played a song that I’ve heard many times . . .

Undertow is a song by Genesis found on their album And Then There Were Three . . ..  I had this album when it first came out, because prog rock, you know, and I was a Genesis fan back in the 1970′s.  I listened to the album many times, and as the years grew on I stopped listening–mostly because I lost all my albums at the end of my first marriage, some twenty years ago.  Then I discovered all this stuff out on YouTube, and once more started listing–

Undertow is one of those songs that I’d heard, but never gave a listen.  When you’re young it’s just a song, something you can kick back to and mellow out when you’ve had a hard day being a teen or early twenty-something.  When the album the song appears on came out, I was just three weeks short of turning twenty-one, so thinking about what was ahead of me wasn’t a big issue with me.  I knew . . .

Actually, I knew shit.  I didn’t have much, I had no understand of what I wanted to do, and I knew I wanted to write, but I couldn’t because I couldn’t bring myself to do it–just as there were so many other things I couldn’t bring myself to do.  I went through life thinking I’ll deal with shit tomorrow, ’cause there’s always tomorrow.

I played Undertow for the hell of it last night, but this time I started listening.  Something happened, because when I work up at four AM today, it was playing in my head.  It was still playing as I drove into work.  When I got my system set up just before seven AM, it was the first thing I played.

It moved me to tears.

There was a connection in the words so powerful that, during the first part of the chorus, I could see myself in those lyrics.  But the second stanza–oh, that’s where the song reached out, grabbed me by the ear, and said, “Sit down, fool; I got something to say”:

 

Laughter, music and perfume linger here
And there, and there,
Wine flows from flask to glass and mouth,
As it soothes, confusing our doubts.

And soon we feel,
Why do a single thing to-day,
There’s tomorrow sure as I’m here.

So the days they turn into years
And still no tomorrow appears.

Better think awhile
Or I may never think again.
If this were the last day of your life, my friend,
Tell me, what do you think you would do then? *

 

Then after the question, Tony Banks comes in and kicks my ass with words and melody so powerful that it’s hard to hold back the tears:

 

Stand up to the blow that fate has struck upon you,
Make the most of all you still have coming to you, [or]
Lay down on the ground and let the tears run from you,
Crying to the grass and trees and heaven finally on your knees

Let me live again, let life come find me wanting.
Spring must strike again against the shield of winter.
Let me feel once more the arms of love surround me,
Telling me the danger’s past, I need not fear the icy blast again. *

 

Damn you, Anthony.  Damn you for making me feel.
Despite what they may say in Westeros, winter is over.  Life is hard, but if you want something you don’t have, work towards getting it.  These damn stories won’t write themselves, and if I want them told, I gotta tell them.  I’ve spent enough time lying on the ground crying, and I don’t want that anymore:  I want what I can take from what I have left, and I want that all.

I want to live, I want to move on, I want to kick the icy blast in the ass and leave it behind.  That I can do.  That is always possible.

As for the arms of love telling me the danger’s past?

We’ll see, won’t we?  We’ll see . . .

 

 

* Copyright: Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, EMI Music Publishing.  Written by Anthony Banks.

Sightseeing in Alternate Realms

“This is the first time I’ve been to New York City, ‘cept for driving through.”

That’s what I woke up to about an hour ago, having walked across a river and standing on a Manhattan Island that could never have existed at any time in our history.  I was telling this to a very pretty red haired woman who . . . well, more on that in a moment.

The above statement is almost true:  I have been to New York City once, but it’s not like you would imagine.  I had to fly to Hyannis, Massachusetts  for software training in the the summer of 1988, and since we (the people I was with, my manager and project leader from Playboy) were flying cheep, I flew out of Midway and landed at Newark, which was no the airport it is today.

But how to get from Newark to Hyannis, you ask?  We flew in a very small, eight passenger twin prop job that never flew higher than a thousand feet the entire way–after we were out of NYC air space, that is.  We left Newark going east, flew right over the Statue of Liberty, then headed up the East River at an altitude of maybe five hundred feet.  It was still light, and the day was clear, an I was on the left side of the plane, so out my window I had all of Manhattan laid out before me, watching the city in a beauty pass shot right out of a movie.

That is my one and only exposure to New York City.  When I say I’ve only driven through, that happened in a dream I had maybe six months ago.  I drove over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, when into a part of the city seemed like the Battery, then headed into Brooklyn.  I met with a woman later on what may have been Long Island, or it might have been near the Tappan Zee Bridge, because there weren’t nearly as many building around when we sat for coffee, but it wasn’t the city proper, I know that.

I have a hypothesis as to why I might have had this dream last night.  David Gerrold, otherwise known as the Father to Tribbles and The Oldest Red Shirt Ever, posted something on his Facebook wall yesterday.  It was one of those strange, simple meme statements you find popping up all the time on Facebook when people are posting pictures of cats, or trying to guilt trip you into liking something by saying you’ll go to hell if you don’t share a post being against pistol whipping bulldogs.

The statement was simple:  ”If you could go back and tell your younger self something, what you would say?”  A very science fictiony concept, because if you could go back and tell your younger self to do something that you haven’t done, you’ll set up another reality that you, the teller, will never see, because quantum physics gives not one fuck about you, but that’s beside the point.  The question is: what would you say?

David had left a statement, as had several others.  I normally don’t respond to these things, because I’m a pain in the ass bitch, but with that point, I was compelled to respond.  I said, “Transition and to hell with what people think, and go to her, you know where she lives.”  Why would I say that?  Well, those are two things that have become important to me . . .

Neither would make the present me happy, because nothing would change for me, but for New Past Me, there something might happen.  One can only guess if I’d decided not to get married in the early 80′s and started my transition, I may have had a twenty years jump on less insanity.  I wouldn’t have my daughter, that is true, but I might have had a lot less sadness and hurt and pain.  Or I might be dead.  Can’t say, you know.

The second part . . . Harlan Ellison’s story Grail tell of a man who spends most of his life in search of a cup that will show him his true love.  After decades of search he finds it, looks into is and sees his one true love . . . and as he states at the end, I will met her in death, because she died before I was born.

Last night I walked across the Hudson into the city with a woman who was younger, and who had red hair, but I knew her even though that disguise.  I remember saying to her, “I was told you’re nice and curvy,” and she looked at me with a sideways glance and smiled and said, “Yeah?  They said that?” and I replied, “Yeah, and you’re soft an warm, too.”

And we stopped after crossing the river and turned to each other.  ”You know that for a fact?” she said, and I took her in my arms and said, “Oh, yeah.”  And then I kissed her and said–

Isn’t this where I came in?

Trials of Love and Remembrance

Day Two of Sick As Hell, but getting better.  No fever now, but I can’t hear out of my right ear, my head is stuffy, and my throat was swollen last night to the point of intense pain.  This morning I’m better, though my head is swimming about because I’ve only seen about three hours of sleep in the last two days.  Tonight I hope to get enough sleep to be sharp enough that I’m not stumbling about like I don’t know what I’m doing.

I was in decent enough shape last night, though, that I could write.  I wanted to get back into Chapter Ten, and it was a good time to do so, because I’d only need about a thousand words to get the job done.  So I got into it, and I was right:  it took a few words over a thousand to finish Chapter Ten, and now it’s time to move onto pillow talk between my two main characters.

With it being Valentine’s Day today, it’s a bit interesting that last night my muse (not my Muse, just to keep things straight) thought about how her newest charge was going to be another in a very long line of lovers, and that she’d remember him all the way until the end of time, well beyond the time when he is not only forgotten by his descendants, but by history as well.  Creatures who are not human, who do have recollections that go back thousands of years, could be expected to remember every encounter they’ve had, every touch they’ve experienced, every kiss that’s graced their lips.  As I said in the story, for Erin the Muse it’s both a gift and a curse, because while she can remember all the good times, she will also remember the bad–and there is now way you couldn’t go through thousands of years of encounters with people and never have a bad relationship spring up.

I’m not a muse; there are no thousands of relationships in my life that I can remember, much less write about.  The reality is I can count on both hands the number of relationships I’ve had, and still have a few fingers left over.  I don’t regret this–and there’s little I could do if I decided to regret my choices.  It is what it is, and not even a TARDIS is going to save you from your own time line.

There are also a few that I’d rather not remember.  One in particular, the family hatted me with a passion, and that didn’t help when it came to developing a romance.  There is one that I do regret ever getting into, though it’s not one most people who know me would understand the reasons why it was such a bad thing for me.

There are others, however, that I will always remember.  They showed me things I didn’t know were possible; they allowed me to achieve an intimacy that had never been there.  And if I can borrow from Mr. Spock (D. C. Fontana, actually, as she was the one who put the words in his mouth), there is one where it was easy to say, “For the first time in my life, I was happy.”

The one thing I don’t want to know is:  do they remember me?  And do they remember me with any sort of fondness.

I guess I’ll never know, or even want to.

It’s better that way.

Into the Haze of Life

This is one of those days that I know will redefine one.

The last few days have been sorta crazy.  I don’t mean crazy as in, “Oh, wow.  Wild stuff going on; better get goin’ on this.”  No, it’s more like, “I’m totally losing it; I should see about getting checked into the facility.”  As in, I’m really on my last good thread, and if it’s cut, I’ve got serious stuff to deal with in a major way.

Last night I tried writing.  My heart didn’t feel as if it were in it.  I did my best, but these things that are happening, it’s eating me alive.  Maybe I’ll get more done later, because even when I’m feeling as if I’m going to have a heart attack at any moment, I need to do something towards my craft.

For if I don’t have my craft, then I have nothing.  There is nothing else waiting for me.  Give up my writing, and I might as well start looking for a nice place to rest for the last time.

I know that sounds extreme, but there really isn’t anything else at this point.  The Undisclosed Location has become less of a place to crash between trips to the job site, and more of a prison of them mind.  At this moment, I’m not there, I’m at The Real Home, though a return to TUL is likely tonight.  Maybe.  Possibly.  It all depends on what transpires during this morning.

There are things to do today.  I’m dealing with things the best I can.  I’ve got support on this end, and I’ve been getting support from other people as well.  I’m not completely alone at this point–which is something that I do feel when I’m at The Undisclosed Location.  It’s nothing but alone there.  It’s the feeling of nothingness, of being isolated from everything but the local Wal Mart down the street, that’s one of the things putting a lot of strain upon me.  It’s helped to be a great writing local, but it’s not helping with anything else.

So many things to deal with:  the job, loneliness, isolation, fear, the feeling that I’m screwing up everything . . . oh, and one other thing.  Something that’s really defining me at the moment.  But nothing I’m ready to speak of yet.  That time is coming, but it’s not yet.  Just like all the events that are surrounding this little episode, I have to leave it for another place and time.

I have to conclude that one of the reasons this current work in progress is taking so long is because I’ve got entirely too much shit on my mind.  My plate is full, and I can’t seem to clear it these days.  There is more calling for my attention, and I don’t have the means to fit it in right now.

Bouncing off the walls, I am.  It’s not quite gotten to where I feel like I’m about to do something totally stupid, but it’s feeling very close.  Objects in the rear view mirror are always closer than they appear, and this one has been tailgating me for a few weeks.

Okay, I’m off.  Even with everything swirling about my head like mad, I can still write.  At least I write here.

See?  Everything’s okay.  Really.  It is.

Twisting Perceptions

The last couple of days seem to have hit me in a particularly strange way.  Actually, this whole week has.  It has become one long, drawn out, seeming like a never ending ride on the Wonka Boat, with that maniac bastard spouting spoken word rhyme the entire way.

If you can’t tell, I want this week over in a very bad way.  Like . . . yesterday.

Part of it is this story.  Diners is hitting me a lot like Echoes did; it is resisting me in a lot of ways.  I don’t want to say, “Oh, I’ve got writer’s block!”, but it’s starting to feel like something along those lines–

Which isn’t actually true.  I’m rolling though this post pretty well, though it seems like, these days, I’m not able to go more than one or two words before I misspell something, and I have to stop, return, and fix it.  That is getting to be one annoying son of a bitch, and it’s one of the reasons I was never able to write until word processors came out.  Word processors with auto-correct that doesn’t replace “pattern” with “penis”.

All the nice things in life.

But for all the excitement I had for restarting Diners at the Memory’s End, it’s as if the moment I’m in it–bam!  It wants me to be somewhere else.  Now, Echoes I got:  there was a lot of emotion behind what I was writing, and it was tearing me up.  This?

Well, I think I know.

As I once said on the pages of the blog, most of my stories are about relationships.  Even the science fictiony ones are like that.  There’s a guy, there’s a girl–or there are two girls, or even three girls.  But anyway you look at it, there’s some kind of relationship there.

Diners is a bit about taking one of those relationships, and twisting it apart.  Just a little, but it’s there.  And it’s going to hurt one of the people in the story, and hurt them in a very bad way.

One of the curses of being a writer is that you have to show this to your readers.  So you have to think about it, and you have to figure out the words that are needed to convey those feelings into images.  In order to do that, I’ve got to spend a lot of time inside the heads of my characters, and after a while, even though they are pretty nice people, you get into some mind spaces you’d rather not go–

Like your own.

I think that’s why I’m finding myself distracted a lot these days.  My own head is a mass of spider webs any more, and while I’m driving my characters crazy with personal stuff, I’m doing the same thing to myself.  Not that I’m fooling around, or anything, but damn–there is a ton of shit that appears to be ready to reshape my life these days, and a couple of days ago I had a bit of a mini-meltdown because I was starting to feel “overwhelmed” by everything.  Maybe it’s time to go The Elvis Route, and fly out to Vegas to pick up a few thousand Quaaludes because I need to decompress, or perhaps some recreational Dilaudid is in order; just a quick skin pop and kick back with a few hours of Farscape to occupy the time.

Only a few days ago I said change was coming, and you can’t believe just how true that statement has become.  It only takes time to get there.

I wish the hell it would get here and stop driving me nuts.

We Said Goodbye Hello

Last night was one of my rare nights out.  As in, I actually get out of the house for some conversation and pizza.  The last time was a month ago, and what with everything that’s went on in my life of late, it felt like a good time to get out and relax.

But I didn’t relax.  I was tired most of the night.  At one point I almost fell asleep watching TV.  The pizza didn’t have flavor.  And when I drove home, my mind was in neutral.  It was one of those cool, cloudy evenings that I usually love, but the drive home was . . . well, there wasn’t any traffic, which was the high point of the trip.

Everything seemed a note or two off.  Hell, I couldn’t even get a good scene up in my mind.

Not that I didn’t try.  I went back to that well I call, “Twenty Years of Stories You Want to Tell, Man!” and latched onto one that, believe it or not, I actually wrote and completed back in 1990.  ”And how did that happen?” I hear someone asking?

Glad you asked.  I wrote it for four women in my office.  No, really.  It came about because of a lunch where I was out with these same ladies, and I was talking about writing, and it was sorta like, “Hey, Ray, when are you going to, you know, show us some of this mythical writing you do?”  Not being one to have four women throw the gauntlet back in my face, I sat down and cranked out a very long story (do I write any other kind?) titled, Dinners at the Memory’s End.

At the time I thought it was good.  It still is, but I thought of it a lot last night, because there are certain things in the story that is pretty doggy.  There’s no other way to put it, because there are aspects of the story, as it was written 22 years ago, that wouldn’t work today.  No how, no way.

So were I to write this story today, I would change it in some significant ways.  Notice the “were” part there.  Of course, if I’m thinking about writing this story, it’s because I’m interested in writing this story.  Or rewriting it, as the case may be.  And it would be a major rewrite, but it would also bring back a story that, for me, was something of a favorite.  And not just because I got to show off like some beat poet trying to get laid.  It’s a favorite because it was the first novella I wrote, and completed.

And it was good.

I’m learning that a good writer knows what to write, what to rewrite, and what not to get into.  One of the reasons I was a bit off last night–perhaps a bit off for a while, come to thinking of it–has to do with the idea of writing a YA story about two of my favorite young characters, Annie and Kerry.  I saw “Annie” yesterday, and told her my idea for the prologue to the novel.  And she loved it.  She thought it was great–

Then . . . I realized I couldn’t write this story.  Not yet.  Not now.

Part of the truth is that I don’t really have it in me, at the moment, to make this a real story.  I’ve the idea, and the idea is good, but that’s all it is.  I can run with ideas, because I’ve done that before.  Stories are ideas, and you put them in the car with you, hit the gas, and head towards your destination with a basket full of tunes and some tasty beverages to pass the time.

There’s something else here, however.  That something is Annie.

Annie is a character, but she’s also a person, someone I’ve known for a while.  And I know her investment in that character.  Yes, she’s told me, “Take the character, make her your own, and let the story fly, you creative little scribbler, you!”  I would, you know.  I totally would.

But I love the character too much.

It’s a awesome responsibility to take something created by another person and do with it as one likes.  Happens in comic books all the time.  I mean, is the same person who created Wonder Woman still penning her stories?  No.  One, he’s dead.  Two, if he were, we’d still have Wonder Woman running around playing bondage games with the other Amazon ladies.  Instead, we totally find out the Amazons got no use for their baby boys, and pretty much sell them off into slavery, misery, and death.  Shit happens, you know?

That’s what happens when you have others playing with your characters; they can end up doing very strange things, or acting in ways that don’t seem right.  With Annie, I want to get her right.  I don’t want her to be a shadow, or a shade, or act in a strange way.  The only way to do that right is to have the Real Annie work with me on the Character Annie.

At the moment, that’s not possible.

So there is no telling of this particular story, at least not now.  Maybe not for a while.  Maybe not ever.  I’ll write the prologue, because it needs writing, but for now . . . no, I won’t go there.  Because every time I think about making that move, I get this thing in the corner of my eye, and it bothers me.

I care for Annie, a lot.  To use a Jack O’Neill (with two “l’s”; the guy with one “l” has no sense of humor) comment, “I care for her a lot more than I should.”  Because I do, I can’t run off with her character.  I have to be careful.  I have to be honest.  I have to be loving.  Until I’m ready for all that, I can’t write the story that will, eventually, be written.

Every story comes in its time.  Annie’s will come–

When it does, it’ll be beautiful.  Just like her.

I own it to Annie.

Tendrils of Astral Light

Ah, the morning is here, and I’m actually catching up on my sleep.  Sure, I have a fair amount of running to do today, and I need to find another airbed before returning to The Undisclosed Location, but I will get to it, and I’ll be victorious before the evening arrives.

My daughter’s birthday is coming up, and I find that I have another task I need to undertake.  It’s nothing completely crazy, but it’s going to take some time, because I need to make sure I get everything right.  She’s made a request, and who am I to say no?  Well, it’s easy to say no, but for this, I don’t really want to.

The dreams last night were–well, they could have been better.  It seems that once I am in Dreamland, my subconscious seems to want to beat up on me.  It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t good, either.  It’s a very rare occasion when I find I have a dream that speaks to me with a little comfort and care, and when they do come along–as one did Thursday night–they don’t stay with me very long.  It just seems as if my mind likes to point out that everything I do is an uphill battle, and if my head gets too big about anything, I’m going to get a smackdown.

However, there are moments when I start to wake, and things do come to me . . .

Of late, I’ve been in a bit of a funk.  My Muse pointed this out to me yesterday, as she was catching up with a week worth of posts here.  She wanted to know what was bothering me, and to be honest, really honest, I can’t put my fingers on it.  (Maybe it’s a keyboard, hence fingers!  Yuk, yuk, yuk!)

But I’ve felt . . . something.  A little strangeness that’s not been there for a while.  Maybe it those old feelings of depression trying to reassert themselves once again.  I did stop by and see my old therapist the other days, and those she wasn’t in, we were able to speak by phone for a few minutes later.  Before I returned to The Undisclosed Location, and the sameness there–and the leaking bed I need to replace today.

Back to the morning, however–

I’ve had a scene building in my head.  I would say, “Building itself,” but I’m the builder here, Bob, and these scenes aren’t going to build themselves.  It’s an interesting scene, because it’s a prologue to a novel.  I won’t get into a debate of whether or not a prologue is needed or not, but for this novel I’m building in my head, it is.  It’s very much needed, because without it, I might not have an understanding of the dynamic of the characters within the story.

The prologue is actually in several sections, taking place all over the world, most of it happening within a matter of minutes on the same day.  And, not to brag, but one part of it, if I get the description down pat, is going to look and feel beautiful.  It’s not going to be easy to convey, but I can do it–I can bring that beauty.  I can get this thing started.  I just need a title, a time line, and I can bring the magic.

As My Muse said to me yesterday, “Ray . . . write the damn story.”

No better words have been spoken.

At least she wasn’t holding a gun to my head.

 

A twofor for you today!  I have a guest post up on the blog of the lovely Cassandre Dayne, to help celebrate the release of my new story, Captivate and Control.  So pop on in, see what I have to say, and buy a book!

Like I said, go read!  You’ll have fun!

The Frozen Ardour

After a week it feels good to sorta get back on my feet.  Though the issue of getting a new bed lay ahead, and that’s a bit of a bummer, but it’s not something that one can’t surmount.

Finally, though, I’m getting back into the swing.  I can’t say that coming down with a killer cold just as a story of mine was being released for publication was great timing–it wasn’t.  At least I wasn’t doing something like a book tour or even a public signing.  ”Hi, would you like me to sign your ebook?”  Right on.  Not to mention . . . I’ve been working on making my signature look like something less than a dying caterpillar and more like something a real person would make.  It’s slow going, but it’s almost, sorta, kinda coming alone.

I’m editing, and it’s coming along very well–again.  Now that I’ve been in “print” twice, I’m eager to get more.  I’m also eager to get something like, oh, cash coming into the coffers very soon.  It’s nice to see yourself on Amazon, but it’s nicer to see your ranking as something a little higher than #256,665 for the week.  It’ll happen; it just takes time.

Something struck me about the edit I was doing last night, however.  Jeannette, the main character of Demonic Majesty, is something of a geeky loner.  It’s said that while she has friends, there’s something she doesn’t have–love.  There’s really never been anyone in her life.

The same thing with a few of my other characters.  Albert and Cytheria, from Transporting and Echoes, had lives that were a bit devoid of affection and love–though, in Echoes, you discover that Albert’s situation might have been just a little different.  There were a lot of reasons for that, but still:  they both went for a very long time without anyone on their respective lives.

The older I get, the more “right” in the mind I become (and I don’t mean becoming “normal” normal, but more like getting better mental illness-wise), the more I crave a touch, a look . . . something to affirm to oneself that they are adored, that they are wanted, that they are desired.  At the end of Transporting, it looked as if Albert and Cytheria both found what they wanted–which was for them to hear, every day, that they are not just loved, but the love felt for them is beyond comprehension.

As someone once told me, “You deserve to have someone tell you, every day, that you are loved.”  And as I told that person, “You deserve the same.”

There are a lot of stories about being alone, a lot of songs about a singular lack of love in one’s life.  These days, I can’t see the point.  I can’t move in that direction, because it leaves one with nothing but emptiness.  Jeannette discovers something about herself in Demonic Majesty, though it doesn’t get examined that much in the novel.  I do hope to pull it out in later works–oh, yes.  I want later works.  Many later works.

Maybe that means it’s time to work on the story of a One True Pairing–

Because love should be written and enjoyed, not locked up and frozen.

Possession of My Memories

Rest and rest and more rest.  That was the theme for last night, after the very long day I found myself heading off to bed very early in the evening.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t get things done yesterday.  Oh, no:  quite the opposite.  I blogged, I saw my daughter get her black belt, we partied a little, I came home and chatted, I wrote and wrote . . . yes, it was a very full time to be had.

I was on the new chapter for Couples Dance last night, and somehow, even with all the shiny distractions going in, managed to crank out 1850 words.  It was mostly conversation, but still, it was a lot of good flow, a lot of great energy going into the story.  I was doing a lot of search for–I guess you could call it a hook for the chapter.  I’m trying to explain something, and try as I might to get it down, the feeling kept dancing away from him.  It was like, “Here I am!  I’m what you’re looking for, right?  Ha!  You can’t have me–not yet!”  Bastard plot lines.  Just when I need my Muse to come around and grab them around the neck and drag them closer so I can whip them into shape, she’s nowhere in sight.

But that probably had a lot to do with my mental and physical conditions.  The last couple of weeks I’ve been dragging ass something fierce.  Friday and last night I started writing in a state of what I would call near mental exhaustion.  Friday night a managed to get out 800 or so words before I had to pack off to bed, and last night was pretty much a two hour fight between procrastinating, nodding off, and writing.  The writing won out for the most part, but I was in bed before 10:30, which is something I never do.

I did manage a short chat with Trusty Editor^tm, who was around for about 40 minutes in the afternoon.  We had a pleasant, if quick, conversation, and some of that conversation revolved around my writing.  Trusty (if I may call them that) has seen most, if not all, of the writing I’ve produced in the last year.  So if anyone knows about the changes in my style, it is they.

One of the things they brought up is how I handle relationships in stories, which they commented upon after reading a couple of excerpts from my last couple of stories.  They told me that, in my older work, my characters–mostly female–were either very cold and hard, or only interested in relationships where there was the promise of pleasure, but little else.  And that’s a valid criticism, because it is true.  It can be said that the later occurred because of the sort of fanfic I was writing–which was totally fetish erotica, and geared at a particular audience–but still, I rocked that first meme very well.

An example that came up was a character by the name of Helena.  She’s a particular favorite of mine, at least now, but when I created her–bare bones, she was a hurt person, maimed in a battle, and extremely hard edged.  If she’d stayed on the path I’d originally envisioned for her, she would have been a character with zero personality growth, likely remaining one of those semi-bitter women who would slowly grow to hate everything around her.

What changed was I needed a character for another project, and so I pulled Helena into that project.  However, I needed a reason for her being there . . . and that’s when I created another character, Erwyin, who I’ve blogged about.  Erywin–if I may steal the title of a script written for The Grand Moffat–is The Girl Who Waited.  She met Helena when they were tweeners in the early 1980′s, fell in love as they became teens, and then were separated for nearly twenty years.  She never questioned why her “pretty girl” went off on a path that would take her away from Erywin; she didn’t question why she stopped speaking to her; she didn’t question why, after Erywin discovered that Helena had been maimed, Helena refused to speak to her; she never questioned why, after Helena finally did start responding to her correspondence, it would take her months to write back, and that her words were so guarded.  All Erywin wanted was for Helena to be happy–and that, one day, they’d be reunited.

Erywin would never pressure Helena.  She would wait.  If necessary, she’d wait forever just to hold her hand for a few moments before Helena passed on.  Because Erywin was full of love for her pretty girl.  She could never hate her.

She would wait because she knew, in time, things would somehow work in their favor.  All she needed to do was exert the tiniest of pressure here and there, and fate would take care of the rest.

And that’s when Helena began to change.  Once back close to Erywin, I knew the old feelings would have to resurface.  I knew that, in Helena’s youth, she’d been madly in love with Erywin, and her feelings for her was insanely strong.  One of the bits that came up was that a couple of weeks after meeting Erywin, Helena had the displeasure of encountering a girl who knew Erywin was a lesbian, and didn’t like her because of that fact.  She made the mistake of telling Helena that her friend was a “silly faggot”, and deserved to be treated with scorn.  Calmly, coolly, Helena grabbed the girl–who was older and bigger–by the hair, and proceeded to drag her–literally, she dragged her along the floor–away from her friends, saying to her and all who were watching in stunned silence, “You need to be taught proper manners.”

When you’ve established that sort of relationship as kids, you know where you have to go with them as adults.

As Trusty said, “You’re not afraid to explore relationships, to go deeper into romance.”  All true.  I’ve said that I’ve grown as a writer, that I can go places I’ve never been before.  I’ve pointed out that I couldn’t finished Transporting–which is a love story told in a science fiction setting–until recently, because I couldn’t tap into feelings that I needed in order to write the ending.  As Trusty Editor^tm told me about one of the excerpts from Transporting, “It’s raw and needs to be tightened, but it’s great.”  And I don’t doubt either of those summations.

So with all that in mind, I headed off to bed . . .

You know where this is going, don’t you?  Well, maybe not, but I’m going to take you there–

I know I had several dreams last night, but only one of them is sticking with me.  It’s short and sweet, and . . . well, you’ll see.

It’s me and another person, a female type person that I do know.  She knows I write, and she’s said that she enjoys my work.  Now, in the dream, we’re alone and in a bedroom.  We’re getting ready to turn in, and we’re both in our night clothes.  (Yes, I do have dreams where I’m not naked.  You don’t want to see that anyway.)  There’s a single light on in the room, a lamp on a night stand.  She’s got her back to me and is in the final stages of getting into bed.

It’s at that moment that I say her name.  She stops and turns to me.  She’s standing there looking at me as I move closer, slowly, taking my time in my approach.  When I’m finally standing before  her I take my time looking at her, gazing into her eyes, and she back into mine–

Then I slowly reach up and gently remove her glasses.

I take them off, my eyes never leaving hers the whole time.  Once I have them off, and I’m holding them close, she gives me a faint smile, because she knows why I did what I did, and she knows the meaning behind the gesture.  There is a slight beat, and then I see her eyes moisten, followed by a single tear trickling down her right cheeks.

And then she says something.  She says it in a very soft voice, but one choked with emotion.  Her words are simple, but they cut right to my heart, because I know what she means by them.

She says nothing more than, “Yes, you do.”

I return her glasses to her.  She places them on the nightstand, then turns to me–and we kiss as the dream fads to black.

There is power in my memories, in my imagination.  I know what I can do these days, and that, the more I work at my craft, the better I’ll become.

But I also know that, now, I can go places I’ve never would before.  And I’ll get there.  I only have to let fate do its thing while I give it a tiny exertions of pressure now and then.

I don’t mind being The Girl Who Waited.

Because I know how this story ends.

The Dark Definitions

There was this recurring dream I would have.  I’d be at my uncle’s house, wandering about the “common areas” like the living room, dining room, kitchen–all the stuff most people see when they visit.  The reason I think of this as being my uncle’s house is that, when I was growing up, my mother’s brother was rich.  I’m talking like worth twenty million in the late-1960′s, which was some real walking around money then.  In 1966 he built a house in the western suburbs of Chicago, said price of the house being $150,000–and he used to tell us it was the cheapest house in the neighborhood where he lived.  It was a big house, or at least a lot bigger than the houses of anyone I knew at the time, and it used to fascinate me greatly.

Anyway, in this dream . . . there are all these areas that everyone sees, but it always seems that I find my way into other sections of the house.  And I know all these sections have things in them.  You know what I’m talking about:  things that Man Are Not Meant to Know.  The two parts that always come to mind is a study that you have to reach by walking through all these twisting corridors and connected rooms, and when you finally come upon the study, it’s long and paneled in a dark brown wood, and there is dim light filtering in through yellow curtained windows, and at the far end there’s a door with a small window in it, and there is no light coming from that window:  it’s pitch black.

I’ve always wanted to find out what’s on the other side of that door, but something in the dream keeps me away.  I can never approach it, I can never get near it.  Because when I do, I feel my fear increase.  There’s something on the other end of the door that scares the hell out of me.

Then there’s “The Big House”, or so I call it.  It’s a very long corridor which enters these large rooms, and the further along the corridor you walk, the older and less maintained the rooms and corridor become, so by the time you’ve passed through three or four large rooms, you can see the paneling falling apart, and the ceiling plaster beginning to flake, and the light grows much dimmer . . .

This part has always scared the hell out of me because I know there is something in the shadows–and I don’t mean “The Shadows That Melt the Flesh“.  Whenever I’ve “walked” through this part of the house, I’ve felt it.  It disturbs me.  A few times I’ve reach a part of the corridor where there is nothing but darkness beyond.  There is solid darkness.  There is a void that light cannot reach.

It’s pretty freakin’ scary.

I haven’t had this dream in a while.  The last time I did, back in mid-December, I blogged about it (when don’t I do that?). And something that happened in that dream sort of ended up in a story I was writing at the time–that story being Echoes.  But three things got me thinking about this when I got online this morning–

One, I checked my blog stats, and found that someone had Googled my blog–and they’d done so using the exact title of the post I linked to above.  I consider that one of those freaky things that happen in your life.  It’s almost made a bit creepier when I found out it was done at 2 AM my time.

Two, yesterday someone Googled my blog using my name, followed by “Wide Awake”.  Not me, people.  And that was one of those things that also set me back on my heels, because no one has every come to my blog before using my name.  They usually find me by Googling “erotic slave girls” or “alien girls experiment”, which are two actual search terms from the last seven days.  (I also had someone find me using the phrase “tseluvki”, which also happens to be in the titles of one of my posts.  Freaky.)

But, three:  last night was another of those strange nights.  I burned through Chapter 6 of Couples Dance, and it was all good.  I ended up with a bit over eight thousand words for the chapter, added just over 380 words, and bringing the total word count to a little over 37,100 words.  Between bouts of editing, I looked hard at the story and wondering, “Do I need to add something?”  Was there anything that needed to go into place that would make the story better?  That’s always a good question, because if you add something to your story, it damn sure had better enhance the experience.  I’ve always said that a story should be a long as it needs to be, and anything else is just taking away from what you’re trying to say.

When I was doing the first draft of Couples Dance, however, I kept thinking, “I’m leaving something out.”  It always felt like I was missing something.  I looked at my Scrivener cork board and thought, “What am I missing?”  And then I had a thought; something in the house, something at night, something that brings out the goose flesh on one of the main characters.

So I threw in a note card and that was that.

Then I went to bed.  And had a dream . . .

There were a lot of things going on, but primary were two.  One, there was all sorts of shadows around me.  Dangerous shadows.  I knew that because there was this feeling . . . it was the same sort of feeling I’ve had when I’m in the Big House, and I find pools of black.  There’s something there; don’t go.  This was very unnerving, however, as I seemed to be surrounded on all sides at times by these shadows, and while they never got close to me, their mere presence scared the hell out of me.

And there seems to be some kind of on-going dialog on this electronic device.  It was telling me about love, and how love was defined, and how, for me . . . well, lets just say I was coming up a loser in that area.  It kept informing me that something I wanted I could never have, and the harder I tried, the less of a chance I’d have to achieve my goal.

It left me disturbed when I woke up, because this dream seemed to go on and on for a long time.  And it always came back to shadows and the inability to find something I desired.

I’m trying not to wrap my head around this too much, though I feel there is something there, in that dream, that was related to my editing.  Perhaps it’s telling me something, and I haven’t heard the message yet.  Or, perhaps, it was only messing with my mind.

Perhaps there is something far more ominous there, and I haven’t seen it–

Because I’m afraid to venture into the shadows.