Fly Me Away

I was flying with Annie last night.

After a long week–after a long day–I finally was able to crawl off to bed and get some sleep.  Seriously, I think I was barely able to get comfortable before I was sound asleep.  Because, up to that point, I was running on empty.

Didn’t keep me from working, however.  While it was slow coming out, and my head really wasn’t in it, I churned out another 625 words for the current part of Diners at the Memory’s End.  I liked what I was writing, actually, because it was sort of a affirmation from my other major character, Albert, about why he was feeling like a total shit.  Yes, he got conjugal with his study partner, Meredith, and while it might have felt good at the time, right now he’s feeling a lot of stress over what happened.  He’s never been in this sort of situation before, having a steady relationship and ending up sleeping with someone else, and it’s twisting his mind around, and not in good ways.

It doesn’t help that when your girlfriend, lover, and companion actually arrives by floating up the sided of forty meter high tower, and hovering off the side just so she can scare the shit out of you–yeah, you’re a little out of your class already.

If not for the fact that I was falling asleep while I was writing, I might have actually hit a thousand words last night.  That used to be the norm, but these days it seems the exception to the rule.  I’m going to fix that, trust me.  I probably need to stop chatting it up at the Mean Girls Table, trading our lunchroom advice to each other as we scope out all the other writers were ready to hate.  Like, you split an infinitive; you are like soooooo lame.

So then it was off to bed, and to my dreams.

I haven’t remembered much of my dreams these days, but last night I was back in vivid dreaming land.  Something about creatures growing, and people telling me where I could go and what I could do–yeah, I get that.  I’ve been going through that a lot of late.

That part I only partially remember.  Because there was a point where Annie showed up, and she flew me away.

I haven’t dreamt of Annie in a long time.  Which is a shame, because I used to love seeing her in my dreams.  She’s always been someone special to me.  After all the frustration I had trying to bring her story to fruition–and to bring it out correctly–she vanished from my mind.

But I was thinking of Kerry the other night, and here, suddenly, Annie shows up, broom in hand, and handed me mine, and tells me, “Let go while the light is good.”  And my younger self–because I am young, maybe thirteen–I straddle my broom and follow her off into the sky.

There was a part where some hicks were pointing at and making fun of us, but that was a minor part.  The rest of the time it was Annie and I, in our flying clothes, zipping through the sky at 80 mph.  We were chatting, but I couldn’t tell you what we were saying, because there was nothing but blue and sun and light clouds around us.  Every so often she’d turn to me, and smile, and something I felt a long time ago returned, something I haven’t felt in a while, and something that I’ve needed for a while.

If only for a little while, it was good the share the sky with someone close.

For when you do, you know they are never far away.

The Breaking Bad Two Step

Oh, is it nice to be done with yesterday.  Well, sort of.  It would seem I’ve got an ear infection starting this morning–don’t ask how, just to say it’s there, and I can’t find the antiseptic that’s suppose to be in the house.  Oh, sure, I could ask, but I’m afraid I’m going to get rolling eyes when I do, like, “Oh, you can’t find it?  Men.”

Yeah, it’s that sort of morning.

But, yesterday:  up early, writing, editing, writing, going to movies, relaxing, chatting . . . not getting to bed until about 1 AM.  Long day.  Up at 6 today, so 5 hours of sleep under the pillow.

There was a very short discussion about trolling last night.  One person seemed to think the idea that getting the IP addresses of people who were, let us say, a bit too excessive in their online commenting was laughable; I thought in some instances, if people are getting down right hateful with their “opinions”, then I didn’t see a problem, sometimes you do have to go after people and tell them to shut the hell up.

The other person tried to sorta forward the opinion that, like on 4chan, if you troll, expect to get flamed right back . . .

And as they Ninth Doctor once said, “And with that sentence, you just lost the right to even talk to me.”

Let me use, as an example, someone I used to game with.  As in role playing game with.  As in, lets play pretend and have a good time.  For the most part games want to have a good time.  They want to play, they want to enjoy the adventure.

This guy . . . not so much.

He liked to yell.  He liked to belittle.  He loved to tell people what idiots they were.  We had an online forum where we could chat.  He would continue his crap there, posting comments in 72 point type so you’d know, when he called you nine different kinds of fucking idiot for something something he didn’t like, you’d see.  If you deleted one of his posts–which some of us could do for a while–he’d bitch that you were a coward because you didn’t want to hear about why you were such a lame jerkoff.

And when he’d finally get called out on his crap and told to knock it off, his fallback was always, “You have to excuse me:  I’m an asshole, and I know it.”

Oh, okay.  So when you made that totally unnecessarily comment about my daughter, it’s okay, you’re just an asshole, I understand.

Since I know a number of writers, there’s been tons said about people who show up in comment sections and leave a critique that amounts to little more than, “Ur novil sux, lutz!” before it goes on to mention that not only does it suck, but you should blind yourself out of shame for having created such a shitty tome.  And those are the kind ones . . .

I’ve yet to encounter these people who want to break bad on you just for the sake of breaking bad, of going off on you because–who knows why.  They’re jerks, losers, assholes:  take your pick.  A lot of it is that I don’t think they get creativity, that it’s just way beyond their ability to understand what it takes to produce something that’s even the slightest bit good.

It takes a lot of energy to get into something good and spread the word to others so they may enjoy, while it would appear that going on about how much something sucks is an easy thing.  To discuss the goodness of something requires some modicum of critical thinking, while hating on anything requires a glare and the ability to type, “You suck!”, and there you have it.  What more is needed?

Other than doing the one millionth Facebook share of a picture meme that tells everyone just how sucky Twilight is because the vampires sparkle.  Boy, you just showed Steph, didn’t you?

I have enough negative energy around me, and if you want to continue to give me more by giving me a bad review, or simply telling me I suck so bad I should kill myself–don’t waste your time.  I’m gonna go forward with the attitude, “Haters gonna hate,” and leave you to whatever pus-filled mind set you’ve fostered over the years.  I no longer have time for people who want to bring me down, who want sow my world with disorder.

Be part of my solution, because you damn sure aren’t going to be another of my problems.

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.

Penultimate Daydream

Here it is, 4:43 AM, but because I’m one of those Central Standard Time people who are working in an Eastern Standard Time zone, it’s really a quarter to four in the morning as far as my internal clock is concerned.  This time zone flipping really messes with me, mostly because I’m heading off to bed at 10 PM my time, and then . . . well, I’m telling you what I’m doing now, aren’t I?

Maybe one of the reasons I’m up early is due to dreams.  I don’t know.  Last night I was having something pretty damn strange happening to me, but try as I might, only little bits and pieces are coming back to me.  There was camping out; there was something about having to sleep by myself the whole time; there was something about people laughing at me, and me just sort of taking it–

Screw it.

I did have one dream last night that sort of hit me in the face, however.  Though I’m not really sure if it was a dream, or if I was sort of half-awake, half-asleep, as sometimes happens when you’re tired and you can’t tell where the hell your mind exists.  It’s like this:

Much later this afternoon, after I blow off the hell I call work, I’ll engage in a ritual that I always perform around this time of year.  I have a pretty good idea of where I will conduct this ritual, and as temped as I am to do it on the Statehouse lawn, that would likely see my ass thrown in jail.  Not to mention that my Statehouse lawn fantasies involved Girl Scouts and cookies–not like that.  Get your mind out of the gutter, perv.

Anyway, whatever mode of mental immersion I was in during the night saw me at the location of my ritual, and as I was sitting there, I sort of . . . deflated would be the best work.  I began deflating, as if there were some weight atop me as the air was being let out.

And later, when I was returning to my car, I stop along the way, lean against a building–of which there are many around me–and let out a small, yet not-so-insignificant sob.

Screw all this crap, too.

I know what my mind is telling me; I know what it’d trying to do to me.  It’s trying to get me down, yes it is.  I admit:  I do feel a little down, but not for the reasons one might think.  There is a certain way I’d like to celebrate today’s ritual, but it’s not possible.  It only happens in my mind that way–

The mind is doing some Total Recall shit on me, however.  Next thing you know, it’ll be telling me to get my ass to Mars.

It’s time to stay focused.  Get through the day, do my thing, return to The Undisclosed Location . . . Edit.  Think.  Continue.

It’s this story I’m on, I know it is.  There is too much sadness there.  And the editing is going really well.

Which means I care for this piece a lot.

But then, when don’t I?

Reinventing the Tedious

Believe it or not, the days seem to be getting better.  I know:  that’s not something I talk about a lot.  But it would seem that I’ve reached some kind of . . . I don’t know?  Equilibrium?  Without having to kill Sean Bean, that is.

It seems like even work–that existential placeholder for what passes for my personal Hell–isn’t that bad these days.  Yes, I’d rather be off doing something else, and I still hate this quiet, uninteresting office, but I’m surviving.

Perhaps I feel invigorated by this idea of collaborating on a story.  I’ve been working in the wasteland for such a long time that I feel that need to connect with someone I know very well, and to be creative with them, that it’s jacking my senses in a good way.  Then again, Annie always does that to me.  After all, we have collaborated in this story, when it was role playing comments.  We know where we can go with the story.  And I know the world in which we can write our characters, so it’s very much win-win.

I even managed to get a good response from Annie when I explained to her how magic in this world works.  One can do some major damage with certain kinds of magic, and . . . I think I impressed her.

I always enjoy impressing Annie.

There is also the ongoing editing of Couples Dance.  I was into one of the strangest scenes last night, seventeen hundred sixty words of a pretty madding scene, and even though I wanted editing to be over, I was enjoying the process of polishing the scene.  The more I play with these editing thing, the more I enjoy it.  I don’t think I’ll ever like it completely, but what writer ever does?  One can see just how the story really comes together, however.  It’s a skill to learn, one to improve upon.  The better I get at this, the better my stories will get.

There was an interesting moment for me last night, however . . .

The lights were out and I was in bed, trying to get comfortable.  So I’m laying there, closing my eyes . . .

And it felt like there was someone else in the room.  Not in a good way, either.

The reality was, it felt as if the person entering the bedroom was Samara Morgan (or Yamamura Sadako, if you prefer) from The Ring movies.  And it wasn’t cute little Samara coming to tuck me in–no, it was “Crawl Out of the TV and Eat Your Soul!” Samara.  She was right there, behind me, looking at my trying to sleep, stepping a little closer, reaching out, getting ready to touch . . .

Smiling the whole time.

Needless to say, for about five minutes I felt like I was in the grips of the night terrors.  It didn’t go away until I actually made myself turn and look to see if she was actually there.

She wasn’t.  So I was able to sleep.

That’s the first time that’s happened in a very long time.  It also made me wonder if there could be a story in what happened to me.

Maybe I should make notes about it . . .

Oh, wait:  I just did.

The New Universe Order

What a busy day yesterday.  And I didn’t get a lick of writing done.  No, really: I didn’t work on Couples Dance at all.  No writing, no editing, no nothing.  I let it smolder and enjoy the quiet that comes from just sitting on my hard drive with pictures and stories and programs that may or may not find use today.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t get anything done.  Oh, please: far from it.

I blogged in the morning, which is par for the course.  I did a blog on one of my dreams, which is something I talk about from time-to-time.  Then I had other things to do, things that kept me busy until at least 1 PM.  Then I’m online finally–

And there’s Annie.  Hello, Annie!

We chatted for some time.  She read my post–and loved it–then we spoke about Cassidy, whom she knows about.  Oh, when it comes to Kerry, she knows everything.  And we got into a discussion about Kerry, and Cassidy, and Annie.  I did most of the talking, because I’m pretty mouthy when I want to be, and even though we’re only typing, you know what I mean.

So I’m going on about what I’m thinking about this Young Adult idea about taking our characters, characters we began working on over a year ago, and how I can transplant them into a world I created for my NaNo Novel, and this and that, and then . . .

Let me back up a moment.  I wrote about the ideas I’ve had for this story last week.  That’s how I am; something begins germinating and I can’t get it out of my head.

However, since Wednesday I’ve had this uneasy feeling.  It’s as if something is telling me, “Are you sure you’re ready for this?  Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”  Nothing I really wanted to talk about, but it was there enough that it was bugging the hell out of me.

. . . Then I’m speaking to Annie, telling her about my ideas, telling her about Kerry, and she says something–words that drilled me on the spot:

“You’re telling this story from Kerry’s PoV.  You’re turning Annie into a sidekick.”

She was absolutely correct.

Let’s put this into context.  My stories tend to revolve around female characters.  It’s the way I am, the way I roll.  Sure, I’ve written some very good male characters, but most of  them tend to be female.

Annie is, however, someone completely different.  While I think I know her, I don’t, because I didn’t create her.  When I’ve written scenes for Kerry to interact with Annie, Annie’s creator has been on the other side, driving her personality.  Because she does this, I can’t say I know what’s up with Annie.  I have an idea in my head, but Annie’s creator–she enjoys keeping me hopping.  She throws me curves; she gives me change ups.  As Annie’s Annie like to say, “You never know what I’m going to do.”

As usual, she is very much right.

Annie isn’t my character, so when I’m thinking of “story”, I find I tend to marginalize her.  I admitted as much to Annie’s creator, and said, “I can’t write her as I see her now; I’d turn her into a shade.”  There in lay the big problem:  the story is about them, Annie and Kerry, not Kerry and His Amazing Sorceress Girlfriend Who I Might End Up Naming Bella If I’m Not Careful.  Without them together as partners, without it being their story, there is no story.

So last night I was out visiting friends.  Coming home near midnight, with the night cloudy, the roads clear, and the miles ticking away, I tried to get into Annie’s head.  I do that a lot when I’m trying to figure out a character, figure out where they’re at, where they’re going.  Since this idea of getting a story around these two originated with putting them into the universe I created for my NaNo Novel, Her Demonic Majesty, I thought of a meeting between Annie and Jeannette, the main character from my NaNo Novel, being held in the later’s Murder Castle (no, really, that’s what it is) in Chicago.

It was short and sweet and came out like this:

 

Annie followed Jeannette into the library.  ”Oh, very nice,” she said, her eyes moving to selected volumes inside the large room.  ”Lots of books here.”

Jeannette closed the door.  ”And there’s two more like this.”  Not to mention that little room just off my bedroom.  ”So what’s on your mind?”

Annie glanced to the large, soft chair to her left, letting her gaze linger there before ignoring it and returning her attention to Jeannette.  ”I have a concern I’d like to discuss–”

Since the girl decided to stand, Jeannette felt it would show very poor manors to flop her ass down upon the sofa.  ”Is this something that concerns Kerry?  Maybe we should get him, too.”

A subtle change drew over Annie’s face.  One moment she was a young tween witch asking a question, and the next . . . Jeannette saw the disapproval in her eyes, and she saw it too late.  ”Kerry’s important to me,” she said in a firm, clipped tone, “and will remain that way for a very long time.  There’s someone, though, who’s equally important–”

“Who?”

“Me.”  Annie’s hard glare seized Jeannette, preventing her from looking away.  ”I love him; I will always support him.”  Her tone and manner was not that of preteen, but rather of a young woman who wouldn’t be marginalized.  ”That doesn’t mean I’m his crutch.  You’d do well to remember.”

Jeannette clucked her tongue, then screwed up her face in an attempt at being self effacing.  I totally failed The Bechdel Test, didn’t I? she thought.  Rather than apologize for her comment, Jeannette moved forward, deciding to re-focus the conversation.  ”So, then:  what’s your concern?”

 

I don’t know.  It’s a good start, and it’s something that I can work with.

But I know, after talking yesterday, I need the real Annie to help me.

She wants to help; she wants to collaborate.  We both know that without her input, the story won’t live as it should.  And I would never want to create a story that feels half-assed.

Not feeling the way I feel about these characters.

So, new plan!  Finish the edits on Couples Dance, and look for publishers, and . . . get note together to pass along to the Real Annie so she can get familiar with the world I’ve created.  Then we’ll brain storm some scenes, get a feel for things–

Then what next?  Writing?

You never know what tomorrow will bring, right?

Sweltering Storyvilles

Beware Pi Day, because it gave me a whammy.

The last couple of days have been one of frustration here at The Undisclosed Location.  The temps are going up outside, which mean the temps are going up inside.  However, my A/C isn’t working, and trying to get someone from the office that takes care of my domicile to understand that (1), it’s very warm in my little hole away from home, and someone should fix it, and (2), keeping the, ah-hem, windows open isn’t really an option, as it doesn’t really cool the place off much, and about one hundred feet from my windows is an 8-lane interstate.

They’ve indicated they’ll “get on it” today.  For their sake, I hope so, because I don’t think they’ll enjoy me camping out on their doorstep every day.

There were also a number of distractions as well.  I need to respond to a few comments that were in need of answering; an interview that I’ve been bugging someone for a couple of weeks on just popped up last night, and, I believe, there’d a deadline of Friday for this to be turned in, which means I have to do it today; I had to hunt up some calculations for someone who is trying to model their own solar system for the first time.

The downside of all this is I didn’t get to Transporting.  At all.  Not a word.

Boo to me.

After three weeks of solid work, it seemed like 10:30 rolled around pretty quickly, and given all that had gone before, I would have gotten to the story . . . but then I looked at the temp in the joint, checked the temp in the bedroom, said, “The hell with it,” and messed around for about 30 minutes before rolling off to sleep.

At least I slept well.  Even if my dreams did consist, in part, of being stuck on a raft in the middle of nowhere, and having a pet octopus trying to drag my ass under . . . good times, I assure you.

Though it wasn’t a complete loss, because speaking of dreams . . .

No, not mine.  Last night one of my distractions was talking to Annie.  Well, her name isn’t really Annie, but she is the one who created Annie, who is the role playing character who is the “girlfriend” of my role playing character, Kerry.  I’ve written about them before–most recently at Christmas–and though they aren’t played these days due to a lot of real life issues getting in our way, I still think of both characters a great deal.

What we discussed, in part, was a dream she had that was sort of about them, and sort of not.  In her dream she’d see us collaborating on a novel about Annie and Kerry; in fact, she’d seen herself holding a finished book of what would appear to be their first year in school.  During our discussion, she mentioned something else:  that she’d had this dream before.

This was extremely interesting, because I’ve had that same dream–and I’ve had it more than once.  As I told her, the last time I had the dream, we were both in the same room, on different computers, finishing up different parts of the manuscript, and bouncing ideas off each other.

Then I told her of an idea I had a while back, early January, maybe late December, that dovetailed into my NaNo Novel.  The idea revolved around a later story with the main character from that novel, and in this story she’d encounter Annie and Kerry and experience a bit of a freak out moment, because she knew them very well–only, she knew them as fictional characters from her “old” world.  The gist of this new story would actually involve my NaNo character taking them back to their school–the one I help build for our role play–and having her discover it, and all the people inside, to be living, breathing people that would make her question her own existence . . .

The thing my Annie liked about this idea was that it was a story.  She said something interesting last night: it was that, right now, our character exist as fan fiction.  There’s nothing wrong with that, however . . . she wants them to have their own stories.  She wants them to have their own world.

She wants them to live their own lives, so to speak.

And I find that to be something I would love as well.

What does this mean?  Does this mean my next project is doing another world build so that two character that another person and myself began developing a year ago, right around this time, can began to exist as their own literary creations?  It doesn’t mean that, not at all.  But you know . . . you give a writer an idea, and before you know it, they’re going to do something with it.  And I already have so many ideas for these two kids that moving on to this wouldn’t be that great of a stretch–

Even when I’m not writing, it seems like I’m writing.

Gotta keep dreamin’, right?

Our Quiet Circle of Madness

It’s close to the full moon again (this month, March, the moon is the Full Worm Moon), which means I was out late again.  Every two weeks I get out, BS with a friend or friends, have some pizza, and talk a bunch of crap.  It’s a good time, one I do look forward to eagerly.

It’s also, unfortunately, about the only face-to-face contact I have with people who are actually, you know, real people.  Nearly everyone I know is online, and when I speak to people I’m speaking to them over the computer.  I know a lot of people from all over the world, but I’ve never met them, and I know I probably never will.  Such is the way life is lived in the 21^st Century.

I shouldn’t say these people are all my friends, because I have a number that are always with me–

The characters I’ve created.

There are many of them, and a few of them I know very well: maybe too well.  Over time some of them have become very real to me, and as I’ve developed them in my head, they’ve developed as “real” people.

As I’ve stated here, on this page, before, it’s not unusual for me to “talk out” scenes with my characters.  Sometimes this is done to help me figure out how I want to write a scene, sometimes it’s just an exercise for me to work out a history for my characters, to see how they act at a certain point in their lives.  It’s something that I do quite often, and because I do spend a lot of time alone, it’s easy to do that.

Last night was no different.  It was a full-blown conversation between my gaming character Kerry, fresh back from a summer spent roaming around England with this girlfriend, Annie, and his school’s head nurse, Coraline, a very friendly woman who was, literally, one of the first people Annie and he ever met, and the person who somehow clued him into the ways of love.  Last night’s conversation had Kerry returning for his penultimate year at school, and he and Nurse Coraline were discussing and event that had happened to her when she’d been in school–a duel she’d had with a boy during her 6th Year.

In the discussion it came out that the boy had developed a crush on her years before, one that she didn’t reciprocate.  His attempts to get her to go out with him eventually turned from cute to annoying, to aggressively disturbing.  Finally, after yet another turn-down, said boy decided he’d had enough with getting rejected, and as a parting shot, he first squeezed her breasts very, very hard, then slapped her when she had the enormity to push him away.

Being the sort of girl who didn’t take crap, Coraline challenged said molester to a duel, and–in her telling to Kerry of what went down–the proceeded to mess this kid up in very short order.  Or, as she said, “Never duel a Healer: they know exactly what to hit to make you hurt the most.”  In her case, she took twenty seconds to snap both her opponent’s ankles, which pretty much shocked the hell out of everyone watching.

What I began wondering this morning was, “Is is normal to have more of a stimulating relationship with your characters than it is to have one with real people?”  Some of my characters are, in fact, very real to me, and I’m sure that’s true of a lot of writers.  It doesn’t bother me that I get into my character this much that I spend so much time trying to see what makes them tick, even when I know some of what I work out may never, ever, be written down and see the light of day.

Are other writers like me and surround themselves with a small circle of imaginary friends who, after a while, become extremely real?  Are they real to me in the same way the people around me are real, or do I take my interest in these characters are little too far.

For when I’m with my characters, I’m also with my Muse, and that is a very comforting feeling.

If nothing else, we all deserve comfort.  But is it right that the ones who bring it are but mere scribbling on a screen?

Could be worse; could be no one at all . . .

Ode to the Muse

I am not one to get gushy over Valentine’s Day.  For me, as with most holidays, it’s just another day to me, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing special.

I think that’s because, over the years, it’s caused me a lot of pain.

The other day I was speaking with my daughter and the subject of valentines being given by classmates came up.  Apparently this is something that’s not done in her school, but “back in my day” it was a pretty common occurring up to about 5th Grade.  And when I remembered those times, it also brought up a memory that I’d rather not have had:

I never got a valentine when I was in grade school.

On reflection that shouldn’t matter at all, not in the grand scheme of things, but it did sting a little to bring it up.  It’s a very insignificant thing, but still . . . it didn’t do much for my formative years to feel like I wasn’t wanted.  And considering how my parents were doing the same thing to me, by the time I reached my teen years I was a true mess when it came to love and affection.

During my first marriage I went out for two Valentine’s Day dinners, and both times we ended up in huge fights over things that, in reflection, were really minor.  But my first wife loved to push buttons, and she knew how to do it with me.  I even remember, during the second dinner, she kept going back to the same subject over and over, even after I told her I didn’t want to discuss the subject, not over what was suppose to be a romantic dinner.  No, she wanted to go there, and she wouldn’t stop until I said something that she could later hold over me as proof that I was an insensitive prick.

That’s been my life in the realm of love.  Usually one huge disappointment after another.

There has been some romance in my writing, though not a lot.  My first forever-work-in-progress novel, Transporting, is a love story of sorts.  You have one person who wants it very badly, and another person for whom is seems they will never, ever love, and part of the story discusses how they get to the end of their respective journeys.  Recently I wrote another story, Echoes, which takes place years after the events in Transporting, and brings up a secret that one of the main characters had: that he’d been in love with someone once, that that in coming to his new home he’d left her behind, and now he wanted to know what had happened to this person he’d felt so attracted towards.

It wasn’t an easy story to write, because it was, to me, very personal.  Some of the things felt by my main character are some of the same feelings I have towards my Muse.

My Muse is a very special creature, because they got me writing again.  I was sinking into the depths of depression once more last year, and they connected with me, worked with me, made me feel better . . . and in time made me not only feel like I could write, but that people would be interested in what I had to say.

At first I didn’t know if such a thing was possible, but little by little I began to believe.  I began to understand.  And, eventually, I knew that everything they told me was real.  That if I wrote every day, good things would happen.  That I would develop my craft.  That I would find people who wanted to read my work.

That I would even get published.

I feel a great deal of affection for my Muse, because they have shown me things that I didn’t know I could do.  They’ve made me go places I haven’t been able to go before.  And they make me want to open up, play with my emotions, and put those feelings on the page.

I know what they’ll say:  ”Everything that you’ve done comes from you.”  True.  But without my Muse having been there for me, I wouldn’t have tried to pull out anything.  I would have been satisfied to do nothing.

When you read anything that I’ve written, it is there because of my Muse.  If not for them being a part of my life, I might not ever write another word.  And I might not know how to find those emotions that I need to make my characters feel real.

The best valentine ever is having your Muse whisper, “You’re the writer I’ve always wanted you to be.  And you’re only going to get better.”

It’s the one feeling I look forward to every day.

Tri Tseluvki za Nova Godina

Being sick is a pain.  Here I am, back at work, and the last 5 days I’ve not only been sick, but it’s resisting treatment like a mother.  Three years sitting at home and I had one sniffle.  Back to work–BOOM!  Sick.  Coincidence?  I think not!

It didn’t help that I had to so a lot of running yesterday.  Friday was a long drive, and yesterday I spent the day with my daughter, who was doing a competition for her middle school orchestra.  She plays cello, and plays very well, and she was part of a group ensemble as well as a member of a quartet.  So it was run her over to the school, wait around, watch her play, wait some more, run some more . . . it was pretty much a most of the day thing for me.

Since I wasn’t writing, I was thinking.  Thinking about stories, but mostly . . . I was thinking about Kerry.

Kerry is an old role playing character who is, at the moment, on hold.  The game, that is; it’s sort of in limbo.  Kerry’s girlfriend, Annie, has been way busy and real life, and because of that it’s been pretty much impossible for her to do anything with her character.

That doesn’t mean I don’t.  I dream up story lines for them all the time; it’s something I do to keep me amused.  And to keep the brain working, because the moment you let the idea machine die down, then you’re screwed.  You might be able to get work churning out scripts for Micheal Bay movies, but that’s about all you’re going to do, my friend.

My mind went to a part of history that, for Kerry and Annie, takes place from Boxing Day, 2015, to New Years Day, 2016.  At that point he’s 15 and she’s 16, they’re on holiday from school, and Annie’s gotten permission to visit her boyfriend for the holidays.  Both parents know, so all is cool.  Kerry lives in Cardiff, Wales, and Annie lives in Pamporovo, Bulgaria, and getting from Point A to Point B takes very little time, since they use magic to get around.

Yeah, Kerry and Annie are able to do that.  Very cool when you’re able to skip flying coach for 5 hours.

So everything is set for the Yule visit.  The plans were made back in August, things were made very cool, parents are looking forward to letting the kids spend more time together–

Yeah, but lets throw in a twist of semi-epic proportions.

See, Kerry has a problem.  Well, it’s not a problem, but it can be a freak-out for people who aren’t quite used to having an open mind:

Kerry’s also a girl.

Not a girl in that he’s got both genitals or something like that.  Nope.  In his history he finds out that he would have had a sister, but two years before he was born his mother miscarried with her.  It would seem, however, that something of her was left behind, and when Kerry was conceived and began to develop, this–call it an essence–latched on and became part of him.

So, for the longest time, deep down inside he had this female part of him that was always there, but could only appear when he wanted it to show.  And once he began learning transformitive magic, this part of him began to knock on his brain and let him know she was there–

So by 2015, Kerry has known he can become a girl, a full and complete girl, and so has Annie.  And so do both sets of parents.

Where does the problem come into play?  Kerry has to have bi-annual physicals, so that the people who keep track of all this magic stuff can see how he and she are developing.  He’s a rather unusual person, and this sort of condition comes around maybe once every 75 to 100 years.  And it was during his physical at the beginning of October that caused all hell to break loose–

That was when “he” had his first period.  Oh, sure, it was a little late, but when you’ve only been a girl part-time, it’s easy to miss that sort of thing.

The sort of it all, when in “girl form”, as Kerry likes to say, he can’t switch back to being Kerry; there’s just too much trauma going on inside to allow it.  So he gets “stuck”, and thus it becomes necessary for him to stay as his now fully actualized female half, Cassidy.

Now, Cassidy is trying to figure out how to control her body, how to lessen her cycles and reduce them to the point where she only has to deal with this for maybe a day, but for now, Kerry has needed to adjust his life so that when it comes time to have “the monthlies”, he becomes Cassidy and . . . deals.

She knows her cycles–which I figured out months ago–and Kerry becomes Cassidy when needed so she can work on her body.  And with her cycles, it turns out that with the coming of the Yule Holiday, it’s going to be Kerry going to bed on Christmas Eve, but it’ll be Cassidy coming down to enjoy Christmas.

So Annie shows up all ready to spend the rest of Yule with her–girlfriend.  Yeah, she’s cool with it.  She knows the guy she fell in love with is inside that cute, red headed (or as Annie and Kerry would say, “ginger”), pink and black glass frame wearing girl, and it’s not stopped them from remaining a couple.

Cassidy still feels a little bad, though.  She’d really wanted Annie to spend time with her as Kerry, but damn that dim red tide, you know?  So, knowing a couple of months before this was coming, Kerry made plans . . .

From Boxing Day to New Year’s Eve, they are out and about, seeing the sights of Cardiff, shopping, relaxing, just being a couple of girls off for Yule.  One day Cassidy teleports Annie and Cassidy’s parent to London for lunch and some sightseeing–yeah, she can do that, and Annie and she are pretty good at that.

But the real fun comes New Year’s Eve.

First, both girls get all dressed up.  Pretty dressed, dress shoes, makeup, hair, jewelry . . . Cassidy actually enjoys this: she was told by a friend to “embrace your inner beauty”, and she does.  Annie knows they are going somewhere for dinner, but she doesn’t know where.

When the time comes, Cassidy and Annie say goodbye to Cassidy’s parents, she takes Annie’s hand, and they teleport–

Off to a restaurant they both visited, and loved, when they were in Paris over the summer.  Annie is very happy, because she remembers the fun they had here, eating and talking and falling even more in love with Kerry, and he with her.  The girls enjoy their evening, but when 10:30 rolls around Cassidy says they have to go, it’s very important because they have an appointment.

Annie goes along with it, not knowing what’s happening.  She finds out moments later when Cassidy takes her hand, and they teleport again–

This time to Annie’s house in Pamporovo, Bulgaria.  They surprise her parents, who weren’t expecting to see her again until the end of school.  Cassidy said she thought they might enjoying seeing in the new year with Annie, and all do just that, with lots of hugs and toasts and nibbling on little treats that Annie’s mother just happened to make.

Of course, at midnight, Cassidy and Annie steal out onto her back porch, and have a kiss, something quick but passionate, because Annie doesn’t want to be discovered.

It’s 12:30 AM, and time to go.  Cassidy takes Annie’s hand and they teleport–

Back to Paris.  See, Bulgaria is GMT +2, and Paris is GMT +1, so it’s 11:30 PM back in the City of Lights, which means it’s still 2015.  Time to bring in the new year again, and they do so from the roof of a building, surrounded by a few other wizards and witches who are enjoying the fireworks going off around the Eiffel Tower.

They wait until almost 12:30 again, and once more Cassidy teleports them–

Back to her home.  Cardiff is GMT +0 time, and once again they’re back in the last half hour of 2015.  They explain what they’ve done, which Cassidy’s parents find amazing.  But when you have a son/daughter with magical powers, hey, this becomes the norm.

And at the stoke of midnight Cassidy and Annie creep into the kitchen and have another kiss, and this time Annie says the words that make up the title of this post (translated: “Three kisses for New Years”), followed by, “How can I be so lucky to have you?”

The story didn’t stop there, however.  Oh, no.  They finally go off to bed.  They are sharing a room–why not?  They’re both girls, right?  No harm there.  Of course, when they’re getting ready, Annie is very huggy, and very kissy, and as the lights in the room go off, it seems as if they’ve left their flannels on the floor and that they’re going to do something they’ve yet to explore–

I have to admit, I whispered Annie’s name as I climbed into bed myself last night.  Not surprising: I’m close to Annie’s “owner”, I guess you could say, and I miss our interaction.  And of late there has been a lot of loneliness in my life, so slipping back into the lives of Annie and Kerry–and by extension, Cassidy–not only helped pass the time while I waited for my daughter to play, but helped reaffirm my feelings that love does exist, that it’s there for us to have an enjoy–and sometimes you find that perfect love, like Annie and Kerry have found.  Even when one of them is busting gender lines, it doesn’t stop them loving each other for who they are.

The least any of us could wish for are three kisses on New Years.  And with the coming of tomorrow three times, you have three times to live your life to the fullest–

Or wish for that special someone to come along and make it complete.

The Deviant Wheel is Way Too Squeaky

If you are reading this, let me warn you: I’m going to say some naughty things below this line.  If you are cool with that, come on in.  If not . . . well, you know the rules.  You can always look at this video on Robosnake.

Onward.

If you are, like me, either a writer, or trying to become more of a writer, or you just like to pen fanfic about what really happened in the Sytheren Commons, then there’s a good chance you have an idea about what’s going on in the world of words.  Mostly, you know about contests where you can submit your stories and get some exposure.

It’s easy to do: contests are everywhere.  If you are like me, you belong to some form of social media that keeps you up to date on things, and you’ll get comments from the peanut gallery about what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s to be avoided.

Well, here’s one you don’t have to worry about any more:  Romance Writers Ink’s 2012 “More Than Magic” contest.  Why don’t you have to worry about it?  Because the rubes at Romance Writers Ink are a bunch of crazy jackasses, that’s why.

Here’s the deal: when RWI put up the info for their rules, they were pretty eager to go all sorts of places.  You could submit in just about every area you could imagine.  I mean, everywhere.  It was even indicated that if you wanted to write about aliens coming down and having tentacle rape sex with unwilling men and woman, hey, we’ll find someone to judge your work!  Now, when I think of romance, I don’t automatically shift over to tentacle rape sex, but hey, whatever floats that boat, right?

However, there was one thing that turned their tummies more than the possibility of a story about someone coating their lover in green slime and fucking their brains out.  And that was:

 

“Note: MTM will no longer accept same-sex entries in any category.”

 

You got that?  Submit a romance about a couple into enema porn; submit a romance about a guy who loves his lady so much he lets her masturbate him with a cheese grater; submit a romance about a guy who’s been blinded by his mistress and loves being her bound toilet.  Submit them all.

Just don’t submit a story about Steve and Marty out on a Valentine’s Day dinner discussing their future.  ’Cause, my friends, that’s disturbing.

Fortunately, these rubes caught so much shit about their little “guideline”, that they decided to take their gay-hatting ball and go home.  (I include this link only because I am in love with that picture of John Barrowman.  Deal with it.)  Yep, rather than find someone who could judge a romance story about a couple of 60 year-old lesbians who’d been together for 30 years, they said, “Fuck it; we don’t get why you people are hatin’ on us, we’re outta here.”

The last time I checked it was still near the beginning of the second decade of the 21st Century.  And while I understand the RWI are based out of Oklahoma–home of High School Lesbians Looking to Turn Your Daughters Gai–I’ve seen reports of similar things.  ”No more M/M, F/F.”  Right.  It’s okay to submit something involving M/M/M/M/M/M/M/F, but lets keep the consensual dick sucking off these pages, got it?

I’ve only been publishing for a while–if by while you mean I have one self published horror story and another story that’s soon to be published by an erotica press.  That doesn’t mean I don’t write.  I’ve been writing for years.  I’ve written a lot of erotica fetish fiction–and within that fiction you’ll find a lot of lesbians.  That’s just the way I roll.

And it’s not all about getting down and getting off; one very old story I found involved a lesbian couple working around an extremely unusual curse, but they didn’t care because they truly loved each other, and they figured out how to make it work, curse and all.  My first attempted and soon to be finished novel, Transporting, is, in part, about a relationship between a lesbian who’s repressed in the worst way, and a guy who is probably the strangest transgendered person ever.

If you write about people, if you write romance and/or erotica, you’re going to, eventually, write about same-sex couples.  Why?  Because that’s real shit, people.  Gay people are out there, they exist!  And they are just like . . . everyone.  Want a good job, want a good education, want love, want their kids to have a better life, want the whole fucking dream.

And you’re telling me there are people and publications out there that don’t want me to write about that?  Get the fuck out.

I can tell you when I started to give less of a honey badger shit about who was and wasn’t gay.  Was in a club in Illinois, late 1976, because I was still 19.  Was with friends who was hanging with a couple of their friends.  We got to talking about music, and I mentioned my admiration for the Queen.  One of my friend’s friends screwed up his face and said, “You know Freddie Mercury’s a fag–”

My response was short and sweet.  ”So?  Who gives a fuck?  He’s a great singer.  You’re crazy.”

And that was that.  I didn’t care.  I like the music, I liked him, and when Freddie died I was heartbroken because he was one of my idols.  It’s been like that with a lot of people I have idolized and respect.  My favorite writer, Arthur C. Clark?  Gay.  Elton John, who I also played constantly?  Gay.  The great skeptic and finder of truth James “The Amazing” Randi?  Gay.  The aforementioned John Barrowman, who my daughter and I love as Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Torchwood?  Ah, you haven’t figured out where this is going?

It shouldn’t be a big deal if someone loves someone else and they both have the same genitals.  I mean, why should I be concerned?  And if I want to write about it, I will.  I should be able to do that, right?

But it seems that there are still way too many people out there who think Teh Gai is going to bring about the end of civilization as we know it, and they must be stopped.  First off, civilization as we know it could stand to be improved.  And second:  what fucking planet are you living on?  People have been the way they are, straight, gay, transgendered, whatever, for millennia.  Do you think reading a passage from the Bible is going to change things more to your liking?

These hate mongers, these people who don’t want us to write tales about gay people, who would rather we just ignore it and hope it all goes away, they are the real deviants.  Because they are so wrapped up in their hate they can’t see anything else.  As Bill Maher has said about Rick Santorum, “He thinks more about gay people than gay people.”  When it becomes that much of an obsession that you can’t see anything else, and you spend all your energy trying to make it go away–you, homophobic ladies and gentlemen, are the true deviants.

Have a little bit of history: it can be argued that World War II was won by a gay man.  That man was Alan Turing, and he worked at Bletchley Park breaking the German codes, and once that was done they couldn’t take as shit without the Allies knowing about it.  And then it was discovered he was a homosexual, his life was ruined, and in the end he killed himself by, it is speculated, biting into an apple loaded with cyanide.  And said apple with the piece bitten out of it is, according to legend, found on every Apple Computer today.

Just remember when you power up that Mac, or turn on that iPhone, or read this on your iPad, you are honoring a gay man who would have turned 100 this year.

Enough of this shit.  Let people love who they want, marry who they want.  And let us write what we want.

Stop making us have to deal with your perverted outlook on life.