The First Ember of Regret

Last night I reached a point that I didn’t think I’d ever reach in my writing.  Was it perfection?  Hardly.  I’ll never be a perfect writer, no matter how many millions of words I string together over the next twenty-five years.  Was it a feeling of ineptitude?  Nope.  I’m not an inept writer; I’m learning the craft every day, understanding what can and can’t be done.  Was it hopelessness?  Naw.  I start feeling hopeless enough on things that aren’t writer related that I don’t need it for my writing life.

No, what I felt was regret–over a character I had to kill.

It’s like this:  there is a chapter in Part Three where Jeannette–she who has been chased all over the city so that someone can mount her head on a pike and laugh about it–has finally gotten the upper hand, and has decided the only way to keep people from screwing with her is to lay down her own Hammer of the Goddess.  With that she figures out a way to find the people who’ve been making her life hell–a word only she uses–she goes after them . . .

With no let up, and no mercy.

This means turning her forces loose, and engaging in the magical version of The Chicago Way:  ”They bring a wand, you bring a gargoyle.  They blow off one of your arms, you consume them all in black fire and smile as they die screaming.”  She knows it’s the only way to make the best of a bad situation, and she knows there comes a point where she has to get her own hands dirty in order to make a point.

In the end she decides to take out this guy–

Only . . . he’s not that bad.

Yes, he’s on the wrong side of the line here.  Yes, he’s giving counsel to the bad witch, but for the most part he’s seen a someone standing on the sideline, marginalized by one too many egos in his group.  So in terms of being a bad guy, he’s not that bad.

Still, he’s on the other side of that line, so when the time came for him to die, I smoked him.  I at least gave him a clean death, a warrior’s death, and not the “Imma Cat and I’m gonna make you die horribly” death I gave another character.  But dead is dead, and the dude went down for the count pretty fast.

Right after I edited the scene, that was when the feeling hit:  where I go, “You know, I really feel bad killing this guy.”  The character even admits he escaped death once before, so he knew how not to pee in the wrong pool.  Still . . . it was part of the plan to have him die, and he did.

Case close, even if I did feel a little bad about it.

Maybe I’d have felt better if I’d had a dragon burn his face off.  At least then I could say it wasn’t my fault, blame the dragon–

Naw.  That’s been done.

Though dragons in the story would be cool . . .

How’s That Apocalypse Working For You?

If you’re reading this, you didn’t die in a massive conflagration of natural disasters that has even bored Roland Emmerich to death.  The world didn’t end at 5:11 AM Chicago time, which was when the last Mayan cycle ended, and the next began.  Nothing bad happened that wouldn’t have happened anyway, and things move forward.

Life goes on.

So does the stupidity.

It amazes me how people are so taken in by utter bullshit every day.  A few years ago it was the Rapture that was, for sure, gonna happen in 2011.  People sold off their possession, convinced they were off to meet the lord, but the only way that was going to happen is if they got personal with a Guyana Cocktail.  Before that it was the Heaven’s Gate yahoos, who at least had enough fortitude to carry through on their insanity and leave the world a little more sane.  And before that . . . hell, people, too much, because it seems like someone thinks the world is going to end at any moment, and only the faithful are going to survive–or, if nothing else, be rewarded with a trip to Heaven Land, or some such stupidity.

And you think this is the end?  Not a chance.  We have another Rapture coming up in 2015, because British Methodist theologian Adam Clarke said so, and no other than Sir Issac Newton, claimed that his studies proved that the Rapture couldn’t possibly occur before 2060, so look for the Raptors (Can I call them that without pissing off the real raptors?) to get all jiggy over that one, because, hey, Sir Issac said so!

People are a gullible lot, and the majority of them seem to be on Facebook these days.  Even today I saw another of those, “Can you believe THIS?” memes going around about there being “December 2012 will feature 5 Saturdays, 5 Sundays and 5 Mondays, a combination of days that occurs only once every 823 years,” and you better pass that along so you can make money.

Pure bullshit.

I mean, it only takes a close look at calendars, and a little common sense, to understand that the whole, “I happens once every 823 years” is total crap.  But it’s easier to believe the crap than it is to call it out as illogical claptrap.  Why?  Because of Sturgeon’s Revelation, I suppose.  Harlan Ellison suggested that the Revelation applied to people as well, and in the forty-five years since reading that, I’ve seen little to suggest otherwise.

It’s far better, it would also seem, to just make fun of the lunacy of the event, rather than tell people who appear to even the smallest belief that the End is Nigh, that they are crazy and should either get their head straight, or to keep their insanity to themselves–or, better yet, get help for their delusion.  Because you aren’t helping anyone by professing your opinion that the end of the world is coming, and we gotta get ready.  You’re a problem, and it would be best if you leave us alone.

Oh, is that too mean?  Just ask a “prepper” if I’m wrong, and they’ll tell you I’m the crazy one.  They’ll tell you the end if coming, and you need lots of things:  clothes, food, guns . . . lots of guns.

Just ask Nancy Lanza how that worked out for her.

At Home With the Insane

Lets get this out of the way right now:  I have mental illness.

I was in therapy at ten because I was lonely, frightened, depressed, and didn’t like the company of others.  Well, there were a few reasons leading to that, but part of my problem is that I was bi-polar.  My therapist then was starting to get to the root of things, then my parents pulled me out of there because, one, they didn’t see improvements, and two, they thought the woman who was working with me was putting “strange ideas” in my head.

Let me tell you, she didn’t have to:  there were plenty of strange ideas there already.

I had friends when I was in school, but not a lot.  I started smoking pot in 1972, and drinking a couple of years later.  These days the behavior is called “self medication”; back then it was just getting high.  And I did it quite a lot.  Mostly because it felt good, mostly because it kept whatever demons were chasing my ass away.  I had my books and I had my music, but I also had my “medication”.

There were some incidences of bullying in school, but nothing really physical.  It was all mental, all designed to wear you down and break you.  At the end of the day, when I walked home from school–because after a while I was afraid to take the bus, and I didn’t want to be with other kids–I’d sometimes find a moment, while alone in the woods, to cry a bit.  I did that often, and it bothered my parents when they saw it happen, so I only allowed myself the chance to do this when I was by myself, and there was no chance of being discovered.

There was a place where we used to get our drugs, and sometimes even our booze.  The home was owned by a husband and wife, with the husband’s brother living with them as well, and they seemed to be able to get their hands on just about any kind of drug you wanted.  For the most part I was interested in pot, but they let it be known that they could get their hands on just about anything . . .

And not just drugs, either.

There was one time when a friend and I stopped over to see them, to buy a bag, and the brother wanted to show me the latest acquisition–which were not drugs.  I didn’t get a full tally of what they had, but I do remember four M-16′s, a couple of boxes of grenades, and . . .

See, the story they were giving us was they’d knocked over a National Guard armory a few nights before, which may or may not have been true.   This was 1973, Vietnam was winding down, and who the hell knew what was being kept in some of these places?  In all likelihood they’d traded a lot of kilos of drugs for weapons, but since I knew these guys were a bit crazy themselves, it was just as likely they’d knocked over an armory.

But lets get to the payoff, the item hinted upon.  The brother opened up as case and said, “Hey, I got twenty kilos of C-4.  I’ll let you have it for $250:  I’ll even throw in the detonators and det cord.”

So lets review:  a guy I knew was offering to sell me about forty-five pounds of high explosives, along with the means to use it, all for $250.  Which I happened to have.

I said no, because . . . well, what was I going to do with twenty kilos of C-4?

Let me also state this:  I was very smart and very imaginative back then.  I was also pissed off and scared and upset a lot as well, and for a few weeks after that incident my fevered little mind thought up all sorts of shit that I could have done with that sort of stash.  The only reason I didn’t?  Stephen King put into words many years later:  ”If you take yourself out, you’re a hero.  If you take out others when you take yourself out, you’re chickenshit.”  I hated myself, and a few other people, and if I really wanted to get back at those I hated, I’d get after them, and that would be that.  Anyone else who’d get caught in your madness would just notch you a little higher on the Chickenshit of the Year list.

I won’t say the thoughts of revenge and getting evenness vanished after that time.  Oh, no.  They aren’t there as much any more, but they still show up from time to time.  These days I chalk up thoughts like that as “Research”, because you never know when you’ll need to know, like I did in 1991, how to bring down a very tall office building–say, 125 to 150 stories–with everyone inside.  I spent a few days looking over the office building I worked in at the time, and understood that, if you have the right tools, it’s not that hard.

I did that because I needed a scene for a game I was running.

I don’t act upon any of these ideas–which are research, remember, because I do write; you should see the really bad ones–because I’m not that crazy.  I’m bi-polar, but I can tell the difference between right and wrong, and as ignorant as I have believed most of my co-workers to be from time to time, I’d never do something that would eventually see me labeled as a “disgruntled worker”.  (Does this mean there’s a grunted worker?)  As an atheist I long ago created my moral compass, and have worked at doing the right things because they are right.

Taking out others just because you’re nuts and pissed off at the world is the wrong thing to do.

Probably is, a lot of people don’t have the same moral clarity as I.

If you are mentally ill, getting help is damn near impossible in the U.S..  You are stigmatized because you have a “problem” that you can’t “handle”, and if you just “sucked it up”, you’ll work through it.  That was what I was taught as a kid; it was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now.  It is easier to get access to treatment these days, particularly if you work for a large company, but that’s only come about after more than a few large companies have had their offices shot up by disgruntled workers, and they’d had to go through the hassle of hiring new people.

That was how I got treatment.  The company I was working for had a program, and I basically had to tell my manager I was loosing my shit, and bad things were going to happen if I didn’t get help.  They told me to call the help line to set something up, and then let me go home for the day.  Let me repeat that:  I professed to suicidal behavior, and they had me call a help line, and then sent me home.  Now, I did get in to see a counselor a few days later, and while she was a great person, she couldn’t get me medication.  The only person who could do that was a psychiatrist, but it might be weeks before I could get in and see one of those.  She told me the easiest thing to do was go to the local ER, tell them I was suicidal, then have myself checked into a facility for forty-eight hours–at which point I could get on meds.  Oh, and lets point out:  she couldn’t commit, even with my permission.  I had to do it myself.

That was how I was able to get on medication to help me with my bi-polar disorder, and all it really took was . . . maybe two weeks of speaking to, or seeing, different people.

Good thing I wasn’t having any serious problems.

You wanna have a discussion?  Lets talk about why we have the worst system for mental health this side of the old Soviet Union.  Lets talk about why if you need help, it’s a culture of “Go see them; I can’t do anymore for you”.  Lets talk about why people are vilified and made to think they are even worse than they are if they profess to being sad, or depressed, or if they feel like they have no choice but to hurt themselves.  Lets talk about why we have so many people with mental health issues in the first place, brought about by stress, by over-work, by being made to feel that if they are LBGT they are scum and should probably die anyway.

Lets talk about why it is every time someone who is mentally unbalanced, who isn’t getting help, flips the hell right out and does something horrific, we act so surprised that something like that can happen here.  Lets talk about the idiots who, upon hearing about said horrific thing carried out by the mentally unbalanced, believe the one thing that will fix this problem is arming everyone . . .

Those of you who think that last is the end-all solution to everything, there’s this thing called “Cause and Effect”.  You fix the cause, the effect becomes diminished.  It does work.  Reaction to the effect does little good, because you didn’t prevent the effect from occurring.  That is what the kids these days call Epic Fail.

There needs to be dialog.  There needs to be discussion.  Without discussion there are no solutions.

Without solutions there is no future.

The Witching Month

I love October.  I love the fall.  September never truly feels like fall to me, but once we get into October, then everything starts changing.  The weather changes, the trees change . . .

People change.

Things are in the pipeline.  I need to edit four more chapters for Her Demonic Majesty, and that’s it, she’s ready for the submission to Harper Voyager.  I think there’s about twelve thousand words remaining, and without pushing it, I’ll finish the polish by Thursday.  Then I have Friday and Saturday to get my submission package together, and send it off, I believe, on Saturday.

Then starts the waiting game.

I need to contact the publisher who have Couples Dance.  It’s been more than ninety days since they received the full manuscript, and I believe I’m in the position to submit an inquiry as to their intentions.  Not that I’m worried, but I would like to know what’s happening there.  That’s another of my babies, and I like to keep my babies close to me.

Also, my new Halloween story has started.  The first chapters will post in about fifteen minutes (it’s 7:45 AM as I write), and it will get pimped out all over the place–which means maybe a dozen people will see it.  Until I post a link here, and maybe it’ll get a little more coverage.

Boo!

While driving to The Undisclosed Location, I imagined the aftermath of one of my characters death.  It wasn’t a happy moment, but given the context of the scene in which it happened, it was required.  I will admit:  I have problems killing off some characters.  Some I can’t see letting them die.  Or, if they do die, they go out like heroes.

But death is needed.  Maybe I’m not going to all George R. R. Martin and create a series called, “Yeah, That One Dies As Well,” there is always the possibility that things aren’t always gonna be nice and neat.  Struggle is good, and death could always be lurking around the corner.

Let me get some stories sold, first, before I start whacking out characters in a orgy of snuff writing.  I mean, why do I want to kill people off right away, when they haven’t even stepped onto the stage.  Or I could pull a James Elroy, introduce a character as a main character in one novel, and then kill him in the first five pages of the next novel.  Kinda sets the mood for the current novel, know what I mean?

So, witching time is here . . . change is in the air.  It’s a good time to change up routines and set new goals for ourselves.  For come the end of the month, and the celebration of Samhain, we need to be ready.  The time to dance between the two bonfires will be upon us, and we could all use a little purification, so we can prepare our spirits for the coming year.

Time to come out of the dark and into the light.  Time to make things different.

Fall is in the air.

And so are so many changes.

Dreamers and Demons

So many strange things today.  Let me tell you, I didn’t want to get out of bed, because of the things my mind was showing me last night–

See, the last few weeks I’ve complained that I haven’t seen many of my dreams, that I can’t remember them.  So, as I was dozing off last night–or, I should say, trying to doze off–I was repeating a mantra that I was going to remember, going to remember . . .

Remember I did.  Oh, boy, did I.  Can’t tell you a lot of the detail, but it seemed to consist of (a) being with some woman I’d never seen before showing porn in a classroom full of middle school kids, (b) doing very detailed measurement of certain areas of her body, (c) finding out she was a cop, and lastly, (d) hooking up with her partner and riding shotgun with him as we took some suspect down to a river, left him belted in the car, then went full-on murderball on his ass as we drove the car into the river and let him drown.

Yes, good times had by all!

That was disturbing.  I mean, yeah, I helped smoke some guy in a rather horrible way, and even though it was in my dream, it seemed that, and the sex stuff, was a rather strange way for me subconscious to remind me of–what?  Just want the hell was it telling me?

So into work . . . and I discover, to my embarrassment, it’s the birthday of H. P. Lovecraft.  One of my favorite writers, and here I was completely forgetful that just over a hundred and twenty years ago he was born.  He and his demons, his racism, and his talent.  He was the first horror writer I read, and it was through him I eventually got into Stephen King.  Lovecraft also, in his own way, pushed me into role playing, as Call of Cthulhu, Second Edition, was the first role playing game I bought.

Lovecraft was a guy with a lot of demons.  It seems like anyone creative has some ifrit on their back, and that sucker is constantly flappin’ it wings so it can keep you wrapped up in bad mojo.  This guy laid it all out for everyone to see.  He was a crazy, misogynous, racist dude who wrote crazy fiction–and spent a hell of a lot of time encouraging other writers to keep at their craft.

I posted a happy birthday for him–like he’s going to see it, right?  Well, maybe a Deep One will see it when they check their wall; these days you can never tell.

No sooner do I get that posted that I learn Tony Scott, director and producer, brother of Ridley Scott, jumped to his death yesterday.  He drove out to the Vincent Thomas Bridge, climbed the ten foot fence that’s suppose to keep people from leaping, and went over the side.  They found a note in his office, so it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing: it was something he thought about, and planned.

And executed.

I’ve seen these demons as well; they are the darkness of your life that tries so hard to consume you.  Even today, after decades of fighting them, learning to keep them at bay, they are there, waiting, sort of watching with their yellow eyes, knowing that every so often I’ll slip up, and let them in.

This last time, I did the right thing; I spoke with people, I got help.  Too many don’t.  Too many are consumed.

Gotta fight the darkness.  Never let the demons win.  Gotta stay with your dreams, even when they are strange.

Strange beats dead any day of the week.

The Dark Circus Has Left Town

When Ray Bradbury passed away last week, I had nothing much to say about it, only because everyone else was saying it for me.  I mean, when you have most of the world on the Internet posting their thoughts about the death of one of the last great fantasy writers, what can one say?  ”Sorry he’s gone”?

Can’t even come close.

I was fortunate, in some way, to grow up during the 1960′s, and lean to read at that time.  A lot of my prime reading fodder was from the 1950′s, though it didn’t take long to discover works from earlier.  After all, I was right on the tail end of what was known as The Golden Age of Science Fiction, and saw the beginning of the New Wave.  Science fiction was there by the metric ton, and new things were being written every day–and sold with some of the most incredible covers ever.

While there was a lot of “Space Opera” that caught my attention, among the early novels that caught my eye was The Martian Chronicles.  Yes, my young mind then saw “Mars” and instantly went for the kill, because I was probably going to find some interesting spacy stuff there.  Oh, there was interesting things there, but damned if it had anything to do with science.

Bradbury was, first and foremost, a fantasy writer, and it showed.  Chronicles had as much to do with Mars back then as most of the stories written in the 1950′s and 60′s have to do with Mars these days.  (Arthur Clarke once pointed out that a line in his novel, The Sands of Mars, proved that science fiction writers often find it impossible to predict the future.  The line?  ”There are no mountains on Mars.”  Oops!)  You had golden eyed Martians dying of the flu and turning to ashes.  You had cities of glass spires glistening in the pale light of twin moons.  You had trees popping up over night after a single magical rain.  You had sand boats, and hot dog vendors waiting out the end of the world.

And you had an horror actor who killed a government censor during a reenactment of The Cask of Amontillado.  Because if there was one thing Bradbury believed, it was that if you allowed stupid people to take control of everything, they were going to drag everyone down with them into a morass of ignorance and fear, all in the name of “protection”.

I dug on all this stuff.  This is what gave me a bendy mind.  This is why I hold science fiction to a very high standard to this day, and when you try to tell me, “X is good science fiction,” you’re liable to get a bit of a smackdown.  Yes, I am a grumpy old dude; yes, I also realize my stuff probably isn’t even anywhere near the level of goodness as the people I read growing up.

But I am trying.  I really am.  Because reaching for perfection is a goal all of those writers from the past will laud.

While there were a ton of Bradbury quotes floating about the Internet last week, most missed this one.  Probably because it was from a poem, the only one that was printed in the Dangerous Visions series of books.  And when you want to talk about writers, this not only hits the spot, it kicks it in the crotch:

 

I am the dreamer and the doer
I the hearer and the knower
I the giver and the taker
I the sword and the wound of sword.
If this be true, then let sword fall free from hand.
I embrace myself.
I laugh until I weep
And weep until I smile

Ray Bradbury, from Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972).

 

Sleep well, Dear Sir.  Some of us have taken up the mantle–

And strive to make you proud.