I remember writing a paper for my high school creative writing class which should have been the best thing I wrote all year. I don’t even remember the specific subject, but I recall being extremely familiar with the material and instantly had an outline of what I wanted to write spring into my head. Only..this assignment had a particular format we were required to use and I had far more information than would fit. Not that it stopped me from trying. I wrote and wrote and wrote until my paper was more than twice the length my teacher had requested. Most of the time, when I overshot like that, my grade improved. It was, after all, a creative writing course and if I wrote more than the minimum requirement, that tended to be a good thing. That was not the case with this particular paper. I remember even being vaguely aware that what I was writing was kind of lousy while I was writing it, but I just had so much to say that I couldn’t stop myself. In the end, it was probably the worst thing I wrote during my senior year and, while I received a passing grade, it was a richly deserved “C.” This is a long way of saying that I’m not especially happy with Texoma by Torchlight. The assignment was to mash up two randomly-selected pop culture properties and I wound up with “Snow Crash” and “American Gods.” I know and love both of these books and feel like I have a pretty good handle on the core ideas contained within them. So, I had an unusually good handle on what the assignment required, but my end product isn’t as good as it should have been. Where did I go wrong? 1) The gimmick of trying to write in third person present didn’t suit the story. It might have been a good ploy for one of the two story lines, but it was confusing and awkward the way I wrote it. So, while it was a good exercise, I’d change it if this were work product. 2) The story leans way too much on dialog. I can hear the conversations in my head, and I know who is saying what. I am not reading my own work for the first time, and while there’s some nice dialog in there, there’s too much of it and it’s confusing. 3) This is a constant problem of mine: Stop trying to shoehorn a 10,000 word idea into a 2,000 word story. I’m very pleased with the ideas behind the story. However, the execution was a compromise between what was asked in the assignment and what the ideas really needed to be fleshed out properly. The story may have had an ideal length, but 3,500 words most definitely was not it. 4) Make sure the idea actually involves a story. I love writers like Warren Ellis and Larry Niven who can take one exceedingly weird idea and spin a story out of it. Simply having a good idea isn’t enough. Again, I am very pleased with the way I combined the ideas of “Snow Crash” and “American Gods,” but I’m not sure I actually wound up with a story. 5) Finally, this is supposed to be flash fiction. It might be a good idea to treat it as such rather than agonize over it all week. Writing quickly and instinctively rather than working it all out in advance is an opportunity to work on a different skill set and it’s one I’m going to need in a few months. I know these assignments (and really, there’s not assignments, but it helps me to think of them that way) are really just suggestions to get my creative juices pumping. I’m not required to follow the rules and I don’t mind going way over my word count if the story requires it. I’m writing these for myself as practice, and if the story requires more space, then I’m going to give it more space. What I don’t want to do, though, is to stretch or truncate something to make it fit. That’s the biggest problem I see with “Texoma by Torchlight.” Let’s see if I can do better, or at least avoid this particular pitfalls, next time. -RK
Author: Ridley
New car, caviar, four star day dream
I feel as though half my weekend was spent inside car dealerships. In truth, it wasn’t quite half, but it certainly felt like it. We wound up trading in the beloved but not-especially-wonderful-for-long-road-trips Miata in for a new Mazda3. It seems like an awful lot of car for the money. I have long enough legs that buying pants can be a problem sometimes, and I can’t reach the pedals on the new car with the seat pushed all the way backs. The ride is smooth, handling precise, and moves along nicely. It still feels a little bourgeois to buy a new car, but given that our payments are well south of $300, I don’t feel like it’s too much an extravagance. I’m not going to go in to it too much right now, but football season in England has started and I’m going to be unreasonably obsessed with soccer for the foreseeable future. I’ve been a Leicester City fan since the last millennium and we’ve turned in to one of the most interesting, if not the best, clubs in the Premiership. While basking in the glory of a dodgy-but-satisfying win over West Ham, I wore my #9 Vardy shirt to the market. For the first time since I’ve been supporting the club, someone who was clearly from the U.S. of A. recognized the crest and engaged me in conversation. I get the impression this might happen a little more often in the coming months. I expect I’ll be writing a lot of football this year, but I’ll try to tag those posts in case footie isn’t your “thing.” Now I’m wrapping up the weekend watching the X-Men and Speed Racer animated series. Nothing calms me down like trying get my head around why you’d have a car race through the middle of a mountain to determine whether or not your Aztec-ish nation will open their borders to the rest of the world. It still seems more plausible than Interstellar. -RK
Texoma by Torchlight
In response to Wendig’s flash fiction challenge Another X Meets Y Pop Culture Challenge! I made this tougher on myself than I needed to, but I got Snow Crash meets American Gods. The idea was not to write fan fiction mashing up the two properties, but to do it taking the core motifs of each of them and writing something about where they intersect. Here’s where I went with it: ——————————————– I. “Have we met? You seem kind of familiar,” Danny hears himself asking, not entirely sure what it is about about the other man in the boat he thinks he recognizes. “Nope, probly not. You might ‘a heard of me, tho.” The ragged man guns the little Evenrude at the back of the jon boat that, even in the darkness, Danny knows is absolutely certain to be olive drab. He’s sitting near the bow of the boat, opposite end from its pilot, in the wind and something that was closer to splashing than the more-poetic “spray” and, even though it was hot as Hell tonight, he shivers and tries to make himself small. Danny has no idea where he is or how he got here. Adding to the fucked-uppedness of the situation, he finds himself remembering parts of his chat with the gaunt, bearded fellow at the back of the boat. “You say your name is ‘Kieron’?” The tall boatman faces the waters off to the side of the boat, although no direction looks any different than any other. He doesn’t turn to face Danny, but he lets off the throttle so his passenger can hear him. “Somethin’ like that.” Southern accent, Danny thinks. No, not Southern. Texan. “Where we heading?” “Across,” Kieron answers. His voice doesn’t invite further questions and a wiser man would have paid more attention to his tone. “Not in any hurry to get there, are we?” At this, he turns his head toward Danny. His eyes flicker with red light which might be a reflection of the running lights, even though Danny hadn’t noticed any. “Reckon I’m doin’ you a favor. The two bits your friend gave me back there get you across, but that all they get you. Anything else, you’re relying on my good nature.” There’s no malice in his drawl, but no empathy, either. Danny does the math and quickly comes to the conclusion that Kieron’s good nature is of extremely limited supply and not something one ought to test. He’s damp, the damn boat is bouncing up and down on the waves and making his ass hurt, and he just can’t stop shivering. He still doesn’t know what’s going on, but he does know two things: 1) He’s fortunate to be on this boat right now because 2) Whatever is behind him is about as bad as it can possibly get. II. Danny is in his head now. It’s not a dream, but it’s also not not a dream. He’s in a room that won’t stay one size or shape, a room that expands or contracts depending on where he’s looking. He’s on a plain, stained pine chair which he knows isn’t comfortable even though he can’t feel it. In front of him, no matter which way he looks, is a short man with a Jimmy Durante nose and almost no hair on his head. What little there is looks like it was trimmed with a weed whacker. He’s leaning on a dark cane, probably wood of some sort with snakes carved in to it, his head tilted to the side, regarding Danny. His eyes are bright but blank and he’s smiling faintly. Danny, resigned to the fact that he’s simply not going to get his bearings in this place, decides to talk to the little man. “The fuck, man. What is this? This isn’t real.” The other fellow shook a little as if awakened from the lightest slumber, straightened his head, and responded: “You don’t know what it is and you’re sure it’s not real? Cart before the horse, kiddo.” “Ok, then what’s going on? Is this real?” “Yeah, yeah, that’s better. We’re in your mind, you figured that one out I guess, but is it real? That’s one for the philosophers, ain’t it? Not my thing. I feel it, I touch it, I talk to it? Real enough for me.” “That’s real helpful.” Danny and sarcasm, inseparable since birth. “Who’re you?” “Eh, you wouldn’t know it or know how to say it. Just call me ‘Ask.’ Most folks do, if they call me at all.” “Ask and ye shall receive, huh?” Danny didn’t laugh at his own joke. “Why…why all this?” he asked, waving his arm around the room and regretting it immediately when the vertigo hit. “You’re in trouble kid. Big trouble. I’m tryin’ to help you out, but someone, someone very bad, decided to try to take you down. What’s the last thing you remember?” “I got an e-mail from a girl. Didn’t know her, but she had a pretty name, so I opened it. Started reading, and next thing I know, I’m here.” “Remember what it was about?” “Huh. No, not really. I remember starting to read it and thinking it was weird as hell, but I don’t really remember what was in it.” Danny thought for a moment and then added with obvious disappointment, “No pictures.” “About what I thought.” The gnomish man, who didn’t really look that old, but Danny could tell he was, took a step toward Danny, squinting, mumbling to himself, and scratched his ear, thinking. “Son, you thought the wrong thoughts. You thought some very bad thoughts, some thoughts that messed you up in here,” he waved his cane to indicate the entire room. “I came here to try to help you, but it’s gonna take some work.” “Dude, I read an email. Read. Just reading something isn’t doing anything. It’s not as real as this stupid place.” “Danny, how’m I going to explain this to you? You got computers, right? You people have them now?” “Sure,” Danny responded, because how the Hell do you respond to something like that? “Ok, that’s good. I can explain this to you. Danny, when a computer runs a program, is it doing anything real?” “I guess…maybe?” Ask sighed and mentally backtracks. “Does running a program make changes in…
Struggling with the “flash” part of “flash fiction”
This week’s prompt seems straight forward enough: Write a story based on a mashup of two randomly-selected pop culture properties. This one ought to be in my wheelhouse, but I’m having trouble getting a foothold on my story. Part of the problem is that, when I look at the list, I can see where some of these mashups already exist in one form or the other. ‘The Terminator’ meets ‘Toy Story?’ Let’s see, the essence of ‘The Terminator’ is that its a cautionary tale of machines rising up to destroy their creator. ‘Toy Story,’ of course, concerns it self with childhood playthings come to life. So, throw the two together and you get…’Child’s Play,’ right? The two I got with my first roll of the dice are ‘Snow Crash’ and ‘American Gods.’ At least I’m familiar with the source material in both cases. It does feel kind of like smashing them together might result in something very close to ‘Neuromancer.’ So, I feel like I need to avoid what I think is the most obvious direction for the story. Which ain’t necessarily a bad thing. It is, however, a difficult thing and one which is not coming to me easily. Two glasses of cheap but very drinkable red wine and Genesis’ ‘Selling England by the Pound’ didn’t help at all. Great album, wrong sound track for this story. My hope, as you may have sussed out for yourself, was that by writing this in my journal, I’d nudge the story into existence. I don’t think my cunning plan is going to work. I don’t think this one will be nudged. Excuse me while I go get my sledge… -RK Seriously? Someone went to the trouble to make a Lego version of the costume Peter wore when singing “Dancing With A Moonlit Knight?” Wow…
The Future, Not-Terribly-Distant
A few of quick note since I’m awake: 1) My wife and I have booked a vacation next month. It’s a little on the short side, but I expect Denver is lovely in September. We’re both the sort of travelers who find making too many plans for a holiday more stressful than making too few, so we are a good fit in this regard. She’s never been to Denver; I’ve only passed through, so this will be a new thing for the both of us. 2) I had an Idea yesterday which means I have a starting place for this coming November. Where I wind up may be some place very different, but at least I have place from which to begin. Of course, now I have one hell of a lot of research to do… 3) In the future, I will attempt to refrain from posting after midnight unless I’m drunk enough to be funny when I do it. -RK
Heroes
You all know Plato’s famous Euthyphro dilemma, but it’s worth re-printing here: “Is the pious loved by the Gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the Gods?” Plato’s always a good place to start when discussing the touchy subject of personal heroes, and the Euthyphro is how I like to frame the discussion. I know people, friends and family, who don’t have any heroes because these are people, hey, we’re talking about, and people are flawed, people let you down, people have grey areas and are, in short, not worthy of being put on the Hero pedestal. That’s a point of view I can understand, but it’s not one I subscribe to. For me, a person doesn’t have to be perfect or even exceptionally virtuous to be a hero of mine. My heroes have one or more traits I find exceptional and admirable, or they’ve done exceptional and admirable things. In a more Platonic formulation, I might say “These ideals are heroic, and Bob is my hero because he does them,” as opposed to “Bob is my hero, so the things he does are heroic.” Anyway, this is a long way of getting to saying that Neil Gaiman is a personal hero of mine. It’s not because he writes terrific stories, stories which inspire me and I find myself re-reading over and over. What makes him a hero, to me, is this: He has the extremely rare ability to speak about ideas the sort of ideas which tend to provoke strong, emotional responses in a way that is calm, thoughtful, and definitive in a way that defuses rather than escalates. Here’s Neil Gaiman discussing “political correctness” a couple of years ago: I was reading a book (about interjections, oddly enough) yesterday which included the phrase “In these days of political correctness…” talking about no longer making jokes that denigrated people for their culture or for the colour of their skin. And I thought, “That’s not actually anything to do with ‘political correctness’. That’s just treating other people with respect.” Which made me oddly happy. I started imagining a world in which we replaced the phrase “politically correct” wherever we could with “treating other people with respect”, and it made me smile. You should try it. It’s peculiarly enlightening. I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking “Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!” In a sense, it’s the opposite of trolling. I admire that and recognize that it’s a lot more difficult than it looks. I try to make my point and still be above the fray the way Mr. Gaiman can be, but…well, I’m a bit of a work in progress in that respect. So, count me in the pro-hero column. I admire John Steinbeck and Warren Ellis and Sarah Vowell and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Greg Graffin and many others. I admire them for what they do and say. They’ve all given me something to aspire to be. I think that’s a fine thing so long as I don’t stick them up on a pedestal and say that everything they do is heroic just because they’re the ones doing it. -RK Pictured: Not heroes of mine, but funny.
Sometimes, the spirit can be too willing
For someone who has read, and re-read, every issue of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman,” I don’t know very much about dreams. I know that I have them, and that I seldom remember them, and with one notable exception, they don’t seem to have any literal relationship to anything going on in m life. I guess I know about as much as anyone who dreams. I did have one awful dream when I was going through my divorce, and by “awful” I obviously mean “wonderful.” I dreamed that my soon-to-be-ex-wife had gathered all of my friends and family together and, in front of them all, begged me to take her back. It was an unsually vivid dream and as I was waking, I remember mentally trying to take hold of it and make the dream real. It’s the only dream I’ve ever had that made me cry when I woke up. I’ve been dreaming more vividly lately than any other time I can remember in my life. The dreams haven’t been so obviously tied to any event in my life as the one during my divorce. They tend to involve friends or family in odd contexts doing even odder things. For example, last night, I dreamed that my best friend was taking his dog to visit all seven continents. He took the dog to the continental (and fictitious) “four corners” where four continents met at a single point. It never felt real, and I can’t imagine why I had this dream specifically, but this sort of thing is happening almost every night these days. My wife mentioned that she understood dreams to be how your mind “unpacks” the days events, like running a defrag on a hard drive. I haven’t done enough research on my own (which is kind of embarrassing, really) to know the state of current study on the subject of dreams, but her suggestion made sense to me. I know I’ve written more than once about reading “Against The Day,” but it’s long, it’s a slow read, and it’s engrossing as anything I’ve ever picked up, so of course I’m going to be writing about it for a while. It’s a strange and challenging book, as one might expect of Pynchon, and I think it’s what’s causing me to dream so much. The dreams certainly picked up in frequency when I started reading it, and while they’re not related to any of the characters, the tone of the dreams, as well as the geography, is in keeping with the novel. Now I’m curious: Have any of you ever experienced anything like this? Has a novel ever caused you to dream more often, or more vividly? It seems like the sort of thing that would happen, but like I said, I haven’t done my home work so I’m dealing strictly with the anecdotal at this point. While we’re at it, are there any particularly good books about dreams that any of you would recommend? -RK Of course, the only question was “Which Sandman image would I choose?” I’m partial to this version, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single subpar artist who ever worked on the book.
Personal Update
Several readers have contacted me privately to ask about my ongoing health concerns. Thank you for caring enough to ask, but I have to say, your timing was a bit off. My chronic skin condition had, until recently, been in less active state. That’s not to be mistaken for remission, but at least I was fighting it to a draw. Over the last week, it’s returned with a vengeance. The doctors would like to have a look at me and poke around at whatever bits they haven’t yet poked, or perhaps to re-poke some of them that they enjoyed poking. I’m sure I’ll have less blood in me this time tomorrow than I currently do, so I’ll be a lightweight drinker for the next forty eight hours or so. Other than my skin problem, things are fairly good. I’ve put on a few pounds, which I’ll blame on the medication and the doctor will call me a dirty liar. That’s to be expected. My body feels good, my moods have been fantastic, and my brain feels like it’s firing on cylinders it didn’t even know it had. I’m hope I’ll have some good news to post tomorrow regarding the skin thing, but experience has taught me that this battle is going to be one of, if not attrition, than at the very least long, drawn-out campaigns rather than swift, decisive actions. I have hope, yes, but not a great deal of expectations. I’ll keep you all posted. -RK I posted this as a metaphor for red, bumpy skin. Pro tip: Do not do an image search for “red bumps.” Trust me on this.
Brief Hugo voting update
I finally finished all of the required reading and cast my ballot. Although I said I would post my choices here, I’ve decided not to do that on account of the ballot being of the ranked-preference sort as opposed to a single choice in each category. This was my first vote, so I was a little unclear on how it all worked, but a long list of preferences makes for a lousy post. Instead, I’ll just note a few general impressions: 1) The reading was eye-opening and I wound up voting for some things that weren’t previously on my radar. No matter how objective one tries to be, preconceptions are a real thing, but there were some outstanding entries in unexpected places this year (graphic novels, I’m looking at you. Ms. Marvel was a revelation to me.) 2) The Sasquan folks were quite friendly and helpful in getting me set up. I’m a newbie at this and getting from point A (interest in voting) to point Z (having the ballot up on my screen) was not without a little difficulty. The folks at Sasquan provided swift and accurate help when I needed it. 3) If you’re going to submit a slate and the entire slate wins nominations, please, for the love of all that is good and right, try to make sure there’s at least one worthy nominee in that slate. I dislike the tactic of slate nominations, but if there are good candidates on the slate, I won’t vote against them out of spite. Slate-nominating mediocre material, on the other hand, lies somewhere between trolling and vandalism. I had no problem listing “No Award” first in instances where there were no worthy candidates. If you’ve never participated before, I cannot recommend it highly enough. The price of entry is a little steep, but the reading packet is more than worth the price. -RK
The next thirty years or so
My wife* and I like to take long-ish walks around sunset in the summer. Sunset walks have the advantage of beautiful skies, the occasional firefly and a cricket orchestra. The temperatures also dip in to double digits, which is probably the real reason, even if that explanation lacks in poetry and romance. Last night, our discussion (and we always talk on these walks) wandered off into the distant future. We talked about where we’d started when we first got together, where we were now in terms of employment and finances, and where we’d like to be down the road. We talked about getting a second car (#NecessaryEvil), about long-term job plans, 401K’s, savings, and eventually home ownership. The word “retirement” even came up at some point. It’s a little strange to be talking about what your plans are for when you’re eighty years old, even when you’re talking to the person you expect to turn eighty with. It turns out that we were very much on the same page as far as how we viewed the road map. We’re both adults, but we’re not really the sort of adult you’d trust with Serious Adult Things. We’re kind of making it up as we go. The thing that struck me about this oddly practical conversation was how utterly confident I was in our ability to make our plans work. That may sound like a very small thing, but I don’t have a stellar history in the planning department. I’ve always been more of a “vague notion of where I’m heading but hey things change so let’s not get too attached to this particular outcome” kind of guy. But last night? It all felt gloriously solid. * Technically speaking, she isn’t my wife quite yet, but she’s getting there. The line of demarcation isn’t nearly as clearly-defined as it once was and, in some contexts, we are married and in others, we’re not. Rather than continue to refer to her as “beautiful girlfriend” (although she is both of these things), henceforth, I’ll just call her my wife. I like the sound of that better anyway. -RK Pictured: Not really a sunset, but pretty.