[Rabbit Hole Day] Further Disappointments

Gentle Readers, I ask you: what is it with me and the 27th of January? You'd think my cognitive biases would have picked a different day to fixate on as my special "rotten day".

I'm really sorry I didn't mention this before...I got a little preoccupied and decided to try to just put it behind me, but then I was reminded of the date.

Last year, on the evening of January 27th, I was hit by a car. It was traumatic, but given how little damage I took (and given that the girlfriend who constantly reminded me of it is gone), I more or less forgot about it. Which is odd in and of itself, really; but rather than reflect on that right now, the important part is that forgetting meant I was doomed to repeat.

So January 27th rolled around yet again, and I treated it like any other morning. I cocked my head at how little coffee my machine made this time around, but otherwise it was a grey winter morning with very few complaints. I walked down the bleak-chic street between me and downtown Mountain View, coffee in one hand, lunch in the other, and contemplated the little pleasures of annoyances of my world.

Do you see what's coming?

Yeah, so I stepped into the intersection, forgetting (there's that word again) how cars love to not check what's happening in the crosswalk before making the right off Shoreline.

They didn't hit me; thank God, they didn't me. I really do not want to know what would have happened if I'd taken an Expedition to the chest. They honked; I jumped back; and when I slammed ass-first into the edge of the curb, my vision went white.

I'd forgotten about most of this, but I did remember the sky; it wasn't so much polluted as it was a normal sky repainted gray. My mouth tasted sour, my whole body felt sunburnt, and an invisible hook was stabbing into my chest; and a familiar, black-haired man was staring into my face and throttling me.

"What the fuck?" These dreams seem to make me say that a lot.

"You're back." The man—his name was Dick, but we didn't use it the entire time I was there—looked utterly shocked. "You're back again."

"Probably?" My mind felt greased.

I sat up, took stock. We were sitting in the shadow of a huge gray block, a giant rectangle some hundred or two feet high. The building was the terminus of a brown earth street; stubbier, uglier buildings flanked us on either side, and those disappeared about two blocks down into a huge green-stone plaza, empty except for the ugly brass fence surrounding it. Everything was dark and wet; the street around me smelled like fresh rain.

Years of watching movies like this came back to me. "How long have I been gone?"

Dick smiled at me, the kind of smile you expect from a grandpa in a whole lot of pain. "Month. Maybe two."

"Okay." I wiped my face off, tried to make nonsense make sense. "Weren't there like five other guys with you?"

"Gone," Dick told me, sad all over again. "The things they left took them."

"The things the other guys left?"

Dick shook his head. "The things the ones in charge left."

He was standing a good distance away from me now, then a little closer, looking and then pointing up at the block behind me. I stood up and gave it a serious look. It was just a piece of stone thrust down into the dirt; it might have been a building if it had doors, windows, or any sense of having been worked. There were indentations, little cracks here and there, but it seemed more like weather than deliberation. And yet, somehow I could tell it wasn't always that way.

"What, was that where they lived?" I asked.

Dick didn't look away from the building. "It's where we burned."

Lightning flashed, or else I just blinked very quickly in a bright light. We moved in jump-cuts down the empty street, over to the brass fence and the plaza. Up close I could see the wire strung between the brass poles, clean, shiny concertina loops like you'd see in World War II trenches. I peered through the wire and the brass at the green stone: dulled from what clearly used to be a sheen, streaked with mud and piles of dirt...as I looked I thought I could hear screaming, and what might have been attempts at prayer.

"A prison," I said. "A prison." Not sure why I said it twice.

"That was before."

"Prison for dead people?" I asked.

Dick perked, straightened up; his eyes bulged as he stared away from me down a side street. I started to ask another question, but then my ears pricked too. Footsteps were echoing off the buildings.

It was just one or two sets of footsteps, nothing big or impressive; but something in the way they resonated sent chills down my spine. I looked at Dick, and he was frozen in the same position; dream-people aren't known for their reliability.

Then the shadow spread out along the wall, and the footsteps were joined by a rattling; and around the corner came three men moving in formation, bowed under the weight of a huge iron kiln, five feet across, its lid open and the inside already belching fire.

"No," Dick said. "No, no, no—"

"We're here to be punished!" the three men said, running right for us. "We're here to burn!"

Dick's big "No" stretched out and distorted, becoming this awful bass soundtrack under the charging men. He put out one arm that he just kept flailing, and I started to think the guy was locked in place.

A voice whispered in my ear: "This isn't how it's supposed to be."

Then the hook in my chest gave a yank; and air whooshed by my ears; and I was sitting back on the curb. The Expedition hadn't even checked to see if I was alright.

I was shaken, of course; it didn't help that I had to sprint to make my train. But after someone else brought up January 27th and that weird post about being hit by a car, I have to wonder, was there some weird causality that made me walk out in front of a brainless SUV driver today? Is there a reason that the block of stone I saw kind of looked like the building I work in made out of plasticine? Also, why did I forget about this until today?

I'm guessing I'll have to wait a year or so for answers. And I hate the idea that that's all I could have to say.

The Day-to-Day

This keeps coming up of late, so I felt like I should blog about it. It is this logic which supports 50% of the the Internet.

When meeting new people, or when people discover for the first time what I'm trying to do with my life, I get a lot of the same questions: what are you writing? Have you ever been published? Why are you bothering with genre fiction? (I won't dignify the last question with a response.) These questions are all fine and good. But I get other questions that people don't seem to realize are related to those questions (well, the two worth talking about). Questions like why it's so hard to get me to come out on weeknights; why I sometimes take a while to watch or read things they've lent me; why I sometimes get depressed or angry or excited, or why I just suddenly stop talking for an hour or two during a conversation on Instant Messenger.

Here's the thing: I don't work 8 hours a day. I work more like nine or ten.

My writing regimen is not even the strictest I've seen, derived from the "beginner's" writing regimen laid out by the inimitable Stephen King in On Writing (the single best book on writing I have ever read). That regimen is 1000 words a day (about 4 normal word processor pages, ish, depending on how often I break paragraphs), 5 days a week. Sometimes I will cheat and count an hour or two of editing as "equivalent" to 1000 words, so that I get editing and submission done without killing myself in the process. And of course, I allow for unique situations (depressed friends, birthdays, weddings, emergencies, etc.) to make me miss an extra day or so a week, and tend to take a vacation around about Christmas, like everyone else does.

What this means is, my average weekday starts like everyone else's: get up, groan about how early it is, rob the coffee maker of its payload, etc. The middle of my day is pretty typical, too—though I guess I exercise more than the average American. But my evening is wildly divergent.

I get home later than most, because I take the train. So call it 7. Most nights, I have to cook; call that about an hour's worth of time. That's 8. I eat dinner then, usually while watching an episode of something on DVD, or part of a movie. We're at 8:30, 9pm. Then I go and write.

This is where things get nebulous. Sometimes, I'm done writing by 9:30, all's well, nothing odd to report, no concerns whatsoever. Some nights, I'm still staring slack-jawed at the computer screen come 10, wondering why I can't decide which of the characters in this scene will catch all the stray bullets coming at their conversation. Once in a while, usually due to forgetting to turn off Digsby or daring to click on my TVTropes bookmark, I wind up there all the way until 11. And then, I'm spent.

Sometimes, if I was in the middle of a movie, I'll watch the rest of it; sometimes I'll watch another episode of whatever show I'm watching. Maybe if I feel really good or I reached some important milestone, I'll have a Jameson's (neat, please), or walk down to Cost Plus or 7-11 to get something sweet. But usually, I'll just get in bed and read.

I do get two days off in a week, but you'd be amazed how fast those disappear. Am I playing D&D that weekend? One left. Do I want to go out on a date? Oops. What if I want to go out on a date and I have guests for the weekend and there's a new movie out I want to see? Well then, I'm glad I only visit the gym at my office every other day, because I need to get some writing done on my lunch break.

So, if you lent me a book and I keep deflecting whether or not I read it, that's why. If I've had a DVD of yours for eight months, that's why. If I keep vacillating about whether or not I want to come out to the bar tonight...well...you know the answer. I'm tightly scheduled, a lot of the time, and there are weekends where all I want is to get up in the morning, curl around my coffee, and get some of this beautiful work done. Writing is the world's most delightful thief, grabbing onto my time and my life and not letting go; and I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.

In Response to This Recording: The Seminal Works of Speculative Fiction

So, I write speculative fiction. That shouldn't be a shock to anyone here.

This also means I read speculative fiction, among a greater many other things. Again, not a shock.

What might shock you is twofold: first, you might be shocked by This Recording's 100 greatest sci-fi and fantasy novels; and if you like that list, you might be shocked by how much I disagree.

Top 100s are fascinating academic exercises, and This Recording is no exception. There is no doubt in my mind that much of this list is great—I've read a lot of them and I cannot doubt the writer's taste. However, I think that he misses a lot of seminal works in favor of the things that built on them—passing up the Tolkiens in favor of the Martins, as it were.

I disagree with this tack. If you want to read 100 great speculative books, read the stuff on this list—or rather, read 1-99 on this list, and then read something else instead of The Word for World is Forest (LeGuin's weakest book if you ask me). However, if you want to read the big movers and shakers, the people who will give you a grounding in the catch-all genre of spec-fic and show you where it's going, I have to recommend a slightly different set; and so, I will put my money where my mouth is, and do just that.

Tyler's List of Things You'd Better Read
The roots of modern speculative fiction

I have to start with the names everyone will quote as the fathers of speculative fiction—people who are so important I couldn't possibly categorize them with their descendants. These are J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Ray Bradbury; and going back even further, you have the whole of mythology from any culture, notably Homer. The rest of these are specific to the sub-genres that splintered off of their work, or are antecedents of theirs whom you might not generally consider, or who have gotten dwarfed by later works.

If you like sword-and-sorcery books, your assigned reading is the short stories of Robert E. Howard (try the collection The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian) and Fritz Leiber (I got the collections entitled The First Book of Lankhmar and The Second Book of Lankhmar, but your area may collect the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories in different volumes). In the latter case, Leiber literally invented the term "sword and sorcery" to describe these types of stories; and in the former case, Howard actually owes more to H.P. Lovecraft than he does to Arnold Schwarzenegger—he is surprisingly literary, actually, without losing any of the machismo that attracts young geeks to the Conan movies. These men are often-imitated, but rarely equalled; Leiber, especially, will come up here in a minute.

If you like your fantasy dark, you have to check out Michael Moorcock: The Elric Saga (the first book, chronologically, is Elric of Melnibone). Moorcock didn't invent the anti-hero, but he did take it to its zenith; the Elric stories are the stories that practically every dark fantasy writer is using as their compass.

If you love weird fiction and horror, you need to read H.P. Lovecraft (widely available), but also Lord Dunsany and Robert W. Chambers. From Dunsany, pick up Wonder Tales; his sense of wonder and whimsy—and occasional chilling surrealism—was the foundation of Lovecraft and his colleagues and imitators. From Chambers, you need to read The King in Yellow; while much of the book winds up being relatively standard romantic fiction, the first few stories set the tone for the ideas of madness and something inhuman beyond our ken that form the other pillar of the Lovecraft ouevre.

If you love urban fantasy, my first pick may surprise you: Rudyard Kipling. Read "Wireless" (found in the wonderful collection of Kipling's fantasy and horror stories). I have to once more underline the name of Fritz Leiber; his two novellas "Our Lady of Darkness" and "Conjure Wife" are deeply important to the ideas of magic in the modern world. Lord Dunsany's Wonder Tales also gets a nod here, just to be thorough.

If you love cyberpunk, there is one name you need to know: William Gibson. Stephenson is great, but he built upon the platform built for him by Neuromancer. It's all here: cybernetics and their effect on how human you are, super-rich people who control the world, mercenary hackers, weird geopolitics...the book even coined the term "street samurai", fer Chrissakes!

If you like deconstructions of superheroes, this one is obvious: Alan Moore. Watchmen. He's to blame for the Dark Age of superhero comics, but so what? Tolkien is to blame for the Wheel of Time.

If you like sci-fi as social commentary, you have to start your journey with George Orwell's 1984, of course, and move from there to Kurt Vonnegut and Cat's Cradle, and from there to Philip K. Dick and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Orwell really started the ball rolling with speculative fiction being used to hold a mirror up to human behavior, and Vonnegut and Dick are the two who, in my humble opinion, ran the ball the furthest down the field.

If you like alternate history, many, many names will be thrown out there, but I come back to another one I already mentioned: Philip K. Dick, with his The Man in the High Castle. A story of the Axis winning World War II,

If you like steampunk, put down your fantasy-steampunk hybrids, and check out this now-familar name: William Gibson. The Difference Engine (co-written with Bruce Sterling, another great cyberpunk name) is the book that kicked the whole thing off, and while I'm not sure I enjoy the plot that much, its ideas underpin the entire steampunk genre.

There are so many other writers whose names I want to throw out there. Neil Gaiman is amazing, and George R.R. Martin is great; but they are more seminal in the modern canon than they are the compasses by which the meta-genre of speculative fiction sails. So, rather than babble about everything I ever loved, I will leave you with this list. I think This Recording did a pretty amazing job of writing down some great spec-fic books—but I think this list will help you see where some of those books came from.

The Power of the Blank

Old writing wisdom (read: the Internet) holds that one of the most fearsome things a writer faces is the blank page. This is, supposedly, why one of the most tired little chestnuts a new writer can trot out is a character waking up in a blank white room with no memory—a manifestation, so say the experts, of the writer's deep fear of the blank white page/screen that they have to fill, day after day, with words.

Somehow, I didn't get that. For me, the most terrifying thing is not the blank page; it's the crowded page. When I'm having writer's block, it's rarely because I don't know where to start (not depending on my writing for food and clothing does alleviate that pressure somewhat; it's usually because I don't know how to continue. So I dread the end of the work day, when it comes time to head home to that page full of words, all crammed together in neat little rows, and I am not sure which word should come after that; and then which one should come after that, and after that, and after that...

So sometimes, I just open up a new document. Even if I'm working on the exact same story, somehow the whiteness and the expansiveness of it gives me the breathing room I need to move forward with the story. This has gone on for as long as I can remember, honestly; back in the days when I thought about being a Very Famous Cartoonist I remember that any drawing session I sat down for was best fueled by the presence of a big stack of blank white paper right next to me, as though somehow I was going to produce 300 pages of Artistic Genius right there at my family coffee table. And even beyond direct inspiration, I have always been surrounded by blank paper and unused or nearly-unused office supplies—even my desk at the office has an unopened ream of paper sitting on it, near my Inbox. (admittedly, that was because my makeshift ergonomic adjustment was one ream of paper too high, but I haven't bothered to move it yet, either.)

So, I do not doubt the fear of the blank page—I think I've ever experienced it from time to time—but I do have to say that a blank page can do a lot of good, too. Blank pages are just another little bit of magic in the bizarre spell that is art, a symbol that can be channeled in one of several directions; for right now, I'm just going to be grateful that my particular corner of the mental landscape seems to view them in a positive light. After all, at least when I get hit by the inevitable Writer's Dread, I've already written something; though then again, that does mean I have something to focus on when it comes time to hate my own work...

Isn't writing fun?

(The answer is yes.)

Review: Ink

And now for happier topics:

See Ink.

No, seriously. You should. It's likely this is the first you're hearing of it, and it's very unlikely you recognize any of the names involved in its production; but this is one of those times where independent film soars.

Because this film works so heavily on its atmosphere, and because it is not something like Paranormal Activity that you're likely to know much about, I am going to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible.

A summary has trouble doing this film justice, because, lacking spoilers, it is impossible to make it sound anything but trite—and the inability to summarize its originality may be Ink's only weakness. It's about a world just beside and layered over our own, where beings of light and beings of shadow govern the more ephemeral aspects of our existence; it's about one angry, tortured soul and his decision to purge himself of that pain; and it's about humanity, and family, and what has to happen for us to change our path.

But what makes Ink stand out is not the skeleton of its plot; what makes Ink stand out is the meat and the skin, the way the details of this other-world are executed and the style and tone of the setting. Director/writer Jamin Winans creates an urban fairytale that manages to step outside the typical bums-at-a-Ren-Faire look, with a mythology that makes you shiver as much as giggle. The cinematography is expertly frenetic, and the actors hit the proper note at allo times. The movie is often quiet, and often cold; but these are part of the Ink mystique. Even the sparse smattering of fight scenes manage some originality, even as they derive a dash or two of inspiration from Guy Ritchie or the Wachowski brothers. The movie takes unknown actors and a low budget and runs with them, breeding originality underneath a layer of predictability. One look at the design for the Incubi, and the industrial-Dreamtime look of the sets, and I'd almost bet money you'll be sold.

And do not get me wrong, this film is on occasion predictable; some of the hints as to what is going on are perhaps too broad, and the story at base is a layer of black and a layer of gray over something we've all seen before. But it manages to never coddle its viewers—there is no scene full of exposition that doesn't feel natural within the flow of the story, and even those take place much later than lesser productions would have allowed; and beyond that, it does so much good with the details of that predictable story that I cannot fault them for sticking within the bounds of their chosen fable.

In the end, I give Ink five out of five terrifying black-and-white nerds. This is proof that it's not telling something original that matters; it's telling what you can find in an original way. A must-view for fans of Henson, Gilliam, or del Toro.

That's It

I'm done with you, Republican talking heads.

For those not in the know, I apologize for ruining your morning, but apparently Rudy Giuliani, Mary Matalin, and a few other right-leaning chin-waggers have now claimed that there were no domestic terror attacks during the George W. Bush administration. When asked about 9/11 and the shoe bomber, they have attempted to claim that 9/11 was "inherited" from the Clinton administration.

Horseshit, people. If you want to twist history to claim that the (successful) attack that we have come to call 9/11 was Clinton's fault, then the same should theoretically apply to Obama and this latest (failed) attack. Bush inherited the security forces and regulations set down under previous administrations, and so did Obama. Even if Obama did something to cause the weakening in security, say that; don't claim that Bush had an immaculate record, especially not when the shoe-bomber was found even after the initial crackdown his administration engineered.

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term," [former White House Press Secretary Dana] Perino told Fox News last November. [source: above link]

Of course you told Fox News that, you useless piece of shit. Get out of my damn country and stop polluting a perfectly reasonable conservative party with your idiotic, anti-intellectual, public-insulting lies.

If you believe this—if you want to say that Bush was a more successful President in this sense—then okay; that's why we have First Amendment rights. But I have them too, and I want to say a couple of things to you:

First of all, you are wrong. There was a terrorist attack during George W. Bush's first year as President, and sources across the world will back that up. President Bush didn't "inherit" this attack from President Clinton any more than President Obama "inherited" the Christmas Day attack from President Bush. To claim otherwise is historical revisionism, similar to that practiced by a variety of fascist and otherwise oppressive regimes. Like, say, China. Who are communist. Bet that stung to hear, huh?

Second of all, I hate you. You are exactly what's wrong with politics today. This isn't about issues or debate anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time; but this is beyond the fucking pale, people. This is yet more cashing in on the deaths of three thousand people and the fears and pain of countless more, just so a political party can win itself some influence. You are a disgrace to my country and to the vision of its forefathers.

To the "journalists" and "leaders" propagating this statement: If I could make it happen, you would spend every single moment of your lives unable to concentrate, to move, to think, for all the shame you feel at having said this. You should be fired and blacklisted from your professions for this behavior. You're ruining my country. Get out. I want a dialogue between right and left, not this insane cycle of mudslinging and lies that make up the morass of American politics right now. If you are marketing this story as truth, I don't even count you as human anymore. I hope your life consists of perpetual suffering. Especially you, Fox News. I would love it if you and whoever your left-wing equivalent are would go off the air and out of print and disappear. Stop poisoning our minds.

Excuse me. I need to go and do work now. Thanks for interrupting, you mendacious piles of dung.

Not Providence: A Metaphysical Pit Stop

Hey everybody.

So, first of all, the usual Tuesday announcement: Part 22 is up, and Book Two has come to its somewhat troubled conclusion.

Now, the second part: Not Providence is going on another break.

Before anyone panics, this one isn't because I have to move again, or anything scary or stressful like that. It's simpler than that, so much so that I can summarize it in three words: I'm burnt out. Wait, scratch that: I'm burnt out, and I need to focus on my career.

Not Providence is great fun; it's an unusual format for me, and a style I really enjoy writing in, if not the one I tend to default to. It's fun world-building within the confines of my creation and trying to wend my way from where Randall is currently to where I plan to put him at the end of Book Four (which will be the concluding chapter).

Unfortunately, Not Providence is a challenge in more ways than just structurally: it's also a challenge to my schedule. For the past not-quite-year, I've been sacrificing one to two nights of writing every week to getting the following week's update ready to go; this is not including the nights of writing that actually went into the project itself. And near the end of Book Two, I could feel my own satisfaction with the project dropping off as I lost my update buffer and was forced to pour more and more time into it (and getting less and less time to revise plot twists and details).

All told, Not Providence accounts for something like 75% of the writing I did in 2009; and while that's perfectly normal for something of its current (and ever-growing) length, the problem here is that Not Providence is free. That sounds cheap, I know; but honestly, I am just starting out as a writer. I have three publication credits to my name (and counting, we hope). I've just barely gotten agents to start reading my work. I am not yet in a position where 75% of my time can be going to a project I am not and do not plan to be making money or forwarding my career on. Plus, even beyond the money, I have ideas pounding at the back of my brain that have been waiting since last June or so; I need to give them time to come out and dance around and see if they are worthy of my energy and attention.

I in no way plan to stop writing Not Providence; it's planned for four books and four books will happen. And indeed, some energy will still be going into it: a break with two books complete is a great time to start trying to attract new readers, now that the promise of an insurmountable archive panic is not in evidence; and beyond that, as I was riding to work today I had the perfect opening for Book Three. I just need a couple months to work on other projects, try to expand my readership, and get Book Three squared away before I start putting it out on the Webbernets.

For those of you reading now, thank you, and please keep in touch; the site will in no way go dead just because Not Providence is temporarily in stasis, and who knows? I might have some other little tidbits to let you read. Do pimp me ou--er, recommend me when you think it is warranted, and don't hesitate to give me feedback when you want to. Just because it's free doesn't mean I don't care, after all.

In closing, do not fret, and do not chalk this up to yet another one of the half-finished projects littering the Internet. I won't be that guy. Randall will ride again; it'll just take a little time to get him ready for it, and he's got some brothers and sisters who need my attention.

Goodbye for now, my drooling hordes. A real blog post will follow later this week.