Metatext is Its Own Reward

I love text (and I'm using the term "text": to refer to any work, film, book, comic, or piece of music) that reveals more about a text that I like. I am an enormous sucker for extras on DVDs, and expecially IMDB's trivia section. Because if something was good, then I'm interested in learning something about the process of what created it. How did it get to be that way?

Case in point, Wilum Pugmire's Sesqua Valley and Other Haunts. He provides an afterward for each story. Sometimes they provide the origin of the story, sometimes the intended effect, sometimes just random stuff about the process of creating the story. For me, each of these is a little story in and of itself, a light touch that lets me see the mind behind the creation. I like to think ir brings me closer to understanding Wilum.

Maybe it's the scholar in me, who wants to take something good apart and see what makes it tick. But there's also the glutton that wants to recapture that feeling of something I've already enjoyed, and delving into something I already like means I don't have to go looking for something new.

Because I like people, and I especilly like creative people. I've regretted delving into the creation of something I love only once, and that was Kinka Usher's director's commentary on Mystery Men, in which he revealed himself to be a shallow, purelie person whose contribution to the film was overshadowed by a stellar cast, excellent set design, and good editing.

Towards a New Atheism

I recently quit a message board I had belonged to for close to a decade because of the religious arguments. With some irony I'll state that it was my fellow atheists who drove me away with their condescention and intolerance. You know; those traits that atheists most often ascribe to the religious.

I want a new movement in atheism. One that is not 'angry' at god or church, one that is not condescending, one that can speak without rancor or snark with those who believe in God. When Christopher Hitchens titles a chapter of God is Not Great "Is Religion Child Abuse?" he is clearly preaching to the choir and not interested in any sort of discussion. How can we establish a meaningful dialog with our neighbors if we do not respect them? Are we so certain of our purpose that we cannot even allow people to practice as they wish? That we must tear them down when discussing religion? Because zeal and fanaticism like that might be mistaken for a crusade.

Now, I'm not against rigorous discussion and even argument when necessary. That's fine. But it would be nice if it could be done without the words idiot, fool, stupid, or ignorant getting thrown around so liberally. Because that's exactly what intolerant people do, and if you adopt their play book, you are one and the same with the religious intolerant.

If we cannot respect religions, then is our intent to destroy them? Mine certainly is not. I believe the vast majority of religious folk work quietly toward what good they can. The loud-mouthed are not the majority, and not representative of any group as a whole. It is my firm belief that religion helps people to live better lives. The accusation that it does not seems to come most often from atheists who have not contributed to a charity in years.

And ultimately, it doesn't matter. We have our lives, and then we are dead. If we are right and there is no afterlife, and no one will be able to gloat over anyone. And that's the joke, isn't it? Atheists seem to believe themselves somehow stonger because they live without the 'crutch' of religion (I do not believe religion is a crutch, but that's a discussion for another time). But if the religious are good people and happier durng their lifetimes than atheists, well the joke's on us.

Why Vermont?

After nine years, it's still funny to tell people that I moved to Vermont from the San Francisco Bay Area. The reaction is usually "Why did you move here?"

The real answer is because I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I couldn't continue to live there.

Don't get me wrong, I miss a lot of things about San Francisco. The people, primarily. We left some wonderful people behind us. Talented, strange, unique, wonderful people, and missing them makes my heart ache. I also miss the food. San Francisco is the Gateway to the Pacific, and there were more delicious and delightful flavors of restaraunt than you could shake a stick at. I miss those tangy Vietnamese sandwiches stuffed with unidentifiable bits that were so amazingly tasty.

Vermont, on the other hand, is very monocultural. It doesn't have the What don't I miss about California? The politics. Yes, I can say that I voted in an the 2003 recall election, which had 135 people running for governor, including Gary Coleman (who took 8^th place), porn star Mary Carey (10^th), and action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who won. Around that time, we also had the joy of the California Electricity Crisis in which deregulation allowed Enron to manipulate electricity prices, caugint them to triple in little more than a month's time. And hey, rolling blackouts, too!.

Vermont's politics are very different. Only in Vermont could Fred Tuttle have become a leading candidate. That's a world of difference.

Certainly Vermont has fewer employment options, fewer people, and not mearly the ethnic restaraunt selection.

But the real reason, the fundamental reason we came back is for apple cider. Californian supermarkets seem to believe that apple cider is apple juice with some spices in it. This is not true. Cider has a lot of filtrate, and is opaque. For nine years, I've been drinking apple cider first thing in the morning, and a mug with my dinner at night. Because it's the taste of home.

With Friends Like These

It's good to have friends.

I've been in a writing funk for two weeks. Not writers' block, but a funk. Unconvinced that my work will sell, not motivated to work on the current story. Not motivated to work on anything, really.

Not that I'm surprised by this. I went back to school last year, and school work took up a lot of my writing time. Now I've got it back, and I'm again wodnering if my writing is a worthwhile pursuit. I sometimes get that in the middle of stories, I think that the story is simple-minded and that anyone would have thought of that plot.

Yesterday, while not watchng a movie, I turned to my bookshelf and noticed a copy of Brian Keene's The New Fear, the Best of Brian Keene, vol. 3. Inside, it's inscribed by the author: “For John, May you find some wisdom — or at least some laughs — within these pages.”

My blog is not like Brian Keene's. Not like it is now, and not like it used to be. His blog is so good because he is passionate. He has written blog entries such as “Fuck Rob Zombie” and “And While I'm at it Fuck the Sci-Fi Channel Too.” I am not passionate about stuff. I'm willing to leave well enough alone, generally speaking, live and let live.

But I found both wisdom and good, hard-headed advice in the book. It includes essays that I consider essential reading for anyone who is just starting out in the writing game: “World Domination 101” and “Stork Penis, A Sortid Tale of Small Press publishing (With Beautiful Nudes).” But it's also undilluted Brian Keene. I hear his voice when I read it, because it's written almost exactly the same way that he speaks. As a book, it's sharp and does not coddle or condescend.

I consider Brian a friend. Because we've met and talked a couple of times, but also because friends kick friends in the ass when necessary. The advantage of having writers as friends is that they don't always have to be there to deliver said kick. So, another blog entry within a week. And I'm going straight off this to work on my on-hiatus Cthulhu Steampunk short story. Because no one else can write the stories I do.

And oh yeah. I've thought of something I'm passionate about. Fuck Rick Santorum. Women, gays, and people you don't like are still citizens who deserve the full benefit of law.

My Personal Problem with Fringe

It’s been a formula in the last decade to have a character in a television show that is problematic. Not politically correct. Someone broken. Archie Bunker is an example of this, and more recently South Park’s Eric Cartman. The character often serves as the engine for the show, their inherent rudeness or insensitivity tends to drive the plots.

Notably, this has been primarily a trope of comedies. Because when the story is done, we can laugh off Cartman’s Hitler obsession, or Arnold Rimmer being a complete smeghead, because they are shown to be pompous, ignorant buffons who deserve to be mocked. It's a lot more difficult to dismiss when the show is a drama that keeps a continuity from week to week.

For Fringe, that problematic character is Dr. Walter Bishop. Drug-taking, unethical human experiementer Walter Bishop.

Everyone who has watched the show is aware that he's an archetypal mad scientist, but he reminds me of the very real, very cruel experiments in America's past. Think of what kind of monster it would take to inject children with experimental chemicals. To me, it's right up there with the doctors in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, the guys who gave more than eight hundred pregnant mothers women what they called vitamin drinks, but in fact contained radioactive iron, or those doctors who who killed 83 Guatemalans in a syphillis experiment. Would you watch a show that lionized the doctors performing these unethical experiements? Check out the wikipedia entry on Unethical human experimentation in the United States. Such experiments were real.

Mad science in the real world is horribly victimizing. People are scarred, or maimed, and have lifelong repercussions. Often these doctors preyed on, ironically, fringe individuals whose voice is faintly heard by the legal system.

Fringe us not honest about the experiements Walter performed. For a little while, Walter is shown as seeking redemption for his ethical transgressions, but that thread is dropped at the end of season two. It stops the moment he receives forgiveness from four of his test subjects in the season two closer, "Over There." These former subjects conveniently die later in the episode, absolving Walter of the responsibility of ever having to think of them again. He again gets what he wants that their expense, and the camera spends no time mourning or remembering them. Instead, it is preoccupied with Walter's gunshot wound.

The following season, Walter's quest for forgiveness is concentrated solely on his son, Peter Bishop.

I find the lionization of Dr. Walter Bishop enormously disquieting. John Noble plays him with extraordinary sympathy, but the writing never truly comes to grips with the moral issues the character raises. Walter Bishop is the smartest guy in the world, the only person who can make sense of what the onrushing doom that is the show's overarching plot. For this, he is given a pass for the monstrous acts he performed, because he is the key to the plot. I continue to find this a very dishonest of Fringe writing staff.

Exactly the Wisdom I Needed Today

"[A]ssholes and obstructionists aren't really obstacles.

They're whetstones."

The wisdom of John Tynes, ladies and gentlemen.

3...2...1... Not It!

And a rejection. "Ultra-Fast Delivery" didn't tickle the editors of Eldritch Chrome in the proper way. It's my first rejection in some time (close to a year?), certainly the first since I got out of school. Still, the line-up for the book looks pretty darn awesome:

Playgrounds of Angolaland - David Conyers
The Blowfly Manifesto - Tim Curran
SymbiOS - William Meikle
Obsolete, Absolute – Robert M. Price
Open Minded Jeffrey Thomas
The Battle of Arkham - Peter Rawlik
The Wurms In the Grid - Nickolas Cook
Of Fractals, Fantomes, Frederic and Filrodj - John Shirley
The Gauntlet - Glynn Barrass and Brian M. Sammons
Indifference - CJ Henderson
Dreams of Death - Lois Gresh
Inlibration - Michael Tice
Immune - Terrie Leigh Relf
Hope Abandoned - Tom Lynch
Sonar City - Sam Stone
The Place that Cannot Be - D.L. Snell
Flesh & Scales - Ran Cartwright
Real Gone – David Dunwoody
CL3ANS3 – Carrie Cuinn

It would have been nice company, but I'll just have to start flogging the story elsewhere. Come to think of it, there's a couple of other stories that need selling, so it's time to get back on the horse.

What a Monster!

I’ve been reading Leonard Wolf’s Annotated Frankenstein, which includes a number of authors, from Brian Aldiss to Robert Bloch to Joyce Carol Oates, discussing their impressions of Frankenstein. Many bring up the inescapable legacy of James Whale and Boris Karloff. Although I’ve seen images from the film, I hadn’t seen it until very recently. My first experience was the book; the 1983 Frankenstein with Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations. And reading Wolf’s text and annotations, I realize how lucky I am. Karloff’s grunting, lurching creature has little of Shelley’s powerful, neglected child so full of questions and desperate to be loved.

When I was eight or so, I got my hands on a couple of issues of the Len Wein-Bernie Wrightson Swamp Thing, and I was just astonished, not just with the stories, but the moody art. Six years later, when I saw that same Bernie Wrightson had illustrated one of the Classic Horror Novels of All Time, how could teenaged me resist?

Wrightson read the story, and without any sort of makeup or special effects budget to hold him back, created a vision of the creature that was true to the book; enormous and hideous, but at the same time, tragic and sympathetic. Shelley’s description of the creature is vague, and in any translation into a visual media, the artist has a great deal of latitude. Wrightson has paid attention to what Shelley did tell us, and builds on what seems like a contradictory set of instructions.

Wrightson does not cherry-pick only the most dramatic illustrations. Although he does point out the moments of high drama, such as Victor’s destruction of his second creation, he also chooses Alpine landscapes, serene moments on a boat, and Victor in his laboratory, reading. In this, he encompasses the book from end to end. It is the masterful execution of the illustrations that makes them important and relevant to the reader, not merely that they are dramatically interesting points in the novel. And that approach takes a lot of confidence in an illustrator. Anyone can be inspired by the creature’s fury or Victor’s pathos when Elizabeth is murdered. But Wrightson is inspired by all the novel, from Walton’s icebound ship to the shores of Ireland.

The original edition of this was published by Marvel in 1983, with an introduction by Stephen King. King and Wrightson had worked together on Creepshow, and also on Cycle of the Werewolf, also published in 1983. Unlike much of King’s other work, I like this introduction. King discusses a few important aspects of the book, how he had to read it because he was going to teach it, and discovered what he’d remembered as a dusty old book was really quite wonderful. The essay is, dare I say it, a sweet love note to a book that waited patiently for him to be able to understand it.

Obviously, copies of Frankenstein, even illustrated ones, are easy to come by. This one, to me, is very special. I hope it’s not just because it’s my childhood Frankenstein, but because Wrightson’s art remains so evocative. This 2008 Dark Horse volume is MSRP $30. And that’s pretty hefty, even including all the production value; it’s a 9x12 clothbound hardcover with a bound-in bookmark, and high-quality paper. It’s heavy, for such a small novella, although it has been padded a bit; the lines are double-spaced, and the reverse of each illustration is not used for print. But the illustrations are enormous, finely-reproduced, and well worth the time to examine them in detail

And now...

I submitted a story today. It's a good story, one I've been working on for two months, and I think should go well with the anthology's theme. It's been nearly two hours since I submitted, and I'm anxiously checking my email to see if the editors liked it. This is silly. They'll take some time, probably a month, since the deadline isn't until the 31st of this month. And so I do what all writers do, move on to the next story (the werewolf one in this case). And try to put the waiting out of my mind. But what I'm really doing? Is waiting.






And waiting

"I don't discuss my process"

I feel like discussing the genesis of a story today. I always think that my stories are easily guessed, the low-hanging-fruit plots that anyone could come up with given ten minutes of thought on a theme. But it doesn't seem to be that way. I've gotten praise for my unusual stories, sometimes from editors, so apparently, my though process is unusual enough that I can sell stories based on it.

I want to be in a werewolf anthology. I don't seek out werewolf stories. There's much more interest in the other parts of the Universal Horror tradition. The werewolf tends to be a serial killer with a big furry coat, a Jeckyl and Hyde persona. An easy metaphor for the rage and anger we all keep bottled up.

How can I make my story different, yet still retain the essential "thing-ness" that makes a werewolf story a werewolf story?

First with the negative. I don't want this to be a 'spot the werewolf' story. We think the unfeeling brute in the story is the werewolf, and OOOH THE SURPRISE it's the meek little person who turns out to have been bullied and gets their unexpected revenge. Nor do I want this to be a story the lionizes the werewolf. While I write stories that involve violence, at the same time, I try not to present it as a way to solve problems. I prefer it to be a symptom of sickness, rather than something cool to do. Oh, and no silver. Silver was introduced in the 20th century, so I'm going to leave it out.

What I do want: a flourish of originality, and something touching on authentic folklore. Europe tends to have the richest werewolf tradition, so I think I'll go with those. And France. I want to set it in France. Probably because I enjoyed Brotherhood of the Wolf, but also because the wolf was wiped out in England in Medieval times, I tend to associate wolves and werewolves with France. I also want wolves, and wolf behavior. And it turns out that there's a strong association of werewolves with cannibalism, so I think that'll go into the plot.

So it's off to Wikipedia. As Wikipedia grows, it has a lot of links to specific instances and references. For example, you can find this entry in the werewolf entry linked to above:

A notable exception to the association of Lycanthropy and the Devil, comes from a rare and lesser known account of an 80-year-old man named Thiess. In 1692, in Jurgenburg, Livonia, Thiess testified under oath that he and other werewolves were the Hounds of God. He claimed they were warriors who went down into hell to do battle with witches and demons. Their efforts ensured that the Devil and his minions did not carry off the grain from local failed crops down to hell. Thiess was steadfast in his assertions, claiming that werewolves in Germany and Russia also did battle with the devil's minions in their own versions of hell, and insisted that when werewolves died, their souls were welcomed into heaven as reward for their service. Thiess was ultimately sentenced to ten lashes for Idolatry and superstitious belief.

That reminds me of an Italian society of dreamers I've read about in Ken Hite's Dubious Shards; the Benandanti, a group of Medieval Italian mystics who fought the Devil in their dreams. I also remember something about the winter of 1450, when the Seine froze, and wolves got into the walled city of Paris. They were eventually wiped out on the steps of Notre Dame. That Wikipedia entry also includes a link to Werewolf Witch trials, which happened in Estonia, where many witches were also werewolves. It was a long, very cold winter, with a poor harvest before it, so the winter of 1450 sounds like an excellent time to set a story about starvation.

So to make a small, possibly credible link with the Benandanti, I'll move the story to the Franco-Italian border, which was at the time in the hands of the Holy Roman Empire, a political entity I tend to forget about since it's not modern. With a little work from Wikipedia and Google Maps, I decide I'm going to put it in the Duchy of Savoy, the capital of which is Chambéry, and the Duke around 1450 is Louis. And that kind of research is a lot of fun. Another hour on Google Maps, and I'll have the very village the story takes place in.

In his Finishing the Hat Stephen Sondheim says that one of his guiding principles is that "God is in the details." Well the man writes some beautiful words, so I'm going to take him at his word and be very picky with my details. It gives me a background to hang the story on, allowing me to make casual mention of the Duke Louis, and Fredrick III is the Emperor (elect only, because he wasn't crowned by the Pope until 1452, but this was apparently just a formality). These details create an air of authenticity, even as I pick and choose my regional werewolf legends.

I don't want to make the werewolf sympathetic per se, but I do want to make them (I don't know what sex it's going to be yet) complex. Complex characters are always somewhat sympathetic because we understand them, and respond to the care used to create them. And because I want to use the cannibalism angle; it's difficult to make people like a cannibal, but I'm always up for a challenge.

So I've got this enormous pot of details and wants and not-wants, but you can see how the details are going to shape the story. And things may change. If I write myself into a corner, I may have to alter any or even all of these details to create a successful story, but as I progress as a writer, the need to change the story once I've started it is less.

And there you have it; the initial steps in the creation of the story I'm currently writing. Now to get to the difficult part of writing it.