Pink
In other news, this place probably won't be updated anymore. Adjust your links, both of you.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Lesser announcement?
Check it.
Shayne: Dude, that's awesome.
T.: Thanks!
Shayne: How the hell did you learn all that stuff?
T.: I dunno. Just figured things out over time.
Shayne: But how did you get it to move and stuff?
T.:....shit's moving on there?
Shayne: Dude, that's awesome.
T.: Thanks!
Shayne: How the hell did you learn all that stuff?
T.: I dunno. Just figured things out over time.
Shayne: But how did you get it to move and stuff?
T.:....shit's moving on there?
Friday, August 1, 2008
Announcement!
My dear, dear Shayne is moving up in the world! She has officially launched her website, shaynewinters.com, AND has a new story called "Still Life" out in Nossa Morte. Her website looks beautiful, and her story is excellent, why not go and have a gander at both?
Love,
T.
Love,
T.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Periphery
Who gets to interview a rock star? I think I do.
Who's never done something like this before? I think I haven't.
Who's scared shitless? I think I am.
I'll give details after it's over and done with and I'm reasonably certain I didn't fuck it up. Until then, I'll leave this up as a tease, and because I'm excited, and felt compelled to spread the news. Just not all the news.
Who's never done something like this before? I think I haven't.
Who's scared shitless? I think I am.
I'll give details after it's over and done with and I'm reasonably certain I didn't fuck it up. Until then, I'll leave this up as a tease, and because I'm excited, and felt compelled to spread the news. Just not all the news.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Going Postal
T.: So...a 52 cent stamp should suffice on the SASE, right?
Shayne: That should be fine.
T.: Unless they decide to send me back a pipe bomb. "Dear Writer, We have reviewed your story, and decided not to publish it in our magazine. To prevent you from sending us anymore crap, we have enclosed a small but powerful grenade. Sincerely, The Editor."
Shayne: Well, they'll just have to pay for that themselves.
Shayne: That should be fine.
T.: Unless they decide to send me back a pipe bomb. "Dear Writer, We have reviewed your story, and decided not to publish it in our magazine. To prevent you from sending us anymore crap, we have enclosed a small but powerful grenade. Sincerely, The Editor."
Shayne: Well, they'll just have to pay for that themselves.
Sunshine and Lollipops
The last few posts have been downers, so I decided to try and think of something cheery to write here.
Then I remembered, I'm a crappy friend. My dear Shayne Winters has recently had a story published in an online magazine, New Voices in Fiction. Her story is called "One Night", it's very, very good, and can be found here.
That cheers me up, in either case!
Then I remembered, I'm a crappy friend. My dear Shayne Winters has recently had a story published in an online magazine, New Voices in Fiction. Her story is called "One Night", it's very, very good, and can be found here.
That cheers me up, in either case!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Working the Plan
"Stage 28" lies, thus unread and unloved, in the submission inboxes of a couple more e-zines.
Foundlings, faeries, catrinas...but first, "After the Blackout".
There are a couple of new links on the side. One is my friend Vikram's website, with his beautiful artwork, and the second is "The Digital Medievalist", which is currently proving more fascinating and distracting than Wikipedia and Crimelibrary combined.
Foundlings, faeries, catrinas...but first, "After the Blackout".
There are a couple of new links on the side. One is my friend Vikram's website, with his beautiful artwork, and the second is "The Digital Medievalist", which is currently proving more fascinating and distracting than Wikipedia and Crimelibrary combined.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Compensation
Shayne: Try these guys next. They're one of the fastest markets out there, pay a $25.00 flat fee, plus a t-shirt.
T.: Sold. You had me at 't-shirt'.
T.: Sold. You had me at 't-shirt'.
Not Artistically Acceptable
So, "After the Blackout" has been driving me batshit, and not in the artistically acceptable way where I feel myself being stalked by shadows of the main characters, or unable to sleep, making me instead stay up all night at my desk, drinking gin by candlelight with shaking hands (a bad mix all around. In other news, I need new batteries for my smoke detector), and penning rambling letters to my sick wife in the sanitorium about how I long for the release of a squalid death. No, it has been driving me to hair-ripping, wall pounding, procrastinating, run-on sentence Hell.
I was in a coffee shop yesterday (I was waiting for someone! Don't judge me!), and I made a bunch of notes, so I think I know what is wrong, and what I have to do to correct it. The problem is, it means scrapping everything so far and starting again, which I'm not keen to do. I have other ideas I want to move on to.
Part of my reason for having this site is to keep myself disciplined. I have the attention span of a lobotomized gnat, I want an egg salad sandwich.
Sorry, sorry, really, I'm back, but see what I mean? I know lots of writers have trouble finishing projects they start...that's a pretty common problem for people in general. My way of combatting this is by making myself work on only one project at a time, and I don't let myself touch anything else until it's done. My reward for completing my work is more work. This website is also a disciplinary tool of sorts, for publicly shaming me into working so I actually have stuff to post.
Right now I'd love to throw "After the Blackout" across my apartment, or bury the notebook in the garden, and work on the next thing. I know if I do that though, I'll fall back into bad habits in a second, and not finish a piece for another two years. I have a few writer friends who seem to actually work steadily on multiple projects at once, and I look upon them as unicorns. Pink unicorns, with glittery manes, and ruby hooves, who speak fluent French.
I'm still a bipedal, non-imaginary anglophone, I'm afraid.
So, for the sake of any and all future works, back to the beginning I go.
(sorry Shayne)
I was in a coffee shop yesterday (I was waiting for someone! Don't judge me!), and I made a bunch of notes, so I think I know what is wrong, and what I have to do to correct it. The problem is, it means scrapping everything so far and starting again, which I'm not keen to do. I have other ideas I want to move on to.
Part of my reason for having this site is to keep myself disciplined. I have the attention span of a lobotomized gnat, I want an egg salad sandwich.
Sorry, sorry, really, I'm back, but see what I mean? I know lots of writers have trouble finishing projects they start...that's a pretty common problem for people in general. My way of combatting this is by making myself work on only one project at a time, and I don't let myself touch anything else until it's done. My reward for completing my work is more work. This website is also a disciplinary tool of sorts, for publicly shaming me into working so I actually have stuff to post.
Right now I'd love to throw "After the Blackout" across my apartment, or bury the notebook in the garden, and work on the next thing. I know if I do that though, I'll fall back into bad habits in a second, and not finish a piece for another two years. I have a few writer friends who seem to actually work steadily on multiple projects at once, and I look upon them as unicorns. Pink unicorns, with glittery manes, and ruby hooves, who speak fluent French.
I'm still a bipedal, non-imaginary anglophone, I'm afraid.
So, for the sake of any and all future works, back to the beginning I go.
(sorry Shayne)
Monday, July 7, 2008
#1
Today is a day for the ages, I received my very first rejection letter! Thanks to all who've been there for me through it all.
Clearly, your friendship and love did me no good.
Clearly, your friendship and love did me no good.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Blind Recommendation
"Tis better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all? No. Tis better to have never met certain people in the first place."
-Kurt Daniel Glowinski
I'm not up at all on current poetry. I don't usually find it all that interesting, and because of that, I've no idea how to evaluate what's good and what's bad. Most people will yap at you that it's all subjective anyway until you say you like ________ poet, and then they'll loudly call you on your stupidity.
I stick to reading poets who are dead.
Still, let me take a moment to recommend Narcissistic Personality Disorder by that guy I just quoted above. I've no way to tell whether this set of poems is particularly good or not, but I can say that they will speak to anyone who has been in a relationship with a chronic narcissist. For those who have been, perhaps it will speed the healing process to know that you are not alone. For those who haven't been, maybe you will see how abusive relationships like those hold together. Or maybe the poems will be useless to you.
Poetry's pretty useless anyway. Unless it's Dr. Suess.
-Kurt Daniel Glowinski
I'm not up at all on current poetry. I don't usually find it all that interesting, and because of that, I've no idea how to evaluate what's good and what's bad. Most people will yap at you that it's all subjective anyway until you say you like ________ poet, and then they'll loudly call you on your stupidity.
I stick to reading poets who are dead.
Still, let me take a moment to recommend Narcissistic Personality Disorder by that guy I just quoted above. I've no way to tell whether this set of poems is particularly good or not, but I can say that they will speak to anyone who has been in a relationship with a chronic narcissist. For those who have been, perhaps it will speed the healing process to know that you are not alone. For those who haven't been, maybe you will see how abusive relationships like those hold together. Or maybe the poems will be useless to you.
Poetry's pretty useless anyway. Unless it's Dr. Suess.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Legacy of Susan Kay - this is a terrible title
Most medium-to-hardcore Phantom fans have read or tried to read the novel Phantom by Susan Kay. It's a tricky book to find; eBay or finding a stray copy on Amazon is usually your best bet. I happened to chance upon a copy at a secondhand bookstore one magical summer.
I was entranced with Phantom, which is a "biography" of Erik, starting from before his birth, and going through his childhood, his life as the Phantom and his affair with Christine, to after his death.
If you find it and read it, have a box of Kleenex handy.
Susan Kay has only written one other novel, that was actually published before Phantom, and is even harder to find, called Legacy. The story of Legacy is as follows:
I was entranced with Phantom, which is a "biography" of Erik, starting from before his birth, and going through his childhood, his life as the Phantom and his affair with Christine, to after his death.
If you find it and read it, have a box of Kleenex handy.
Susan Kay has only written one other novel, that was actually published before Phantom, and is even harder to find, called Legacy. The story of Legacy is as follows:
Phantom - Erik + Queen Elizabeth I = Legacy
I'm being glib, it really is a good book. I can't help comparing it to Phantom, though, and I have to say that in the five year gap between novels, Susan Kay really honed her craft.
I can't complain about the subject matter. I love history, and Elizabeth Tudor is a fascinating figure, and real, unlike Erik (I can tell the difference every now and again). I kept having issues with the narration though, which prevented me from breezing through the book in a day like I did with Phantom. I could also be slightly biased towards the subject matter in Phantom, but like I said, the Tudors are an interesting set.
The issue seemed to be that the book hovered between using a (with apologies for sounding like a prat) limited third-person omniscient narrator and an objective third-person etc. etc. So while the pronoun usage, in theory, placed the reader in the minds of different characters, one always felt divorced from the action of the story, and this left some important moments of the story feeling rushed, or the impact lessened. Towards the end, it also seemed she was trying to build Elizabeth up to be an unreliable narrator, but I couldn't tell if this was deliberate, or just a result of the narration issues from all the way along.
Being a historical book, of course I can't resist nitpicking at a few points. If you, dear reader, actually intend on exerting the energy to find Legacy and read it, you might want to stop here. Spoilers. No, it doesn't matter if you're already familiar with the story of Elizabeth Tudor, you want to stop here.
Are we all sorted out now? Good.
Legacy is very accurate, to my knowledge, though I would be the first to say that I am not an expert. Two fairly significant issues jumped out at me, however:
1. There is a suggestion towards the end of the book that Elizabeth was actually the daughter of Anne and George Boleyn. Based on every source I've ever read, that is absolute bollocks, and really didn't add anything to the story to suggest it. Matter of fact, it pissed me off about fifteen pages from the end. Taking liberties with history in fiction can be forgiven, sometimes, if it actually adds something worthwhile to the story. Having Elizabeth spend six hundred and fifty pages fighting to keep the throne because the Catholics think she is a pretender and a bastard, and then telling the reader, "Hey check it out! They're right! PWNAGE"? It defeats the purpose of the character. You've just invalidated six hundred and fifty pages of your own work, and the time it took your reader to read them. Good job.
2. Elizabeth is described as being very naturally beautiful well into her forties and fifties in Legacy, and her appearance gradually changes to being very mannequin-like due to wigs and cosmetics as she ages. This is not the case. Elizabeth I suffered through a bout of smallpox in 1562, when she was 29. This left her scarred, and she began to use heavy make-up from that point forward, which hastened the loss of her hair, so by her mid-thirties there would have been nothing natural left about her beauty. This was not an unusual case in her time, but in Legacy, Elizabeth comes through the bout of smallpox miraculously un-scarred, and actually marvels at her unbelievable luck at having done so. A major inaccuracy like that is annoying enough, but more to the point, why change it? It doesn't add anything to the story, and in fact it would have been more interesting to read about Elizabeth's struggle with her vanity; historically that's one of the interesting points about her.
And those are my gripes.
For all my complaining, I still loved Legacy very much. Whoever finds my cold corpse one day will have to pry both it and Phantom out of my dead arms with the jaws of life. I'm sure it will find it's way into my regular book rotation. Just not for a little while.
I can't complain about the subject matter. I love history, and Elizabeth Tudor is a fascinating figure, and real, unlike Erik (I can tell the difference every now and again). I kept having issues with the narration though, which prevented me from breezing through the book in a day like I did with Phantom. I could also be slightly biased towards the subject matter in Phantom, but like I said, the Tudors are an interesting set.
The issue seemed to be that the book hovered between using a (with apologies for sounding like a prat) limited third-person omniscient narrator and an objective third-person etc. etc. So while the pronoun usage, in theory, placed the reader in the minds of different characters, one always felt divorced from the action of the story, and this left some important moments of the story feeling rushed, or the impact lessened. Towards the end, it also seemed she was trying to build Elizabeth up to be an unreliable narrator, but I couldn't tell if this was deliberate, or just a result of the narration issues from all the way along.
Being a historical book, of course I can't resist nitpicking at a few points. If you, dear reader, actually intend on exerting the energy to find Legacy and read it, you might want to stop here. Spoilers. No, it doesn't matter if you're already familiar with the story of Elizabeth Tudor, you want to stop here.
Are we all sorted out now? Good.
Legacy is very accurate, to my knowledge, though I would be the first to say that I am not an expert. Two fairly significant issues jumped out at me, however:
1. There is a suggestion towards the end of the book that Elizabeth was actually the daughter of Anne and George Boleyn. Based on every source I've ever read, that is absolute bollocks, and really didn't add anything to the story to suggest it. Matter of fact, it pissed me off about fifteen pages from the end. Taking liberties with history in fiction can be forgiven, sometimes, if it actually adds something worthwhile to the story. Having Elizabeth spend six hundred and fifty pages fighting to keep the throne because the Catholics think she is a pretender and a bastard, and then telling the reader, "Hey check it out! They're right! PWNAGE"? It defeats the purpose of the character. You've just invalidated six hundred and fifty pages of your own work, and the time it took your reader to read them. Good job.
2. Elizabeth is described as being very naturally beautiful well into her forties and fifties in Legacy, and her appearance gradually changes to being very mannequin-like due to wigs and cosmetics as she ages. This is not the case. Elizabeth I suffered through a bout of smallpox in 1562, when she was 29. This left her scarred, and she began to use heavy make-up from that point forward, which hastened the loss of her hair, so by her mid-thirties there would have been nothing natural left about her beauty. This was not an unusual case in her time, but in Legacy, Elizabeth comes through the bout of smallpox miraculously un-scarred, and actually marvels at her unbelievable luck at having done so. A major inaccuracy like that is annoying enough, but more to the point, why change it? It doesn't add anything to the story, and in fact it would have been more interesting to read about Elizabeth's struggle with her vanity; historically that's one of the interesting points about her.
And those are my gripes.
For all my complaining, I still loved Legacy very much. Whoever finds my cold corpse one day will have to pry both it and Phantom out of my dead arms with the jaws of life. I'm sure it will find it's way into my regular book rotation. Just not for a little while.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Rock-a-bye baby
Anyone else experience night terrors? They're really most uncomfortable. Even the ones that involve you waking up and seeing Hannibal Lecter in your bed, and quoting Dante to you over a string quartet.
Especially those ones.
Next time, I'll put on the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack before I go to sleep. Maybe I'll wake up next to Johnny Depp.
I can dream, can't I?
Apparently I can.
That's the point.
Get it? Funny, huh? Get it? Do you?!
I need a hobby. Like writing or something.
Especially those ones.
Next time, I'll put on the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack before I go to sleep. Maybe I'll wake up next to Johnny Depp.
I can dream, can't I?
Apparently I can.
That's the point.
Get it? Funny, huh? Get it? Do you?!
I need a hobby. Like writing or something.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
How I'll Spend My Summer Vacation
One convention that's grown on me a lot the last few years is Fan Expo, which takes place in August at the Metro Convention Centre. It's basically a giant geek mall you pay for the privilege of shopping at, but there are usually good movies showing, and cosplay to really marvel at. Alright, so I'm easily entertained.
On that note, one of the guests this year is the director of Cannibal Holocaust. I don't know if any of you reading this (except for me) have ever seen Cannibal Holocaust. If you haven't, I don't recommend it. If you have, perhaps you'll understand when I say that this year I think I'll throw some extra incentive on top of my registration fee for the privilege of kicking the guy in the nuts.
Buzz Aldrin's going to be there too, but I won't kick him. Unless he slaughters a turtle or cuts off a monkey's face between now and then I guess. I must admit my hypocrisy in that I still won't kick him even if he stabs a giant spider, but what can I say, I'm not perfect, just arachnophobic.
On that note, one of the guests this year is the director of Cannibal Holocaust. I don't know if any of you reading this (except for me) have ever seen Cannibal Holocaust. If you haven't, I don't recommend it. If you have, perhaps you'll understand when I say that this year I think I'll throw some extra incentive on top of my registration fee for the privilege of kicking the guy in the nuts.
Buzz Aldrin's going to be there too, but I won't kick him. Unless he slaughters a turtle or cuts off a monkey's face between now and then I guess. I must admit my hypocrisy in that I still won't kick him even if he stabs a giant spider, but what can I say, I'm not perfect, just arachnophobic.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Fame! (not the good kind)
My reputation as a Phantom fanatic is spreading, like waste from an overflowing cesspool (GODDAMMIT I should have thought that up in time for the Bulwer-Lytton contest. Oh well, next year). As none of you will know, I posted an entry on Facebook back in November, ranking all the different film versions of Phantom, imparting my indisputably expert opinions on each (who could forget such classic academic language as this: "And so like in this version, Erik is sooooooo sweet, you just want to reach through the screen and pet him!! And then Christine is so annoying, but in a very Christine way, so that's okay! I like totally love this movie!1!!111!!!!!"). My but that English degree has served me well.
Earlier this week I received a Friends Request on Facebook from someone I didn't know, with the following message included:
"Hi! I was hoping to read your note about the different film versions of the Phantom of the Opera."
I checked his profile, and we don't have any friends or groups in common. There is the possibility that he found my one post from months ago on the one Phantom group I belong to on Facebook, or he found out about it somehow third hand.
Either way, for the sake of my professional future, it's probably time to start thinking about changing my name. This ranks maybe slightly better than being president of a Star Trek fanclub, but quite a bit worse than knitting scarves for each Harry Potter house.
Earlier this week I received a Friends Request on Facebook from someone I didn't know, with the following message included:
"Hi! I was hoping to read your note about the different film versions of the Phantom of the Opera."
I checked his profile, and we don't have any friends or groups in common. There is the possibility that he found my one post from months ago on the one Phantom group I belong to on Facebook, or he found out about it somehow third hand.
Either way, for the sake of my professional future, it's probably time to start thinking about changing my name. This ranks maybe slightly better than being president of a Star Trek fanclub, but quite a bit worse than knitting scarves for each Harry Potter house.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Secret Identity
If ever I feel the need to publish under a pen name (I currently feel no such compulsion), then I've determined that my name will be Alex Fawn Timfly. A bag of candy for anyone who solves the intricate mystery of the name*. And in all my works published as Timfly, I will use this as my author bio pic:
In other news, no longer having my pet around, I can no longer mask my insanity, and have become reconciled to the fact that I just talk to myself most of the time.
It's a good life.
*Shayne is excluded from this. She knows too much. And the mystery is not that intricate. Have you read the Da Vinci Code? Yeah, I'm sorry too. Anyway, it's not much trickier than that. You don't care anyway.
P.S. Yeah, this is supposed to be a writer's blog. I may or may not have a story twitching anxiously in the inbox, or possibly even on the desk of the editor of a sizeable horror magazine.
In other news, no longer having my pet around, I can no longer mask my insanity, and have become reconciled to the fact that I just talk to myself most of the time.
It's a good life.
*Shayne is excluded from this. She knows too much. And the mystery is not that intricate. Have you read the Da Vinci Code? Yeah, I'm sorry too. Anyway, it's not much trickier than that. You don't care anyway.
P.S. Yeah, this is supposed to be a writer's blog. I may or may not have a story twitching anxiously in the inbox, or possibly even on the desk of the editor of a sizeable horror magazine.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Frisky
As long as I'm already a blogger, I might as well do everything I can to be irritating as possible. So here's an entry about my pet.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Peer Pressure
Today, someone apparently found this site by Googling 10 whacks with a wet noodle. That is so funny I currently cannot breath.
And since everyone else is doing it, here are my disorganized thoughts on the TTC strike:
So, the surprise TTC strike this weekend set off a great flurry of well-thought out and carefully weighed opinions, particularly on the internet and its various "blogs".
Just kidding. We're all jackasses.
I was just as toweringly pissed off about the strike as anyone else, and as I aimlessly surfed from faceless LJ to faceless blog (having nothing better to do as most of my weekend plans were effectively destroyed, except for my market-going plans with Shayne as I would and have happily jumped through hoops of fire and flown motorcycles over rows of rabid tigers to hang out with her), I found an increasing number of bloggers, some of whom could even spell, advocating an "alternative mode of transportation", biking.
I have nothing against people who bike, some of my best friends are bikers, but you know what? I like the public transportation system. I especially like using the public transportation system that I'll pay for either way whether I use it or not. Plus, I'm a terrible bike rider, can hardly walk a straight line let alone bike one, and the idea of wobbling through Toronto traffic where I might have to face drivers as ditzy as I am is highly unappealing. Sorry, but if I'm going to be put in a position where I have to play chicken with a pick-up truck, I want the odds stacked in my favour, thank you. I'll take the bus, rather than rely on a couple of pounds of aluminum, a plastic helmet, and worst of all, my reflexes and common sense, to save me.
This is not to say that I'm hog-wild about buses, trains, and cars either. If it were up to me, automobiles would be banned and we'd all go back to riding horses everywhere. In fact, if I ever run for mayor, that is what I'd base my entire campaign on. That, and recreating Toronto as a polyandrous society. This is how it would go:
"Mrs. Maxwell-Depp-Englund-Townsend-Lee, crime in this city is out of control. What is your plan to reduce the crime rate?"
"FREE PONIES FOR EVERYONE!"
"Mrs. Maxwell-Depp-Englund-Townsend-Lee, how do you plan to handle the city's financial crisis?"
"ALL TTC BUS DRIVERS WILL BE RE-TRAINED AS FARRIERS!"
I think I'd win.
Where was I? I was thinking about ponies. Oh yeah! Biking.
To win me over to the side of biking as a viable method of transportation, the following conditions would have to be met:
-someone would have to find me one of those old-fashioned bikes with the giant front wheel
-I would also require a green velvet hat with a wide brim and a white ostrich feather
-pantaloons (these I can provide myself)
Yes, I wear my Beetlejuice pantaloons as regular pants, big whoop, wanna fight about it?
Really, when you can wear pantaloons in public, who needs sex?
Okay, I will stop making jokes about pantaloons now*.
Anyway, picture it: I'd sail along Yonge St. to work everyday, towering above the cars. I'd pull up at an intersection next to an eighteen-wheeler, look into the cab at the driver, and give him a big thumbs-up and a grin. Then I'd go find a Smart Car and circle around it like a vulture all the way down the street, just because I can and my front wheel would be higher than its windshield.
I'd have to somehow rig speakers to the bike, so I could blast Scott Joplin rags and old-timey circus music too.
Anyway, there's my list of demands. Bikers, your work is cut out for you, win me to your side!
* Lie
And since everyone else is doing it, here are my disorganized thoughts on the TTC strike:
So, the surprise TTC strike this weekend set off a great flurry of well-thought out and carefully weighed opinions, particularly on the internet and its various "blogs".
Just kidding. We're all jackasses.
I was just as toweringly pissed off about the strike as anyone else, and as I aimlessly surfed from faceless LJ to faceless blog (having nothing better to do as most of my weekend plans were effectively destroyed, except for my market-going plans with Shayne as I would and have happily jumped through hoops of fire and flown motorcycles over rows of rabid tigers to hang out with her), I found an increasing number of bloggers, some of whom could even spell, advocating an "alternative mode of transportation", biking.
I have nothing against people who bike, some of my best friends are bikers, but you know what? I like the public transportation system. I especially like using the public transportation system that I'll pay for either way whether I use it or not. Plus, I'm a terrible bike rider, can hardly walk a straight line let alone bike one, and the idea of wobbling through Toronto traffic where I might have to face drivers as ditzy as I am is highly unappealing. Sorry, but if I'm going to be put in a position where I have to play chicken with a pick-up truck, I want the odds stacked in my favour, thank you. I'll take the bus, rather than rely on a couple of pounds of aluminum, a plastic helmet, and worst of all, my reflexes and common sense, to save me.
This is not to say that I'm hog-wild about buses, trains, and cars either. If it were up to me, automobiles would be banned and we'd all go back to riding horses everywhere. In fact, if I ever run for mayor, that is what I'd base my entire campaign on. That, and recreating Toronto as a polyandrous society. This is how it would go:
"Mrs. Maxwell-Depp-Englund-Townsend-Lee, crime in this city is out of control. What is your plan to reduce the crime rate?"
"FREE PONIES FOR EVERYONE!"
"Mrs. Maxwell-Depp-Englund-Townsend-Lee, how do you plan to handle the city's financial crisis?"
"ALL TTC BUS DRIVERS WILL BE RE-TRAINED AS FARRIERS!"
I think I'd win.
Where was I? I was thinking about ponies. Oh yeah! Biking.
To win me over to the side of biking as a viable method of transportation, the following conditions would have to be met:
-someone would have to find me one of those old-fashioned bikes with the giant front wheel
-I would also require a green velvet hat with a wide brim and a white ostrich feather
-pantaloons (these I can provide myself)
Yes, I wear my Beetlejuice pantaloons as regular pants, big whoop, wanna fight about it?
Really, when you can wear pantaloons in public, who needs sex?
Okay, I will stop making jokes about pantaloons now*.
Anyway, picture it: I'd sail along Yonge St. to work everyday, towering above the cars. I'd pull up at an intersection next to an eighteen-wheeler, look into the cab at the driver, and give him a big thumbs-up and a grin. Then I'd go find a Smart Car and circle around it like a vulture all the way down the street, just because I can and my front wheel would be higher than its windshield.
I'd have to somehow rig speakers to the bike, so I could blast Scott Joplin rags and old-timey circus music too.
Anyway, there's my list of demands. Bikers, your work is cut out for you, win me to your side!
* Lie
Monday, April 28, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
With Flair!
"Are you sure you want me to come to the dance with you? I'll probably just cramp your style."
"Malhavoc, trust me. You're cramping nothing."
******************************************
Ad Astra was interesting. I haven't been to that many cons, but each one has it's own personality of sorts. Ad Astra was very panel focused, but most of the panels were focused on writing and media analysis, or very broad topics of interest while panels at some other cons are pretty much overwhelmed by niche fandoms ("Buffy's Hairstyles Through the Ages", "Kirk vs. Picard vs. Those Other Guys"). Frankly I was thrilled not to be surrounded by Harry Potter, Joss What's-His-Name, and Star Trek. The panels I attended were intelligent discussions (and sometimes debates) that were a pleasure to listen to, rather than the disorganized mumblings of a group of die-hards with the collective public speaking abilities of a thirteen-year-old. So, between the panels and picking up a bunch of nice new books from the dealer's room, this could be considered a successful weekend.
And on a shallower note, the con was also rife with tall, skinny, dark-haired geeks with ponytails, glasses, and noses to next week. It was like a weekend at the Playboy Mansion.
Except instead of a grotto, there was a mass Dungeons and Dragons game.
"Malhavoc, trust me. You're cramping nothing."
******************************************
Ad Astra was interesting. I haven't been to that many cons, but each one has it's own personality of sorts. Ad Astra was very panel focused, but most of the panels were focused on writing and media analysis, or very broad topics of interest while panels at some other cons are pretty much overwhelmed by niche fandoms ("Buffy's Hairstyles Through the Ages", "Kirk vs. Picard vs. Those Other Guys"). Frankly I was thrilled not to be surrounded by Harry Potter, Joss What's-His-Name, and Star Trek. The panels I attended were intelligent discussions (and sometimes debates) that were a pleasure to listen to, rather than the disorganized mumblings of a group of die-hards with the collective public speaking abilities of a thirteen-year-old. So, between the panels and picking up a bunch of nice new books from the dealer's room, this could be considered a successful weekend.
And on a shallower note, the con was also rife with tall, skinny, dark-haired geeks with ponytails, glasses, and noses to next week. It was like a weekend at the Playboy Mansion.
Except instead of a grotto, there was a mass Dungeons and Dragons game.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Mingling
Not that anyone who reads this knows my phone number, my e-mail address, or what I look like, but I'll be at Ad-Astra this weekend. Legend has it that if you look into a mirror and call my name three times, I will appear by your side.
Now, guess my costume.
Now, guess my costume.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Ninth Gate versus the Club Dumas: It's Not Just the Depp Factor
I really hated the book the Club Dumas.
This is one of the few cases in history of the movie being better than the book, and naturally I'd say that about pretty much any movie version of a book if the movie version involves Johnny Depp, which in this case it does, but in this case it's not just the sexy, sexy Depp factor that makes the Ninth Gate a much better movie than the Club Dumas is a book. I really enjoyed the Ninth Gate. It was slow and calm to watch, but quirky as hell just under the surface, like Polanski movies are. It was a decent story, well-shot, well-acted, satisfying ending. So, armed with the common knowledge that the book is always better than the movie, I eagerly purchased the Club Dumas at a bookstore at Pearson airport a couple of summers ago while making my annual pilgrimage to the Mysterious East (Nova Scotia).
By the way, there will probably be spoilers for both book and movie farther down, so you may want to stop reading now. Or there may not be, it's not like I put any thought or planning into these things before I write them.
I got to reading, and made an exciting discovery: there was an entire second plotline that hadn't been in the movie at all, about Alexandre Dumas, the Three Musketeers, and the Satanist society that uses the book of the Nine Gates (the society, and obviously the book were in the movie, but the Alexandre Dumas story was not). That explained the title at least. Boy, was I ever giddy with happiness and insecurity. Surely the two stories...the search for the three last copies of the Nine Gates and the gradual revelation of Dumas' devil-worshipping and possible credit-stealing...were going to intertwine in some fascinating way that would have me bemoaning my sluggish, third-rate brain for not being able to think up something nearly as clever, thereby sealing my fate to remain a mediocre pulp hack for the rest of eternity.
Not quite.
It was a good book, really. I had such high hopes. Nicely atmospheric, pretentious as a poet at Starbucks, but that wasn't really a surprise, given the subject matter. Overall enjoyable, until the last fifty pages or so. The grand climax hit, and gosh, it sure was neat, but something was wrong. The whole Dumas story seemed to have flatlined about twenty pages earlier, and one of the main characters (Irene Adler, guardian angel and token love interest) was standing around and doing nothing. I don't just mean that you didn't hear about her doing anything during the high drama resolution of the search for the Nine Gates, it's just that what you did hear about her what that she was standing by the window of the castle and looking bored. Okay. So, where was the rest of the story?
There was no rest of the story. The Dumas story never concluded. And, as it turned out, it had nothing to do with the primary story of the search for the Nine Gates.
Nor, it turned out, did Irene Adler. In fact, one of the last scenes in the book had Corso and Irene driving around in a fancy convertible and laughing about how the search for the Nine Gates had absolutely nothing to do with her. And we never do find out what exactly made her important beyond being Corso's occasional guard dog and sex toy, in which case making the character an actual dog would have been much more interesting. Or certainly uncommon. Whatever gets the reader's attention.
My hands were shaking as I closed the book the book and put it down. I looked at it lying on my bed, and thought that maybe if I clapped my hands three times or something, it would jump up and act out the rest of the story.
No such luck, though my mother mentioned something after dinner that night about maybe having me tested for autism when we got back to Toronto.
Had I really just read that?
I love books. I am very nice and gentle with my books. I won't let any but a select few individuals borrow my books, because I don't trust everyone to take care of them properly. And some of my books I won't even let out of my house. You want to read my copy of Phantom by Susan Kay? No problem. I'll just handcuff you to the radiator in my kitchen, place the book on a book stand no less than twelve inches away from you, and you may turn the pages only with a pair of sterilized tweezers that I will provide. I cry when the cover of one of my books gets bent, or a page torn. I love the damn things.
So, in the name of that love, and my resolve to never do harm, I had to take the Club Dumas to my mother, and ask her to hide it from me. Why? Because I feared I would rip it to shreds. And light the shreds on fire. And then scatter the ashes into the grazing paddock of an alpaca farm nearby.
A few days later, I had mom produce the book again, and we got in the car and drove (fast) to the closest Frenchy's. I didn't even let her slow the car down, I just opened the window and hurled the book out in the general direction of the store. I may have broken one of their windows. I didn't care. I just wanted to get the book out of my sight and out of my presence.
If you see this book, do not read it. Do not let its poison enter your mind.
Watch the Ninth Gate. Feel a greater than usual sense of appreciation for Roman Polanski.
Enjoy the scene where Johnny Depp is only wearing a towel.
Don't read the Club Dumas.
This is one of the few cases in history of the movie being better than the book, and naturally I'd say that about pretty much any movie version of a book if the movie version involves Johnny Depp, which in this case it does, but in this case it's not just the sexy, sexy Depp factor that makes the Ninth Gate a much better movie than the Club Dumas is a book. I really enjoyed the Ninth Gate. It was slow and calm to watch, but quirky as hell just under the surface, like Polanski movies are. It was a decent story, well-shot, well-acted, satisfying ending. So, armed with the common knowledge that the book is always better than the movie, I eagerly purchased the Club Dumas at a bookstore at Pearson airport a couple of summers ago while making my annual pilgrimage to the Mysterious East (Nova Scotia).
By the way, there will probably be spoilers for both book and movie farther down, so you may want to stop reading now. Or there may not be, it's not like I put any thought or planning into these things before I write them.
I got to reading, and made an exciting discovery: there was an entire second plotline that hadn't been in the movie at all, about Alexandre Dumas, the Three Musketeers, and the Satanist society that uses the book of the Nine Gates (the society, and obviously the book were in the movie, but the Alexandre Dumas story was not). That explained the title at least. Boy, was I ever giddy with happiness and insecurity. Surely the two stories...the search for the three last copies of the Nine Gates and the gradual revelation of Dumas' devil-worshipping and possible credit-stealing...were going to intertwine in some fascinating way that would have me bemoaning my sluggish, third-rate brain for not being able to think up something nearly as clever, thereby sealing my fate to remain a mediocre pulp hack for the rest of eternity.
Not quite.
It was a good book, really. I had such high hopes. Nicely atmospheric, pretentious as a poet at Starbucks, but that wasn't really a surprise, given the subject matter. Overall enjoyable, until the last fifty pages or so. The grand climax hit, and gosh, it sure was neat, but something was wrong. The whole Dumas story seemed to have flatlined about twenty pages earlier, and one of the main characters (Irene Adler, guardian angel and token love interest) was standing around and doing nothing. I don't just mean that you didn't hear about her doing anything during the high drama resolution of the search for the Nine Gates, it's just that what you did hear about her what that she was standing by the window of the castle and looking bored. Okay. So, where was the rest of the story?
There was no rest of the story. The Dumas story never concluded. And, as it turned out, it had nothing to do with the primary story of the search for the Nine Gates.
Nor, it turned out, did Irene Adler. In fact, one of the last scenes in the book had Corso and Irene driving around in a fancy convertible and laughing about how the search for the Nine Gates had absolutely nothing to do with her. And we never do find out what exactly made her important beyond being Corso's occasional guard dog and sex toy, in which case making the character an actual dog would have been much more interesting. Or certainly uncommon. Whatever gets the reader's attention.
My hands were shaking as I closed the book the book and put it down. I looked at it lying on my bed, and thought that maybe if I clapped my hands three times or something, it would jump up and act out the rest of the story.
No such luck, though my mother mentioned something after dinner that night about maybe having me tested for autism when we got back to Toronto.
Had I really just read that?
I love books. I am very nice and gentle with my books. I won't let any but a select few individuals borrow my books, because I don't trust everyone to take care of them properly. And some of my books I won't even let out of my house. You want to read my copy of Phantom by Susan Kay? No problem. I'll just handcuff you to the radiator in my kitchen, place the book on a book stand no less than twelve inches away from you, and you may turn the pages only with a pair of sterilized tweezers that I will provide. I cry when the cover of one of my books gets bent, or a page torn. I love the damn things.
So, in the name of that love, and my resolve to never do harm, I had to take the Club Dumas to my mother, and ask her to hide it from me. Why? Because I feared I would rip it to shreds. And light the shreds on fire. And then scatter the ashes into the grazing paddock of an alpaca farm nearby.
A few days later, I had mom produce the book again, and we got in the car and drove (fast) to the closest Frenchy's. I didn't even let her slow the car down, I just opened the window and hurled the book out in the general direction of the store. I may have broken one of their windows. I didn't care. I just wanted to get the book out of my sight and out of my presence.
If you see this book, do not read it. Do not let its poison enter your mind.
Watch the Ninth Gate. Feel a greater than usual sense of appreciation for Roman Polanski.
Enjoy the scene where Johnny Depp is only wearing a towel.
Don't read the Club Dumas.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Stage 28
A little teaser passage from "Stage 28". Do enjoy.
On a not entirely unrelated note, I am in love with Julian Lloyd Webber's orchestral version of the Lloyd Webber Phantom music, and I'm also enjoying the Woman in White suite as well, which I've never heard before. I could swear that several of the melodies are ripped off another classical composer, Gustav Holst maybe, but I'm too lazy to check. Some Lloyd Webber naysayers, of which there are many, would say, "Of COURSE he did! He's a hack!"
I however, being neither an ALW naysayer or fanatic, will be sitting here and enjoying some pretty violin and cello.
Happy Easter!
Nothing was easy. Telly felt lightheaded.
"Everyone take five," he said, and there struck up a quiet drone as cast and crew began to wander away in all directions. Telly stood up, and began to explore Stage 28.
It had been the first steel-and-concrete set to be built at Universal Studios, especially to serve as the interior of the Paris Opéra, and several other sets as well, for the silent film adaptation of the Phantom back in 1925. The silent film was the only one where the actors hadn't messed up by having American voices in a French setting, har dee har har. Telly traced the carving on one of the old opera boxes. They were shooting the unmasking scene in the Phantom's lair, and had built the smaller, much more claustrophobic set, within the soundstage. Outside of its black walls, one could still see the remains of the auditorium set. A false floor hid where once an audience of eager extras had sat, the backstage set had long been dismantled, and the chandelier lost. How one managed to lose a one-tonne chandelier from a locked storage facility on a private secure lot was indeed a mystery for the ages, but there still remained something special about stage 28, where the first and greatest film adaptation of the Phantom had been made. Telly had hoped his cast would be inspired by working on the set, as he had been, but the announcement had bounced right off Mindy's head and received only a lukewarm "Oh?" from Richard. Justin, hell-bent on becoming a respected acteur (his irritating words) had reacted as if he'd just been told he was next in line for the British throne. "Oh my God!" he had exclaimed. "That is so incredible!" You could hear the hitch in his voice as he stopped himself from saying "cool". He had then proceeded to tell them what a great fan he was of Len Chaney. He was a moron.
There was a legend that Chaney's ghost haunted the stage, Universal's own personal Phantom. In his more cynical moments, Telly wondered if a Ouija board and an EMF meter might improve the cast. Then he would think that Lon Chaney would have better things to do with eternity.
On a not entirely unrelated note, I am in love with Julian Lloyd Webber's orchestral version of the Lloyd Webber Phantom music, and I'm also enjoying the Woman in White suite as well, which I've never heard before. I could swear that several of the melodies are ripped off another classical composer, Gustav Holst maybe, but I'm too lazy to check. Some Lloyd Webber naysayers, of which there are many, would say, "Of COURSE he did! He's a hack!"
I however, being neither an ALW naysayer or fanatic, will be sitting here and enjoying some pretty violin and cello.
Happy Easter!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
White Lighting
I'm beyond the point where I take an overtly holistic or spiritual approach to writing, but some residual belief in faeries and winged muses clings to the inner walls of my brain. Case in point:
"Stage 28" HAD to be written in the wide black journal with yellow pages and the silver placeholder ribbon, with black pens, in handwriting.
"After the Blackout" HAS to be written in the blue-ish "inspiration" notebook my mother gave me for Christmas, with blue pens, in printing.
"Stage 28" HAD to be written in the wide black journal with yellow pages and the silver placeholder ribbon, with black pens, in handwriting.
"After the Blackout" HAS to be written in the blue-ish "inspiration" notebook my mother gave me for Christmas, with blue pens, in printing.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Stage 28: the story of the story, part FINITO except for editing, formatting, submitting, and publishing. Shut up.
Once the weather improves, black pens everywhere will be lighting candles as I bury their three fallen brothers in the planter outside my apartment building. Yes, I still have the first two pens that died so "Stage 28" could live. Yes, that means I've kept two dried up Bic pens for a year. Not just kept them, transported them when I moved this past summer. I'm quite mad you see.
Once Spring arrives for a long-ish stay (shouldn't be too long now) they will be laid to rest along with a Staples SONIX Gel pen that also laid down his life for the cause of my Phantom story. I think perhaps I will wrap them in a black cloth and sing their requiem.
You all think I'm joking, don't you?
I had to pause for a count of five between words for the last page-and-a-bit. That would revive the ink for another three letters or so. My patience was wearing thin at the end, and I just scratched out the name and date as quickly as I could. I might as well have done it with my fingernail for all it showed up.
Who cares? It's DONE.
Now, it will be shoved in a drawer for a week before I begin the major renovations it still needs, mostly in the last three pages. I'm pleased with the ending, but I need to clarify it. Clarify it to emphasize its ambiguity, which makes sense to me. There's also some reorganization of events to be done. The important thing is that I know all the elements that I want are there this time, and everyone's ended up where they should be.
What Happens Next
I have another story that I'll begin work on soon called "After the Blackout", and I also intend to pull out my stories from the past few years (five in total...yeah, kinda sad), rip them apart, and turn them into something I can be proud of now (not two or three years ago). Once that's done, I'll set those in circulation as well.
Be happy for me. I am!
Once Spring arrives for a long-ish stay (shouldn't be too long now) they will be laid to rest along with a Staples SONIX Gel pen that also laid down his life for the cause of my Phantom story. I think perhaps I will wrap them in a black cloth and sing their requiem.
You all think I'm joking, don't you?
I had to pause for a count of five between words for the last page-and-a-bit. That would revive the ink for another three letters or so. My patience was wearing thin at the end, and I just scratched out the name and date as quickly as I could. I might as well have done it with my fingernail for all it showed up.
Who cares? It's DONE.
Now, it will be shoved in a drawer for a week before I begin the major renovations it still needs, mostly in the last three pages. I'm pleased with the ending, but I need to clarify it. Clarify it to emphasize its ambiguity, which makes sense to me. There's also some reorganization of events to be done. The important thing is that I know all the elements that I want are there this time, and everyone's ended up where they should be.
What Happens Next
I have another story that I'll begin work on soon called "After the Blackout", and I also intend to pull out my stories from the past few years (five in total...yeah, kinda sad), rip them apart, and turn them into something I can be proud of now (not two or three years ago). Once that's done, I'll set those in circulation as well.
Be happy for me. I am!
REJOICE
It's done it's done it's done, motherfucker it is done done done done like Britney Spears and twice as dramatic.
I'd be celebrating my lady bits off right now if I didn't have work in the morning. And if my left hand wasn't frozen into something resembling a vultures talons.
I'd be celebrating my lady bits off right now if I didn't have work in the morning. And if my left hand wasn't frozen into something resembling a vultures talons.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Stage 28: the story of the story, THE FINAL CHAPTER
Yes yes, I know I've been slow with this ending of mine. Really, it's because writing and other creative endeavours (drawing and sewing for a start) have been taking precedence over blogging about writing and other creative endeavours. You should be glad. Or not, as none of you have read my work yet, so for all you know I might be a hack of Brown Rice proportions.
I wasn't kidding when I said there really wasn't much more to tell. I truncated the absolute worst of the garbage, and reworked the beginning into something readable (though the homoerotic elements stayed notably intact). I found what seemed like a good pausing point in the story, and turned in that much to my professor. I found that I was becoming increasingly fond of the work, and wanted to finish it again, but actually make it good this time.
The end has been very slow in coming, I must say. I've been bashing my head against the wall, the desk, and whatever other hard objects have been close at hand for nearly a year. This sounds painful, and perhaps not conducive to grand inspiration, but I was kicked in the head by a horse as a child, and my risk assessment abilities kinda went out the window after that. So did my math skills. What's traumatic brain injury? Cognitive impairment what?
There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. Of course, it's a white candle set on an ornate iron candle stand, so the light is weak and flickering, but such an atmosphere is only befitting for a scholarly artiste such as myself. This is a difficult story to do anything with: a director starts to lose it when his idiot actors don't see his vision. Then what? More importantly, so what? Unanimously, the opinions of the few who have read the original fragment of "Stage 28" have been, "Wow, it's good. I've absolutely no idea where you're going to go from here, but it's good." My thoughts exactly. I like my homoerotic fanfic. And now, I'm going to finish it without having to separate it into 200+ chapters on a specially filtered LiveJournal, and give it a title like, "All I Asked of My Angel of Music of the Night".
Edit: I am bored at work, and so issuing a challenge to both my readers: think of the most annoying title possible for a Phantom fic created out of song titles from the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. Include a brief description of the story if you'd like. For example:
"Thinking of All I Asked of my Angel of Music of the Night": Having chosen to end his sad, lonely life, Erik reflects on his relationship with Christine, and of why she rejected him (hint: it was because of his face).
"Wandering Child Goes Down Once More": Erik/Christine. PWP. i think dis iz the best thang i've evar writen. guys read it and rate it good, k? lol
"Phantom of the Prima Donna": Erik stalks the NEW star of the Paris Opera House. She has long jet black hair, starry violet eyes, and albatross skin. I meant alabaster skin. She is perfect. Chapter 1 of 2867493^10.
"Point of No Return to the Masquerade": All the cool kids at the party were mean to Erik, so he runs away and hides in his labyrinth. Christine comforts him. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content (ie. no goats).
Make me laugh, people.
Edit #2: Okay, you can use song lyrics as well as titles. I'm making this too easy.
Edit #3: Include story descriptions. I can't make it TOO easy.
Edit #4: I'm going to stop making edits now.
I wasn't kidding when I said there really wasn't much more to tell. I truncated the absolute worst of the garbage, and reworked the beginning into something readable (though the homoerotic elements stayed notably intact). I found what seemed like a good pausing point in the story, and turned in that much to my professor. I found that I was becoming increasingly fond of the work, and wanted to finish it again, but actually make it good this time.
The end has been very slow in coming, I must say. I've been bashing my head against the wall, the desk, and whatever other hard objects have been close at hand for nearly a year. This sounds painful, and perhaps not conducive to grand inspiration, but I was kicked in the head by a horse as a child, and my risk assessment abilities kinda went out the window after that. So did my math skills. What's traumatic brain injury? Cognitive impairment what?
There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. Of course, it's a white candle set on an ornate iron candle stand, so the light is weak and flickering, but such an atmosphere is only befitting for a scholarly artiste such as myself. This is a difficult story to do anything with: a director starts to lose it when his idiot actors don't see his vision. Then what? More importantly, so what? Unanimously, the opinions of the few who have read the original fragment of "Stage 28" have been, "Wow, it's good. I've absolutely no idea where you're going to go from here, but it's good." My thoughts exactly. I like my homoerotic fanfic. And now, I'm going to finish it without having to separate it into 200+ chapters on a specially filtered LiveJournal, and give it a title like, "All I Asked of My Angel of Music of the Night".
Edit: I am bored at work, and so issuing a challenge to both my readers: think of the most annoying title possible for a Phantom fic created out of song titles from the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. Include a brief description of the story if you'd like. For example:
"Thinking of All I Asked of my Angel of Music of the Night": Having chosen to end his sad, lonely life, Erik reflects on his relationship with Christine, and of why she rejected him (hint: it was because of his face).
"Wandering Child Goes Down Once More": Erik/Christine. PWP. i think dis iz the best thang i've evar writen. guys read it and rate it good, k? lol
"Phantom of the Prima Donna": Erik stalks the NEW star of the Paris Opera House. She has long jet black hair, starry violet eyes, and albatross skin. I meant alabaster skin. She is perfect. Chapter 1 of 2867493^10.
"Point of No Return to the Masquerade": All the cool kids at the party were mean to Erik, so he runs away and hides in his labyrinth. Christine comforts him. Rated PG-13 for some sexual content (ie. no goats).
Make me laugh, people.
Edit #2: Okay, you can use song lyrics as well as titles. I'm making this too easy.
Edit #3: Include story descriptions. I can't make it TOO easy.
Edit #4: I'm going to stop making edits now.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Stage 28: the story of the story, Part 3
Alternate Title: A Sue By Any Other Name Would Destruction Wreak
Flagrant narcissism was the answer, isn't it always? My main character would be an obsessive devotee of the Phantom, trying desperately to create the one "true" film version of the story that would essentially launch all the other tacked-together versions into the sun. Not bad. It was a starting point, but where to go from there?
I fidgeted through the rest of the bus ride, and when I finally got home, hardly said hi to my mother as I made a beeline (meaning I ran quickly but crookedly and unsteadily...pretty much my norm) for my computer.
That thing I said about no research? Okay, so it was a bit of a lie. But it wasn't much, really. I think I still held to my new "lazy" resolution quite nicely. I needed a catalyst though. So, armed with the Complete Phantom of the Opera and Google, I began to feel my way along Phantom's cinematic history. I didn't have to probe long before the perfect setting landed in my lap, and Telly began to take on more detail in my head, along with a cast of utter idiots. I was jitterbugging all over my room, except not really because it was the size of a horse's stall and the open floor space in it measured exactly one foot by three. So instead of jitterbugging, I sat on my bed and began to write.
I wrote two pens into Bic Heaven. Around seven o'clock in the morning, brain feeling like cotton, eyeballs on fire, and shivering like you do when you haven't slept a wink, Stage 28 was done. Rough to be sure, but done. I went for a much needed cup of tea, then came back and read the story.
I started to feel sick.
It started off well. It was funny, and clipped along well, then about a third of the way in, it became a mess. Not even a salvageable mess, just an absolute disaster. I suppose this shouldn't have been a surprise, given the circumstances, but for all of you who went to college or university and procrastinated like most students do, well...you get used to pulling off miracles. The panic doesn't hit until you've failed to pull off the standard miracle. Once the standard miracle has failed, then you're in the realm of the unknown. THEN you panic.
I panicked, and the first thing I did in my panic, was make another cup of tea. It was the same as the cup of tea I'd just drank, except my hand shook a lot more when lifting the cup. I re-read "Stage 28", and thought of what I should do with it, all the while, a nagging discomfort grew in my mind. There was something else wrong here, besides the story just being a pile of crap.
Wincing, I read the story again, tried to pinpoint what was bothering me, and couldn't do it. I forced myself to try again, this time doing the critical thinking and sniffing out of symbols and themes that I'd supposedly learned to do in four years of university. Then it hit me.
Dear God, sweet God, I had accidentally written a piece of homoerotic slash fanfiction.
Seriously...no seriously...was I an even bigger hack than I thought? Apparently so.
There's not much left to this sweeping, epic tale, then I'll actually start talking about current writing events, rather than a year old farce.
Flagrant narcissism was the answer, isn't it always? My main character would be an obsessive devotee of the Phantom, trying desperately to create the one "true" film version of the story that would essentially launch all the other tacked-together versions into the sun. Not bad. It was a starting point, but where to go from there?
I fidgeted through the rest of the bus ride, and when I finally got home, hardly said hi to my mother as I made a beeline (meaning I ran quickly but crookedly and unsteadily...pretty much my norm) for my computer.
That thing I said about no research? Okay, so it was a bit of a lie. But it wasn't much, really. I think I still held to my new "lazy" resolution quite nicely. I needed a catalyst though. So, armed with the Complete Phantom of the Opera and Google, I began to feel my way along Phantom's cinematic history. I didn't have to probe long before the perfect setting landed in my lap, and Telly began to take on more detail in my head, along with a cast of utter idiots. I was jitterbugging all over my room, except not really because it was the size of a horse's stall and the open floor space in it measured exactly one foot by three. So instead of jitterbugging, I sat on my bed and began to write.
I wrote two pens into Bic Heaven. Around seven o'clock in the morning, brain feeling like cotton, eyeballs on fire, and shivering like you do when you haven't slept a wink, Stage 28 was done. Rough to be sure, but done. I went for a much needed cup of tea, then came back and read the story.
I started to feel sick.
It started off well. It was funny, and clipped along well, then about a third of the way in, it became a mess. Not even a salvageable mess, just an absolute disaster. I suppose this shouldn't have been a surprise, given the circumstances, but for all of you who went to college or university and procrastinated like most students do, well...you get used to pulling off miracles. The panic doesn't hit until you've failed to pull off the standard miracle. Once the standard miracle has failed, then you're in the realm of the unknown. THEN you panic.
I panicked, and the first thing I did in my panic, was make another cup of tea. It was the same as the cup of tea I'd just drank, except my hand shook a lot more when lifting the cup. I re-read "Stage 28", and thought of what I should do with it, all the while, a nagging discomfort grew in my mind. There was something else wrong here, besides the story just being a pile of crap.
Wincing, I read the story again, tried to pinpoint what was bothering me, and couldn't do it. I forced myself to try again, this time doing the critical thinking and sniffing out of symbols and themes that I'd supposedly learned to do in four years of university. Then it hit me.
Dear God, sweet God, I had accidentally written a piece of homoerotic slash fanfiction.
Seriously...no seriously...was I an even bigger hack than I thought? Apparently so.
There's not much left to this sweeping, epic tale, then I'll actually start talking about current writing events, rather than a year old farce.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Stage 28: the story of the story Part 2
Yes, Phantom of the Opera.
One of my first memories is of being in our basement when I was four-years-old, eating dinner with my parents and watching TV, when suddenly I heard the most beautiful music.
And this was high praise from me: I HATED music. Hated the songs we sang in Sunday school, hated the silly rock and roll my parents listened to, hated the ragtime my mother played on the piano. What I did like was classical music, but I considered it such a separate entity from the normal garbage I heard referred to as "music" that I didn't even classify it as such. It was a pretty sound, but not music, to my young mind. Music was crap*.
But this, this was something I'd never heard before, and that deep, spooky voiceover (anyone else remember it?) was calling it music. The images on the screen were also like nothing I'd ever seen before: hundreds of candles on elaborate iron stands in a black room, swirling red velvet drapes, a beautiful woman in a fragile-looking white dress, and then there was the man.
It was his profile, and his hands, he had beautiful hands. I was in love, though I didn't know that. I wanted to sit next to him and listen to him play his organ** and sing forever.
So sprouted the seeds of obsession.
Phantom was all consuming from that point onward, and I didn't even get to see the musical until I was seven, three years after seeing that first commercial. Every film version of the Phantom I could find, I had my parents rent ad nauseum (bear in mind that these were the days before home Internet access, so it wasn't like I was looking these up on IMDB. I just scoured every video store I could find). My father taped a few versions off television, and I watched the tapes so much that today, they're just about broken. I started piano lessons when I was seven, and hated playing (except for classical music, which I had by then learned was also music), but when I got the Phantom piano book for Christmas, I knew them all after a day or two. I started singing by reading the libretto at the back of the Complete Phantom of the Opera. I bloody well talked to Erik. That is not an exaggeration, I constantly spoke aloud to a fictional character. I was a very lonely only child. That, and there's a lot of syphillis on my father's side***.
Phantom as a focused obsession faded into the background eventually, though I still watched the movies often, but the aesthetics, musically and artistically, never did. I loved darkness.
So that night as I sat on the bus and found myself besieged by several of my younger selves to go back to Phantom for inspiration, that commercial, and the montage of images that started it all beckoned first.
I am proud to say that I never even considered the idea of a straight-up fanfic.
I retrieved that body of knowledge from where it had been collecting dust in my memory, and began to turn it over, and look at it from different angles. I kept coming back to the movies. So many movies. All of them had one thing in common: the title. All of them had one thing in common with the original novel: the title. Aside from the first silent film and a very short, cheaply made children's animation in the 80s, all the Phantom movies had pretty much junked the original novel, and just used the basic concept of a crazy man who may or may not be deformed being obsessed with a beautiful young girl who may or may not be a very talented singer. I tried to picture what a truly faithful Phantom movie would look like. It would be tough to do without looking like a prat. There were so many clichés intertwined with Phantom by now that had served a purpose in the original work, but had been relentlessly abused by filmmakers since. The depth of the characters had been stripped away layer by layer, until they could have been convincingly played by cardboard cutouts (I refer you once again to the animated version of the 80s. And the Dario Argento version of the 90s, ba-zing). If someone who truly loved the story, the original story, were to take the reins of yet another remake, what would the result be?
And that's when I first met Telly.
* I should point out that I've since developed a tolerance for rock and roll, a cautious affection for ragtime, and like a whole bunch of other music as well. Classical still kicks your ass though.
** Who's the pervert now, pervert?
*** Just kidding, or am I****?
**** I am.
One of my first memories is of being in our basement when I was four-years-old, eating dinner with my parents and watching TV, when suddenly I heard the most beautiful music.
And this was high praise from me: I HATED music. Hated the songs we sang in Sunday school, hated the silly rock and roll my parents listened to, hated the ragtime my mother played on the piano. What I did like was classical music, but I considered it such a separate entity from the normal garbage I heard referred to as "music" that I didn't even classify it as such. It was a pretty sound, but not music, to my young mind. Music was crap*.
But this, this was something I'd never heard before, and that deep, spooky voiceover (anyone else remember it?) was calling it music. The images on the screen were also like nothing I'd ever seen before: hundreds of candles on elaborate iron stands in a black room, swirling red velvet drapes, a beautiful woman in a fragile-looking white dress, and then there was the man.
It was his profile, and his hands, he had beautiful hands. I was in love, though I didn't know that. I wanted to sit next to him and listen to him play his organ** and sing forever.
So sprouted the seeds of obsession.
Phantom was all consuming from that point onward, and I didn't even get to see the musical until I was seven, three years after seeing that first commercial. Every film version of the Phantom I could find, I had my parents rent ad nauseum (bear in mind that these were the days before home Internet access, so it wasn't like I was looking these up on IMDB. I just scoured every video store I could find). My father taped a few versions off television, and I watched the tapes so much that today, they're just about broken. I started piano lessons when I was seven, and hated playing (except for classical music, which I had by then learned was also music), but when I got the Phantom piano book for Christmas, I knew them all after a day or two. I started singing by reading the libretto at the back of the Complete Phantom of the Opera. I bloody well talked to Erik. That is not an exaggeration, I constantly spoke aloud to a fictional character. I was a very lonely only child. That, and there's a lot of syphillis on my father's side***.
Phantom as a focused obsession faded into the background eventually, though I still watched the movies often, but the aesthetics, musically and artistically, never did. I loved darkness.
So that night as I sat on the bus and found myself besieged by several of my younger selves to go back to Phantom for inspiration, that commercial, and the montage of images that started it all beckoned first.
I am proud to say that I never even considered the idea of a straight-up fanfic.
I retrieved that body of knowledge from where it had been collecting dust in my memory, and began to turn it over, and look at it from different angles. I kept coming back to the movies. So many movies. All of them had one thing in common: the title. All of them had one thing in common with the original novel: the title. Aside from the first silent film and a very short, cheaply made children's animation in the 80s, all the Phantom movies had pretty much junked the original novel, and just used the basic concept of a crazy man who may or may not be deformed being obsessed with a beautiful young girl who may or may not be a very talented singer. I tried to picture what a truly faithful Phantom movie would look like. It would be tough to do without looking like a prat. There were so many clichés intertwined with Phantom by now that had served a purpose in the original work, but had been relentlessly abused by filmmakers since. The depth of the characters had been stripped away layer by layer, until they could have been convincingly played by cardboard cutouts (I refer you once again to the animated version of the 80s. And the Dario Argento version of the 90s, ba-zing). If someone who truly loved the story, the original story, were to take the reins of yet another remake, what would the result be?
And that's when I first met Telly.
* I should point out that I've since developed a tolerance for rock and roll, a cautious affection for ragtime, and like a whole bunch of other music as well. Classical still kicks your ass though.
** Who's the pervert now, pervert?
*** Just kidding, or am I****?
**** I am.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Stage 28: the story of the story, Part 1
It started off with laziness.
You see, normally I make writing very, very difficult on myself. This is probably why I never finish anything. I think of stories that are related to obscure mythologies, or set in a country I've never been to, or in a culture I've never experienced, therefore to sound plausible, I need to research my ass off. Since typically I'm not writing against deadlines, this was no problem. I just never finished the damn things.
Then, I took a creative writing course in my last semester of university. Suddenly, there were deadlines.
Suddenly, there were problems.
I had a short story due in class the next day. The professor didn't care if it was just a fragment, but it had to be about eight pages.
In my last year of university, I was working like crazy on top of school. I taught music four days a week, volunteered, and did a bit of tutoring on the side. Unfortunately, the creative writing class fell on Wednesday, which, for those of you who are unaware, is the day after Tuesday, which happened to be my longest work day of the week. So, on the two hour bus ride home at the end of the day (9:00 PM), my tired little brain mulled over story ideas, tacitly resigned to another all-nighter. My usual material...the obscure mythologies, countries, and cultures...floated in circles, occasionally colliding with each other in a brief creative formation, only to pull apart when I would shrink from the idea of the research I'd have to do, and the speed at which I'd have to do it.
It was at that moment, on a stinking, filthy TTC bus creeping through one of the worst ghettos the GTA has to offer, that I had an epiphany.
Why the hell was I making this so complicated? Where was the shame in writing from what I knew?
There was no shame, came the answer loud and clear, except for what I was creating in my head.
Fuck mythology, and fuck worldliness, I was going to use this short story to embrace my admittedly narrow and uncultured world view. I was a white girl from the middle class suburbs, and for once I was going to take that sheltered identity and run with it. I always have and likely always will make things difficult for myself because I feel a lot of guilt about my life being too easy, but this time, the hell with it. I was going to take the easy way out like normal people.
So I changed the direction of my thoughts, and started thinking about things that I knew, inside and out, that I could somehow string out into a story.
From an old and long neglected corridor of my memory, my four, five, six, seven, eight and nine-year-old selves came charging out in all their frizzy-haired glory, and screamed to make themselves heard.
Phantom of the Opera...
You see, normally I make writing very, very difficult on myself. This is probably why I never finish anything. I think of stories that are related to obscure mythologies, or set in a country I've never been to, or in a culture I've never experienced, therefore to sound plausible, I need to research my ass off. Since typically I'm not writing against deadlines, this was no problem. I just never finished the damn things.
Then, I took a creative writing course in my last semester of university. Suddenly, there were deadlines.
Suddenly, there were problems.
I had a short story due in class the next day. The professor didn't care if it was just a fragment, but it had to be about eight pages.
In my last year of university, I was working like crazy on top of school. I taught music four days a week, volunteered, and did a bit of tutoring on the side. Unfortunately, the creative writing class fell on Wednesday, which, for those of you who are unaware, is the day after Tuesday, which happened to be my longest work day of the week. So, on the two hour bus ride home at the end of the day (9:00 PM), my tired little brain mulled over story ideas, tacitly resigned to another all-nighter. My usual material...the obscure mythologies, countries, and cultures...floated in circles, occasionally colliding with each other in a brief creative formation, only to pull apart when I would shrink from the idea of the research I'd have to do, and the speed at which I'd have to do it.
It was at that moment, on a stinking, filthy TTC bus creeping through one of the worst ghettos the GTA has to offer, that I had an epiphany.
Why the hell was I making this so complicated? Where was the shame in writing from what I knew?
There was no shame, came the answer loud and clear, except for what I was creating in my head.
Fuck mythology, and fuck worldliness, I was going to use this short story to embrace my admittedly narrow and uncultured world view. I was a white girl from the middle class suburbs, and for once I was going to take that sheltered identity and run with it. I always have and likely always will make things difficult for myself because I feel a lot of guilt about my life being too easy, but this time, the hell with it. I was going to take the easy way out like normal people.
So I changed the direction of my thoughts, and started thinking about things that I knew, inside and out, that I could somehow string out into a story.
From an old and long neglected corridor of my memory, my four, five, six, seven, eight and nine-year-old selves came charging out in all their frizzy-haired glory, and screamed to make themselves heard.
Phantom of the Opera...
Friday, February 22, 2008
OMG
Oh my god, it's a blog. A writer's blog no less, does the world really need another one? The answer is no, of course not, but my vanity and "artiste" affectations demand one, I'm afraid.
I be T. Max.
I am currently working on "Stage 28", a story very close to my heart that I've been struggling with for nearly a year. Details will follow once my baby's done, but until then, you may know my shame in that it's the closest to fanfiction I've ever written. And I mean fanfiction like whoa. Self-insertion, sex with my favourite character, and everything I've ever hated. Luckily, I'm a writer, and therefore hypocritical and pretentious enough to think that I can pull it off when no one else can.
Welcome to Rosebush Maze, everybody.
Edit: Holy craparino that text was bright. Hopefully this is better.
2nd Edit: It occurs to me that the phrase "self-insertion" placed right before "sex with _______" (fill in the blank) results in a much dirtier sentence than I intended.
3rd Edit: By the way, I'm a pervert. I even own a trenchcoat. You'll get used to it.
I be T. Max.
I am currently working on "Stage 28", a story very close to my heart that I've been struggling with for nearly a year. Details will follow once my baby's done, but until then, you may know my shame in that it's the closest to fanfiction I've ever written. And I mean fanfiction like whoa. Self-insertion, sex with my favourite character, and everything I've ever hated. Luckily, I'm a writer, and therefore hypocritical and pretentious enough to think that I can pull it off when no one else can.
Welcome to Rosebush Maze, everybody.
Edit: Holy craparino that text was bright. Hopefully this is better.
2nd Edit: It occurs to me that the phrase "self-insertion" placed right before "sex with _______" (fill in the blank) results in a much dirtier sentence than I intended.
3rd Edit: By the way, I'm a pervert. I even own a trenchcoat. You'll get used to it.
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