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.

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.

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.

Stage 28

A little teaser passage from "Stage 28". Do enjoy.

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!

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: 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!

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.

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.