National Novel Writing Month: Week 1

So, Ashley has (repeatedly) asked me to blog more often. And, since she’s been pretty sick this past week, I thought the very least I could do was give her something to read.

Some of you may be aware that November is “National Novel Writing Month”–or, for those who are too fucking important to take the time to say the whole thing: NaNoWriMo. The basic idea is a whole bunch of people (only in the United States, I would assume, since it’s called “National”…if some of our friends in other countries are participating, mayhaps we should change the name, no?) pledge to write a brand-spanking-new novel of 50,000 words or more during the month of November. The idea is quantity, not quality. I’m pretty sure people who expect that they’ll craft the “Great American Novel that encapsulates the hopes, dreams, cares, and fears of an entire generation” crash and burn around the 13th.

I was going to participate last year, except I spent the first few days of November with my head in the toilet, which had a serious effect on my motivation. But, this year, I managed to get the ball rolling. Even managed to log about 8800 words in the first week. More importantly, I learned a few things:

1. My characters tend to swear. A lot. I came to this realization when I toyed with the idea of turning the thing into a YA novel. Still not 100% positive if I want it to be YA or not…which leads me to…

2. You can not, convincingly, portray a bunch of teenagers going off on globetrotting adventures. Even if an adult is present. Even if that adult is a legitimate parent or guardian (although, in my case, it was not). Maybe…maybe…said adventure could take place over the summer, but that’s pretty much it.

3. If I write a scene with someone wandering around sewer tunnels, they will fall in. At least once.

4. Writing scenes out of order is not as gut-wrenchingly terrifying as I thought. This may not be a big revelation for some people, but I’m a little bit OCD, so the thought of writing out of order fills me with dread. But, y’know what, it isn’t that bad. I might have to do it more often. (Update: I will probably not be doing this more often.)

 

That’s it for now. More next week. Maybe…

Enter Sandman

So, I survived an unseasonably muggy Halloween night dressed as Golden Age comic hero Sandman.

Here’s the proof:

 

 

Happy Halloween!!

Truly the greatest time of the year…

 

 

 

If I Ran Gotham City…

If you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on in DC’s Batman titles over the last few months, then you’ve missed what’s more or less been a game of Musical Cowls. All of the new faces in the Batcave got me thinking: what would be my dream Bat-team? Luckily, I have this blog, so I can write down my ideas and force you all to experience my brilliance.

Batman:

Yeah, there’s just no way around this: Bruce Wayne is Batman. I have no explanation for this, because there are certain truisms that just do not need to be explained. The Sun is hot. Water is wet. Bruce Wayne is Batman. Next!

Red Robin:

I really haven’t read a lot of Pre-Crisis comics, so I’m not at all familiar with the original Red Robin. However, I guess you can’t be a Boy Wonder forever…and, I guess Tim Drake has earned the right to adopt a new identity. Plus, the costume is kind of cool.

Nightwing:

Dick Grayson’s always fought to be his own man. From creating the Nightwing identity to moving to Bludhaven, Dick’s never wanted to live in his mentor’s shadow. So, while I get why he’d honor Bruce’s memory by wearing the cape and cowl, he’ll always be Nightwing to me.

Robin:

Fuck Damian Wayne. Now, I’ve always been a fan of Tim Drake’s Robin, but I’m willing to accept Tim in his new role as Red Robin. Therefore, we need someone else to fill the role of Batman’s sidekick. Honestly, why was Stephanie Brown only allowed to be Robin for about a minute and a half?

Batwoman:

I have absolutely no thoughts on Kate Kane being Batwoman one way or the other.

Batgirl:

While I’m pleased that Steph is getting to be the new Batgirl in the actual DC Universe–despite one of the lamest costume designs I’ve seen in a while–I’d much rather see her as Robin. I’m not sure Gotham needs a Batgirl and a Batwoman…and, for my money, Barbara Gordon will always be Batgirl. But, if I need someone in that identity, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be Cassandra Cain.

Yeah…You Heard Me…

What can I say? Sometimes…you just feel like being an ass…

Gamma Ray Poisoning Added to List of Officially Recognized Disabilities?

“Hulk want seat…Hulk disabled. Hulk no want smash puny commuter.”

Just sayin’…

If Not For Brent Spiner, I’d Be Illiterate.

Okay, this is not entirely true. But, it’s pretty close.

Here’s the deal: I love to read. I’m always reading something. I can’t walk into a bookstore without walking out with something. As soon as I read the last sentence of one book, I immediately read the first sentence of another. But, when I was a kid, I hated to read. Hated it. Hated. If I had to write a book report in elementary school, I’d read the back cover and skim the first and last chapters to get a vague idea of what the book was about.

What the hell happened? you ask.

This happened:

I was a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I recall seeing a handful of episodes from the original series on Saturday afternoons as a kid, but TNG was what really introduced me to the Trek universe. So, imagine my surprise when I came across this book. A novel. About the crew of the Enterprise. Holy shit, right? I devoured it, followed by several other ST:TNG novels. I was a reader…and it was all thanks to the media tie-in novel. (Okay, I think the Sherlock Holmes stories probably came first…but, otherwise I stand by the previous statements.)

From then on, if someone wrote a book based on a show or movie I liked, I’d usually check it out. I’ve read books based on The X-Files, Quantum Leap, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, various iterations of Star Trek, Farscape, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. I’ve read books based on comic books, too. The medium doesn’t always translate well to straight prose…but, Andrew Vachss’ Batman: The Ultimate Evil stands out as being an excellent example of literature of any genre. On my bookshelves at the moment, I have tie-in novels of Bones and Criminal Minds waiting for me. I’m tempted to check out the novels based on Monk, Psych, and Burn Notice. I’d kill for novels based on the new Abrams-verse Star Trek or Leverage.

Why am I telling you all this? I don’t know…maybe because I can.

“Hi, My Name Is Mary Sue, and I’m a Vampire.”

There’s really no good way for me to ease into this, so I’m just going to come out and say it: Vampires, at least many modern interpretations of vampires, are little more than Mary Sues.

Until recently, I wasn’t familiar with the concept of the Mary Sue, even though  it’s fairly common in the world of fanfiction, a corner of fandom that I have never really had any interest in visiting. Anyway, in brief, a Mary Sue is an overly idealized, hackneyed character who functions as a kind of wish-fulfillment for the author or the reader. A Mary Sue can be either male or female and, despite originating in the realm of fanfiction, several canonical characters can be considered Mary Sues (Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation and The X-Men’s Kitty Pryde have both been classified as Mary Sues in the past). There’s a pretty good explanation of the Mary Sue phenomenon here.

So, where do I get off calling vampires the Mary Sues of film, TV, and literature? Well, I think the prevailing depiction of vampires in fiction leans heavily on the “overly idealized” and “wish-fulfillment”parts of the definition. When I was growing up, vampires were monsters. They were evil, bad. They hung out in castles and abandoned crypts, killing and feeding on people. Then, somewhere along the line, an author by the name of Anne Rice showed up (perhaps you’ve heard of her?), and vampires experienced a thematic shift. (Disclaimer: I’m not saying Rice was the one who created the new, Mary Sue-ish vampires–in fact, I’m pretty sure she isn’t–but, she’s probably the writer who is most associated with the Sue-pires.) No longer were they monsters to be feared, hunted, and killed in the name of humanity. No. Now, they were to be pitied. And, in most cases, fucked. This is where the Mary Sue bit comes in. These new vampires were bad boys…but, bad boys who felt soooooo tortured by what they’ve done, that all they need is the love of the right mortal woman to put them on the path to righteousness and redemption. In the real world–y’know, the place we all live; the place we keep our stuff–guys who spend their time killing people probably don’t give a shit about redemption. No, they’re more likely to beat the crap out of you or throw you down a flight of stairs.

Now, I’m not knocking the whole “bad boy” thing. I get it. Bad boys can be wicked cool. Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, John Wayne: they all played a variation of the bad boy. Wolverine? Jayne Cobb? Logan Echolls? Yeah…they’re all awesome. I also understand because I suffer from the male version of the Bad Boy Fixation–the Crazy Girl Dilemma. River? Parker? Kara? Faith? Yes, please. I understand the draw, the excitement of never knowing what’s going to happen next. The truth is, in real life, both the bad boy and the crazy girl would fuck your shit up as soon as look at you. However, in the world of Mary Sue-pires, the tortured, immortal bad boy is easily tamed by the mortal woman, thereby providing the reader (and, possibly, the writer) with the best of both worlds: they get their bad boy who is dark, mysterious, and brooding, but all of the danger that would come with a real bad boy has been safely removed: “He may be a vampire, but he’ll never hurt me. He feels bad about all the killing and will never do it again.”

In closing, while I may not like the current crop of emo, metrosexual vampires plaguing modern fiction (don’t even get me started on the sparkly ones), that doesn’t mean I think you shouldn’t. In fact, I insist. If you like something, by all means enjoy it…drink from the well of entertainment ’til your thirst is slaked. But, I think you should realize (and accept) that the tortured vampire bad boy is complete and total wish-fulfillment. In reality, this guy would be the abusive boyfriend, the rapist, or the wife beater.

The Return of Teaser Tuesday

I’ve ignored Teaser Tuesday for the last few weeks for a number of reasons, many of which are boring and not worth mentioning. One is not. I’ve been in Plot Mode: tinkering with some things, fine-tuning others. I took an old short story I wrote (a snippet of it was posted here) and started re-working it into a larger story. Anyway, here’s a little teaser from early in the new, larger WIP:

Molly Schuster checked the navigation panel as she increased power to the out-dated runabout’s single turbine engine. Even though the runabout hovered on a cushion of force created by its antigrav units, Molly felt the entire vehicle shake with the increased speed. She tightened her restraints, but didn’t ease back on the thrust. She knew the runabout—which was older than she was—would hold together, mainly because it’s her job to make sure every piece of equipment on this rock worked when it was supposed to.

It was not an easy feat.

Menkib IV was a tiny rock of a planet with a thin, arid atmosphere made even less inviting by frequent sandstorms. These storms, which would hit several times a day without warning, could deposit several kilograms of sand and grit in even the tiniest spaces, making Molly’s job as the camp mechanic a never-ending nightmare. In fact, she had spent the better part of the day cleaning sand out of the engine’s intake and compressor—it really didn’t take much sand and grime to clog up the innards of the old turbine—and the arid climate wreaked havoc on an antigrav’s magnetic field coils, requiring constant realignment. Of course, after flying through this maelstrom of swirling sand and dust, she’d probably have to spend the rest of the day doing it all over again.

It was unwise to go anywhere on Menkib IV without goggles and a breathing mask, but Molly did wish she had remembered to bring something to keep the dirt out of her hair. Pulling her long, strawberry blonde hair back into a ponytail helped, but a cap would have been much better. She’d also like to find out whoever thought bringing an open-topped runabout to a planet plagued by sandstorms was a good idea and beat them senseless with a wrench. Yes, that would probably improve her mood quite a bit.

Since visibility was practically non-existent, Molly had to rely on the runabout’s rudimentary sensors and navigation equipment as she guided it along the floor of the wide canyon that cut across most of the planet’s northern hemisphere. Between the steady, low thrum of the turbine and the high-pitched whistle of the wind as it whipped through the canyon, Molly almost missed the ping of the runabout’s proximity alert.

Glancing at the small display screen built into the runabout’s console, Molly saw the flashing red triangle that represented the transponder signal assigned to one of the exploratory teams. Menkib was a small operation, with only enough personnel and equipment for one working mine. But, the camp’s two geologists were constantly looking for the next big deposit of duranium ore. Ahead, the canyon forked and Molly nudged the runabout down the right-hand path. Despite her goggles, Molly still found herself squinting against the abrasive tempest as she came within visual range of the blinking indicator on top of the portable transponder’s antenna. She powered down the runabout as a large figure approached through the swirling sand, a single hand raised in greeting.

“Molly! You didn’t waste any time getting out here, did you, girl.” Even though he wore a heavy breathing mask, the man’s voice boomed when he spoke.

Grabbing her toolkit off of the passenger seat, Molly took the man’s offered hand and climbed down out of the cockpit. “No rest for the greasy,” she said, showing off the fresh lubricant and hydraulic fluid stains on her dark gray coveralls.

What the Hell Am I Waiting For?

As part of another Mega-Blog Crossover Event, the Fantastic Fangirls have asked us to pick something we’ve been resisting to read over the years and give it a shot.  Sounds like a good idea to me.

I’ve decided to give Starman a shot.  A lot of people really like this series…but, for some reason, I’ve never felt the urge to pick it up.  Until now.

Forward…ever forward!