Here, there, everywhere

If there’s anybody who reads this, and they’re near Ohio, I’ll be attending Marcon this year. Will be arriving Friday night and staying in the hotel until Sunday afternoon. Hope to see you there. If you recognize me, I’ll be the tall overweight guy with short hair, beard, glasses, and the nametag will say “Steve Buchheit,” say hello. I don’t bite, unless you want me to. I'll mostly be in the writer part of the programming, in sessions and trying to hang out with writers outside the sessions in a vain attempt to soak up all the good rays of blissful energy coming from those that are published.

Hello, how are you...

I collect the nicest reject letters now. Well, two reject letters, one from LCRW which was cryptic and one from Weird Tales which was very specific. Of course both of them are complete dead wrong about my stuff. But most importantly they are completely correct. Time to put “The Dead Are Busy” back in rewrite. What the editorial horde at Weird Tales said in their letter echoed some things I had doubts about myself, and they pointed out some of my most grievous writing errors (homonym misuse and hyphenation). “Changelings” is a weird bird, so I think going back and checking for my grammatical usages and word choices. That might be all it needs. And once that’s done, I’ll kick them back out into the real world.

“My Favorite War Stories” took an interesting twist. Turns out it’s a Lovecraft Fanfic piece. Go figure. So I’ll continue writing it out (I think it’s pretty good) and submit it to the magazines that publish Cthulu stories.

Had my first idea for a (possibly) mainstream book. I can’t write about much of it here, but I can tell you this was the storybone I needed to get started. That and I’ve been listening to Douglas Adams read his Hitchhicker trilogy at work. Been getting great ideas for it. Here’s hoping it’ll pan out. This makes three novella/novel lengths in progress. Sigh. Need to make more hours in a day.

The Guilt Stack

Well, many things have happened. One, I finished “The Killer Angels” by Michael Shaara. Very good book. It helped that a couple of summers ago I took the second vacation of my adult life, my wife and sister-in-law kidnapped me and we traveled over Southern and Western Pennsylvania. We spent a few days at Gettysburg, knowing the ground was a great help. I could never understand the order of battle for the first day, until I saw the ground myself.

And speaking of seeing the ground myself, you have to check out where Pickett’s charge came over the corner. Stand on the Union side and look out over the field. It looks like a smartish jog, a bit long to go with the cannon from Little Round Top (to your right) plowing through, but not to bad.

Now cross over the wall and look at it from the South’s side, see what they saw. Oh Mother of God! St. Francis on a pogo-stick, they had to charge up there, clamber over the wall, and then start attacking? No wonder they lost over sixty percent of their troops.

You have to see it to believe it.

Then I read a current war book, “The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell” by John Crawford. Just wanted to make sure I still had the voice for my “War Stories” short. Yes, soldiers still talk the same as I remember, just different slang words, “hajji”, “battle rattle”, etc.

Now I’m reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “A Man Without a Country.” Always liked Vonnegut. Kilgore Trout makes an appearance. Vonnegut also bemoans that we don’t have any modern Mark Twains. I always though of Vonnegut as a Twain, but that’s me. I’ve sometimes had that delusion that I could be a modern Twain, but them something shiny catches my attention and that’s that.

The Grind - War Stories

The current burning project, besides rewriting Crow Boy to be longer and include more info, is a short story I call “My Favorite War Stories.” Five guys in a legion hall telling some stories, one is real, one is really off the dark cliff. The story came out in a rush and I spent this past weekend putting phrases and paragraphs in order so that it makes sense. I killed a couple of darlings (those phrases that as a writer you just love) and rewrote part of it. I hit an interesting block where the characters wanted me to say something and I didn’t. Well, the characters win. It’s their story after all. Now to keep molding and rewriting to get it to work. I know I have to turn the heat in some parts. Where the characters should be in jeopardy, there’s no tension. Time to cook with gas.

Probably will be about 6000 words, horror, Cthulu genre. Not sure where and how I’ll sell it, but first I need to get it finished.

Dude, Run!

For any writer, the TV is a big time sink. With my schedule I barely get to see more than the rerun of the Daily Show while I’m shoveling my dinner down as quick as I can. There was a little show that caught my attention last year called Ghost Hunters. I’d catch pieces of it while doing other things, the TV being on for background noise. It’s only the second “reality show” I’ve really watched a whole episode before attempting to save my intelligence by switching the channel (the other show was a cowboy dude ranch thing). Anyway, March 29 starts a new season of Ghost Hunters on the SciFi Channel. “Dude. Run!” Ah, fun times.

Story Bone - Cell Phones

The phone looked ridiculously small in his hand. He seemed to be yelling into a child’s toy, pinched between thumb and index finger, held gingerly away from his ear like a particularly disgusting piece of lint.

Story Bone - Revenant Going the Final Mile

While a Revenant can seem a worn subject in fiction, even having movies and comics made of the idea (The Crow and Spawn), most of these returned to avenge their own brutal killings. What if, to avenge some other wrong, someone made them self a Revenant? Say, their wife was killed horribly, and the legal system was unable to help them. They don’t have the contacts to track down the perpetrators in normal life. But as a Revenant, they’d have access to supernatural powers to track and punish those responsible. A Revenant spured and formed by agape.

Story Bone - Border Crossings

Listening to a Fresh Air story on NPR when I had an interesting idea. The story was on children illegal aliens trying to reach their mothers in the US. The trials, tribulations, everything they have to go through to get across the border and then the problems that arise after they’re over the border. So I got to thinking, would there be such a border crossing between Heaven and Hell (of the Christian variety)? Would people be able to get over the border? What would they do for or in Heaven (the chores, the same type of jobs that our illegals take)? What would they get from it? Grace? Can you transfer Grace from one person to another, could they bundle Grace back with them across the border?

Many illegals send money back to their families. Many come to take jobs that US citizens don’t really want, or don’t want to pay a lot for. Many are migrant/seasonal passing back and forth across the border every year.

A further complication for the Heaven/Hell scenario is what if people meet those they loved or knew? Would the other person turn them in?

The Muse Sings

Here’s another link I recommend, Tobias Buckell “Getting Past Being Joe Blow Neopro,” as a podcast. I have to admit, I have sinned. I’ve wasted time when I should be writing, I’ve been rude to people at conventions, and I’ve let uncomfortable silences slip into conversations with editors. I hereby apologize for all of them.

So, now, how does one find time. That seems to be a common question. So let me go through my thing. I work a full-time job, I have a one-hour commute, so if I work an 8-hour day, that translates to ten hours. I get no lunch hour (union contractual thing). I have been working 11 to 12 hour days lately. Overtime is shiny, but deadly. Okay, add to that I am an elected official of my village. That means that at least one, more than likely two, nights a week I have meetings. I also have other work that needs to be completed at home. Most recently I spent an afternoon going through a manual for NIMS (National Incident Management System) and taking a test. That’s an afternoon I wont get back. I also do freelance design work. That’s a job that’ll wack out a few hours in the evening and is slightly unpredictable. I also attend a writer’s workshop every other week.

When do I find time to write? Whenever and where ever I can. I have a notebook with me at all times. When there’s a line bothering me I write it down. DO IT NOW, before you forget. Always have something to write with. And if you don’t and a line comes to you, find something, a napkin, the back of a receipt, anything. And then transfer it to your notebook when you can. Then write the story when you find yourself with a spare hour or two. You don’t have to write it all in one sitting, and try not to edit yourself when your writing the first draft, there’ll be time for that later. When you have some time and don’t feel inspired, well, that’s what you’ve been waiting for to do the rewrites.

Kilgore Trout Redux

Whenever I read Mark Twain, I hear Kurt Vonengaut speaking. And when I hear Kurt speaking, I read Twain. So it goes.

Exercise February

Okay, so here's another assignment for my writer's group.
Flesh out this character - Juliana Reade, age 52; she is an extrovert, but gets easily depressed.

And here's my solution:

Jewels stationed herself on the green leather and chrome stool closest to the door. It was her stool, her favorite place. Jackson, the bartender, made her Long Island Ice Tea before coming over to say, “hi,” and then retreated to the darker end of the bar to talk with another regular. Jewels didn’t understand why Jackson didn’t want to talk anymore. She had been his favorite. She liked talking to people.

“Juliana Reade,” her momma would say. “Stop talking and get your ass in this house.”

Her momma was long dead now, smoked herself into an early grave when Jewels was only 38. She raised her glass, “Fourteen years, momma, and I haven’t smoked another one since we buried you.”

Someone came in the bar behind her and Jewels automatically said, “Hiya, sit a spell.” She had become the unofficial greeter of the bar. The shadow that had come in mumbled something back and headed for one of the booths on the other wall. The bar was only a small one, they hadn’t gone far away, but Jewels felt adrift at the end of the bar, cast away by the regulars and the newcomers. She had always felt welcome before, but just like the other familiar places, welcome eventual wears thin. Her positive attitude veneer melted away and her shoulder pads slumped. She felt enormously tired at having to find another place as her home other than home.

Show, don't tell.

Story Bone - Youth's Dreams

"Our youthful dreams burning in the glow of green phosphors."