Storytellersunplugged

— A memory - first published in a very limited circulation book titled “Personal Demons” I found this doing some file cleanup, read it, and got lost in the memory all over again. Hope my buddy Randy forgives me…hope you find it of interest.

—David Niall Wilson

Some memories never leave you. Some things you can shrug off, walk away from, squash into the back recesses of your mind, and some others have a will of their own. In other places, on other pages, I have put a name to the moments that lend themselves to such memories. I call them defining moments. Some of them haunt me still.

The hill I lived on as a child overlooked Charleston Lake in Illinois. We lived at the very top of the hill, where a single road wound around and up and one end and down the other. In the winter, this road was a menace because you had to ride the Illinois snow and ice down from the top and make a very sharp turn at the bottom to avoid going over the edge of the road and into a large field. In the summer, that same hill was a place for the release of insanity – two hands gripping the handlebars of a green “Hiawatha” stingray bicycle from Western Auto, no way to hit brakes on a hill that steep, not on the old bikes. There were no hand-grip brakes on those machines. You reared up, kicked back, and sent the rear tire into a skid. On that hill, you didn’t use the brakes at all.

I lived on that hill for over a decade. I survived that stingray bicycle and two others, graduating through five and ten speeds. I survived my mother’s driving, despite the ice and snow. I survived things, in short, that should have scared me, creating those memories you can’t ignore.

What I remember most, though, is the lake – and the river below.

I lived by the water. Not in the sense that our home was near it, but in the sense that I fished nearly 365 days a year, threw stones to skip across the surface, swam in the small ring of cable-tied barrels each summer where the city posted a lifeguard, flew down the river with my step-dad in his air-boat, and generally made the water a part of me. I took it for granted, ignoring most dangers – poisonous snakes, steep cliffs, deep pools – combinations of the above.

Then there were other times.

On the day in question, I had a friend visiting, and we started out as days on Charleston lake usually started out. We went fishing. The fishing hole of choice was the pool that gathered at the bottom of a concrete spillway. Giant carp would leap at the base of that slanted surface, vainly attempting to move from the bottom, which flowed off into the Embarrass River to the more placid lake waters above. Catfish gathered at the base, as well, and even a few Crappie and Largemouth bass sweetened the pot.

Old and middle-aged men would drive down to that small stretch, following a gravel road that brought them to the shoreline. Each had huge coolers, tackle-boxes that opened to three-tiers, and station-wagons with wood paneling, or large trucks filled with minnow buckets, fancy spin-casting gear, fly-rods – the works. Each of them tried to outsmart my lake, and, for the most part, they failed. They didn’t know the secrets.

I would slip up with my Zebco 202 rod and reel combination, crab-walk across the slanted concrete slab angling away from the very base of the spillway, toss a line in with a single weight and a hook, baited with whatever form of insect or worm was handy at the time – or even a bit of kernel corn bread dough, and drop it in the corner nearest the spillway. I knew the secrets, you see. I’d watched, and I’d learned. I didn’t have much money for fishing equipment, or fancy bait, but it never mattered. I always caught fish – mostly given away after the thrill of the hunt to the men and women in the big trucks. For me it wasn’t the fish themselves, but the secrets.

That was how the day started. If it had ended as most other days at Charleston Lake ended, all might have been different, and my dreams might be troubled by hair-rasing rides down the side of that hill beside my house. That isn’t the story.

There were others who came to that spillway besides the fishermen. Eastern Illinois University wasn’t far away, nestled in the center of Charleston itself, and the students would come to the lake in droves, mostly drunk on beer, or whiskey, or life and the reckless, never-going-to-die attitude that permeates the world of those who have yet to suffer enough defining moments.

A favorite pass-time at the lake, despite the threat of arrest, or fines, was to swim across the top of the spillway, then slip over the top and slide down. It was like a big, concrete water-slide, coated in green, smooth algea, and water flowing over concrete about a half a foot deep. The current, on most days, wasn’t so strong you couldn’t hit the bottom and pop free, swimming past the angry middle-aged fishermen and the two kids squatting at the bottom, actually catching fish. You could come over that top, bounce free, and swim to the side before the water poured over the next small, man-made structure – a wall of concrete – and two feet down to the river itself. Then you climbed back up the slanted concrete side to the top, hopped into the water, swam out to the middle and did it again.

I was only about ten at the time, and though I could see the merits of such insanity from the side of fun, I was also afraid enough to remain where I was, watching, fishing, and dreaming about the day I’d be in college and brave enough for such foolishness. That was most days. This day, Randy Overton was visiting - my best friend - and there is something about the proximity of friends that lessens the intellect and raises the courage.

So there we were. The sky was relatively clear, the sun was shining, it was warm out, and there were idiots galore slipping over and down the spillway, ruining the fishing for those below and screaming at the top of their lungs. Somehow, with so many bodies lined up along the top of the spillway, it didn’t seem big. The other side seemed very close – you could see the people clearly on both sides of the concrete, and you could even make out the winding road that led from the main highway into the park on the far side of the river. It was the kind of day that made everything seem safe and possible all at once.

I’m not sure where my younger brother Bill was, but if he’d been there, he might have prevented the whole thing by his presence. No way would I have risked his safety. For some reason, though, he was absent. Randy and I slipped into cut-off blue-jean shorts and t-shirts and waded into the lake at the top of the spillway.

I had feared it would be deep, that we would be fighting current with only our ability to swim protecting us from slipping over the top, but this turned out not to be the case. There was a concrete ledge, just along-side the curved top of the spillway, where you could get your footing and brace against the side just enough to keep your balance. Laughing at how easy it was, we set off across the lake. Somehow, as we progressed, we failed to note how the others were disappearing. The fishermen were packing up their things and driving off up the road. The college students were growing fewer, quieter. The sky – in fact – was darkening, and it was far too early in the day for sunset.

I mentioned the river earlier. I see that river in my dreams, some times, dreams where I wake up every bit as wet as I was that day, crossing that lake – coated in sweat with the whirling, out-of control waters of the Embarrass river swirling through my mind. When the rains came, and the lake rose, the river was not my friend. Most times I could camp along those banks, swim and fish, toss stones at the snakes and turtles, and go home with a smile. When the water was up – and the Earth had shed her veneer of calm for a more honest glimpse at the raw power beneath, the Embarrass was a huge, roiling monster.

I remember clearly watching that river slash trees from the banks, rolling the logs up and under and crashing them through rapids. I remember watching boats overturn, slide beneath the water, and not come up again until they were nearly out of site.

I looking back and seeing that the water was pouring over the spillway, twice as deep and twice as fast as it had been when we started across.. There was a large branch that had not been there when we first crossed, caught halfway with branches reaching down the spillway, trailing tendrils of moss and algae.

In Illinois, when it storms, the sky goes greenish yellow – hints of brown around the edges – and you can feel the crackle of the lightning in the air. Things break, in those storms. From wind, lightning, the force of the water. Colors change and you can almost believe you have shifted partially through some sort of veil into another existence to a darker place. Things that were safe are not, and that veil is never quite the same once you’ve seen past it.

All blustering and courage were gone. We were cold, stranded on the wrong side of the lake / river - the park we stood in was within site of home, but the only way to reach home by foot was to trek a mile or so up the dirt / gravel road, find the main road, and another two miles down that to turn back into the drive leading up and around my hill. Too far in bare feet, thunderstorm, alone and hungry. Too far, too dark.

The next few minutes, which seemed to drag into hours, are not completely straight in my head. I believe I’ve relived those minutes in dreams, but they are no more clear when I wake than they are now as I try to sort them out. I know that we went down to the river, tried to find a narrow / shallow place to cross. The storm had raised the level everywhere, and the water was whipping along with unbelievable force. I remember stepping out into it – the sensation of my feet being snatched away, the force as I gripped the roots of a tree on the bank and pulled and prayed and pulled some more until my body dragged free, back to the muddy bank. Colder still than I’d been, and shivering with fear.

And that is when the real nightmare began.

There are times when you come up against a test you could never have expected – times when your heart hammers so hard against the inside of your chest you feel like it might explode, and you shiver until your bones rattle. Those sound like cliches until you live them.

Randy and I stood at the top of that embankment overlooking the spillway. It was nearly dark, though it couldn’t have been more than four in the afternoon. No one was in sight. No one. Our parents didn’t know where we were, though by then I know they were starting to worry that we were out in the storm. We were alone, and we had one choice – a bad choice. We took it.

At first I thought the battle would end before it had begun. The water pressed me against the wall of concrete so hard it nearly took the breath from my lungs and dragged me over and down. Somehow, I hung on. I clung to the top of that spillway, that tiny ledge, only my head above the water, and I started across. It wasn’t as cold in the water as it was out, with the wind, and by some miracle, the rain hadn’t hit yet. There was lightning. You could catch the scent of ozone, and I was never more acutely aware of being immersed in water around electricity. I knew if the lightning hit nearby, it was over.

Randy was very close. I know he wanted to cling to me as we went, I felt the same, but we had to hold on to things that were solid. Things that were not likely to go plunging over the spillway and down, churning off along the length of the Embarrass. I would love to describe what he said, what I said – how we shared the moment. We didn’t. My memories are a very selfish, self-preserving wash of fear.

Not long after we left the far side of the lake, that log-sized branch in the center of the spillway gave way and slipped over the side. I remember stopping. I vaguely remember Randy pressing up behind and slapping at my back, desperate for me to move on. I watched that log slide to the bottom, twisting as it went in a sort of slow-motion dive. It hit the churning, white-crested waves at the bottom, and it dove. One moment it was there, the next, it was gone, and then it burst from the surface of the lake, nearly clearing the water, and shot toward the river, rolling to one side and smashing into the rocks that lined the shore, only to whirl off and away.

I think it was about that time I heard thunder, and I started to move again. It took forever. Mechanical motion, one hand in front of the other. No swimming involved, the current a lot stronger near the center. We dragged ourselves across that lake, and onto the bank on the other side – at last, and part of me never left the lake.

I know it is there, still. I know it slipped over that edge, and down, because when I dream of that river, I can feel the churning, the vertigo brought on by being held, helpless, in the grasp of something that is part of nature - -uncaring, powerful, and deadly.

Some memories never leave you, nor do you really leave them.

I still fear rivers when the water runs high, but I love thunderstorms, and maybe . . . just maybe . . . that river saved me from endless nights gripping my sheets like handlebars as I plummeted down the hill from my house. One day, I’ll have a beer with Randy, and I’ll ask.

Do you remember?

— DNW

Yes, this is Alma Alexander. Yes, I’ve just joined the Storytellersunplugged team. Yes, the 30th of the month is MY day, from here on, and I will presenting myself with a new blog post at that time every month.

Due to a VERY pressing editorial deadline I have begged to start my official tenure on the 30th as of NEXT month, not this one. However, I’ve had one or two inquiries to the tune of, “your name’s up there, why aren’t you?”

So this is a very very brief post - I am just stepping into the water, and pronouncing it fine. I fully intend to start swimming next month.

Watch this space.

**************************************

(A Note from the Admin)

Entirely my fault for the confusion, folks. My apologies. I should have amended a quick note to Edwin’s post mentioning that he is our back-up man and would be covering for us this month until Alma started her official tenure in January.

Alma will have the 30th of each month, just as our contributor list states, and Edwin McRae will be handling the 31 month days, as well as filling for us when needed.

Best to all - Joe Nassise

Hi everyone. It’s great to be here, but as I’m suffering a little from stage fright, I’ve decided to hide behind a couple of my characters on this, my first post.

Enjoy!

She pursed arterial red lips and tapped the cleft below her nose gently with an onyx index nail.

“Characterization is a chameleon act in the world of fiction. But is not merely the changing of one’s skin. It has much more in common with lycanthropy: a complete transformation of self, from man to doggy, civil to savage, beauty to beast.”

Adam licked his canines to see if they had grown points. “We’re talking werewolves? Howling at the moon, man-eating horror movies on four paws?”

“They are an apt metaphor, although I am not suggesting you shall be sprouting those canines any time soon. Nor will baying at the full moon necessarily be a requisite.”

“Then it’s just like putting on a mask, acting like you are something else for a while.”

“Not acting, darling. Believing. It requires putting your identity in the blender, pureeing it to a creamy consistency, and pouring it into a mould of your choosing. Acting is mere demonstration. You can smell the pretence on an actor. You can taste their bitter mimicry at the back of your tongue. You can feel the breeze of false whispers against your skin.”

The mention of skin caused a rapid descent in his line of sight. “Okay, I think I get it,” he said, desperately trying to look her in the eye, rather than in her artfully presented cleavage. “It’s about becoming at one with the character. If I forget I’m me for awhile, if I believe I’m a character, then someone else will believe that character too.”

“Quite.” She smiled as she took a sip of her wine. There was the faintest, tiniest scream, as if the wine were blood being extracted drop by drop from a distant, unseen victim. “And that’s when the Fiction Engine can begin its work on you. It’s easier for us fictionals, us characters. I am the Wicked Witch – always have been, always will be. An archetype with a one hundred percent proof sense of self. But you…“ she levelled a midnight talon at his face, “…human types are never completely sure of anything. There’s always a doubt, a crack in your belief, and therefore, a chance for transformation.”

“I think therefore I am?”

In answer, the Wicked Witch placed a deck of cards on the table. “Pick out the ace of spades. You are permitted one movement only.”

His mouth went dry and his teeth felt one size too big. He tried to hold the image of the Ace of Spades in his mind, rotating it slowly. The back of the card was a red and white checkers board. He placed a shaking hand on the deck and thought of the movie “Maverick”, thought of Mel Gibson willing an ace into existence. One ace equals one million dollars. Couldn’t be simpler.

The edges of the cards dug into his fingerprints. He split the deck. The cards were heavy sheets of gold. He opened his eyes and looked at the upturned card.

Two of clubs.

He pressed the card back down onto the deck and curled his lips in disappointment. “Bugger.”

The witch chuckled. “Not so easy, is it?”

“No.” He folded his arms, building a little flesh and bone wall between him and defeat.

“Mistakes are the best teachers with the loudest voices, but so often we ignore them or wish they would simply shut up!” She slammed her palm down onto the table. Adam jumped as thunder rumbled about his head.

He placed his own hands on the table, dropping his defences. “Where did I go wrong?”

“You tell me.”

He’d tried to will the card into his hand. But why would the ace of spades suddenly be there? By luck? No. There was no luck in gambling. So how could a gambler be so certain that an ace of spades would come to his hand?

Realisation slapped him in the squishy forebrain, sending it a-quiver. “Because I put it there myself. I manipulated the deck. I bribed the waitress to drop a tray of glasses so that I could use the resulting split second of distraction to slip a spare Ace of Spades into the deck, just where I wanted it.”

He split the deck once more and flourished the Ace of Spades at the now smiling witch.

“Bravo.” Her smile turned seductive. “Would you like your reward?”

“Yes, please.”

“Remember, I’m not real.”

“Then I’ll just have to believe you.”

Once upon a time, there was a scullery boy.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about genre conventions and what they do to stories.

A genre convention is something, a certain type of character or a particular development of plot, that can be depended upon to show up in stories that share a genre. Loner private eyes are a convention of hard-boiled mysteries, for example. Tall dark men with sinister pasts are a convention of gothics. And scullery boys are a convention of a genre that can be called “epic fantasy” or “high fantasy” or–my preferred term precisely because it doesn’t carry a lot of baggage–”secondary world fantasy.”

And we all know what happens to scullery boys in this kind of fantasy: they turn out to be kings.

That’s what a genre convention is: it’s something we all know before we read the story.

Genre conventions aren’t always a bad thing; they’re a common language for readers and writers, and having a common language means that you can have a much more sophisticated and thoughtful discussion, instead of having to reinvent the wheel every time you get in the car. And every convention can be twisted or tweaked or turned on its head, and often the most fun and interesting stories are the ones that do that.

This is the important thing about genre conventions: they are not carved in stone. They are not immutable. They aren’t laws, or even rules. They’re grooves. And of course the problem with a groove is, it all too rapidly deepens into a rut.

Ergo, the scullery boy.

We all know the shape of his story: he will be extracted from his scullery and sent on a variety of adventures; he’ll acquire some loyal companions and some equally faithful enemies, and eventually, to everyone’s shock (except the reader, who saw it coming 300 pages ago), he will turn out to be the Long Lost King of Albion or Gondor or Riva or wherever the heck we happen to be.

That’s the genre convention, and if you think with it–if you let the convention dictate the shape of your story–you’re going to write flat and unappealing fantasy that no one will be able to remember five minutes after they’ve put the book down.

But what happens when you start to think about it?

For example, let’s not say a scullery boy. Let’s say this scullery boy. His name is Tam. He’s fifteen, an orphan, skinny and dark and he’s got a nasty hacking cough just like the one that killed his mother. The other boys who work in the castle beat him up on a regular basis because he’s an easy target, and he has small, subtle, and very elegant ways of getting revenge.

Or how about this scullery boy. His name is Patrick. He’s fifteen, the seventh of twelve children. Two of his siblings died before they were two years old; his eldest sister died in childbirth when he was twelve. His eldest brother stands to inherit his father’s croft and the anxiety is already turning him into an old man; his second brother is apprenticed to a cobbler and is miserably unhappy. His father intended Patrick for the priesthood, but he talked his way out of it, and got himself sent to the castle instead. Patrick loves living in the castle; he loves his job. What he knows is that he never wants to be responsible for anybody else’s life.

Or how about this scullery boy. Her name is Annalisa; she’s fifteen, the daughter of the head chef, and she works in the scullery so her father can keep an eye on her. Her mother died when she was born; all Annalisa knows about her is that she was a foreigner, she never talked about herself, and she left her daughter a golden locket that no one knows how to open. Her father tells her that it will look beautiful with her wedding gown, and Annalisa dreams that when she finds her One True Love, he’ll know how to open the locket.

Put any of these particular scullery boys into the conventional story, and the story falls apart. Tam’s got TB; he can’t go swanning off across the map on a quest. And he’s got a Machiavellian approach to life which many people are going to find inappropriate in the Long Lost King of Wherever. Patrick’s going to do everything in his power to avoid being sent off on a quest in the first place, much less being made king. And Annalisa doesn’t want to be in that story; she wants to be in Cinderella instead.

The genre convention falls apart, but the story you find in the rubble is much more interesting. We DON’T all know how any one of these stories–Tam’s, or Patrick’s, or Annalisa’s–would turn out. We can’t predict the plot developments 300 pages in advance.

Which means both the story and the characters are free to develop however they want to, instead of being ruthlessly trimmed back into the topiary shape of a grail. They’re free to be real.

We’re out of our rut, and that’s hard and scary, but the view is worth the climb.

Wayne Allen Sallee

November 28th 2007

I’ve been giving a lot of interviews lately, though none really touch on anything I am promoting. Upagianstthewall (on Phil Nutman’s website), and Doorways magazine. Dark Scribe ran an interview, but it was mostly about my witnessing John Wayne Gacy’s execution and my correspondence with him in the early 90s. (One of my albatrosses, along with being remembered for “Rapid Transit, my first dad-blasted story). But David Bainbridge asked some pretty decent questions of me for Doorways, ending with talking about my day job. I mentioned being 48, making ten bucks an hour with no health insurance, then adding that that is this century’s American Dream: simply having a job.

I created a character called The American Dream, he appeared in stories back when I was of a different frame of mind. He wore a heating pad for a cape, had wrist braces as gloves, an invisible sidekick named Blind Justice. A utility belt of plastic baggies filled with pain meds and sinus sprays. But he served his purpose, I got to write stories with Evan Shustak (his real name) as my alter ego, he could handle his daily pain, if only with insanity, the sphincter-shrinking thoughts of craziness I was constantly fretting about in the 90s. Of course, I’m on the bipolar meds now. But I wrote the craziest things when he was involved and it helped me cope. Through the winters, mostly. Hard to believe a time when there were the harsh keystrokes on a manual typewriter. And no spell-check, I should have had stock in Liquid Paper. I wonder how many people put themselves into their characters, the loners like Marv in SIN CITY, Travis McGee, or Superman. I was always partial to thinking that I would continue to act as noble as Steve Carella in Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, as I went further into adulthood, maybe looking for voices of reason in a world I found increasingly tough to continue living through. I wanted to be the guy who maybe only got tension headaches from an unsolved murder. The American Dream stories were the only ones I wrote at the time that weren’t not narratives, though I cheated at times by having Evan write in his diary, much as I wrote my stories on the buses and el trains. As I said, his stories were fairly silly, to hide my real life.

But I’m nearing the Half Century Man mark, and I keep reading about a better breed of bastard more and more, from molesting priests to wife-killers to models who try to commit suicide by ramming another person’s car at 87 MPH. People who get away with things, so I decided I needed another alter ego. I have a series of stories centered around a serial killer named Jimmy Dvorak, Every Mother’s Son. All the stories involve people who really needed to be dead to be dead, dead and gone. See, as an adult I have to watch my blood pressure, and I can get relief from those “little maniacs,” as Richard Chwedyk calls them, by giving them justice in my stories. There’s been a story in the news from downstate Illinois about a woman who made up a fake name on MySpace to lead a 14 year old girl with low self-esteem on and then taunting her enough that the girl hung herself in her bedroom closet. I read that article online on Thanksgiving Day and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Of course, the woman, a neighbor in the family’s same subdivision, can’t be convicted. Not even for a hate crime. Its the kind of bullying that would make other students go Columbine or VA Tech if they were male and the name calling was happening face to face and not by a cowardly woman hiding behind a fake male identity.

Its time for me to send Every Mother’s Son on the road again. And to be brutally honest, in this one case, because it involves someone who was my niece and godchild’s age, I’d really like to go down to O’Fallon myself. I don’t think it would be hard to get a neighbor to point a finger in the right direction. Its a small town, plus the subdivision was mentioned in the article. I read the Act of Contrition every day now because of moments like this. Its better than it being Proactive Contrition, where I expect to be absolved of crimes after the fact. I had wanted to do a riff on Lovecraft and write a story called “The Colour Off of MySpace,” but I don’t think I can do that now.

And I want to get people to believe that I am SIMPLY a writer, a writer of all things, but, thanks to “Rapid Transit” and my Freddy Krueger story and all the stuff that made me get noticed Back In The Day, well, if someone backed me into a corner and asked me why I was a horror writer, I’d ask them to pay attention to the crap going on around them, and gently push the MySpace newspaper article across the dinette as they sipped their green tea and ate their wheat crackers.

Thanks again for your time.

Your chattel,

Wayne Allen Sallee

Burbank, Illinois

Tonight, I am Frankenstein.

Not the monster, the doctor, Victor or Frederick depending on your context and your tolerance for that sort of thing. I am bolting together slabs of prose from different drafts, different versions, different takes on a novel. I am ripping great hunks of unnecessary verbiage out and consigning them to the offal heap or the cut file, whichever is nearer. I am creating a monster, so that when all the pieces are there, all the parts assembled, I can see what’s missing and give it the jolt that will in turn give it life.

The book, that’s the creature. Go James Whale or Mel Brooks or wherever you want with it, but this is not a golem, formed from seamless and smooth clay. It’s not a homunculus, generated spontaneously from the ingredients of midnight and nightmare. It’s a monster, a thing of shreds and patches that will, with luck, live.

I could take the metaphor further, of course. I could talk about what the book might be missing, whether it’s got no heart or no guts or whatever. I could discuss sneaking down to the literary graveyard and pillaging bits and pieces of other stories and other novel projects, cutting down the hanged man of a 50,000 word chunk of vampire novel and seeing if I could use any of the bits. But that would be silly, and overwrought, and frankly a little disgusting.

This is my third attempt at tackling this particular book, or more accurately the fourth. The first time it was fluff, a boogedy-boogedy monsterfest without enough monster, written with the underlying fear that since it was about video games, it would get me fired. So I wrote it soft and missed the point, and I understood that even as I was writing it. The best ghost stories, I find, involve the setting as character, and I’d lost that. It was just backdrop, the equivalent of an establishing shot at the beginning of a television episode, and it had lost its intrinsic importance to the real heart of what was going on.

The second time, it was jokey, a too-conscious attempt to distance it from its predecessor and to adopt the semantically null “edge” that people seem to think video games have, or have to have. The protagonist was, to be blunt, a jackass, and not someone either I nor the reader would have cared to spend time with.

The third time…let’s not even talk about that. There was a hotel room involved, and Canadian beer, and it was stillborn twelve thousand words in. Radical reconstructive surgery saved most of those, but they’re unrecognizable now, living under another name in another chapter. 

So now it’s take number four, and I’m ripping bleeding hunks out of the other three, performing surgery on the words to get them right and to make the seams invisible, and then seeing if it all hangs together.

I think it does now. I think I’ve got the target bracketed and have found the range. If nothing else, the speed of my work has picked up, usually a good sign. The distractions that tell me by their very existence that I’m barking up the wrong tree are less alluring. More, simply said, is getting done.

This may, of course, be another false alarm, another failed experiment to toss off the battlements or lock in the dungeon. But it feels different. It feels good. It feels like I’m getting there, at too-long last. As one slab of prose after another drops into place, it does so with the clang of finality, with the sense that it’s landing in the right place.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a plane to catch and a game to work on.

And most importantly, a book to write.

Finally.

A combination of physical difficulties and crazed deadlines have forced me to decide to forego writing a regular blog post, so instead, here’s a fun story I wrote to rid myself of a recurring dream.–Janet Berliner 

     She is fifteen when the dreams invade her nights.

     By the time she is not-quite forty, the dreams are like lovers she hates, but cannot live without–frightening her as much by their absence as by their presence.  She finds a new therapist, buys a new notebook, records again the details of the dreams . . . 

     . . . she is moving slowly down the corridor of her grandmother’s pre-war Riverside apartment.  She knows that she is dreaming.  At first, everything around her is black and white, then the edges soften, running into each other like wet paint.  She waits for the greyness to come, to release her body from gravity’s constraints.  She can almost touch the sensations free flight will bring–sensual, warm, safe–like love without risk. 

     She is floating now.  She cannot see the end of the passageway, yet she knows with certainty that she will soon be outside.

     Outside.  Color and sunshine.  She hovers at the crest of a tier of rolling lawns, trying to delay her journey to the bottom, anticipating the flight with pleasure, its end with dread.

     But she is not the master of her body.  Setting aside all thought of what is to come, she concentrates on the scent of freesias drifting from the field below, on the poppies and forget-me-nots blooming wild as far as the horizon.  Forgetting, she allows herself to be happy–

     She is in a room, a conference room, standing before what appears to be a tribunal.  At the head of the table sits a woman dressed in black and white.  There is nothing muted about this scene, or about the woman, yet the dreamer cannot see her features, hidden in shadow beneath a wide-brimmed black straw hat.

     The dreamer is frightened.  The people in the room are all talking at once, talking at her.  Why is she on trial, being judged? She feels herself growing smaller and smaller–

     Lilliputian, she returns to the sunlight.  The door of the tribunal is shut behind her and she feels safe again, surrounded by color.  Though she does not really recognize anything, she knows she is in a small beach community she visited once as a child.  The knowledge comes from the smell of the salt in the air, the texture of the sea breeze, the crunch of sand beneath her feet.

     She looks down and sees that she is wearing a flowing white dress, embellished with lace and seed pearls.  She is carrying a basket on her arm, a picnic basket filled with flowers.  She is sixteen or seventeen, perhaps a little older.

     A young couple strolls along the other side of the street.  Their movements parallel hers.  They know her and she knows them, but they do not acknowledge her as they walk toward the ocean.

     When she reaches the beach, she stops.  A low, concrete divider, no more than four fingers wide, separates the street from the beach. 

     Without looking at her, the two young people step over the retaining wall and head into the water.  She watches them go, sad but unwilling to make a move to join them.  She is frightened again.  Something tells her a tidal wave is coming, and she feels eyes burning into the back of her neck.

     Dreaming still, she recalls another dream–a nightmare–remembering it in such infinite detail that she thinks she might be having a dream within a dream–

     She is swimming in the oily water of a busy harbor.  She has no idea how she got there.  All she knows is that she feels like the ancient mariner, condemned to the water forever.  She is surrounded by immense ships–tankers and cruise ships.  They are black and white.  She knows she will not drown, yet she has the sense that if she breathes in too deeply she will not be able to exhale again.  Ever–

     Back on the beach in the sunlight, she turns at last to identify the eyes staring at her.

     Behind her, she can see a semi-circle of concrete.  In its center, under a striped umbrella, a woman bends over a telescope.  Her hat identifies her as the woman from the tribunal.

     “You’re invading my privacy,” the dreamer says.

     When the woman does not respond, the dreamer moves closer.

     “How dare you!”  She is shouting.  “You’re intruding on my life.  You have no right!”

     The woman looks up and smiles.  She moves into the sunlight, but even then her features are blurred.  She beckons with a gloved hand.

     The dreamer moves to her side and turns to look at the ocean.

     The tidal wave has begun.  It moves in slow-motion.  Though the dreamer is terrified, she keeps thinking how beautiful it is.  The woman has stepped back but the dreamer stays on, watching the wave rise, curl, flatten, rise, curl, flatten.  It moves across the beach in a perfect sine curve, avoiding the couple, sweeping the dreamer into the water.

     For a moment, she enjoys being at the mercy of the ocean.  She tries to relax and move with the wave.  Then the current tugs at her legs and she knows that if she wants to survive she is going to have to fight her way to shore.  She can hear people shouting for help.  She sees a man and a boy, a father and son.  The boy’s head is bobbing in and out of the water, just beyond the man’s reach.  She struggles to find bottom with her toes, to test the depth of the water, but the sand moves too fast beneath her feet.  Her energy is flagging.  If she tries to help the man, the boy, she will drown.

     She makes it to the beach.  Lying on an incline in the safe part of the sine curve, she tries not to listen to the cries for help.  She covers her ears with her hands.  Hearing them still, she begins to scream . . .

     Her screams wake her from the nightmare.  Her pillow is wet with her own tears.  No one is there to hear her scream–to comfort her.  She lies alone in the dark, replaying the dream.  She can remember each detail, but she cannot identify the woman. 

     She takes out her notebook and records the details of the dreams for her new therapist, the one her mother chose.  Her mother calls to remind her about the appointment.

     “This one is well-trained,” she says.  “And he’s single.” 

     The therapist is well-trained.  And clever.  And proud of his cleverness.  It takes him no time at all to identify the dream-figures.

     The woman pays him.  Thanks him.  Leaves. 

     The dreams do not return.

     At dawn on her fortieth birthday, the ex-dreamer stands on a cliff in Half Moon Bay.  She can see two bodies on the beach below and a striped umbrella.  As she raises her arms and begs the greyness to come, she wonders if, this time, someone will hear her scream.

Sorry for the late post (and my first, too!). You’d have to be an idiot to travel on Thanksgiving weekend, right? Well, present and belatedly accounted for.

I suppose that being the newest member of Storytellers Unplugged I should take this opportunity to introduce myself. But, well, *@#% that. We can have polite chitchat later, or better yet, go out for a drink sometime. But right now I’m on strike, with the rest of the WGA, East and West, and today I’m here to tell you way.

I’ve been a WGA activist for six years, now including a term on the Board of Directors and founding the WGA’s unoffical message board, WriterAction.com. Because of my work with the WGA I’ve been living with strike plans and strike talk for three years, now. This has been a long fight, and it will be longer – as long as it takes for us to win.

It’s our future. It’s your future, too, if you’re looking for a professional career in anything relating to writing. It’s your future if you don’t want the corporations to be the sole determiner of entertainment content.

If you’re already glazing over, or just don’t want to read further, please at least watch one or both of these videos to get an inkling of what this strike is about:

Why We Fight:

The Heartbreaking Voices of Uncertainty

Every three years the Hollywood creative guilds – actors, directors, and writers, renegotiate their contracts – that would be the MBA, the minimum basic employment agreement - with the studios who employ us. The contract includes among many, many other things: minimum payments, residual rates (this is the screen version of royalties), and pension and health contributions, as well as creative concerns. If we don’t reach a fair and acceptable agreement, then really our only tool to sway the studios is to strike – to refuse to work until they negotiate fairly.

I say studios, but the fact is, the old style Hollywood studios no longer exist. Vertical integration has been a fact of Hollywood for going on twenty years now and the creative guilds are actually being forced to negotiate for fair payment with enormous, multibillion dollar, multinational corporations. There is a good argument being made that by now this is in violation of anti-trust laws. And the same vertical integration is increasingly a reality in the publishing industry, too.

There has not been a screenwriters’ strike since 1988 – before I was in the guild. There has not been a strike in large part because for various reasons, in the years when we needed to negotiate hard, the WGA has not been strong enough to even threaten a strike.

But this year, this contract, we needed all the strength we could get. There are dozens of important issues, but we are really only striking about one: internet downloads.

Anyone with half a brain knows that internet is the future of everything in entertainment. The corporations don’t want to pay writers, directors or actors for reuse of their work through the internet, and they think that if they squeeze us out of that now, that they’ll never have to pay us for that again.

That’s the bottom line.

Not only did the companies come to the bargaining table with a proposal that completely eliminated payment on internet reuse, but their initial proposal had 76 rollbacks of our previous contract, including separation of rights. Separation of rights is what screenwriters have instead of copyright: for example, it allows me to retain the right to publish a novel based on my original screenplay. It is one of the most cherished creative rights we have as screenwriters.

That’s just one of the proposals the corporations lay down which made it quite clear that they were not intending to bargain seriously or fairly.

That’s how weak they thought we were. We haven’t struck in twenty years and they probably assumed that we couldn’t pull it off this time. They thought this would be an easy win and they would be able to cut us out of internet profits once and for all time.

They were wrong.

As a former member of the WGAw Board of Directors, I have had the great pleasure of working with all of the current WGA west officers: President Patric Verrone, VP David Weiss, Secretary-Treasurer Elias Davis, WGAw Executive Director David Young, and most of the current WGA Board of Directors, and a great number of the WGA Negotiating Committee, East and West members, and they have been smartly and inexorably working toward this moment for three years, now.

Here’s when I knew we were going to win.

The strike of 1985 was a huge setback for the WGA in terms of residuals. Back then the issue was videotape residuals – videotapes were an emerging market and the WGA was striking primarily to get a fair share of the profits from videotapes. The WGA had previously agreed to a temporarily lower residual to help the companies build this “emerging market”. The “emerging market” had taken off for feature film releases and accordingly the WGA asked for the higher residual rate in the 1985 contract. The companies refused - making that issue a strike issue.

But the WGA has traditionally been deeply divided between screen and television writers. There are many, many more TV writers than screenwriters, and our issues are different. In 1985 there were no TV shows being sold on videotape yet, and the television writers perceived the videotape issue as a feature writers’ issue. A group within the television writers persuaded the other TV writers to cave on the issue and the WGA didn’t get the raised residual rates it wanted on cassette tapes. Two months later the original STAR TREK series was released on videotape and those TV writers realized just how badly they had miscalculated.

This year we have the same situation with the internet.

But we no longer have the divide between TV and feature writers. This is EVERYONE’S issue.

Three years ago I saw the current WGA leadership begin a massive courtship of the most powerful TV writers we have, the showrunners – the producer/writers who create and control the shows. The studios can keep pumping out feature films indefinitely – they have a huge backlog of scripts that they can pull out of their vaults while the writers are on strike. But television is much more in the moment. A TV show needs product every single week to stay on.

The showrunners are overwhelmingly united this time around. And they’re not working, period.

More than three dozen TV shows currently have no more than one episode left to air before they will have to shut down production. We’ll be going into reruns and reality momentarily.

The corporations have billions and billions of dollars to wait us out. But they have no stories without us. And without our stories, they’re going to be losing money faster and faster.

How long can this go on? As long as it has to.

What we’re asking for, as the creators of television and film content, is a tiny fraction of profit from internet use of our work.

That will be our living, in the future, and we’re not giving that up.

And now I’ll post some links to far more eloquent summations of the issues.
———————————————————————————————————————-

FAQ:

WHY ARE YOU ON STRIKE?

Payment for reuse of our writing has been a key part of our earnings for half a century. Now the studios are using the growth of the internet as a tool to take that away from us.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT MORE MONEY FOR SPOILED, RICH WRITERS?

True, some writers are paid very well — but in any given year, almost half of the Guild’s active writers go without any employment at all. They count on residuals to pay their mortgages and feed their families between jobs. These new pay cuts will be particularly devastating to our most vulnerable members. And right now, most of the writing for new media isn’t even covered by the Guild at all — which means no minimums or pension or health insurance. That’s not fair, and it needs to change.

HOW LONG WILL YOU BE ON STRIKE?

Until we get a fair deal. Because the future — the internet — is at stake, this is the negotiation of a generation.

AREN’T YOU HURTING THE REST OF THE COMMUNITY BY STRIKING?

This concerns us deeply. But remember, we didn’t want this strike; it was forced upon us by management. In fact, we even went so far as to take off the table one of our most important issues — DVDs — in hope of averting it.

ISN’T IT TRUE THAT IN A STRIKE, NOBODY WINS?

We’re fighting not to lose. Management is trying to take so much away from us that if we don’t dig in and defend what we have, next time around they’ll be coming after our pension and health benefits. So we need to draw a line and stand up to them. In that sense, we’re fighting not only for writers, but for many others in our industry as well. We’re all in the same boat, and if we succeed, the pattern we set will benefit every other guild and union in Hollywood.

Strike Captains’ blog: United Hollywood

http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/

YouTube videos explaining the strike:

Why We Fight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ55Ir2jCxk

The Heartbreaking Voices of Uncertainty: Media Moguls on the Internet:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8a37uqd5vTw

Fade to Black:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFkFLf5OvpM

Heroes of the Writers’ Strike:

My hero - Howard Michael Gould

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beMNePzqpzQ

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=127766&title=moment-of-zen-torture

SNL writer Tim Kazurinsky on Chicago’s WGN explains the strike:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd_x_ivCSKw

WGA Video Strike Log:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbzb_K8Ku0w</

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:

There are various online petitions that you can click on and sign to show support - I’ll link to some of them here.

http://www.petitiononline.com/WGA/petition.html

http://www.petitiononline.com/f4wga/petition.html

Keep up to date with actions at unitedhollywood.com (WGAw) and strikenotes.blogspot.com (WGAE), and I’ll update this thread with current actions for those who want to help.

Here’s another great site with suggestions for how to get involved:

http://www.fans4writers.com/participate.shtml

Here’s a viral pencil campaign for those who want to send a message to the corporations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GggokNW-4c

Here are some virtual picket signs if you’d like to show support on your MySpace/Livejournal/Second Life, etc. sites:

http://community.livejournal.com/wga_icons/

A larger community with mega-graphics:

http://community.livejournal.com/wga_supporters/

And here’s the graphic people have been using to replace their main picture on Myspace:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v317/kullervo/wgamyspace.jpg

And we’re working on a T-shirt I particularly like:

SUPPORT THE WGA - HAVE SEX WITH A WRITER.

Anything for the cause, you know?

Great to be here, everyone.

Alex Sokoloff

In the summer of 1995 I decided to get serious about something that had, up until that point, been not much more than an occasional hobby, one I took up every now and then to amuse my friends and myself. Every now and then I would write a short story, realize that I was probably the best writer since Stephen King, submit it to a couple of magazines, realize I sucked, then give it up for a while.

This time I was serious! I would paper the house with my rejection letters, I thought (not knowing just how close to the truth that thought was), until I finally sold my story.

My problem, I realized, was that I was writing short stories when I should be concentrating on a novel. Short stories were a waste of time. I certainly wasn’t going to get rich selling shorts.

I broke out my old Brother word processor, tracked down the floppy disk with the first few pages of an abandoned novel, and dedicated myself to finishing it.

This was my second attempt at a novel, the first having ended badly some five years previous when I loaned the first fifty handwritten, my only copy of them, to a girl I worked with (and had a huge crush on). The girl, Jennifer, forgot those pages after a late shift. The next morning the janitor found them on the break table and threw them out.

After another six months or so of working on second novel, the one I resumed while working a five dollar an hour construction job in Mountain Home, Idaho (an odd name for the town, since Mountain Home was splat in the middle of southern Idaho desert, and there was not a mountain in sight).

Some Kind of Hero, it was called.

Some Kind of Hero might have made a good comic book in the right hands, but as a novel, my novel, it stunk on ice. My first complete novel, much like other first novels I imagine, was not worth the stamps it cost to mail out submission packets. I eventually lost count of the number of submissions I made. I sent them to publishers, both large and small, and agents, and the only interest I generated was from a vanity publisher and a guy called Bill Appel from a company called Edit Ink.

These letters of interest came as a surprise, since I made a point of not sending subs to vanity publishers, and I had never even heard of Edit Ink, and in both cases, after coming down from my euphoria (Oh my god! They like me! They really, really like me!), I decided that Edit Ink was likely an expensive scam, and vanity publishing would be an empty victory. I am luckier (or maybe just smarter) than a lot of would be authors who threw money away on Edit Ink’s special services, but maybe not much luckier (or smarter). I was raising a family of four on five dollars an hour, and my wife did not work, so I didn’t really have the money to spend on them.

I have since deduced how Edit Ink got their info on me. Another agent sent me a rejection letter, with a request to resend the material once Edit Ink has had a chance to work with it. This rejection came with a very informative brochure about Edit Ink and their services.

I sometimes wonder how many agents and publishers were in on that scam with Edit Ink. I wonder if anyone other than Bill Appel and his partner in crime, Denise Sterrs, knows just how far spread this Quid Pro Quo went. I do know that Edit Ink set up fake agencies and publishing houses whose only purpose was to refer writers back to them.

Clever bastards.

A few years later another agent, responding to a query concerning my next novel, the equally horrible Black Day, requested that I seek out the services of Edit Ink and then resubmit. I rewrote the novel myself, even paid a local English professor to help me edit, and then resubmitted the work to her. It was, of course, rejected, as it should have been. It just wasn’t very good. Given the Edit Ink ties, however, I question whether she even read the resubmitted work.

I never did seek the services of Edit Ink, but they didn’t let that discourage them. I’m guessing quite a few of the agents I queried were affiliated with Mr. Appel, because he eventually took a personal interest and contacted me. He called my wife while I was at work, told her he was an editor, and that he was interested in one of my manuscripts.

I did return that call, thinking he was a real editor, and I still count that return call as one of the biggest disappointments in my life.

I can feel this wanting to veer off course and become a rant against agents, and I don’t want that to happen. Writers need agents. Despite my less than stellar past relationships with them, I’m still trying to land one. Maligning an entire branch of the literary field because of the sins of a few wont help me, and letting my frustration with a few crooked agents color your perception of them won’t help you.

This essay is not about agents. It is about vampires, bloodsuckers, leaches, and bottom feeders. This rant is about the people who put on pretender’s hats and call themselves editor, book doctor, and yes, sometimes agent.

After the multi-million dollar civil action filed against Bill Appel and Denise Sterrs by New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco, I assumed that Edit Ink had been shut down, but upon further research, I’ve discovered that they may still be in business, pending an appeal.

Still in business, scamming naive writers.

Also still in business, the agent who referred them to me after receiving a query for Black Day, one Alison J. Picard.
Writer beware. Here there be monsters.

New writers need to know that these people are still out there, spewing false promises from their lying pie-holes, patting us on the back with one hand and picking our pockets with the other. Still trying to get their greedy mitts on our money. New writers must research every individual and business with which they intend to do business.

Google.com is your friend.

There are other online resources available to writers. In this era of the information super-highway, it has never been easier to arm yourself against the scumbags and swindlers who make their living off the trusting and naive.

There is Preditors and Editors. Yes, I know predators is misspelled. I assume they did it intentionally.

There is the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. I am not a member. I am not yet accomplished enough to meet their membership standards, but their website is still a valuable source of information.

There is www.duotrope.com.

There is www.ralan.com.

There is the account of Matthew Warner’s personal experiences with Edit Ink at Horror World.

There are also countless writers groups and communities on the web. If you’ve found your way to Storytellers Unplugged, chances are you already found one or more of these. Seek out the real pros in these groups, and by pros I mean writers who have worked with established houses, writers who write for a living, working with publishers who publish for a living. The guy who just sold his bukkake haiku to Billy-Bob’s Poetry Slam webzine may have good intensions, but any advice he offers is likely to be less than sound.

As long as you’re already here, look up and down the contributor’s list. Most of the folks on it are much more qualified to give advice than I am. Stick around and get to know them. If you have even a scrap of talent and dedication, you could benefit from their experiences and advice.

Don’t take my word for anything.

Take theirs.

Brian Knight

By Richard Steinberg

This month’s column is dedicated to the sacrifices of Capt. Benjamin D. Tiffner, 31, of West Virginia; 5th Special Forces Group and Staff Sgt. Patrick F. Kutschbach, 25, of Pennsylvania; 10th Special Forces Group.

Thank you guys, stand easy.

“I’ve been struggling with this toast for several weeks. Should I strike a melancholy, time passes sort of tone? A humorous, light hearted thing? Maybe stentorian wisdom seasoned with a soupcon of slightly controlled emotion? But instead of such frippery, I decided on a taste of truth. After all these years, thank you for not killing me in my sleep,” William Dean Howells

Two years.

Thirty-one columns.

Around 75,000 words on words.

Amazing.

Together, we’ve explored plotting and characterization, evoking reactions from our readers, what it means to be a writer (as opposed to a creative typist) politically imprisoned writers, and the roots of Godzilla. Wherever possible I’ve tried to share with you what I know of the alchemy of literary creation, and certainly I have received from you both insight and inspiration.

Year One, we spent exploring the soul of the writer.

This past year, the writer’s heart.

Next month, we’ll begin a year long journey through a writer’s intestinal tract. Not a pretty picture, but hey, someone has to do it. But for right now, I want to share with you – in keeping with the day – a few of the things I’m thankful for, as a writer, as a man, as a human being.

I’m thankful . . .

. . . that I’m still alive.  It’s been a struggle the last few years.

. . . that God – or whoever’s in charge – has made it abundantly clear that they’re not quite through with me yet.

. . . that I’ve come to realize that last thing is a blessing and not a curse.

. . . that Bob & Dick, John & Katherine, Loren & Michelle, Janet & Bob2 remain close, remain stalwarts, remain rocks that I can lean on, count on, believe in, when leaning, counting, and believing become nigh on impossible.

. . . that my gift of writing is still there, still a part of me as much as my intestinal tract, still compelling me forward whether I want to go or not.

. . . that John & Susan, Miss Anne, Shirley & Jim, Sue & Joe, Cabaret Sue, Sigi & Vic, Patti & P.J., and always Stan the Man have such generosity of spirit, such well intentioned belief that it keeps me warm on the colder, dark nights of the soul.

. . . that in a time of loss and dissolution and depression I saw a child coloring, a teen helping a senior, a senior lending their wisdom to a grownup, and that I have still – rather successfully – avoided growing up myself.

. . . that I can experience Harley’s strength and power blossom, Mike’s first tentative steps into the writing pool that he will one day swim deep in, Detta & Rolf’s commitment to life, Amanda & George’s unbelievable life force and heart, Harrigan’s courage playing out every day, Sarah’s dreams coming true much to her (and only her) surprise.

. . . that America is still a place where it is the quality of your work and life, the content of your heart and the product of your actions that matters far more than anything else.

And yes, I am thankful that I still believe.

. . . that Eileen and Mike, Laura and Liz and Michelle and all of my spectacularly brilliant friends of Brilliance remain good friends and not just publishers.

. . . that critics haven’t caught on to me yet.

. . . that Sister Clare, my sister the Sister, is in the world.

. . . that I’m still alive to experience gifts from God (or whoever’s in charge) curses of talent, the greatness of possibilities, the actual sparseness of evil (however loud it may be) in the world; that I’m free to loathe some writers, worship others, to take a stand or not as my choice rather than someone else’s command.

. . . that Dave Wilson, Frank Wydra, John Rosenman, Thomas Sullivan, Justine Musk, Brian Knight, Stan Ridgley, Janet Berliner, and Richard Dansky are among my fellow collaborators here in the land of Storytellers, with so many others I don’t yet know so well, but admire so well.  Their generosity of spirit takes my breath away.

. . . that Storytellers Unplugged is read by the dissidents who risk arrest (and sometimes their lives) of the Golden Media movement around the world.  These young people risk their freedom and lives to read and circulate banned books and publications in their countries; simply so that they can make up their own minds about the relative worth of the words.

I am thankful that there is light to counter the dark.  I’m thankful that with my gifts, with the gifts of my co-Storytellers, with the gifts and aspirations of so many of you, my dear gentle readers, the light might never go out.

I am particularly thankful for Carly Simon album covers; but hey, that’s me!

There are too many more people and things for me to list here.  A failing memory and a pernicious post-project exhaustion just won’t permit me to pull everyone and everything out for the public acclaim and distinction they so deserve. And so, let me simply thank the world around me for getting me through the world around me another year.

Thank you, for making that year consistently interesting, never dull, always curious, too often painful with too many losses, even more frequently stunningly refreshing, ennobling, in its way . . . healing.

“For people who are artists, the work is the life. It defines and justifies your very existence. If you’re not actively doing a project you’re nothing in your own mind. You can’t retire from it. There is no way out. You are your work. You’re life is defined by it,” Gene Lees

I am a writer.

I am a fictioneer; sailing the seas of apostasy, torment, pain and injustice.

I am a fictioneer; reminding you to hope, to love, to care, to see, to taste, to take a stand for those things that are intrinsically right and against those things which are immutably wrong.

I am a fictioneer, a more worn than new, more sad than happy, more lost than found writer.

But then, I am a writer.

And that makes up for it all somehow.

Happy Holiday, and always in all ways . . .

Believe!