Wait…I’m Dracula?!?

I had two posts stacked up, ready to post…

Yeah, the important word in that sentence is the verb: had.

One of the benefits of getting ahead on posts, by the way, is that you gain the time and distance you need to read and honestly evaluate the material before you hit the “Publish” button.  On review, both of those posts saw me hit the trash can icon rather than the button to post them.

One of those posts I kinda regret nuking, but only because it was basically harmless.  It was, in all honesty, just an exploration of the meaning and impact of a couple of songs.  Unfortunately it also wasn’t any more than that; it offered nothing new, nor anything particularly interesting for anyone but me.

That is the great danger of this kind of writing, by the way: the urge to devolve into internal monologues and self-absorption.  It is all too easy to forget that even a blog has to have a point.  Even a blog has to work to communicate something to its audience.  A work that is nothing more than the stream-of-consciousness spouting of internal thoughts and feelings with no purpose is a diary,* not a blog.

*Or freaking “Prufrock”…but, then, I hate that damned poem.  “Dare I eat a peach…” my ass.  Harrumph!  Those who love that poem, however, have a totally different opinion.  YMMV.

One of those posts that I deleted, however, had a core that did have something to say…even if that core needed to be stripped of the bitter, half-drunk trappings with which it was surrounded.  Now, what got me started on this particular post was re-reading that bit, while simultaneously thinking about a couple of discussions with some new friends…

Just like when I was living in Yellowstone, I find myself surrounded by — and socializing with — those who are significantly younger.  That’s not entirely bad, to be honest.  There is an energy and an honesty to youth that those of us who have weathered more of life’s shit can quite easily lose.  I know I personally have lost quite a bit of that energy and hope.  Unfortunately, youth also owns a callowness and naivety that can grate on your damned nerves…

One kid — 19 or 20, and dreaming of wealth and better things — talked about getting into “affiliate marketing” and “drop shipping”.  Now, whether you go old school and call them pyramid schemes, or adopt fresh new terms, those things are still nothing more than vehicles to abuse the young and stupid.  Sorry, Ethan, but that’s the truth…

Others with girlfriend/boyfriend troubles…

The loss of an apartment, and couch-surfing with friends and acquaintances…

When you get right down to it, the pure naive belief that the world makes sense, and that the universe is — of all life’s dirty words — “fair”…

I’m still utterly convinced that Dracula, and his particular brand of magic and mesmerization, is nothing more than an allegory for someone with decades of life and experience living among the young and naive.  A deep, dark part of me — one that I don’t invite to parties — knows it could manipulate these “kids” into, well, pretty much anything.  Experience can predict response; wisdom can guide impetus and action; cynicism can manipulate reaction…

God, I’m an evil bastard.*

*Errr…actually I’m a writer.  Which amounts to the same thing, when you get right down to it.  Who else but a serial killer or a writer would ever Google shit like “castration” and “eunuch” and actually read the damned results?!

“Why would you do that?” is the cry, of course.  “Why would you ever abuse the naivety and inexperience of the young?”

Just wait until you are over forty, then go talk for a half-hour with someone who is less than half your age!  You have two choices at that point: nostalgic memory for your own youth, or bitter cynicism at everything you have lost…

Shit, someone should write a story about that!

Wait, I think I might have that covered…

Okay, so someone should open a brewery where that can be written!

Ummm…well…I pretty much have that covered, too…

Shit…wait a damned second!

Did I just take away my last excuses for not producing my long-brewing fantasy series?  Dammit!

Swearing-Nerd is Evil, So Let’s Snippet Instead

I feel like I’ve been missing something lately…

Hmm…let’s think back over the list of my (relatively) recent nerdy posts and see where we stand:

History-nerd?  Check.

Anime-nerd?  Check.

Sci-fi/fantasy-nerd?  Check.

Astronomy-nerd?  Heck, even that one gets a check by it, if only for my effort to throw some cold water on Elon Musk’s rush for a manned flight to Mars.

Well…shit.  What nerd-isms do I have left?!  Booze?  Uhhh…I’m still in the coffee phase of my day, so I think I’ll leave that one alone, thank you very much.  How about sailing-nerd?  Not even other sailors want to read random thoughts about sailing!  Politics?  No.  Just…no.

Okay, this is getting frustrating.

Harrumph!

Pretty soon, if this keeps up, we’re gonna end up with swearing-nerd.  While that’ll be fun for me, I’m not sure anyone else wants to read about just how many ways you can tell the world to get bent if you speak several languages.*

*I especially like to mix and match my swearing — a bit of Japanese to leaven a good Czech “fuck off” is always entertaining…

Well, since I couldn’t come up with a post if you held a gun to my head this morning, I suppose it’s time to throw in the proverbial writer-towel and just go with an old standby…

The bit below is not a part of the DockRat cycle of stories (the Connor & Oz series), but it is a random scene from the background material to those stories that I have been toying with expanding into its own story:

Snippet: “First Flight”

Michael Brady was out to get drunk, and nothing was going to interfere with that.  Not the girl sitting next to him — the one trying to distract him with conversation and jokes — and certainly not the bartender who had short-poured his last drink.

He tried to watch intently while she poured a new one, tried to keep track as she mixed the different types of booze.  He tried, and he failed.  His eyes refused to focus and his brain was barely able to keep up with even the most basic of movements.  The empty drink at his elbow certainly had not been his first of the night.  It hadn’t even been his fifth.

The girl touched his arm, her voice bright and cheerful, “So, Mikey, you were about to tell me what you’re doing here at the beach.  No one comes to Coronado anymore.  Not after the war…”

Mikey?  Shit.  Brady would have walked away if she weren’t so completely gorgeous.  And if he could have walked, after all the drinks, without embarrassing himself.  A quick glance around the half-empty bar and he the saw bouncer glowering at him, trying, evidently, to decide when enough was enough.  Brady quickly looked away; he’d been thrown out of far too many bars over the last six months.

He turned back to the bartender just in time to receive his drink.  A long pull, then, and he turned finally to the girl next to him.  He wanted to be contemptuous, to sneer at her naivety and foolishness.  But he also wanted sex.  He wanted sex, in fact, considerably more than he wanted to feel superior, so…”I’m takin’ a break from workin’ for a while.  I’ve been followin’ the coast road from Alaska, and this is just my latest stop.”

“Wow, that sounds like fun!  How long’ll you stay?  If you came for the ocean, by the way, you got a problem.  The water just ain’t all that safe, not with all the radiation pouring out of the San Diego ruins.  I do know a couple places, though, that aren’t so bad…”

The invitation was there, written in her hesitation and in her eyes, and Brady weighed the benefits of one more drink against his fairly urgent need for physical companionship.

The drink won.

Another long pull, then, and he rubbed a hand over his freshly shaved head.  Intricate vines and leaves writhed and shifted on his arm, the ever-changing designs and colors running from wrist to chest.  He’d found the artist in Florida, one of the few who could make the new high-tech inks and techniques stand out clearly against Brady’s dark sepia skin.

Between the heavy tattooing, the freshly broken nose, and the loss of his long braids, he doubted even his own mother would recognize him.  He certainly hoped his ex-employer wouldn’t.  God help him if they managed to track him down.

Finally, he answered her, “Oh, I got no plans.  Not really.  I’ll stay ’til it’s time to move on.  A good swim does sound good, but not if I’m gonna grow an extra eye or somethin’.  I’m actually doin’ my best to swim in every ocean in the world.”

Voices at the bar’s door, then, arguing.  The deep bass rumble of the bouncer, followed by another voice too low to hear clearly.  Brady didn’t bother to so much as glance back.

Fuck it, he thought, who cares?  It’s time to get laid, not get in some bullshit bar brawl.

He’d had enough of those.

He leaned closer to the girl, lowered his voice, “Tracy…right?  Tracy, let’s get the fuck out of here.  You can show me the sights…”

And then it came, the voice he least wanted to hear.  The voice he’d been avoiding for the last six months.

Hiding from, a little voice at the back of his mind corrected.

“Dr. Brady?  I think you’d better come with us,” that voice said.

“What?  Wait…DOCTOR?” Tracy asked, her voice inching towards a squeal.

Brady spun on his stool, rather gracefully he thought.  “What the fuck do you want, Paul?” he barked as he turned.  When he tried to stop…when he tried to stop, the world kept turning.  And not just turn, it started to whirl and spin and hop up and down like a crazed wombat in a chorus line.

Not even the crack of his head hitting the floor was enough to stop the spinning.  That fall, in fact, just made it worse.  Brady decided at that point that he didn’t want to be drunk anymore.  No, sir, he just wanted the acid and booze in his stomach to not try so aggressively to come up again.

Hands on his arms, impersonal and efficient, hauled him to his very unsteady feet.  He looked up, then.  Looked into Paul’s face and saw the briefest flair of irritation at the back of those blue eyes.  Any other man would have been screaming threats and obscenities after what Brady had done six months ago.  But Paul…Paul’s eyes barely hinted at the tiniest bit of irritation.  Brady shuddered at that hint of irritation; Paul was one of the most dangerous men in the world.

“Kinda pullin’ out the big guns, ain’t they, buddy?” Brady slurred, finally.  “You got better things to do than chase my black ass all over the world.  When the fuck did I become a fish big enough for you to arrest?”

“Whoa…wait a second,” the bartender complained, her voice bordering on a whimper.  One glance at Paul, and at the two goons holding Brady at something approximating the vertical, and she was terrified…but she also had a job to do.  “Someone’s gotta pay his tab before anything happens.”

There was no reaction on Paul’s face, just the stoic blandness of a hardened, lifelong warrior.  He leaned forward and placed a slim, matte-black card on the bar.  His voice betrayed not the slightest hint of emotion when he spoke, “Use that for the bill, and add the same again as a tip.  Dr. Brady will not be returning.”

Paul’s icy eyes shifted back to Brady.  The barest flicker of a smile, one that no one — certainly not Brady — could ever swear was actually there, then he said, “I’m not arresting you Dr. Brady.  I was sent to bring you home.”

Brady wished the booze would fade faster.  Something was happening that he didn’t understand, and he did not like that.  Brady was always three steps ahead of everybody else; he was always the one calling the shots.  “What the fuck?  I ain’t goin’ anywhere near Oxford again, that place sucks ass.  Shit, why the hell wold they want me back?  I pissed on the fucking Vice-Chancellor’s desk, ferchrissake!”

“The Beagle failed her flight tests, professor, and she needs her designer.  You’re the only one who can fix her FTL drive at this point,” Paul explained, his voice still flat, still emotionless.  Then, a final twist to the knife, “You did steal the designs, after all.”

“Shit.”

How Do You Choose?

Random writing, today.

I’m working on the fantasy series I want to write.  Unfortunately, the series I have in my mind is…well…it’s at least two different series.  Two different ones, but both do I want to write.  Both have characters I like, and stories I believe in.

How do you choose?

The worst torture the Romans could ever dish out was simple: line up the entire the family, then ask the father which child lived and which died.  The father always gave the Romans whatever they wanted.

So, for me, which story lives, and which dies?  Into which story do I plunge the dagger?

Okay, so no story every really dies…but putting one off for a couple of years (at the minimum) feels a whole lot like killing it…

Like that father, how do you choose?

No, really, how do you choose?

The story not of the young kid who wields a magic sword to become king, but rather the story of the sword so dedicated that he seeks out the last survivor of “his” family…

Or the story of the bitter immortal — the “angel” exiled for his part in the lost war in heaven — who wants nothing more than the grey numbness of oblivion…

I love Connor and Oz.  Err…well…Connor is a great character, and a great narrator, but it is Oz who I actually love.  It is Oz who is my favorite character.  But their time is coming to a close.  Once their third story is written, that’s it.

Hell, if I’m honest, there never should have been more than one.  Somewhere Peaceful to Die was written to have no sequel…but I couldn’t let those characters go.  The Silence That Never Comes and The Flicker of Ghosts came (are coming) because I couldn’t let go of those two characters.  But the time has come to finally let go…

So what fills the blank?  The stories of devotion and innocence that drove my youth?  My take on the Belgariad and the Chronicles of Amber and the Lord of the Rings?  Or…

Or…

Or, a more deeply personal tale?  A tale built on experience and reality?  A tale of a weary life lived among those far younger?  A tale of bitterness and loss amidst the joys and innocence of youth…?

It would help, of course, if one had a character that stood out more for me than the other…but both call to me:

Finntan’s hope, the innocence of his life, and the dedication of the magic items that dedicate themselves to him…

Versus the world weary insouciance of Runae…versus the concept of the once-great wanting nothing more than the forgetfulness of death…

How do you pick which child lives and which dies?

How do you choose between the hope and love that you wish the world was, and the bitter pain that you know the world actually is?

I tried conflating them, I really did.

Yeah, it was worse than you think it was.

Those two cannot be combined.  Not in any way.  I tell either Finntan’s story, or I tell Runae’s.  I can’t combine the two…not any more than I can plan out to a third series!

*sigh*

This is why, of course, writers get paid the…ahem…small bucks.

If I had wanted to get rich, I would’ve been a plumber.

Musical Note — the song below is one I love. It is a song that has not specifically been a part of anything I’ve conceived or written, but rather has elements that touch on everything I’ve written (not to mention having the best song line ever: “If you’ve never stared off into the distance / Then your life Is a shame”)…

Soundtracks And Music To Write By

If history is a major influence on what I write, alongside philosophy and literature, then music is the catalyst that actually gets everything going. Music influences — and in some cases even shapes — the words I write. And I mean everything I write. Even the posts on this blog are shaped and focused by what I am listening to at the time (for the record, I’m listening to Mumford & Sons’ The Road to Red Rocks live album as I type this).

I’ve mentioned before that the very first thing I write for any story is the final scene. That final scene gives the story shape and focus by giving me an end-point to work towards. It also helps to define the emotional tone and message of the story itself. For Somewhere Peaceful, that means I wrote the final scene of tragedy and loss even before I wrote the words to get folks there…and that process defined the (sad and bitter) tone and mood of the story.

But how did music play a role?

Well, like the writing process for the scene I described in this previous post, that concluding scene had a “soundtrack” to it…a soundtrack that, through that initial creation process, shaped the entire damned story.*

*If you’re wondering, the two key songs for that final scene are “Ghosts That We Knew” by Mumford & Sons and “Be Still” by The Fray. Both songs, by the way, still have the power to evoke all the emotion and loss and pain that went into creating that scene every single time I hear them…

Over time, the soundtrack for Somewhere Peaceful to Die grew. It grew by songs and bands; it grew by genres and styles; it grew until it was well over a hundred songs and a dozen artists. Somewhere Peaceful’s soundtrack led directly into the one for Silence, but for that second story the music has changed…it has changed a great deal. It had to change. Even as my protagonist changed and grew, so too did the soundtrack have to. And it will continue to change, I know that. The music is a reflection of both myself (as the writer) and of Connor, so of course it has to change…

But The Silence That Never Comes is not the only story I’m writing. Nope, I’m also starting the conception and background work for Once Magnificent. Not just a different genre (fantasy versus sci-fi), that story will also have a very different tone and focus from Connor’s stories.

But I don’t have a soundtrack for it. Not yet, anyway.

Crap, I can’t write without a soundtrack!

Oh, all the work I’ll do as part of the background and prep will help, especially the work to “get to know” my characters, but I still don’t have that “one song.” Not in the way Ghosts That We Knew is the “one song” for all of the stories about Connor & Oz.

On the other hand, the quest for music is fun…almost as fun as the writing itself. I love music*…more than almost anything else, I live for music. I need music to listen to just as much as I need books to read, so the prospect of doing a few hours of “shopping” through the iTunes store excites me as much as the chance to browse the shelves of a good book store…

*I took piano lessons as a kid. When I decided to quit, my mom told me, “You’ll regret it later!” Holy shit, was she ever right. I regret stopping those lessons more than I can even begin to describe. Yep, Mom was right…again. *sigh*

I am, by the way, always shopping for new music…so any and all suggestions are welcome!

Living in Yellowstone last year introduced me to a dozen new bands that I have come to love, but I’m not up there this year. Instead, I’m hoping other folks will come forward with ideas for new stuff to help me out…

Once Magnificent is a story about nostalgia and growing old. It’s about watching your place in the world disappear, even as you fight to hold on to everything you once had. So…err…think about that, then suggest away!