Tag Archives: Writing

Underworld Figures

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been writing a bonkers novel called Subterraneaus Obscura about the mysterious world underneath Washington, D.C. (which has nothing to do with politics). It’s about three adventurers wearing suits who journey their way through ratweillers, the Mongolian death worm, organic server farms, Gnome Town, etc. They are:

Ember—thrill-seeker. They discovered the underground and keeps recruiting people to explore it with them. They’re optimistic and friendly, and they can’t hold their berry beet smoothies.

Juliette—career criminal. After committing the crime of the century, she is swept up in Ember’s wake when she is almost hit by a Metro train. She’s pretty relaxed, considering.

Mazel—charmed ad absurdum. Cursed with supernaturally good luck, Mazel is on the run from her father, the wealthiest man in the world. Her good fortune gets glitchy underground, so she follows Ember to see if it will run out.

Adventures in Anthropomorphism

Posted on by
Reply

I just finished writing a bananas novel called Subterraneous Obscura, which has dozens of supporting characters, from baristas to the richest man in the world. I’ve tried to give memorable personalities to all of them, and the best way to do that is to give them names. I pluck my names out of my life, and along the way, I named seven characters after the pets who are or have been living with my friends, Steve and Meredith, my former roommate, Nicole, and myself.

Here’s Steve and Meredith’s:

Cooper (Ginger Golden Retriever): A doctor who always wanted to do theater. He thinks he’s auditioning for Little Shop of Horrors, but instead, he’s cast in a sex tape.

Harmony (Golden Retriever): The preppy herald of an underworld goddess. (RIP)

Inkling (Sleek Black Cat): The minions of an underworld goddess.

Stardust (Small Tortoiseshell): An underworld goddess. (RIP)

Next is Nicole’s baby, Henry (Black Egyptian Mau): An FBI agent used to getting his way. He’s a Momma’s boy, and his Momma is a crazed, shotgun wielding old woman.

Following is my beloved Newcastle (Maine Coon): A butler who took a vow of silence. (RIP)

Finally, my current roommate, Oscar (Fluffy Black Cat): A sleazy teenage data broker.

They Say It’s your Birthday

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t like to make a big deal of my birthday, but I still have three iron-clad rules:

  1. I will have finished a self-portrait and summed up the previous year in one word.
  2. I will take the day off from work and from doing anything I don’t want to do.
  3. I will eat cake.

Here’s the thing with cake and myself: neither of my parents were chefs. The food wasn’t terrible, but, they managed to collapse a Betty Crocker recipe every year. We called them Charlie Brown cakes, and I wish I could have one again.

Monday, I posted my portrait, I shuffled around my apartment, nowhere to be, and I had some cake. The rest of the day, I worked on my project. My friend Emily tells me people-watching is addictive, and I’m inclined to believe her. I needed my fix.

Luckily, I had accepted an invitation to the Blood Editors’ Retreat Dinner. The choice of cuisine meant I was having Indian food on my birthday, and I wasn’t paying for it, so happy birthday to me. The best part was that they served entrees tapas-style for sharing. Usually, I just order Tikki Masala (the Official Dish of England), but this dinner introduced me through so many exciting new dishes.

I took my seat at the end of the table, and the two people closest to me were Dr. Mario, an Italian, and Dr. Erica, from Australia. Dr. Mario’s accent was very thick, and the room was so loud as editors caught up and had a good time that I struggled to understand. He is from Pavia, which I’ve heard of, probably through Shakespeare.

Dr. Mario was very interested in where I’m from. I usually tell people I was raised in New Mexico and leave it at that. But that skips over Nebraska, Indiana, New York adjacent, Oklahoma, and Central Jersey, Qatar, etc. I stuck with the Southwest, and he told me how much he loved Ansel Adams.

I’m not entirely sure why I went off on a rant about Italian drivers in the presence of Dr. Mario and the Editor-in-Chief, but I committed to it once I did. “These guys will drive up what are clearly pedestrian walkways,” I said, “where there is not an atom between the car and the wall.” If they were serious about catching Vin Diesel, they’d send Italian cab drivers.

Dr. Erica did not want to talk about work, so she talked about me. These editors are academics and science writers, and they think fiction is magic. When Dr. Erica found out I’d written and (almost) published a novel, she had to tell everyone.

Blood publishes research papers, and when they find one that’s really good, they ask one of the peer reviewers to write a brief commentary on why the paper is worth reading. I tell you this to put some context into the following conversation, which took place among several accents.

“Which one of us is going to write the commentary for his novel then?”

“We can’t publish one in Blood without a hematology angle.”

“Jeremiah says it’s about a werewolf.”

“Do werewolves suck blood?”

“No, that’s vampires.”

“It’s a shame your book couldn’t be about vampires, Jeremiah.”

“Wait. Werewolves turn people into werewolves by biting them.”

“A pathogen then?”

“More of a transfusion.”

“I’m a transfusion specialist. I can write the commentary!”

I do have my limits, and I reached them shortly after the last course. I retreated home to enjoy a second slice of cake before curling up, while Oscar did the same, just out of arm’s reach.

The View from Below

Posted on by
Reply

When I started drawing again over two years ago, my writing suffered. It seemed like I only a finite amount of creativity. Still, I persisted. Less than one year ago, I completely rewrote the second two thirds of a novel I’d finished in 2021, and I adapted a (bad) screenplay I wrote in 2023.

What I’ve noticed in my writing renaissance is that my books are less introspective and grounded than they used to be, and more surreal and cartoony, with brake-neck action.

Now I’m working on a completely new idea, Subterraneus Obscura, thanks to some inspiration from my dear friend, Emilie. She continues to help me out, coming up with names for nightclubs to prodding me when I need help developing a character.

The book jumps from POV to POV of the three characters below.

Ember is the trailblazer, exploring the world underneath Washington DC with panache.

Lucky, their sidekick, is the fortunate one, with inhumanly good luck and a taste for pot.

The fugitive is Juliette, running from the law through Metro tunnels when she is swept up in the adventures of the other two.

The Descent of Ryan

Posted on by
Reply

As a Doctor Who fan, I enjoy multi-Doctor adventures, in which they bring back their former lead or leads to interact with the present star. “The Three Doctors,” in 1973, set the precedent that the Doctors squabble amongst themselves. The Doctor is played by different actors, so they were like different people, but what if they were all the same actor?

I thought about it in earnest one day, and I concluded that, if my past selves met me, they would hate me, or at least see me as a big disappointment. If there’s one thing I do with gusto is reinvent myself every few years. I change hairstyles, I change wardrobes, I change shape. Sometimes I have a beard. Sometimes I’m wearing glasses.

In parts of college, I was a condescending intellectual. In my mid-twenties, I was a miserable

dude who partied somewhat hard. When I was a kid, I could be downright feral. And then there was the polyamorous fitness buff.

I wrote a screenplay about it. I started working on it in Atlanta during my society’s ostentatious 2021 annual meeting. I remember this because I was thumbing through the program for names. I had no idea what I was doing, and it shows. It was proof that an idea is not enough.

I haven’t really been writing anything new lately, but I’m still being productive by finishing unfinished books or completely rewriting garbage drafts. I’m adapting the screenplay into a novel, which means adding a coherent plot and ton of new material.

It’s a sci-fi comedy about a middle-aged loser who is temping at an evil genius’s secret headquarters. A cute scientist flirts with him for a few days, then she lures him into a dangerous experiment. The result is that his past selves have materialized with him in the lab.

The polar opposites that were Ryan, at forty-five, thirty-six, twenty-seven, eighteen, and nine, must all work together, with the help of the cute scientist, to escape before they are disposed of.

Anyway, this is my movie poster.

A Day in the Life

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t know if it’s ADHD or a symptom of our society, but I hate the quiet. For most of the day, I’m listening to something. While I work on art, it’s a movie or a YouTube video. While I work at work, I put on a podcast I don’t need to listen to. On the weekends, I like to cozy up in a cafe and get swept up in the busy lives of others.

The main reason I always like to have something on is because the earworms nestle in otherwise. Sometimes they’re fun songs, but usually they’re not.

Today, I’m not plugging into noise, and I’m paying the price for it. I’m hearing my favorite Beatles song, the one I can never listen to anymore, “A Day in the Life,” from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This is one of those rare songs ascribed to Lennon/McCartney that actually had contributions from both. If you know their style, you can pick which parts are theirs.

The numbness of the John Lennon part (“I read the news today, oh boy”) is how I feel having sacrificed passion for my sanity, and the McCartney part (“Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head”) is the result of that, i.e. going through the motions because you have to.

It’s a heavy song, and it never fails to bring me to tears. I found out when Newcastle died that it also described how I was processing my grief. Today, I found myself sitting on my bed, unmoving and unthinking, for ten minutes.

The only way I can feel anything right now is by writing about it.

 I read the news today, oh boy.

Crock Plot

Posted on by
Reply

I turned on a movie while I was working, as I always do. It took a few minutes to realize this was a Lifetime movie. The thing about Lifetime movies is that they’re engaging, but they’re really goofy. My favorite part about Lifetime movies is describing them.

This one is about a woman who wakes up in a strange bed with no memory of the night before, and the other person is dead. He is Elon Musk, only he doesn’t look like he ate a statue of John Barrowman made of butter.

Her best friend is a lawyer, who is going to represent her, and her other friend is a good-looking guy who looks exactly like the dead billionaire. I’d say this was by design, but every male in this movie looks like the dead billionaire, including the grizzled cop who’s tracking her down.

She stays with her male friend, but they get attacked by people in hoodies. The cop figures out she’s their suspect, but when she calls the station from a burner phone, he believes she’s innocent. Later, the good-looking friend takes an axe to the face.

Spoiler alert! The lawyer and the dead billionaire’s ex-wife framed the main character. The lawyer because the main character once slept with the lawyer’s ex-boyfriend, the recently axed friend. The ex-wife did it because the main character slept with the billionaire. The cop shows up, there is a scuffle, and everybody believes the main character, even though all the (fake) evidence points at her.

Lifetime!

Subedit

Posted on by
Reply

My novel was accepted by the publisher almost two years ago. I read the contract very carefully, looking for tricks and traps, but it was straightforward and very generous. The cover looks great, and they were very responsive to my concerns about fonts. Because the title is a Navajo word, they were able to accommodate the unique accenting of the language. The layouts went well. Everyone has been extraordinarily professional. But that’s not why this is taking so long.

I received the first edits fifteen months ago, and they were really bad. When I realized the editor had caused a lot of problems, I asked Production to fix it. They rejected all the changes and brought in a new team. They were just as bad. So was the third edit. The fourth edit was a vast improvement, though it wasn’t until a later round that they stopped changing “Oxen’s Razor,” which was the term used by a teenager trying to sound smart, to “Occam’s Razor,” not getting the joke.

I’ve been going back and forth with them for fifteen months, during which I’ve reread my novel nine times. I’m getting kind of sick of it.

(To be clear, I’m really proud of this book, and I think it’s some of my best writing.)

Now that they’re only sending me the final proofs, I have to edit my own book. Because of my attention span, I can’t catch all of the errors on a pass, so I have to go through it again and again, stripping out the errors. On the ninth pass, I saw that I had misspelled Jennifer once, and I didn’t notice the other eight times I read it. Also, I’m catching some continuity mistakes, like who gave the main character his pickup. These things should have been spotted by an editor.

To be clear, I’ve liked working with them so far. I just can’t figure out how this one department can be so unskilled and unprofessional. And I can’t figure out why the publisher isn’t taking this more seriously. When I self-published three years ago, my novels went up covered in typos. I reread them at least three times, and I still missed a lot. And that’s embarrassing. How am I able to hold up a book proudly and brag about it if it looks self-published? This looks bad for the publisher too. So I just returned the latest round of proofs. I will spend another fifteen months doing this if it’s what it takes to make this perfect. I painted this picture of Aaron and Jen, the main characters of the novel, Hanììbààz Rising because it was on my mind again.

Frisky Business

Posted on by
Reply

As you may know, I’m ace, or asexual. Some may find this hard to believe because I’ve had my fair share of sex in my life, but there is a pattern. I tend to be more randy when I’m manic, and when I’m baseline or depressed, I’m not interested. I’m still drawn to sexiness, but I don’t want to have sex. Asexuality is a scale, and I fit on it somewhere.

Anyway, that’s my way of saying that I’m apparently going through a manic period. This means delusions of grandeur, snap decision-making, irresponsible spending, a really short, hot temper, and I start remembering sex fondly again. As a result, I started getting a little frisky with some of my drawings. I’m still seeing all the errors, but I’m happy with most of these.

Noir Favorite Things

Posted on by
Reply

A while ago, I started listening to podcasts, and I soon learned that some really talented people were doing old-timey radio shows. I quickly zeroed in on writer and voice actor, Gregg Taylor and his baby, Decoder Ring Theatre, home of the superhero adventures of Toronto’s Greatest Champion, the Red Panda and my favorite, Black Jack Justice. Set in the fifties, the show is about a Private Detective and coffee snob, Jack Justice, and his partner, Trixie Dixon, two-fisted Girl Detective.

Taylor is an enormously talented writer. The styles of Red Panda Adventures and Black Jack Justice, as well as the anthology plays he does are wildly different. The tone between episodes of a single show will veer out of control. Black Jack Justice has had episodes that leave me laughing aloud on the train or episodes that break my heart with the injustice of it all. His dialogue is spot on, and I wish I could pull out a few quotes to share.

I picked up a couple of his novels when I was a reader, and his conversational style in the shows translates perfectly to paper. He’s been a big inspiration to me, as a writer and as an artist, so I did this little piece a while ago.