Anne Vs. Stephenie

A feud broke out this week.  Perhaps you didn't hear about it, what with Cain Vs. Perry going on.  Unfortunately this feud has the potential to change the world in which we live in such huge, drastic, proportions.  It all comes down to who's vampires rock more.

I'm not even going to voice an opinion here and you shouldn't have to ask what my answer would be.  Do I want sparkling vampires or vampires that will turn their own mothers or children into blood suckers?

For me, watching this has been quite fun.  Seeing authors wage mini wars on each other is very entertaining.  But, in all honesty, Stephenie Meyer is taking a lot of flack, these days.

Here's what Stephen King has to say....here (hint, it's not positive)

Here's Anne's view....here (obviously, not good)

I read the first book, in the Twilight series, on word of mouth, from friends, long before the movies came out or the Twilight phenom reached fever pitch.  I believe that what Stephen King says is true, "She can't write worth a darn." but it's her ideas that keep the people coming back.  Say what you will but she's tapped into something that has some resonance. I don't get it, most of my friends don't get it, but certainly the people forking over their money for the books and movies 'do' get it.

I just almost wish she would have called them something else, other than Vampires.  Sure they drink blood and have everlasting life but that's pretty much where the similarities end.  While even Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, chose to learn and expand his horizons, as each day repeated.  These 'Vampires' in Twilight choose to stay in high school.  Huuuuuwhaaaaat?  All of eternity poised before you and you want to learn how to skip gym class for the fiftieth year in a row?

Of course, the thing is, without this idea, hundred year old Vampires in school, how would they ever meet our sixteen year old, and get her preggo with a vampire baby, before finally corrupting her further and, eventually, making her sparkle, as well.

Ultimately popular authors have always taken the hit for being popular.

NaNoWriMo 2011

The decision has been made to go with "Grey House" as my NaNoWriMo novel of choice, this year.

It's a little daunting since I've only, really, got the first few chapters fleshed out, in my head.  They, and I'm not sure who 'They' is, say that you're supposed to have an end game planned from the beginning, in books of this type, ghost story/mystery novels.  I have a beginning but no end.  I'm hoping an end presents itself at some point during the process.

I do know that I have a main character who I'm hoping to return to in subsequent books.  A "Bear" of a guy, big and imposing but a baby on the inside, named Aidan Whitlock.  I can see him in my head, as if I've met him, tall, at six foot six, and somewhat heavy weight, probably around 250 or so, mostly muscle but a lining of chubbiness, as well, and dark brown, almost black, head of hair that swings down into a thick beard.  As imposing, physically, as he seems he, actually, has no talent for fighting, having never had to let things get that far, and outside of lifting weights, he's not athletic, at all, either.  He's in his mid fifties and he's at a point in his life when life is of constant contemplation.  He owns a comic book shop and sublets his night time activities by lending himself out as a private investigator.  Mostly his cases contain cheating spouses and/or missing items but things are about to get a little X-Files on him.

The fun part of NaNoWriMo approaching are all the posts about how to write or how to survive November.  A couple good ones are here and here.

The thing, about writing, is, everyone has their own theory on how to do it.  If you look at most of the iconic novelists, however, you would notice that they all seemed to make the rules up, as they went along.  From Jack Kerouac to Ernest Hemingway, they all developed their own style and, even, their own punctuation.  It comes down to readability, for me, does it make sense, does the dialog sound realistic, is there a plot, all of those things.

Anyway, these are a few of my pre-NaNoWriMo thoughts, tomorrow's the big day, 1667 words a day, to keep up the 50,000 word goal.

More tomorrow.....good luck all you participants, this year. :)

Pre-Novel Thoughts

Just a couple days before NaNoWriMo begins...and the pre-novel thoughts are bubbling.

Options....

1- End of world Zombie novel feature two gay main characters, with a newborn they've adopted, trying to eek out life in a world where the zombies are the least of their concern.  Down the street the United Church of Christ has militarized their chapel and is out to recreate the world as they think it should be.  Fencing off the city, block by block, they clear and utilize the area to make their new community. (early stages of thoughts on that one, things always change once the actual writing starts.)

2- Another gay novel, my theme this year, it would seem, follows a young man, late twenties, who travels home when his father is diagnosed with terminal cancer and put on a hospice program.  He has to confront the world that he left behind, the world he ran from when he came out, relationships he left broken because he never thought he would be back.  Also, he finds, he has to confront the world he created, inside himself, after he left, when he finds love for the first time, in the nurse providing hospice to his father.

3- Mick and Ed just bought a house in Cabbage Town, the largest gay suburb in North America, or so the real estate agent has told them, and plan to turn it into a gay bed and breakfast.  When a friend, from New York, comes to stay and goes missing, while never having left their house, leaving a pool of blood in front of his bedroom closet, the little bumps in the night they had been hearing suddenly become bigger.

Those are all early ideas still.  We will see where creativity leads.

Slumming It...The Last Werewolf

This post is more about a current trend in fiction than an actual book review...but, since it's also a book review, I'll treat it accordingly.

The Last Werewolf - by Glen Duncan


Meet Jake. A bit on the elderly side (he turns 201 in March), but you’d never suspect it. Nonstop sex and exercise will do that for you—and a diet with lots of animal protein. Jake is a werewolf, and after the unfortunate and violent death of his one contemporary, he is now the last of his species. Although he is physically healthy, Jake is deeply distraught and lonely.

Jake’s depression has carried him to the point where he is actually contemplating suicide—even if it means terminating a legend thousands of years old. It would seem to be easy enough for him to end everything. But for very different reasons there are two dangerous groups pursuing him who will stop at nothing to keep him alive.

Here is a powerful, definitive new version of the werewolf legend—mesmerising and incredibly sexy. In Jake, Glen Duncan has given us a werewolf for the twenty-first century—a man whose deeds can only be described as monstrous but who is in some magical way deeply human.

One of the most original, audacious, and terrifying novels in years.


----


Audacious?  Terrifying?  No, not really.  Can't say as I was holding on to my chair much during the reading of this and that's not a complaint against the book it's a complaint against the publisher trying to sell the book.


I feel bad for publishers right now.  See, they have these literary heavy weights releasing books about Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies (oh, my).  What are they supposed to do about this?  The writers aren't tackling them as a normal horror writer would.  They're not getting their hands too dirty but just dirty enough to lend it a horror classification.  So the publishers are trying to sell books and, of course, they're doing it the only way they know how...appealing to that horror demographic, knowing full well that there's a section of 'literary' readers that aren't going to be following these authors into the trenches.


Not to send you away so early in my blog post but here's an excellent article about what I'm saying.


The strange thing about this situation is that, previously, horror writers have crossed that border on more than a few occasions without much ado.  Stephen King and a few of his stories come to mind, Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, The Green Mile.  So, I'm not sure I'm happy about how these authors, delving into Horror for the first time, are getting such accolades for their courage and kudo's for breaking down the typecast author.  I can't but feel as if they are selling out, somehow.  Literary fiction, not being the type of book one grabs just before a long flight or hospital stay, has always been the frame but not the engine of the publishers car.  After seeing Twilight and Harry Potter at the top of the best seller list, for the better part of a decade, I'm thinking, they see that money can be made from writing.  After all, in seven years J.K. Rowling went from unemployment to billionaire.  (or so the story goes)


The one thing I can be happy about is that it certainly puts the pressure on horror writers to focus more on the writing and less on the imagery.  There's a few, out there, I could name but won't, that have some fun books to read but without the idea's, pushing the novel forward, I would have given up on, long ago.


Back to the novel, at hand.  The Last Werewolf...


Beautifully written and fleshed out.  The attention to detail and world building, I thought, was meticulous.  


Currently I'm reading Zone One, a zombie tale, written by a previous lit fic heavy weight (shouldn't say previous, I'm sure he'll keep that standing) that tries too hard to keep the lit the center of attention and not the horror.  Werewolf knows where it stands.  Duncan knows that he's writing a horror novel and so makes sure to keep the story moving with action.  Where as, in Zone One, pages go with nothing but memories being described.  It's akin to listening to your grandmother tell you about what's going on in her 'Stories.'  I'll dive into Zone One, on here, when I'm done reading it.  It just makes for a good comparison, right now.


You get your Werewolves and you get your evil people, as well, which most often are the actual horror element of a horror novel, after all what's scarier than a deranged psychotic human?  Exactly.


My qualm with this book, and it's a small one, is that it starts strong, the first third is right into the story and setting up the finale.  Then, a character is introduced and it goes into sexapaloozaland (an actual word, look it up) before getting back on track and hitting the gas again, for the final third.  It's during this middle part that you can see that Duncan had an issue with just allowing the book to remain in horrorland (which, oddly enough, shares a border with sexapaloozaland).  For this middle third he throws in all the esoteric thoughts and flourishes of ideas and words that most lit/fic fans will appreciate.  For me, and I do like lit/fic, don't get me wrong, it almost made me put the book down.  It's just that, when I want a werewolf to ravage a maiden, or a brawny dude for that matter, I want it to happen, not think of happening or think of how it might happen if the world were a different place or...you get the picture.


Still, I have to recommend this book, the writing, as I said, is excellent and, in the end, Duncan pulls it off.


I guess, also in the end, if the authors are going to meet us halfway, to horrorland, then we, the reader, might want to do our part and head towards litville. (a small country known for stamps in Europe)

Return To Blog

Nanowrimo time is fast approaching, my peeps, if I may call you peeps.  This is good news and bad news.  Good news = Nanowrimo always motivates me to sit my ass down and write.  Bad news = My computer, the new laptop, not this old one I'm using now, is dead. (they say an old laptop should never have to bury it's youthful - faster processor, battery that holds a charge, power cord that doesn't spark when looked at strangely, wireless router that works - self.)

The thing about Nanowrimo is, if you don't know, that you write a novel in a month.  I've done this the past five years.

1 - Anniversary - A Zombie Tale

2 - Flotsam and Jetsam - A coming of age tale (just your regular old fiction)

3 - Wolves - Werewolves (not too original of a title but in all honesty I lost most of this novel when I upgraded         my computer to windows 7

4 - Bear Lake - A slasher murder mystery set at a lake house

5 - Golem - a vengeful mystical being on the lose killing a group of friends one by one.

Now I'm about to dive in and do it again.  As usual, a custom, tradition, if you will, I have no idea of what I'm wanting to write.  Not for lack of ideas, I've got the beginnings of about ten novels stuck in my head currently.  But the idea, notion, of Nanowrimo is to get your creative juices flowing, strike out into new, unknown, territory.  By writing something unplanned, unplotted, you fill that creative udder, hanging just under your frontal lobe, and begin milking it.

So, now maybe, you see the conundrum.  The weeks leading up to my writing a novel I'm not supposed to think about but, then, all I can do is think about it. (Did that make sense?  I didn't think so.)

So, again, what to do?

I might go back to the beginnings.

One of my first posts on this blog was about a book I had bought, "The Making of A Story", something to help me write.  I made it through a bit of it before it dropped off the radar.  Maybe it's time to break it out again.

Golem reborn

I think I've posted this before, however it wouldn't be this version as I've spent some time, perhaps too much, reworking the words and structure. It's hard for me as I'm a person that the more I work on something the worse I make it. I need a constant reminder that little is more with me. Anyway I've been working on this novel, a gay horror story, a niche I see is void when visiting amazon or chapters or b&n. Here is the first few pages, as I've left them, I'll post the others as their rewritten. On this particular novel I've written about 80% of the book, the last 20% is still to be birthed.

Fair warning to those of you who don't feel like reading about scenes of gay sex, the last part of this post is peppered with it.

Enjoy -

Golem -

The drive out to the lake had taken a bit longer than he had remembered it, probably because the group would always car-pool and so, he assumed, the company reduced the appearance of time. It had been the first he had ever been at the lake house by himself. It sat dark and eerily quiet, just the sound of wind, whistling through the tree tops, the trees moaning under their own weight, and the sound of the lake, washing up on the beach.

As though someone else were there to see him and, as though, he was about to do something devious, he crept past the house, looking over his shoulder and jumping at the smallest of noises. He knew, with certainty that nobody was near; even the other house sitting on the lake was devoid of life, the empty driveway and lack of light were a dead give-away. Still, though, its windows remained empty eyes that were watching him. It would be another couple weeks before anyone else would visit the place. Still, though, in his mind an image materialized of a stranger standing in one of the large bay windows, tracking him. Though it was only his imagination, the image, on a loop, ratcheted up his nerves and he found himself looking and looking again, at the plate glass windows, searching for the shadow of a person behind the reflection that the moon cast. It took great effort for him to put those thoughts and images away and ignore the persistent feeling that he was being watched. Pulling a mini mag-lite from his pocket he walked past the house and down the beach. Dimly, the light, illuminated the path before him, he had forget how dead the battery was. The trail dodged back and forth between trees and ferns and soon the foliage blocked what little of the moonlight there was. He began to feel his feet sinking, slightly, into the ground and he knew he was close. The sounds of a trickling stream guided him toward his intended spot.

Water lapped at the beach, catching his pant cuffs, in their wake. Kneeling, he plunged his hands, wrist deep, into the icy mud patch, where the small stream trickled into the cold waters of the mountain lake, he began moulding his creation. His lips were moving, as he recited the same set of words repeatedly, under his breath. It was important, he had read, to do this. Attempting his best at getting the incantation right, he found himself over pronouncing each word. It was a mystery to him, why he was so concerned about getting it wrong. The words were not his language and he was pretty sure that he was butchering each syllable. In hopes of finding some recordings of the words, he had gone online, so he could hear them spoken but, after a hard search, found nothing.

The shape below him was forming into a man, a large oversized muddy one. His freezing hands were infecting the rest of his body; the shivers crept up his arms and down his spine. It was summer but only for another few weeks and then fall would take the reins. In a week, when he and the guys would be up here, it would be a bit colder, still. There was a large coffee in the car, a travel mug with a plug in heater, to keep it warm. The idea of wrapping his hands around that mug, feeling the warmth filter back into his fingers, comforted and motivated him. Mosquitoes that had somehow lived past the days of a warm summer sun swarmed around his head. There were light trails of mud markings all over his face and neck as he, gingerly, attempted to swat them away, while trying to remain clean. By now, he thought, the mud had to be so thick the mosquitoes wouldn’t be able to get to his skin. The image he must be making, a man covered in mud moulding another man out of mud, struck him as funny. The flash light, illuminating the quiet night, bobbed with his silent laughter and began to dim, futher, as the batteries died. His time was almost up. It was almost done anyway, just one more thing, a piece of the person it was modeled on.

Arms out, keeping his hands away from his clothing, he stood up and walked into the water; then leaning over began to rinse his hands free of the mud and clay. Once clean, he pulled the object from his pocket and, moved back towards the mud figure, he forced it into the chest, where the heart should be, and then he smoothed mud over the hole. It was almost complete. Last but not least, using his thumb nail, he carved some letters into the things forehead. These had been easy for him to remember, without having to write them down, having gone through a Kabbalah stage, at one point, they were familiar to him.

His therapist had suggested he make art, “Take your anger and frustration out in a creative way, write, paint or draw. Get it out, quit harbouring it.” He wasn’t sure if his therapist would have approved this particular work of art, knowing she had meant for him to create a Rembrandt, make his own Picasso, or become the next Stephen King. Instead, with his inquisitive mind, he had gone home and typed ‘therapeutic art’. One link had led to another, as they usually did, and soon he was looking at Golems. It wouldn’t ever walk, it couldn’t talk, and nothing would ever come of it, he knew, but it was the action, the creation, that he was capitalizing on. Through his efforts the anger that resided in his heart would be transferred into the mud man, lying before him, and then, with the next rain it would wash away. Symbolism, that’s all it was. The same way divorced women used to throw their wedding rings into the Truckee river, running through Reno, Nevada, back when Reno was the divorce capital of the world, he would throw this memento, of his betrayed love, into the mud effigy and let nature cleanse him of the hurt.

Feeling strange, he stood up, the hairs on his body were raised and his goose pimples followed suit. It was as though electricity were coursing through his body. Looking up he scanned the skies, thinking a storm must be brewing. This high up in the mountains, he knew, storms could approach without warning and lightning was a dangerous thing. But all was clear, not a cloud to be seen, only the stars were looking back at him. It must be working, he thought, all that negative energy leaving his body, dispersed back into the world from whence it came. Already, he felt better. This might work; he could sense the success in the air. For once, therapy was paying off.

Cool, he thought.

Chapter One

As was his ritual before weekends at the lake house, it was to Goliath’s Aidan went.

The place was busy and there was a waiting list for a room. Music was blaring, as it always was, a little too loud. Opened doors revealed more ass than face, as he walked by, tops and bottoms, face up or down, looking for their missing halves. Debauchery surrounded him. People were getting blowjobs in the shower and a man, in a sling, was gliding back and forth, on a glistening cock, his grunts echoing their way down the corridors. A small crowd had gathered at the door and Aidan had to bump the shoulders of the men, some jerking off, as they watched, in order to get past.

Standing at over six feet tall and solid, like a linebacker, Aidan was a big guy. In the microcosm that was a bathhouse, you only needed to combine his size with his sexual proclivity, being a top, and you were left with a popular persona. If he wanted to fuck someone, there was hardly a wait. Eyes turned to him as he walked down the hallways and their bodies turned with them. Tonight, though, regardless of how worked up he was, frustration prevented him from relaxing. Walking down the halls, a large convoluted circle, Aidan noticed he had company, a man following close behind. He recognized the hurt in this man, could read it on his face, and knew the other man could do the same.

Sitting in the porn room, the level of quality, in both film and performance, told him the movie was, at least, ten to fifteen years old, he watched as men walked around, towels around their waist cruising one another. There were cubicles facing the screen, a few full with action. Despite how bad he thought the porn was he had found himself slightly excited. His follower, a slightly smaller man, had walked into the room. He was mildly attractive, Aidan thought, nice body. They kept the gaze going, in typical bathhouse code and then the man walked over.

It always came to this, Aidan had come to understand. The goal, as it had been the all the previous times, was to tempt himself. Aidan wanted to know he could turn down sex, prove that he was strong enough to withstand the temptations thrown at him. Outside, in the real world, he had failed. This, as he saw it, was his boot camp. Walking around, sitting, watching, he could witness all the things he could be doing, people he could be doing, everything he enjoyed doing, but say no, force himself to not engage that part of his mind, and body. Self-control is what he lacked and why his relationships always ended and so this was his work out, his attempt at gaining strength.

The man with the hurt eyes walked towards Aidan and, with the slightest shake of the head, Aidan said ‘No.’ A missed step, a sure thing blown, the man staggered a foot or so, unsure of what had happened, then, in true bath house style, pretending that, in fact, nothing had happened, he turned and walked from the room.

Aidan sat, listening to the pleasure, emanating from all around him, and let the desire wash over him.

Anathem

A first on this blog and a new feature. I'll attempt to write reviews of the books I'm reading, as a goal to keep myself reading, about a book a week, as well as get me writing of this blog.

First up Anathem, by Neal Stephenson.



I'm not going to be one of those book reviewers that inadvertently, or intentionally, tells you the plot of the book in their review. My goal here isn't to recap each chapter of said book and then call it my review. Instead I'll cut and paste the publishers description, because if they think it's okay for you to know this information then I guess I do to, and then I'll give you my two cents too.

Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable—yet strangely inverted—world.

Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside “saecular” world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent’s walls. Three times during history’s darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside—the Extramuros—for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.

Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent’s gates—at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious “extras” in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn’t seen since he was “collected.” But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.

Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros—a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose—as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world—as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.

Now, my two cents, as promised....

I not the smartest man, barely passed a lot of my math courses, to be honest, but, somehow, I still found this book pretty riveting. I would assume that a basic knowledge of higher math would be key to enjoying this book a bit more but Stephenson does a great job of explaining it to even us hicks.

For me the little bit of pretentiousness that comes from only catering to the smart kids in class is overshadowed by the world and characters that Stephenson has created here. At the end of the day, it's still an ID4, The Day The Earth Stood Still or, even, War Of The Worlds type story, with a bit of originality thrown in.

I did think that, at a few points, in the book, Stephenson lost control of the narrative, to use one of his own words, from the book, and the characters were lost in the idea of what he was trying to convey. For me, however, this is a small complaint, I would rather the author be passionate about what he's trying to write than contrived about it.

I also found the ending to be a bit of a let down. You read a thousand pages you expect a better pay off's all I'm saying.

All in all, though, the book was good and I look forward to rereading it, at some point. The world building was solid and realistic and the characters and groups that live within that world also felt spot on. Nothing seemed forced, as sometimes happens in a lot of fantasy/sci-fi books.