Delos and his family sat around the kitchen table. Morning sun glinted off the polished tiles. He didn’t notice that neither his daughter nor his wife had eaten anything. Caroline cried while her mother stared at Delos. Oblivious to their distress, Delos wiped his mouth with the blue linen napkin from his lap.
“Time to go to work,” he said and rose from his chair. The napkin lay next to his clean plate.
He kissed Maureen on the cheek, told her to have a nice day and squeezed Caroline’s shoulder. “Good luck on that math test today.”
Outside, Delos walked three blocks to his bus stop, coincidentally last on the express line downtown. Birds sang along the way and he found himself smiling. It would take him half an hour on the express to get to his building and he would use that time to go over the details of the Cavanaugh deal. Not that it was complicated but he wanted to give his boss his best work. It was a big contract, after all.
“‘Morning, Bob,” Delos said as he boarded and paid his fare. Bob looked over his tablet at Delos without recognition but returned the greeting. Everyone else in the cabin ignored him. (more…)
The door was stuck. Not the first time it’d happened to me but no less infuriating for it. There should have been an instruction card near to hand for the occasion so I thumbed on my flashlight app.
The light popped on just above the bridge of my nose. I furrowed my brow so that the beam would be tighter. Less chance of it shining through the cracks around the door. I moved my head back and forth methodically.
No card.
Damn it, Boston. You’re crap at details.
“It’s one of the Great Houses,” you told me. “That shit always works.”
Not this time, apparently.
I smooshed the the heel of my hand against my forehead to shut off the light. Now there was a chance this whole thing was some kind of trap. In the dark again, I ran my fingers up and down and around the frame. Along the top were two latches. Locked from the inside. I wondered who passed through here last and why there was a need to lock the door after.
Some small effort was rewarded with both latches flipping open though neither wanted to. Rather than barging out, I listened for sounds of anyone near the other side of the door.
Nothing.
I pushed the door open a crack and waited. Still nothing. Deep breath, slow release and I went through.
Nice hallway. I didn’t recognize the portraits on the wall opposite me. A quick glance left and right. I was alone in the hall.
“Welcome.” A female voice. Nice. Quiet. Another voice and another until there was a mob of voices welcoming me. I was still alone in the hall. The dull red carpet, the white walls yellowing at the top, the brass sconces that needed dusting and the portraits were all the company I had.
Of course, the portraits. The owner had infused the voices of the subjects into the house system. I supposed there’s a certain comfort in being surrounded by people you knew all the time. At least they’d never talk back.
“Jimmy Cavanaugh,” a strong lady’s voice said. “I thought never to see you again.” (more…)
Moira left the front door open and slumped down on the steps to President Carlton’s private residence. He was in Geneva with the others. The Secret Service sequestered his family in a ‘safe place’. Like there was any place anywhere that was safe. The Enemy already controlled half the world.
A warm breeze carried the scent of flowers from the north side of the house. Nothing mattered now. She knew exactly where Carlton and the other leaders of the free world were. Though it would be fruitless, she still wanted to go to them. Her friends in the diplomatic corps would welcome her, she’d be among friends.
It would solve nothing, though.
No use feeling sorry for herself. Just to make sure, she looked at the book Carlton sent her to retrieve. “You’ll know it when you see it,” he said with a sad smile then gave her the combination to the safe. It took ten hours, one flight on Air Force Two, one car from the Secret Service and she opened the safe and found the object of her quest.
Unbelievable. Of course she knew it as soon as she saw it. Its improbable title, 3 Steps To World Peace, astounded her. So simple. It was a slim book with no author. The hard covers were thicker than the paper they bounded. Moira opened it to the first page. She’d already read it inside the house but she felt the need to be sure she hadn’t missed anything.
Snapping the book closed, Moira looked up at the maples. Just turning, the thick leaves hid a couple of jays talking to one another. No crying, she told herself. You don’t know who’s watching. (more…)
Well, that’s some low-hanging fruit there, but it’s true and it’s something that we don’t think about. When we’re in the car we don’t think “I’m sitting down”, we think “I’m heading somewhere”. Or something like that.
I’m here to tell you that I spent the summer of 2012 essentially on my butt. The entire summer. This matters because I didn’t think I was just sitting around. No, I was writing. Creating new stories, revising others and surfing the Internet. Watching TV. Visiting with friends. Worse, I’d broken the habit of walking every morning for 2.5 – 3 miles. A habit I’d acquired over five years. Every morning out for a walk. Unless it was too cold (under 45*F) or there was lightning or I had to be somewhere before 8 AM.
I fooled myself into believing I was being creative, learning, vegging out, whatever. I never considered that it would cause me problems. My knees started hurting. There were little aches and pains that developed. I thought nothing of them. Come fall when I became more active, much more active, I didn’t notice that I was having troubles.
My knees got worse. I didn’t notice that I was actually slowing down when I walked places. I failed to see that I had begun to have trouble breathing.
That was the beginning of the trouble that would eventually land me in the hospital with massive bilateral pulmonary embolism. The trouble that nearly killed me.
I was living with untreated (and at that point undiagnosed) ulcerative colitis. My failure to move about I’m sure contributed to the problem. It had to. Thankfully it appears the colitis is heading towards remission. I’m walking regularly and things are much, much better. Doesn’t mean I don’t worry, that I don’t take note of every little ache and pain that pops up but I keep track of the ones that don’t exist any more, too. There are more of the latter than the former.
But when I’m writing, when I get in The Zone, it’s hard to remember that I need to get up and walk around. I mean, I don’t want to lose the roll I’m on and I don’t want to have to come back in fifteen or twenty minutes and remember where I was. I’m sure the same thing applies to you.
My own experience tells me that I do need to do that, though. That’s why I modified my old drawing table and turned it into a standing desk. At first I didn’t think it would be for me but it turns out one of the benefits of standing is that when I get frustrated and need a break from the screen I can walk away instead of leaning back in my chair.
Sounds simple but it’s effective. I don’t lose The Zone and I move around for a couple of minutes. It rests my eyes, gets the blood flowing and burns a couple of calories. Another side benefit is that I tend not to snack when I’m standing. I still drink coffee or whisky, let’s not be silly, but the snacking and the moving around are good for me.
This may not be for you. I exhort you to consider, though, the report I linked to above. What can it hurt?
(Note: I cross posted this from my blog because the Cafe is an appropriate venue to discuss this.)
Johnny Cash covers NIN. Hurt is the best cover of the last 20 years.
There’s a tradition in rock music of learning your favorite songs note for note and then playing them for money in a bar band. Freebird. Smoke on the Water. Johnny B. Goode. I learned ‘em all. Smoke was the one I liked playing best and these were the tip of the iceberg for me as a bass player learning my instrument. I loved Sting, Geddy Lee, Chris Squire, Paul McCartney and I tried to learn from all of them and more.
I learned a lot of songs. All the ‘standards’ of rock music. I got pretty good at playing the bass guitar in a number of different styles. I wasn’t on par with any of my heroes, but I was okay. Later, after years of playing I wrote songs and my bands played them. We even played them in popular venues alongside the covers. One band did a whole set of covers at an open mic night, closing with Werewolves of London much to the amusement and consternation of the hipsters in the audience. That was fun but it didn’t win us any fans. Didn’t matter.
As a writer of prose, that kind of ‘covering’ of someone else’s material is called plagiarism. It’s frowned upon.
So where do writers get the same kind of training and trials by fire as musicians?
Fan fiction is a start. And that got me wondering if there were professional ‘covers’ like Rob Zombie doing We’re an American Band or Johnny Cash doing Hurt and making it his own?
Stephen King covered himself by approaching the same story as himself and as his alter ego, Richard Bachman. (I preferred the Bachman story, by the way.) And retellings of origin stories are commonplace in comic books. Marvel Comics even relaunched their entire universe as Ultimates which spawned their current slate of very, very popular films. Essentially these are ‘covers’. So are remakes of films.
But the writer of prose doesn’t get to do this. Why? Wouldn’t it be interesting, say, to have an entire collection of short stories where various writers retell selected short stories of Ray Bradbury?
Probably not. See I think readers are more protective of their prose than any other artist or creator. Well maybe not as protective as the fine art world where those who ‘cover’ a painting are called forgers. Anyway, you see the point?
It’s impossible for writers of prose to learn in the same way that rock musicians do, except for fan fiction. Maybe. Can you think of a popular example in fan fiction?
How about Fifty Shades of Grey? Fan fiction cover. Completely.
There’s no begrudging here, there’s no sour grapes over any of this. I’m asking questions, looking for answers. I’m talking about the differences between the arts. Comedians are allowed impressions, actors channel other actors who’ve played the role before but writers aren’t supposed to cover stories that have inspired them. At least not in public.
Is that fair?
No, it isn’t. But that’s part of what makes writing so much fun, the challenges that we have to overcome to tell the story we want to tell.
“I’m Done,” he said and set the glass down on the painfully white bar in the more painfully white and other wise featureless room. “I’m finally well and truly done.” He turned the glass around completely twice.
He couldn’t recall having put on a white suit yet he wore one now. In fact, he’d never owned a white suite in all his one hundred and seventeen years.. No tie, though. Disappointment welled up in him at that. He should have a tie. No one wore ties any more, they’d all forgotten what it meant to be businesslike. Now they all wore business casual.
Something blue, maybe. He liked blue ties.
Are you?
Surprised, he answered without thinking. “Am I what?” He moved away from the bar and tried to take in the entire room.
Are you capital-d Done?
“Oh.” The question was aggressive in a way he hadn’t expected. The voice was unfamiliar, too. He considered the question. “Yes.
Joseph Fink’s wonderfully odd, off-kilter creation is a piece of art that’s irresistible.
I’d heard about this podcast called Welcome to Night Vale from several friends over the last few months. As is usual for me, I came to the party later than everyone else but that’s kind of the beauty of podcasts. Try one and there are more and more to download and check out.
After I listened to the first one, I scratched my head and thought about what I’d just heard. It was strange and beautiful and reminded of — I didn’t know what. So I cued up the next one. And the one after that.
Are you familiar with Welcome to Night Vale? If not, dear readers, it’s presented as a community radio broadcast with the sonorous voice of Cecil telling you what’s happening in the desert town of Night Vale. There’s sports reports, traffic reports and weather. We’ll get to those in a bit.
The first thing I thought was that Night Vale was a town a lot like David Lynch’s and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks. It’s peopled with interesting, mysterious characters like Hiram McDonald, the Faceless Old Woman Who Lives In Your House, interns who mysteriously die or disappear and organizations like the Sheriff’s Secret Police. It’s the organizations that make Night Vale even weirder than Twin Peaks.
It took me about four episodes to decide that Welcome to Night Vale also had a distant relationship with The Twilight Zone with jets disappearing and reappearing inside the school gymnasium, pterodactyls menacing the town via a rip in the fabric of space/time and any number of other incidents that draw the scientist Carlos to town to investigate.
Ah, Carlos. Cecil tells us how perfect he is, how melodious the man’s voice is. Quickly, Cecil tells us he’s in love with Carlos and the courtship is on.
But that didn’t tell me what the missing element was for me. And then I was struck as if by thunder: Welcome to Night Vale recalled to mind the bizarre and wonderful Mister X comic created by Dean Motter. Almost to a ’T’. You probably aren’t familiar with Mister X.
Go ahead, look up that comic. It’s absolutely worth your time to seek it out and read if you already listen to Welcome to Night Vale.
Okay. What I haven’t mentioned yet is that there are places in Night Vale that are off-limits, more mysterious characters lurking in the background and lots more unusual events occurring than anywhere else in the U.S. This makes the UFO conspiracy location of Area 51 look like a kindergarten playground. The other comparison that needs to be put in play here is that the podcast is presented seriously and the laughs come from uncomfortable truths, ala the Mama’s Family sketches from the old Carol Burnett Show. It’s all tempered by the normality of all the strange things.
Night Vale would be an interesting, terrifying place to live.
But the weather would always be interesting. On the broadcast it’s a song by an artist I’ve never heard of. Usually it’s more than just curious music, too.
Finally, and I have to wrap up here, I want to tell you that if you like the weird, the mysterious, the off-beat, you will probably like the podcast. Best of all – it’s free! Download and listen at your leisure.
Listen closely though, so you can identify which surveillance helicopter is which. Your life may depend on it.
I’m not going to tell you a lot of things. The things I need to tell you, I will, but the rest you will have to trust in or disbelieve the entire thing. I don’t really care.
Which is the first lie.
I do care. I’m trying to tell you something that’s important. If I fail to convince you of the meat of this story, then I will have to try again. That will be dangerous. But someone needs to know.
And that is the second truth I’ve revealed to you.
Proceed with caution but proceed. It’s important.
This is about a single night in the calendar that you’ve never heard of but which has as many names as cultures that are aware of it. It’s the Night of Many Names, the night when bad things happen to good people because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s unfortunate, but necessary. The herd must be culled. (more…)
Ollie and his crew. If you like fantastic fiction you might like this one. It’s worth looking at and spending time with.
It’s no secret I’m a comic book fan. That said, I never watched Smallville when it was on TV. I was interested early on, but then for some reason it never really appealed to me. I love Superman, and the idea of the show should have grabbed me. Lois & Clark did, but for some reason I just never tuned in to Smallville. Even when they started introducing heroes like the Legion or Doctor Fate or Hawkman.
A couple of my friends have been talking about the CW’s Arrow on Facebook and Twitter. This year I’m set up to stream Netflix so when I got curious I flipped on the first season of the show. There’s a lot to like about this program and what I enjoy the most is being able to watch an episode without commercials. I suppose that this was my video equivalent of trade-waiting the comics. Regardless, I watched the pilot with some trepidation, as I do any comic book adaptation. Fair warning, there may be spoilers ahead here. I don’t believe they’ll ruin your overall enjoyment of the series if you’re familiar with the characters in play here so here we go. SPOILER WARNING. (more…)
“What’s it’s name?” Britten peered down, bending over with his hands on his knees. His black hair was wild. The garage was chilly but not too cold. Barber had moved his car out into the driveway and Britten had parked right behind him. A single bulb burned in a socket separate from the door opener. One of those twisty, low-energy things. It was enough to see by but not enough to chase all the shadows from the corners.
“He says it’s Arvo. There was a long string of sounds before and after,” Barber said, “but we agreed Arvo was his name.”
“Bizarre.”
“Indeed.”
Britten stood up and planted his hands on his hips, considered the alien held captive in the chair. He paced back and forth, never taking his eyes off Arvo. When he stopped, he crossed his left arm across his chest then stroked his chin with the fingers of his right hand.
