Showing posts with label vampire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vampire. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Keeping it Real in a Writing World of Fantasy, Vampires and Steampunk
Twitter is great. I’ve learned so much about so many things from so many people. Ever changing trends, topics and discussions and have opened my eyes to worlds of information I’d never given much thought to.
After years of writing locked away in a private office, I jumped on the Twitter wagon two years ago and was immediately shocked and humbled by the astronomical number of writers trying to break through, just as I was.
Never before had I been exposed to so much hot off the press fiction. It was like having my finger on the pulse of the literary community. Twitter enables me to be part of the greater literary discussion, to voice my opinion on character development or ask formatting questions and get an immediate response.
All this from my private office where I’d worked for years, head down and fingers flying, oblivious to anything and everything that was not making its way into my manuscript.
But all that has changed. Now, it is not so easy to have tunnel vision. Every time I’m on Twitter, I get an eyeful of what my fellow writers are working on or have published.
Turns out, there’s a whole lot of fantasy writing a’going on. In fact, a buttload.
I’ve been introduced to an endless variety of vamps and werewolves and other worldly beings all living out God knows what kinds of lives in the literary universe. These fantastical beings have day jobs and lovers and join the PTA. They go grocery shopping, curse and spit and have explosive gas, for all I know.
Then there’s this whole thing called Steampunk which I had been woefully unaware of. A veritable hodgepodge of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s (thanks Wikipedia).
Coming out of my private office and into the Twitterverse, I have been truly astounded at the creativity and ground breaking work being developed.
This has caused me to look at my own body of writing from a different perspective. How do my novels and stories fit in this fantastical literary menagerie? How creative have I been in my world creation and character development? How much glitter did I employ?
From this fresh vantage point, I’ve realized my work is mired in realism. My characters do not have any supernatural abilities. They do live in the underworld, heaven, space, or other dimensions. They do not crossbreed with other fictional species. They do not have immortal battles.
Does this mean my characters and their struggles are any less formidable than those found in Fantasy or Steampunk? Does this mean their battles are not as grand or sensational?
The answer to these questions is NO. If anything, their battles may be more significant due to their realism.
My characters greatest battles are fought within themselves. They need saving, and saving bad. Laid flat by life and events beyond their control, or brought to their knees by their own whiskey bent and hell bound natures, my characters can’t take another step forward. Can’t stand on their two feet and face another day. Can’t turn to another living soul for help, because they haven’t just burned their bridges, they demolished them in a raging fury.
Demons and monsters are battled in my writing. But these are the ones within my characters, the one within all of us. Finding the strength and courage and will to face what is inside is about as fantastical as my stories get.
Ultimately, the fight for salvation is the greatest battle my characters fight. It is this battle to save oneself that always surfaces in my writing.
Sounds pretty boring next to all those vampires and werewolves and wizards and steampunks.
And yet, I find the internal life is as dark and deceptive and dangerous as any fantasy world. Maybe more so, because it is real.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
From My Folder Titled: Vampire Crap
I completely forgot about this. My attempt at total pulp fiction. I guess I've decided not to pursue this, so I don't mind telling you the main character wakes with her face planted in a pizza box full of pizza.
And now, my gift to you:
VAMPIRE CRAP
When the door closed, Harley Hendrix stood dizzily for a moment, as if the earth had shifted in some noticeable way beneath her. Then she realized she wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t breathing, but stood, holding her breath, waiting, expectant for Bill to swing the door open and sweep her off her feet. She was waiting for what she had waited for her entire life. A door to open, a man to enter and her real life to begin, finally at 39.
The door did not open.
Instead, she turned the radio on, fifties rock and roll her mama used to play on Sunday mornings as she burnt the breakfast sausage. Harley did the ‘mash potato’ into the kitchen and retrieved the frozen bucket of premixed margaritas from the freezer; her emergency ‘stash’. She left it on the counter to thaw as she pulled the pan of fresh turtle brownies from the oven. She pushed her finger into the center of the brownies and then quickly removed it. Done!
While the mix melted and the brownies cooled Harley kept busy. Too busy to think about how much fun she’d had with Bill over the past four months. Too busy to think about the life she had already imagined and planned with Bill: the small house in the country, matching quarter horses and a couple of goats, some barn cats. Harley hadn’t imagined a small child, she wanted to see how the goats worked out first.
But now she was thinking of the goats, thinking of Bill saddling the horses and a surge of panic well inside her. She’d ruined it with Bill. She didn’t know how but he was gone now. Moving in with some woman, or skank ho’, he’d met online two weeks ago. Talking marriage, as if seeking Harley’s advice on how to proceed. As if Harley had any experience with that!
“This calls for an exceptionally large, overloaded, everything and your brother pizza,” she determined in a quiet, fierce voice to Pepe, her quiet, fierce schnauzer. Pepe barely paid Harley any attention, having been through this routine many times before.
After ordering her pizza, Harley’s eyes landed on a picture of her and Bill at their favorite Italian restaurant called ‘Noodles’. The waiter had taken their picture. Bill hadn’t wanted to recreate the famous scene from Lady and Tramp, the two dogs sharing the same long noodle until their lips touched. Bill had thought it was stupid, embarrassing. But when he saw how much it meant to her, saw the tears glistening in her eyes he had complied with her wishes.
Only, as Harley looked at the image with the lens of love so ruthlessly stripped from her eyes, she realized the grin on Bill’s face was actually more an angry grimace, a really, really, really angry grimace. How had she not noticed that before? His eyes, those deep grey pools of warmth and understanding seemed to hold daggers pointed at her idiotic smiling face. It was there, in the picture, the truth that they would never be together, never enter into marital union. Never own goats.
But Harley did not despair, not yet. Despair would come in a little over five months, when she turned forty, if nothing happened soon. And it had to happen soon.
Until something happened, Harley slipped a dvd into the player, determined to not dwell on the wasted evening. There was no chance Bill would re-enter her mind tonight, not after a billionth showing of Interview with a Vampire. And a couple of margaritas. And a pan of brownies. And a medium pizza, the works.
Harley was well into her second margarita, dancing to ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and slicing a lime when the doorbell rang. One thought blazed through her heart, her mind and her soul: Bill! In her excitement Harley sliced into the lime too forcefully, cutting deep into the meat of her thumb.
“Ow, ow, ow, owie,” she muttered as blood ran freely down her arm onto the cutting board, discoloring the limes. Then it hit her, Bill wasn’t at the door.
“Idiot, its only the stupid pizza,” she said as she grabbed a paper towel and pressed it to her thumb. But it did little good. By the time she opened the door to the hippie pizza guy, the paper towel and her entire arm was a bloody mess.
She said, “Hey, hold on,” as she fumbled around in her jean pockets for money.
“Dude,” the pizza guy said, his shining eyes glued to her injury.
“Oh, its nothing,” she said with a laugh, “nothing a little tequila can’t cure. Lime injury, happens all the…”
The words died on Harley’s lips as the pizza guy pushed the pizza box and himself forward into her living room.
“Hey, well okay, come on in,” Harley said, startled by the intrusion.
The pizza guy was now inside the house. He looked quickly over his shoulder through the doorway and then shut the door behind him.
“All I have is twenty, just, uhm, just keep the change. That’s fine.” She held the bill towards the pizza guy and placed her hand on the pizza box. But he did not take the bill.
“Just keep the change,” she pulled the pizza from his hand, “and I’ll keep the pizza. That’s generally how it works.” She was about to add, “crazy pizza guy?” beneath her breath when he pulled his lips back, reminding her of a snarling coyote she’d seen once as a child on Little House on the Prairie.
He was now crazy pizza snarling coyote, with a little spittle running down the side of his open mouth. Which, by the way, revealed a set of very long incisors, long and pointed. They weren’t particularly clean teeth, not bright white and shiny and why should they be? He was a pizza delivery guy, his dental insurance had to be pretty crappy.
Harley said, “You need to leave now. I have…” she reached into her purse on the coffee table quickly and pulled out a can of deodorant. “Mace, this is deadly, blind your ass mace, Mister, and if you don’t leave now, I’ll spray it right in your eyes and in your mouth.” She found herself wondering if the deodorant might help with the coyote’s putrid breath, if somehow she would be doing him a great service right before he… he what, she wondered.
Then she knew.
He intended to eat her.
And now, my gift to you:
VAMPIRE CRAP
When the door closed, Harley Hendrix stood dizzily for a moment, as if the earth had shifted in some noticeable way beneath her. Then she realized she wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t breathing, but stood, holding her breath, waiting, expectant for Bill to swing the door open and sweep her off her feet. She was waiting for what she had waited for her entire life. A door to open, a man to enter and her real life to begin, finally at 39.
The door did not open.
Instead, she turned the radio on, fifties rock and roll her mama used to play on Sunday mornings as she burnt the breakfast sausage. Harley did the ‘mash potato’ into the kitchen and retrieved the frozen bucket of premixed margaritas from the freezer; her emergency ‘stash’. She left it on the counter to thaw as she pulled the pan of fresh turtle brownies from the oven. She pushed her finger into the center of the brownies and then quickly removed it. Done!
While the mix melted and the brownies cooled Harley kept busy. Too busy to think about how much fun she’d had with Bill over the past four months. Too busy to think about the life she had already imagined and planned with Bill: the small house in the country, matching quarter horses and a couple of goats, some barn cats. Harley hadn’t imagined a small child, she wanted to see how the goats worked out first.
But now she was thinking of the goats, thinking of Bill saddling the horses and a surge of panic well inside her. She’d ruined it with Bill. She didn’t know how but he was gone now. Moving in with some woman, or skank ho’, he’d met online two weeks ago. Talking marriage, as if seeking Harley’s advice on how to proceed. As if Harley had any experience with that!
“This calls for an exceptionally large, overloaded, everything and your brother pizza,” she determined in a quiet, fierce voice to Pepe, her quiet, fierce schnauzer. Pepe barely paid Harley any attention, having been through this routine many times before.
After ordering her pizza, Harley’s eyes landed on a picture of her and Bill at their favorite Italian restaurant called ‘Noodles’. The waiter had taken their picture. Bill hadn’t wanted to recreate the famous scene from Lady and Tramp, the two dogs sharing the same long noodle until their lips touched. Bill had thought it was stupid, embarrassing. But when he saw how much it meant to her, saw the tears glistening in her eyes he had complied with her wishes.
Only, as Harley looked at the image with the lens of love so ruthlessly stripped from her eyes, she realized the grin on Bill’s face was actually more an angry grimace, a really, really, really angry grimace. How had she not noticed that before? His eyes, those deep grey pools of warmth and understanding seemed to hold daggers pointed at her idiotic smiling face. It was there, in the picture, the truth that they would never be together, never enter into marital union. Never own goats.
But Harley did not despair, not yet. Despair would come in a little over five months, when she turned forty, if nothing happened soon. And it had to happen soon.
Until something happened, Harley slipped a dvd into the player, determined to not dwell on the wasted evening. There was no chance Bill would re-enter her mind tonight, not after a billionth showing of Interview with a Vampire. And a couple of margaritas. And a pan of brownies. And a medium pizza, the works.
Harley was well into her second margarita, dancing to ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and slicing a lime when the doorbell rang. One thought blazed through her heart, her mind and her soul: Bill! In her excitement Harley sliced into the lime too forcefully, cutting deep into the meat of her thumb.
“Ow, ow, ow, owie,” she muttered as blood ran freely down her arm onto the cutting board, discoloring the limes. Then it hit her, Bill wasn’t at the door.
“Idiot, its only the stupid pizza,” she said as she grabbed a paper towel and pressed it to her thumb. But it did little good. By the time she opened the door to the hippie pizza guy, the paper towel and her entire arm was a bloody mess.
She said, “Hey, hold on,” as she fumbled around in her jean pockets for money.
“Dude,” the pizza guy said, his shining eyes glued to her injury.
“Oh, its nothing,” she said with a laugh, “nothing a little tequila can’t cure. Lime injury, happens all the…”
The words died on Harley’s lips as the pizza guy pushed the pizza box and himself forward into her living room.
“Hey, well okay, come on in,” Harley said, startled by the intrusion.
The pizza guy was now inside the house. He looked quickly over his shoulder through the doorway and then shut the door behind him.
“All I have is twenty, just, uhm, just keep the change. That’s fine.” She held the bill towards the pizza guy and placed her hand on the pizza box. But he did not take the bill.
“Just keep the change,” she pulled the pizza from his hand, “and I’ll keep the pizza. That’s generally how it works.” She was about to add, “crazy pizza guy?” beneath her breath when he pulled his lips back, reminding her of a snarling coyote she’d seen once as a child on Little House on the Prairie.
He was now crazy pizza snarling coyote, with a little spittle running down the side of his open mouth. Which, by the way, revealed a set of very long incisors, long and pointed. They weren’t particularly clean teeth, not bright white and shiny and why should they be? He was a pizza delivery guy, his dental insurance had to be pretty crappy.
Harley said, “You need to leave now. I have…” she reached into her purse on the coffee table quickly and pulled out a can of deodorant. “Mace, this is deadly, blind your ass mace, Mister, and if you don’t leave now, I’ll spray it right in your eyes and in your mouth.” She found herself wondering if the deodorant might help with the coyote’s putrid breath, if somehow she would be doing him a great service right before he… he what, she wondered.
Then she knew.
He intended to eat her.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
