Category: creative writing

Shelves and Tables

This past weekend, I marathoned the series “Man in the High Castle.”  It was everything I expected from a PKD-Ridley Scott combination.  I was pleased to see Rufus Sewell again, even if he is playing a Nazi.  One of my favorite movies is “Dark City,” and he did superlative work in that.

Anyway.  At the end of Ep10, I sat and thought a bit and came to the conclusion that  – at this point of my life – I simply do not have what it takes to write political-espionage.  I am shelving “Crosses and Doublecrosses,” for now.  So… what now?  I stared at the empty formal dining table, wondering when my wife would come home from her radiation treatments and what the Hell I was to do with my life.

Dated it may be, but my all-time favorite anime is “Haibane Renmei.”  A brief review can be found here.  A huge, spoiler-laden takedown can be found here.  It’s very difficult for me to say what it’s about without ruining it; I could do it with a single word.  It’s an extremely complex moral and theological story; amazing that a non-Christian Japanese writer seems to have a better feel for my faith than many of my co-religionists.

Some years back, a chap took the character models from HR and made a 30s video, based on a trailer for “Constantine,” a good, but very erratic movie.  You can see the video here.  While there are icebergs of story just below the surface of HR proper, just to look at it, it appears to be cute-girls doing cute-things.  Guristantine is not that at all.  Just as with the two ideas that were the genesis of “The Fourth Law,” the series and the video curled up in my unconscious, and waited.

Going back to our collaboration of 3-AR Studios LLC for our visual novels, my friend and colleague, Will, and I, had long thought of a live-action Haibane Renmei.  We talked scenes, locations, actors… but nothing came of it.  A few days after deciding to abandon “C&DC,” it came to me (how?  how does this stuff just come to me??) to make a live-action series, based on HR; not just an adaptation….

One set in hard-edged Abandoned Factory, not the safety of Old home.  One with deeply flawed characters, desperate to understand themselves and where they are.  One where violence and sex are – if not out in the open – not pretended to not exist.  One where the abandonment of either wing of the human soul (faith and reason) leads quickly to madness.  One where… okay; you get it:  I saw quite a lot, quickly.

Below the fold is a pretty raw treatment of what you could call a trailer for a six-episode series of 30-minute shows.  I’m bricked in to swim meets for my girls all this weekend, and will be writing as much as I see, which, so far, is quite a bit.  If any of this tickles your forebrain, leave a comment.  I’m planning on throwing a couple of grand of my money at this, at least for the trailer.  We’ll see what happens beyond that.

Continue reading “Shelves and Tables” →

Iter II

Just finished another lovely deep-fried turkey.  Wife wanted that to eat before she left tomorrow afternoon for Houston and radiation at MD Anderson .  I exist to serve…dinner.

As I’ve mentioned, my machines have made me older that there are no such things as coincidences.  This was seconded by a part-time pharmacist I work with.  She’s also an illustrator.  Her and her husband’s website is here.  I’ve looked at their works and proposed that I commission them for either a webcomic or graphic novel.  They’re more – allow (mich-allow?) me to blunt here – much more ‘artsy-fartsy’ than Will is, so I had to see a story that is more in line with their style.

The opening scene is below the fold.  Thoughts?

Continue reading “Iter II” →

Keeping Content-free for Weeks!

Next week is busy:  wife’s last in-patient chemo, girls busy with school and swimming, and, at the end of the week:  Ohayocon!  Since 2011 it’s been a great family outing for us:  we stay in a hotel in downtown Columbus that’s attached to the Convention Center, get our cosplay on, and have fun!

This year…not so much.  There’s an alpaca panel at 1400 on Friday that Daughter #1 wants to see, so that means I pull them both from school at lunch.  Another three hours of an hundred-year old Prussian education system designed to produce docile technicians, or fun with the family?  Tough call.  Daughter #1 has at three cosplays she’s bringing.  I wasn’t really planning on anything, but my wife suggested that since this year’s theme is ‘science,’ just put on a lab coat and go.  Of course, that got me thinking… so I’ll add my white wig (last year I was Ginko from Mushishi) and perch my steampunk welder’s goggles atop it.  Add a pocket-protector, and I’m good!

That’s Friday.  Saturday AM I’ll release the kids and drive a few miles north to get the missus.  Right now the plan is to take her back to the hotel room to rest and hang out – rather than driving 45 minutes back home.  With her red/white cell count, there’s absolutely no way she can go to the con:  a head cold would be enough to give her pneumonia and kill her.  Too bad, really:  hairless after the chemo, she’d make a fantastic One Punch Man!

After that, as I told a co-worker, I’m setting the hard end date for Crosses & Doublecrosses for Easter.  If it’s not done by then, I abandon it.  The first thing I’m going to do is write down all I’ve seen; there’s quite a bit of material, actually, probably around 18k words.  Trying to fit them into a coherent story has been killing me.  So, I’ll just worry about that later.  My New Zealand illustrator has showed me some colored pages for Henge’s Big Day!  They are wonderful!  I encourage all of you to patronize her site and get some portraits of you, your kids, and your pets done!

Busy week ahead.

“Combination Play: Jamie’s Goal”

Finally finished flogging the story for that contest I mentioned in the post just below.  Had to add a little more story in Scene 2.  After that, I had to format the text into what they wanted for submission; anyone who’s ever programmed a visual novel with instantly recognize the style.  For whomever they pick as a winner, Voltage’s staff will just have to slap some “scene” and “show” commands in and they’re finished.

Anyway, I sent off my entry a bit ago.  If you’d like to read it, the story’s below the fold.  I definitely do ‘cute’ better than ‘political terror.’

Continue reading ““Combination Play: Jamie’s Goal”” →

Write Right

Had a conversation with a day-job co-worker yesterday.  She’d asked if I’d finished my fourth novel, Crosses & Doublecrosses, in time for NaNoWriMo.  Nope, I replied:  that whole “wife diagnosed with cancer” thing was a bit of a spanner in my plans.

However, after some reflexion, I wondered if I would have finished in time if that had not happened.  Outside of a handful of Robert Ludlum books as a late teenager, I really have no experience with espionage and political fiction.  There were many times I stared at the monitor, unable to see anything of a story to write down.  Was I losing the ability to make up stories?

A week ago, completely out of left field, came this:  a writing and drawing contest from a Japanese/American company called Voltage.  It wasn’t the US$5000 prize that caught my eye – no, really – but the facts that, one, this is for a visual novel (something I do know something about), two, they give you the characters and scenes (all I need to do is create dialog; breath life into the characters, as it were), and three, it’s a cute little story.

Cute.  I can do cute.

So, last Tuesday, while my wife was getting a port installed in her chest for her chemotherapy (which started in-patient on Thursday), in the two hours or so I was waiting, I hand-wrote about 2200 words for the three scenes.  Just like that.  So easy!  Apparently I didn’t lose the ability to see stories.

I’ve since typed it up and done some basic editing.  I was concerned that what I wrote for Scene 3 was not in-line for romance stories directed at women; I read part of the scene to my wife last night at the hospital.  “You’re suspiciously good at writing make-out scenes,” she quipped with a slight glare in her eyes.  Hey:  I grew up a geek and later became an engineer; people like me never had many girlfriends, but that didn’t mean we didn’t think about it… A LOT.

And, me being me, all of what I do hangs together in one way or another.  You might catch a glimpse of that in the teaser below the fold.

Continue reading “Write Right” →

Iter

My girls had a swim meet in Mason, Ohio, this weekend, so it was something of a working vacation for me.  Vacation in that it was the first time since January since I’d slept anywhere but in my own house.  Working in that I tried to get some more story written down.  And I do mean written:  typing is a bit problematic when sitting on bleachers at a high-school pool.  Perhaps I’ll make the NaNoWriMo cut off; perhaps not.

travel

Up this AM at 0400 to get my wife to the airport.  She’s off to Houston for tests and consults this week for her lymphoma.  It will be a busy time for me, what with day job, girls’ club activities, and whatnot, until her return.  Writing takes another hit….

NaNoWriMo – Holed at the waterline*

*Just ‘at’ mind you, not under.  I still might be able to salvage this.

Last week, my wife had a small lump removed from the upper left side of her nose.  It was something I would have ignored, but fifteen years ago, she had a fight with lymphoma.  Ha, ha:  jokes on us.  The biopsy of the small tissue mass was positive for B-cell lymphoma.

So, morale about the house is rather shattered right now.  She’ll be off to MD Anderson in Houston, likely in a week or so, for more tests and consults.  That leaves me spending all my time on Daughters #1 and #2, and not on writing “Crosses and Doublecrosses.”

I’ll get it done; I just don’t think it’s going to be by November 30th.

Book Tour – Day 14 (sorta, again) [updated]

Rooms with Books was to be today’s stop, but it seems they’ve not yet posted my interview.  If they succeed later, I’ll revise this post.  Until then, their questions and my answers are below the fold.

[they finally got ’round to getting my tour stop up – with no explanation]

Continue reading “Book Tour – Day 14 (sorta, again) [updated]” →