Eric W. Trant

Are babies just like drunk people?

2012-01-30T05:42:00.000-08:00

Let us analyze that statement, just for fun. I have a baby, so it makes me wonder, see.

First off, I will challenge the reader to dispute that babies and drunks don't waddle the same waddle. It's a back-and-forth almost-tumble that makes you wonder if they aren't walking down the aisle of a bus going sixty down a bumpy winding backroad.

When they kiss, it's all slobbery.

Neither one is afraid to piss in public.

Everything is hilarious. Bodily function-noises -- e.g. the Zurburt or the Rasberry -- are fan favorites.

They want to ~touch~ everything.

Either one is prone to scream in the middle of Wal Mart.

I wouldn't trust either one to drive a car or a golf cart. That's a good one, eh!

Both throw-up on themselves and think nothing of it.

Both will walk through the house naked, or out into the yard for that matter.

You can't understand a dang thing either one says!

How about you? Any other similarities I missed?

- Eric

And finally we release "Out of the Great Black Nothing"

2012-01-26T12:36:00.000-08:00

Finally, after a year in draft and edit, and two years in concept, I release my debut novel: Out of the Great Black Nothing

My author interview is here: Eric Trant Interview

I don't know what to say, other than I feel like I lost and gained something special. It's sort of like getting married, having a child, or losing your virginity. It's the end of one and the beginning of another.

I am a published author. How about that.

- Eric

What do you say when people ask?

2012-01-23T10:04:00.000-08:00

So I went to a family reunion this weekend and guess what happened? Everyone asked about my writing.

They asked about work and the family, sure, but they wanted to know about my short stories and forthcoming novel.

What's it about? they all asked. Where can I buy it? Do you have business cards? Where is your website? When will it be released?

That's when I went Fudd on them and started stammering. I had no idea what to say!

It embarrassed me. I don't like discussing my work, because when I say it out loud, it sounds (to me) ridiculous.

God love my wife. She started talking me up, and hearing her talk relaxed me. Then I started talking easier about the story lines, and after a while I felt more like I was networking than visiting with family.

It was weird to hand out business cards to my family. But they took them, and I think they are genuinely excited about the book.

The business cards, of course, were for my business, not for my book and writing, and I looked as be-Fudd-led as I felt.

So I give you this as advice, as well as myself, regarding the arting of writing.

Get some business cards

There's a thought, eh. I will probably generate a logo for myself. Speaking of which...

Logo?

Not sure on this one. For me, yes, I will create a logo. If you do it yourself, keep it simple, with as few colors as possible, and don't go changing it every few weeks. Make sure you can zoom in or out without losing resolution. You will need Photoshop if you are serious about it, or you can find free logo companies online.

Know your long and short

Be ready with a one-sentence blurb about your book. My blurb it this: It's about a redneck in a spacesuit who sits in a lawn chair and stares at the moon.

Then you can field questions after that little intro. I need to practice more.

Website and email

If you don't already, get a website and an email. I use my business email, and I own the website www.EricTrant.com and redirect it here.

Have a central location for all your work

I keep track of my work and publications right here on this blog. I try to make it easy for folks to find and purchase my work.

Be professional on your blog

Too late for that one, eh.

Anyway, enough about all that. I need to polish my marketing and conversation skills so I am better prepared in the future.

How about you? Have you been taken off-guard about your current career and dream pursuits? Do you stammer when they ask what it's about and how it's going?

Buh buh buh, buh-da, That's all, folks.

- Eric

How much money do you need, anyway?

2012-01-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

Man, I got this one figgered to the penny. I need $4.00 mil. That's it for life.

I calculate with the cost of living adjustments, I would need just that much to survive to eighty-something, and by then I should be good and dead, assuming I continue to follow the American diet and breathe Dallas air.

$4 mil. Anything after that is fluff on my cake, and fluff only makes you fat.

I see these corporate guys/gals making hundreds of $mils and I think, Man, how many zeroes do you need to be happy?

Six? Seven? Eight? NINE! TEN like Gates and those Middle Eastern Princes with their diamond-studded Mercedes?

Damn.

You realize, of course, that zero is a physical representation of a NULL, and that it has no mathematical value or function, other than relocating the decimal. It is, in fact, living proof that man does not understand the universe, because there is no such thing as NULL. God did not create a NULL. He laughs at zero as I laugh at infinity and mankind's infinite ignorance about its own mathematical and scientific dysfunction.

We are wrong, way wrong, and I laugh with God.

Ha.

Therefore, no matter how many zeroes are in your income, it is still a NULL. It is more and more nothing in your offshore bank account.

If I had $4 mil, I'd pay off my house and what little other debt I have and stash back the rest. I would be free to retire, see, that's the point.

I would drive my old Tahoe into the ground -- and for you greenies out there, hush up yo mouf in advance. I know it's a gas guzzler. I figger the faster we burn it, the faster we'll learn it's true value. You only miss it when it's gone.

What was it the Indian said about fish? We'll only worry about over-fishing after we eat the last fish.

Anyway, have you thought about how much you need? What is your cut-off point? Do you have one? If you don't, you'd better figure it out, because you don't want to be one of those corporate greed-olies who think they need bigger and bigger boxes in which to store their stuff.

George Carlin said that: A house is a box with a lid on it in which you store your stuff.

Me, at $4 mil, I open my own local brewery, work in my underpants from home and in my brewery, and if you drink in my brewery, you drink without your pants, because that's how I roll. I drink what I don't sell, and sell what I don't drink.

I will call it Club Garson for personal reasons, and we will play indoor soccer on the off-days. Pantsless.

No garage full of Maseratis and Porches and other unpronounceable cars could ever be better than that.

Is it Porche or Porch? I sit on one and drink and talk to the moon, and on the other I run off a cliff and burst into flames. Which one, tell me, do you prefer?

Plus, my wife is hotter than most rich guy's wives, and she loved me way before I had $4 mil.

In fact, I have no idea why she loves me, but she is gorgeous, and you just can't buy that, now can you.

What's that limit, folks? Where is your cutoff?

- Eric

What do you want as a writer?

2012-01-16T03:00:00.000-08:00

What is it you want, as a writer that is?

Do you want money? Fame? Notoriety?

Me, I'll tell you what I want, since you asked nicely.

I want to be loved.

I brought the cheese, you bring the crackers, eh.

But really, that's what I want. I want to be that lingering aftertaste, that euphoric moment after you wake up from a vivid dream.

I want to be one of those authors who people discuss fondly, and say, Man, I liked that story. It resonated. I related to that character. Remember that one scene where the woman sewed her arm back on, man that was cool.

I don't know if that will bring me anything other than internal satisfaction. If so, that's fine, I suppose.

See, I mentioned in an older post that one of my readers gave me a statue of Percy Freebottom, a character I created who is all dreamer, and all he dreams of is writing his name in the moon. The reader bought me a 12" statue of a spaceman, and had the name Freebottom stenciled on the lapel pocket.

He said when he and his wife were at a baseball game on a full moon night, his wife looked up at the moon and said, I wonder if Percy wrote his name yet?

That's what I want, folks. I want to resonate. I want to vibrate deep in your cockles.

Anyway, what is it you want, and are you finding it yet? I am. One reader at a time, I'm finding it just fine.

- Eric

Candyland's Post

2012-01-06T05:56:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to say how amazed I am at the outpouring of goodwill over at Candyland. I've been following her for a while, and she's humorous, insightful, well-written, and deeply honest. There aren't many bloggers who could post what she posted without sounding ingenuous.

Candyland: Lower than a rapper's pants

I'd also bring up Mr. 3QE himself, Matthew MacNish, The QQQE, for drawing in so many people to Candace's place. Nice job, Matt.

Go read her post. I've read it quite a few times. She's having trouble with her new baby and could use a little hope thrown her direction. And couldn't we all use that sometimes!

Here's a quote to get you started:

From pregnancy, he's been a needy baby. It started with the loss of fluid near his head causing me to be in and out of the hospital (= monumental bills piling up), then he died at birth. Thankfully was brought back to us but it was not without issues. He's had problems with different formulas and medications which they attribute to reflux. After we got our sweet Sully home from the hospital, his condition has only worsened.

- Eric

Back to the HOUSE OF PAIN!

2011-11-10T16:05:00.000-08:00

So I bought a Kindle last week. I know, I've railed on the little electro-beast, how it is actually more expensive and less convenient than a book, but now that I went over, now that I indulged, now that I dropped $200 bucks on an Amazon Kindle 3G, I have to admit that I love that little knucker.

It hasn't left my side. I'm afraid I'll leave it in the potty and my son will drop it in the toilet. He's one year old next week. My wife warned me, she said, You better not leave that Kindle in the bathroom like you did your books. Daz (that's our son) is going to drop it in the toilet.

So I try not to leave the Kindle in the potty. I think I'll miss that the most, leaving books laying around the house, next to the bed, at my desk, in the car.

But I was wrong about the convenience of a Kindle. Boy was I wrong. I downloaded some free books from the local library and finally bought the first book in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. I returned the other three library books after the first chapter -- the first few pages, actually, I didn't make it any farther -- but I did make it through an old HG book called The Island of Doctor Moreau. I forgot how creepy that book is.

BACK TO THE HOUSE OF PAIN! ARE WE NOT MEN!

The point is, I'm hooked on the e-book. I'm not sure how short or long-lived this little obsession may be -- perhaps the novelty will wear off after I drop it and it shatters into a hundred tiny Kindle-bits, each bit worth approximately $75 USD, with one large piece worth just over a $100.

Anyway. Off to read my new Kindle! Maybe now I can finally get caught up on some of Roland Yeoman's books. Dude, you are a writing machine! (He's on Amazon, FYI, just over 10 books and counting.)

- Eric

An Honest Lie Vol 3: Justifiable Hypocrisy

2011-11-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

So the latest Honest Lie short story anthology is on sale. You can't vote for me, but poke around and VOTE for Donna Hole or Stephanie Loree here. The author with the most votes gets a BOOK DEAL! If you buy a book from one of their portals, they get more points. Click their name to see an excerpt and buy, and click mine (but buy from one of their portals) if you want to see a bit about my short story (which is not that short) titled Melvin Gee's Short Trip to Hell.

Read through some of the author interviews here: Life at OHP.

Anyway, now I need to update my links on the side. This publishing crap is a lot of work!

Click the picture. I do believe the kid is GUARDING the playground, not attacking it. This is a common scene in third-world countries.

Also, I should have my full-length novel, Out of the Great Black Nothing, in print this quarter. It's about a redneck in a space suit.

- Eric

When Life Imitates Art: Larf?

2011-10-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

This post is about dead children, specifically your dead children, my dead children.

(That's my son on the right, in the picture, shopping for Halloween costumes.)

I'm not sure why I got the hankering, but in early September the worms started digging and what they dug up was this: A bunch of little bones.

I'm talking shoe-box sized bones and tiny skulls with an open fontanel.

Early September, mind you. I suppose it's the thought of winter that brings in those thoughts. God, I wish it were winter already. I'm sick of the heat, and we need some rain in Dallas. (God, if you read this blog, SEND RAIN!)

Anyway. The worms dug up the muck and I started a new novel, one that had been incubating for about nine years, and it sho-nuff has some dead children in it.

It's full of death and suffering. Not in a depressing way (I hope), but in a realistic and heartfelt way.

Now, onto the Life Imitating Art subject, or Larf, as I'll call it. That's Larf, you'll all say one day, Larf's a bitch, Get a Larf, meaning Life + Art.

Get it?

I will, of course, receive no credit for coining this term. And Larf goes on.

So my dad died last week. Don't worry, he didn't ~stay~ dead, but he was dead as your granny's virginity for about two minutes.

Some big black guy, I didn't see him, broke my father's chest pumping blood manually with his heart. Pop's heart stopped after he had some stents put in. He was in the ICU already, otherwise he'd be in a nice box today, wondering why the hell his lips were sewn up to his gums.

(Pop is alive and well. They got his heart beating and it's beating still. Sorry if I confused anyone!)

Larf, eh. I'd been writing about death for about a month, thinking about it, and then it glove-slaps me in the face and touts me.

But wait, there's more!

A neighbor of mine lost his daughter. She died and stayed dead. She was 25 and had a masters degree, a magna cum laude track record, and cancer that ravaged both the first and second livers she tried.

I'll share with you someone else's Larf, which is here, which is beautiful:

More Importantly. It's Annie's blog, Quiet Commotion.

I read this and like so many of Annie's ad hoc poems, it scraped my neck just at the base of my skull, there in the primal parts we share with birds and lizards and cavemen alike. True words, she wrote, true and old as granny's virginity.

Why do I think that last part is so damned funny?

I'll also share something I wrote in my current piece. It's a POV I tried out in a couple of scenes, see if it fits. It's second-person present tense. It seemed appropriate.

I wrote this about a week before all the death (both permanent and temporary) around me.

Nothing prepares you for the loss of your child.

When you get pregnant, out come the doctors and nurses and Lamaze specialists. They show you how to change diapers, how to nurse, how to push and breathe during labor. They tell you what the baby should eat and warn you against the toxicity of eggs and honey and bovine milk, seemingly benign things unless you stuff them into your little baby.

There are stores dedicated to clothing your baby. Entire sections of the local grocery are filled with baby necessities, fluids for when they are sick, bibs for when they drool, plastic seats for when they ride in your car. Friends and neighbors pour into your yard when you release blue or pink balloons into the sky and announce your baby's gender. People clap and cry and cheer your baby's arrival.

It is different, though, when you lose your baby. People grow hushed and cover their mouth and turn away. Sure, they send food for a few days, but after that gesture, afterwards, after the afterlife where there is no life after, after you find the baby stiff in the crib for no good Goddamned reason, after you find him nose-down in the kiddy pool in a few inches of water, after you find her behind the couch with a marble in her throat, after you find him on the dining room floor with a bullet in his head. After the friends and neighbors and family send food and maybe attend the funeral, if there is one, because sometimes, if the baby dies in the womb, they don't even do that.

After all that you are a pariah. You are a topic of conversation. These conversations begin with the words, "Have you heard about," and end with the words, "I can't imagine."

All the stuff in-between those two phrases is a garbled mess of nods and hand-waving.

There are no classes about how you breathe. There are no doctors or nurses who rush to your side to guide you. There are no shelves in the store dedicated to burial clothes. Hell, there aren't even greeting cards, maybe one that reads, "So sorry you lost your toddler down Old Man Johnston's well. Better luck next time!"

People don't discuss it with you. They discuss it all right, but not with you, not anywhere near you. They shun you as if you are diseased, because you are diseased.

You are ostracized and condemned and moved to the other side, wherever the hell that is, probably near hell because that's how it feels. You are one of them, one of the others, one of those who lost their kid, so tragic, and have you heard about, and I can't imagine.

God gives you no reprieve. He allowed His son to be mutilated and killed and so great is God's love that He gave His only son so that you may be saved. Your son died for no greater purpose. He died for no reason at all, and yet you are charged to bear God's deepest grief.

You are not God. No one worships your dead son, and let's not forget God didn't handle the grieving all that well Himself. After three days He couldn't take it anymore, and He raised His son back to life.

Ah, it's good to be God.

Anyway. Larf it up Fuzzball, Larf all you want, Larf with me not at me.

I have a wire crossed somewhere, you know. I tend to laugh when I should cry. There's a picture of me in the ER with a bone sticking up from my shoulder (not quite poking through the skin, but almost), and I'm smiling like I just won a six-pack of Shiner 102 beer.

I have a hard time crying, see. All I can think is Larf Larf Larf when it all goes to shit.

Maybe Larf is a better term, eh.

Have you ever had a Larf moment, where something you wrote came to pass? Do you look back on your old words with new experience and think, Dang, that was spot-on? (or Dang, what an idiot I was!) Did the second-person present tense work?

- Eric

PS. My first wife miscarried our second attempt, about two months in, after we had already told everyone and scheduled a sonogram and named her Hannah. I had to flush my burger-meat daughter down the shitter, because that's where she came out. I didn't laugh at all that night, and I don't laugh now thinking on it. I dredge up that pain when I write, and God help me if it had happened when she was 7 years and not 7 weeks. In all seriousness, heartfelt prayers for anyone who's lost a child of any age, be it in the womb or out.

Orphans: Why do we love them?

2011-10-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

So I'm writing a novel with my kids. We're in the fun phase -- drafting characters and brainstorming ideas.

I call them idears, and we keep them in a black book I call My Little Ocean. The Ocean used to be pocket-sized. Now it's a leather-bound journal.

Anyway, we're drafting the characters, and I keep coming back to orphanizing the two kids.

See, you need two kids, a boy and a girl, same as I have at the house. I'm not making them twins. The girl is older by a year.

And I keep killing off their parents. Sometimes one or the other parent is alive, but usually the kids are somehow abandoned.

And I got to thinking how common that is.

Luke Skywalker was an orphan. So was Harry Potter. Little Orphan Annie and the kid in Great Expectations were orphans. Superman was an orphan. Megamind and Metroman were orphans. Percy Jackson was semi-orphaned, had an estranged father.

I could go on, but you get the point so go on your own dang self. The thing is, we orphanize our children in YA lit.

Why is that, I wonder?

I still don't have the answer, but I'm beginning to let that question fester. I look back at my own stories and realize I have a novella about orphans. Never thought about it.

There's something romantic about an orphan, something magical, something that gets the gears turning and makes us automatically relate to them.

Why do we relate to kids without parents? Why is it so easy to demonize step-parents and victimize step-children? I have no freaking clue. You tell me.

But we do relate. Maybe it's that coming-of-age thing, where we all sever from our parents and become ourselves.

Oh, Spider-Man was orphaned, too. So was Batman, and in fact his orphanization caused him to morph into the Dark Knight.

Gads, that's an easy thing to think up orphaned heroes, isn't it.

You tell ME! Why are orphans so common and desirable in literature!

Meanwhile, I'll be drafting my own set of orphans. They have [expletive] eyes. Shh. Don't tell anyone.

- Eric

Viscerality: What is too much?

2011-09-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Knuckers:

Like many of you, I have some stories that are deeply emotional that deal with traumatic experiences. They aren't gory per se, but they are disturbing stories.

For instance, one of my earliest shorts is called Digging. I have never tried to publish this story because I believe it is too visceral, too primal. But when I let people read it the response is consistent -- the story resonates. It disturbs. It has the intended effect, which is to show an ugly underbelly, the snake's belly, the scaly underside beneath the coiled head and body.

Specifically, Digging deals with incest. Oddly enough, that's a story so common among writers that publishers specifically say: No incest, no rape stories.

I say: Why not?

They answer: Too visceral. Too disturbing. Readers want fiction, not reality.

And yet and yet the Digging story got two responses that I remember in particular.

One was from an English teacher and she said this:

Your unapologetic brutality was disturbing.

The other was from an Army Ranger, one of those special force types who is the real shit. He's a Captain now, and he's a cutout Tom Clancy character a lot like Chavez. If you know who Chavez is, then you know what I mean, and you know I mean this guy is no bullshit. When he bought his house, for instance, he made sure he had a clear path of egress to gun down anyone who invaded his stairwell, even aligned the rooms such that he wouldn't be shooting into his daughter's bedroom.

I camp with him once a year or so and he brings a full trauma kit and a well-beaten rucksack and somehow he still convinces me to carry his fucking water for him so he has room for his camp chair.

Yeah, that guy. He read an entire batch of short stories and commented on one story only, one word, and it was Digging and it was this word:

Damn.

So I ask you my fellow writers and knuckers specifically, is it too visceral to write what is real, what is savage, what is the basest in our skulls just above the spine. Doesn't the blood flow up through the neck and through the primal parts first, before it branches out to the thinking gray-matter that really doesn't matter at all?

I ask this because my current piece, the Marty piece, the one I alluded to here -- Dead Characters -- is primal. It is unapologetic.

It is real. It is savage.

It is visceral. It involves a mightily abusive and dysfunctional family unit. It involves rape and murder and personal treason.

Is that too much? Am I crossing lines here?

What do you consider too much? I don't mean ~gore~, I mean primal emotions. I don't appreciate gratuitous gore and won't write it. I mean primal and savage acts that leave a taste -- literally -- in the back of your throat when you read them.

- Eric

Dead and Resurrected Characters

2011-09-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

I think all my characters are zombies, or vampires, or something undead and permanent.

See, I can't let go of them. I wrote this blurb, which I'll post for you to torture your eyes on, back in 2002. That's, like, TEN YEARS AGO. Almost. The date stamp says September 5, 2002.

Man, that's weird. It's like the anniversary date for the birth of this character. I wonder if there's something in this season that puts this shit in my head every year, because I have never forgotten Marty.

What's even weirder is I haven't messed with this story, with Marty, in forever, in YEARS, but last night that little bastard with no warning dove into my worms and started digging and throwing dirt until I had to get up and let him write a stupid outline for the stupid book so he'd shut his stupid mouth and let me stupid sleep.

Which I didn't sleep, of course, not a drop or a wink, not last night. It's like that when you see your next book waiting to be writ.

This guy, Marty, he's a blurb. He's a ghost. He's an undead boy with a big-ass knife and he will not let me forget him.

Queue the scene, stage left, hit the music.

Working Title: The Idear

It could have been something he'd imagined, one of those pipe dreams kids come up with late at night, under the covers with a friend and a flashlight. He'd played it over and over in his head until it seemed real enough. And here he was, holding a knife as big as his arm. The blade alone reached from his elbow to his wrist. Holding it near his face to see that yep, sure enough, it's real all right, real as Jeannie's tits.

"Hey, Sugar, what you got?" That was Gus. He was the leader of this little troop, six boys in all, and they called Marty Jameson Sugar because that's what his mom had called him once.

Marty hated being called Sugar.

Marty stuffed the knife under his shirt. The blade was rusty and it didn't look sharp. He'd take care of that later. "Nothing," Marty answered. "I ain't got nothing."

"Liar!" Gus said. "I saw you put something under your shirt, sugar-boy, let's s—"

"I ain't got nothing!" Marty said. He turned and put his feet under him, running despite the danger of having a blade so close to his heart (his mom would belt him for sure if she caught him running with a knife).

Marty was faster than the other boys—except for Danny, he was the oldest—and Marty sprinted around a stack of old tires, between two stripped-out Volkswagons, and ducked beneath a tower of fifty-gallon oil drums. He clambered inside one of the barrels before Danny rounded the corner behind him. The rest followed, all running past Marty. Silent as a rabbit, Marty waited until he heard Gus scream, "He went over to the crane!" before climbing out of his hole.

Marty drew the knife from his shirt. The blade was wide and long, a true Bowie knife, with a busted fake-ivory handle that had broken halfway down the length of the grip. Marty tucked the knife into his belt so that it both looked and felt like a sword on his hip. He raced home, stopping only once to lift a piece of corrugated tin and claim a beat-up wire grinder brush he spotted. He could use that to clean the blade.

***

The next day it rained, huge drops that fell straight-down without wind and without thunder. Marty sat in the attic next to the window as if beneath a waterfall, hidden behind clear sheets of water as the rain rolled over the eaves. He sat in a toddler's chair, one he'd found crammed into the corner of the attic when they'd moved in a year ago. The wicker seat was chewed-through, and the sharp corners of the broken straws sometimes poked him, but its legs were strong enough that Marty could lean back as he worked. The overhead light had long ago burned out and never been replaced. So Marty sat near the window. The cascading rain somehow amplified the light here.

Marty's fingers bled from where the wire brush had stabbed him; the wild-haired brush wasn't designed to be held, it was designed to spin on a grinder. He had taken a piece of his jeans (the part left over after his mom had made cut-offs) and used the fabric to pad his hands. It worked well, and during the past few hours, Marty had scraped most of the rust from the blade, and saved the rest of his fingers.

According to his mom's scale, the one she kept hidden beneath the bathroom towels so she didn't have to look at it, the knife weighed over a pound. The weight sat heavy in Marty's lap.

In his pocket was another weight, this one a few ounces he'd lifted from the knife-drawer in the kitchen: a battered and chipped whetstone.

Marty held the knife up in the shimmering light. "You're almost clean," he said. "Then I'll put an edge on you that'll cut through glass."

***

How about you? Any new or resurrected idears yet?

- Eric

PS. This blurb was used during a blogfest at some point. Just saying.

Characters we CARE ABOUT

2011-08-30T19:41:00.001-07:00

In response to Julie Musil's Building Characters post. Read it and come back here or read it there. I really don't care which you do, satisfy yourself because I know you will anyway -- that's what knuckers do.

All right, missy (Julie), you just touched on something that's been nagging at me these past few months, and in fact has nagged me for many months across many years across many many stories for all the time I've been a-writing.

Here's the nag: ALL characters are important.

Every. Last. One.

If you ever dismiss a character as unimportant, that is you as the writer's fault for not being more sympa/empathetic.

This point was hammered home to me recently when I read Vonnegut's Breakfast for Champions.

I always sensed that everyone was equally important, but V pointed this out in B&W and even drew a human anus to make his point.

That's true. Read the book if you don't believe me.

Your #7 and #9 are the two that got me -- extraneous and non-care-abouts.

There is no such thing as non-characters in your story, anymore than there is such a thing in real life.

We all have agendas. We are all important. We are all meaningful, and if you forget that point you'll alienate your reader who just happens to be a cocktail waitress at a dive bar that you as a high-pedestal author do not think is important.

You see the point, yes? You see the left hook in that comment?

Give your characters respect. Give them your love. You are their God and Creator and Savior.

If they pop up, even tangentially, they are your creation and deserve your respect and affection.

Or murder them. Someone else said that, too, murder your darlings.

But they're your darlings. Nothing unimportant about them, so lay them on the slab and bleed them, but cry about it when you do.

- Eric

ps: I love Julie's site. If you're not on there, go there, join, and make her your friend. Here is the link: http://juliemusil.blogspot.com

Writing with the kids

2011-08-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

So I'm writing a story with my kids. It's not just any story, it's THE story.

It's magical.

It's whimsical.

It's outer-space and out-of-this-world. It's no-limits and no-holds-barred.

It is a ninja monkey who is NOT a monkey, he is a primate by God, and he kicks your ass if you call him a goddamned monkey.

It is the Ultimate Banana. It is zombies and space ships and everything we want it to be plus an extra heaping of upside-down spray-it-right-in-your-mouth nitrogen pressurized bottle of whipped cream.

It is a leather-bound notebook and a stack of pictures drawn on wide-rule notebook paper, a conversation in the car, a deep study in the boy's room beneath the ceiling fan click-clicking.

It is wonderful.

It doesn't say ass or goddamned, though. It's a kid's book. Keep it clean.

The point is I'm sharing my writing experience with my children. I share it with my family. I share it with my relatives and my co-workers. I believe that if not now, then maybe later, when people describe me, they won't say, Eric was a Chemical Engineer from UT Austin, a quality engineer, a process/product/device/test engineer, or a programmer, or a mathematical samurai, or a short white guy with a big nose.

They'll say, Eric was a writer and a story-teller and was incredibly good-looking.

It was his blue eyes, the women will say, and they'll wish I wasn't dead and secretly hope I will come back and seduce them into an army of undead concubines.

My kids will remember the stories we wrote and told and tell the ones we never wrote.

My son said about the story we're writing, Daddy, do you think we'll be millionaires?

Probably not, I said. I made $85 bucks on my last story. That's the sum total of my career in writing.

Sweet! my son said. We can be hundredaires.

Do you share with your family? How will they describe you? Will you be a hundredaire author?

- Eric

Your Author BIO: Straight-Talk from my Editor

2011-08-25T07:50:00.000-07:00

Have you ever written an author bio? If you haven't yet, you will, eventually, because if and when you get published, the publisher is going to ask for a couple of things.

The first thing is this: Your signature. Sign here. And here. Initial there. Here's your copy of the contract, looking forward to doing business with you.

And it is a business for the publisher -- ain't no art in publishing, you knuckleheads.

Now the next thing they'll ask for is a clean draft. They'll probably do a quick read and ask for long edits and send it back to you. Mind you, I'm with a small publisher, so this leg of the process will vary proportionately with larger publishers, but Open Heart Publishing, local to Dallas, has been professional and by-the-book as far as I'm concerned. I imagine the only difference between drafting with OHP and drafting with Harper-Collins will be length between edit responses, and the depth of the personal and professional relationships.

That's a theory.

So while you're drafting and re-drafting and reading and re-reading your piece, the editor will ask you for a couple more things.

We need a headshot for your bio, says Ms. Editor. (Her name is ME, by the way, and her blog is here: An Honest Lie Speaks.)

Okay, you answer. I got a picture from last spring break, just need to clip out my wife and kids from the pose.

Take a new one, ME says. You alone. It doesn't need to be professional, but you need to be the only one in it.

Okay.

And we need a bio, she says. Between one and two hundred words for your short story in the AHL volume 3 anthology, and another one about three-hundred words for your novel.

Okay.

Can you get this to me tomorrow? she says.

I guess.

I'll take that as a yes, she says. She then promises to share a beer with you once we get the damned things in print, and off you go to write your bio.

The picture is easy. Grab a beer and a clean shirt. Head to the back yard with the wife. Snap. Done.

But that bio, that ever-loving bio, that freaking fracking macking bio...

There's the hard part, folks. Who the hell are you? How do you sum up the complexities of YOU in three-hundred -- or two-hundred, or one-hundred -- words or less?

I won't share my bio with you, but I will share some of ME's invaluable editorial feedback.

And I quote, where I got too flippant and personal about my non-writing activities and family and such:

Be careful here – you are shifting too much focus away from your writing. Everything that is “in addition to” or “aside from” takes away from your writing career time. You don’t want to inadvertently sound like your life is so filled with other priorities that writing takes a back seat. Writing has to be and remain primary focus.

I ping-ponged ME a bit on the personal aspect (we communicate primarily via email). I wrote that I want to establish a personal connection with the reader in my bio, and that's why I include the personal aspects in it.

ME responded to that point like this:

I agree with you on the personal connection being important, but we always have to remember the potential publishers and agents who might come across our work, and be ready with the bio info they'll want to know.

On the personal part of the bio, for the novel, I have made a couple of alterations. Below is the revision. I have taken out "unbelievably beautiful" wife - this is a bit more personal and intimate than should be included in a bio (remember, a bio is a resume, not a personal journal).

Here is another response from ME, earlier in the pinging and ponging:

That's a good bio, and those are great photos. I think we'll use the photo of you on the chair looking right (yours, not viewer's).

I'd like to see something a little different on your bio. I'd like to take the personal info down to one or two sentences top, include your other writing credits, and talk about your blog and anything else you've been doing in the field of writing. 100-200 words is about the size we need.

Would you mind?

Bios should always focus primarily on credits, even if they were the same credits from the last bio. You want to work towards getting as many credits as you can, and as many writing related projects. After that, when you get new credits or projects, take out those that are less spectacular in order to add new credits/projects.

You see what I highlighted, yes? Are you paying attention?

I was, and I do pay attention to ME. She makes sound points and backs them up. I tell her she has hollow-toothed venomous advice that strikes like a bite to the neck.

But it's a good strike. It's a good feeling. She injects you, the author, with a jolt of reality that is meant to make your writing BETTER.

Here's another diddy from ME, when I originally included my email in the bio:

Never ever include contact info in your bio. Your bio can and will be seen by the world at large and you don’t want a way for perverts or stalkers or other harassers to be able to contact you. You can refer people to your publisher or agent, but never give your own contact info. Delete next sentence. I have deleted same reference from short story bio.

And now, in summary, for those of you knuckers who skim to the bottom and skip all the good stuff I write:

o Focus on your writing activities

o Your bio is your resume

o Focus on writing credits (include significant non-writing, such as a patent, which I always include)

o Do not share personal contact information

Listen to ME's advice. When you write your bio, remember what ME says.

Just don't get sour if she leaves a little smidge of a mark just above the shoulder and below the ear.

Do you have bio advice? What does your editor say?

- Eric

PS: If you find this advice helpful, you should thank ME at her blog: An Honest Lie Speaks. All email responses are used with her permission.

Half of Something, or All of Nothing? You Choose.

2011-08-19T06:09:00.000-07:00

Have you ever watched the show Shark Tank? People with NOTHING approach investors with their idea, and the investors either purchase a chunk of the person's product, or turn it down outright.

What amazes me is that people turn down the investment offers.

Not enough, the people say.

You want too much of my company, the people say.

My company is worth more, the people say.

And then these people turn and walk out of the Shark Tank with the exact thing they walked in with: NOTHING!

Now, if that's not a capital-bold WTF moment, I don't know what is.

Folks, your company is only worth what someone is willing to pay. That's it. It is NOT a million dollar company, or a $100 million dollar company, or a $1 billion dollar company, until someone says it is and slaps down a check.

Until then, your company is worth squat shit and diddly, in that order.

Now, project this onto writers, and aspiring authors, and those of us hocking our words to publishers and agents.

You are the company. Your writing is the product. You are trying to sell it to investors who plan to make money off your work, and they want their cut.

I occasionally run across authors who say they turned down an offer while they wait on something better.

I see authors who say their book should be HUGE, and they plan to secure HUGE up-front bonuses from the publishing houses, from their editors, from anyone who helps them with their magnificent book.

As if by sheer will of force they plan to add value to their product!

I see people, and not just authors, who would rather have 100% of nothing instead of 50% of something!

I avoid these people in business. I avoid them in my personal dealings. I avoid them outright.

They call themselves dreamers, risk-takers, entrepreneurs, and they scoff the world for not seeing the true value of their product, be it a book or a new-fangled contraption for whizzering your gizzard on Shark Tank.

I can't even watch Shark Tank anymore. The investors make an offer, the person turns it down, and the investors laugh and mock the person and say the same things I am thinking: What was that guy thinking? He'll never make it without a business partner. He'll never make it without us!

He wants 100% of nothing, because in that warped and demented dream-state thinkering, the product (book) is worth a hundred bazillion dollars.

I see Dr. Evil: One millllion dollars!

I shake my head. I drink my beer.

I move on looking for that investor (publisher) who is willing to take 100% of nothing and turn it into 50% of something. Size doesn't matter, because something beats nothing.

A rich man commented on game shows, how people tend to keep going once they have a significant amount of cash. That's money in the bank, you idiots! he said. Cash out! A $20,000 profit is more than the $1 million you didn't win! Why can't these idiots do math!

So don't be one of those idgets that rich people make fun of. Don' be that person who, when someone hands you the moon, you say, BUT I WANT THE SUN!

No no no. Please no. Success is found in bites and nibbles, not one large chunk, and it damned sure doesn't happen on the first offer of your first book.

Do you keep your expectations reasonable? I don't mean small, I mean reasonable. Are you willing to let go of your baby and take what someone offers?

Do you realize and accept that your product (book) is only worth what someone will pay?

- Eric

Show Me, Tell Me

2011-08-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

Let me get this off my chest. I'm well-aware of the rule that states a writer should show, not tell.

Show the story! Don't tell the story! Yes yes yes, I've heard it over and over. Preach on, little parrot, preach on.

But let me tell you something about telling.

See, there's something you can only do with telling, and it is this: Bond the reader to the character.

For instance, let's take the security guard floating in my beer as I ponderize this post. It's dark beer, Delirium Nocturnum, whatever the hell that is, and it has 8.5% alcohol. That's nearly twice a Bud Water's content, or at least today it is, and there's a security guard in it.

Guard the Showing

She sits behind a half-round table stacked with split-screen monitors showing each of the cells in the city jailhouse. One bank of monitors reads Holding Tank. Another bank reads Shakedown. Another reads Visitation.

And so on. (I borrow this from Vonnegut, who I am reading at present, all hail V)

A cup of coffee with a lipstick ring sits half-empty next to her hand as she types. She types a name into the computer: Harold Banks.

She types Harold's weight and height and the date he arrived in the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

I'll stop there. I was showing, not telling. I told you nothing about her, not even her name. I guess I could have shown you her nametag, but I didn't want to ~tell~ you her name. That's telling, not showing.

And this is exactly -- EXACTLY -- what you get with movies and videos and those damned old moving picture thingies. You get SHOWING, not telling.

Now, sometimes you do get telling, even in the movies. We hear it as a narrator's voice, the author, a character, someone filling you in on the details, someone ~telling~ you the details.

Let me re-hash that security guard scene with a little snip of telling, not showing.

Guard the Telling

Henrietta Beecher Snowe scooped up the stack of papers from this afternoon's processing frenzy and laid out the first one face-up next to her keyboard. Jackie, the day clerk, had called in sick and since the officers didn't know how to use the new software system, and since Henrietta had all damned day to kill watching nothing but three-dozen holding cells and Google her name, the task fell on her to perform the day's data entry.

And today had been unusually busy.

It started when Jack Keller, the local busy-body and town drunk, was run over by a dump truck hauling a load of pea gravel. Henrietta had gone to school with the driver, Harold Banks, and had once offered him a sticky-finger behind the band hall after one of the football games. Henrietta played flute. Henry had been a percussionist. Now he drove trucks and ran over drunks who happened to be stumbling along the side of the shoulderless road just outside of Jefferson's Grocery and Deli.

Jack Keller, of course, had been killed. The truck's back tires had squeezed his head like a brown grape and left his brains skid-marked along the side of the road in a gray-matter snail trail.

Henry had tested positive for alcohol, not surprising given he was driving on the shoulder in the first place, and Larry Timbers, one of the day officers who worked nights over in Beaumont, found a bag of cocaine under the driver's seat. Henry rolled the truck, spilling the gravel up and down Poskie Street proper, and that's when things got interesting.

And so on.

Do you see the difference? I told you one story.

I showed you the other.

Yes, I agree showing is the best way to show a story, but telling is the best way to tell a story.

You need both. The showing moves the present-tense action along. The telling fills in the details and the background.

The ~telling~ is the critical point in writing. It's when you bond the reader to your characters.

The ~telling~ is what you do not get with a movie.

The ~telling~ is what people miss when they see a movie adaptation of a book, when they look at you and squint and say, The book was better.

Why? you ask.

I don't know, they say. It just was. I got inside their heads better.

This comes up because I'm editing, and my readers keep asking me to ~tell~ them about the characters. I was trying to show show show. I'm thinking now that I showed too much and told too little.

Don't be afraid to tell. It's how you bond to the characters! It's how you make the reader care about what happens to them!

How about you? Do you have that strange detestation of telling that afflicts so many writers?

- Eric

Pity Reads: Why they are a BAD thing

2011-08-15T06:18:00.000-07:00

Do you know what I mean by a Pity Read?

It's like a Pity Fuck. You know what that is, right? We've all had one or offered one (I assume, unless you are a particularly prickly sort who never gives out those good-bye adios vaya con dios love fests just before you break up).

I'll refer to the one as PR, and the other as PF, for simplicity and to reduce the vulgarity, as if that matters to me. It doesn't, but I do it as courtesy to those light-hearted souls.

Often in a relationship, One person is more in love than the Other. Since this is an unbalanced relationship, it is doomed as a one-winged bird a-flapping with the left wing and a-scratching his ball-feathers with the right.

The One wants nothing more than to soar up into the sky and shit on something clean. The Other is busy trying to find bird-balls, which it soon will realize don't exist.

So in the end, just before the dooming occurs, and maybe a few times before, the Other (who is less in love, the scratcher) offers the One (who is more in love, the flapper), a good old-fashioned banging pity fuck.

Other doesn't enjoy it.

Ironically, neither does the One.

It's a lose-lose situation.

Even if it's a guy, he may not be into it. He'll give it a few good thrusts, but then he leaves with a lazy salute, hasta la vista, and he jumps off the balcony onto the carport and rolls into the back of a truck and walks buttoning his pants and pulling on his shirt across the parking lot. He forgot his damned shoes but he'll never go back for them because he doesn't need to -- the One is on the apartment balcony tossing his shoes and socks down after him and screaming to the world how small his Johnny is and that she's glad she gave him herpes.

Now, flip it and Godferbid it's the woman offering the PF, because folks, this can be quickly boiled down into a bone fide long-term guilt-trip, or even worse, a date-rape accusation.

Either way the PF is a bad thing. It's not a safe way to end a relationship, nor is it a healthy act to indulge in.

Doing something out of pity is a sure way to reduce your own personal worth.

So what's that got to do with writing, and reading?

I'll tell you, since you asked politely.

I call it this: The Pity Read

It's when you ask someone to read your book, or your story, or maybe they ask to see it and you show it.

Now, just as one person disliking your pelvic thrusts doesn't make you a bad lover, neither does one person disliking your writing make you a bad writer.

It just means you didn't do it for them. You weren't their thing. They're not into you. No hard feelings, it's me, not you, but not really.

But the reader, the Pity Reader, the PR, is your friend, your confidant, your spouse, your relative, your co-worker, your online buddy.

And since they are your friend, they trudge through the piece. They ache their eyes against your blasphemous words. Your phrase makes them want to peel their eyeballs like the skin of a plum. My God.

My God.

It's not bad, they tell you later, after their Pity Read, as they run through the parking lot buttoning their pants and pulling on their shirt.

Not bad at all.

The first thing wrong is this: They gave you dishonest feedback.

The second thing wrong is this: They will tell their friends.

Oh Lord in Heaven, do you see why this is the Gonorrhea of writers? Not only does the Pity Reader mislead you about your writing, but they then sabotage you with would-be readers inside your own circle.

So I tell you this: Avoid the Pity Reader like the clap!

This comes up because I am at present soliciting beta readers for my novel, and I tell them this, without exception:

I only want you to read this if you want to read it. If it doesn't grab you, put it down. You won't hurt my feelings. Even if your feedback is that you got through the first twenty or so pages and didn't like it, it's not your bag, no problem. That's feedback. That's what I need to know.

And I only want you to be a beta reader if you want to be a beta reader. Just because I asked doesn't mean you are obliged.

Or something like that.

I recommend you do the same thing with your betas, and with your readers, and with anyone inside your globosphere who offers to buy or read your work.

Read it not because you know me -- read it because you like what you're reading.

I say the same thing to you, my online buddies -- only read me if you enjoy this sort of fiction, and for Godsake don't buy me if you don't think you'll like it!

Because I don't need your pity.

What do you tell your readers? Buy my book or I'll cut you!

- Eric

Moot Argument: Pantsing and Plotting

2011-08-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

Should you pants it? Should you plot it?

I've seen that argument over and over, I've even indulged in it myself. Now I think it's a moot argument.

See, either way you put in the same work. Here's the reality.

Pantser

Draft
Plot
Develop Characters
Revise
Revise
Revise

Plotter

Plot
Develop Characters
Draft
Revise
Revise
Revise

Do you see it? All I did was re-order the process. There is no reduction or increase in the work! In fact, you can even go further and insert those three Revise steps in different locations. For instance, this is closer to my actual process:

Eric's Process

Draft
Revise
Develop Characters
Revise
Plot
Revise

I tend to revise as I go. You may increase or decrease those Revise steps, but certainly you'll never find a short-cut! Not for a well-written and understandable body of work. If you go through fewer than THREE deep revisions, it is probably an under-written book.

What are your thoughts? I really don't care, because your opinion is moot, as I just pointed out, but I ask out of courtesy.

- Eric

No BACKSPACE! An Experiment

2011-07-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

Thi s is an experiment. I am for this post going to use no backspace, no edit, no delete, no spell-checker, no undo, and no do-overs.

See, this is how the OLD generation used to do it. Often (stricke that), b

Okay, start over.

Before typewriters, tehy even had to d write out their work by hand. If they fucked up, they had to scratch it out and type over it.

They had to think about what was going on the page before it every lef t their mind and fled down to their fingers. They had to capture thoughts directyl in raw form, unadulterated, mutilated, deformed as they were, and slam i them onto the patper before they got away.

What did this do for the writersz/?

I'll tell you.

It forced them to do something we tell ourselves every day to do: KEEP WRITING!

They didn'gt get bogged dowin in the infinite edit loop that so many of us suffer from.

They didn't write a paragraph, nuke it, re-write it, nuke it , and so on ad foreverum.

No. They had to trudge on. Misspellings be damned. Fat fingers go to hell. So the muse stopped talking, who cares, keep writing, because there is no go-back and revise that prior page.

You must write FORWARD, not backward.

That's how they did it, with pens and typewriters and stnen stencils.

Maybe that's why we don't have the great writers anymore. Maybe we delete all our best stuff. Maybe theo power to edit has destoryed the muse and shut her up.

So i I encourage you to try this experiment. Type up a blog freestyle, no edits, no revisions, NO BACKSPACE, and esee what pops out.

I may even do this with my next picee. It makes for a lot of spellchecking, but it may also forsce me to really slow down and think about what I am writing. Who noknows. Maybe I'll even write something brillian t and NOT erase it!

- Eric

PS. I am not going to proof-read this. Type and SEND to the blogosphere! I'l l read it when it's on the site. Good luck with your own, if you so choose to accept teh challenge.

JK Rowling, the Pomeranian, and Me

2011-07-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

I watched the JK Rowling story tonight on Lifetime. I now know how to properly pronounce her name, and what the J stands for.

I also learned a couple of other things, and at one point I started crying. It was a man-sob, nobody saw it, and I held the Pomeranian up to my face to shield my eyes and I don't think anyone noticed, except maybe the dog and she won't talk, but I cried nonetheless.

Hold on. I gotta fetch a beer. Grab one, too, will you...

Ah, okay, better. I'm drinking a local brew, a "Munich-Style Helles Lager" that tastes a lot like feet. I bought it not knowing how it tastes, but I'm a soldier, by God.

Now, back to the Pomeranian tears.

I knew Rowling had submitted an even dozen times, a wonderfully magic number, before being accepted.

I knew she had been a welfare mom and I know how rich she got off the book.

(I take the show as fact, so please excuse me if the show is incorrect.)

What I ~didn't~ know is that she was top of her class in high school, and that she didn't get into her college of choice. That sort of got me, because I was top of my class, and I didn't get into my college of choice.

No big deal, though, that happens to everyone. It's called reality.

The scene with her dad, though, when he explained to her, and I paraphrase, "You can't be a writer! You'll live off the state. You need to do something practical, like math--" and that's where I broke down, right there during that sentence, at that word, that's where I picked up the Pomeranian and held her to my face and let her lick my forehead.

See, because I was top of my class, I earned the valedic scholarship. I began majoring in Biochemistry-Pre-Med at the University of Texas at Austin.

After my freshman year, I changed my major to Literature-slash-Philosophy, intending to study books and Greek mythology. Maybe it wasn't Philosophy, but it was something like that, Greek Mythology maybe. I don't remember, because it didn't last but a couple of weeks.

I went home and as always at the end of the semester sat at the bank in front of my scholarship benefactor and explained my grades and my plans and how I intended to spend their money.

"I changed my major," I said.

"To what?"

"Literature and philosophy."

Man, I remember the look on his face, those steepled fingers. My aunt worked at the bank and it's a small town and everyone knew me and my parents and my brother and cousins and God help us all, my Grandparents, who practically shut down the bank every time they stopped in to chat. My aunt sat at the desk next to him, but she wasn't there just now.

"Literature," he said. It wasn't a question.

And let me pause here. He was a good guy. He died a little after I got out of college, and the advice was sound, but it was a helluva a thing to hear. There were no malice in his words.

He shook his head. "You can't major in literature," he said.

"Why not? My mom is a librarian. She has a library science degree and taught English. I've been reading since I was in the womb. I'm a shoe-in."

"I won't argue with that," he said, and he couldn't, because he knew mom and he knew how freaking smart she is. "But you can't major in literature. You're too good at math. Not everyone has that talent. You need to major in something you can make a living at, like math or science."

Now, I'm eighteen just turned nineteen, an April baby and sober to boot, because I didn't start with the booze until I hit my 21st birthday, on the day, and haven't stopped since. But I didn't possess the emotional fortitude to handle what he had just said.

Hell, I knew I was good at math. Math is easy. It's just numbers. I like it all right, but that's not what I was angling at. He'd just hit me in the head with a bag of Stephen King books, It maybe, or Pet Cemetery.

"I'd really like to be a writer," I said to him.

"I'm not saying you can't, but you need to major in something we can invest in. Literature is a bad investment for this endowment."

"What does that mean?"

"It means, Eric, that if you major in literature, I'll stop funding your scholarship."

Hells on a stick, that got my attention. I was a poor white boy scraping through college on scholarships and work-study and loans. If I lost the scholarship, it was game-over.

The word FUCK went through my mind, but I didn't say it. I knew he was bluffing, and he was bluffing (I assume), but I got the point.

"All right," I said. "What should I major in?"

"Have you thought about engineering?"

I left the bank, and I left town, and I drove home. Home was Austin since I stayed, keeping my job, and so I went back to Austin and up to my brand-new adviser and said, "I can't do literature. I have to change my major."

I can't even remember if the adviser was a he or a she. It only lasted a couple of weeks, such a short-lived and fucking BEAUTIFUL relationship. I felt for those few weeks like I had wrapped God around my finger and He was doing MY bidding.

One of my senior gifts, from high school, was from my Aunt, the one I consider the grandmotherest of my relatives. She bought me a Brother Word Processor. I wrote this story for her and she was kind enough to tell me it was a great story. I don't remember what all I wrote on that thing, but you had to write a paragraph and then print it, something like that. You couldn't write but maybe 500 words at a time, but at least you could edit before you typed. I went through a lot of ribbon and I have no idea what I wrote, but I fucking wrote by God.

I lugged that thing up to college my Freshman year, left my drum set at home but I took my Brother Word Processor, and I banged on it every once in a while. I submitted to Playboy. They turned me down, which didn't surprise me, because like any good writer, I know and accept that I SUCK.

I hacked my way through that Freshman year in Austin, and at the end of it knew science was a good gig and all, but it was the Brother Word Processor that I looked forward to, not my HP calculator.

I was tried and tested, and I found my gig. It wasn't math. It was writing. It always was writing. Always from the beginning of always, and when the teachers read my story, or the girls passed around my stories, or people cried when I wrote, there I was with God on my finger again, a white-robed ringlet nodding up at me saying, "That's what I created these fingers for, boy. That's what I created you for!"

And I get to the bank and the scholarship benefactor, and I'm told it just isn't the right thing, forget your talking finger-God.

So I said FUCK YALL! and dropped my Lit major. Romeo just dumped Julie, baby! End of story!

I had already scoped out Chemistry, Organic Chemistry (which I loved, but didn't want to major in it), Biology, Zoology, and the other softer sciences.

So I went a few buildings down on campus and rang up the math prof. We talked about actuarial science, which is statistics and I still love statistics, but I didn't want to major in it. It sounded too easy, actually, and I was good at math, by God, I needed to use my talent, not squander it analyzing stats for insurance companies!

I tried physics, but that science has always seemed somewhat impractical to me. You learn so much about things that may or may not be true, that you probably can't prove, that nobody will believe, that are untrue not long after you learn them, but trust me, there really are black holes we just can't see them. I'm a PHYSICIST, BY GOD! I JUST SHAVED SHRODINGER'S CAT WITH OCCUM'S RAZOR!

Yeah, whatever.

So I went over to the engineering department. Civil, Mechanical, Aeronautical (one of my current characters is an Aero Eng), they didn't sound tough enough, and so I kept on a-moving.

I finally whittled it down to two majors: Electrical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering.

Me and electricity never have been tight, but my whole family is in the oil field, so I chose Chemical Engineering.

Plus, everyone said Electrical and Chemical Engineering were the hardest majors on campus, and to be honest, the EEs at work still raise their eyebrows when I tell them I'm a Chem E, sort of a Holy Shit look, and then they expand my personal space a few feet.

I figured Chemical Engineering would suffice, and it would use my aforementioned God-given math skills to my benefactor's liking, and so I called him up, told him of my change in major, and he said, "That's more like it."

"Fuck yeah, it is!" I didn't say that, but I thought it.

And so here I am, a Chemical Engineer who has NEVER quit writing.

I am a writer. I always tell people that first, after a father I am a writer. I work days as an engineer, but I am a WRITER.

And when I saw that scene in the Rowling story, where her dad said, "Writing is too impractical. You're too smart. You should major in something like math."

Man, I broke down and dabbed my eyes with the Pomeranian's belly. They only have eight nipples, you know, not ten like big dogs, or at least that's all I could find on her and I just checked again.

Anyway, we've all had those moments, haven't we, where people say, DON'T BE A WRITER!

"Sure," they say, "go ahead and write. I love your stories and all, but don't quit your day job."

Even writers say that. Family, friends, everyone.

Because that would be so impractical, wouldn't it. People don't even read anymore.

How about you? Have you ever been discouraged from being a writer? Do you have God on your finger, or is He shaking his head because you are doing something you were not meant to do?

Thank you for reading this post. It was somewhat of a torrent for me.

And don't quit writing. For the love of finger-loving God, don't quit writing. Not now, not ever.

- Eric

Have you met Mr. MacGuffin?

2011-07-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

(Image from http://www.macguffinpodcast.com/)

I learned something recently when my publisher beta-read my piece and said this:

"The MacGuffin side story about other Percy needs to be seen and not talked about."

Now that sentence didn't make a bit of sense and I had to look up MacGuffin. I thought it meant buffoon or prankster or some such, which still didn't make sense.

Here is what Wiki says about Mr. MacGuffin:

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin

I always called Mr. MacGuffin my story question, the thing that propelled the reader from the beginning to the middle and on to the end.

As Wiki said, Mr. MacGuffin is that Maltese Falcon of your story, that thing everyone is focused around obtaining.

I've been intuitively adding MacGuffins to my stories, but now I have a name for him!

Or her. Or it.

In this case, my latest story, working title Out of the Great Black Nothing, I have the MacGuffin of the other Percy.

With that in mind, I beefed up my first scene and added scenes and inserted details here and there.

I put a name on my story question and it jumped to life! I feel like Shelley's Dr. Frank when he finally bottled lighting.

Until I put a NAME on it, the MacGuffin had no face, no identity, just an implied existence that I found hard to press under my thumb and make it BEG to be read.

I rotated my story around this point, the story question, that thing driving every character in the story to act the way they act. It is the central motivation, that ~thing~, the piece of Kryptonite, the Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth, that mystery and tickle and itch that every character is killing to scratch! It is the propulsion that keeps the reader turning!

It is the MacGuffin.

Thanks to my publisher Mr. Debrin Case for educating me and introducing me to a term I had somehow all these years overlooked.

I now share that knowledge with you, in case you missed.

He extends his hand, Mr. MacGuffin. Take it. He's a good guy.

- Eric

Asking WHY: A Vampire's Dichotomy

2011-07-11T04:00:00.000-07:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the difference between smart and genius is the asking of WHY.

Why why why.

Smart people know how to do something. It's the genius who understands why it's done that way.

So I've been wondering why it is that vampires are the sensual monsters, the sexual killers. They suck your blood and that's downright gruesome, but for some reason we still want to schlep em.

And my why-thinking has brought me to this, which may not be all that original of a thought, but it's where I arrived. Vampires are sexy murderers owing to their dichotomous nature.

See, the vampire kills you, but gently. That's a contradiction. Many times the male (historically the vamps are overwhelmingly male) seems downright gentlemanly. Ma'am, he says, I would like to please suck your blood.

He then takes the woman in his arms, kisses her a few minutes, and then sticks his fangs in her carotid and gets his rut.

But it goes deeper than that, which is where I think most people stop.

See, the vamp also has fangs. They're sharp and gruesome. Werewolves and all sorts of monsters have fangs, and even for the vamp the fangs are intimidating, scary, and always at the fright-scene the vamp reveals the fangs before the scream.

But unlike most monsters -- say, a werewolf with its hairy maw, or the freak-monsters with its gruesome visage -- the vampire's fangs are housed in a succulent mouth, perky lips, inside a beautiful face.

Do you see the dichotomy there? Terror inside beauty.

It's the same with their claws, which the vamp usually grows as demanded by need. Sharp claws, but soft hands and gentle fingers.

Total dichotomy.

They remain young and beautiful in many renditions, and in other manifestations are allowed to morph between beauty and beast.

Often the bad-guy vamp, if there is one, is old, wrinkled, and sexually undesirable. Why do we do this, authors I mean, why do we make him (usually a him-vamp king) so old and wrinkled and gnarly?

It's to remove the beauty of him, to make him undesirable, to squash that dichotomous nature and make him all monster and no beauty.

Now where am I going with all this? I've been thinking of vamp-whys for a while, now, because I want to create a monster like a vampire, but who is not a vampire. I want the desirability and sexual attraction invoked by the vampire myth, but for my own unique monster, my own creation. Nobody wants to mount and ride Frankenstein's jock.

But what if Frank had been built from perfect body parts and groomed to be a gentleman?

See how that works? Even Hannibal Lector in his grotesque insanity maintained a strong sex appeal, with his understanding of Claire and his succulent and classical high-class behavior.

Me, I'm making women-monsters. I look back at my work and see sexually desirable women doing much of my killing. Weird how that works, a man's mind bent on finding the perfect villain, that perfect spider who satisfies and eats me afterward.

- Eric

First Final Draft Complete!

2011-07-07T16:41:00.000-07:00

Ah, I am ending the blogatus. Hiatus. That's what I mean. A hiatus to blogging, a blogatus, get it?

I've been focused on work, baby, work, wife, work, kids, writing, work, house, vacation, and work.

Holy crap. Even on vacation I have to work. I'm working right now, and then off this weekend on another short jog into Oklahoma to drop off my boy at summer camp.

But but but but BUT!

But I finished my first final draft. It is actually the 5th version of the completed text, and the 18th version overall.

Now it's in for edit, and the revisions will increase all the more. I've looked at that piece so many times I think I hate it now. Watch the same movie twenty times in a row. That's how it feels. Ugh. A break will be nice.

I hope to visit your blogs soon. I miss everyone and as always regret the neglect. I hope summer finds you all well and good.

By the way, I am at present at a trade show, in my lonely booth, alone, drinking some free beer and abusing the free wireless access. That's how I roll.

- Eric

I am CAPTAIN OBLIVIOUS!

2011-05-31T08:57:00.000-07:00

I am Captain Oblivious. I was last night reminded of this when I dreamed a little dream.

My dream-wife, nothing at all like my life-wife other than they looked the same and shared a name, said to me, I've been seeing other people.

Other people? said Dream-Eric. You mean like, more than one?

Yes, dream-wife said.

She then began naming Asian guys, because apparently dream-wife had a thing for Phongs and Wongs, and I stopped her after the fifth Tang and pointed and said, Get out.

She left, and Dream-Eric got plowed and fast-forwarded through a few dream-days, with dream-wife texting these coded messages that had to be read in the mirror upside-down, numbers only, things like 07734 (hello) and I love you and whatnot.

I woke next to life-wife and didn't wake her because she was tired and had gotten up earlier with the baby, who for some reason had been great all day and wanted to cry last night. I blame the Tex-Mex for that dream.

I was reminded of that big red O with a yellow middle against a royal-blue back painted squarely on my chest. I am Captain Oblivious.

She could cheat and I would never know. She wouldn't, of course. I believe that in my heart, and I'm not worried about it. Like I said, blame the Tex Mex because I ain't the jealous type. We're good and it was just a dream, but it was one of those vision-vivid dreams that really shake you, if you get me.

I've been cheated twice -- that I know of -- and both times I stared shocked as if suddenly realizing that cup I'd been guzzling was full of bugs, a minor detail that in my greed I had overlooked.

I even argued with a doctor once, my freshman year in college. Let me relate this story.

I'm not sure what it is, I said. They just showed up one day.

I dropped my drawers and showed her the damage. Looked like zits all along my crotch.

Doc said, You have mollusca.

What the hell is that? I said.

It's an STD. Very common and curable. Kids sometime get them on the playground because they're so contagious.

How the hell did I get an STD? I've been with my girlfriend since high school. I'm a college freshman, she's a college junior, that's like five years, and she's the only one I've had sex with. How can I get an STD?

Doc shrugged her shoulders.

I said, I haven't had sex with anyone else. Could it have been from the showers? I live in the dorm.

No, the doc said. You get it from having sex. This was transmitted sexually.

But I haven't had sex with anyone but my girlfriend, ever. How could I get an STD?

No idea, Doc said.

Thinking back, I'm pretty sure she was trying not to laugh at that big fucking O on my chest, as Captain Oblivious beat his arms and flew off the nearest rooftop into oncoming traffic covered in flaming rags while gagging on a piece of overcooked pork chop.

I am Captain Oblivious.

Have you ever been Captain O? Have you ever suffered Tex-Mex reflux-driven hallucinations late at night so disturbing that when you got up to urinate, you were forced to sit down because your hands were shaking?

- Eric

When are you a writer?

2011-05-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

The answer: Always.

You are always a writer. I alluded to this concept a couple of posts ago, where I mentioned you should be yourself always in all things you do.

I brought up fighting, but the criss-cross paths going through my mind looped in other topics, namely writing, but also things like behavior in public, in relationships, and with your family and friends.

For instance, I used to post quite a bit on dating websites, back when I was dating. I always wrote to people that I behaved BADLY on the first date. It was a habit I formed to quickly weed out women I call ~fish~. A fish, see, is one who is slinky under the water and gorgeous and beautiful and calm, but soon as you break the water to grab her, she fins the shit out of you and scoots away.

I don't like fishy women, and so I weeded them out early by being myself on the first date. I say I behave badly, but what I mean is I would do stuff like tell a dirty joke, curse, drink if I wanted, and if God or politics had the obnoxisity to poke up their ugly heads on that first date, I played Whack-A-Mole and banged the shit out of the topic until she knew all my views left-right from heaven to hell.

It worked, too. Had I done that in my early years, I would probably have weeded out my first (ex) wife. She's not a bad woman, but she's more prudish than I am.

My (second and most-excellent) wife is far less prudish. She is, in fact, very like-minded to me, and on our second date we found ourselves in Austin getting tattoos together. I can't sum it up better than that. We're both crazy impulsive complete opposites, a high school dropout (her) married to the class valedictorian (me).

Whodathunk?

Anyway, back on topic, I asked, When are you a writer?

The answer is ALWAYS!

I try to rope it in at work, especially if I get too flamboyant, but sometimes I let it get the best of me and I send out an email that has some Eric-isms in it, or some pithy and cheeky way of stating some point.

My old boss used to try to edit my emails before I sent them out. He said I was too crass. I let him edit a few, but he killed them and so I cut him out and did my thing, and eventually switched to a new boss because, as Homey the Clown would say: Homey don't play that! Whack!

Where's my loaded tube sock when I need it?

My next boss also said I was crass, but he only asked that I tone it down.

My next boss hasn't said much, and in fact I think he likes it.

The common thing that ALL of my bosses have said, and many of my co-workers, is this: Eric, you should be a writer!

On the websites where I posted: Eric (Saul), you should be a writer!

And I say always: I am.

When they aren't complaining about the crass-icity of my emails, bosses and co-workers respond with messages reading: Well-written (without the dash).

I've even had people ask if I really wrote that, or copied it from somewhere.

Last week we had a discussion about proving a null hypothesis. A customer and a business group asked me to prove we do not require a test to ensure our product is a quality product.

I responded with a Bigfoot analogy. I said, paraphrased because I can't find the email:

You're asking me to prove Bigfoot does NOT exist. The only way to do this is to head into the woods and look for footprints and show a large area of land without evidence of Bigfoot. The question is: How big of a plat do I need to cover before you believe there is no Bigfoot?

It's a good analogy, and it stuck, and now it's being latched onto and repeated because it is a memorable way of understanding the problem with proving a null hypothesis true. I can only disprove Bigfoot does not exist, by finding him, but I cannot prove he does not exist. See?

The point is, I'm a writer always in all things I do, and that includes goofy emails at work and home and crazy posts online both here and facebook.

Are you a Writer always? Or should I say Artist. Do people look at your work and say: You should be a writer/poet/songwriter/singer/painter/photographer!

If they do, maybe you should listen.

- Eric

Find your own light

2011-05-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

You'll never see what I see. You can look and I can describe, but you'll never see what I see.

You can hear what I hear. Sound is nothing more than a pulse of air slamming into the side of your head. Hear away.

You can smell what I smell and taste what I taste. No difference in those two senses, really. You smell shit, or you taste shit, it's because little particles of shit landed on your buds and stimulated them and yep, that's shit. Smell flowers, that's pollen. Taste her perfume, that's skunk piss, and so what because her neck was salt-sweaty anyway just like the rest of her, and you'll taste saltier parts later.

And touch? What about touch? Same reaction is what we all have. Prick a finger, pull away. Finger a prick, lean toward. We aren't unique. We all share the same touch, don't we, and wasn't that a brilliant twist of words!

Those other senses are trite. It's sight that matters. Sound doesn't travel through The Great Black Nothing. You can't taste another universe, or smell the Milky Way, or hear the moon. I suppose you can feel the sun, but let me stop you right there -- you feel the sun's light.

And it's the light you see. We can see it all, and I see it my way, and you see it yours, and you aren't allowed to look through my little window. Because every time you try, I'm gonna shut my eyes and say, Find your own damned window! This one's taken.

- Eric

Emotional Pacivism: Be yourself always in all things you do

2011-05-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

All right, you knuckers, I'm going to wax and wane and pine philosophical for a moment. Bear with me. I haven't gotten around to posting on your blogs, either, so also, please bear with me. I'll get stop by soon and post something inappropriate that embarrasses you in front of your followers.

Anyway, on with the post.

I recently tried to be someone I am not, namely in a fight with my ex-wife. Why is this bloggerly? It's because I broke one of my own sacred laws, and that is to be an emotional pacifist.

I don't understand emotional fights. You know the ones I'm talking about, where you slug away and launch personal attacks that have nothing to do with the topic being discussed.

For instance, isn't it funny how you are suddenly a bad lover toward the end of the relationship. Or that you're somehow sexually inadequate. Or ugly. Or fat. Or stupid. Or a pussy and a bad father and terrible person all around.

I've been called everything except a good and decent man.

I'll fight physically, and in fact I've been in quite a few fights, even a knife fight once -- which isn't nearly as fun as it sounds -- and I'll debate math and data and business topics. I'm not a pacifist at all. I don't run from fights. I'm just an ~emotional~ pacifist.

I never have seen the sense in digging into someone personally when it is completely unrelated to the argument.

But I got into a tizzy with my ex-wife, and (snip because that was an inappropriate rant). We fight, and by fighting I mean she screams and I listen silently, and all I hear is blah blah blah Eric blah blah Eric blah blah blah.

That one's for you, Tracy!

I don't like to fight emotionally, but this time I dug into her, hard, hoping it might make her think twice next time, sort of the way you might bite a dog to teach it not to bite. I did it via email, and even though she's well-written and well-spoken, the written word is my turf and I made it hurt.

This was way out of my comfort zone, and it bothers me not what she said, which she said hurtful things but I'm immune to that, but what I said. That bothers me. I said things I had never said before and I've known this woman for over fifteen years.

But what can I do? I don't know how to fight those fights. How the hell do people release angst like that besides beer and a furious amount of masturbation?

Point is, be yourself. If you are an emotional pacifist, like me, let it be. Someone wants to scream at you, turn red in the face, dig at you, let it bounce and go do your thing later. So you're a pussy. Big fucking deal.

If you're on the other side, and you're an emotional vampire, suck away. My neck is yours because I'm bled dry, trust me.

My wife, my now-wife, early in our relationship, she tried some of that shit with me. I took it. She called me a pussy, which is always a strange and humorous insult coming from a woman. I put her shit in storage and kicked her out and she has fought well since (this was back in 2006 or 2007).

She brought that up to me last night, said, Remember what you did to me!

I said, Yeah. It worked, didn't it. Remember when you locked me outside in my underwear?

She said, Yeah.

Good times.

- Eric

E-Reader: A Cost of Ownership Analysis

2011-05-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

Yet another e-book post, but in this case, I'll show some math.

I'm still debating the e-book purchase, and still unable to make it happen. See, I don't understand the math.

For example, let's say I want to read These Dark Things by Jan Merete Weiss. I picked that book only because it popped up when I looked up e-books on Amazon as a top seller.

Here's the cost:
e-book: $10.00
Amazon: $8-15, depending on which you go with. I buy a lot of used books, personally.

But now you have the added expense of the e-reader. You can spend anywhere from $120 to $300, so let's assume you get the cheapo and go with the $120.

These Dark Things ran you $120+tax+$10

Hardcover it ran you $8-15, depending on which you go with. I buy a lot of used books.

If I lose my e-reader, or get it wet at the pool, or drop it in the crapper because I am a potty-reader, read until my legs go to sleep and then stand up and recirculate and sit back down, then I lose all my books.

Any of that happens with a book, I lose only that one book, not my whole damned library and movies and music I downloaded!

I can't let my brother have my book when I'm done with it. We swap a lot.

I guess the advantage of an e-reader is it gives you access to $0.99 books, and your entire library is in your hip pocket.

Certainly, though, cost of ownership of the e-reader is far beyond what you get with a book.

If you want the actual break-even point for the number of books where you reach a break-even point, then here is the equation:

n = eR / (hb - eb)

where
n = number of books purchased in either venue
eR = cost of e-reader
hb = cost of hardback book (or paperback)
eb = cost of e-book

For instance, let's use the below numbers:

eR = $200 + tax = $218 (medium-quality e-book)
hb = $10 (median price for hardback or paperback)
eb = $8 (use a fudge-factor that suggests e-books are about $2 less than the same printed book, which is NOT accurate)

We get a break-even point of

n = 218 / (10-8) = 218 / 2 = 109 books

So you'll need to read over 100 books to break even with your e-reader, and that is making the BAD assumption that the same e-book costs less than the same printed book.

Plus, I am not factoring in the $0.99 books you'll buy as e-books that are not available in print.

My guess is you will never break even with an e-reader. E-readers will never be cheaper than printed books, not at today's price.

If you check Amazon, you'll see little if any separation in price for the same book, and in many cases, you can find a less-expensive hardback, gently used or from overstock.

Example from Amazon's Kindle Homepage defaults:

The Fiery Trail: $13-17 hardback, $15 Kindle
Washington, A Life: $15-23 hardback, $20 Kindle

I could go on, but I won't. Do your own research.

Furthermore, if we use MUSIC as a prior example, you'll note that music CD (printed) still costs the same as electronic music downloads. Music still runs you $0.99 to $1.50 per song.

I'm sticking with print, and downloading e-books to my PC-Kindle (free application), if I should need to read an unpublished $0.99 e-book.

Of course, I still buy CDs, and who the fuck still buys CDs.

How about you? I know many of you purchased e-readers. Do you actually see any cost-benefit, or are you happy with the convenience despite the higher cost-of-ownership?

- Eric

WiP me into Climax, you dirty MC!

2011-05-10T17:54:00.000-07:00

Yeah, if you're a writer, these mean different things than if you're a non-writer.

At least as a writer I know not to climax too early! I drag it out all foreshadowy and stuff, get the whole character arc going before I ram it home.

I find pinching the inside of my thigh helps if I get too antsy.

Now I'm gonna sit in my closet, in my underpants, drinking beer as I stroke my Asus.

Wish me luck. I'm almost finished!

- Eric

Why be insecure?

2011-05-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

My editor/publisher pointed this out, and I wonder if I'm the only one who suffers from it.

Eric, he said, your short stories feel like they're ~going~ somewhere. But your novels fall flat. You need to bring that same voice to your longer pieces.

And so I'm trying in my latest WIP to do just that -- bring out my short-story (and bloggerly) voice.

Still, there's a roadblock there. It's an insecurity. I have moments of clarity and scenes that pop out in the right voice, but other scenes are flat and balmy and tasteless as lipstick on a cow.

I recently read Gaiman's Anansi Boys. I read that book really, really, REALLY slow, and I read every word of every chapter and the forwards and afts.

I read it all because his voice is so playful, and for years I've tried to be a "serious" writer for my novels, but unleash the beast on the shorts.

Unleash the beast on the shorts. That's sorta funny.

For instance, I wrote a short piece entitled The Devil Gave Me Autumn in my flippiest voice, and one of my readers, and I've had a few say this, mentioned this story was the most Eric of the stories she read.

That's your voice, she said.

And it's this voice, my blogger voice, my hee haw yee haw voice.

But then I read McCarthy and think, I can write like that!

And I can, in small bursts, but it's hard to maintain that droll voice throughout.

I read King and think, I can write like that!

And I can, but his overly-detailed scenes and 200kw tomes elude me.

Elude has only one L, by the way. Inside joke.

I read Gaiman and think, I can write like that!

And I can, and I can sustain it, but after a while I feel too clownish and insecure and start checking my zipper, yep, still zipped up, and do I have a booger, and gads, I think I better delete all this crap before someone reads it, eh.

I don't know. I've been writing for YEARS, and still finding my voice.

I'm wondering: Am I the only one? Do you question yourself as you write, try to still that voice that says, LET ME WRITE!

Do you say, No, no, the world's not ready for you. Hush up little voice and write like they say write.

- Eric

Some Zombie Haikus

2011-05-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

For the Daily SotA Zombie Haiku Contest, I present some of my entries.

What a fun contest!

Eric's Zombie Haikus

~~~

My left arm tore off
My guts fell out of their sack
Just another day

~~~

(multiple haiku poem)

My lips are yours, dear
My chest and all of my heart
But I keep the brains

My eyes are yours, dear
My lungs breathe only for you
But I keep the brains

My arms are yours, dear
You may take them when you leave
But I keep the brains

You have all of me
Least what's left after the fall
But I keep the brains

~~~

If you need a hand
I give you one willingly
I never liked it

~~~

It flies out of me
The life that once gave me breath
My eyes still seeing

~~~

I keep both my arms
Beneath my bed protecting
I cannot reach them

~~~

I ate my girlfriend
I do not mean the good way
I mean I ~ate~ her

~~~

You have to admit this is a great prompt! Come on, let's hear a Zombie Haiku! Have you submitted yet?

- Eric

Zombie Haiku Contest!

2011-05-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

Your Daily Sign of the Apocalypse is hosting a ZOMBIE HAIKU contest!

See their entry stuff at the link above. Now this is a fun contest I can sink my teeth into, at least the brainy parts.

- Eric

Z is for Zachry Disease

2011-04-30T02:19:00.000-07:00

And to end the A-Z torture fest, I'll close with a joke.

A woman goes to a doctor and says, Doc, something's wrong with me.

He's a Chinese doctor and he says, Rady, what wrong with you?

Men don't like me, she says.

Ah, ah, I see, says the doctor. Say Ah.

She says Ah.

Rook over here, he says.

She looks.

Now turn around, he says, and bend over.

She turns around and bends over and the doctor says, Ah, I see probrem, now. You have Zachry Disease.

Zachry Disease? the lady says. What's that?

The doctor says, It when your head rook zachry rike your ass.

- Eric

Y is for Yes! We have no bananas.

2011-04-29T02:18:00.000-07:00

This was my favorite drum solo, this song. I can't find it online though, at least the marching band version with the rocking drumline. You'll have to use your imagination.

I leave you instead with Black Betty, which for some reason I've been hearing a lot lately. That has to mean something, but only God or the Devil knows what. Probably the latter.

Yes! We have no bananas, was my favorite because there wasn't a drum score, and since I was first chair drummer, I got to write the music and play the tri-toms (the three drums) and we really jammed out, at least that's what we and the tuba players thought.

YES! This post is lame.

One of the tuba players laughed at me once. I threw a drumstick down her tuba and it got stuck and we had to take her tuba apart right before we marched onto the field.

We wrote a Christmas concert drum solo that brought the audience to their feet. I'm not sure that had ever been done. Freakin rocked.

Once me and one of the other snares traded off for about 30 minutes in a continuous drum roll because we began the National Anthem and the flag wasn't ready. It's a buzz roll, not a two-stroke, and we buzzed until our forearms ached, nodded at the other, and he took over. Once you start the roll, even though the director flagged us to stop, you can't stop.

Because you do NOT stop the Anthem. Ever. I mean, you don't stop fighting, do you?

Another time the band director pissed us off, the drummers, by saying we were too loud. I told the snares to play a click-march onto the field rather than our normal cadence -- which I wrote, and which freaking JAMMED, even the black guys thought so, even the black guys from the OTHER BANDS asked us where we got our cadences, during contests after our drumline beat their ASS and they couldn't believe a white boy could play them tri-toms like that, because I embellished every single song I played while all these other jerkies followed the music sheet without modification (lame), and we didn't play those stupid hand-writ cadences the director gave us -- and the band director got really pissed but never again said we played too loud.

Because really, can drums ever be too loud? Like saying a woman is too sexy or you've had too much beer and sex and rock and roll. It ain't possible, because more is more is more.

I would've made a helluva a drummer, folks. One helluva a drummer. I tell my wife to forget that lead guitar wannabe lamo. The sexiest guy in the band is ALWAYS the drummer. I forget which band it was, but they said they went through three drummers. The first one kept stealing the women from the lead singer. The second tore up the tour bus.

And who is the most memorable Muppet? Why, it's ANIMAL, of course! Want WOMAN! The drummer boy in chains and spiked collar, because aren't we all!

The KORN drummer plays shirtless, always. That's how I always said I'd play and that's why I stopped drumming. It was too much drug for me, the crack cocaine of life to which I would be addicted and never, never, never ever stop drumming.

Naked women, sorry, you are not so beautiful as a spread-open trap set into which I penetrate and gyrate in endless orgasm. I will give up one for the other every time without temptation because drums are always willing and become angrier and louder with the taking.

Now you know.

End post.

You have any band stories? Come on, one time, at band camp...

- Eric

(That last part is for my poetic friends, Annie and Tracy. It's poetry, yes, deserving of props, yo?)

X is the Magical Letter!

2011-04-28T02:14:00.000-07:00

X is the most magical letter. No other letter can do what X does.

You aren't O-Large, you're X-Large.

Combine that with the magical NUMBER -- 3 -- and you get XXX-Large, or XXX rated, or x-tra x-tra x-tra!

Don't like Christ in your holidays? Call it Xmas.

How about at work, where we call it x-section rather than cross-section, or txr instead of transistor.

Want to dump your lover? Go ahead. Now they are your ex!

Hold your arms in an X. Go ahead. It's a symbol of power and it feels powerful, doesn't it.

How about an X-Ray, or X-Ray vision?

Malcolm X?

What's the most common mathematical symbol? Yep, you guessed it: x

How does a pirate mark his treasure? Not with a W, because X marks the spot!

Want to cover a deadman's eyes? We don't use A or B, we draw death with an X.

Need help? Call the X-Men.

X-acto knife. X-Factor. Generation X. The X-Files.

X X X! It's the magical letter.

What other X-terms can you come up with?

- Eric

W is for Water Mocassin

2011-04-27T02:16:00.000-07:00

I have two water moccasin stories. The first is short. My son saved my life when he was about four years old. We were hopping the creek behind my apartment here in Dallas, and I about near stepped right on one coiled up under a weed. I was in flip flops and wouldn't it have been ironic after all these years to get snake bit in the city!

The other story is my brother's, and I plagiarize without his permission since that's what brother's do.

I mentioned our creek in C is for Creek. It ran along the northwest side of our property and was filled with frogs and fish and snakes that ate those frogs and fish, the most common being the water moccasin, also known as a cotton-mouth.

We always carried sticks or a machete to whack the snakes with. I don't know how many we killed, but it wasn't enough because they still swarmed every time we went down there.

When Bro and I were about nine and ten, third and fourth grade or so, this little guy from Chicago moved into town. He was pretty unlucky to move into our haunt and he didn't last but a year or two before he moved away.

Never seen a snake, the boy said.

We told him we'd never seen a taxicab, and we all exchanged dumb what-the-fuck looks.

We'll show you a snake, Bro said. We grabbed the boy and our troop of six or so boys led the way with Bro in the front down through the pasture, by that big oak out by itself for no good reason other than everything else had been slain to clear the pasture, and down to the creek.

We walked the bank for a while tipping logs and poking sticks into holes until we finally saw one bobbing its black head in a creek pool. The creek was anywhere from a few inches to a foot where it was running, but in a few of the turns it pooled up to about mid-chest on a boy. This was one of those places.

Let's find another snake, Bro said. He was carrying the snake machete.

I want that one, Chicago said. He didn't realize how big that snake was under the water because of its little head, but we all knew. He had a big head. There was lots of body under that water.

Fine, Bro said. He waded into the pool and whacked that water moccasin in the head.

A snake in the water can't be cut, though. He sunk the snake, and a few seconds later that black head bobbed up behind Bro and got another whack. The snake couldn't get out because the creek was pretty well dammed up, and the far shore was a steep bank, and the near shore was full of boys screaming and waving their snake-beaters.

Bro finally got tired of hitting water and looped that water moccasin around the machete and hoisted him up on the bank.

Don't let him get away, Bro said. Pop had said that once when he found a copper head under the house (trailer) and flung it out. Boys, step on it, don't let it get away.

Yeah, fuck that. Bro and I didn't listen to Pop then, and nobody listened to Bro now. That water moccasin was plenty pissed off and it's a good thing they don't have a long strike radius. He was hissing and showing his mouth and striking and we were backing up and trying to hit him with our sticks that were suddenly way too short.

Bro walked up out of the water like he was going to stomp Tokyo. He had that adrenal rush we lacked, from being challenged by some know-nothing city boy, and being in the water with that snake. He walked up behind that thing and whack-whack-whack, sunk it into the mud, couldn't cut through it, and grabbed it with the machete and tossed it farther up onto dry land. The snake was stunned by then and Bro marched up there and finished the job.

Chicago might as well have seen flying monkeys from Mars eating frozen pickles on bicycles. We all thought that boy was going to breathe himself to death. This was a typical creek outing for us, what we called An Adventure, and this was just another water moccasin in a long line of dead snakes.

One of us pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed the head between the eyes. They can strike, you know, even when they have no neck. We pried open its mouth and showed Chicago the fangs and everybody slapped Bro on the back and said we would have done the same thing, which was a damned lie.

That's a big snake, Chicago said. He held that head up and looked at it and twirled it on that knife, one of America's deadliest and most aggressive pit vipers this side of a rattlesnake.

I've seen bigger, Bro said.

Do you have any snake stories? We all have one...

- Eric

PS, I should add this: A few years ago we found a ground rattler in our garage. My wife insisted we catch it and release it and that's what we did. I can't remember the last time I killed a snake, or for that matter, any sort of animal except this rat I found two summers ago in my office. I killed him with a golf club. My wife got mad, but I told her that rat was sick, or the dogs had already gotten a hold of him. He didn't run or scamper but just sat there. Normal rats don't to that.

V is for Vick's Vapor Rub

2011-04-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

Vick's Vapor Rub is NOT a sexual lubricant.

I know what you're thinking. We're out of Vaseline, and Vick's looks like Vaseline, and the warming sensation might add to the experience.

It doesn't add to the experience. It burns for a really long time.

- Eric

PS, on the same note, if it's your job to cut the jalapenos for the cookout, be sure to wash your hands before you pee.

U is for Upside Down

2011-04-25T02:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote this poem for my first son when he was a toddler. He loved being carried around upside down, and I read this poem and think about how I used to carry him by the feet and how much that would break my shoulders now.

I Am Right Side Up

I am right side up
Not up
And the world is upside down

I walk by on my hands
Not feet
And I walk all over town

Above my head
There's green green grass
And dirt with dirty worms

Below my feet
I see the sky
Blue with orange orange sun

The trees grow down
The weeds grow down
The birds fly under my toes

The cars fly high
The bikes fly high
The planes fly way way low

And the people walk on their feet
Not me
While I walk on my hands

They stop and point
And I point back
At least as best I can

Cuz my hands are by their feet
You see
I need my fingers to walk

I point back with my tiny toes
Who knows
Why the people just gawk

Maybe it's cuz my eyes are high
Not low
And I've such red red cheeks

Maybe it's cuz I look
So strange
When you're walking on your feet

But everyone looks so strange
To me
As I must look right now

Cuz I am right side up
You see
And the world is upside down

I know, it isn't perfect. It stammers in points, but I didn't want to edit it. Like so many things I write, I cherish the imperfections because they feel like me.

- Eric

T is for Tallywhacker

2011-04-23T03:00:00.000-07:00

He waved them over to the monkey bars and pulled out his tallywhacker and showed it to the girls who were forming a tight circle to block the playground lady's view.

See, he said, and they all leaned closer. It looks like THAT!

I was in kindergarten. I ran laps and they called my mom and had a ~very~ serious talk with me in the far corner, beneath the fat lady's shade tree, the two of them breaking their lawn chairs and converting the sinner back to Jesus. I remember it pretty clear, and I bet so do the girls. I never confessed that we all pissed in the sandbox.

You probably thought people never actually did that, didn't you. Well, I did, and if you read my R post, you'll see that my wife once locked me out of the house in my underwear. It was because I had stepped into the back yard to whizz and she got miffed and locked the door.

Hard to keep such a curious critter bottled up, I guess, even under threat of expulsion.

What other names do you have for a man's or woman's pink parts, bodily functions, and so forth? You ever flash either intentionally or un?

- Eric

S is for Silence

2011-04-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

Watch. I can drown you out with silence. Ready?

Get it?

- Eric

R is for ROMANCE!

2011-04-21T03:26:00.000-07:00

Lemme give you a little taste of what it's like to be on my side of the court, the ball, the game.

Let's start in fifth grade. I was "going with" a girl in my brother's grade, a year younger, and I never spoke with her. I bought her a sucker pop each Friday and Bro gave it to her. A bag of spiders over my head wouldn't have scared me more than that girl scared me.

In fact, I would have taken the bag of spiders.

My freshman year in high school a junior girl made me her Pet Freshman. We dated into college, about six years, and it's my fault we aren't married.

Lord how I fuck up relationships. Ever see Tommy Boy? Girls are my butter rolls, and I shred em to hell.

I got hooked on another girl for about a year and a half. I got obsessed. Never been like that, but there it is, and I was nuts. College and the pressure of working and going to school and trying to get into med school all contributed. One night I gave her a dozen roses. She sold them on 6th Street in Austin for a $1 buck apiece.

Lived with a New York Jewish girl. She was something else, still is. She used to throw tortillas in the restaurant.

I got out of college, met my first wife at a bar -- which is how I met all my women -- and I fell in love with her way more than she did me. She wouldn't give me her phone number, but her sister, older by 6 years, thought I was "adorable" and called out her phone number over her shoulder as my future-wife was dragging her ass out of the bar.

Little known to her I was the phone number guy. Girls never wrote down their numbers. I remembered them, even remembered em for my buddies. I know. Freak of nature Rain Man, but that's how I rolled. I couldn't drink enough beer to forget her number and I didn't want to.

Married. A kid. Few years later divorced because I'm OCD and she's normal in the head.

Let's not relive my early thirties. I'm not sure I can. I'd die if I tried because I almost died at the time.

Met my now-wife at a bar.

You wanna dance? I asked her. Two-stepping Dallas bar, me in my hat, her in some California wanna-be beach hat and looking mighty West Coast and nobody likes them Westies out in Dallas. She's a Vegas girl.

Anyway, I said, You wanna dance?

No, she said. Don't know how.

She waved me off and with that waving-off hand I grabbed her and dragged her to the dance floor saying, Come on, chicken, I'll teach you to dance.

The next night we were in Austin getting tattoos, been together almost six years, now, and have a kid (who's doing great, by the way!). God in Heaven I love that little girl. She's a nutcase sometimes, locked me outside in my underwear and gave me every bit of the hell I gave her, but I tell her often that guys should ALWAYS go for the crazy bitch.

I mean, any chick who is willing to kill for you is worth keeping.

I also believe women should be on medication from birth. It'd save a lot of trouble, I think.

- Eric

Q is for QUITTER!

2011-04-20T04:37:00.000-07:00

Lord, what have I not quit. I am a quitter of all things large and small.

First thing I remember is I quit baseball. I was a helluva a catcher, but I didn't have that sling-arm you need to burn out the stealer heading for 2nd base. I could hit, I could run, I could score and I could for damned sure catch, but that weak-ass side-arm throw of mine got me.

Plus, my coach and my old man went to high school together, and I'm pretty sure Pop nailed the dude's old lady and showed him up because Pop's got a third forearm.

So coach flattened my ass against the pine until I quit. I was twelve. Man, I loved baseball, too, long as I could catch.

I quit Extemporaneous Speaking, which is Gulf Coast slang for Debate Club. Not sure why I quit or why this matters, but it stuck with me. I got bored, I suppose.

I quit drumming when I got to college. And let me pause here and explain something about the drumming...

I am a tapper. I am not the every-day tapper who tap-taps and fidgets. I drum. I make rhythm. I always have, still do, and I even type to a rhythm. I clack my teeth because in high school the teachers started throwing erasers at me trying to make me stop tapping.

That's true as a lady's leg hair. They threw chalk and erasers and one even cracked my pen.

In third grade, I BEGGED my mom to let me take drum lessons. I gave up my recess and started drumming. Damn, I was good. I don't mean good, I mean creepy good. I quit, though, because my friends were playing outside.

But God had other plans. He does that sometimes. We moved when I was in seventh grade. I hadn't drummed since third grade, though I had tapped, tapped tapped tapped tapped, always tapping, always drumming, just not formally to formal music.

I tried out for band again. I asked the other drummers what the notes meant because our band director was too busy molesting the high school girls.

Again, true as leg hair.

After a few weeks -- a FEW WEEKS -- we tested for chairs and I yoinked first chair!

I went to district every year after that, and once got to regional. I didn't make it past regional, though, because I played the bells all natural. I had no fucking clue what those # and sharp signs and those other goofy symbols over the notes meant, and kept wondering why there was this extra row of keys above the main rows (these are the black keys on a piano, flats and sharps).

One of the drummers at regional asked me: What the hell were you playing?

I said, The music sheet.

He shook his black face and white eyes at me and said, Nah ah. You played something else.

Still, I made region, and so did he, and when that black dude walked in with a pair of drumsticks and saw all those Vidor jackets on the back row -- and Vidor, Texas, at the time and maybe today had a sign that read, Nigger, don't let the sun go down on your head (leg hair) -- he saw me (not from Vidor) and stuck to me like I was his favorite uncle.

Anyway, to say I was infatuated with drumming is like saying guys on occasion think of vagina.

Pop, God love him, bought me a five-piece Pearl drum set not two months after he moved out. I still have it.

Anyway, I got to college and quit drumming. I knew -- I KNEW -- if I got into drumming there in Austin, music capital of the south, I would have flunked out of college.

So I quit. Cold turkey. Drum lessons in high school, the ones I paid for with my own money, gone. Quit quit quit. I still hear only a lead drummer and backup singers in every song, and I quit.

Of all things, I miss drumming the most. Still, in college, I carried around a drum key, and showed it to every woman I met and asked: What is this?

I swore I'd marry the first woman who knew what it was. Only one knew, and I think she cheated even though I also think she loved me, but like so many things I fucked it up and who knows where she is now. Happy without me, I suppose.

When I write, when I have sex, when I drum and when I hold my breath for a really long time and finally breathe in, that's when I am with God. There will be a trap set in heaven for me, mark those words, and I'll keep all you knuckers up all night long banging out licks and riffs and flams and paradiddles and sixlets and so forth.

You should have seen my forearms, and not from what you think a teenage boy might be doing to get ripped like that.

Anyway.

I won't go into the same detail, but I had the same passion for medical school. I graduated valedic of my high school class, and went to UT Austin, majoring in Chemical Engineering, for no other reason than everyone said it was the toughest course on campus, and I said, Bring it, and I quit drumming to be a doctor.

You grok that last part, I hope...

I made Bs, mostly. High Bs. God in Heaven how I hate the 89 B. If I am going to make a B, make a 79.5, not an 89.4. I didn't convert so many to As, but I was far more than a B student, owing almost entirely to homework.

See, I quit homework. It's bullshit. It always has been. I looked at the class curve and it said, Homework: 10% of your grade.

I said, No problem! I eeked out a 20 or 30 on the homework, and relied on high 90s on the tests and projects. That strategy worked about half the time, the other half was the 89.5 grades. How can you score 96 on the final and average high 90s on the tests and make a B in the class!

End point is I didn't get into med school on grades. I scored high in the MCAT -- Medical College Admissions Test -- but who the fuck needs another white-boy, English-speaking doctor?

I tried for five more years to get into med school, and finally took the DAT -- Dental Admissions Test -- out of desperation. I scored in the 99.4th percentile.

Damn, huh. Surprised me too! I figured I would be a shoe-in.

Guess not. I'm an engineer, not a dentist, and I only got one interview.

So I quit. I gave it up and pursued other avenues that were, and have been, more lucrative.

I quit my first marriage.

I quit karate, which I was good at, and it's the only sport I consistently brought home first-place trophies.

I quit all these things I'm good at, but still I continued to write. I continued to drink. I continued to work out, to try things I knew wouldn't work, and to invest in myself above all other things. I'm a successful engineer, a great drinker, I have an AWESOME Wife 2.0, and I'm a published author with a small local press.

I'm a quitter, I suppose. But sometimes you have to quit in order to move on. Some dreams need to be dumped so that others my live.

What have you quit? Did you quit this post? Did you skim to the end and miss the embedded porn scene? I would have, because I'm a quitter like that.

Here's to dead dreams and the quitted lives we aren't living.

- Eric

P is for Pink and Purple Polka-Dotted Panties of Passion

2011-04-19T04:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read that right. Pink and Purple Polka-Dotted Panties of Passion.

The panties were a relic in my days of D&D (Dungeons and Dragons), and we quested for them periodically and never managed to find them.

Lord, if we had found them, if ~I~ had found them, I wouldn't have known what the hell to do with em. Sniff them would have been my first reaction. I'm a dog that way, wuff wuff.

My second reaction would have been to beg women to put them on, because ain't that the ruse. You can lead a girl to the Pink and Purple Polka-Dotted Panties of Passion, but you can't make her put them on!

Did you ever role play? Did you make fun of the Halfling thief's penis and use him as a club during a barroom brawl, or as a distraction send your buddy streaking naked through a gaggle of goblins, or sneak into brothels using a ring of invisibility?

And if you ever find those panties, send them my way. I might be able to slip them onto my wife while she's sleeping.

- Eric

MNO is for Motivation

2011-04-18T07:01:00.000-07:00

Motivation!

I abandon today and perhaps indefinitely my attempt to relate A is for Anecdotes for the Alex J. Cavanaugh et al A to Z Challenge.

N is for nuffsenuff, and I'm not building readers, I'm alienating them with a deluge of pointless posts.

So I return to the topic of WRITING.

I learn something every time I write, every day. Let me tell you what I am learning on my latest novel:

MOTIVATION!

To motivate the reader, you must stimulate them. This translates to entertainment. I like to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), so I lump all reader motivations into TWO categories:

o Imagination
o Intellect

You stimulate the reader by tickling either their imagination, or their intellect, or sometimes both, and this provides the MOTIVATION, the thrust, the push the umph the force that drives the reader from page to page to chapter to book to series to movie to the coup de gras, your own action figure.

So I'm working on MOTIVATION in my latest long piece. I am writing forward -- not backward, onward ho to the end! -- but keeping in mind that later, I will need to implant stronger motivations to keep the reader surging through the pages of that novel.

For me, I use a combination of Imagination and Intellect, because that's who I am. I'm an engineer-writer. I use scenery to stimulate the senses, and implant what I hope are intellectually stimulating subtle points throughout, with an undertow of questions that nag at the reader who drops my piece mid-chapter.

How about you? How do you motivate your reader? What beside Intellect and Imagination do you use to urge your reader through to the ending?

- Eric

L is for LAUGHTER

2011-04-14T04:08:00.000-07:00

Do you have humor in your writings?

Let me tell you about one of my favorite blogs: Res ipsa loquitur.

The name means, according to Google, It speaks for itself.

Phoenix, she's a poet, an introspectologist, and one of the most heartfelt, honest bloggers around. Her writing is tremendous, and if I've mentioned anecdotes are my favorite form of storytelling, you'll find insightful, meaningful, entertaining anecdotes on her site.

And she's DAMNED funny.

Why is she so funny? Because she's honest, and because honesty is pretty darn funny. I told her once that I read her site so I don't feel so stupid. I can look at what she did and say, At least I didn't do ~that~.

I find humor pops up in my writings even against my will, and I believe it's for the same reason I like humor in Phoenix's site: it's honest.

It's life.

We are born knowing how to cry, but we have to LEARN TO LAUGH!

Think about it. I know I have these past five months, after my second son was born.

He's in a good place, nice and warm, doesn't know hunger or pain or discomfort, doesn't know what it's like to be cold, or tired, or grumpy, or have the lights in his eyes, or get woke up by the damned dog barking when someone knocks on the door selling candybars or lawn services.

Suddenly the little guy is yanked out of the womb!

BAM! Into the light. Cut the cord. What the fuck, lunchbox, you mean now I gotta BREATHE on my own! And what's this feeling in my tummy? Why am I shivering?

Waah waah waah! Cry baby cry.

Oh, and while we're at it, let's cut off part of his pecker. HA! No anesthesia. Babies can't feel anything, don't you know.

Yeah, fuck that. He felt it. I felt it. We all felt it. I'm still feeling it now and hold on, I need to beer myself after that little flashback...

Anyway, point is the little guy knew how to cry right off the bat, right out of the chute, out of the womb. First thing he learned is that hot women with gloves are bad news, and some things never change.

But he had to learn how to laugh! We all need to learn how to laugh. You're not born into it. You see the absurdity of the world, the backwardness, the awkwardness, the chaos, and your mind, too much horsepower for such a little skull, can't suck it all in and make sense of it.

So you laugh. It's the ultimate fuckit response. You don't get it. It doesn't make sense. Ha ha ha.

That's all you can do.

One of my stories is what I consider a ~serious~ piece. I used my Cormac McCarthy voice, the one from The Road and Child of God. If those aren't serious books, ain't no such thing.

And my character, a young boy whose dad hanged himself, burns his house down trying to cook a squirrel.

I have hookers, and they have a pistol named Chavez.

At my grandfather's funeral, I put a tic-tac between his cold dead forefinger and his cold dead thumb, because he always had tic-tacs. Didn't take long for others to catch on, and he had a dollar bill (he gave the kids dollar bills), and a Nutter Butter, and so forth.

When someone says they got or are getting a divorce, I say, CONGRATULATIONS! and make as big a deal as if they had said they were getting married (seriously, you should see the reactions, especially at bars).

I tell people, Don't think of it as getting laid off, think of it as being given the chance to chase your dreams.

I try to be serious, I really do, but the humor, the awkwardness, it pokes through and makes everything a little bit tilted.

I call it being unhinged, and it's the only way I can write. I am unhinged.

I am unhinged. The worms are free, wiggling out of their holes, and I am unhinged.

I quote in my unhingedness the kings of unhinging:

o Steven Wright: Ok, so what's the speed of DARK?

o George Carlin: Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

o Preacher Man Sam Kennison: AAAAAH! AAA AAA AAAAAA!

It's the honesty that's funny.

How about you? Are you unhinged? Do you include humor in your writing out of necessity? Are you honest, or do you lie? Are you a liar? Be honest.

- Eric

K is for Kegs (and Monkey Loving)

2011-04-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

Circa 2000, written under the pseudonym of Saul (for anyone who still remembers Saul...), in response to a chain email from my cousin.

To Lone Wolf, in answer to your question: "What one thing would you want if you were stranded on a desert island?"

One hundred and thirty-three kegs of beer. Brand wouldn't matter, but it'd better be dark, by God. And we'd need Bro there, too.

You, me, and Bro with one hundred and thirty-three kegs to knock back. We'd be fucking the local monkeys by the end of number thirteen! Around fifty, we'd discover our inner beauty. We'd fuck that inner beauty around the sixtieth keg.

That's because we'd have gotten tired of the island monkeys always telling us no, not tonight, I'm tired, my ass hurts, I have lice, can't you see the lice!

Around seventy, we'd construct crude topless dancers out of palm leaves and coconuts. You and I would give them all our money, but they'd go back to our cave with Bro. Go figure.

Kegs eighty through one hundred would be a naked blur.

After the century keg, one hundred, we'd take a day or two to sober up while we lashed the empty kegs together with vines and what's left of our underwear, forming a seaworthy raft. You'd try to smuggle on a couple of monkeys; you'd say they were for the trip home, but Bro and I would say we're tired of the monkey-loving, leave them.

Taking the leftover thirty-three kegs, we'd make a long trip around the southern tip of South America (I assume we started out in the southern Pacific, around Hawaii, maybe stranded on Maui or something), land in New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras, sell the monkeys you stowed on board anyway, and use the money to pay for some real strippers.

All the girls would go back with Bro, but what the hell -- it beats coconuts!

- Saul Mighty

What would you want if you were stranded on a desert island?

- Eric

J is for I LOST MY JOB!

2011-04-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

A re-post from October 2010, by request.

I LOST MY JOB!

So I lost my missionary position, but that's all right, it was entry-level anyway and kinda boring.

I found an ad in the paper for a boob job, went and applied, they said I didn't meet their minimum applicant requirements, so I went next door, where they had a new blow job opening. That one fit me, and they sent me back next door to help with the boob job, but I didn't last long and had trouble getting up the second day and I wound up getting laid off.

After that I went downtown to the government offices to apply for a hand job.

"You can do this at home," she said, "but the pay's not that high."

I told her I didn't mind the low pay -- something beats nothing, right -- and since I can set my own hours and work at my own pace, I've managed to squeeze out a lot more than she probably thought I could.

I'm an over-achiever like that.

All this is for the damned A-Z challenge issued forth by Alex J. Cavanaugh et al

For my part, I shall be writing anecdotes -- A is for Anecdote!

This, dear friends, is my favorite sort of storytelling. Even my characters tell anecdotes about their lives.

- Eric

I is for Immaturity

2011-04-11T06:57:00.000-07:00

Are you immature at times? Or do you act your age and follow all the rules associated with that age group's accepted behavior?

I got immature this weekend. We almost got kicked out of the Studio Movie Grill. You eat dinner and watch a movie, only we ate dark beer -- Shiner Bock -- and watched Your Highness. I honestly don't remember the last half of the movie. My brother said we almost got into a fight with the guys behind us, which doesn't surprise me, nor would getting kicked out have surprised me.

I threw up in my neighbor's yard. My nephew -- sober -- was driving us and thought it was my house.

Lord I hope the neighbors didn't see that, but found some mystery yurk down at the curb and blamed the local teenies. I coached their kid in soccer.

And my wife is now known as Natalie Portman. As always, I am still either Vin Diesel or Dale, Jr, and the occasional Jason (General Hospital hit man) or James Franco.

It would have been a Natalie meets Franco weekend if she'd seen the movie with me.

When was the last time you didn't act your age?!

- Eric

H is for HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me

2011-04-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

Today I am 40. Time for a shrimp and crab boil!

- Eric

G is for G-Spot

2011-04-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

I fully expected all the chicks today to say G is for G-Spot.

What the eff?

- Eric

F is for Flaming Pine Cone

2011-04-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

Here's an A is for Anecdote story as written by my cousin. It's a second-hand story written by someone trained in storytelling (I come from a family of storytellers), although not formally trained in writing.

Note his pace and his casual style, the personification of the burn pile, how he builds the tension with a gut-punch at the end, a story guaranteed to keep you reading to the end even if you know what's coming. He knows how to deliver the ending.

You should hear this guy in person telling stories.

I present it here unedited, as it was written for a literature class.

Nate is my brother. He is the pyro of the two, thus the explosions.

Flaming Pine Cone, by Jason Watson

It was very hot and windy that day and the smell of freshly cut grass was in the air. I had been on leave from the military and my family was having a get-together by my parents swimming pool. My sister kept everyone relaxed with plenty of vodka jell-o shots. My cousin Nate and I grabbed two more ice cold beers and started walking around the front yard, which had more pine trees than Baton Rouge has people. We looked up to see the tops of the trees swaying back and forth as the wind blew through their tops. Nate looked at me and said, “You wanna light something on fire?”

“Sure,” I said. I figured that since my parents had five acres of land for their yard, this would be enough to keep us busy until we passed out.

As we walked through the yard, Nate and I took it upon ourselves to rid my parents of all of those pesky little piles of pine straw and grass that accumulates after cutting their lawn. As I leaned forward to light one of the piles of straw, Nate said to me, “You know,there’s nothing more Amercian than drinkin’ beer and starting fires!” We both laughed and took a long drink from our beers that were beginning to taste warm from being out in the sun. We continued to scour the area and continue our patriotic mission of eliminating pesky pine straw piles.

“Do you have anything bigger to light on fire?” Nate said, as we watched the orange flames dance away on another pile of straw.

“Sure we do. My parents just cut the entire yard, so our burn pile should be full of stuff to torch!”

“Hell yeah! Let’s torch that mother!” Nate said.

We marched to the south side of the house were the biggest pine trees were. They seemed to watch every move that we made. Then we saw it: the biggest pile of pine straw we had ever seen! The pile was a high as a Pathfinder and twice the diameter. There were so many pine needles it smelled like Christmas. I would not have been surprised if we saw two of Santa’s helpers living in that behemoth.

“Ok,” Nate said, “the first thing we’re gonna need is diesel. It will burn better and it won’t burn as fast.”

“What’s the second thing?”

“More beer.”

We laughed as I ran to my dad’s dingy white tool shed. It was dark as a cave in there because dad had not bothered to replace the light bulb. As I fumbled around the unraveled extension cords and rusty saw blades, I found it: the five gallon can of diesel. I brought the spout to my nose to smell it and ensure that it was diesel. I did not smell like diesel, but since it was in the diesel can that clearly marked ‘diesel’, I knew it had to be just that. As I walked back to the pile of straw, I noticed that the pool was empty and the water was very calm. I looked inside the sun room to see everyone escape from the blistering heat of the sun except me and Nate. We had a job to do.

As I got to the pile, Nate was ready to go: “Did you get the diesel?”

“I found the can that says ‘diesel’.”

“Is that diesel in there?”
“Sure.”

After we drank another beer, I began my task of making sure that all five gallons of the contents of that can were poured on every single pine needle in this pile. As I poured the contents out of the can, I smelled something that wasn’t diesel, I smelled gasoline. Nate gave me a very glazed-over-Pirates of the Carribbean look and said, “Are you sure that’s diesel Jason?”

“I’m sure,” I lied, because by this time I couldn’t smell a damn thing, “it says diesel on the can Nate. How stupid do you think I am?”

Nate did not say a word, he just drank his beer. However, as we looked at the contents coming out of the can, it did not look like diesel either.

“Jason, are you sure that’s diesel?” Nate said.

“I’m sure Nate! It says it right here- Look! ‘DIESEL’!”

“Well it doesn’t even look like diesel!”

“Nate, that’s only a detail we don’t need to worry about right now. Let’s just stay focused.”

I finished pouring all of the contents out of the can in the center of that big pile. I looked at the worry starting to spread over Nate's face. The fumes that rose over the pile gave it a very pissed off look and it filled our noses with the familiar smell of high octane unleaded. It was getting hotter outside and sweat was glistening off of our foreheads. We looked at each other and Nate said, “Here, you light it.”

“There’s no way in hell I’m lighting that damn thing, this was your idea to begin with!”

The pile seemed to grow so high it was beginning to tower over us. Each second we delayed in torching this monster, it seemed to grow and taunt us. Nate knelt next to the pile and extended his red lighter and pressed the trigger. Click, nothing, no flame for the bad pile. Our hearts skipped a beat and we started to struggle for breath. “It must have been the wind, “ Nate said.

“Well try again.”

After several more ‘clicks’, Nate came up with another strategy: “Jason, if I light that thing and I’m next to it, I’m dead meat. What we need now is the flaming pine cone.”

“What in the hell is that?”

“Take a pine cone and fill it with pine needles. After that take whatever’s left in that ‘diesel’ can and pour in on the pine cone. Once it’s covered, light it, and throw it right in the center of that pile!”

We immediately went to work. I found a pine cone the size of a football and gave it to Nate. He looked like Vulcan as he made the proper adjusments to the cone. Both of us knew this would work, and to be honest, it had to work. We could not let this pile with the mystery fluid survive.

Nate and I stood before that big monster. At this point, Nate looked at me and said, “Are you ready?”

“Hell yeah! Let’s light that bad boy!”

With a steady hand, I took the lighter and placed it in the middle of that pine cone. Nate said, “I want you to know that is gasoline Jason.”

“I know.”

I pressed the lighter trigger and it took flame with one strike! Nate took the pine cone and launched it from his hand. The yellow-orange flames danced off the cone as it sailed through the air. When the cone made contact with the middle of the pile, for one second there was no flame. I could not hear the birds chirp or the wild blow through the trees. All I could hear and feel was the oxygen being sucked into that pile. It was like this beast was taking it’s last breath and it wanted us to join him in his funeral pyre.

With the pile’s next breath one second later, a fireball so big you could see it from the international space stations shot up towards the heavens! The force of the blast not only knocked us off of our feet, but blew pictures and painting off of the walls inside of my parents house. Everyone ran outside to see what exploded. They saw Nate and I, laying on our backs looking up at the sky. Nate said to me, “See, I told you that was gas!” I looked at Nate, laughed , and said “Maybe we should stick to small fires from now on!”

- Eric

E is for Ex-Sex

2011-04-06T04:57:00.000-07:00

Would You Could You Sex Your Ex

An original poem by Eric Trant, circa 2004

Would you could you sex your ex?
Would you could you make a mess?

Would you could you in a car?
Would you could you in a bar?

I would not could not in a car!
I would not could not in a bar!

I do not like sex with my ex!
I do not like to make a mess!

Should you would you in a house?
Should you would you lose your blouse?

Would you like it on the bed?
Or would you like the couch instead?

Would you like it on the floor?
Would you like to close the door?

Try it! Try it! You may see!
I do not like it! Let me be!

I do not want it in the house!
I do not want to lose my blouse!

I do not want it on the bed!
I do not want the couch instead!

I do not want it on the floor!
Now please go out and shut my door!

You should try it in the shower!
You should try it with a flower!

Try it! Try it! Find the mood!
Try it! Try it in the nude!

Try it! Try it fully dressed!
Try it! Like it! Please confess!

If I try it, will you leave?
Will you please just let me be?

Here, I will try sex with my ex.
And I do like it! I confess!

I will try it in the shower!
I will try it with a flower!

I will do her in a car!
Bend her over in a bar!

I will do it fully dressed!
I will kindly leave a mess.

And when I turn my sheets that night
My mess will greet me bright and white.

I'll mope and wonder what I did
And how this will affect my kid.

So tell me tell me if you will
Where's the payoff, what's the bill?

There is no payoff, that's the rut.
You were thinking with your nuts.

- Eric

D is for Dogs

2011-04-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

What is a boy without a dog!

I'll tell you what he is: he's an incomplete boy.

We found Bandit as a stray puppy, maybe two months old and starving, wandering around the trailer park next to where my dad docked his boat. She was a lab mutt, white-chested and otherwise black with chestnut eyes. Pop wanted to kill her. Mom let us take her home. My bro and I were three and four, resp., and I can tell you it was a summer afternoon, we were in my Pop's un-air-conditioned white Chevy, and I rode in the truck bed with bro and me holding her while we sat on the fenderwells.

Funny how many animals pop up in my stories who look like Bandit. I even created a black bear with a lightning bolt chest, just like hers.

She got wet or dry same as us. When she had puppies, and she had lots of litters, she left her pups to fend themselves if her boys needed her. She brought us rabbits as kill, and Lord could that dog run! You should have seen her shoot under that barbed wire if there was a rabbit in front of her. She once swam a good ways across the lake because we thought we could leave her on the pier. We didn't leave her after that.

A while back, I wrote this for my dog Bandit as an exercise in POV. For you, girl. RIP.

She smelled rabbits. Lots of rabbits. Maybe a family. Baby rabbits for sure.

She looked back and saw her boys. They called her, but she didn't have time. Rabbits. Lots of rabbits.

Oak leaves and pine needles crunched under her feet. She heard more crunching and stopped. She looked. Her boys, walking this way. One of them kissed his lips together and called her: "Bandit."

She stuck her nose to the ground and circled a huge oak. The trail wound past the oak, between two pines, through a flurry of light underbrush. She stopped and smelled the air. Her boys smelled close. The rabbits smelled closer.

She heard a tiny noise in the underbrush. She put her nose to the ground. The scent burned her nose.

Under the log. She heard them clicking as they breathed. Her back tingled when she crouched. Balancing on three legs, she stepped closer. Inches at a time. Not to scare them. She smelled a dozen rabbits at least. She swallowed hard.

"Bandit."

One of her boys grabbed the back of her neck. It startled her and she turned.

"Bad dog. Come on, leave them alone." Her boy patted his leg and called to her as he walked deeper into the woods.

She looked under the log. A dozen tiny eyes stared back at her. A whole family down there.

But her boys wanted her to follow them. She barked once, at the rabbits. Then she turned and ran after her boys.

- Eric

C is for Creek

2011-04-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

What else could C stand for but Creek. Country. Cow. Cowboy. Cowboys, and boys who wanted to be cowboys, children, another C-word.

A creek ran along the backside of our property, dumping in from the upstream neighbor's property, dumping out of our property into Toledo Bend Reservoir, an offshoot of the Sabine River, which separates Texas and Louisiana. East Texas. You don't get more East Texas without being in Louisiana.

That creek came from someplace we never found, but I like to think it originated deep in the East Texas Piney Woods, the Big Thicket National Forest, from a spring-fed well -- which are common in that part of Texas, so it's not impossible. It had a pure source, and the water was cold and trickling even in the hottest drought.

There's something magical about a creek. I challenge any one of you to come upon a creek during your hike and not scout the shoreline for a place narrow enough to cross, shallow enough to wade through, or the coup de gras, a fallen tree spanning the width of the creek over which you cross, holding downed limbs for balance, ending on the other side by climbing a spiderweb of uprooted roots and jumping off the top of the root-ladder, onto the newly-discovered world where no man has been, and realizing you can't go back, not the way you came.

You'll have to survive until you can find another way to cross.

Or, if you really luck out, you find the coup de coup de gras, and discover a vine, thick as your forearm, strong enough to hold you as you monkey-swing across the creek, Tarzan, a lion of the jungle, king of the beasts, flying above the water to the far shores of adventure. You hack at the vine's base with your machete, which you always carry to the creek, always, because you never know when you'll see a snake who needs its head cut, or bamboo, or sugar cane, or water-vines (they ooze water when you nick them, for drinking), or any other number of things that meet the special needs of a machete chop.

You cut the vine to length, so it won't drag the ground. You test its weight. The first of your troop swings across, the lightest, you because you are the smallest, and then your brother, who was usually second, because although he was smaller and younger, he was smarter. You have scars dotting your body that he watched you earn, testing those great idears, first into the breach, too impatient to wait on everyone's useless theoretical discussions of weight, rot, is the limb big enough, will it hold, I don't know, tug-tug, yep, it looks good, is it long enough, should we find another vine?

You grab the vine and step off the cliff and swing and throw the vine back across the creek and say, See?

The others swing across. The older boys swing last, the heavier ones, some of them dragging their feet through the creek because their weight is bending the limbs, testing the vine's capacity. It snaps, of course, when the last and largest boy takes hold. A warning groan from the treetops, that familiar crack of breaking wood, a panicked whisper as trees and leaves and limbs and vine become an avalanche of broken rottery as you and the rest of your troop scatter like ants beneath God's thumb before He crushes you. You marvel that nobody dies, because that limb was friggin HUGE.

The big boy, the one who broke it, survives by diving into the creek, headfirst to the bottom, chest-high on him when he finally stands up amid the wash of floating debris and says, What the hell happened!

We laugh because we are all dry and he's wet. We laugh because he's alive. We dive into the creek after him when he calls us names, slurs not fit for a boy's mouth that only a boy can properly speak.

We drink from the creek, eat the berries that line its banks. We never get sick, not even when we drink downstream from a dead cow and realize you shouldn't drink water with foam on it.

We cross it always, boots in the winter and shivering legs through the pasture, or shorts in the summer and we dry as we follow the cowtrails home. We never stay out of the creek, not even when it snows and we break through the ice to our thighs.

I defy you to resist the urge to cross a creek when you come upon one. There's something magical about a creek, something mystical and inexplicable, something that says everything is better, everything is worth it, getting wet, getting muddy, the tromping along the shoreline, all the hard work will pay off.

If you can just get to the other side.

- Eric

B is for Bloody Stripper

2011-04-02T05:04:00.000-07:00

Yes, friends and neighbors, this is a true story, and yes, it involves a real-life bloody stripper.

Let's put on some music... let's see. 311, nope. Three Doors Down, nope. Alice in Chains, Atreyu, Beastie Boys.

Ah, there we go. Look no further. Beastie Boys it is. Kick it! I am most ill at Rhymin and Stealin.

Drink the beer. Now refill. Cue the music. Here goes. (hit the PLAY button, wimp)

My wife tried to tell this story at a recent GNO. That's Girl's Night Out for those of you not down with the lingo. She missed a few key points which I shall now correct.

She left out the police officer, which is the best part if you ask me. I don't know how she forgot that part. And I'm not sure she knows all the cell phone details. I may have left out that part since it involved potential depravity.

She did remember I was covered in stripper blood, though, which is the key point to all this nonsense.

Let's roll back to circa 2004, about two years after I moved out of my house sans wife #1, about a year before I met her most-excellent upgrade. I'm in-between girlfriends, ex-wives, wives, houses, kids, and everything else that goes to shit when you're in the throes of that early-thirties requisite divorce that most of us seem destined to stumble through.

I stumbled through that phase by drinking. Lots of drinking. Dionysus passed out trying to keep up with me, freaking wimp of the Olympians. I ate out my own liver and DRANK it, proving that son-of-a-god Prometheus was an uber-wuss for letting an eagle do that work for him.

One Tuesday night I decided it was go-out time. I ripped off my button-down, picked up a 750ml bottle of flavored rum, and hit the all-nude titty bar, where you bring your own booze, and the girls strip down to nothing but their evil eyes.

She's Crafty, she's got it right... Man I always regret it. Something's going on and I'll probably never get it. And she's just my type! She's CRAFTY!

So I get to the bar and the downstairs is too slow for me. Gals and Guys, downstairs is always lame. Get the special treatment. If you go, go all out. Burn out like a punk. Go upstairs.

I upgraded to the VIP room. Much better. Me and my rum found a table and I grabbed two girlies and beer that's cold.

One girlie kept coming back for more. They do that sometimes. She hit the bottle, got naked, rubbed on me, got dressed, took my money, disappeared for a while, came back, hit the rum, rinse, repeat.

She liked me and said so. They do that sometimes, too. Most of the time, in fact, kiss up for more bucks. This one, though, she liked me. I was wearing slacks and my undershirt, and she kept rubbing on me, grinding, putting her hands under my shirt, doing all those things they aren't supposed to do in those places.

A girl has to have goals, she said, naked, grinding, doing that backward glance over her shoulder from my lap. Man, I love naked women in my lap.

Anyway. She said, A girl has to have goals, and tonight, my goal is to fuck you.

I fully support your goals, I said.

I'm on my period. Something about being on my rag that makes me mad horny. Does that gross you out?

Nope. I got my red wings. Don't ask what that is.

She didn't ask. We drank. She danced. She took my money. We exchanged numbers.

GIRLS! To do the dishes. GIRLS! Two at a time I want GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!

I got into the parking lot and punched in her number and rang her up. Sure enough, the number worked.

Meet me at IHOP, she said. I'm hungry and I need my energy to fuck you.

Which IHOP?

Phone goes dead. Dead as disco. And my mom threw away my best porno mags.

You gotta FIGHT! For your RIGHT! To PAAAAARTY!

So I picked an IHOP. God, I hope this is the right IHOP. I didn't have a car charger for my new phone, and the gods are laughing, all of them, because Lord in Heaven this girl was smoking hot. Jesus is turning His blood to wine to feed the angels as they watch the show unfold.

I stumbled inside the IHOP. I mentioned a 750ml bottle of rum, yes? That bottle was purt near empty, and my stripper and I were the only two partaking. I was tight. She was tight.

I picked a table, and in fact they let me have the run of the place. They fed me. I waited. I paid. I left. Nobody asked. Nobody asked a thing, and for a while I thought they might let me eat for free. I guess I had that look.

Overall, no stripper. Wrong IHOP. I later learned she waited for me at one a few blocks away.

God frowns. Satan laughs. They exchange money, because Satan won that bet playing dirty.

In the parking lot, after I ate, after I drank some coffee and sobered up, I inspected myself and realized my white tee-shirt was streaked with blood.

Stripper blood. From her rag, her period, snail-trailed up and down the front of my shirt, my pants, my crotch, a bone fide CSI blueprint of where she had violated me with her naked, thrusting, grinding, wildly aroused and bleeding vagina. I was lucky the IHOP people didn't call the cops, or if they did, I was lucky I left before the cops arrived.

I got in the car and pointed it northward, back toward home, and concentrated on keeping it between the lines, in this case aimed at the point where the four lines converged.

I exited the tollway, turned onto my street, and in the Wednesday morning hours I fucked up and went 60 in a 45, within sight-distance of my apartment.

Lights spun behind me. A siren chirped. I stopped in the middle of the street because nobody else was out this late, nobody but drunks, thieves, thugs, and cops.

License and registration. Have you been drinking tonight Mr. Trant?

Yessir. All one word, a true Texas yessir.

Honest to God I wasn't afraid of a DUI. Bring it. Please only let me get a DUI. I was covered in blood. I looked like I'd gutted someone, a butcher-esque white boy in a Tahoe at 3AM. They would have spent a week trying to figure out whose blood that was. I was doomed. News at Nine, video of officer beating blood-splattered white boy in Plano, Texas.

That's my apartment up there, I said. I pointed to the stop light, cycling green, yellow, red. I crossed my arms over the bloodstains.

The officer did that flashlight thing, right in my face, my ID, my face, ID, face, ID, as if he couldn't decide much on what else to do.

Face. ID.

Here you go, he said. He handed me my license. Be careful getting home, Mr. Trant, and don't let me catch you again.

Yessir.

At this point, Satan paid God double down, and God laughed, Satan frowned. I'm God's favorite channel, and God never loses, does He. Pay up, you knuckers.

Listen all yall, this is Sabotage!

- Eric

A is for Anecdote

2011-04-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

So I did it. I signed up for the freakshow called The A-Z Challenge, hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh et al

For my part, I shall be writing anecdotes. This, dear friends, is my favorite sort of storytelling. Even my characters tell anecdotes about their lives.

I should add that the stories I plan to share are true. With embellishments, of course, but true.

I should also add that another A-word comes to mind: Appropriate.

Not all my stories are appropriate. I shall start off with one on April 2 entitled: "B is for Bloody Stripper," which I plan to write directly, after finishing no less than one Bud Ice beer.

You've been warned.

- Eric

Be consistent. Now shake it up!

2011-04-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

It's a series of mutually exclusive mantras that some smartass likes to parrot from time to time, right? And you've all heard it before, but let me tell you the truth about the advice to be consistent, but shake it up.

Here is what They say: Be consistent. Establish a routine. Set and meet goals. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!

Here is what They' say: (That's "They-Prime" for my mathematically challenged friends.) Shake it up. Break the mold. Push your boundaries. BE SPONTANEOUS!

It's like fire and water. It sounds mutually exclusive, doesn't it? I mean, fire and water are mutually exclusive. One kills the other.

Nope. Wrong. That's why I'm the genius. I see things sideways, and that makes me special, and I don't mean wear-your-helmet special.

See, I look at fire and water and I put them together and realize that sho-nuff, they work out great when mixed! That's how you cook. You boil stuff. Water without fire and fire without water can't boil an egg.

It's the same with that conflicting, seemingly mutually exclusive advice to BE CONSISTENT! BUT SHAKE IT UP!

You need to do both, and I don't mean just with writing. With writing, yeah, but with other stuff, like in the gym. Work out regularly, but change your routine. That's how you stay sharp, isn't it? That's the only way to get sore.

Personally, my life is a vortex of chaos. I have ignored the dozen or two writer and poet bloggers I genuinely love to read, both on my comments and on your blogs.

I have ignored my writing, my workout routine, my diet. I changed it up at work, even take a different route to work rather than the same ol drive.

These changes have reinvigorated me. I worked out and got sore. I wrote and pumped out words I'm happy with. My drive to work sucks in a completely different way, now.

Shake it up. Be consistent. Embrace the chaos, enjoy the switch-ups, relish the routine, and stay on-schedule.

Sometimes it's all you can do is hold up your hands and enjoy the ride.

Have you made changes lately? What did you change? Workouts, habits, writing, anything goes.

- Eric

PS: On two separate notes...

1) My boy is doing GREAT. He's sleeping through the night, but not every night (random consistency is the theme, you know). I am almost ready to get back on a routine writing schedule, soon as I can get a consistent night's sleep.

2) I turn 40 next week. I don't know what that means, other than I'm not dead yet.

Here's some Monty to celebrate that #2, forthcoming:

Bring out your dead!

Unsolicited Inspiration

2011-02-25T11:59:00.000-08:00

God's a funny guy, and lemme tell you why I say that. I mentioned on Ann Best's website, when she was discussing bloggerville and whether it will survive, that the Almighty keeps Himself entertained at my expense.

See, I've been off-kilter since that baby was born. He's 3.5 months old, not quite sleeping through the night, giggling a little, crying louder, finding his personality, manipulating his mommy and me, and being an all-around joy.

Plus, work hit me hard.

But enough with the excuses. God doesn't make excuses, doesn't apologize, doesn't give a reason, and doesn't ask why, so why am I doing it?

The fact is I haven't been writing.

Cue God, or fate, or chance, or karma, put whatever name you want on it, but along comes that force making fun of me.

Out of the blue I get asked for a couple of critiques. My ex-wife sends me all my old writings -- and maybe I'll post the very first story I wrote back in high school, now that I found it again!

My publisher calls and says he wants to do a Tour de Dallas, and he politely doesn't mention the book deal because I don't think he likes the books I sent him, and the one I'm supposed to be writing isn't getting written.

I get back on the blogger-wagon a couple of weeks ago and start fidgeting on the keyboard and making sure I still have online friends.

But then the BEST thing happens!

My old boss read an early version of my short story "One Small Step" about a year ago, before I submitted it, before it came out in An Honest Lie 2: Delusions of Insignificance.

He liked it so much he took it home for his wife to read.

She took it to her work. They let their kids read it. He said it inspired him to dig out his old Arthur C. Clarke books and re-read them, said they don't write stuff like that anymore.

He said they were at a baseball game last year and the moon was full and his wife pointed up and said, You think Percy is up there?

And this morning he shows up in my office with a gift bag and a copy of An Honest Lie 2 and says, Sign my book, and we got you something.

What is it? I ask.

Open it and see.

Well, that's what I saw. It even says FREEBOTTOM on the pocket. Percy Freebottom is the character, see. That there figurine is him or my name's Fudd.

What a gift! How inspirational, especially to a writer whose nose gets bent a little farther out of shape every time someone reads his stories.

It's those little inspirational moments that keep us going. It's not the money -- what money? -- or the fame, or the notoriety. It's those moments.

It's that email I sent my Pop framed in his office. It's that email I sent to my (then) wife on September 12, 2001, that somehow went viral and I got emails from strangers saying I'd touched them, made them cry, did you really write this Eric, thank you for saying what I was thinking! I was surprised, by the way, to find that 9-12 email taped to my cousin's fridge door during a visit several years later.

It's those moments that keep you going. They're genuine, heartfelt, real, unsolicited, moments.

Thank you for inspiring me. Thank you for not letting me give up.

That's God I'm thanking, by the way, not you knuckers. You all just distract me from the ~important~ things in my life!

But really, I hope I inspire you, and that some of this enthusiasm rubs off on you and you realize how important a little story can be.

Remember that. You never know who's reading!

And here's another plug for "An Honest Lie 3: Justifiable Hypocrisy" Go submit something!

http://anhonestliespeaks.blogspot.com/

Have you received unsolicited inspiration lately? How? Who?

- Eric

Call for Submissions: March 15

2011-02-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

Deadline is March 15 to submit your short story for An Honest Lie 3: Justifiable Hypocrisy!

I spoke Saturday with the publisher, Debrin Case, and he mentioned submissions have been slow this year.

How slow? I asked.

We only have four stories so far, he said. But there is usually this huge data dump in the first two weeks of March.

So get your submissions in! He's looking for new authors, unpublished, up-and-comers. He's a small publisher, so make sure that's your bag. Small pubs usually mean less money, more personality, less editing, more artistic freedom, smaller distribution, more devoted fans, newer and less-known authors, a better chance at actually getting published!

So it's a give-n-take with the small publisher. I personally have enjoyed it because the pressure is less intense, and the pay even from a large publishing house rarely outweighs the stress they induce on their writers.

Anyway, get to submitting! If you need a crit, I'll take a look at 1kw or so before you submit. Remember editors hate to edit, so clean up that story before you submit!

Are you submitting? Post up a ~small~ excerpt. What is your story about? Please spread the word. Let other talented writers know they have until March 15 to submit to An Honest Lie.

My story is called "Melvin Gee's Short Trip to Hell," working title. It's about clipping angel wings and riding that Long Black Train.

My excerpt (330wd, don't post more!):

~~~~
"I'm Melvin Gee," Melvin said, holding out his hand, which a few moments ago had been little more than a fleshy sack of shattered bones, crushed along with the rest of his body beneath a mangled Ford F150. "I'm not sure I'm in the right place, but heck, I just followed one of the lights."

"One of the lights? That's unusual." The angel looked at Melvin's offered handshake. Then she checked a clipboard in her left hand, tapped it with a feathery pen in her right hand, nodded, and looked back up at Melvin. "Melvin Michael Gee?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Hmm," the angel said. "Looks right. Whatever, let's go. We have to get you signed in with the big guy."

The angel turned and began walking down a packed-dirt path. Slender and long-robed, seven feet at the shoulders, lacking the wings Melvin supposed an angel should wear, the angel presented herself in a regal way. Her hair was a radiant silver, and spread down her back as she walked.

Melvin noticed that where the angel's bare feet touched the dirt path, the grass crept toward the prints, pinching off the trail behind her. Melvin hurried to follow her, both of them walking toward a range of mountains several miles in the distance.

Holding her pen between her fingers, trying not to mark her robe, the angel rubbed her left shoulder as she walked; the ink stains on her robe spelled old habit.

"Yes, I know what you're thinking: the sky, this field, that little stand of trees, the mountains... beautiful. Peaceful, isn't it. Makes you want to lay down and sleep. Don't. This is the Old Garden, the one you cats got booted out of. If you fall asleep, or slip off this trail, or God help you if you steal one of those precious apples, you'll get carried off. But I bet the big question is why I don't have wings."

"Actually," said Melvin. "I was wondering about the path. It—"
~~~

- Eric

Fracking macking macker bracker

2011-02-18T13:44:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to let everyone know exactly how I'm feeling these days.

Fracking macker fracker bracker cracks. That's the mood.

You ever have those days where you want to run naked through a cornfield?

That's me. Do I need to go all the way to Mexico to find a cornfield? I feel a streak coming on...

By the way, buy Roland D. Yeomans' book, "The Bear With Two Shadows"

Writing in the Crosshairs

He'll put a link up near the top of his blog if he really wants you to buy it! (That's for you, Roland.)

- Eric

Playing by Ear

2011-02-07T13:41:00.000-08:00

I'm convinced nothing great is done on purpose.

Nothing. Maybe God can do it, but I can't, and I don't think any other human can do it.

You simply can't come up with a "great" idea, employ "great" writing, develop a "great" marketing strategy, and issue forth to the world a "great" masterpiece that spans the generations.

Greatness is an accident, every single time. Don't get me wrong, there are intentional components that go into structuring great writing -- plot, scene structure, grammar, and so forth -- but the truly great pieces are written by accident.

The author writes by ear, feeling the story, forgetting about the rules, forgetting about sentence structure and paragraphs and action scenes and descriptions and dialogue.

Lemme give you an example, since I see some of you nodding and saying, Loon-ball.

Sex.

Good example, right? But what the hell does romping bootie have to do with writing?

I'll tell you, since it's obvious now that you don't combine those two things like I do.

Great sex is never on purpose. I mean, I've had great sex when it was pre-planned, but there were always little unknowns, little twists and turns and unforeseeables that made it that much more fantastic. There were little tweaks that made good sex great.

And those twists were accidents.

Let's skip the gratuitous detail and let me challenge the naysayers by asking this: Do you plan every position, in advance, before you engage in sex?

Nope. It's spontaneous. You have some idea of what you want. You have some general skills, specific talents, a place and a partner and an arsenal of dirty thoughts.

But it's not pre-planned.

Neither is great writing. You can have a general idea, and a place, and a plot, but the writing, the act itself is ACCIDENTALLY banging out just the right words... who would have thunk?

Who could have guessed?

You read it later and realize your monkey paws did indeed pound long enough on that keyboard to peck out a masterpiece!

And when you try again later, bang all you want, you can't do it again. Because it was an accident.

Don't believe me? Go ahead and try.

- Eric

(not so) GREAT Expectations

2011-01-24T13:04:00.000-08:00

Have you ever set your expectations so high you were bound to fail?

We do this, all of us. It's one of the reasons modern Americans relish their divorce -- the marriage simply didn't meet the expectations as set forth by our sitcoms and dramas and porn sites.

That's why I'm divorced, I'm convinced of it. She wasn't a bad girl. In fact, she was pretty good. I was a pretty good guy. Pretty Good + Pretty Good = Pretty Good, if you do the math.

So why divorce?

Because I expected more from her. She expected more from me.

Both of us had unrealistic expectations. We expected GREAT, not Pretty Good, and what the hell is GREAT anyway?

But we grow, all of us, I hope, as we age and suffer through life and plunge head-first into the Great Black Nothing from whence we all came.

Great Black Nothing... don't steal that, because it's the focal point of my current WiP.

Which brings me to my current WiP and unrealistic, over-zealous expectations!

See, in November my son was born. I was working a novel at the time, kept working it, and worked it more in December.

Then I showed it to my publisher.

"Didn't grab me," he said.

All right. Sure. I got more where that came from. As the cowboy says about peeling horses: If you've never been thrown, you're not riding hard enough.

So onward I rode. I abandoned that piece and began working on a story he and I discussed and both thought would have potential.

Enter the Great Black Nothing.

Enter my Great Expectations.

Enter my goal to bang out 20,000 words -- yes, 20kw! -- during my two week paternity leave.

Enter my goal to bang out 20kw over the Christmas holidays.

Enter my goal to finish a book by the end of January!

You know, pre-baby, that would have been a reasonable goal. But that little booger stays up ALL DAY LONG! I thought he'd nap more. I thought I wouldn't have a leak in the roof. I thought I wouldn't get into a wreck (no injuries, minor). I thought the car would pass inspection and not need $700 in repairs so I can drive it legally. I thought I wouldn't need to drive my mom to Galveston to see family. I thought Christmas and my time at home would be quieter.

I thought and thought and thought it all wrong.

I thought I could do it, but the fact is, I couldn't, I didn't, I didn't even come close.

I have 12kw, now, and half of those were yoinked from a piece I wrote a year-and-a-half ago. So I really only got about 6kw written.

What's my point? I have no idea.

Don't get disappointed if you miss your goals. I guess that's my point. Set deadlines, stick to them, prioritize what's important, be thankful when you hit your goals and meet your expectations, but don't fret it if you fail.

As every cowboy knows, failure is simply part of the breaking process. You wanna learn to ride, better learn to fall.

Do you have any misses you want to share? Successes are welcome, too, brag away!

- Eric

PS: THANK YOU TO THE WELL-WISHERS WHO EMAILED ME! Always feel free to contact me at saulgoode35 at yahoo dot com. I missed you all, too, and am hopefully back to where I can blog and keep up with what's going on.

Give them something to TALK about!

2010-12-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

When you write, give your readers something to talk about. That goes for books, posts, poems, stories, songs, and anything you can dig up from your creative innards.

Heck, it even goes for painting and sculptures.

The person enjoying your piece, whatever it may be, needs something to talk about.

For instance, Star Wars is nothing -- NOTHING -- without Light Sabers and Jedi. It is otherwise a cut-n-paste cowboy-space saga. It's all right, don't get me wrong, and it's a fun movie and a great story, but the things we talk about are Jedi and Light Sabers, yes?

The things that make it Star Wars are the things we talk about.

Same for any book you read or movie you see.

We repeat great quotes from As Good as it Gets and Caddyshack.

We discuss what Heinlein and Salinger meant with their rebellious books Stranger in a Strange Land and Catcher in the Rye.

We discuss spooky King, JK Rawlings's Quidditch.

We talk about that Korn song that moved us, the one called Yall Want a Single.

We ~talk~ about the good stories, the great songs, the incredible movies.

Give them something to talk about, Dear Authors.

For my part, I give you a blue-faced God, disgruntled angels without wings, and a boy in the woods with two dogs named Whiskey and Scotch. I give you androgynous test-tube warriors and drug-addict galactic leaders. I give you a chance to name anyone for death and see them die.

I want to give you things to ~talk~ about.

What do you give me to talk about? Do you write with repeatability of your story in mind?

- Eric

LOST in my own words

2010-12-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

Isn't it funny how you get lost in your own work? I haven't written on my WIP since December 2. That's the date of my last save-point. That's a week from today.

Now I've forgotten where I was and how I got there. I'm 22kw into my piece, well into the middle-point (which I personally find the BEST part of writing!), have plenty of steam, I just can't remember what track I was on.

Now I have to re-read parts, skim a little, reset my mind to the book and rediscover my groove. I read a scene, the first few paragraphs of the second chapter, and all of the first chapter, and realized I had completely forgotten I wrote that!

It's like waking up headspun after a drunk blackout in the back of your Tahoe in someplace Louisiana and your cousin is in the front seat, somehow driving, laughing when you moan, and saying, Dude, you didn't get kicked out of the bar, you got kicked out of the TOWN!

He showed me pictures later of me pissing on the side of my Tahoe and laughing and flipping him off.

It was a biker town, I remember that much, something right out of Sons of Anarchy. He said we almost died because I popped off at some guy and hit on his old lady and we bowed up all of them against stupid-ass me and some college kids trying to get out of the way, none of which surprises me. He said he lost me in the commotion and found me on the curb outside with a bouncer standing guard and the bouncer said, Is this fucker with you? You'd better get his ass out of here.

But it was like it never happened except in that story of his. I remember none of it, not even the curb part.

Jack Daniels, man. He's a mean sumbitch, especially if you're going through a divorce.

For you coonasses out there, and I know there are a few (I am one), the town is Mamou, where the windows are painted black and they sell rum as a hangover cure.

You ever have those moments when you write? Complete surprise at a scene you had forgotten, or a story you wrote and shelved and re-read and you can't believe you wrote that, can't even recall it?

You ever woke up in the back of a car hauling ass out of a biker town?

- Eric

Writer ENVY: Have you ever suffered from it?

2010-12-06T05:42:00.000-08:00

I envy talented writers. Talent in anything -- from dancing to singing to sports to writing to math -- cannot be learned, or taught, but is innate as a singer's voice, or a mathematician's knack for numerical visualization.

Either you got it, or you don't got it.

This weekend I saw a fellow writer, who I will not point out other than to say he is not associated with me on the blogosphere, received a special recognition. It wasn't much, but it reminded me of him, and I re-read one of his pieces and looked him up online and wow... he's not a commercial success (and really, what is commercial success anyway?), but he is wildly talented, and is enjoying some small fruits of that talent.

It's amazing how his mind twists the words into a mangled mess that somehow makes sense. It's like watching a crunk dancer perform ballet, and somehow it ~works~.

I read his stuff and think: I'll never write anything like that. I can't. It's not doable. Not that I even want to try, but still, try as I might, I couldn't write like that.

And I envy him for that talent. I get a little bit jealous that he's out there at all, that there are writers with that amount of talent seeking representation from the same agents, the same publishers, going after the same readers and hanging out in the same bookshops. I get a little bit scared that I have to compete with this guy.

I envy his recognition and want my share of it. I feel stingy and childish for that emotion, but there it is, plain and inexplicable and embarrassing as the nipples on my chest. I don't wish him ill, and I believe his recognition is reasonable and well-garnered, but still...

I know I'm not the only one who suffers from this. You don't have to point them out, or acknowledge them, but don't you have authors you're jealous of, that you envy? I don't mean Stephen King or JK Rawlings, I'm talking about your fellow inmates in pre-pub and small-pub lockup, the ones in the trenches with you right now, today.

I mean, don't you ever read something in a blogfest or on a post and think, Wow, I sure don't want to go head-to-head with that author!

- Eric

Final Wordcount

2010-12-01T05:15:00.000-08:00

I say this with absolute genuine praise: If you met your November wordcount goals, if you got your badge, CONGRATULATIONS! I don't care if you got to 50kw or 220kw (as did my publisher, all written from the madhouse here in Dallas). If you set goals and met goals, writing, editing, reviewing, blogging, whatever, I offer you a congratulations for doing what you said you'd do.

Despite the disruptions this month -- and yes, I just called the birth of my son a "disruption" -- I managed to hack out about 20kw on my current WIP.

I have daily goals of 1000-2500 wpd (words per day), and I average 1500 wpd most days. I met those goals on the days I wrote, which tells you I wrote approx 15 days out of 30 this month. The only day I recall starting and not meeting that goal was the day my wife was induced for labor. I managed to get 500 words while we waited for the oxytocin to kick in and I kept getting distracted by the television in the delivery room (I hate television, but my wife loves it).

Anyway.

Don't stop writing just because November passed, and don't spend the next 11 months on your NaNo book. Rest a little if you need it. Write a few shorts just for fun, or some poetry. Edit a couple of months on your NaNo and send it off.

And then ON TO THE NEXT! Don't wait for NaNo 2011 to write your next masterpiece!

If you ask me, May should be the other NaNoWriMo month, but nobody asked me.

- Eric

Write Forward, Not Backward

2010-11-29T06:05:00.000-08:00

First: Thank you all for the well-wishes! We had our baby boy November 17, and mom and baby are and have been nothing but perfect all year, and they are continuing this trend moving into Christmas. I also have managed to write 19kw this month -- not too shabby! -- and am determined to finish my WIP by January.

In the picture are my daughter, son, and son. It's the right baby and his name is Trant, despite the Howey on the baby-tub. That's his momma's last name, which will be changed in 2011.

Now, on with the show...

What the heck do I mean by writing forward?

Hell, it's what NaNoWriMo is all about, isn't it. Don't stop to rewrite. Don't pause or stall or drown your muse in an endless edit-reedit-rereedit-rerereedit cycle.

Write ~FORWARD~! Onward, ho! Move along. If your train derails and you find yourself writing in the desert, on a horse, with no name, write from the desert on your nameless horse and forget the train derailing, because that may be the most wonderful thing you ever write.

Now why did I get to thinking on this topic? I'll tell you why, thanks for asking.

It's because I'm reading a lot of write-forward authors. I've always been attracted to them the most, and with few exceptions, I'd argue it is the write-forward author who writes the most imaginative, creative, beautiful pieces.

For instance, I'm reading Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. He wrote that book forward. I guaran-damned-tee you he didn't stop to edit along the way. Even his character-author Jubal Harshaw said this about his writing, which he dictated to his secretary (and I paraphrase): For God's sake, Anne, don't show it to me! Type it up and mail it off! It's hardly worth reading, much less writing, and if I read it, I'll destroy it. Now off with you! FRONT!

You see what he's saying, don't you? That's Heinlein giving you one of his methods. He wrote, refused to re-write, and in Stranger I hit any number of plot-kinks (if there ever was a plot) that would have stalled me, had I been writing the book. I probably would have put it down and burned it around page 150.

But Heinlein didn't stop. He didn't burn it, and there's a good chance he didn't do much editing before he submitted the piece. Hell, his first release required a 60kw cut!

And it's considered one of the greatest Sci-Fi pieces of all time.

Anyway, we call these people pantsers in this blogosphere. It's what NaNo is all about, writing forward not backward, move along, keep it up and keep moving and get from here to the end.

It's the way we dream. We don't stop and edit our dreams as we go. We dream through to the end. We live life the same way, no do-overs.

In some ways, I believe the computer and the word processor are the WORST thing to happen to writing. It makes editing too easy. Used to be you wrote it with your quill, or in later years typed it.

You wrote forward. That's the way it's always been. WRITE FORWARD!

I say this about editing, and you can quote me on this: Revision can take a good rough draft, pound out the lumps, roll the kinks smooth, straighten the curves, round the edges, and untangle all the thoughtless knots—until there's nothing left but a bunch of flat, balmy words. Blech!

Keep some of the kinks. Let us see the author in you, the writer, the YOU in your words! Write it forward and let the editor sort it out, should it come to that.

It's how I write my blog posts, and when I finally get going on a freaking novel, it's how I write my novels. When I forget this, and begin editing, I kill the piece, just like Jubal Harshaw aka Heinlein said I would.

Write FORWARD!

Assuming that works for you. It's funny how authors give conflicting advice. Who was it who said, All first drafts are shit! (Hemingway)

And, I don't write. I rewrite. (??)

But I digress.

- Eric

Update: Yep, I'm failing NaNo

2010-11-10T13:38:00.000-08:00

As expected, I am failing NaNo.

Someone, please, ask me if I give a shit. Please ask.

There you are, thanks for asking. No, I don't give a shit.

And before anyone goes to bragging, my publisher was at 60k words on day 5. So shut yo mouf.

We all write at our own pace. I won't try to write at your pace, don't try to write at mine.

Me, I am right at 10kw for the month. That's not too shabby, but it's a 30kw/mo pace, short 20kw for a NaNo badge.

Where's that gal who asked me that question a second ago. There you are. You're a cutie, by the way, thanks for asking, and no, I still don't give a shit.

I've modified my workout -- I mean writing -- routine to accommodate a little more writing time.

I put more thought into my story and dove into it, hard.

I also am getting back to my ~method~.

You do have a ~method~ don't you? Here's mine.

I have to think on what I write, before I write it, for about an hour. At least an hour. I ponderize the scene until it's ripe and then I sit down and bang it out!

I used to use my drive into work to do this. I have a 45min to 1hr drive. Turn off the radio, turn on the ponderizer, and for an hour or two peck it out when I get to work.

I got back to that method and it feels wonderful! I write more at home (I use a pre-sleep method to think on my story for morning sessions). I worked in some writing time at my job (that's not an easy thing to do, you know).

And I gave myself permission to skip a little -- not much, but a little -- on the workout routine, in order to catch a few more scenes before they vape on me.

Anyway. That's my NaNo update 10days in.

Oh, and my baby is due any day now! Doc said she'd be surprised if my wife makes it through this weekend with that little baby still in her belly.

More on that later...

GLUCK on NaNo. I would say I'll get to your blogs soon, but that's optimistic at best. I will say this: I'll try.

How is your NaNo going? Are you failing as expected? Have you surpassed 80kw yet (as my publisher has done)? Did you forsake your medication for one month and let the voices take over (as my publisher has done)? Do you have a ~method~?

And WHY ARE YOU READING THIS POST WHEN YOU SHOULD BE WRITING!

- Eric

Eric's Writing Desk

2010-11-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

All right you knuckers, you asked for it. Here's my writing area for Summer's Lazy Fest.

I took a picture with me in it but I cut that one because I look fat and I am NOT fat, dammit.

If you read the numbers, here are what they mean.

1) Smithwick's + Guinness = (what)? Bonus if you know the proper terms for this mix. For inspiration. This is inarguably the most important thing in writing, thus the #1 in my list.

2) Current WIP. Ongoing, soon to be deleted and completely re-written, again, as is my modis operandi.

3) Wife's skivvies, for inspiration, enhanced by the effects of #1. Lots of inspiration in those things, often more than I can handle.

4) Bills I hope to pay when I hit the BS (best-seller's) list. Total of about $4k, which is far more than most writers make.

5) Cable box. Because this is the closet, and they put cable boxes in the closet.

6) Shorts. I hang my shorts. Don't ask. My wife started that crap.

7) Fan, because the closet gets hot.

8) Desk I hate. I will eventually destroy it with a 3lb sledge and burn it down to the nails.

9) Speakers, blasting She Fucking HATES ME! by Puddle of Mudd, which is my theme song.

10) Current read, Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, because my WIP is a Sci-Fi and I read only the best during my writing-slash-drinking binges.

Now you have the 10 variables for the genius equation. Don't abuse them, or if you do, at least give proper credit to Eric W. Trant at Digging with the Worms...

- Eric

What do you use for inspiration? Does Guinness inspire you? Have you ever had Shiner Bock? Why is beer known as The Great Motivator? Can I see your (or your wife's) skivvies?

Something Spooky from Eric

2010-10-31T04:56:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

Here's an unedited ditty from my early days, back in the early 2000s. I sent this story out to a few ezines, never heard anything back.

Then my sister-in-law Googles my name and finds it on some guy's emag-site! So I guess this is ~officially~ my first publication.

It's sexual in nature, a sex-horror. All my horrors are sexual, now that I think about it.

Weird.

Funny that I've always lumped sexuality and horror together. My first novel is a horror, and one of my current wips is a horror, and both have deep, deep sexual undertones, with women who use their sexuality to manipulate and control men.

Oh, the HORROR!

This is mostly unedited from the original draft. I knocked out a few semicolons (isn't it funny how that is such a common newbie habit!), and cleaned up a couple of confusing sentences, but otherwise left this intact.

Go ahead and pick it apart if you want. There's a ton to pick!

Letters From the Dead

Waking that evening, Lionel reached out and expected to find her there, beside him in the bunk. How he hated her beside him. How he loved not finding her there. She'd swayed beneath him when they'd left port, and Lionel had begrudged her that, taking little pleasure in the appalling acts with Hillary, the thing he called his wife. For years she'd hexed Lionel with her seductions, her smooth words, her touch that melted him; now she swayed beneath him in another way, lurid, part of the endless sea, groaning in the sails and the wind.

Eleven years Lionel had opened his eyes and seen Hillary. This evening Lionel opened his eyes and found an envelope on the pillow next to his head. Outside the sun sank low on the horizon, and the cabin was too dark to be sure of it, but the white object looked like a letter.

Reaching for the light next to the bed, Lionel remembered it was broken, shattered. Last night, he'd swept up the glass after Hillary broke the lamp. Lionel touched his temple. There. That was where Hillary hit him with the lamp, ripped it free from it's bolts and struck him in her final desperate act.

Lionel stood. Naked, he felt his way to the aft light, next to the head, and lit the cabin. Seeing hurt his eyes. The sailboat creaked in the light. In the daylight, the ship's planks blanched in the sun and complained and refused to hiss against the water. But the night was a comfort to both Lionel and his boat. Cool darkness, like closed eyelids on a burning pair of eyes. In the light there was too much to see.

It was a letter, the white object, creased as if it had been hurriedly folded, or as if a child had done the folding, awkward; the letter lay half-open on his dead wife's pillow. On Hillary's pillow.

The letter gaped at Lionel like Hillary's mouth after she'd swallowed too much salty water, open, looking for air, finding none. Lionel hadn't seen the end of her when she'd gone under. Hillary drifted down into the dark water and simply disappeared. She was alive when he'd last seen her, Lionel was sure of that. She kicked against the rope, but an anchor is a heavy burden. Around your neck, how heavy is that? Can you support it as you swim? Resist its iron weight as it tugs you under, hundreds of feet to the bottom? It seemed oddly humorous last night, watching Hillary fight the weight of the small anchor, the fifty-pounder Lionel rarely used but kept on the deck anyway. He'd used the anchor last night, all right; and when he'd pulled it onto the boat this morning, the anchor hung alone on the rope. Nothing left of Hillary. Spread like forgotten ashes unto the sea.

But there rested a letter on his pillow. And Lionel knew what it said. He didn't have to open it. Hillary was a wicked woman. Evil. From the depths of the ocean Hillary reached up and stroked Lionel with her seductive dead fingers.

She'd looked up at Lionel as she sank, gaping for air, her panicked face wavy beneath the water, her hair wild and alive and reaching, the long auburn strands probably still alive, reaching now from the ocean floor like spines from an urchin. Lionel could see her eyes, bulging and blue. And her unsmiling teeth. Hillary had such perfect and wicked teeth, white and straight as they soaked in their salty grave.

Her teeth seemed to Lionel the most important part of his dead wife. When she'd otherwise wasted away, bored with her own condescending abuse, when she'd become a skull with a pointed tongue, all bones and ribs and sharp angled hips, Hillary's cheeks drew back and exposed more of her teeth. You're too fat, she said to Lionel. Then she flashed her teeth, snarled, and tore away at Lionel, ripped apart his self-respect with her perfect teeth.

Hillary wrote a letter once and put it in Lionel's pocket:

You belong to me

Keep that, Hillary said. It's true, you know.

Hillary made love to him that night, after she folded the letter and tucked it into his jeans, made love as if the letter represented a bonding, a covenant. She consecrated her vow—if that's what it was—on top of Lionel with her eyes closed. She couldn't look at him when they made love, she said. It ruins the mood.

Lionel kept the letter tucked beneath his pillow, where Hillary could see it when she wanted. Hillary asked about the letter regularly. Show it to me.

That was her foreplay. Lionel showed her the letter and then she took him.

And now, where they'd made love two days before, was another letter, folded as roughly as had been the first.

You belong to me.

Lionel could read it on Hillary's lips as she sank into the ocean. She hadn't been gasping, she'd been speaking, reminding Lionel of his place. She'd asked to see the letter. From a hundred feet below the world, Hillary gave Lionel her ultimatum. Show me the letter, and then I'll take you.

"No," Lionel said. He spoke to the letter as if it might answer back. It seemed a living thing, breathing as the sailboat shifted back and forth on the evening wind.

There was nothing left to do. Nothing else but to walk to the bunk and touch the pillow that still smelled like Hillary's hair. So Lionel stepped to the bunk and sat on the sheets. The sheets were wet, either from his sweat, or from the thought of being soaked in saltwater poured from a dead woman's eyes. She's coming. Hillary's coming to take me.

Lionel picked up the letter and examined the creases. The boat creaked, and Lionel thought he heard footsteps, a flutter that might be the sail, or that might be a loose-knit skirt flapping on a skeletal woman.

Surprising how calm a man can be at the end. That was Lionel's thought when he saw how steady his thumbs held the letter. He unfolded the paper.

The words didn't make sense. They were jumbled letters, nothing but scrawling lines:

You belong to the sea

Not what he expected, Lionel read the words again. He realized the handwriting was his, not Hillary's. He must have written the letter last night, in the calm aftermath of killing Hillary, after he watched her face disappear beneath the sea, written the words and forgotten about them. Easy to forget. There were so many things to think about, now.

He needed air. Lionel folded the letter and placed it under his pillow, where Hillary once kept her letter. Then he went up to the deck and stood looking over the stern of the boat. It was almost night. Lionel felt more at home in the darkness.

Lionel checked the rudder. He looked into the water, and below the rudder Lionel saw Hillary there, gnashing her teeth, wild-haired beneath the ocean. But it would be dark soon. And in the darkness, what dead things are there to see?

circa 2001, Eric W. Trant

- Eric

NaNo: It's OKAY to Fail!

2010-10-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

NaNo's all over the blogo, and I'd like to weigh in on this, if I may.

First, let me say: It's all right to fail!

Odds are you will NOT reach 50kw in one month.

Odds are you will NOT have a readable or editable manuscript.

Odds are you will NOT be able to edit and revise that (unreadable) manuscript into something saleable.

Folks, I'm a pragmatist and overly honest. I call it like I see it. I don't believe in false confidence or unrealistic expectations, and I'm telling you right now, NaNo is chock full of unrealistic expectations.

Let me tell you the reality of NaNo.

NaNo IS...

... a way to kick off your writing habit, if you do not already have one.
... a means of re-establishing your routine, if you've lost it.
... a fine excuse for dealing with your Writer's Guilt (see my previous posts on this).

NaNo is NOT...

... a good or easy way to write a novel (this is debatable, but is true for my writing style).
... the only way to write a novel.
... the only time of the year you should be writing.

So with that said, let me suggest this to you, my writer friends:

Use November to...

... establish (or re-establish) a consistent writing habit.
... write something legible and healthy.
... educate those around you that writing is ~important~ to you!

The point is, folks, be healthy during NaNo. Set realistic expectations. Don't give in to the peer pressure to set random goals you ~cannot~ achieve.

Be honest with yourself. Keep your balance -- there is no sense neglecting other parts of your life to hit a random word count of 50k words. You'll only frustrate yourself and those around you.

Do your best, and so long as you make forward progress, you are a success. 12k words, success. 5k words, success. Polished revision, success.

Do you see? Please say you see.

My fear is that NaNo discourages writers who "fail" to get the badge. It's a fine idea, folks, but don't be upset if you miss that arbitrary mark, and don't get all flippant if you do.

Because hey, I hit 50k words a long fucking time ago and I wasn't the first. Good job, now sit down and keep writing.

- Eric

I Got Fired

2010-10-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

Submission deadline: Short Stories for An Honest Lie

2010-10-25T18:05:00.000-07:00

Ping YOU et al:

Submissions open NOVEMBER 1 through MARCH 15 for short story submissions for An Honest Lie Vol 3: Justifiable Hypocrisy

Open Heart Publishing Submissions

This is the anthology I'm in twice -- see sidebar for Vol 1 and 2 -- so you know they'll accept just about anybody.

Debrin Case, the publisher (see his interview here) is looking for well-edited, clean stories with a creative twist.

Here's a hint: Debrin loves urban fantasy, especially Charles DeLint, and he likes the story to appeal to general audiences.

For instance, in Vol 2 he made me take out the hell words from my story, including the hell I had tucked in the title and the last line. Those lines were the same, actually, and he said I ruined the punchline, change the title, and so I did. My story is now entitled One Small Step. The last line is the same, though, and he let me keep that one hell in the story.

So take out the curse words and obscenities and add a little fantasy and change the title.

I'd be happy to look over anyone's submission, so long as I don't get swamped.

Please feel free to reference this on your blog, as Debrin is looking for ~GOOD~ submissions, and I know you all have some creative stories about hypocrisy tucked in your vault, and you have friends who can cook up something gritty for Vol 3.

NOTE: This is a paid publication, no entry fee (not a contest, see my blog on which way the money flows), includes professional editing, and you may be required to read your publication aloud, on camera, in a room full of staring people.

Then again, we may meet in a pub for a get-to-know-you. We did that too, see this post.

Also, whomsoever sells the most books (out of approx 13 authors) wins a book deal! That's how I got my book deal, if you were wondering. I sold an order of magnitude more books than most of the other authors, because that's how I roll, and publishers like authors who get out and hump it.

Any idea what Justifiable Hypocrisy is? Have you done this in real life? Do you have a book deal? Do you want one?

- Eric

One simple rule to avoid SCAMS

2010-10-23T04:38:00.000-07:00

Here's one simple rule I follow that allows me to avoid scams, not just in writing, but in general life.

See, as a writer, we are bombarded with scams. I can't and won't list them all out, and not all of them are scams as such -- they are unscrupulous, but they are legal -- but I'll mention a couple.

Many writing contests charge an entry fee. While some writing contests are considered legitimate, and offer respected prizes, I lump most of them in the not-to-do list. There are a few I might consider entering, but not many, and to date I have entered none at all that charged a reading fee.

I won't say that vanity press is a scam, but I'll say be careful who you choose, if you choose to go vanity press. Do your homework and make a smart business decision.

Both contests and vanity presses are legal ways to get published, but they're both often listed in the scam category, and that brings me to how I came about my one rule for avoiding scams of all sorts.

Let's go back to Eric when he was in college. I grew up in a small Southeast Texas town on the Gulf Coast. In 1989, I drove to Austin, Texas, to attend The University of Texas, and unloaded my stuff into a dormitory that housed three times more people than my hometown, (2.78 times more people, to be precise).

I ordered pizza like they did in the movies. That was neat and I did this a lot afterwards.

I ordered Chinese food, which I never believed came in that little white box that opened on the top -- Chinese food boxes with chopsticks were a myth to me as much as trolls and fairies are to you.

I rode in a taxicab, and on a city bus, and hit those buttons at the crosswalk that changed the stoplight, and saw my first beggar right there on campus. He chased me into the dollar theater when I wouldn't give him money, and for a minute I thought I was going to have to fight him and his buddy to get them off me.

Come on, Captain, you got some money, he kept saying, his buddy hobbling behind him and both reeking of the street and beer, me all alone because I was the only person I knew. Come on, Captain.

A cop took my hunting knife, said I couldn't carry that in my truck (she didn't take the machete or hatchet I had behind the seat, God help me if she'd found that or the other shit I had tucked here-and-there), and the officer laughed at my girlfriend (I met her after the bum-thing) when she told the officers that I was from a small town and didn't know any better.

What's this knife for? the cop says. She shows it to the other officers and almost hits me when I reach for it.

I was gonna show her what I use it for.

Cutting rope, I said. I had rope in the back of the truck -- I always had rope, don't you always have rope?

She said I could claim it at the station, but she took it home and I never did get that knife back, dangit, and I loved that knife. It was a bone-handled full-tang Kabar my brother gave me for my sixteenth birthday, and the high school principle back home once saw it in the parking lot, opened the truck door and took it out and called me to the office and said that I should put it under the seat so nobody would steal it.

Anyway. I guess he was right.

One evening I'm in my dorm room and the phone rings. You've won one thousand dollars in prizes! the guy says.

What the hell are you talking about? I say.

He goes on, and I don't believe him, but he says he is right outside with my prizes, all I have to do is come down to the lobby, pick em up, and that would be it, and I said, All right, then.

Just bring forty-five dollars, he says, and I'll give you a thousand dollars in prizes! Congratulations!

I'm expecting him to have a dolly and maybe a truck full of shit to offload, and I'm wondering where I'm going to put it all.

In walks this pothead in frayed khaki shorts. He says something. I say something. He takes the money and hands me a book of Austin City Limit Coupons and is gone like a fart in a hurricane.

It wasn't illegal what he did, not really. I later discovered that the local whack-heads sold coupon books to the freshmen each fall, that it was a regular deal and about as illegal as selling those roses on 6th street, but that night cemented into my mind the one simple to avoid scams, and it is this:

Money only flows one way!

This applies to jobs, businesses, sales, and yes, to publication in writing.

Let's go through the logic here.

If someone says you are working for them -- or that they are giving you money in the form of a prize (spare me) or inheritance from a distant relative -- then the money flows from them to you, right? That's how my paycheck works at my day job. I never pay them unless I receive a specific service (such as gym membership or health care or some such).

Otherwise, I provide a service and my company pays me for the service. The money is flowing from them to me.

Now, if the money is flowing from you to them, you are NOT working for them, nor are you receiving money from them. NO! You are paying them.

Do you see what I'm saying, about the direction of the flow of money?

So if someone offers to publish your book for you, or hires you as an author, or says they will represent you, and in turn asks for money from you, then the money is flowing in the wrong damned direction, and boys and girls, what is Eric's one rule to avoid scams?

Say it together:

Money only flows one way!

I'm not saying don't pay someone to professionally edit your book, nor am I saying you shouldn't submit your work to publishers who charge a reading fee.

I'm just saying that if you choose to pay someone to look at your work, do so knowingly and with some common sense.

Oh, which brings up another rule of mine, which is this:

Don't call me, I'll call you.

I'm immediately suspicious of anyone who calls me offering money or ways to make money. In other words, be wary of any agent or publisher who contacts you without your solicitation. I'm even wary of headhunters in my day job who solicit me for engineering positions.

Do you have any rules to avoid scams? Have you ever been scammed? Did you learn anything from your scam? Has a cop ever laughed at you, or taken your favorite knife, or have you ever been attacked by zombie-bums?

- Eric

Writer's GUILT

2010-10-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

Writer's Guilt is that feeling you have for holing up in your writing space -- and I guarantee you it's a hole or a cave, because if it wasn't, you'd never get anything written.

You hide and for a few hours you write.

Even if you're published, even if you're a famous author, you know that what you write will probably never be read. It's not wasted, but it's a first draft, something that may resemble the final story, but it's not the final story.

Or you revise. God, I hate revision. So if you're like me, you sit cursing in your Writing Cave (creating new curse words like shitballs and hellfuck and madre de mutherfucking dios), hack-hack-hacking until the words are right and you can move off that page and never, never, NEVER look at that piece of dingleshit again (unless an editor asks you to look, in which case it must not have been that bad, eh).

You embrace the art of writing and in doing so you neglect your family. You could be playing with your kids or taking them frog-hunting around the neighborhood. It's frog season, you know, the tadpoles are grown, and last year, around this time, we bagged nineteen -- count em, NINETEEN -- toads a-hopping around the neighborhood.

You neglect little Fluffy, or in my case, Princess Daisy, our Pomeranian who sits in my lap as I write. Let's not mention Nicki the ball-crazy Corgi. He's too nuts to sit in my cave with me.

You neglect your chores, dinner, put off getting dressed or showered or nibbling your sweetie pie. (I don't put off that last part. Hell, yesterday I stopped mid-sentence to nibble on her.)

You delay all these things in lieu of WRITING.

And if you're like me -- and I bet you are -- you feel guilty.

You feel like you should be doing all those other things, that your family is more important, that the Corgi deserves a good ball-throw in the yard, and wouldn't that be more fun than banging out another 750 words on this goat-fucking story that SUCKS, and you hate the voice, the tone, the main character, and... well, your mind bends back to the keyboard and you peck out another 750 words and 200 to grow on, because you didn't want to stop in an awkward place.

I'm giving you all permission, so here it is: Stop feeling guilty.

I'm lucky because my wife supports my writing. She pokes her head into the cave, kisses me, says, How's it going?

Good. This sucks, so I'm doing it right.

This is the story you're going to publish in the spring, the one with me in it?

Yep, if I can get it fixed. It sucks donkey balls. I hate my life.

I made you a plate.

She hands me the plate she made, the food she cooked, sets down an open beer and says, How much longer?

An hour or so. Thanks for the food and beer. Pick out a movie and we'll watch when I'm done.

Okay.

Then she picks out a horror blood-fest action flick, and puts her head in my lap while we watch and I drink another beer, and now you all know why I love her so much.

Anyway. The point of all this is that you should NOT feel guilty. Find some balance. Write and be PROUD that you write, no matter what or whose balls it sucks.

Talk to your loved ones about it, help them understand that writing is important to you, and if it's important to you, it will be important to them, no less than would ballet for your daughter or soccer for your son or soccer for your daughter and ballet for your son. If that was what they loved and enjoyed and said, Daddy/Mommy, please, can I do it, I LOVE it!

You'd do it, and you'd be happy for them, especially when they succeed at something they worked so hard to achieve.

Don't feel guilty.

Don't feel guilty.

As they say about good workouts, we can say about good writing: EMBRACE THE SUCK!

And embrace it without the guilt.

Do you feel guilty? Does your family support your writing? Do you have any curse words I can add to my arsenal?

- Eric

PS: Speaking of WRITING CAVES, have you entered Summer's LAZY BLOGFEST, where you post a picture of your writing area Nov 1. I'll be exposing my cave then, so be prepared.

Balance: Note to Self

2010-10-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

This here post is a note to myself. If nobody else reads it, so be it, the post served its purpose.

But if you want to read on, have at. It's about balance.

My life has become unbalanced.

I got busy at work. I usually post during my downtime at work. Now you know my secret, why I've been so quiet, both here and on your blogs.

Late nights kept me from getting the sleep I need to get up and write each morning -- I write at 4:30AM, when it's quiet, which means I need an early bedtime to hit my writing mark.

My wife and I are expecting a baby son between today and Thanksgiving, and we're in that final throe where I'm in a total panic and she's saying, Honey, calm down, it'll be all right, and I'm saying, But formula's gonna be $700 a month! Holy shitballs, woman, how are we gonna feed that little baby boy! And quit looking at that $700 rocking chair! Holy shitballs, woman, you have expensive taste. She blinks and we get the rocking chair anyway, because she's beautiful like that and I love her way more than money, and she's right, it'll be okay.

I coach soccer for my son, and we're having a tough season. I try not to worry much on this, but I need to run practices, check schedules, send emails, and wash those penny jerseys and the goalie jersey.

I work two jobs, one my own business, one the job that pays the bills. Both got busy at the same time. My day job -- I already mentioned that one -- hit a hotspot, and at the same time my night job picked up and badabing badaboom, I'm off my balance beam, on the mat, floored and gassed and no idea how to get back up and go at it again.

Plus I write. Like you all. Did I mention that one, yet?

But enough about me and my busy-ness. I'm busy. You get the picture.

There's this one thing I haven't mentioned, though, and it's my gym-time. I work out every day at lunch. It's a religion for me. I don't miss workouts unless there's a damned good reason, and I don't miss more than one or two per week, ever. I get at least three per week, usually four or five, and only allow myself to take off on weekends, but on weekends, I stay off my ass and do stuff that requires physical labor, like putting up a fence last week.

Did I mention I had to put up a fence, too? Forgot about that one. Don't forget putting out Halloween decorations, too, while I was putting up the fence with the kids and the wife asking me to haul this and that down from the attic.

Anyway. I love my family, and I did it (mostly) without complaint.

Back to working out. I didn't skip, because working out is important to me. It keeps me sane, healthy, keeps my stress in check, and if I manage to peak (which I am trying to peak this fall), I feel sexy as hell. Not that it'll do much good with a new baby, and not that peaking when you're almost 40 is all that impressive, but still, it means something to me.

The point is I made time for the workouts.

Even when life was unbalanced.

Even when I was so busy I could barely find time to check my emails, ate at my desk, and all that other blah-blah I don't have to tell you about, because you, my fellow modernites, know exactly what I mean.

Oh, and my alternator went out. Let's not forget about that alternator, holy shitballs woman, I just had to spend $700 on an alternator, how are we gonna afford this baby!

I want to find that balance again. I want to juggle my balls without getting racked, if you get me.

I need to get back on the writing, my blogging, keep my head in this literature game.

I need to stay on top of my side-business.

I need to keep up with my day-job.

My family needs me, my wife and my kids and my soon-to-be-born son.

Stick with my workout routine.

Find balance. Find solitude. Relax.

Make time for what is important. Leave out those things that don't matter, and remember how to say, No.

Remember it'll be all right. It always is.

(Writing this out, helped, see! I figured exactly what was needling me, and it's that combination of nerves you only get before weddings, Christmas when you're ten, and baby-baby-babies...)

Holy shitballs, eh! He's almost here!

- Eric

I landed a BOOK DEAL!

2010-10-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

And the Winner Is... Eric Trant!

I landed a book deal!

This morning I got a call from Debrin Case over at Open Heart Publishing letting me know I had received the book deal he was offering to one of his short story authors.

"Yes, I have some books," I told him, when he asked.

"Good," he said. "Have one to me by December first."

Now I have to edit those pieces -- again -- and figure out which is the best one to put out for publication.

Do I keep working on my current piece, which is about 12kw along, add some sections to that novella I wrote in the spring, re-write that horror from a few years back, hit that trilogy I got bogged down in, or finish that fantasy novel I stopped working on a while back? Or maybe go with that lit-fic-fantasy I wrote last year, the one my wife likes because I based one of my characters on her.

Or maybe take the easy way out and do a short story compilation... (not my first choice).

I think, instead of thinking on this too much, I'll relax today and think on it tonight while I sleep and have an answer by morning. My brain works like that, by osmosis. All my good stuff occurs while I sleep and I forget it all the next morning, except for the really, really good stuff, which somehow floats close enough to the surface for me to scoop out and keep.

I would like to thank a couple of my fellow bloggers, though, for reviewing and promoting An Honest Lie Vol 1: Encouraging the Delinquency of Your Inner Child.

Mesmerix over at Scribbler to Scribe wrote a solid review. She's one of those people who gives more than she takes, which is especially a good thing if you're a boxer, except she's a writer and editor and legal advisor in foreclosure and bankruptcy. She inspired that Pay It Forward post I put up a while back, owing to her generous nature, and I hope some of her generosity rubs off on me.

I also hope to learn, via osmosis, some of her editing tricks.

Donna Hole, whose punchiness is always a welcome respite from the more timid bloggers we read and love. Donna is unapologetic in her opinions and her critiques and that deep-throaty voice that keeps its tongue bit back one or two words short of one-word-too-far. I do believe that the very first post I received from Donna mentioned how I had head-skipped POV in a scene I posted up for a blogfest, and she caught the fact that I lied to the reader. "Lie to the characters but not the reader," she wrote.

And she's right, you know.

In any case, there it is and here you go. I have a book deal.

Coming in Spring of 2011...

- Eric

Nicknames: Why they are important

2010-09-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

Remember your nicknames, folks. Everyone has a nick, most of us have many, and we nickname everything from our kids to our dogs to our guns and cars, to our lovers and best friends and favorite beers and the favorite parts of our lovers that we only find after drinking a few of those favorite beers we call Black Syrup.

I drive a Tahoe. Its nickname is The Tahoe.

So we're in The Tahoe, and the kids are watching Lady & the Tramp over and over. They do that, watch the same movie over and over, and I get to hear it, over and over, and that movie is what got me to thinking about nicknames.

See, the man and woman in Lady & the Tramp have names, but their dog, Lady, only knows them by their nicknames: Jim-Dear and Darling.

Then later, when Tramp meets Lady, he immediately nicks her with Pigeon, which is nicked even further to Pidge.

Do you see the art there? Nicknames dig deep. That nick is the private name, the one whispered and never written -- except when we, as writers, write them!

I nick my kids, my wife, both the dogs, my brother and my pop, and in fact my dad never calls me Eric, I'm known only as Boog, short for Booger.

My brother is Tigger. His wife is Bear. Mine is Sweetie Pie.

Nicknames, people. Don't forget your characters have nicknames.

What is your nickname? What about your characters, do you nick them?

- Boog, E, ET, Baby, Bro, Daddy, Mr. Eric, Coach, Saul, Saul Goode...

Paying it Forward

2010-09-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Pay it forward, you jerkies!

I'd like to thank Mesmerix over at Scribbler to Scribe not only for reviewing some of my work, but also for inspiring me to Pay it Forward.

See, she and I emailed a bit and I thanked her for the review and offered to read some of her work and return the favor and thanked her again for "wanting to read my gunk." (That's a direct quote.)

Know what she wrote back? She said, and I quote: "I'm all about supporting my neighborhood blogger-writers. Pay it forward and all."

So I'm paying it forward and heading off to buy one of my fellow blogger's books.

It's a book I've been eyeing for a little while. I like her excerpts. It sounds good and manly (so many of my fellow bloggers are either YA or romance).

In other words, it sounds like my gig.

A book I might actually enjoy reading.

I don't patronize or buy out of obligation, nor do I guilt or push my work onto anyone else. I read because I enjoy reading. I critique writers I like to critique.

Likewise, I expect the same from my readers and critters and betas. I'm not an obligation, dadgummit.

So I'm not asking you to buy a book you'll hate, out of guilt or obligation.

Nope. Instead, I'm suggesting you buy that book that you've been thinking about buying. Get the electronic version, if you must, it's sure a lot cheaper.

Buy that self-published book that sounds decent.

Buy that romance, or even that YA that sounds nifty.

Maybe they're self-published, or working with a micro-pub, or it's their first book with Penguin or Harper.

Go support your local blogger!

Pay it forward and all.

Whose book do you want to buy? Post a link to it in the comments! See my old post on how to insert a link into the comments: HTML for Bloggers!

Here's my choice: Mary McDonald's No Good Deed

- Eric

Book Review: An Honest Lie Vol 1

2010-09-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

http://mesmerix.blogspot.com

There's a fine book review at Mesmerix on an anthology containing one of my short stories. Special thanks for the awesome review!

You'll note in her comment that purchases made through my portal go toward a vote that earns the leading author a book deal. Last I checked I was the leading author and am working hard to keep it that way! Wish me luck, and I'll know for sure in October...

Again, M, thank you for the review. Hopefully next year it'll be a full-on novel to shred up.

- Eric

Shaved heads and other setbacks

2010-09-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

We all face little setbacks. Life doesn't hit the pause button when you're ready to write. To be successful in writing -- and in anything you do -- you need to be ready for those setbacks and you must employ two of my favorite all-time quotes:

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. Paraphrased and reversed, spoken by Clint Eastwood, written by Jim Carabatsos (the actual quote was cumbersome and backward)

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Teddy Roosevelt, spoken in perfect order and brevity

I'm a believer that obstacles are not problems, they are opportunities. I say this at work all the time. "Send me into the fire," I tell em. "Because that's where the opportunities are."

And the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. The harder you have to work at writing -- and I'll stick to writing as the goal here, but really this applies to any goal in your life -- the bigger the payoff.

I don't know why that is, but there's a Divine Law somewhere that says just that: Payoff is directly proportional to effort.

Rarely is it the casual writer who la-lahs into a bestseller with ho-hum effort who then laments that it was too easy.

Instead, it's the struggling artist, the Clancy writing with his kid on his knee, the King locking himself in his office away from his family, the McCarthy writing in squalor, the Grisham going from store-to-store hocking his books and begging for shelf space, the Rawlings writing it out on napkins after a dozen publishing houses rejected her story.

It's the hard-earned EFFORT of the writer that pays off. If it's easy, you're probably doing it wrong. If you quit when it gets tough, then you're not doing it at all, are you.

Which brings me to a shaved head.

I asked my wife this weekend to help me shave my head. I keep it short since there ain't much left to keep anyway. "The guard's not hitting it," she said.

"That's all right," I said.

So she does something behind me and hair starts falling away and I say, "What'd you do?"

"Took off the guard."

Crap. I didn't want to get peeled, just clippered. Now I'm bald as Bruce Willis.

So it's a setback, albeit it a minor one, but I still looked at it as an opportunity.

Namely, I guilted my Sweet Thing into some very nice nibbling.

That's how it works, folks. It's not a setback or a problem.

It's an opportunity.

Even when it's the hair on your head.

- Eric

My Publisher's Interview

2010-09-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

And now, here's the interview from my publisher. He's done two of my short stories, and I like to think we'll continue doing business together, so long as the worms keep digging and he keeps being able to pay his rent.

http://debrincase.com/blog4/2010/08/31/and-now-our-fearless-leader-debrin-case/

Purchase the book here, with my first-ever short story Apple Tree:
Click to Buy

Excerpt

OHP: Do you have any advice for aspiring publishers {writers} out there?

D.C.: Keep to your deadlines. Nothing else matters above your word and keeping to your deadlines.

Is your life in shambles, can’t pay the rent, need a new car… tough shit, keep to your deadlines.

The world is doomed, the wrong political candidate won the election, there is a race of mutant rats overthrowing your city… ah well, stick to your deadlines.

An author needs an extension on their piece, an artist is having issues, your printer is going away on holiday, who cares… Keep your deadlines.

Remember those words, my fellow wannabes and gonnabes and are-nows and has-beens and ceaseless lifelong dreamers.

It's all about the deadline.

Go figger.

- Eric

My Author Interview

2010-08-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

Here's my author interview with Open Heart Publishing and their forthcoming anthology. They're publishing another of my shorts, entitled One Small Step. Feel free to visit and comment!

http://debrincase.com/blog4/2010/08/25/returning-author-eric-trant/

Here's a snippet:

OHP: In your opinion, which is the more important discovery of humankind… plumbing or the written word?

E.T.: A combination of both, actually. One gives you the means to accomplish your personal business in private. The other gives you something with which to wipe.

- Eric

Rainy Night Blog Fest

2010-08-25T04:35:00.000-07:00

Rainy Night Blogfest for Christine over at The Writer's Hole

From my unpublished novella, Dark Woods. Henry is about 10 years old.

The rain began late that night, a quiet shower dripping from the treetops. No lightning or thunder interrupted the steady patter of droplets against the leaves and Henry's blue tarp. The rain fell straight down in the stagnant air. Water sizzled in the fire and on the burning summer ground, hard and hot as pavement.

Henry huddled beneath the tarp with the dogs on either side of him. He sat cross-legged and used the Army shovel to hack a deeper water trench around his sleeping area. Despite its calm nature, the rain was actually a downpour, and puddles accumulated around Henry and filled up his fire pit.

Henry wished he'd brought some fire wood under his tarp. He wished he'd set up a fire pit closer to the tarp, or better yet, beneath the tarp. But the tarp barely covered him and the dogs. He wished he had a larger tarp. He wished he had a flashlight that worked, or even a lantern he could light.

He wished he had matches to light the lantern.

Satisfied with the water trench around him and the dogs, Henry watched the fire die down and the fire pit fill with water. Two charred crawfish shells floated to the edge of the fire pit and crept toward the trees atop a flowing puddle of gray ash. The ping-sizzle of the raindrops died off into a muddy slap, taking with it the last remaining light. Darkness wrapped around Henry so thick he could barely tell his eyes were open.

***

Henry couldn't see much, but he could hear. The rain ebbed and flowed, and after a while began to let up, and that's when he heard the squealing. The dogs had perked their ears long moments before, hearing the things only dogs can hear, and Whiskey raised his head and issued a few warning growls, but the rain had masked the sounds Henry now could hear.

Henry heard a raucous screech followed by a few deep thumps that he could feel in the ground below him. The screams of pain, heavy grunts of anger. Nothing in the darkness moved, and Henry could barely see to the edge of his camp.

Henry wrapped his hands around the .30-30 rifle, flicking the safety on and off as he waited to see if it would come nearer.

Whiskey stood and shook his coat, splattering Henry's cheek and arm with flicks of mud. The dog growled deep in his chest. Henry saw the spiked outline of the dog's rustled hair standing on end along his spine, his tail low but not between his legs, just out of the way, his flanks wound tight and ready to spring. Scotch stood and wagged his tail and barked once and then licked the splatter marks off Henry's cheek.

The rain drizzled through the treetops in an unsteady buzz. Henry heard clumping footsteps that became wet and sloshy as they grew nearer to Henry's camp. They were hooves, he could tell from the clopping sound they made against the roots, and large, more than one set of hooves, two or three maybe, overlapping as they navigated the dark woods. He felt the hooves pound against the forest floor. Sharp cries of pain issued forth from the underbrush, something crashing through the briars and thorns and cracking limbs beneath its feet.

- Eric

Writing Tips I Learned From My Kids

2010-08-14T21:06:00.000-07:00

So I'm watching X-Men with my son, and he says, "Daddy, who's this movie about?"

And I say, "Well, the first character you see is usually the main character. For this movie, who's the first character?"

"Magneto."

"So that's it. Magneto's the main character."

"But I thought it was about Wolverine."

"Was Wolverine the first character?"

"No."

"Was Wolverine the guy at the end of the movie?"

"No."

"That's right. The first scene was Magneto. The last scene was Magneto. Everything about the plot was Magneto. Magneto was the Main Character. See how that works?"

"Yeah, I guess. I still like Wolverine better. He's way cooler than Magneto."

And my daughter, we're watching The Day the Earth Stood Still, and they're standing in front of the alien spacecraft and Jennifer Connelly is walking toward the alien, holding out her hand toward this unknown being who just a few seconds earlier about leveled NYC, and my daughter says, "It's always a smart person who walks up to the alien to shake hands. Then some stupid person with a gun shoots them."

Then somebody shot the alien.

"See!" she said.

Stupid somebody!

So remember these lessons my write buddies and baddies: The Main Character is always the first person -- not the most interesting -- smart people stick their hands into the blender, and stupid people shoot things they don't understand.

Everything you ever needed to know about writing, courtesy of my childrenses.

You're welcome.

- Eric

When do you ~CREATE~?

2010-08-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

We've all posted about when we write and how we inspire the muses, but I want to discuss the creation process deeper this time, and why understanding when you create your stories is one of the most important timeslots in your day.

I wrote a story about a blue-faced God whose expressionless features never answered a damned thing. My character asked over and over for God to answer, and God stared back at him with that blue-faced mask, still as a sculpture.

The reason that scene came alive for me is that I tripped inside of my head this fuse that allowed the worms to dig and excavate and root around anytime my mind fell idle.

I fell asleep praying to my blue-faced God. In my dreams I stood beside God and asked Him to solve my problems, show me the way, bless those I care for, and He stared through and above me and never said a damned thing.

You know how sometimes when your kid asks you a question, and you pause for a second to let their wheels click, and after a few beats the kid says, "Oh, I see. Nevermind."

You never said a word. You stared and let them figure it out for themselves.

That was how it was with my blue-faced God. He let me figure it out for myself, and I in turn passed that on to my character and let him figure it out for himself.

How's that relate to the overall topic of when you create? Let me tell you. I created that story at night, falling asleep in my insomnianic manner, rolling for a couple of hours in bed and in my head. I didn't write that story at the computer, or mowing the yard, or working out, or sitting around with pad and paper and an outline.

I wrote it in my dreams, and when I woke the next morning, I hammered out the scene that had cleaved itself from the hard-packed earth and puked up a blue-faced flower.

I nurtured that time at night. I let my mind drift to the story.

I allowed myself to ~create~ the story, and then, later, when the lights were on, I simply wrote down what I'd seen the night before.

King created Misery in his dreams on an airplane flight. Dante created Inferno in his dreams. Who the hell knows where Poe created his stuff, but it wasn't at the pen-and-ink table with the candle flickering. Then, later, they wrote it down, see.

The point here is to understand when it is that your stories come to life and nurture that time. Humor it. Make that time part of your daily routine. It may be different for every story, but find that creative time when your story is born and make time for it. Nothing is created at the keyboard or the outline tablet.

Your stories are recorded when you write, that's all.

- Eric

Detox for Writers

2010-07-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

When you're stressed out, everyone and everything suffers. You neglect your family, forget to clean the fish tank, let the yard grow out, piss off your boss with your latest raging case of The Fuckits, irk your loving wife because you'd rather sleep on the couch (because, probably owing to the PTSD associated with your divorce and all those years bedding down the cushions, when you're stressed, the couch feels safer), and above all other things, you impose a magnificent injustice on your writing.

It's this latterest point I'd like to address specifically, and the others tangentially, if at all.

Writing is important to me. It quiets the voices. I release an energy inside me that opens up a whole new level of creativity that I can apply to anything else in my life. Writing helps me coach soccer. Writing helps me analyze engineering problems at work. Writing helps me communicate with my wife and children.

Writing is a huge part of who I am, and what I do. When I stress out, and can't write, I need to find ways to detoxify the stress levels and unleash the worms.

First, I believe you need balance in all four areas of your life: Head, Heart, Spirit, Body.

That sounds a little Buddhist or Taoist or Maoist or some such, but there it is. I add a fifth on there sometimes, Financial, but I'll leave out that sucker since most of us don't have nearly the control over our finances that we like to think we have.

Anyway, here are some things that detoxify me when I get cluttered up.

I hole up and read. That, friends, is a huge escape for me, and a fine way to prime the writer's pump.

I work out. I've done globogym work since college, but did martial arts and burst training in high school. I recently went back to burst training (doing CrossFit) and some light martial arts, and it has reinvigorated a youthful side of me I had forgotten I still had. In fact, it's inspiring my latest story.

I attend church or pray. Pick your religious poison, but having some sort of spiritual relationship will put you back on keel. Like the burst training, a good religious experience will awaken that inner kid, the one who let Mommy and Daddy worry about everything, and who believed Dad when he said it would be all right and that he was the meanest mutherfucker in the woods, ain't nobody gonna hurt you, ever.

I cuddle up with my wife and watch a movie. I let her pick the flick, and God love her, she picks guy-movies every last time. I don't know if she actually likes the movies. She says she does, and then we rent the latest Resident Evil. How can I not love that woman?

I think I'll buy her flowers tonight, just for the hell of it, and cuddle up with her, even though I should be working and mowing that yard.

Man, screw the yard.

How do you detox? How do you stay in-the-game during stressful times?

- Eric

Why do you read?

2010-07-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

Why do you ~read~? How does that apply to writing? And if you don't understand why you read, how the hell are you going to understand why you write!

Collectively, writers say they write, "... because I must."

Collectively, readers say they read, "... to escape."

I have no idea what those mean. I've said both, sure, so have you, but I invested some mental capital into the topic and came up with this:

I ~write~ because I want to be heard. I want to connect with and capture an audience.

I ~read~ because I want to be captured. I want to sit with an author and listen to a voice I'll never hear, meet a person I'll never know.

There's no must in wanting to be heard. There's damned sure no escape in wanting to be captured.

It's a speak-listen relationship between the author and reader. I want to speak, they want to listen. I want to listen, they want to speak.

Simple, really, when you think about it.

Why do you read? Does your writing style serve the purpose you, as a reader, would demand of an author?

- Eric

Death Scene Blogfest

2010-07-18T15:22:00.000-07:00

For Tessa, a death scene:

Mandy screamed, "Stop it!" to the brothers and their hecklers. For some reason, Mandy threw her book at Luke and Lionel, but she missed and hit Hector in the thigh. Hector kept chanting without looking up at Mandy.

Lionel hit Luke in a steady cadence of fleshy smacks. Smack. Smack. Lionel's boots kicked over desks as he fought for footing, forcing Hector and the other boys to step back, out of the way as they chanted, "Fight! Fight!"

Constance and Locos stuck their heads into the room, and behind them a throng of other kids formed from the emptiness of the hallway, coalesced by the chanting. Ms. Kennedy, Mandy saw, was behind the crowd, standing like a shocked student and not at all like a teacher.

There was blood on Luke's face and Lionel's fist. The smacks sounded wetter as the boys huffed and grunted on the floor.

Mandy turned to the teacher behind her. "Mr. Beaks!"

He didn't look up. Mr. Beaks's mouth moved as he read to himself. He licked his lips. The top of his scalp looked wet.

Suddenly the screaming stopped and Mandy turned back to the fight. Huffing, Luke stood and leaned on the front of Hector's desk for balance. Luke's face was torn from cheek to lip, and his eye already looked swollen. His nose was either bleeding or bloody from the other cuts on his face. Breathing hard, Luke hunched above his brother dripping blood on Hector's desk.

Lionel lay on his back, having let Luke out of the headlock, looking up at his older brother. Though he hadn't been hit, Lionel's face was a deep bruised purple. He was crying. "I'm sorry," Lionel said.

Then Luke lifted Hector's desk by the front. Pencils and a notebook slid off as Luke raised the desk above his head. Luke yelled, "You fucker!" and dropped the desk onto Lionel, hammering the metal leg of the desk through Lionel's sternum like a two-inch spike.

- Eric

(PS: This is based on an actual fight between me and my little brother. He beat the hell out of me. So I threw a stereo on his head and then hit him with the top drawer of my dresser.)

What is it they want?

2010-07-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

What do publishers and agents want most?

Anyone? Anyone?

Let me enlighten you: They want professionals.

They want a mystery writer who will bust his ass selling books.

They want a YA author who can rip out a full trilological book series with each book stronger than the last.

They want a romance or a literary woman who knows her target audience and is willing to sit down and bang out two novels a year, steadfast, from A to Z, starting with A is for Alibi.

Let us face reality, my pre-published friends and neighbors: Agents are business people. Publishers are businesses. Editors don't work for free.

So when you ask, "What does an editor/agent/publisher want from poor little unpublished me?"

The answer is simple, and they respond, "We want you to make us some money, you dumb knucker!"

Don't forget that.

Be professional. Show them a strong work ethic. Demonstrate the ability to bust your ass in sales and marketing.

You might be surprised at their response.

- Eric

Some Random Thoughts

2010-07-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

All right, knuckers, there are some posts I skip entirely on your blogs, because it is mostly a rant and I usually don't read rants.

Unless I feel like a-ranting myself.

So if you skip this blog, more power to you. Knuckle-tap and Wonder Twins unite, I would've skipped this one, too.

If you made it this far, here's my rant. I hope you're ready.

I've been writing on my current piece now for a few months. I plotted, re-characterized, re-plotted, wrote some concept scenes, so on ad nauseum ad infinitum pro bono bona fide veni vidi vici.

Only sans the veni vidi vici part. I came. I saw. I got my ass whupped Texas style.

Actually, I kicked my own ass. I've been a-ranting these past few weeks on the rules. Now, that's not a random occurrence. I didn't accidentally rant on that stuff.

I also didn't listen to my own little voices well enough. I ducked back into my cave -- that's where I can be alone, without the spotlight, no blogs, no editors, no betas and no worries -- and I wrote myself some personal notes. It's my way of digging up the worms and hearing them speak.

They're soft creatures, worms. You pot em, they die. Squeeze em, they die. Over-water, they bubble up to the surface and the birds get em. Under-water, and they dry into crunchy little twigs.

But cut em in half and you get more worms. You can't hardly kill em with a knife. Go figure. Sometimes God doesn't make a bit of fucking sense, does He?

Anyway, my personal notes-to-self, the ones I'd never publish online or anywhere else for that matter, are the ones that mean the most to me, and the ones that do their speaking in a voice so loud I can't help but not ignore it.

How's that for some triple negatives stacked ad nauseum?

I heard it, the voice, and here's what it said:

Swing on the coattails of your characters. Grab hold and hold on tight. That's a Bradbury quote. It was more along the lines of unleash your characters and hold onto their coattails. Something like that.

I realized what I already knew, and it is this: I cannot re-write. I cannot plot. I cannot think ahead and expect to write something brilliant and well-planned.

I am not a pantser, nor am I a plotter. I am something in-between.

My mind prefers a vague concept, a cool scene, something fun to begin with, and then a follow-on scene, something fun to write, interesting characters, and I'm turning the page of my own work and each morning reading for the first time a story that ~I~ wrote.

I've re-written my current piece seventeen times, now. That's a fact. I am on cut #18.

And you know what? I looked back at the first cut, and it wasn't that bad. I should've kept going, but now I'm afraid I may have killed it.

I over-watered and it drowned. I might be able to suck off the excess and keep going, but I have other bodies in my trunk besides this one, dead stories, the almost-concepts, the ones who didn't make it off the operating table. I have so many of them I bet there isn't enough lime and formaldehyde in Dallas to cover the stench.

Anyway. That's the worms a-talking. That's my rant. That's why I've been boogering so hard on the rules these past few weeks, because they've been fidgeting so much with my worms that I can't write!

I must write from the cave, from inside my own self, for myself, by myself, to myself, holding nothing back.

Embrace the rules for your own protection. You get that, don't you? Like how you might tackle a growling dog and then rub its belly.

You have any rants you'd like to share?

- Eric

Education Kills Creativity

2010-07-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

Now here's a great lecture on the art of killing the worms. I call it education, book-learning, following the rules and doing and believing and parroting what you're told.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The more you learn, the less you know.

So very true. I see it at work. I see it at home. I see it everywhere I go. The innovators are the rule-breakers, the ones who don't shackle themselves with the process and insist everyone else wear these chains with em.

They're the Brazilians in soccer, constantly inventing new moves on the field.

They're Einstein at his clerk desk ponderizing physics without the anchor-weight of a professor telling him he was wrong wrong WRONG!

They're Hemingway and Vonnegut with total disregard to accepted literary practices.

These people are educated, smart, and in their own right they are learned and stand on top of what others have learned.

But they don't repeat in rote droves what they learned as gospel and unquestionable truth. They understand ~why~ the rules are in place, and why breaking them might improve the process.

They question the rules. They question the process. They challenge and prod the limits of what is acceptable practice.

Many fail -- and don't be afraid of failure -- but the ones who don't fail, the ones who manage to get off the ground, God how they soar!

- Eric

Why Plot?

2010-06-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

Do you, as a writer, know ~why~ you need a plot? Have you ever asked yourself this question?

I have. I ask that question quite a lot, actually: Why plot?

Hemingway never had a plot. Angela's Ashes didn't have a plot. Most Cormac McCarthy books lack a plot, as do many of Stephen King's works.

Short stories have no plot. They don't have the protagonist-antagonist interaction, or a character arc, or a three-scene conformity. Many of the chapters and scenes in your favorite books -- Harry Potter for instance -- have nothing to do with the plot.

It is inarguable -- so please do not try -- to state that plot is necessary for a piece to be readable, publishable, or recognizable as a great work. There are simply too many exceptions that violate this rule.

So why plot? What is its function? Why do genre publishers insist on the dang thing?

I'll tell you why: To drive Dear Reader to the end.

That's it.

The only reason you need the plot is to provide thrust and rhythm to the reader. Dear Reader rides the ups and downs of the plot, pacing fast, then slow, and finally, at the end, in a mad rush, they climax and THE END, thanks for playing, what was this author's name again, and who cares because I got mine, where's my next book.

But aren't there other ways to please the reader? Look at Life of Pi. No plot there. The little guy floats in a boat with a tiger and lands in Mexico. No protagonist. No antagonist. Just a boy and a tiger and some turtle blood, which apparently you can drink.

Rather than using a plot or a pro/antagonist conflict as thrust, the author used a story promise, a big question that I've stated before as the only question you need inspire in the reader: What's next? He also used prose, imagery, and scene-driven conflict to sail the reader through to the end.

He kept you turning the page until Pi landed in Mexico and that was a good stopping point and so he stopped writing. The end. Was it good for you, honey?

Using the plot as the only means of reader thrust is severely limiting yourself! Flip over Dear Reader and use good prose. Stand em up and use a story question. Hold em upside-down and use imagery to woo them into the next chapter.

Use plot, sure, but understand why you are using plot. Understand that it is not the only way to satisfy the reader, nor is it a steadfast rule in literature. It may be the most common means of thrust, but there are many more ways you can entice a reader to complete book.

What other ways can you inspire Dear Reader to read to THE END? What methods can you combine with plot to give Dear Reader added incentive to finish your book?

- Eric

Supporting Roles: Write with Character

2010-06-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

If you don't believe supporting roles are key to great stories, let me ask you something:

What is Star Wars without Vader?

What is Pirates of the Caribbean without Jack Sparrow?

Would Dorothy be so interesting if not for her companions?

How about Mr. Potter? The most interesting character isn't Potter or even his friends -- it's that big dude who befriends spiders and unicorns, Hagrid.

What about Lord of the Rings, you ask? It would hardly be LOTR if not for Gandolf and Gollum.

You get what I'm saying, don't you? Every story has one character -- and often multiple characters -- who pull the story along. These characters are the interesting ones, the memorable characters who draw us into the story and keep us reading along.

Here's the ruse, though: Often they are ~supporting roles~!

The Main Character (MC) has to worry about the plot, the conflict, the one-two-three of the chapterizing, manage the wordcount, and drive from beginning to end. This can be agonizing, boring, painful, not to mention rote. Your MC is all business and no play.

So in stomp these supporting players to tear up the stage. They tickle the plot and move it forward, but really, most of them can be removed or replaced or edited down to minor bits. It's only the MC who is irreplaceable. If that's not true, you have the wrong MC!

For instance, let's look at Gollum in LOTR. He serves the MC as a guide, a foil, and an antagonist, and serves the author to enhances the backstory. None of these things were ~necessary~ to the plot. Frodo could have found his own trail into Mordor and never met Gollum. Heck, he didn't even need his good buddy Sam to tag along, did he?

But the trip itself was awfully boring. One-two-three. Describe the mountains. Four-five-six. Kill a spider. Seven-eight-nine. Burn a ring, ten you're done, let's go home.

Instead of moving linearly, though, JRRT introduces Gollum, a sidebar character who is, above all things, interesting and memorable. The story, if not the plot, just got better.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Along with your MC -- who should be interesting in their own rite, but may not be the ~most~ interesting character in the book -- you need to include sidebar characters who not only enhance the plot, but also draw the reader into the story.

Make these sidebar guys and gals and monsters interesting. Let them steal the show. Let them trip up and push along your MC.

Let them enrich your world and your story, so your MC can trudge along the plotted path and get done with it already.

Oh, and what does the monkey flipping you the bird have to do with this post? Absolutely nothing. He's simply there to demonstrate my point: He's interesting. My friend took this picture recently.

What are your thoughts? How important are supporting roles in the reader's experience?

- Eric

Me on Writing, circa 2000

2010-06-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

I stuck my finger in my annals this weekend and managed to dig this out, from circa 2000. This was me in the cave, speaking to myself, writing on the wall in blood and wondering if anyone a thousand years from now would read it, and not really caring either way. I'm still not sure being inside that cave isn't the best thing for my writing.

See, when you're alone, you can blasphemize and butcherize yourself and your story and not worry about a dadgum thing but the story itself.

I am absolutely certain, for instance, that at the moment of conception, when that spark of thought first hits us, and before it we are tainted with language and learning and bombarded with extrasensory movement and perception, that in our fetal state we know God and God knows us and we get it.

It's only after we pop into the light that we begin to unlearn everything we already knew. That's the power of the cave. Even bloggerville is noisy and blinding compared to the darkness of the cave.

My wife's pregnant. Can you tell?

And I still agree with this, ten years later.

Here you go, world. See if the light blanches my words.

Begin Cave Thoughts, ~2000

Seems every writer’s got something to say about writing. Well, I’m not a writer. (I’ll settle for being published, though).

But I’ve read quite a bit on the subject of writing (big eff-ing deal, right?). And muddled through the first draft of a novel, a horror-fiction, packed from first to last with mediocre verbiage (and absolutely no horror). So, in the tradition of pumping out a ton of mediocre verbiage—like so many authors today—here are some words on writing. We’ll see how long I agree with what I write.

It’s simple—just unravel the story like a ball of string and you have it. Every person has it; you don’t need to be a Dr. Crichton or a lawyer Grisham or—gasp—an insurance-man Clancy to pull a story out of your ass. And that’s just where it came from. If you need help, eat some paint; that’s what King did (I bet).

First, start with the ball. It’s a tangled mass, and can be anywhere from the car-sized Gone With the Wind to Jack London’s rat’s nest To Build a Fire; your choice. Okay, so you have the ball, either in the palm of your hand or parked pacing your garage like an un-caged lion. Somewhere in between lies ninety percent of your (wannabe) authors.

Second, look at the string. Decide what it is. Is it a horror string? Romance? Fantasy? Don’t even think about porn—your wife’ll kill ya, and if it’s a husband you’re worrying about, well, he’ll probably wonder why you know so many ways to stroke a man’s thingie. All that aside, though, figure out your string. If you get to the cork in the middle and find out it ain’t what you thought it was, you probably need to start over.

Third, find an ending. And a beginning. You need both ends. Now realize the beginning may not be exactly the beginning you eventually go with, and neither is the ending, but you must must must start with these ends. If you’ve ever tried to unwind a mass of fishing line, you know what I mean.

Fourth, I’m getting tired of counting; if I keep going, we’ll get to tenthly and seventeenthly. So, onward sans counting. Good. That’s settled.

Tug some on the string. Unwind it from beginning to end as best you can. Don’t worry about the knots along they way—those’ll come out later. Keep going. Get to the end.

When you reach a spot—and you will—where you have your knife out, ready to cut, don’t. Don’t do it. Skip the knot. Screw the knot. Let the knot stay right where it is. Keep going. Find the next smooth spot in your string and go from there. Forget the knot.

And don’t fret the bigger knots, either. Let them be. They’ll look like frazzled old ladies waiting in the salon, tapping you to do them next, they aren’t getting any younger. Resist the urge. Move on. Forward. To the blasphemous end.

You’ll get there. To the end. Finally. And guess what?—it sucks. The whole book. Full of these twists and holes and God am I ever going to get a book published? Hemingway said, “All first drafts are shit.” Remember those words.

So here you are, sitting at the end of a mangled script, bent, frayed, creased, tangled. And, yep, it’s shit. Get out your working gloves, ‘cuz it’s re-write time.

(snip)

END

- Eric

Word Verification Challenge

2010-06-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

Just for fun, I am turning on WORD VERIFICATION (WV) for this post only. In the comments section, make a sentence or paragraph or story using your WV word. It must make sense.

For instance:

o In Latin, the plural for theater is theati.
o Furuq that noise!

Unleash the muse...

- Eric

Know your VOICE

2010-06-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

My editor tore apart my latest piece. I paraphrase our discussion, but it went something like this...

Editor: "Nice voice. It seems to have changed between your last story and this one. This one is more frenetic."

Eric: "I've been experimenting with a less detailed voice, getting to the point without the meandering. I tend to over-describe and I wanted to challenge that habit with this piece."

Editor: "The Beatles were famous not for writing the same song over and over, but for writing a different song on every track. No such thing as a new story. At this point in literature, it's all been said. The only difference is voice. Nurture that thought."

That, folks, is straight from the horse's mouth. She's not an actual horse, but she can kick like one.

Know your voice. Make it unique. Don't be afraid to stretch those vocal cords and challenge your method.

Just as voice and not the song makes the singer, voice and not the words makes the writer.

- Eric

What are you ~really~ afraid of?

2010-06-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

Last night we camped about 11 miles north of all the flooding in Arkansas, and about twelve hours behind it.

The ranger stopped us coming into Ouachita. She'd had a hard night evacuating, she said. "I'm not telling you not to go in, but I will say be careful." She looked behind me to the back seat. "I see you got little ones. Yall be real careful, okay. They lost eleven people on down river."

We crossed a few washed-out bridges and found a horse camp that looked dry. We stretched out in the Tahoe, didn't backpack, didn't set up a tent. A horse camp is a clearing near the road but away from the main park, dry enough that you can back in horse trailers, but isolated enough that you can enjoy the solitude. We were all alone, but there were fresh droppings and hay that said someone had left that morning.

Another ranger pulled into the camp, this one a younger guy. "What time did yall leave this morning?"

"Why's that?" I said.

"I guess yall didn't hear the news yet. They're pulling bodies out of the water down at Albert Pike. I won't ask yall to leave, but be real careful. You should be okay up here, but further down the mountain, they got hit real hard. I'd keep them kids out of the creek."

It was me and my two kids, nine and ten, boy and girl respectively. The creek was still screaming from the night before. Yes, we swam in it, but in a shallow wash about two feet deep. My son found about a hundred baby salamanders, and my daughter was the only one brave enough to do push-ups in that freezing mountain gush.

"I keep feeling like someone's watching us." That was my son. Near dusk, we had to shoot his pellet gun into a stump crouched in the treeline like bigfoot. I had to walk them over to prove it was just a stump and not some mountain monster.

In their defense, it did look like a crouching monster. The frosted sugar side of me half expected the stump to jump up and charge when I shot it.

That night, my daughter said, "I'm getting freaked out," when she heard what sounded like a coyote. I don't know the Arkansas sounds, but it wasn't a coyote. Sounded small, though, and I had my .410, so no worries.

I stood outside the Tahoe listening to the kids watch Hotel for Dogs. I kept stoking that wet fire wood until it caught -- wet wood will burn if you get it hot enough -- and watched it burn down. I don't normally get wigged-out on campouts, but last night I couldn't let go of that little single-shot .410. It's the gun I had growing up, a kid's gun, and if animals have souls, I'm gonna be royally fucked because of that shotgun.

It gets so dark out there you can't see your feet when you piss. I can't speak for women, but I figure squatting down in that sort of dark is borderline insane. I'm glad I didn't have to squat.

Something kept nagging at me. And I'm not the sort who gets nagged, not by bullfrogs and fireflies and a creek in the background. I grew up on a lake, on a creek, catching bullfrogs and fireflies and murdering things with that .410.

I called my wife today when we got back into cell phone range. She was as wigged-out as her daughter, glad to hear from us. "I saw this thing about this lady," she said, "whose daughter got swept off into the current. They could hear her screaming, and they heard other kids screaming, too. They said most of the dead will probably be kids."

"It's so dark out here, baby, that if the kids got swept off, there's nothing I could've done about it. I wouldn't be able to see them, or the shore, or anything else. With all the clouds last night and the lack of moon, I couldn't see the ground at my feet."

And that's when it hit me. That's what I was afraid of all night: Me not seeing a thing, and hearing that scream fading off down river.

- Eric

How to unstick your Gladiator

2010-06-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

I got stuck on my last novel because I kept trying to figure out what would happens before it actually happened.

Then I read a post today on Christine's Journey that mentioned revisions.

I read through some of the links on her site, commented on a couple, but this one stuck with me: Guide to Literary Agents.

I'm not sure the link works, but let me give you the gist: The author wrote a story, found an agent, the agent shredded the story and insisted on a near-complete rewrite, whereby the author obliged and wrote a novel that resulted in a three-way bidding war between publishing houses.

How's that for success!

But it tickled my revision bone, which has been tingling and tickling these past few months as I challenge my method.

Here is my short-story method: Write it out, fast, go with the flow. Re-read, and rewrite. Often, I nuke the entire story and write from scratch. The end result is almost never what I began with. I have a ton of short stories, some of them pretty good.

My novel method: Agonize over the plot. Write the first chapter. Rewrite it. Eventually find a hook and agonize through the middle and on to the end. Revision is limited.

See the difference here?

My short-story method is the one that ~works~. The novel method is the one that ~fails~.

Remember that in the olden days, writers used pen and ink, or a typewriter, and a draft was a draft, while a revision was a rewrite.

In other words, there were no revisions. No cut-n-paste, no delete, no spellcheck and modify. You had to rewrite and retype the whole damned thing!

I am going to try this on my latest work. I am going on a backpacking trip tomorrow and won't be writing. I'll ponder my story in the Arkansas mountains (Ouachita Park), and then when I get back, I'll plug out my first draft, non-stop, as if on a typewriter or handwritten, and then rewrite the whole dang thing, all 60kw.

You are my witnesses. This is how I will unstick The Gladiator's Son

If you're stuck, how will you unstick yourself?

- Eric
PS: Post responses will be delayed as I will be playing the banjo in the AR backwoods.