He moved north at the first opportunity. Way north. He cut
all ties, even to his mother, which was the hardest on him. He was a mama's
boy.
His hair went white from all the stress, including his
beard. He took that as a sign to change his appearance and began dressing in
pants as soon as they were invented. All the sedentary hiding made him gain
tremendous weight, face filling out, giving him rosy cheeks in the snowy
environment.
He stayed in doors as much as possible, but always came out
around his birthday. It was too lonely, even with the elves that had found him
and made camps all around his house. They fashioned him thick, orthopedic boots
and gloves that comforted his scarred extremities. It allowed him to take up
carpentry again.
The gregarious wee folk did so much for his spirits that he
reached out to a similar-sized people: children. He still only went south
around his birthday, but brought a sack of the toys from his workshop for those
boys and girls who had the right attitude. There were always more gifts to
give, too, as the elves copied his work and began production for every decent
child.
And associating with children turned out to actually help,
for in his old life he had been an average-sized Jew, but to them he was a
giant. So his new identity was a jolly mammoth with a white beard and a bag of
presents. He was safe. No one down there ever guessed that Santa Claus was an
alias.
The wizened fairy buzzed around The Prince’s head like a
halo, shooinghim into the chamber. He bowed at the threshold, taking in
the musty room. A bed wide enough for ten consumed more than half its breadth,
sheltering a solitary girl who couldn’t have been a day older than himself. Her
slenderness, and that porcelain complexion, haunted him from first sight,
because this wasn’t first sight. This was the girl from his dreams.
The Prince knelt on the covers, hands hovering over her
shape, uncertain how to go about this. She was so pale, and her breathing so
shallow that she could have slept in Death’s arms.
“Go on, go on,” the old fairy coaxed from the doorway. “She’s
been dreaming of you, too, for so many years.”
Heart thudding against his ribs, The Prince lowered until he
finally felt her breath sweeping his cheek. He took the narrow peak of her
chin, holding his breath for fear an exhalation would blow her away in the
breeze, and pressed his mouth to hers in a kiss he’d dreamed nightly for
months. She moaned into his mouth, body arching under him, and he lowered his
left arm to sweep her from the bed. Yet as soon as his hand touched the small
of her back, a palm thrust into his forehead, pushing him away, and her body
lurched, curling into the covers and burying her face in the pillow.
“Five more minutes,” she mumbled. “Just five more minutes…”
The Prince furrowed his brow and looked to the window.
The wizened fairy was checking her watch.
No one would put book shelves in a cemetery. Cut it.
Realism is allegedly the goal of fiction. It’s alleged exclusively
by real people, which seems somewhere between a bias and bigotry to me.
Regardless, realism is cherished in fiction. We coddle F.
Scott Fitzgerald for nailing a feeling, or a poet for putting a thought we’ve
all had into verse. Meanwhile an implausible romance is shameful, someone walking in at a convenient time is contrived, and nearly every character is accused of being unrealistic. Realism is considered a requirement for good storytelling –
except in a million different cases. Here are ten of them.
1. Characters have the same last name and no relation to
each other. Happens millions of times every day in the real world; has
happened, perhaps twice, in the history of fiction.
2. Coughing, sneezing and hiccupping for no reason. Someone
in my family gets the hiccups at least once a week, and never because they’re
nervous a dragon is nearby.
3. “Uhm, uh, you know, well, like, it’s just – you know what
I mean.” These oral pauses allow real people to gather the best wording for
their next point, although it’s a tiny minority of fictional characters who
ever use them. I’m most acutely aware of this dissonance when I’m editing
novels; I spend hours a day cutting every needless word, and become absolutely irate
with everyone I meet who talks like an actual person.
4. Characters notice a conflict between each other, talk
over their opinions honestly, figure out a simple compromise, and drop the
issue. Half the editors I’ve met would chastise you for squandering conflict if
you wrote sensible resolution.
5. A heart monitor flatlines because a node disconnected.
This has not only happened to me, but is by far the most common cause of
flatlining for every medical technician I’ve ever talked to. People whose
business is to save lives make fun of your fiction about life and death
scenarios.
6. The “good” political party wins and yet the “good” party
members are never satisfied no matter what the new administration does. They
become deeply jaded by what they identify as the failings of their leaders, seldom
recognizing much of their disappointment stems from their own ignorance over
what is plausible. Our real would actually be a great satire about idealism and
phony pragmatism.
7. Cold wars. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. spent decades
embroiled in one, and the closest they came to blows was psyching each other
out over missile placement. You seldom see a Dark Lord who the rest of the
world just refuses to trade with, and who fails so catastrophically to lead his
giant tyranny that the capitalists have to sneak him loans.
8. The neighbors losing their shit the night after a Horror
movie/novel when it turns out eighteen people have been stabbed to death and
the mailman was actually a sadomasochistic zombie. I don’t know about you, but
if somebody revs their motorcycle too loud my neighbors obsess about it for
years. The closest fiction gets is in a sequel, years later (or one year later,
on the anniversary), and then those nervous locals are just introduced for body
count.
9. The superhero that just does the right thing because it’s
right. A pragmatic idealist motivated by his or her own mind, not a personal
tragedy or preposterously corrupted city. What’s funnier is our popular
misconception that all superheroes are already like this. Actually, even
Superman isn’t that anymore.
10. The serial killer who is impossible to catch because law
enforcement is incredibly complicated bureaucratically and logistically, not
because being crazy is a mental superpower.
That ought to be enough to get us started. Do any others come to mind?
It's a particularly polarizing episode of Consumed this week as all three of us congregate over The Hobbit. There's high praise and analysis for its visual style, Howard Shore's score and many points in the acting, but also heavy questions of pacing and how the surprising number of fight scenes are handled. I seem to have stunned Max with one claim about "amateurish" elements toward the middle of the podcast. We get deep into it, so if you want a fix for Peter Jackson's latest, then this is the podcast for you.
You don’t know I am, so let me introduce myself: I am the woman
who hammered that shrapnel into your ankles and knees while you were under.
You’ll be reassured to know every piece came from one of
your landmines. None were the one that took my son’s legs, though I tried to
find some. It would have been even more appropriate. As it is, all the charred
steel now shredding your muscles and tendons is stuff you bought and put out
there.
The handcuffs are for your own safety. If you pulled those
shards out, you might bleed to death or get an infection. Mothers are very
worried about infections. Did you know one summer when he 11, while playing
soccer, he got such a bad gash that he needed injections in his calf every
three days for four weeks? Of course you didn’t think about that, just as I don’t
care what you were before you became a warlord or whatever you think you are.
We’re ten miles from your nearest compound. That’s a lot of
walking to do with your joints full of metal. It might even be impossible, but
maybe you’ll get lucky and waddle your way into screaming range for one of your
lackeys.
I’m going home now. My son’s funeral is tomorrow, because he
didn’t make it back to base, what you left of him. He only made it ten miles.
Ten miles with no legs. Can you imagine?
“Wrong. Nitrogen, oxygen, argon and carbon dioxide are in
the air.”
“No, you’re wrong. That is the air. I’m in the air, from ground
level up five feet and fewer inches than I’d like, and several cubic feet
around for that elevation. I’m as in the air as I’m ever in the water of a swimming
pool.”
“No, those elements are what makes up air. It’s like you
having a heart and lungs inside you.”
“Yes, but it’s poor grammar to say I’ve got a heart in me,
even though most living humans have one. A heart is a part of me; it is me. I’ve
got half a fish taco in me. It’ll be part of me later, and part of the septic.”
“That is not the same as pretending ‘love’ is in the air.”
“So pheromones don’t count?”
“They’re a stimulant, not love.”
“So love isn’t a chemical?”
“All brain reactions are chemicals. That’s all love is.”
“So I’m in the air, and I’ve got brain chemicals in me, and
love is a brain chemical. Therefore love is in the air. Find my wife around
here and stimulate me a bit, and there’ll be an excess of love running rampant.”
“That is definitely not the same as pretending love is
floating around.”
“What if someone skywrites the letters L-O-V-E in the sky?”
“Then you could say it. But nobody does that, and you know that. You’re just
saying that to annoy me.”
"You could be poor enough to be forced to skip meals, and not
a single public worker didn't, and you could be poor enough to starve, and many
poor souls did, and you could be poor enough to reuse teabags, and we often had
to suffer the indignity, but no one in the country could be so poor as to go
without tea."
I've never had the grasp of days. It could have been four
weeks ago, or perhaps six, that the dreams began. Perhaps it was only two, but
it surely feels a deal longer than that. I've never been the sort to reckon my
dreams, and that is why the same ones recurring nightly struck me. It seemed
every time I put head to pillow, I was visited by a young man with grey hair,
in an ivory suit. He usually brings a switchblade with a pearl handle, like my
father used to own.
Sometimes he throws acid or scalding coffee in my eyes.
Sometimes he lurks by the stairs and seizes my ankles. Every night is a little
different, whether I try to escape through a window and fall into a garden of
thorns, or hide under the bed and he finds my ankle sticking out, or I simply
charge him and have my tendons slashed. Every night it's the same end. The same
pearl-handled switchblade.
After a week, I took to writing down what happened, to record,
to perhaps show a psychiatrist. Evidence of a dream is a troubling thing. Also,
it’s ridiculously hard to find one who’s taking new patients this time of year.
Now you might tell me to disregard the dreams. Yet three
days ago, I saw him in broad daylight. His ivory suit, his grey hair, his utter
lack of wrinkles. He was having demitasse at the cafe across from where I
always eat lunch.
He has been to the cafe every day for the past three days. Those
I’ve counted. He has demitasse and nothing else, and never looks at me, at
least when I’m looking at him. Today he brought his mail with him; he opened
the envelopes with a switchblade. I nearly threw up when I saw him pull it from
an interior pocket. That was no letter opener, though he applied it to four
letters, and read them studiously. Three he tucked into his ivory jacket. The
fourth he left on his table, with a hundred dollar tip, weighed down by his
cup.
Whatever you'll say of me, I'll hear nothing against my
venturing to his table after he caught his cab. I had to see the scene. It was
a need.
The demitasse was unfinished, still steaming in the mid-day
gloom, smelling faintly familiar. I could have sworn that drink had been thrown
in my face some night. I took the envelope as his waitress came over. She
nearly called the police on me, but I insisted that I knew him and had to
return the letter for business.
The envelope bore my address. My specific P.O. Box at the
towers, and for several minutes all I could think was to throttle the manager
for giving this ivory-suited stranger a double of my key. It made me feel
positively insane, too much be a hideous dream, and I drew out paper to write
everything down, because in dreams you can’t make time work so neatly. Because
I needed record and evidence that this was happening.
But the letter. The letter inside the envelope, one sheet of
paper, folded three times in the way I've done since third grade. Even the
handwriting was familiar. How my a's and o's look the same. How I forget to dot
things.
The letter in the envelope was the one I’m writing now.
My palms broke into a sweat and I nearly crumpled the thing
up. I want to incinerate it, but my hands wouldn’t let me. They had to preserve
evidence.
What’s crazy is that as I’m writing this, I can’t think of
anything else to say. The letter’s words, its statements, its facts are all my
mind can conjure. It’s as though his stolen mail is all there is. I can’t invent
anything else. My imagination turns on me. Every sentence chronicling what I’m
thinking is another step down what this sheet of paper says. I couldn’t even
avoid going home, even though I read on and knew better.
I’d write more. I’d start scribbling, draw something since
the letter has illustration, just to deviate from its ugly omniscience. I’d
like to invent who you are – to find out who I’m writing to. Why haven’t I
dreamed you? Or have I, and I can’t remember? But there isn’t time for that
question, or to invent an answer.
I don’t have the time, for I saw him outside, just as I read
that he’d be there. He was across the street a minute ago. Now someone is
buzzing my apartment. It’ll be worse when he stops buzzing and stops waiting.
I’ve dreamed what happens then.
I need some place to be, some place to hide or defend that I
haven’t dreamed him in before. I’ve latched the windows, unplugged appliances,
thrown away all the heavy objects he’s ever wielded, and what do I find?
There’s no corner of this apartment he hasn’t killed me in before.
There’s someone knocking at the door. Have I ever let him
into the apartment before? I can’t remember how he gets in. I’m no good at
remembering dreams.
His hypoallergenic dog fed and napping downstairs, and his
wife having texted that she’ll be locked up until six in the Hayworth divorce case,
he sits down to write. He sits at a prefab desk, in his memory-foam office
chair, wrists resting on an ergonomic keyboard that he bought at 24% off on
Amazon, eyes flipping between his ultra-thin monitor and the view of the suburb
out his glass window. The urge to go for a popsicle goads him, but his eyes
fall on his grandmother’s photo, hanging on the wall. She’ll give him hell when
he makes his weekly call if he’s behind on word count again.
So he consults two tabs in Firefox and the text book
balanced on his waist basket. He sucks a poppy seed from between his teeth,
then shakes his head at the confluence of claims between the three sources. He
scratches at the scabs from yesterday’s vaccination – the soreness is obnoxious
– before convincing himself of plausibility.
‘No,’ he thinks to his fingers. ‘People aren’t really like
that. More believable if Caesar had…’
And he types what really happened in the Roman Senate over
two thousand years ago.
For the rest of December we'll be doing a little community
chat between The Bathroom Monologues and Twitter. #bestreads2012 will be all
about your favorite books from the last year.
The blog hop will launch on Wednesday, December 26th,
the day after Christmas. Up until then, anyone on Twitter is invited to an open
chat about their favorite books of the year using the hashtag #bestreads2012. If
you’ve got a blog or Tumblr, you can post a list of your favorite books there,
only make sure to come back and link it here by the 26th so I can
include you in the blog hop. For those without Twitter or blogs, you're still
welcome to discuss your favorites in the Comments section here. Everyone is
invited, readers and authors alike.
So think on it. What are your favorite books that you read
this year? Not what was written or published in 2012, but that you personally
read and loved for the first time. Fiction, non-fiction, prose, poetry and
sequential art are all welcome. I guarantee you a comic book will show up on my
list. It's a romantic comic, too. My list will be between 5-10 books long, with 1-2 paragraphs
for each entry on what I got out of them. You can handle the number and
format as you like.
Feel free to launch questions below. We'll field them
together.
It's a unique app that has only ever been downloaded to only
one cell phone in the United
States. It can send out a pulse across every
available frequency and networking, activating other phones, televisions, car
alarms, and anything with a computer in it. The curious thing? It's designed to
activate only those devices in one direction from the user's cell phone, as
though he or she needs a distraction. Why is a short story.
Why the app is called "Phone Booth" is a longer
story.
This post is dedicated to Randall Nichols and Theresa Bazelli.It has no new content, so as to appropriately inform one and annoy the other.
She danced like no one I've ever seen. You ever stick your hand out the
car window and wave it up and down in tune to the breeze? Like it's a
wing in the wind, or part of an invisible current? You ever done that
when you're tired and your defenses are down, and you find that feeling
becomes more important than steering the car? No, you'd never admit it,
but I do that. And watching that princess bound and dip like she didn't
have a backbone, it was like watching another person perform the feeling
I get in my hand. She wasn't lithe, but a girl made of wires couldn't
have done all that. She made me a fan of ballet inside of one minute. It
was the only real elegance I've ever seen, so in rhythm with the music
that I never would have believed she was improvising, and I never could
have believed anything else. I knew right then on the edge of my chair
that this was the woman I was going to marry.
It's a lucky thing I fell in love with her
at first sight, too, because goddamn, she was a case. Snuck into the
reception and discovered my princess chewing out her horn section for
being a quarter-beat off. I tried bringing her a glass of bubbly and she
blew past me, spilling it all down the side of my jacket. Didn't even
glance back.
A few minutes later I sidled up and she
handed me a glass. I thought it was an apology and sipped it. But as
soon as I tasted the stale stuff, she laid into me. Thought I was staff
and wanted me to take her old drink to the kitchen, not sip it and
listen to the conversation. Even when I explained her mistake, she had
this way of making it seem like I was wrong.
Should have backed down, as I didn't fare
much better in conversation than I did as a waiter. Got verbally spanked
on the history of dance, and then on the history of sculpture. As I
slunk away she complained that she didn't want to see anymore fans, and I
warned a couple of approachers on my way out. Apparently I did it too
close to earshot. She peeled right between her fans, berating and
jabbing me in the chest until I was up against a wall.
That I didn't throw her across the hall is
evidence of love at first sight, or at least extremely patient lust.
Even charging me, this woman could move, shuffling her feet like a bird.
But banging my head was still too much and I stripped off my jacket,
still wet with her stale drink, and tossed it in her face.
Even then, I wasn't really mad. I just
wanted to see how mad she'd get at a legitimate provocation. The
reaction? Angry like birds in rage, all exaggerated head turns and
fluttering her arms. Any time she got tiffed for the rest of the night
she'd glare at me across the floor, like I was an investor in everything
that got under her skin. No doubt in my mind that's how I landed the
first date.
“You’ll think I’m crazy, and that’s fine so long as you don’t
dismiss the facts. A string of young, Caucasian girls have been found dead in
relative wilderness settings, of unknown causes in each case, each with extremely
similar markings on their lower backs and no other signs of violence. There
seems to be a connection between many victims and mental institutions. The FBI
is not investigating what happened at any of those institutions, or if anyone
worked at more than one of them. They have not autopsied a single body. A
reasonable person might at least consider the work of a serial killer or cult.
I think when you follow this you’ll realize it’s got to be aliens, but you have
to at least be reasonable enough to pursue what is going on in this case and
why the bureau has buried it.”
UFOs circle the country fairgrounds. They flash, strobe and
terrify. They lower, three unknown objects, and sweep the hair of the tallest
citizens, and spook the cattle, and everyone runs for their cars. UFOs whiz
away into the sky.
A fortnight passes. UFOs circle the downtown shopping plaza.
They flash, strobe, and terrify. Car alarms go off from their proximity, and
eerie musical notes emanate from the fillings of old men. Electric doors rebel
and remain closed, trapping shoppers to stare at the unknown. UFOs whiz away
into the sky.
Another fortnight passes. UFOs circle over the city’s only
annual night-time parade. They flash, strobe, and intrigue. Citizens duck for
cover, and once under cover, argue about whether these strobes are a different
color than last time, or how there are fewer this time. Everyone now clearly
sees that they are saucers, sleek and well-illuminated. They are identified.
The FOs whiz away into the sky and the parade resumes, if awkwardly.
Another fortnight passes, and the city congregates down by
the docks, out in the open. They have blankets laid out and hotdogs grilled up,
all in time for the light show. As it circles overhead, citizens hug each other
a little tighter, or munch caramel corn, or try to snap ironic photos of
themselves “holding” the saucers aloft. They’re welcome.
So a little while ago Cindy Vaskova bestowed this Very Inspiring Blogger Award upon me. The real compliment was Cindy finding my writing inspirational at all. It's one of the nicest things a writer can say to another. I mean, unless it turns out I inspired you to strangle your neighbors. Then I'd probably be closer to 'Neutral' than 'Flattered.'
The game requests you reveal seven things about yourself, and that you hand it over to fifteen other people. I've played a lot of games where you reveal personal details, and tried my best to come up with new stuff this time. Please tell me if I repeated something. I'll probably owe you a private revelation if you get me.
1. I root for the villains a lot. For instance, I’ve always
thought the Ring Wraiths were really cool, and enjoyed the way they adapted
into the movies. When the Nazgul attack in Peter Jackson’s Return of the King,
I cackled so much that a friend turned to me, put her hand on my arm and said,
“You’re enjoying this too much.” If only I could dive-bomb some good guys on my
pet pterodactyl.
2. I’ve never had a drink of alcohol.
3. I’ve never smoked anything. For a year in my teens I
needed a nebulizer for my lung medicine, which I guess counts as inhaling
controlled substances.
4. I once dieted and exercised so hard that my gallbladder
overreacted and I had to have it removed. I almost went bankrupt with medical
bills. Healthy living, everybody.
5. One time while I was in the hospital, my brother and
father gave me a bunch of rare football cards. I was so surprised that I
flatlined.
6. I don’t have as much of a conscience as I have a modular
sense of what some people might object to. When I love what I’m writing, even
this modular sense goes on the fritz, and sometimes I’ll ask a friend to read
it over to ensure it’s not horribly amoral. The most recent case was Exorcising Mother (thanks be to Max Cantor).
7. One reason that I’ve never bought Meme Theory is that
human beings are not unconscious repetition machines. It’s not blind luck or
survival traits that necessarily cause us to adopt an idea or behavior; we are
quite often intelligent designers, altering a notion upon reception, or after a
period of mulling it over. For instance, I’m changing how this award works. I’m
going to pass it to three people, and I’m going to include the stipulation that
you have to tell why you’re naming them.
2. Elephant’s Child is obviously not her real name. However,
it’s what she goes by on the internet, and I respect that. EC has one of the
most positive blogs on the web. Even when she’s grappled with health problems
and personal tragedies, she’s fostered compassion from her community of friends
and followers. It’s something I’d like to be able to inspire as easily as she
makes it look.
3. T.S. Bazelli is very transparent about her writing process. There are status updates, she's also happy to discuss what she got out of an article, a writing camp, or even her latest set of edits. She's been incredibly kind to me as both a beta reader and discussing her own process. I love transparency in how we get fiction to work.
Polly knelt in her single circular window sill, trying to
think of an appropriate prayer. A pillow was tucked under her swollen left
knee. He’d be home tomorrow and she still hadn’t recovered. Everything she knew
was about honoring thy parents, so how did you ask the sky to stop them from
hurting you?
Asking God the Father felt wrong, but so did asking His son.
Tears rippled up in her little eyes until she spied an orange streak in the
sky. A shooting star, she thought, a message. A chance. She clasped her fingers
together and wished, and wished with all her heart, that Dad would stop yelling
at Mom, stop grabbing her, and just, just, just stop.
Polly was a very lucky girl, for that orange streak
wasn’t a shooting star. It was her father’s plane crashing.
The other day I made a
joke about enjoying child abuse in fiction, because that’s the sort of person I
am. It was in Tony Noland’s fiction in person, and he responded like so:
I don’t know why I’m
compelled to share what went through my head. Maybe it’s that I want affirmation
that it happens other people, or maybe I’m just getting off on embarrassing
myself. Here is a taste of my neurosis, scribbling down minutes after he
messaged me.
Did I call Tony a dick?
No, I definitely didn’t. We are not good enough friends for
me to get away with that level of insult-humor yet.
Did I say something like, “Hey, you’re a dick”?
I don’t remember anything like that. We haven’t had many
conversations recently…
Wait, this morning I posted a story about an author. Tony’s
an author. Did he think it was about him?
My author wasn’t a dick. That’s really judgmental of him.
Wait, my author wasn’t on Twitter. He left a note on a car.
Is that a form of messaging, and thus like Twitter? Is he saying that character
was too aggressive in promotion, and it made him think of his own regrets?
That’s fucking crazy. He can’t have thought that.
But did you call him a dick?
No…
Okay, so he thought the author story was about him, and took
it as an extreme burn on him. How do we tell him that? We can’t just say, “That
story you saw as an extreme burn wasn’t about you,” because that’ll acknowledge
the intent, and then he’ll think it was already in our head, and then he’ll be
even more offended thinking we lied.
I guess the other sane option is that he’s talking about
somebody else. Somebody else made the comment while we were joking about child
abuse. That seems much more reasonable. Let’s ask him.
No, if we do that, then he’ll think we’re pretending to have
not called him a dick. Or pretending we’re so important we don’t remember
clearly deeply offending him. After already putting him a bad mood, he doesn’t
deserve more grief from us.
So is the only option to say nothing? I mean, I know the
internet makes it feel like if I say nothing then everyone will forget it, but
the internet is a fucking liar. That really just makes people stew. I don’t
want him to stew over something I don’t remember doing.
The honest thing is to ask him what he’s talking about, and
of course he’ll respond emotionally about it, but I can parse facts and defuse
from there. If it was somebody else, I can jump into that conversation and
defend him so he feels better, and get whoever was mad at him now mad at me,
and enjoy a week of that Twitter feud. Or it’ll turn out I really did call him
a dick and now he hates my guts and thinks I’m a liar, and kiss that friendship
goodbye. Regardless, it’ll be a week of thinking way too long about what to
tweet.
Then it’s settled. I’ll say nothing.
I talked it over with
him later. It turns out it was someone else. I don't know who. Some dick.
The short: the Red Cross is collecting holiday cards for veterans recovering in American hospitals. It's to participate, will take one minute of your day, and could seriously touch someone who needs it. Click here for every bit of information you need to send a card.
If that's all you need, then awesome. But we're going to run a little long because we should discuss this. Firstly, in the last two weeks a false message has been circulating through social networks, particularly Facebook, asking people to send holiday cards to soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, where so many wounded veterans recover. It appealed to a spirit of charity and compassion. It was very nice except that it was a hoax; Walter Reed doesn't have staff to handle that kind of mail, has no such program, and the address was likely posted by a troll trying to annoy them using your kindness to do it. It's despicable.
However, the American Red Cross is running a program like that. Somehow the Walter Reed drive gained more attention than the Red Cross one, but organizations like Snopes have crossed the two stories so that anyone moved by the hoax can still do something kind. It's my favorite thing I've ever experienced through Snopes, and they'd had some amazing hits over the years.
The Red Cross has very few rules about this drive, and they all seem quite sensible to me.
Ensure that all cards are signed.
Use generic salutations
such as “Dear Service Member.” Cards addressed to specific individuals
can not be delivered through this program.
Only cards are being accepted. Do not send or include letters.
Do not include email or home addresses on the cards: the program is not meant to foster pen pal relationships.
Do not include inserts of any kind, including photos: these items will be removed during the reviewing process.
Please
refrain from choosing cards with glitter or using loose glitter as it
can aggravate health issues of ill and injured warriors.
If you
are mailing a large quantity of cards, please bundle them and place them
in large mailing envelopes or flat rate postal shipping boxes. Each
card does not need its own envelope, as envelopes will be removed from
all cards before distribution.
All mail must be postmarked by December 7th.
They're pretty much asking you to keep it short. You can be any religion or irreligion, and say almost anything. You can send your cards here:
Holiday Mail for Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456
So you've got a week to write two sentences to someone who was injured serving our country. That seems reasonable to me. I'm not a card-giver or letter-writer. I have a nerve imbalance in my hands that makes it excruciatingly painful; keyboards and e-mail were godsends to me. But today, once I finish my allotment of edits on Last House in the Sky, I'm going to fill out some greeting cards.
If you want, take a photo of your card, or even you holding your card. If I get a few, I'll find someone with a working camera around here and post one of myself and my own awful handwriting. We could do a meta-post of them next weekend.
Yesterday I consoled two friends who failed to write 50,000
words in a month. Just as I finished comforting one, the other IM’d me. After
three hours, I think I ran out of patience. It’s for the hysterics I both
witnessed and heard about yesterday that I’m writing this today, to reminded you
that National Novel Writing Month is imaginary and you’ll all be fine.
There are a few dozen professional authors with whom I speak
regularly. None of them were doing #nanowrimo the way it’s intended. Most didn’t
do it at all; I didn’t either. A few used the community aspects and
inspirational messages to psych themselves into getting as many words as they
could for their own novels – most of which, I think, are going to finish at
double or more the 50,000-word goal line. This is how they pay their bills, and
they just wanted progress on hard projects.
I frame this in terms of what they did to ask you something
simple: what did you want out of this thing?
Did you want a publishable book? Bullshit! Almost no one in
the history of almost everywhere has ever written a decent novel in one month. Maybe
Stephen King, maybe once, out of a career headed for triple digits.
Did you do it for camaraderie with other writers? Then it
only matters how you bonded. And good news: those people are still around, so
you can still talk to them, encourage them, and share your work with them.
Did you do it to start writing again? Then you did, and if this
art form expressed something from within you that nothing else reaches, you probably
ought to keep going. Maybe writing this, maybe something different, maybe
something shorter. Maybe December is your Short Story Writing Month, where you
nail a smaller thing that squirmed out of the novel, to feel that you can
conquer an idea. Or maybe you just keep pace until this novel itself has an
end.
Did the high demand stress you out, wreck your outline, or
otherwise leave you unable to work effectively? Then start over with a more
generous time table. There are eleven months before the next November, and many
talented people will be writing during those, including every single
professional author I know. It is actually legal to keep writing today. You
have my permission.
Look: 50,000 words in a month doesn’t make you a novelist.
Unless you were contracted to someone for a manuscript by today, you haven’t
failed at jack shit. You will only fail if you don’t embrace what you wanted
out of this before you die.
Also, take it for granted that if you die, there’ll be
greater concerns than word count.
It’s still surprising Mom lived so long. She was a sweet lady, always donated to UNICEF and Make-A-Wish. She worked as a maid at one of the Chicago Hyatts for thirteen years, and again at the Radisson for eighteen more. She cleaned rooms, folded toilet paper into white roses, and occasionally spiked visitors’ medications or the minibar with untraceable chemicals. As Aunt Theresa put it, she was a prolific but unassuming professional.
When she died, it wasn’t by a hitman. It was liver failure. I was there, bawling my eyes out, and the only assassins to blame were diet and genetics. She’s why I eat so many salads.
She’s also, I think, the reason why all my ex-boyfriends are dead. As far back as I can think, Mom was very supportive of who I was. Dad still doesn’t understand – he thinks I can just like girls if I try hard enough. Mom understood and coaxed me to love who I loved, though she refused to lower her standards. The boys I liked weren’t good enough for her. When I was dating Micah, she actually went to his concert to watch how he behaved. I saw her halfway through his set. She made a little “swish” sign at her neck, which meant I wasn’t seeing him again. Like, romantically again. She didn’t kill him. Heroin killed Micah. I’m pretty sure heroin killed Micah.
It was a month after Mom’s funeral that I noticed a problem. I was with… Jake. It sounds tackier than it was, but Jake was a Canadian brewer hoping to turn full-time hockey player. I know, it’s terrible, but he was so earnest. Or he seemed earnest. Actually, he was an asshole who called that he was sick the morning of Mom’s funeral, and it turns out he was actually drunk with his team. I saw the pics on one of their Facebook Walls. I was so mad, and I was plotting to dump him via that same Facebook Wall when other status updates came in. Jake, who was almost born on ice, had slipped in his shower that night and broke his neck.
I was devastated. Like, Aunt Theresa and my friends thought I was going to kill myself. These two girls from Mom’s church actually drove me to grief counseling sessions, to and from, and took me out to lunch afterward every time. Mom knew really nice people. I mean, except for the mob ties.
It was at one of these sessions that I met Hunter. Hunter. God, I can’t believe I ever dated someone named ‘Hunter,’ and that name hurts twice as bad in retrospect. It turns out he would go these sorts of grieving sessions to prowl for easy lays. I kind of suspected it, but he had the nicest hands I’d ever seen. Hands are a thing. Don’t judge.
Anyway, Hunter tried to sneak out of the house with my wallet and was, by means I still haven’t figured out, decapitated by the screen door. You probably read about it. It was kind of a big deal in the newspapers. I hear it made the front page of Reddit for a minute.
Then there was D’Angelo. He restored vintage cars, and we made out in the back of the only Rolls Royce I’ve ever been in, and a week later a pneumatic press broke and the Rolls fell on him. And then Gustav and Aleksei, who I wasn’t really in a thing with, but they both fell through the same patch in the ice. I remember them because right before my cell rang, I swear I saw Mom in my mirror. She looked like she was cleaning the frame.
Am I crazy, or is my mom’s ghost killing all my boyfriends? Dad said he still feels her presence, but I don’t have the balls to ask him if that presence feels like it strangles people. He’s lucky that he doesn’t want to date anymore. It’s also frustrating, because if he would, and those women died, I’d know Mom was looking after me. I mean, stalking after me. Poltergeisting after my sex life, because it isn’t hard enough being gay in America.
It’s super-weird, but I moved twice, and it hasn’t stopped. I could probably get the Match.com people arrested as an accessory at this point. Last week a cute guy cut me off in traffic, and ten minutes later I drove past the smoldering ruins of his car. “Afternoon Delight” was on the radio. That was Mom’s favorite song.
I once saw a psychotherapist to find out if Mom is just a useful delusion, expressing latent telekinetic abilities. What if I was actually killing all of those people with mental powers, and schizophrenically projecting it onto my late mother? The doctor thought this was all a scam to get prescriptions. He’s dead now.
It’s lonely. I mean, I guess Mom is stuck in a homicidal purgatory which is probably pretty lonely. I still have friends, and Aunt Theresa, and Dad, while Mom doesn’t even have Twitter. I’ve tried telling her, and praying to her, and praying to God to maybe finally take her away, but if you believe that omen on the turnpike, it hasn’t taken yet. It feels too harsh to have my mom exorcised, especially just for my sex life. I don’t know. It isn’t fair.
So now I just tell people the truth. Nobody believes my cute maid of a mom is now snapping necks from beyond the grave, and I need this stuff off my chest. I don’t know. What would you do?
“Madame, I will be the first suitor today to speak honestly
with you. I wish only to marry you for your money. Now, every man who’s come in
here before me has had the same intentions despite what he says, but you might
consider them more polite, or playing some social game that has appeal. I think
not, I think you’re cleverer than that, which is why you’ll see that I am the
best suitor for your estate, not because of honesty, but because of what I’ll
do with your holdings.
“I work at the local bank, where last year I turned nine-hundred-thousand
pounds in portfolios into two-point-three million pounds, and if they don’t
touch those accounts, it will be ten times that in a tenth the effort in less
than ten fiscal quarters. I’ve been trained by the best tax liars: the revenue
services themselves.
“I’ve got scandalous connections in both mercantile and
caravan industries, two which you are likely sick of dealing with. These people
need ports; they are ultimately vulnerable to their shape and ownership. Your
family gives you one port and your late husband provides you two more. You are
many things: eligible, wise, but foremost to these people, you are the
definition and portrait of ‘international.’ I know who of these businessfolk
are the most vulnerable, the easiest to bend, and where they cheat. You are set
for life, but I can guarantee our children will be rich for all of theirs, and
I brought the projections to prove it. All it will cost to see them is a
simple, ‘I do.’”
So this author and his wife are departing his favorite
grocery store. Their cart is overloaded with shredded miniwheats and celery,
yet over the bags he spies a familiar dust jacket sitting on a passenger’s side
seat. It’s his own.
He stops the cart and peers through the window of an old
sedan. Indeed, it’s his book, left in a car parked on two over from his own.
Looking around the lanes, he hopes to find a fan out in the parking lot, but
most everyone seems to still be inside, browsing the discounts on ice cream. He
entertains a two-second daydream where this reader loves his book and brings
out a pint of Ben & Jerry’s to thank him for his literary brilliance.
His wife complains they should go; her rice milk is
dangerously close to room temperature. Well, he thinks, October had been
unseasonably warm. And there was no telling when this reader would finish his
or her shopping. But he had to do something with this unique promotional
opportunity.
Swallowing, he pulls a notepad from his rear pocket and
tears off a sheet. He makes his Alpha Signature – the impressive one with all
the cursive loops – and writes a tidy note beneath.
“Thrilled to see you have my book here. In case you like it,
here’s my autograph.”
He almost rambles longer, but sanity and his wife elbowing
him jar the author back into life. He quickly concludes:
“And in case you hate the book, there’s still my autograph.
You can burn it.”
Then he hustles to pack the groceries: cold stuff in the
back seat, stuff that could wait in the trunk. Heaven forbid the rice milk hit
room temperature outdoors.
The U.S. is
overwhelmingly victorious. How overwhelmingly? They’ve invaded England. They
don’t have a lot of industry yet, and frankly, the U.S. sees something in this “Military
Industrial Complex.” It could take them places. Shocked by the new
nation’s early defeat of British troops, the Germans refuse to extended
Hessian support to the King. At the same time, Wales
and Ireland hate England and lend themselves as naval bases
for the biggest invasion of the British Isles
since the Vikings.
One
colony (pick your favorite) decides not to fight the war, but rather sits
it out. After the U.S.
declares independence, this colony declares itself a sovereign nation and
freely leases land to the Brits who still want to do business in
sub-Canada. It rapidly turns into the most passive aggressive shopping
district in North America, with
revolutionaries and loyalists constantly running into each other at the
vast array of neutral boutiques.
The
world really is flat. George Washington and is fellow homies plot to trick
the world’s greatest navy into sailing off the edge of the planet by
setting up a fake continent and drawing them into a war that isn’t there.
Ala the end of The
Hobbit, in the middle of the bloody Revolutionary War, a third army
arrives to interrupt. But it ain’t the goblins: it’s the Mayan Apocalypse.
It turns out all those calendars won't run out for a few centuries, but humans won't be around for those years. Soldiers of both sides are suddenly united in their desire to get the heck
off of the continent before they’re all consumed by a regional end-times,
and to warn Europe of their impending
doom.
The
Vikings realized the Jersey Shore was more amenable that the tundra of
northern Europe and simply moved here.
With a few hundred years of radically superior weather and vaster terrain,
they’ve really leapt forward as a culture, putting the Enlightenment to
shame. Their only real rivals are the Native Americans, who think Vikings
are crazy for putting so much emphasis on Physics, and have developed
their own more holistic curriculum. Red Cloud invents the first affordable
family-sized Sedan around 1776, when Europe arrives and awkwardly demands land rights.
It’s a lot like getting robbed by a kid with a cap gun, but the Vikings and
Native Americans are too nice to just ignore them. It’s really less of a
“war” and more of a “long sigh hello.”
Benedict Arnold is gunned down by fellow colonists for
his perceived betrayal. Blown to needless bits, he is narrowly saved by the
cutting edge of science at the time, with his missing limbs replaced by a
steampunk nightmare. He becomes the 1770’s answer to RoboCop, mindlessly
following the Prime Directives of the Magna Carta in his pursuit of bringing
down the rebels. But are the emotions that once harbored in Arnold’s breast really dead, or does his soul
lurk within that cog-powered body?
