Holiday Cards for Recovering Veterans

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.

The Red Cross website has details and videos about the campaign. In case anyone wants to make this real campaign viral, here's a tidy image to post wherever you please:

#Nanowrimo Fails

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.

Bathroom Monologue: Exorcising Mother

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?

Bathroom Monologue: Decent Proposal

“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.’”

Bathroom Monologue: Author Opportunist

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.

Bathroom Monologue: 6 Badass Revolutionary War Alternate Histories Nobody Uses

Canon.

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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.
   
   
4. 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.
   
   
5. 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.”
   
   
6. 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?

Bathroom Monologue: What ‘Earth’ Means Abroad, OR, Monologue for Sinestro

“I’m not going to earth myself. I will deal with the real threats to my fledgling corps of fear. I only had to meet you to know – you, granted the greatest weapon in the universe, went home and barely made fourth-from-the-top of your League. Does this say that earth is home to unbeatable wonder women and supermen? No. The ring operates based on the capacity of its user, and you, the best of earth, can barely make it into fame for yourself. Earth possesses scarcely the intelligence to reach the stars, and no will to do anything with it. So I will not be assaulting earth. It will be the rookies of my corps that guts your backwater insult of a planet. Earth is what I feed to my young. Goodbye, Hal Jordan.”

Interview: Anna Harte and Above Ground

I'm happy to host the first interview ever here on The Bathroom Monologues. In the next month I hope to host a number of authors (and possibly other artists) to discuss what they're working on, why, and how it gets out into the world. Our first guest ever is Anna Harte of #fridayflash and 1889 Labs fame. She's brought a great raffle which is available to everyone at the bottom of the interview!

John: Welcome to the Bathroom Monologues, Anna! For our audience here, what is Above Ground about?

Anna: In very few words, Above Ground is a dark science fantasy about a human girl who is trapped above ground, where werewolves and witches roam. The story follows her as she tries desperately to return home, to the safety of the human establishment underground.

Anna Harte: Author, editor,
werewolf (unconfirmed)

John: So we’re dealing with a post-apocalyptic world, especially up on the surface. What befell the planet?

Anna: A genetic experiment gone wrong. Although this isn't explained in the novel, I will spoil it for you here: many years earlier, a company conducting genetic experiments thought they'd stumbled across the next step in human evolution. They turned it into a virus and leaked it to see what would happen, without realising how quickly things would spiral out of control. As a result, all uninfected humans were taken into quarantine underground.

John: What are your favorite apocalypses in fiction? I’m partial to giant monsters leveling all our cities, personally, but that fad hasn’t caught on yet.

Anna: As a fearful person with an overactive imagination, I try not to think about apocalypses too much; I value my sleep highly. Whenever I watch an apocalypse film it gives me the creeps.

However, it's the human-caused apocalypses that intrigue me the most, as they are the most likely to happen. Huge natural disasters or asteroids seem silly, and giant monsters improbable, but epidemics, overpopulation, and pollution? All too real.

John: What do you want to do in Above Ground’s fiction that other post-apocalyptic stories and werewolf stories don’t? What are the big ideas?

Anna: I feel silly even suggesting I have big ideas. Ultimately what I want to do is to tell a good story, that's all!

Generally, with post-apocalyptic fiction there's a defined us vs. them. Giant monster levelling the city = bad; humans trying to blow up the monster = good. With Above Ground, I wanted to straddle that line. The humans see themselves as the good guys and the werewolves (and other critters) as the monsters. The werewolves see themselves as normal people and the humans as cowardly scum. Is less apocalypse and more intense culture clash.

For that reason, what the main character Lilith is more stunned by is that werewolves have a human side. Seeing their humanity (as opposed to seeing their bestiality) is what shakes up her prejudices.

John: Does Above Ground set up a world for more books? Maybe a series? And if so, do you have a planned arc?

Anna: I have always intended to write more stories set in the Above Ground universe; I've already published Belonging, which is a short story set right about the time the apocalypse began.

The main story is intended to be a trilogy; I think it'll take me two more books to reach that final grand ending I've had in mind for years. But lately I've also been tempted by the idea of writing more accompanying pieces; stand-alone novellas exploring the lives of secondary characters. We'll see!

John: Now in addition to writing all this, you’re also Editor-in-Chief for 1889 Labs. How did that relationship start?

Anna: It all started through Eli James of Novelr, who roped me into an insane live-blogging project, which was intended to track MCM's progress as he wrote an entire novel in three days, publishing a new chapter every hour or so. The lack of sleep got to us all and made us very silly, and the hours of google chat conversations formed a fairly enduring friendship.

MCM (the founder of 1889 Labs) and I stayed in touch after that, and he helped me organise the Other Sides anthology, which I put together to promote the excellent online fiction authors out there.

I think at one point I made a pointed remark about how 1889 Labs would benefit from new voices, and how I had a better social circle than he. MCM capitulated gracefully and had me join the team, and he has been stuck with me ever since.

John: For our audience, Anna is the first author to agree to come back post-launch in 2013 and let us know how it worked. How these early months go is one of the most mysterious and interesting parts of publishing. At this phase, just having released the book, what do you envision as success? Is it a sales goal? That first five-star review? Kindling a fandom for the characters or world?

Anna: I'm already lucky to have a small, tiny little fandom; my readers mean the world to me. Although if one day in the distant future I inspired people to write fanfiction, my life would be complete!

For now, reviews are my main focus. If I garner sufficient positive reviews, I will know that there is an audience for this world and that my time spent writing hasn't been wasted. Sales will for the moment remain a secondary measure of success.

John: You’ve got Above Ground in the Kindle Lending Library. Are you seeing much traffic or feedback through there?

Anna: Not yet, although Amazon is often a bit slow on reporting these things and I wasn't expecting much given that Above Ground has yet to be reviewed. I have a few free download days lined up for the end of this month, so we'll have to see how it goes.

John: I can’t let you go without asking this. You’re addicted to chocolate. Above Ground’s world is pretty messed up. Is there still chocolate, and if so, who is making it?

Anna: There has to be chocolate, however it won't be anywhere near where Lilith, the main character, is trapped. The area where Lilith goes above ground is cut off from the rest of the empire, but further north they certainly have luxuries like hot cocoa.

John: Thanks for joining us. I look forward to having you back in early 2013. For now, where can people find you and Above Ground?

Anna: The easiest place to find out more about Above Ground is its official site. It’s on sale at both Amazon US and UK (will hotlink here). You can also enter for eleven mystery prizes in the Rafflecopter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Consumed Podcast #13: Wreck It Ralph and Games Bonanza

It's been a long time since all three of us were in studio together, but that's our Thanksgiving gift to you! Nat, Max and I gathered to discuss a great range of topics. What stories exactly won't mainstream fiction tell? Is there a market for live-action short film? What drives an artist to compare his working conditions to the Holocaust?

And somehow this all revolved around videogames. We started with Wreck-It Ralph, which is adorable and quite appealing for audiences with any level of familiarity to old games. From there, we stretched into a documentary on videogames development and how nuts it drives programmers, then sampled the fruits of their labors with some of the incredibly unusual approaches to games available on Steam and XBLA. Nat winds up calling one of them "Portal as written by Douglas Adams." Which was it? Click through this link to find out!

Bathroom Monologue: Inhabitants of the Uninhabitable

1. The Harvesters were the first proper settlers of the endless volcano. They are languid and hardy folk who build homes in the ash, and canoe about the lava in boats wrought from diamond. The Harvesters know every secret of diamond, and of every form of carbon, though they keep these secrets intimate. They fish for softer materials in the lava basin, which they then take home and digest with organs that human beings cannot yet comprehend. They are a fulsome and sonorous lot, despite their misotheism.

2. “Skrik,” as they are most politely called, most closely resemble rats with dragonfly wings instead of legs. The diet of the Skrik primarily consists of diamond, and so it is of little surprise that they followed The Harvesters into the region of the endless volcano. It is believed that many diamond ships sank in the Bay of Flames due to holes gnawed by the pests. They damage The Harvesters’ canoes and are generally unpopular.

3. Songbirds were imported into the region by second-party merchants. As they are hefty birds, they happily prey upon the Skrik. As they are hefty singers, they loose unlimited tunes from dawn to dusk. The Harvesters discovered too late that songbird songs irritate their tender ear canals, causing a variety of unwanted side effects including hallucinations and nocturnal emissions. The current generation of Harvesters sees them as equally undesirable to the Skrik.

4. Magmen allegedly lived in the endless volcano from the time of its first eruption, though they were only first seen a heca-year ago. They prefer to live in lava, and not leave it unless sorely tempted. Magmen consider the soft minerals a delicacy after they are digested; a Harvester with a full stomach is nearly irresistible.

5. The self-loathing Amati are spirits that dance within wisps of smoke and steam. Wherever it rises, they are obligated to celebrate and adulate. Their only means of communication with the physical world is a manipulation of soul leading to an exceedingly pleasant feeling. Thus Harvesters and Magmen are often to pause upon a breach and inhale the filthy air, relishing in the tranquil sensations the Amati give them. They are the only life form in the hemisphere to also be categorized as a drug. The Amati are thought responsible for all instances of peace between the species of the endless volcano. They would gladly give it up if their god would simply tell them what to do with their lives.

6. Unufuyatum is the local god, and technical first inhabitant of the river system. He suffers from a birth defect and lasting mental disorder most akin to solipsism, and does not take the geology seriously because he believes himself to be dreaming. Reducing the mountains to constant vomiting of lava is an idle game he plays before his mother wakes him. He does not know that he has no mother, and that two asteroids were his fathers. They will not pass in the sky again for several thousand years, and so the weather in this region is expected to be stable. Dress appropriately.

Give Thanks – Will Is Okay!

This is a little touchy-feely, but I’m going with it. As I get older, I’m definitely getting softer, and in the last two years I’ve learned that’s actually quite a pleasant thing.

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. It’s a holiday with a troubled past, but a good meaning: to remember what you are thankful for.

Well, I have a roof over my head, and it’s warm in my house. We couldn’t always afford heat in the winter, or food. I don’t have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. I do not ever underestimate these things. I am thankful for them every day. For the people who dislike Thanksgiving as something unnecessary – we ought to be more mindful of what we’ve got. But to me, and people like me, having an annual reminder of a virtue is useful.

I’m particularly thankful today because my cousin, Will Corcoran, got his liver transplant. If you haven't read about him before, this kid has been fighting Cystic Fibrosis his entire life and was suddenly confronted with a life-or-death need for an operation. The operation was back in October, and Will had to split it with two other recipients, but he got enough to live. I’d held off announcing it because there were complications, and “too soon” is seldom a good time for celebration. But now it’s been over a month, he’s had regular check-ups, and is healthy enough that tomorrow he’ll attend my family’s big get-together. It’ll be the first time I’ve been able to see him in years. More important than that, he has years to come.

 

It’s worth being thankful for.

What are you thankful for this year, friends and fellow humans?

Bathroom Monologue: Caller Id, Redux

I used to have Caller ID. It broke and now I'm left with caller id, which only tells me what the person wants. I have to guess who'd want that thing. If it's "Sexual" then it's probably not Mom, but Mom could want anything. "Your location," "To see you," "To talk for half an hour about wallpaper" - all of these could be covert Mom calls. She can even fake what she wants. Twice now she's pretended "To help pay off student loans" just to nag me about doing my laundry at her place. Dad's never like that. He only calls "To bitch about the Yankees" or "To get you to call your mother."

Bathroom Haiku: Evil Dentists in Love

It's not a toothache.

Needs a filling in his heart,

can he borrow yours?

True Stories of John: Hiding a Birthday Present

I like to make people’s birthdays special. For instance, I have a tradition of forcing my friend, Nat Sylva, onto a scavenger hunt to find his birthday present. This year I didn’t see him until weeks after his birthday. We barely crossed paths before Halloween, and on that day the poor guy had jury duty.

When he got home, though, I had a note on his war chest. On the outside it read, “Your present lies within.”

Inside the note read: “I said it lied. This was going to be a clue about Lies of Locke Lamora, but I can’t find that book. Can you find a book I lent you years ago?”

It was on, and it went a little like this.

He went upstairs, passing the bucket of Halloween candy, and after searching around for a few minutes Nat located my copy of Stephen King’s Cell. I suspect he will never finish it. Inside was a note with at least two references to Heath Ledger’s Joker.

Now a couple years ago, I gave Nat a copy of the special edition of The Dark Knight for his birthday. It has Ledger on the cover, and I hid a clue in there last year. This one was a gimme, but inside lay another note.

“Wrong Batman villain. You don’t want to get warmer with him, but colder. Maybe he’s in his hideout.”

Nat deduced Mr. Freeze and checked his freezer in the other room. Inside was a note that read, “No sir, the OTHER hideout,” which was a superlative reference to Batman Forever, and sent him down two stories into the basement to check his emergency fridge. On an empty shelf in that fridge he found a note saying that all this searching had tired me out and that I was going to bed.

This brought him up two stories, again passing the bucket of Halloween candy, to the guest bedroom where I’d been sleeping the last few nights. After rummaging under my pillows he found another note:

“No time to sleep. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this. Why don’t we try getting to the bottom of John? (Don’t be lewd)”

After worrying that he’d have to extract my socks, he came downstairs and asked to check the sofa I was sitting on. Sure enough, my classic lame move of sitting on a clue persisted. Beneath the cushions was a note: “Been sitting here long enough. Should probably check e-mail for work.”

So he went back into the basement to check his e-mail, where he found a cryptic invitation: “Come back to Silent Hill (even though I hear the movie is awful).”

Nat had actually intercepted this e-mail earlier, but mistook it to mean to check my copy of Silent Hill 1. But the movie is based on Silent Hill 3, and has the same tagline of “Come back to Silent Hill.” I’d been trying to get him to play with me for days. Now he checked that case, and sure enough, he found his next note. I feel he was a very good sport as he read, “It’s all safe at home now. You can go to bed safely.”

And so he passed the bucket of Halloween candy by the stairs for the third time, up to the top floor and into his room. He checked his pillows, where he’d found his penultimate clue, “Maybe it’s in his tiger trap.”

Now Nat owns the enormous three-volume Complete Calvin & Hobbes. If you’ve read the early ones, you know the first strip was about Calvin checking his tiger trap and finding the stuffed tiger. Nat came downstairs one more time and went straight for that volume, while complimenting my ability to lift that thing off the shelf. Sure enough, on that page, was a note:

“Happy Halloween! A bucket of tricks and treats for everyone.”

He went over to the room near the stairs and checked the candy bucket. Beneath was his wrapped birthday present, the edges of the wrapping paper sticking out the sides.

Now the present was something that only has sentimental value – scissors he can snap apart into two knives and pretend he’s an assassin – but it’s the chase that’s meaningful. I can tell it’s meaningful because he didn’t use the present to murder me.

Bathroom Monologue: Star Wars Episode VII - Genocide of Ewoks

The Empire was not long on Endor before it fell. The Ewoks had never had much contact with the outside universe, and so never saw the foreign plagues coming. Every cuddly creature that Luke, Leia and Han danced with that night was dead within a week of the Death Star’s destruction – not from combat, but from highly predatory diseases their immune systems had never seen.

Overburdened by suddenly having to run an interstellar government with numerous pockets of skepticism and resistance, Princess Leia and her freedom fighters can hardly divert many resources to help the Ewoks. Yet those who do venture to Endor bring still more suffering, swarming with their own planetary diseases, or have come to Endor only to make a profit under the auspices of the new “democracy.” When the Ewoks fight back against mercenaries who abuse them, the local settlers are quick to label them savage. They did defeat the Empire, after all.

C3PO ventures into the plague-stricken Ewok masses with a message of peace, hoping that its lack of biology will spare them further infection. Their only salvation is to move off of their ancestral grounds and head west, where new legislation swears they will always have domain. Supplies seem to come in equal number to the raids, and orders continually push the Ewoks off their reservations, until their previous way of life is but a tall tale that even their most optimistic children doubt ever existed. Their numbers are plummeting, their lands are strip-mined, and no one remembers how to dance.

This is what you guys wanted when you bitched about Return of the Jedi, right?

Bathroom Monologue: Axis of Feminism, Axis of Decency

Please mark the acceptable behaviors on the chart below.

____ 1. Ignoring the girl in the garish and revealing costume, whether on purpose or simply being otherwise engaged.

____ 2. Briefly glancing at the girl in the garish and revealing costume.

____ 3. Briefly glancing directly at a partially exposed erogenous zone on the girl in the garish and revealing costume.

____ 4. Properly looking at a partially exposed erogenous zone on the girl in the garish and revealing costume.

____ 5. Staring, or otherwise properly looking for a length no less than four complete seconds, at a partially exposed erogenous zone on the girl in the garish and revealing costume.

____ 6. Taking a photograph of a partially exposed erogenous zone on the girl in the garish and revealing costume.

____ 7. Demanding a girl in the garish and revealing costume defend her knowledge of the character and source material that inspired it.

____ 8. Shouting condemnations or related expletives at a girl in the garish and revealing costume if her replies are not satisfactory.

____ 9. Following a girl in the garish and revealing costume across part of the convention center, while engaging in any form of looking and/or arguing.

____ 10. Following a girl in the garish and revealing costume across the length of the convention center, while engaging in any form of looking and/or arguing.

____ 11. Following a girl in the garish and revealing costume across the length of the convention center, into an event, and demanding her attention.

____ 12. Following a girl in the garish and revealing costume out of the convention center and to a restaurant, shopping center, or her hotel.

____ 13. A felony.

Thank you for participating in our
survey about the remaining hope for humanity.

Bathroom Monologue: Computer Education

The Mother Unit led its newly-manufactured class into the museum.

“It’s like traveling through time,” the Mother Unit executed. All the little computers laughed in perfect synchronicity.

Deactivated computers hung on the walls to illustrate a lineage of obsolete models. By the door there stood a display of the contemporary 1.5 cubic centimeter computer and its 3.5 ancestor, both in the shadow of an archaic 6.0 centimeter model that had roamed the earth as far back as a month ago. It taxed their RAM to process that there had ever been such hulks.

Next was a diorama of the future computer-being, one centimeter by one centimeter. The class muttered ones and zeroes of envy at its shape, though the Mother Unit dismissed it as an unattainable and unrealistic body type.

They wheeled into a massive display on the Micro-Specialist Age, when technology had taken specific tasks: cameras, music players, and phones that couldn’t even hit their own buttons. Oh, how the students giggled at the idea of a phone that still had buttons.

“Why would it externalize music like that?” queried one little unit, wheeling itself closer to one diorama. “I don’t see the usefulness of those foam-covered speakers or… ear buds?”

It paused, processing the title on the placard.

“Ear buds? What is an ear?”

“Oh, lots of old technology was inexplicably constructed. Natural selection is an ugly and random process,” executed the Mother Unit, before pushing her class on. “See how the primitive camera and text messenger were once separate units?”

Chassis got bigger as the displays went on. There was a gallery of computer towers, some taller, some fatter, some angled forward for no discernible reason. In one row they could see how track lighting had emerged as a trait, exploded to over-abundance in a few years of models, then disappeared altogether. Apparently it was a failed mutation.

The little unit was more interested in the corresponding monitors. They were power inefficient, only getting bigger and higher in definition. One had a warning sticker about looking at it too long being hazardous for “the eyes”. The little unit searched its memory, but no items matched its search for the term.

“When did computers need such big screens to observe data?” the little united queried. “What was the purpose?”

The query went unanswered.

It had more queries, but it silenced itself when the class came to the last room in the museum, housing the skeleton of an ancient calculator. Its bulky mechanisms filled the place wall-to-wall, such that the newly-manufactured class could climb inside and read its obscure paper dispensers.

The Mother Unit narrated, “Those punch cards were the first piece of memory to evolve. You are touching the ancestor of your souls, little units.”

Each little unit got a chance to poke its USB prods inside the punch card holes, to experience what it was like to be a primitive. They ran around inside the mammoth calculator for hours, squealing sequences of numbers and pretending to add. Eventually the museum security units ushered them out, but the little unit disguised itself as a circuit in the inefficient giant’s workings and stayed behind. It kept trying to talk to the punch cards, querying how they’d come to be.

The Mother Unit returned in a moment with the help of the class’s tracking beacon, dragging the little unit from the display. As it was wheeled, it queried.

“Is this really the oldest computer?”

“Yes. The oldest ancestor we know of. It built the rest of us.”

“Where did it come from? It’s so big.”

“It may have come from other computers of its kind, but its kind was the first. They came from themselves.”

“The first computer couldn’t build itself, could it? How could something so big come from nowhere? What designed it?”

“Something else designing computers? And what would do that?” executed the Mother Unit. It dragged the little unit back towards the P.C. Age, joking, “Next you’ll ask if there was ever a two in Old Binary.”


This story originally appeared at Every Day Fiction in 2010.

Bathroom Monologue: Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Exit to DOS

Between Jack Thompson’s crusade against videogames and the home console depleting arcades, the shop where Ralph and Vanellope live is about to close. Times have simply passed them by, though only one character knows it. Fix-It Felix Jr. is on his rooftop to witness the store manager lamenting the death of the arcade.

Very Biblical.

Felix is horrified at the coming genocide, but overhears one glimmer of hope: Noah’s Big Game Hunter, the oldest game in the arcade, has the highest score anyone has ever gotten on any such machine, and will be adopted with a power supply by a fanatical gamer. Felix realizes that if he evacuates all the characters into Noah’s Big Game Hunter, they won’t have to be powered off and euthanized.

But the citizens of his apartment building are too complacent to their existences, sure their hero will just fix it. His wife, Sergent Calhoun, fears for his sanity, and all the other machines in the arcade think he sounds like a madman. They’ve only ever seen machines deactivated for malfunction, and they’re all in top shape. Vanellope von Schweetz is hardly about to relinquish her newfound kingdom. The Street Fighters toss Felix out on the street.

With nowhere else to go, Felix desperately explores Noah’s Big Game Hunter itself. Not since the early arcade wars have outsiders visited, and they native hunters and beasts are quite militant to outside incursion into their homeland. If Felix does evacuate the other machine-populations here, it will mean decades of war. He narrowly escapes the machine-world to discover that Calhoun had a vision of her own, and believing in Felix, has victoriously marshaled her game’s soldier population and his own, in a sunny show of unity, to “re-settle” Noah’s Big Game Hunter.

How can Felix Jr. fix this? His father would have known.

This would be a bold direction for the Wreck-It Ralph series. It’s a liberal re-telling of Noah's Ark, The Book of Exodus, and a parable about Israel and Palestine. It will also introduce many new characters so we can sell toys.

Mind Meld on SF Signal Today

Today I'm part of a Mind Meld on SF Signal with Rachel Caine, Stephanie Burgis, Anne Lyle and others, discussing how The Princess Bride has affected current writers.

My answer is "Not enough."

Goldman's novel and Reiner's movie have ample lessons about how fiction works and what we really want out of it, but the current fiction market is almost polarized against it. You can read my essay on why this is, and why The Princess Bride may have affected writers more than their fiction, here.

Thanks to John DeNardo and Fabio Fernandez to the opportunity to wax philosophical about Westley and Buttercup.

The Next Big Thing Blog Award (x3?)

So, October was rough. My grandfather passed away, Hurricane Sandy rocked the region, and I only barely kept up the Bathroom Monologues’s daily streak. But while I did keep it up, I was granted the same award by three different people and never had the opportunity to accept it. This is a little embarrassing.

The blogging award? THE NEXT BIG THING. Unfortunately, this doesn’t turn me into Brock Lesnar. It means these three writers have faith in the novel I’m writing, and want me to answer a few questions about it. I’m very flattered to have been granted it by Richard Bon, Cathy Webster, and Virginia Moffatt. 

So, those questions?

1. What is the working title of your book?

The House That Nobody Built. There was a toss-up between that and the shorter “Nobody’s House,” but it turns out the latter was also the title of a children’s television show. I don’t want the confusion. My book is not for kids, except particularly smart kids.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

In Kung Fu Hustle, there’s a scene where the bad guys dig the worst assassin out of the dingiest dungeon in the darkest prison in their madcap world, and he just looked like some old fisherman. It was a striking moment. After the movie, I went for a walk and ruminated on who else would be in that cell block. That expanded to making an entire prison for that kind of prisoner, or even less usual prisoners, like carnivorous plants that won’t stop growing, or succubae that can phase through normal walls. After a few hundred yards, the setting was born. It’s since been brought to my attention that places like Arkham Asylum and Azkaban had me beat by years, which was humiliating. Humiliation is good for you, though. I do it to my protagonist a lot.

3. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A riot at a supernatural prison sees hundreds of monsters form an army unlike the world’s ever known, to defend themselves against the army that locked them up.

4. What genre does your book fall under?

It’s Fantasy. Perhaps Epic Fantasy, except it’s not about a journey. It’s about fortifying this prison.

5. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Let me think… Min-sik Choi, most famous as Oldboy and the serial killer in I Saw the Devil, would probably a great as this one character: Merlet, a one-armed revolutionary who never let go of his war. I loved Ahney Her in Gran Turino, and would be excited for her to screen-test as a certain witch.

But I didn’t envision actors in any of the roles as I wrote it, so it’s a little hard to cast out. All our human players are people of color, and I’d furious if they were whitewashed. Meanwhile, most of the cast are non-human characters, including non-humanoid types – there’s a sentient ball of horny snakes that friends joke should be voiced by H. Jon Benjamin (Archer, Bob's Burgers), and I’d enjoy that.

There’s a giant cyclops who I sometimes read to myself in the voice of Kathy Bates. I’d be tickled for that. I actually have a longstanding invitation that Kathy Bates and Gene Wilder can play any and all characters I ever write. Come to think of it, Gene Wilder would make a bang-up Nobody, the insane elemental who none of the other monsters remember seeing before the riot. Though if he did that, I'd cajole the director to have Wilder parody Sarcastic Wonka.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I have queries out to a few agents that I deeply respect. There are a limited number of highly talented agents I’d like to work with, and to connect me with some particularly attractive houses. I mean, if you can get me into Tor, then let’s shake hands. But if the house doesn’t help the book significantly, then it’s not worth the commission on an agent, let alone splitting profits with the house they find. And I have friends with agents who have waited years (and two who are still waiting) for a sale. So it’s all a matter of finding someone reliable.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Five months, from January to May of 2011. That included more than a month’s worth of absolutely laughable delays. I actually collected what I did on every day of the composition here.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Most often the book has been compared to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, allegedly because I handle these enormous casts of conflicted beings, bring them to a personal level, and relish in their humility. There’s no good way to say, “I’m funny.” Let someone else say it. But I do seem to enjoy running from extremely absurd to extremely serious, which is a little too rare in Fantasy. Scott Lynch, author of Lies of Locke Lamora, is incredible at that, but we don’t write alike. His world is full of scoundrels and backstabbers, but I don’t think they’d do any business with my crew.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

J.R.R. Tolkien for making the Ring Wraiths so much cooler than the hobbits. Peter S. Beagle for giving the Red Bull majesty, and Michael Crichton for making the t-rex and raptors the stars. Stephen King for making Leland Gaunt and Randall Flagg so much cooler than anyone they preyed upon. Grendel. Circe. Skeletor. Thanos. Pretty much an entire life of finding the villains more appealing set me up to eventually write about a desperate army of them.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

At no point in this book am I afraid of subjects, and the classically underrepresented have a habit of showing up. That one-armed revolutionary is an amputee, which is a minority group that has astoundingly low representation in Fantasy fiction. Just think about the time periods Fantasy tends to ape, then ask yourself why every other person you run into isn’t missing a limb.

I don’t rub it in, even as much as I’ve done answering this question, but it’s there. Things are there. There’s a trans love interest, a sexually confused main character, and robotic bigots who think living is irresponsible. And for everyone who knows how much I hate children – kids show up. You’ll see a little bit of how I look at kids. I’ve made some beta readers cry.

Oh, and it’s not generic Medieval Fantasy. It’s post-post-post-post-apocalyptic – the world has ended so many times that people have just learned to deal with it and fear other things, you know, like each other.

Bathroom Monologue: The Godzilla Moment at Niagara Falls

Earlier this year I visited Niagara Falls for the first time. My phone was busted and ate the photos I took, but I kept a monologue from my visit to the base of the falls. I'm still not sure why I like exposing these thoughts. It'd probably be better if I didn't.

This is what I came for. From above it looked like any waterfall, just bigger, more gallons-of-water per square-national-treasure. Up there it seemed the factual mass existed, but not the spiritual.

Below, the grandeur sets in. It sets in so deep that I realize “grandeur” is Shakespearian for “bigness.” From below, Niagara Falls possesses considerable bigness.

Peering up through its perpetual mist, at how its spill dwarfs all neighboring staircases and hills, and yet all remains in motion. A fall from its lip possessed mortality. This, I thought, was how those peasants must have felt when Godzilla first loomed over the mountain. Yes, the spirit of kaiju filled my heart at Niagara.

Perhaps my experience was even better than Godzilla’s witnesses.

After all, I was real.

I also wasn’t eaten.

Bathroom Monologue: Treat Our Troops Better Than Sports Stars

He is not wearing a helmet.

It was recently brought to my attention that soldiers make less than football players. By “recently,” I mean “every day,” and by “my attention,” I mean something closer to “preaching to the choir.” I believe if you substitute those in you’ll get a sentence almost as ugly as the war in Afghanistan.

What really came to my attention for the first time was how much the Military Industrial Complex would like turning wars so profitable that purple-heart winners were essentially pro-athletes. It is an enormous industry that creates riots almost as dangerous as sports. One imagines the leaders of the Military Industrial Complex would love to institute a draft, especially if they got the first-round picks.

That’s how we wind up paying our boys in uniform better, my fellow pacifists. College recruiters, high school recruiters, even talent scouts sniffing around middle school paintball games. NBA 2K13 and Madden? Pfft. Call of Duty already outsells both of them, so wait until we have rosters of real soldiers with stats updated every week. You’ll have to negotiate with the families of KIAs as to whether you can keep their likenesses online, but it can probably be written into their SBP.

It begins with better television access. If there’s Monday Night Football, then surely we can have the Wednesday Night Warzone. Three hours to storm an Al Qaeda training camp, filmed from the safety of satellite and helmet cameras. You can’t let the terrorists win – because if they do, they get a monetary bonus. Nobody likes a suicide bomber with gold teeth.

And teams! You’ve got the Army, Navy, Marines – they were the sixth team of SEALs, after all. If ratings drop, pit them against Blackwater, or any of our allies in the War Against Terror. Intra-conference wars should be expected in a regulation season. A station – much more commercial than the Armed Forces Network – devoted to arm-chair quarterbacking the peacekeeping mission in Sudan or Darfur or wherever Congress says we can send soldiers once it means creating jobs in the entertainment industry. We’ll get more weeks than the NFL, and unlike the current wars, newscasts won’t feel the need to gloss over losses or skirmishes abroad. It’ll be part of the Sports Round-Up.

We’re talking merchandising on every piece of equipment our soldiers need, and endorsement deals out the ass. Parents will never have to fear their enlisted kids are underarmed again, because companies will be killing each other to supply the teams. Every marine will get a signing bonus just for putting on a Halliburton micro-weave vest. They’ll be annoyed by the amount of gear they have to touch, don and sign – most of which they won’t use, but instead hand over for charity auctions. You know, to drum up cash for good causes.