Meanwhile…

On Jens’s recommendation, I’ve picked up Shadow & Claw, by Gene Wolfe. I’ve so far read the first half, The Shadow of the Torturer, and it is excellent. I get the impression that I’m not really smart enough to catch all the allusions and what not, but that’s fine. I’m enjoying it and eagerly look forward to seeing more of this dark, declining world. It’s difficult to summarize, but if you took my advice and read and enjoyed any of China Miéville’s books, you’ll probably like these, too.

Between the two halves of that I happened to notice Sharpe’s Tiger at the local HalfPrice Books and nabbed that. It’s the first of Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe books. I’ve always wanted to read them, but never actually came across the first book of the series before. Technically, it’s not the first, but it is the first chronologically, being Sharpe’s first big military adventure, and set earlier than the other books. I’m guessing it doesn’t really matter what order you read them it, but the comic book reader in me wants to read it this way. I love that period of history, with the rampant deluded colonialism and technology just advanced enough to be dangerous to user and victim alike. There is still plenty of opportunity for adventure in 18th-19th century Earth. It’s been a lot of fun so far.

I’ve been obsessed with Phonogram: The Singles Club lately, having finally obtained the couple issues I missed when they first came out. Written by Kieron Gillen with Jamie McKelvie on art.  It’s a series about music, the effect it can have on us, and how magical that is. These comics haven’t left my side for the past week.

The series is set in a London dance club and all takes place over a single night. Each issue presents the night from a different character’s point of view, and by the end of the (fantastic) last issue you get a pretty complete idea of everything that happened. Each of the tales has a bit of a supernatural twist (in the Phonogram universe, music is literally magical), but the stories are still grounded and human. It’s a beautiful, funny, heartbreaking series. At some point I need to pick up Rue Britannia, the original Phonogram series.

I don’t think it’s vital to be familiar with the music that’s referenced throughout to enjoy the stories, but I noticed my enjoyment of the series ramped up considerably once I started checking out the bands (praise be to Pandora).

What are you reading?

Good news – A Thousand Faces accepted a new flash piece from me! I had a lot of fun writing this one. Look for that later this year.

Tuesday evening I pounded out more than I’ve written in a while. Perhaps I’m getting back on track after a pretty dry couple of months.

I’m a fan of writing these interview-style works. I enjoy writing dialogue, and the form really lets you explore the character and how they see the world and interact with others. Don’t have to worry about advancing a plot or framing an action scene. The story is in how the characters reveal themselves through their speaking. Just a couple of people sitting around chatting. It also makes me feel like I’m working on a Christopher Guest-style mockumentary (though I’m not nearly so talented as those guys).

There’s great poetry done in this style, too. So I thought, more as an exercise to get my brain going again more than anything else, that I’d write a few interviews with my fictional alien rock band, Virtuoso of the Serious Combat. By the time I got through the first section, the spark of a fuller story had ignited.

But do these sorts of things work as prose stories? I don’t know how entertaining they really are to anyone other than me. It may be that this will make a great screenplay for a short film, but not a short story. We shall see! I understand Script Frenzy is next month, too. Perhaps this will give me a chance to break in my copy of Celtx.

Anyway, here’s the rough first part of the interview series. Let me know if this looks like something that might be entertaining, in any medium. Continue reading

DC finally saw fit to release the second half of Morrison and Quitely’s All Star Superman in paperback. I raved a bit about the first volume a while back, and got to read the rest of the story this past weekend. To my great irritation, an absolute edition was announced shortly before I received mine in the mail. You’ve won this round, DiDio.

With the first volume I was most struck by just how amazing they made Superman. He was powerful and could perform phenomenal feats, and the reader feels great just watching him do these things. All of Superman’s greatest traits are showcased, from his selfless compassion to his intelligence (which is often overlooked).

Some people complain that Superman is too powerful, and they can’t identify with him as a result. That’s all bullshit. It’s not like more the modest powers possessed by the likes of Spider-Man or  Captain America are attainable by us lowly humans, either. Even non-powered heroes like Batman are far better than any real person ever will be. Powers are little more than plot devices, anyway. They aren’t important. The personality behind them is what matters, just like any other genre. Kal-el of Krypton has plenty of personality to identify with.

The second volume is focused on another theme: the world is a better place with Superman. To me, this is vital. In my years of studying stories of heroes, from the epics of Gilgamesh and Beowulf to The Odyssey and Star Wars and Seven Samurai, one of the most important questions asked of any good hero story is whether the hero and their deeds makes their world a better place. Gilgamesh returns from his quests for immortality to discover that his people haven’t just gotten along just fine without him, they’ve actually thrived in his absence. Beowulf’s heroic deeds brought nothing but trouble on his people. The motley band of surviving ronin at the end of Seven Samurai muse on what it means that the people they’ve historically oppressed are capable of turning on them or abandoning them when the warriors are no longer needed. What does it mean to be a hero? And who gets more out of the experience? Is it worth the collateral damage?

By the end of All Star Superman volume 2, I’m convinced that this is a book that has found a hero who makes the world a better place. His legacy is inspiring. His actions improve lives. He has stopped evil that wasn’t somehow his own fault. Even when he’s just a character on a page, Supes changes things.

I’ll need to reread volume 1 and then this one again to really catch everything (it’s that kind of book), but my initial impression is that this book has effectively made the case for Superman. Not that he really needed any help, but it’s nice anyway.

Since I have been known to occasionally venture into talking about feminism in pop culture and journalism both, I thought I’d bring this up (since not much else has been happening here lately).

You may have heard already, but a couple of weeks ago Mattel announced Barbie’s new careers – computer engineer and television news anchor.

What? She's a mathematician!

Computer engineer, fine. Young women should be encouraged to pursue technical fields. No problem.

[Is there a physicist Barbie? I don't keep track of these things. Perhaps she could come with a Large Hadron Collider playset and miniature black hole, and will be unattractive until she takes her glasses off, at which point she becomes a sexual dynamo. But I digress. (Mattel, call me)]

But I have to take issue with television news anchor. Television news, particularly the 24-hour news networks that have become so huge over the past decade or so, has done nothing but destroy actual journalism. I rarely bother with any of it, but it seems like every time I flip past one of those networks it’s either someone reading Twitter posts on air or some raving lunatic like Glenn Beck.

If I were an editorial cartoonist, I would take a minute away from feverishly updating my resume to draw an image of a man in a Newspaper suit dragging a man labeled “Journalism” into a grave while another guy in a Television hat stood smugly by with a shovel.

Not that Barbie couldn’t be a grave digger if she wanted. I just think she’s a classier gal than that, is all.

I’m delighted to present “Aftershocks: The Musical” over at Everyday Fiction. I kid, I kid. It is, however, an audio reading of the story, read by M. Sherlock of the UK’s own Storm the Gates.

Sherlock enjoyed chewing me out a little for writing a story with such difficult names, and deservedly so. I can check “get called a git by a real Briton” off my bucket list. Next: Piss off Alan Moore with a film adaptation of Captain Britain.

Anyway, you should go give it a listen, even if maybe you read the story back in the day. Audio podcast markets are something I’d like to penetrate more, when I get around to it. I never seem to have something that’s the right length.

In general I feel pretty meh about the Oscars nowadays, but I thought I’d glance over them anyway. I don’t have much opinion on the performance nominations and what not. Since I have a terrible memory for this, I’ve got a list of the movies that came out last year and I’m comparing it to the nomination list. Prep yourself for some stream-of-consciousness style commentary.

Best Picture. Avatar will almost certainly win, though everyone but the voters will likely agree that it shouldn’t. Why is The Blind Side there? Haven’t we seen the “feel good high school football movie in which somebody overcomes great disadvantage” about a billion times already? District 9 and Up In the Air are good, but not Best Picture good. Out of the ones I’ve seen, I think I enjoyed Inglourious Basterds the most, but I understand it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I’m cursing myself for not having seen A Serious Man. From what I’ve heard, Precious might actually be the one that deserves the prize.

I feel like if it hadn’t made a babillion dollars, Avatar wouldn’t be there, and Sherlock Holmes would have been able to take it’s rightful nomination.

If Avatar wins Best Art Direction I’ll be sorely disappointed. People have complained about the recycled script, but there was nothing remotely original about the art design. It didn’t deserve a nomination, much less a win.

Wait, why wasn’t Watchmen nominated for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)? Instead we get District 9, which devolved into a generic action movie in it’s 3rd act.

(Observation: There were a ton of documentaries about the environment in 2009.)

Damn, I didn’t get to see The Men Who Stare at Goats, either. Or The Fantastic Mr. Fox. A lot of stuff came and went during my insane busy season at work.

They should create a special Most Number of Heads Cut in Half Because Ninjas Don’t Fuck Around with that Neck Nonsense award for Ninja Assassin.

I also didn’t get to see The Imaginanium of Doctor Parnassus, an omission for which I should be beaten with reeds.

The Wife Awards: Jeff Bridges wins the Most Frequently Mentioned Person My Wife would Totally Do award, and (500) Days of Summer gets the Movie During Which Wife Most Frequently Glared at her Husband award.

And really, those are the ones that matter.

I attempted to watch Wings of Desire and failed utterly. I get it, it’s pretty and artful and life sucks. After an hour of nothing happening I gave up. Please don’t mistake me for someone with the attention span of a Michael Bay Transformers fan, or who doesn’t like “reading” at the movies. I’m a huge fan of Kurosawa, for example, and he doesn’t exactly have the most fast-paced movies. But you don’t need an hour to develop a character whose defining characteristic is that he’s bored.

On the plus side, now I get all those Sprockets jokes.

I watched The Friends of Eddie Coyle last night, and it was fantastic. Great story of a small-time hood in over his head in a town full of scumbags. Robert Mitchum and Peter both turn in excellent performances. Check it out. The film got a really nice Criterion edition just this past year.

And just to end on a down note, I checked out the first episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand on Starz. Wow was it bad. Probably one of the worst things I’ve seen on television. They essentially took everything that was good about HBO’s Rome, threw it out, then added in effects from 300 that they clearly didn’t have the budget to recreate. When the appearance of Lucy Lawless doesn’t persuade me to keep watching, you know you’ve got a problem.

So as I mentioned last time, I’ve started work on a new superhero story. This is a character I’ve had floating around for a while and I think I finally came up with a fun angle from which to tell his story. I like this beginning. Now that I reread that earlier post I see that apparently I had decided against trick arrows, but why the hell would I do that? When I sat down to write I immediately started coming up with ridiculous and fun trick arrows for him to employ.

Anyway, here are the first few hundred words of an as-yet-untitled Quivering Jack story.

Continue reading

Speaking of Every Day Fiction, they have recently added a podcast page for their stories. I have someone working on one of my stories even as you read this! So look for that sometime soon.

In the meantime, you can head here and listen to a couple of fellow Writer’s Inkers tales that have already been read.

Also, Stephanie had a fun zombie story go up over the weekend. Enjoy!

In writing news, I have been working on a new superhero story. I’m digging the beginning and may post an excerpt this week. It’s high time I wrote a story about a superhero who’s a bit of a jackass. I’m also drawing on some stories of friends’ experiences in Hollywood. Should be fun! It’s been way too long since I’ve actually finished something, so I really want this story to happen.

The second Every Day Fiction Anthology is out, featuring my story, “Apotheosis Cake,” as well as stories from Erin, Jens, Stephanie, KC, Gay, Frank, Kevin, and a whole slew of other great writers. You can order it directly from the good folks at EDF right here. It should be available at Amazon and other fine booksellers soon.

I unfortunately can’t make the official release party/reading in Canada (next weekend, I believe – if you’re in the Vancouver area you should check it out). But, I will be attempting to organize a local reading and signing, since there are several of us locally who have stories in the book. I didn’t get much response from the big booksellers last year, but I have found a local bookstore that might be amenable. Now that I have info on the book I’ll head over there sometime and see about scheduling an event.