You’re going to need a hardhat.

Let me know what you think!

I have also written a Christmas story. If all goes well, you may be able to read it in a few weeks. If not, I’ll have to hang on to it and try to sell it next year, since I didn’t write it until yesterday. Christmas holiday themed things have a rather narrow window of only about half a year, you know.

I just received the following missive from Frank of A Thousand Faces.

First things first: the reason for the holiday. A heartfelt THANK YOU to
all the real heroes, past and present, putting their life on the line to
preserve our rights to make up silly stories about masks and capes.

And, to celebrate, Lulu is offering up a nice ONE DAY ONLY 20.10% discount
on all orders placed today!

Head over to the Thousand Faces webstore –

http://www.lulu.com/thousand-faces –

and use coupon code VETSDAY305 at the checkout!

If you haven’t picked up any of the prior issues of the book, you should do so now! In particular, I recommend Issue Four, where you will find a superhero story of epic proportions with my name on it!

Thanks to some forgetfulness and a minor communications snafu, we’re actually starting today instead of yesterday like we’d originally intended. But no biggie. So I’ll be trying to post excerpts of my attempts each day.

This is a little of what I wrote last night at the write-in to kick things off. I thought this might serve as a good companion piece to a story I’ll have appearing in A Thousand Faces later this year.

Untitled

Every afternoon at two, after a meeting with the district supervisor down the hall, she rolled past my desk. Her name was Stacey Park, and wheelchair almost swallowed her slight frame. She dressed business casual, usually a long skirt with a neutral blouse. She kept her hair in a simple ponytail, probably preferring not to deal with the hassle of something more complicated. But it just accented the faint Asian features around her eyes and mouth. Black horn-rimmed glasses completed the look, though sometimes, if the meeting went badly, she had them in her lap as her face crinkled in rage. Even in anger, she was gorgeous. I fell in love a little more every afternoon at two.

She worked in R&D, though. Months ago Jones, my former cubicle mate, had made a pass at Yaleena in R&D, and he had vanished the next day. I heard he’d been pressed into service in one of the Cybermen brigades. I know there’s a give and take with that position, but personally I’m not ready to trade my emotions and pain sensitivity for a miniaturized fusion reactor installed in place of my heart, and I say no thanks to chaingun-arms.

#

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.

Title!

These interviews were conducted with the members of the Jovian band Virtuoso of the Serious Combat, on their tour ship as it was docked in Los Angeles during their Destructo tour in May of 2170.

The tour was interrupted shortly thereafter with the issuance of arrest warrants for all involved with the band.

*****

I originally thought the drummer was fidgety and nervous in front of the camera, but as it turned out he was fidgety all the time. He tapped out a rhythm on the seat of the chair, between his legs. He never stopped. He caught a glimpse of our sound man grimacing and suddenly seemed very self-conscious, gripping the edge of the seat. His knees bounced instead.

“So what do you think of this name they’ve given you?” I asked. “The ‘Iron Acrobat.’ Do you feel that’s…that it represents you, as a person?”

He shrugged. “That is how you translate it. Few humans learn the language of my people.”

Despite his nonhuman status, Iron Acrobat was the most Terran-looking of the band. His dark brown skin and hairless head weren’t unusual at all, and he had the proper number of appendages. From a distance he would easily be mistaken as a native of Earth. He didn’t even have much of an accent. Up close, though, his Ionian heritage was obvious. His skin possessed a rough, rocky texture, except for the smooth areas around the joints. The lines in his face were more like fissures than wrinkles, cracked and dry. His eyes were little more than craters in his face, deep within which embers faintly burned. He tended to leave a fine layer of regolith in his wake. Though barely over five feet in height and skinny by human standards, Iron Acrobat was dense and heavy; his quarters are furnished with furniture specially built to handle his weight.

“When did you first become interested in music?”

“On Io we are all musicians. As our world sweeps past Jupiter, our atmosphere reacts with the planet’s magnetic field, and the entire world is charged.” I will not claim any expertise in reading Ionian facial expressions, but his eyes seemed to burn brighter as he spoke of his home. “We can hear this massive discharge as Io sacrifices itself to Jovia. It is like music. We even have instruments that can manipulate the local currents. It is quite beautiful. With the proper aural aids, humans can listen, but it is said that the experience can drive a man mad.”

“You learned on these instruments?”

“Yes. I started on a heavy electron pipe when I was about five. I still play when I go home. I am working on a side project, adapting Beethoven’s 5^th for the Loki Patera Symphony.”

“When did you first hear Earth music?”

“A few years after that, I think? I was very focused on the local scene back then.”

“Did you see a lot of live acts? This would have been, what, twenty years ago? Not too long after first contact with the Jovian Collective. I can only think of the Stones tour in ’59.”

“I never saw a human act until I visited Europa. I was about 15. Only the really big tours could afford the rigors of a trip to Io, and a poor kid like me could never afford those concerts. The closest I got was peeking through the gravity fences at Ra Patera when the Luddites came on their Asteroids tour.”

“They were a great live act.”

“Yes, I could barely see them, but it was enough. The sounds were so different from our own, and the energy was incredible. I was at least two miles away, but I could feel the stomps of the crowd beneath my feet. I knew that was a power I wanted to harness.”

****

What also may be of interest is that the latest issue is out, featuring a story by Erin and holy cats now I see one by KC Ball as well.

Man alive. I’m the superhero guy and you’ve all left me in the dust. I need to get back on that.

Still, I thought it would be fun to play around with a minor bit character I created for Shades of Red way back when. I had to look him up just to remember his name. In a way this is sort of a follow-up to that story, one of the consequences of that adventure. Some of the best genre stories are from the point of view of someone not directly involved with the big epic that’s taking place. The little guy on the side who’s a witness to these big events can offer a fresh perspective on the action and help flesh out the universe at the same time.

This story involves Radio Gal, who if you’ve been around here long enough you’ve seen once or twice before. Just the first few hundred words. For some reason I have a blast writing these scenes of superheroes just sitting around talking.

Pitch

Wayland tapped the thick stack of papers. His perfectly manicured fingertips slid down the top page to the blank at the bottom of a dense block of text. The paper looked green in the glow of the nearby neon signs. Wayland hated these first encounter meetings, always taking place in basement bars or these all-night diners. At least this place was empty. The aging cook half-asleep behind the counter hadn’t given them a second glance since they walked in.

“Just start here,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything else.”

The young woman sitting across from him chewed at her bottom lip. Her name – or rather, what she pranced around calling herself – was Radio Gal, minor-league hero of the upper west side. She was pretty, despite the large, bright yellow conical helmet and matching jacket. Beautiful deep brown eyes a few shades lighter than her skin studied the contract.

“I’m just not sure this is my thing,” Radio Gal said. She adjusted one of the antennae on the side of her helmet. “I’m not like an actor or anything.”

Wayland stifled a sigh. This was always how it went. Initial reluctance and modesty. Refusal to see how the deal would help them. It’s for the greater good, not fame, so on and so forth.

“I’m betting you sing a little, though, am I right?” said Wayland. He gestured to the radio antennae and smiled. “You could be the first hero with her own recording contract.”

She giggled. “Just in the shower.”

Wayland flicked his cell phone, sending it spinning. “One phone call and we’ll have Puff Daddy in a studio in six hours.”

Radio Gal sighed and pushed the contract away. “I’m sorry Mr. Wayland. I’m not doing this for the fame or to get some Gatorade patch on my jacket.”

“This isn’t about that Starburst business is it?”

“Starburst business? You mean when his wife-”

“Whom he married against the wishes of his management.”

“She nearly destroyed the city.”

“She wasn’t my client!”

Radio Gal rested her chin on her hands and remained silent.

Wayland scowled. He was losing her, just like he’d lost every new client since the Starburst incident. Nothing killed an agent’s career like the death of a favorite client, his wife, and the hundreds of people they took with them on the way out. Ari Emanuel hardly ever had this problem with the Coen brothers.

#

Don’t recognize the picture? Then clearly you need to head over to A Thousand Faces and check it out!