writing

It almost sounds like a busy weekend

Last night, I watched The Master, which…I just don’t know. Most of the acting is terrific, even when it’s in service of emotion more than character or plot. Watching the camera hold tight as a range of emotions play out across Joaquin Phoenix’s face is affecting, even if it’s sometimes difficult to understand what he’s saying or what exactly is playing out between the characters. I don’t know that I could say I enjoyed it, but I also don’t know that it’s a movie designed to be enjoyed in quite that way. There is a lot to like about it, however, and I’m glad I watched it.

I wish I could say the same for last week’s episode of Community, which I also watched. The week before, with their “puppet episode,” the show really seemed to finally cross the line into unwitting parody of itself — the sort of thing that, on the surface, is exactly the sort of thing the show’s fans say we love. Didn’t we all love Abed’s Christmas episode, where they all turn into stop-motion animation? Well, yes, but not because of that. Here, this year, it was all surface, and the execution left so much to be desired. This week, though…it was just trying way too hard for very few laughs. It goes off in a direction I really, really hope isn’t the season’s end game, and just feels like an empty shell of the show I used to love.

I also watched an episode of the Syfy Channel show Continuum, which surprised me by being pretty decent. It’s on Netflix now, and full of time-travely intrigue, so I’ll probably keep watching. Earlier in the week, I’d watched the first episode of their newer show Defiance…which you can sort of tell came into being simultaneously with a video game set in the same universe. The show — and I don’t necessarily mean this as a bad thing — is like one long cut-scene that the game developers forgot to stop rolling. I liked that the show doesn’t spend a lot of time on exposition…and yet, at the same time, I actually kind of wanted more, which is a rarity in the genre. The show has a deep back-story that it’s not all that great at explaining.

Sometimes that’s for the good. I get stories all the time for Kaleidotrope, for instance, where the narrator spends several pages just explaining how the world he or she inhabits got like it is — “in 2071 the robots took over” or whatever — to an audience who’s theoretically also in that world. Unless they’re explicitly leaving a document for the future, there’s no reason for them to assume the reader is unfamiliar with the world too. It’s tricky, of course, because the actual reader is unfamiliar with it, so some exposition is going to be needed. But it’s a lot better to show the world through observed detail than to lay it out as “this happened, then that happened.”

While I like that Defiance just kind of lets its world be — its characters don’t need every alien explained — it’s not impossible to get a little lost.

And of course, all that being said, while I found some things to like about the show, I’m not desperate to revisit it. As a fan of Farscape, I enjoyed seeing the name Rockne S. O’Bannon among the creators…but the man’s also been responsible for some clunkers (like SeaQuest). But we’ll see.

Then there was the new Doctor Who, which was a significant improvement over the past couple of weeks. If nothing else, it was nice to see the show being genuinely scary for a while.

And then today, I went to see Oblivion. It’s okay, passable entertainment.

And somewhere in all that — it really wasn’t all that, and it was actually right before the movie — I wrote this:

The war, if you could call it that, only lasted ten hours. But after that, we spent a whole week picking bomb fragmentation out of the northern wall, salvaging what we could and repairing damage wherever salvage was not an option. Mad King Helfud’s forces had been easily repelled, driven back into the wastes, or driven to their collective knees, and most of the dead who were left behind were the king’s own famed shadowtooth brigade. These were supposedly the finest soldiers the frozen death lands to the north of us had ever seen, if you were to believe Helfud’s own incessant ravings, but that hadn’t stopped our armies from trailing them from as far back as the Tsirich Sea, or Helfud himself from rotting in our dungeons once those armies actually engaged him and his soldiers in battle. The shadowteeth had been pulled, that’s what everyone was saying; and though I thought some of the young lads belabored the metaphor — our armies were the dentist, the field of battle the bloody, tooth-freed gums — there was little doubt throughout the kingdom that we had been victorious.

And yet, that wall wasn’t going to repair itself.

It was almost surprising how much damage one madman could do in less than half a day. And I suppose the loyalty he inspired in his troops — if not the fear they say lurks deeper in his subjects’ tired eyes — was remarkable, even inspiring, after a fashion. I sometimes wish I could inspire half that much loyalty in the layabout boys they send me to till the gardens or pull the weeds…or repair the walls. Bur I am a humble groundskeeper, not a tyrant, and while Helfud may indeed look resplendent in his northern gold, I know as well as anyone that it was bought for with the blood and bones of those who — till now at least — had dared defy him.

Perhaps it was just as well, then, that I had been born to a simpler life. And just as well, too, that Helfud, they say, was to be transported back to Earth.

I don’t know about the sci-fi turn it takes near the end. But there’s definitely the hint of A Game of Thrones in there. Have I mentioned that I’ve started watching it again? I think, actually, that’s what I may go and watch right now.

Sunday

So I wrote this today.

“These are sensitive issues,” said the Director, “and they require a delicate hand, not some…trigger-happy hot-shot who thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”

“You know, I think he’s talking about me,” said Crosswell. “In case any of you had ‘trigger-happy hot-shot’ in the betting pool.”

“This is no laughing matter,” said the Director.

“You’re telling me,” said Crosswell. “I had twenty to one you were going to cite ‘flagrant disregard for agency protocol.’ That’s good money you just lost me.”

“This is serious!”

“I know,” said Crosswell. “I can tell from your grouchy face. Look,” he said after a moment, finally sitting forward in his chair, “no one’s denying I maybe got a little…over-eager with the gunfire on that last assignment.” He stared at the Director and at the other suits sitting around the conference table. “But are you going to tell me those xenophobic jerkwads didn’t deserve it? Just a little?”

“The Russian delegation?” asked one of the suits. Crosswell couldn’t remember her name. Then again, he’d only been half-listening during the earlier introductions.

“Jerkwads,” he said. “The lot of them. I mean, ‘the Cold War’s over, Ivan, lighten up a little,’ am I right?”

“Not even remotely,” said the Director.

“Potato, po-tot-o,” said Crosswell. “I guess we’ll just have to act like grown-ups and agree to disagree.”

“Unfortunately, your wholesale slaughter of the Russian delegation makes that rather difficult,” said the Director. “And to make matters worse, this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Bingo!” Crosswell shouted. Then, when he noticed no one else was smiling, he said, “What? Didn’t anybody else have ‘tip of the iceberg’ in the betting pool?”

“The purpose of this meeting is decide on the proper disciplinary action,” said the Director. “Obviously the agency’s preferred course of action is disavowal, to strip you of your weapon and your clearance, and maybe, just maybe, if you’re really lucky, to not tell the Russians where to find you afterwards.”

“That’s a little harsh,” said Crosswell. “When did shooting three ex-KGB goons become slaughter? I was standing up for the Agency, you know, and for you. It’s not like I was unfaithful. They were bad-mouthing the whole outfit. I said they were wrong and you look fine in those pants. Have you lost weight?”

“Wow,” he added after a minute. “Tough room. And I’ve been tortured for state secrets.”

Yeah. So there’s that. Like always, it was based on a forty-minute free-writing prompt, in this case three random words. I don’t think it’s unamusing, but I also don’t think there’s anywhere to really go with it. It’s kind of a weak version of Archer, actually.

Meanwhile, in my never-ending quest to be non-productive, I have discovered and downloaded Bioshock. It’s a little like Portal, but with more shoot-’em-ups than puzzles, and I don’t think it’s going to replace those games as my favorites, but it’s nonetheless a bizarre and interesting (and violent) world.

Sunday

So let’s see. I finally did my taxes yesterday, which is good, because it’s apparently already April.

You wouldn’t necessarily know that from the weather we’ve been having lately, though it did warm up slightly yesterday.

Which may explain why the landscapers showed up and spent an ungodly amount of time running mowers and leaf-blowers directly below my window. Practically all afternoon. (They also mowed a lawn not really in need of it and killed a bunch of flowers along with the nascent weeds.)

I didn’t do much else yesterday, now that I look back on it. I went for a walk, read a little for Kaleidotrope. There’s a review of the current issue at the Locus website, by the way, if you were worried this zine wasn’t actually a thing. Lois Tilton says, “the prevailing tone is dark, the situations compelling, moving” and calls the last two stories “a diptych of suffering.” But, you know, in a good way. There are also silly horoscopes and a fake advice column I had genuinely pleasure writing. (One of my goals going forward with the zine is to put more of a personal stamp on it.)

Then I ended the day by watching the latest Doctor Who, which was sweet and beautiful and rather disappointing, and the first episode of Hannibal, which surprised me by being really very good.

And today, I wrote this with my writing group:

The golden woman did not look happy.

“Listen,” I told her. “I shouldn’t be here, I get that. I got lost in the alleyway and couldn’t find my way back home. I was looking for a doorway when your goons dragged me back here. If I could just have my books and my pack, I’d be on my way and –”

She said nothing, but I could see the shadows shift in the corner of the room when I mentioned the goons. For all their strength and speed, they were not subtle. I didn’t know what she was, exactly, only that they’d called her their queen, but it worried me, this patience, this deceptive calm. Brute force I understood; my bloodied lip and bruised pride both would heal. But her, the golden queen, her I could not read.

At least for the moment she had closed her terrible, terrible eyes.

“It was a mistake,” I said. “A…what do you call it? A miscast? A spell gone wrong.” I worried I might be tipping my hand too much here, but I had to tell her something. I’d seen worlds where spellcasters weren’t welcome — or worse, were hunted, rounded up, even killed. I’d heard stories, some of them even credible, about death squads that wandered between the worlds, about extermination camps. I was barely a mage myself — if I was, I’d have found that damn door — but I knew there were dangers in the Great Tree’s branches for the inexperienced magician traveling out on his own.

Not that I believed all that Great Tree multiverse mumbo-jumbo. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a religious man. There were other explanations for where I was, after all, for the shadow-things that had grabbed me off the street, for the golden queen and the terrible things I had glimpsed for just a moment hidden in her eyes. This was easily just another planet, one even in the Protectorate of Worlds, and if that was the case…well, a little diplomacy was all I’d need.

“I don’t know how you feel about mages,” I said, because the queen so far had said nothing. “But I don’t much like them.” This was not completely a lie. The Council had never been much help to me; membership had bought me nothing but citizenship in the Protectorate. And I’d bought the spells that had landed me here in the first place from another magician. He’d never done a damn thing to help me, even if he was my brother.

I think it got a little away from me near the end, when science fiction started to bleed into the fantasy, but I feel like there is a story here of some sort.

I need to spend more time writing, I really do. I didn’t do my morning pages at all last week, and I’ve let work on short stories slip. Part of that’s because I’ve got a couple hundred stories by other people to read for Kaleidotrope. I was so glad on April 1 when I could both announce the new issue and say I was closed to new submissions for the year. I don’t have to read all of those stories front to back — that might upset some people who submit, but it’s true; I give up on stories if they’re not working for me; a reader would too. But it’s still time-consuming.

But that’s still no excuse.

“You never know what’s comin’ for ya.”

It’s been a pretty ordinary handful of days lately. I decided a little while back to take this coming Monday off, so this has been a three-day weekend, and I still have tomorrow off. I’ll work from home on Tuesday, and then travel to a local campus on Wednesday, so hopefully it shouldn’t be too rough a week. The part of me that gets to sleep in a little late in the morning certainly doesn’t think so.

Last night, my parents and I went out to dinner for my upcoming birthday, and except for dessert, which was decent but unremarkable, it was a very lovely meal. I had duck gnocchi with wild mushrooms, pine nuts, golden raisins, and pancetta to start, and then possibly the best sea scallops I’ve ever tasted. (With roasted cauliflower, toasted almonds, and more golden raisins.) I was ridiculously stuffed afterward, but it was a very good meal.

This evening, I watched the first episode of the new Bates Motel television series, which wasn’t very good, and then later The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which surprised me because it was.

I think the AV Club is right about the series that “[t]he problem, then, is that Bates Motel is simply overburdened by the reason it exists.” It fails to work, at least in part, because it winds up having to be a Psycho prequel. (It’s the same thing I thought seeing the trailer for the upcoming Hannibal TV show. It looks strangely interesting; I just really, really wish it wasn’t an adaptation/prequel/remake of Manhunter/Silence of the Lambs.)

And earlier today, in my weekly writing group, I came up with this based on some prompts we picked out of Scientific American Mind magazine:

“I can kill you with my brain,” she said, “and with just a glance. But let’s pretend for a moment that we’re both civilized people and there’s maybe a better solution?”

He frowned, but then nodded, holstering his weapon, and sat in the wing chair opposite her. “Agreed,” he said — and she realized with a start that in all these years this was perhaps the first time she had actually heard his voice. And after he had killed how many of her sisters?

“So we are at an impasse,” she said. “I have no desire to kill you nor any desire to die, but that seems to be where fate has landed us.” She tried to smile; she would not betray herself with a showing of fear, not to this man, damn his eyes. “Tea?” she said, lifting the pot.

Again, the nod, and almost a hint of a smile himself. A trained killer, she thought, and completely ruthless, but not wholly above the social niceties. For just a moment she wondered which of them both she was thinking of.

“Two sugars,” he said. “No lemon.”

She poured the tea and handed him the cup. He let it cool for a moment in his hands, blew gently across its surface, but then drank the tea without hesitation. He knew you wouldn’t stoop to poison him, she thought, and then just as quickly regretted that she hadn’t. She sipped from her own cup and stared at him, letting the silence settle between them, counting up all the room’s exits in her head.

“What I propose is a bargain,” she said finally, returning her cup to the tray on the table in front of her. “Or perhaps more accurately a trade. My life — “

He stared, but said nothing, still sipping his tea.

“ — for information. I know things that you don’t, things even my sisters didn’t know. If you killed me now — or rather, if you tried to kill me now — that knowledge would die with me.”

He nodded — so calm, damn him, even now — and leaned forward in the chair to place his own, now empty cup upon the tray. Then he sat back, actually crossed his legs, and this time did smile. There was more good humor in that look than she would have thought possible; this was just a job to him, one he took great pleasure in, but he did not hate her. And suddenly she hated him all the more because of that.

“You have no information that I want or need,” he said, a great finality to his voice. Even seated, relaxed, almost laughing, she knew he could reach his gun before she could act. Only his own doubt of that had saved her this far. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know who sent you here,” she said. “I know your employers. And I know how to kill them.”

He stared for a very long minute, and she braced herself for the shot, that final bullet with her name on it, and then he said:

“All right. I’m listening.”

I dunno, I kind of like it.

And that’s been most of weekend. Still one day of it to go, however, thank goodness.

Sunday

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and am I wrong that I’m glad it falls on a weekend this year so that I won’t have to push past throngs of green-clad drunks during my evening commute?

It’s been an unremarkable couple of days. It snowed all of yesterday, although you wouldn’t know it, except for strange bits that accumulated some odd places (like around my parents’ car’s license plate frame) and didn’t melt. Otherwise, there was not accumulation.

Last night, I watched two very different movies, Absentia, a very low-budget but fairly decent horror movie, and Wreck-It Ralph, which richly imagines an alternate world in which children still play in video arcades. (The last one I used to visit, Playland in State College, closed down several years ago.) Still, it was cute and sweet.

And today I wrote this, which is neither of those things:

They called her the Bird Woman of Alcatraz, which was kind of dumb, since she’d never even been to Alcatraz, not even as a tourist, and couldn’t have been as an inmate. But nicknames aren’t exactly the most logical of things, so after a while I guess that’s just who she was. It had stuck. That’s how everyone knew her when I first moved to town, at any rate.

She had been imprisoned several times, that much was true — starting with her extradition from France in 1978, after which she was held in federal custody for seven years, for what turned out to be her own kidnapping. That must have been embarrassing, and there’s a wealth of newspaper stories about the bungled case, the supposed evidence of the supposed crime, even in this little town’s underfunded library. If I’d been interested in any of that, I could have spent a weekend digging through microfiche, or combing the archives of court records online. I could have made a dozen phone calls, discovered if I still have any friends left at my old job. But I wasn’t interested in any of that. Those stories had been written already, that well had run dry, and time, as they say, was ticking. It was just dumb luck that I’d been exiled here, and I needed to act before anybody else caught wind of what had happened. A scoop like this could put me back on top, but only if I got to her first.

I could see the headline now: “Bird Woman Kills Superhero.” Or maybe, if something more grisly was needed to sell: “Mr. Impenetrable Eaten Alive.”

It was a work in progress. Obviously he hadn’t been eaten alive. I didn’t have a clue what a post-mortem would show; Impenetrable was reportedly from the planet Klaxos, had fallen to Earth when his home planet was destroyed in a fiery coup, and was reportedly the only one of his kind. (That point was still debatable.) We’d never even seen a blood sample, much less the bloody scene that the Bird Woman had left behind her. But everything I’d been told — a few well-placed dollars in the county sherrif’s pockets — said that Mr. Impenetrable had been eaten.

Was it cannibalism if he was an alien?

Yeah, sometimes forty minutes and three writing prompts can produce gold. And sometimes there’s this.