The Invisible Library

After three and a half years of work, I have published my first book.

Now available from Lulu.com

As the world succumbs to a slow death, choking on mushrooms and poison, a young servant girl is caught in the last attempts by human hands to thwart fate and the destiny of all living things. The King of Ruhleheim made a deal for immortality but not longevity. 1500 years later, his mummified corpse keeps his descendants up at night. But Prince Laslo and his twin sister, Princess Lydia have a plan to rid themselves of the king once and for all. Inez Vespertine, Lady’s Maid to Princess Lydia, overhears this scheme. To get her out of the way, the royal twins send her to visit their cousin, the Marquise, who lives deep within the Ergot Forest, a vast swatch of poisonous fungus that is overtaking the world. But when Inez returns not just alive and well but with a scheme of her own, the conniving twins are befuddled. Who will survive to rule a dying world?

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November is National Novel Writing Month.  Since I’ve been working on my novel since January, it would be a bit dishonest of me to jump in now, seeing as how I already have 37K words written. However! I’m going to try and finish the first draft this month, in solidarity with my novel writing brothers and sisters.

So far, I’ve received very positive feedback and encouragement regarding my finished novel, The Machine of the World. The only real criticism I’ve heard so far is that it many people thought there would be illustrations. Well, there are, they just aren’t finished yet. Finishing them will be my winter project, once the first draft of the new novel is done. Then I’ll post a new version of Machine with illustrations (and typos corrected!)

As for the current novel project, I’ll have periodic updates throughout the month. I encourage all Wrimos to likewise keep us informed in comments as to their progress.

Man your typewriters!*

_________
* And by typewriters, I of course mean open source word processing software, such as Open Office, or NeoOffice for those, like me who write on Macs and don’t want to sully our electronic words by having them mediated by Bill Gates’ crappy software. Does anyone use a typewriter anymore? I know there’s a quaint bit of mythologizing about how Real Writers only use analog mechanical typewriters, despite the fact that none have been manufactured for about twenty five years. That would drive me mad, though, given how much revising I do on the fly. That and I’d spend all my free time scouring second hand shops for ribbons and correcting fluid.

Ron Charles, Literary Critic for the Washington Post, has a problem with Harry Potter:

But all around me, I see adults reading J.K. Rowling’s books to themselves: perfectly intelligent, mature people, poring over “Harry Potter” with nary a child in sight. Waterstone’s, a British book chain, predicts that the seventh and (supposedly) final volume, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” may be read by more adults than children. Rowling’s U.K. publisher has even been releasing “adult editions.” That has an alarmingly illicit sound to it, but don’t worry. They’re the same books dressed up with more sophisticated dust jackets — Cap’n Crunch in a Gucci bag.

Many of those adults who are reading Harry Potter may not have time to read Serious Literature, because they’re too busy trying to figure out how they’re going to pay their overly bloated mortgage, keep their kids in a school that isn’t hamstrung by NCLB, or pay for health care. Perhaps if our American Culture wasn’t so money obsessed and corporatized, adults would have some extra leisure time to read other novels as well. But they don’t and so most of them won’t. But some will. Surprising as it may sound– shocking, even to lit snobs like Charles, some of us Harry Potter fans also read other Serious Literature (though I will be setting aside Against the Day for Deathly Hollows. That’s just how it’s going to play out).

(more…)

They never did figure out who put the Ecstasy in the President’s milk. The First Lady was the one to realize something was amiss when she had to pull the President away from the Green Room wall where he had been fondling the gilt framed mirror and licking the wallpaper. She told the Vice President, who called a Doctor immediately.

“Nothing to do,” said the Doctor, patting the President on the shoulder and smiling congenially. The President offered a dreamy smile of his own in return. “He should come down in a couple of hours. Just make sure he drinks plenty of water and juice.”

The President spent the night listening to jazz records and dancing around the Lincoln Bedroom, rolling on the south lawn and petting the dog. That night as he was coming down, he whispered state secrets into the First Lady’s ear.

“You haven’t done that since the caucus!” she cooed.

In the morning, the Joint Chief’s met to decide the fate of a pesky foreign potentate who had been giving them trouble for a number of years. The Joint Chief’s were unanimous in their decision to invade the foreign country, topple the regime and replace it with a pro-US dictator.

“I don’t know if that’s such a great idea,” said the President, “What if the people, you know, have other ideas? I mean it’s their country, right?”

The President was beginning to think many strange and beautiful things. About the joy of simply breathing, defining the world with each exhale. No one should be denied that simple pleasure. Or peanut butter.

The Vice President and Secretary of Defense clenched their jaws and exchanged uneasy glances.

The next day, the Vice President knocked on the door of the oval office. The President was busy looking out the window, remembering when he was a child and had visited the sea- how vast it was and how small he had known himself to be then, standing on ancient shores…

The Vice President came into the Oval Office, coughed to let the President Know he was there. The President swiveled in his chair to find a familiar looking man standing next to the Vice President.
It took the President a moment to realize that the man looked exactly like him. A genuine doppelganger.

“Who’s this?”

“Oh you remember Scooter West, Mr. President. He used to be your personal bodyguard. Well, he’s being promoted.” The Vice President pulled a pistol from his coat pocket. Scooter West sneered. It was the same sneer the President used to wear, before he drank that fateful glass of milk.

And the President began to think, could he make it to the door in time?

Wired asked authors to write a story in six words. Some of the best:

Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
- Joss Whedon

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore

With bloody hands, I say good-bye.
- Frank Miller

1940: Young Hitler! Such a cantor!
- Michael Moorcock

I’m dead. I’ve missed you. Kiss … ?
- Neil Gaiman

Osama’s time machine: President Gore concerned.
- Charles Stross

I decided to join the fun, even though my novel hasn’t been published (yet):

Tragically, she died. Oh, what beauty!

Jesus returns–as comet! Robertson: “Shit…”

No, pa, not the axe, again!

Man eats mushroom, becomes Better Angel.

Satellite calls God. No one home.

Jane Espenson the great TV scriptwriter* makes an interesting point about writers and aspiring writers:

[Branko in Croatia] points out something I hadn’t consciously noticed, which is the tendency of aspiring television writers to get hyper-critical about television. Good point. This does happen. In order to acquire tv-writing skills, you have to start applying critical thinking to those shows you want to emulate. And the side effect of critical thinking is that you start thinking critically. You notice things: Hey! That important event happened off-screen! Hey! That moment sold out that character! Hey! That act break didn’t leave me wanting more!

Keeping Steve’s letter in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the same thing happens to writers of other kinds as well.

It very much does. Case in point: For the last week or so, I’ve been reading J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories. Now, I was never a huge Salinger fan in High school. I tried reading Catcher in the Rye but I think I was too old (I was 17 and if you haven’t read it by the time you’re 15, don’t bother. Everything that strikes a 15 year old as startling and profound hits your jaded 17 year old like a sack of doorknobs. “Yeah, great, Holden, I figured that shit out a while ago.”) But lately, every writer I read about or story I find interesting circles back in some way to Salinger and his extra special Nine Stories. So I decide to try him on for size again. So far, I’ve read about half of them and they are hit or miss. My attitude is probably colored by my poor reception of his only previously perused work but I’m just finding these stories to be lacking something that other people claim to find there. Sure, the dialogue is decent (though dated) and he is a technically good writer. But still, something is missing. Most of the stories I’ve read so far start off week but build to an interesting if not altogether satisfying ending (except for, For Esme, With Love and Squalor, which goes in the oposite direction).

But perhaps this is just the over-analytical side of my writing getting the better of me. The stories work, most of the time and for your average reader, I’m sure they’re great (so long as you aren’t yet out of your early twenties. Salinger may have broken ground in the world of Serious Fiction 50 years ago, but today he would be a Young Adult Author).

of course, having said that, I’ve decided to borrow Salinger’s structure for my novel-in-progress and am writing it now as a series of interconnected stories. So he’s clearly doing something I like, it just isn’t telling a story a 29 year old can relate to.

So yeah. We aspiring writers can get hypercritical but it helps hone our craft. Maybe when I’m done with Nine Stories I’ll pick up The Martian Chronicles again. Ray Bradbury is the antidote to age and overanalysis.

Today is Ray Bradbury’s birthday.

Ray and I go back a long way. Not too long, he is 57 years older than me and we’ve never met, but still. When I read Farenheight 451, I knew I had to become a writer. 20 years later, I’m still working on it. And whenever I get down, I break out my copy of The Martian Chronicles and read a few pages (or chapters) and I get back on the horse. Here’s to another 86 years!

Discussion topic: What stories of his have managed to evoke something in you? Longing? Lust? What?

One day, after thirteen rude customers in a row, a waitress named Mary throws a plate of clams in the face of a fat man from Laredo who keeps calling her Sugar. She promptly stomps into the kitchen, kisses a bus boy named Henry full on the mouth and slams the door behind her. She tosses a few clothes into a suitcase, picks up her cat, Lucy, hails a taxi down to the docks, walks strait out onto the planks and boards the first boat heading anywhere.

The boat is captained by a Cuban Ex Patriot named Jorge Veluptus. He is heading for Havana with a boatload of illicit knobs. He wants to turn on all the down-trodden people of his homeland and start a revolution. Mary and Jorge make wild passionate love on the deck of the ship, the Insolent Navigator. Jorge names Lucy Second Mate.

Mary’s unholy temper and boiler room lingo frightens the crew, an assortment of one-legged former whalers who fear that having a loose woman aboard is a sure sign of doom. Omens of giant waves, midnight squalls and unmitigated swooning fill their sleepless nights. But, they reach Havana without so much as a rain shower blotting their voyage. As punishment for their mental mutiny, Captain Jorge locks the sailors in the hold and sinks the boat. There is no room for Insolent Navigators or superstitious one-legged sailors in their new world.

They take to the streets of Havana, Mary and Jorge, drunk with love, swilling Molotov cocktails, holding roses between their teeth, mowing down police with tommy guns loaded with silver bullets

Mary seduces young boys and shy, bisexual girls to their cause. All she has to do is lift her skirt and they fall madly in love with her vagina.

A blind woman selling paieya bestows upon Jorge, Che Guevara’s old beret

Lucy rouses the hackles of every tomcat from Havana to Guantanamo Bay. The cats are the foot soldiers of The End, racing calico bedlam through the palace and hissing at all those foolish enough to stand in their path.

When Castro sees them coming, he pisses himself. In his dotage, he mistakes Jorge for the ghost of his old comrade in arms, come back from the dead at last, leading an army of Left Libertarians and mad cats to dance on the broken back of his failed idealism. Fidel weeps. Mary takes pity on him.

After the revolution, she and Jorge let Fidel live out his last days in the spare bedroom of their little hut on the beech. The sound of their midnight frolicking in the surf is the last he ever hears. He dies, quiet and repentant in his sleep, Lucy the cat curled up on his fat belly. Free at last.

_________

* After Camper Van Beethoven

I asked Elvira what she wanted for Christmas last year and she told me, “A gothic fairy tale, with pictures.” Dutifully, I started writing what I intended to be a ten page short story with a couple doodles. Something about an immortal king and a servant girl who was infinitely put upon by his idiot descendents. Then Grad School got in the way and with one thing and another, it became a birthday present, scheduled for completion by early this coming July.

Seven months and Seventeen thousand words later, I’m almost done with the story, though it’s looking like it’ll be about 75 pages and will have 9 full page illustrations (a small version of one of which appears to the left). I still have 2 (or maybe 4) scenes left to write and five illustrations left to draw (matters were only made all the more interesting by my birthday presnt a week ago. Elvira and my folks got me a digital tablet that has made drawing on the computer easier, which means their’s no excuse for simple, scanned in drawings anymore, but fully rendered illustrations).

Initially, I will be making a handful of self published (and hand bound) books but fully intend to post it on an adjacent page, complete with pictures, sometime in mid July.

Alternately, if there’s interest, perhaps I’ll send it off to a publisher. We’ll see.

Update: 1/30/06

Six Eight months later. The book is written (92 pages, or 30k words). Most of the illustrations are done. The move, the new job, the hiatus and the holidays all slowed me down. But the final product should be done… soon. Like, two, three weeks, tops.