Jul/090
“I Am Legend” (Chapt. 1 – 3)
Matheson’s first three chapters do something I always find very difficult to pull off. He managed to develop a character in isolation, without having any benefit of dialog with another character. The description and narration combine well to bring out poor Robert Neville’s ordinary world.
I think Matheson also does a great job of building up the attackers through their actions (and the one who constantly taunts – “Come out, Neville!”). He makes it through two full chapters before referring to them outright as “vampires”, giving the reader plenty of material to work with before falling into stereotypes of the vampire. By the time we get to the explicit statement, we as readers have been prepared for the idea that these may be vampires, but they’re not Vampires.
There’s one line that really stood out for me, and I’m not exactly sure why:
He took down a can of tomato juice, then left the room that had once belonged to Kathy and now belonged to his stomach.
I think part of it is the language feels a little strange – his stomach has its own room. But it’s also the larger image. The world is in such a state now that what once belonged to an entire human being can now be dedicated to a single organ.
Jul/090
“Dance of the Dead”
Richard Matheson’s short story, “Dance of the Dead”, is a fine example of matching up pacing and action. The story opens with four college kids racing across the plains in a “Rotor-Motors Covnertible, Model C, 1997″. The kids are engaged in drinking, drugs, and sex as they head to Saint Louis to catch a “loopy” show.
Needle quivering at 130, two 5-mph notches from the gauge’s end. A sudden dip! Their young frames jolted and the thrown-up laughter of three was windswept into night. Around a curve, darging up and down a hill, flashing across a leveled plain — an ebony bullet skimming the earth.
His description is short and quick, fragmentary in spots. It gives an excellent sense of speeding down an empty road and brings the reader into the car.
In the back seat:
“Have a jab, Bab.”
“Thanks, I had one after supper” (pushing away the needle fixed to the eye-dropper).
In the front seat:
“You meana tell me this is the first time you ever been t’Saint Loo!!”
“But I just started school in September.”
The dialog is also quick, and punchy. It’s a fair representation of informal exchange. Both the dialog and description he uses keeps the scene moving quickly, pulling the reader along with the characters to Saint Louis.
Matheson uses an interesting technique to tackle the unique jargon found in the story. Interspersed among the narration and dialog or quick definitions. For instance, at once they near the city, the kids put on plastic nose-and-mouth pieces. It’s followed by a quick little nursery rhyme:
ANCE IN YOUR PANTS WOULD BEA PITY!
WEAR YOUR NOSIES IN THE CITY!!
This is followed by a dictionary-style definition:
Ance (anse), n., slang for anticivilian germs; usage evolved during WWIII.
Several other of the definitions also reference WWIII, providing an instance time-period reference without him having to work it in to any of the narration directly. It’s a unique approach to world building that I think works in this piece to keep it fast paced without burdening the reader with a lot of unnecessary background.
All in all, it’s a great little story!
Jul/080
My First Paying Market!
I got up this morning, groggy as hell. Yeah, getting up at 4 am will do that to ya. But, it’s paying off! In my inbox was my first acceptance notice! My short story, Gray, is to be published in the January, 2009, edition of Necrotic Tissue!
Sweeeeet… I’m going back to bed 
Aug/070
Colors
you sense my hesitation.
- good.
This is the color of DREAM
we are children, unseeing
we open our eye
unlocking the verse and meter
of the universe.
This is the color of FORGET
it is here
look closer.
this is the color
This is the color of SAD
baby girl, club-footed
opens her eyes.
pressed between hot sun
and rough mountain
welcomed to the world
by no one.
This is the color of GREED
whatever is written here
it is not enough.
This is the color of LOVE
one plump drop
sneaks from a fang.
This is the color of DREAMS
one by one
we close our eyes
no longer children.
May/070
incense
fresh smoke
squirms through
our sacred window,
pierces yesterday’s angel
those words, salt
your voice, awake
my flesh, dried
a raw monopoly of god
May/070
wet bug
squirming through
the marbled world
when you remember words
remember the copper tang,
the smoky perfume,
the sad, warm woman
your work must be
porcelain steel rythms
May/070
translucent prisoner
their wild steel universe
surrounds him
broken through sex,
velvet worry – once live -
now devoured color
perhaps, sister, you listen -
stiff lipped laugh, trembling
explore them, pick and haunt,
time stream pooling
[ Original Images: ]
[ Achi Tryptichon ]
[ AbuGraibAbuse11 ]
[ AbuGraibAbuse14 ]
[ ForgetMeNotFlower ]
[ A Galvanized Corpse ]
Apr/070
Chernobyl and Prypiat
A great disaster. For a novel I started working on in October, 2006, I started doing some research. There’s a portion of it that takes place in an old, abandoned city, one that had been left in destitution for centuries, so I was looking around for theories on what happens to a modern city when left to the forces of nature. To my shame, I had forgotten about the Chernobyl disaster. In my research, I rediscovered it.
There’s an excellent site – an adventerous woman takes a motorcycle tour of Chernobyl and surrounding areas, including Pripiat. See KIDDofSPEED. It is thought-provoking, saddening, and generally depressing. It provided the example for which I was looking.
After reading the site, I began to wonder if some of the pictures she had could be viewable on google maps. They were. Here are some interesting comparisons.
- Ship Graveyard: KiddOfSpeed vs. GoogleMaps
- Ferris Wheel: KiddOfSpeed vs. GoogleMaps
Also, you can go to wikimapia and search for Chernobyl or Prypiat. There, people have outlined places and you can get a little more infomation.
Check out this YouTube video of Prypiat:
Dec/060
End of NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo wrapped up, of course, on November 30. How’d I do? I wound up with a word count of 48,459. Not the goal of NaNoWriMo, I know. But, it satisfies me that with an outline, and setting aside a few hours a night for writing 5 out of 7 days a week, I can make some tremendous progress towards a novel. Personally, after doing this the second time, I’ve come to agree with these wise words – I’d rather have spent the time writing something worth reading than cranking out 50,000 words worth of crap.
Some of the participants I checked ran way over, some nearing 100,000 words, but when I checked their excerpts, I must say YAWN. Not worth the time. Not one excerpt I read sparked my interested except maybe the one for a piece titled AFTRLYF. To be honest, I only checked people in my region, and maybe, just maybe there’s truth to the 700 monkeys for 700 years, that one of these folks has turned out the works of the master himself, but I’d be hard pressed to figure out which one it was!
Long and short, with a writing plan, I’ve proven to myself that I can still maintain home life, my full time job, and produce sizable and (hopefully) worthwhile works of fiction in a reasonable amount of time. Oh, and the piece I started is only about half done. I wasn’t in any hurry to meet the NaNoWriMo goal necessarily because it was in no way indicative of the novel I’m writing.