Got a battle brewing in my head

Warning for any and all who think writers are crazy beings lost in some multiple-personality syndrome -- it's true. Right now I have a fight going on in the back of my head and it exploded just this morning.

Brendan is sick and tired of me shunting him aside and letting other stories take me over and then take their time being told. It's a form of literary avoidance, and this whole slow dance between Eric, Allen and Pavel finally sent him over the edge. So Brendan informed me this section of "Bobby Carapisi" is not really necessary, yet; that volumes 1 & 2 cover the important part of BC. Then he added, "Focus on 'Place of Safety' or drop it...or I'll drop you."

He also hates me calling it "A Place of Safety." Says it's softening the title too much. Weird.

Anyway, to make it clear, I do NOT want to drop the story. I've been wrestling with this thing for way too long to just give up on it. But I'm still spooked by the POV it's taking and nervous about making it work. I don't -- no, I can't let it wind up a lightweight, unreal, simplistic tale meant to do nothing more than further my own viewpoint of the meaning of that hideous time. I just don't know if I gots the chops to make it work. Of course, that cuts zero slack with Brendan. It's do it and that's all there is to it -- or don't.

So maybe he's right. I did the goofy thing of asking myself, If I contracted cancer and had six months to live, what would I focus on? The first thing that popped into my head was, Finish POS. So I guess that's my course from this point forward -- finish the book. Not just a first draft, but one that's good enough for people to read and offer feedback on. One I can start showing around. Even post on Authonomy.com. I just finished writing a short story that ripped me to shreds -- all in a voice I'd never heard before -- and I made it through that. Let's see what hell Brendan brings my way.

His response? Just you wait. Offered with steely eyes and a slight nod of the head. He's gonna make me pay for my wariness.

Gentle...gentle...

Sometimes working with my characters is like doing a slow dance to midnight movie music. The kind that's just a bit overwrought ("Rocky Horror Picture Show" comes to mind) and insistent, so that what you're experiencing is movement counterpoint to the rhythm. I really got a sense of it, last night, when Pavel showed up in Eric's tale and totally turned his world upside down...and not in the way you think.

What this has done is show me the reason for the third book, not just as regards Eric but also Allen. It's the book of revelation for them both -- Eric because of his encounters with Pavel and Bobby's mother, Allen because of his final encounter with Eric. Now the ending seems inevitable, all I have to do is map out the travel plan and follow it.

I've been following a blog called "American Flyer" written by a guy who also wrote a pretty intense book of gay erotica titled "Sarge and the Sailor Boy." The guy's a great writer (tho' you should only read his book if you're into graphic gay sex) and his observations about some "Jewish Jihad Party Boys and their Mean Queen," who live next door to him, are hysterical. Much more lively than my blog, and he is NOT politically correct, to say the least.

I also follow "Salmagundi," which has a lot about books out and available...and is occasionally NSFW. But its blog-boy is intelligent and sometimes has very off-beat comments about things.

Okay, enough of this; time for back to work.

BC3 begins to emerge

And Eric is still running the show...but he's shown me where he's heading, now, and step by step it's getting there. Problem is, it's been so long since I dealt with BC1&2 I'm not remembering details that I thought I'd never forget, so I need to go back through the first two books to remind myself. I thought I'd written everything down in my notebook for BC, but I'm not finding it so I may have left it in SA.

You know, it's never smart to break up your things when you're shifting locations. Invariably you need exactly what you left behind.

The office cats have decided I'm their best friend evah since I brush them. I can take off five loads of hair from each cat and they're still big and fluffy and wanting more. I even had one flop on my desk atop some paperwork and gaze at me as if to ask, "Why aren't you brushing me, you idiot?" But my allergies don't seem to really mind it. I get watery eyes, once in a while, and sneeze every now and then, but that could just as easily be from dust as cat dander.

The up side is, the cats bring me offerings -- string and ribbon and even a stuffed fish (which is a big deal, according to thems what knows). I'm sensing a touch of jealousy in the cats' peoples. I love cats.

Back to work. I have to get the powerpoint reset to match changes requested. So out comes the laptop and up powers the PhotoShop.

I probably shouldn't say this...

But looks like I'm making a trip to LA, next week. I bought my plane ticket, have a hotel set up in Santa Monica and reserved a car, so it looks real. But after my Paris debacle, I ain't takin' nothin' for granted, anymore. I can just see Mt. St. Helens blowing up, again. So until I'm there, I ain't believin' it.

This is just a quickie packing job, and I'm dropping down to get a look at another possible packing job in Huntington Beach for June or July. Problem is, I can't afford stay long because we're also gearing up for the Olympia Book Fair in London...the one I'm not going to. (Sulk, scowl, snap, snarl, yap, yurr.) We're pushing to get the company website up to the point where it can help our clients and that's going to take some pushing on my end since our IT guy is pretty busy. But I'll be able to visit with friends in the evenings -- people I haven't seen in too long.

I'm not thrilled with what's coming out on BC3, so far. It's surface nonsense meant solely to get me from point A to point Z, which means it'll take a lot of work to get right. And I can't blame that on Allen, right now -- simply because he's still playing coy, the bitch. It's Eric wanting some big moments...like a typical actor. Pavel has joined in this menagerie and just smiles, bemused. Maybe this is like the beginning of a party, where everyone's still testing the space between them and wondering how far they can go before making a fool or an obnoxious ass of themselves. Maybe I'll crank up the volume. Eric likes Depeche Mode. "Precious" off "Playing the Angel" fits him perfectly. Dammit, I wish I'd brought my CDs with me.

Man...New York Ain't Cheap

I just found out my auto insurance is more than doubling in cost...and that's with me lowering my benefits. Plus I've already been warned that when my health insurance is shifted to a NY policy, it'll go up...and it ain't cheap now. Looks like my plan to pay down my credit card is out the window. I'll be lucky if I keep pace with it. So...no eating out this month, that's fer dang sure.

Aw, what he hell -- I've never been good with money. Got no head for it, at all. That I was able to live for more than two and a half years on my severance pay, limited unemployment and the occasional writing, storyboarding & packing jobs I scrounged up still amazes me, especially since a year and a half of that was in LA, not exactly a cheap city, either. But what did I achieve with it? I wrote some scripts then workshopped a couple of them into top shape while contacting hundreds of people about buying or producing them...and got zero interest. And that's with me even hiring a career consultant for 10 weeks. Of course, I picked the worst possible time to try this -- just as the economy was collapsing and nobody was doing anything. Hell, friends of mine who have major credits were having trouble getting work.

Of course, I did get all my books published during that period. HTRASG came out in November 2007, five months into my "bold new direction in life." And when I moved to Texas to help with my mother, I aligned myself with the publisher of my books and worked up a magazine to help promote his company as well as edited new works and brought in some new writers. (And if he could pay me what he owes me, I'd be in decent shape, financially...but he got hit by the Great Recession, too.)

So...even when I try to change my life, it stays the same. And that's typical of me. My timing's off or I choose the wrong direction to go and don't realize it till it's too late for me to double back. I hope moving to New York isn't going to be one of those mistakes.

Okay, I think I've whined my way out of being depressed about the insurance and can now get back to BC3. I feel like I have a pot of stew brewing here, with most of the ingredients mixed together but some still needed to make it savory and give it bulk. Pavel joining the story added some interesting spices...but he also needs some research done on his background before I can blend them in; I don't know the correct portions, yet. It's like trying to decide, Do I want to make this a beef stew? Lamb stew? Vegetarian? Irish? Curry? Dammit, they all sound good, right now.

Hmm...what've I got in the fridge?

On top today's earlier post...

This is the opening 5 pages of "Bobby Carapisi - Volume 3"

----------

“You know, it’s the people who scar you who prepare you the best for life.”

I mentioned this to a friend of mine and he looked at me like I was about to slit his throat. And that surprised me. If anyone should have understood what I was saying, it was Moritz. He’s the epitome of the bitchy queen but without all the requisite mannerisms, and his world is so completely centered around him and his needs you know he’s never wondered a bit about anybody else, and that had to come from someplace in his history. But he’s as sharp as they come and all too aware of the hatred the world spews at us fags, having run here screaming from glorious Idaho (another detail of his life that makes me think he understands about the scars you need to survive), so I figured he’d just nod his head and agree and then try to explain why he’s the poster child for that notion.

Instead he eyed me up one side and down the other and sniped, “Well, Eric -- pity-boy party, your table’s ready.”

We were seated at Marix, a Tex-Mex restaurant in WeHo, finishing off my second Corona and his third Margarita...and that was before the entrees had arrived. And just to give you an idea of how fast we were downing them, this is the kind of joint where you can sit down, eat and be gone in thirty minutes; these guys believed in volume hurried along by extra slatherings of grease.

The thing is, I wasn’t feeling the beer, yet. Maybe it was all the chips I’d chomped down or the Guac we’d had two helpings of, but I was still stone-cold sober and hating it. It had not been a good day and I wanted at least a few moments of oblivion.

“No, seriously,” I said, digging another chip into the Guac and then scooping a spoonful of salsa onto it. “My folks love and support me, as do my brothers and my father’s side of the family and my sister-in-law, and because of them, I’m probably more emotionally stable, right now, than I’ve ever been in my life.”

“If you’re fishing for me to comment on that, I’ll pass. I don’t feel like starting a fight.”

“C’mon, Moritz, you know what I mean. Hell, you and Laila and Rene all factor into it, too. You guys -- you helped me rebuild my life and I -- I know how important you were and -- .” And I was having an exquisite time trying to formulate my thoughts, and not doing too damn good till I said, “If I hadn’t had you guys to lean on -- after the last year, I’d have been lost in Tina and still...still doing the -- no, it’s been a year and a half, hasn’t it?”

“Almost. Is it now time to weep in your beer?”

The cunt. “No. It’s just, you guys helped me rebuild my life, but it was the assholes on my mother’s side of the family who gave me the strength to make it through all the shit.”

“This might mean more if I really understood what you’re talking about.”

No argument there. So I took another gulp of beer and said, “Fine. My folks used to make me and my brothers spend a month, every summer, at my grandmother’s outside Atlanta. My mother’s mother. And she was a control freak without measure. Not just over herself but also others. If you said you were going to do something, you did it. If you caused a problem of any kind, you owned up to it. Her way was the right way and silly things like facts and reality did NOT factor into the equation. And if you were facing anything in the way of ‘unpleasantries’ that needed to be done, you did the worst first. She seared that crap into our brains, all without ever raising voice or hand against us. She didn’t need to. You see, she firmly believed that if a child misbehaved, you just locked them in their room without food or drink until they admitted the error of their ways and explained why they did what they did that she didn’t like and how they would never do it, again. The first time it happened to me, I was six; I caved in ten minutes. The last time, I was seventeen; I never caved.”

“You never learned how to handle her, did you?”

“Oh, I learned,” I said as our food finally came -- cheese enchiladas swimming in grease for me, healthy chicken taco salad for him. “We all did. But Gerrod and Nils took the fake-it route then kept out of her way when they wanted to be sneaky. Me? I -- I’d be as blunt and honest as she was, to her face, sometimes. And yet, I also had this streak in me where -- well, if she was being especially hard to take, I’d do something wrong just to get the solitude it would bring.”

“The zen of dealing with grandma.”

“Grand-MOTHER. ALWAYS grandmother. But I think that’s what kept me from crashing too far after...after...”

Man, closer to two years later than one and it’s still hard to face. Just doing too-close a drive-by of those events could shatter my brain with memories and shut me down. I mean, I’m not as freaky as I used to be, but still...

Moritz gave a gentle pat to my hand and offered me a low-key smile. I didn’t have to detail it for him; I’d done that a week after it happened and had given him his first gray hair, or so he’d have you believe. I’m sure he’d plucked it the second he noticed it and nuked it to death in his microwave then did some incantation over it to make sure none of them ever showed up, again. Not that he was vain or anything.

Anyhow, he didn’t say a word, just dug into his meal like he’d never eaten before. I layered the last of the salsa on my rice and mixed it up before I continued, “My point is, she lead me to embrace my inner hard-head, the mule of my psyche, and I needed it during that -- that ordeal -- and I think I’ll be using it, again. So this is fair warning to any and all.”

“I don’t get it.”

I took a deep breath and said, “I, uh -- I got a letter from Allen.”

He looked at me for a moment, waiting, and then it dawned on him. “Barrow? Allen Barrow? One of the guys who -- ?” I nodded. “He wrote to you?! Why the fuck would that little shit do that?!”

“I -- I asked him to.”

Interesting developments

I've been making notes about BC3 and trying to figure out what the hell's going on with Eric and Allen...but then an old character popped in -- Pavel, the male nurse who tended to Eric after his rape and did so in a very gentle manner. He got Eric to talking about hockey as he gathered evidence during the SANE exam, and suddenly he decided to appear when Eric is heading back from a trip to Texas; he's on the same plane bound for LAX. They sit together and Pavel tells a story that helps Eric regain some perspective in his life. This may chuck out the ending I wrote...or not...dunno yet...but something about him adds balance to the whole process.

I love it when this happens. I've found if I just let the story develop along any lines it chooses (even if they wind up being dead ends that take me back to point one) I discover things that only deepen it and make it better. At least, in my mind. God only knows if other people think the same thing.

Hmm...I should rephrase that parenthetical comment -- I'm never taken back to point one; point two or three, maybe, but just the fact that I've learned more about the story and characters (even if it's stuff that turns out to be unusable or wrong for them) means I'm building from a firmer base.

Now just for the hell of it -- can you figure out what this means? Mora dhuit. It's Gaellic and you'll be laughed at if you say it to an Irishman.

Back to Oz and back...

This is downtown Toronto from a nature preserve south of town. My business was done by 2:30 so I thought I'd head back and miss the weekend traffic. No way. It was as bad on the QEW (Queen's Expressway West) as on the 101 in LA during rush hour. I finally got off, thinking it must be a wreck and toodled down to this lovely little park, walked around to relax and found this elegant view of the city's center...uh, centre.

You know, for some reason it reminds me of The Emerald City in "The Wizard of Oz" -- the movie with Judy Garland. It seems to have that same feeling of hope and promise and dreams about to be filled.

I finally headed back to the QEW and everything looked better...until I'd gone 5 miles and hit that sort of stop and go traffic that makes no sense...for 30 miles, up to the 403 split. I didn't get to shift above 2nd gear the whole way. Then it sped up again...for ten miles and another slow down for a few miles. At 5:30 I was just hitting St. Catherine and yet another slowdown, so I got off and went to Niagra-On-The-Lake to see what was playing at the Shaw Fest. Tonight was "The Cherry Orchard," a Chekov play that I've already seen and am not all that taken with. And NOTL is really little more than a small town with a couple of nice shops (that were closed) and overpriced restaurants -- tho' I found one that wasn't ridiculously so. I had a burger and fries and something to drink for $20 then drove to the bridge at Lewiston along the Niagra Parkway and finally got home at 9:15pm.

I'm too beat to work on anything but un-thinking crap, tonight. The whole time I was in the car the sun was shining and the breeze was cool and that combination makes me really tired...and a bit sunburned. Guess my shower will be low-temperature, tonight.

Inching forward

I worked on BC3, last night, and plotted out the ending section. Of course, it being Eric running the story, he gets the last words in...and it feels right. So now I just need to connect all the spots I've written and shift the ones that no longer fit out of the way and into their own section. I may let that one be a series of vignettes. I don't know, yet. Don't even know how long BC3 will be or how much trouble I'll have with it. Eric wants to be done but Allen is still playing coy.





A fellow author just published his sixth "Mark Julian, Vampire PI" book and is pushing out his seventh, soon. They really are a series and a nice easy read with some surprising attitudes popping up, now and then -- like an archangel who might be up to no good but who definitely does not give a damn about human suffering, an obsessive female werewolf into using toys on her boys (did I mention these have a bit of wary erotica in them?), a difficult relationship between a normal human cop and a 2000 year old vampire. Doesn't hurt that he's my namesake...Kyle (Cicero). His books are pure escapism and genial fun, even in the middle of a slaughter. I wish my writing could be that light and breezy.


I've also read Bob Archman's "Clydesdale" series of mysteries. He sort of a raw, rough and tumble, gay Raymond Chandler with characters of a different sort in his writing...including a main character that's got height issues. Fun in a different way, and more up front about the sex.

I wish the pictures had come out a bit neater. I got them off Nazca Plains' website since the ones from Amazon have stuff added to them.

Now back to BC3 and Allen's intransigence (I love using words I need spell check to spell).

Life in the medium lane

I just found out my oven doesn't really cook; it just does a really good job of warming things up if you leave it in there long enough. I rarely use it but decided to, today, because my toaster oven's got stuff piled on top of it. Well...I put my dinner of a frozen organic enchilada bowl in it to cook for 45 minutes...and it wasn't even heated all the way through when I took it out. So I cleared off the toaster oven and slammed din-dins in there and it was ready in 15 minutes. I'll have to have it looked at.

So...now it's 8pm and I've just finished dinner and am about to get down on BC3. I know what I need in it and the publisher is waiting for it, so it gets done now. There will be a book 4, but not till I'm done with at least a first draft of POS...and God knows when that'll be. You see, BC3 is intended to give Allen a chance to explain his side of what happened with Eric and Bobby, but he wasn't using it for that. He wanted to get all prurient and detailed and self-aggrandizing about it and that was killing the story. So he and I had a nice little slug fest and I let him know those tales go in another book (so he can still write them and I'll have Eric refer to it in BC3) but he had to be more revealing about his thought processes and history than he's been willing to be up to now. Another point -- the 4th book can be as graphic as he wants. That finally made him happy enough to start refocusing.

Fortunately, Eric stayed out of it. He already knows what he wants in his part of this book and Allen hates his guts for the trouble he's caused; all that needs to be done is the interweaving. I even know the final moments of the book and I hope they work within the overall context.

Brendan's letting me finish this, but then I have to hunker down and work with him on POS. When he saw what I did with "Desert Land," he sat back and gave me some slack. But the implication is, I have to be just as intense with his story as with that one...which will be draining; DL was just 4000 words long and I obsessed over every word and its placement to get it right and that made me numb for a week. I may wind up your typical Irish drunk after POS. Which Brendan laughed at. The little snake. Oh, sorry -- no snakes in Ireland; he's just a sneak...

...which is an anagram of snake, right?