Made more presentable

I decided to go ahead and make my proto-poster just a tad nicer since that first version looked like a kindergarten cutout...and the words were barely presentable. Now it's clean and mean, and you can check my whole set-up out at Amazon Studios.

I know from psychotics

I just got a form letter from my brother and sister-in-law that discussed my brother's illness in September, her job, and how great her kids are doing. All very nice. All very sweetly presented. I tore the fucking thing up, because for some reason, the fact that our mother died just a couple months ago rates no mention. Wasn't even a blip on their horizon. Guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering I had to call him several times to let him know mom was getting worse and suggest he come see her.

He did, finally, for 5 minutes the night before she passed. Then spent 10 minutes telling me about how much he has to do for his wife's two grown sons and strongly suggesting we let my youngest brother go to a homeless shelter now that he'll be on his own. I also noticed the money he'd borrowed from my mother six months earlier, when she was in the hospital the first time, which was supposedly to fix a broken tooth, was not used in the way he said it would be. I was so stunned, I didn't even react.

Of course, now I know exactly how much money my brother is going to put in on paying for her funeral and marker. Starts with zero and ends with nothing. Which is not a big surprise. He borrowed money from me years ago, swearing he'd repay it in a month, but I have yet to see a penny. I haven't been in contact with him since the funeral...and honestly don't know if I ever will be, again, I'm so angry.

Apparently, I'm not alone in this sort of situation. A co-worker had similar issues with her brother and his wife when their father was dying. She actually got into a screaming match with her sister-in-law in the hospital parking lot over them not coming until the last minute, and there are still scars healing from that rift in their family.

Look, I'm not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination. You give me half a chance, I'll roll out a list of defects in me that would curl the hair of most people. And no question I've been a dick more times than I care to admit. But I never abandoned my mother. And I won't abandon my youngest brother. And I know my sister will be there for him, as well, just like she was there for mom as much as she could be. To do anything less would be evil...and I'm disgusted that I'm of the same blood as someone who would do exactly that.

Update:

Okay...I was skidding into a mood that's even darker than this when I noticed my book, "Porno Manifesto" got a review of "Awesome" on Barnes & Noble's site, along with 5 stars out of 5. Doesn't take much to turn my black into mere twilight. Maybe, in regards to an earlier post, I am as shallow as I seem.

Helen Mirren Doesn't Sleep

She apparently wants to be Dr. Who....in which case I may start watching the show. I think I've seen parts of four episodes...maybe five. Of course, the reaction from the Who-go-nauts is typically a condescending sneer that all but screams, "You said you liked Ab-Fab, you watched all the Prime Suspect (because of Helen), you enjoyed Hetty Wainthropp (because of Dominic) and Mystery (despite the shoddy production values) and some of the Masterpiece Theatre concoctions (tho' I HATED their version of Rebecca, and that's despite Diana Rigg playing Mrs. Danvers), yet you've never watched Dr. Who?"

What can I say? I wasn't big on "Star Trek" either, really, not till Spock was made hawt and Kirk became a cutie in the re-boot. And I was heavy on BSG because it was more a political SF show than anything else (and Jaime nearly lost his towel). Okay, I'm shallow. So what? Sometimes you just gotta have the Pop Culture and what dreams it engenders, know what I mean?

I say that because I'm probably doing something stupid, as regards Amazon. It started when I was dumb enough to try and buy something from the Warner Brothers' Store (which I finally learned is on back order till God knows when). Suddenly I had a window pop up on my sbcglobal page. Mentioning a competition for best storyboard. I'd never heard of this before, so I clicked on it. This is what's known, using twenty-twenty-hindsight, as a boo-boo.

Amazon has been offering a new program that's a step above Triggerstreet.com. You post a script, let other people rewrite it, if they choose (them doing it with the understanding that they lose all rights to their rewrite while the original author of the script keeps his or her rights...and I read the submission agreement and that's basically what it says), then it goes through a membership review process and if Amazon likes it, they will option it and if it gets made pay you better than Guild minimum.

Well, I posted a script. Came up with an image for it and everything. It doesn't cost a penny to submit and here's what I did. It's not like I'm doing anything else with the script, and if this gets it noticed...it'll be worth it.

The image is a bit clumsy, but it works. Maybe the next thing I'll do it work up some decent storyboards of one of the action bits and post those in a series, instead.

As for IF...I'm closer. But I'm in an area where everything is shifting around to make better sense. I'd set up one character's death over some space to ratchet up the pressure on Vinnie, then realized it would have a greater impact if it happened suddenly. So there was that. And then the marriage and his partner becoming his best buddy and my initial draft really was just an idea piece.

Maybe one of these years I'll finish it.

More work than I thought

Man, I'm doing a fair amount of rearranging, now that I'm following "Inherent Flaws" from beginning to end. I'm through page 163 so am on the downhill slope, but it's not easy going. I'm also finding repetition of various situations and some things referenced later in the story need to be established earlier. I'd say this first draft is really turning out to be little more than a step outline but there is a lot of development going on. And for all that I'm cutting out, I'm putting more in so it may well set in its 62K word ways.

I'm also finding a theme is there that I'd not really noticed, and it dips neatly into the final act. I'll need to set it in better than it currently is, but it helps make the spine stronger and adds to Vinnie's actions.

Slept good last night, and I think I did it all on my right side, because my right leg and lower back irritated me all day. But I felt good otherwise. The only change I made was cutting the heater off before I hit the sack. It may well be that's what's causing me discomfort enough to not be able to drift off. Fortunately, my apartment stays warm if I have the window closed and a curtain over it.

I made the mistake of ordering some DVDs from Warner Brothers' shop, online. Back on the 10th. They have yet to arrive...hell, I can't even find out if they've shipped yet. And they will not answer my e-mails. Last time I'll do that.

This is ridiculous

I'm not used to having insomnia. Normally when I hit the pillow I'm out within a few minutes...mainly because I keep going till I'm about ready to drop. But the last two nights, I've barely gotten any sleep. It's like my brain kicks in and I can't shut it down. So at 3:30 this morning I gave up, turned on a light and read for an hour, then was able to drop off and get some ZZZs. I never was one for the Tylenol PM crap; makes me a zombie the next day.

Okay, I have had episodes like this before, but what surprised me was that this time, rather than me fading out at about 2pm, I was fine till I got home, ate dinner and was checking e-mails. Then the tiredness swooped down like an owl on a field mouse, so I took a catnap and we'll see what happens tonight.

This brain restlessness may have something to do with the story. I worked on it, yesterday, and tonight I got to about the halfway point in corrections and changes. I did have some things out of order, and not deliberately so. I also decided to go whole hog on the Sixties scene in NYC and added in Vinnie going to some parties with a guy he knows who knows people in the know, and having to deal with the explosion of drugs not only on the streets among the low-lifes, with hints of it in his own family, but in the parlors and discos of the monied class. Certain appetites get awakened that will bear fruit later. These will probably need to be fleshed out more in the next draft, but for now they work to carry the story forward and build his reasoning for what happens near the end.

So by the time this draft is done, it'll really be a second one...but my seconds are always my firsts, at least, they're the one's I'm willing to let people read.

Or maybe I should wait till I figure out how the hell Simon and Garfunkel were able to worm their way into one of those parties without even being there. I know, I know, but it makes sense in the story.

I think.

Out of control

No sleep, last night, thanks to my mind refusing to shut down. Which means a sleep-walker of a day. I'm posting early 'cause I'm aiming for bed, early...and doing it the lazy way -- with a part of "Inherent Flaws." This is when Vinnie's 18 and considering a job that would put him "on record" with the mob.

--------------------

The phone rang. Ronnie reached over the bar and answered it. “Hello. Who’s this? He’ll be here. He said to come by.”

Ronnie hung up and headed into a back room, and I could just see Lino seated at a desk, inside.

And I could just hear Ronnie say, “I told him.”

Lino nodded and said, “Close up.”

Ronnie came back out and clapped his hands. “Okay -- good night, everybody. Clear out.”

People got up and headed home. Ronnie motioned for me to wait till the club was empty, then he handed over the car keys.

“Stay right by the phone. I don’t wanna bother your folks. And really, you don’t hear from me by midnight? Hit the sack.”

I nodded and headed out the door and crossed the street and the only red car with a black vinyl roof was a beautiful brand new GTO. Man, this a killer piece of metal, with twin scoops on the hood, hood-mounted tach, and hidden headlights. I got in, slowly, like I was going to church, and breathed in that new car smell, then gave the beast a good looking over. Power steering and brakes. AM-FM Stereo radio with an 8-track. Cruise control.

I started her up and the engine thrummed to life. Deep and ready. Probably a 455. Whooh, that convinced me -- he was doing good. I’d thought he was blowing smoke when he started talking about getting his own place in one of the new high-rises going up, ‘cause they won’t be cheap. But now? What was I doing at a job that wouldn’t even pay me enough to buy a second-hand house in Hoboken?

Thing was, my dad was harsh on me even thinking about going on record. He’d worked hard his whole life and had a good reputation as an honest man, had the kind of respect that’s earned instead of comes from fear or need or greed. And he wanted that for me, too. Him and my mom and my sisters. They’d drilled it into me that I didn’t need to go that way. So if I took this step, it’d break all their hearts. Crush them. I was the only son, and all their dreams for me would be gone down a drain.

But then I thought about where we had to live my whole life -- a third floor walk-up where you could hear the neighbors arguing and kids screaming as they played on the street or in the halls and no trees worth anything and no grass at all, except at the projects, and then you had to deal with all kinds of other stuff. Pipes knocking to keep you awake. Garbage trucks being your alarm clock at five am.

It was the same for my aunt and uncle up in Harlem, with Fredo. They couldn’t afford to live anyplace else, so their whole world was built around retiring to Florida, with a little condo near the beach where they could slowly die as they watched the ocean. So my cousin, Fredo, was doing his own thing to keep that from happening to him, and like I said, he’d been flashing nice wads, lately. But by now I had a pretty good idea what that was all about, meaning we just didn’t talk about it.

What’s funny is, this was all an argument my head was having; my heart didn’t enter into these thoughts at all. Not once. What Louisa might think didn’t figure. I knew she’d back me up no matter what I did, and I wouldn’t have to tell her everything that happened. I’d just have to be the kind of guy who can keep his own secrets. That wouldn’t be a problem. My dad still thinks getting me on with Patty’s was the perfect answer to getting me away from Mickey’s life. It was almost funny, ‘cause here I was right back to that, as if I was meant to be there.

I dunno if I believe in fate. If you’ve got your life written out for you and no matter what you do, you wind up right where you were meant to be, even if you weren’t planning to go there. But still...

A new Cadillac sedan passed me and double-parked in front of the club, jolting me out of my thoughts. I put the GTO in gear and pulled up the street, going slow so I could watch the Caddy in the outside mirror...and I got a great view of this massive side of beef getting out from behind the wheel, wearing a camelhair coat and shoes that gleamed in the light from the street lamps. I knew who he was straight off -- Frankie Bats, one of those vicious guys that hits first and asks what you’ve done wrong after. He strutted around the Caddy as his bodyguard got out, an even bigger side of beef who was probably a former boxer, the way his face looked all mashed up. He stopped and took in a deep breath, then Ronnie opened the club’s door and they strutted right in like they were royalty.

Frankie Bats. He was uptown. Who’d of expected him down around here? This did not bode well, so I drove off.

When I got home, the place was dark except for a light in the kitchen. I liked it like that. It made it easier to just sit in a chair by the phone and not think, for a while. I tried to be quiet as I got a beer from the fridge, but I still heard mom call from her bedroom, “Vinnie?”

“Yeah, mom. Sorry I woke you.”

“Are you working, tomorrow?”

“Yeah. See you in the morning.”

I sat in the chair, sipping from the beer, thinking, wondering what was going on at Lino’s club, right then. Because something about Frankie Bats’ coming-on-hard strut and the bodyguard breezing in and the fact the club closed half an hour early made me wary. Man, I could just see what was gonna happen.

Ronnie was all polite and led the guys to the office door then motioned for them to enter and returned to the bar, letting Frankie and his Bodyguard strut right in, all full of themselves and sure they were in control.

Lino was seated behind his desk and didn’t get up to greet them. That would indicate weakness, and it was obvious their attitude meant nothing but trouble. Besides, Lino never cared about standing on formalities. So Frankie and his boy kept standing, to keep in control.

So -- what would a guy like Frankie want that Lino might have? Well, seeing as how Lino and Dante’d both moved up the ranks now that Big Joey was in Attica, they probably split all his old contacts. Meaning, only one thing made sense.

“Here’s the deal,” Frankie said. “You got a judge on the pad. We want direct contact.”

Of course, Lino stood up and got just as hard right back at him. “You kiddin’ me? My people only deal with me.”

“He’ll deal with me if I approach him right."

“Cut the shit, Frankie! We got everything set up, here. You need help with something, you go through me, like everybody else.”

“And keep makin’ you rich? Fuck that. You don’t share, maybe nobody got him.”

“You’re a fuckin’ idiot,” Lino said then yanked out a pistol and shot the bodyguard before he blew Frankie away. Bam, bam, bam, bam, like that kid on the “Flintstones” cartoon, before he stormed around the desk and shot each man in the head to make sure. Back room. Thick walls. Nobody’d hear a thing. And even if they did, even if they knew exactly what was happening, they’d just shrug it off as business that’s between those guys and nobody else.

Of course, all of this was just conjecture on my part, because it would be a major violation of good manners. You don’t invite a rival over to talk business then scatter his brains all over your floor, not if you don’t want to start a war up. Or...unless you got the okay from higher up. Something like, “This guy, Frankie Bats, he’s causing too much trouble. Thinks he’s gonna tell us what to do.” And Lino’d been given the job because he really did not give a damn.

Oh, man. That was not what I wanted to be thinking about. I kept sitting in the chair in the dark, watching the phone, a fresh beer bottle pressed to my temple. It was a quarter past eleven, and I was getting nervous. What if that was what happened? What if this was what Ronnie’d got himself into, now? He’d always been more of a hard-ass than me, a nose-to-nose kind of guy who wouldn’t take anything off anybody. But me? My feeling was always, Why fight it if you can work around it? Like with that idiot, Cisco. Yet here I was aiming to do backup to Ronnie when I had no idea what I was backing him up for. Could I do this? Really?

Memories and wishes...

 This is the image of Christina Ricci that set me off on Gabrielle -- youth filled with awareness, beauty touched by the cold, cold night.

 I was thinking of using this image for the poster -- Chet Baker and his wife, Halema, in the 50s.

This is what I came up with, instead. Maybe too subtle, again...one of my failings. However, my alternate one, using a different model, was deemed "too busy" by people I knew in the graphics world.

62,374

That's the number of words in my first draft of "Inherent Flaws." 275 typed pages. Probably doesn't make a damn bit of sense, and I already know of one bit I want to move to earlier in the story so it'll need to be smoothed over, but I have the beginnings done. And I have no mind left, at the moment.

To let said mind wander...on the bulletin board over my desk is a semi-shrine to a script I wrote, one I was hoping would be the sale I finally got. It's an erotic-horror-romance titled "Blood Angel" about an 800 year-old vampire queen named Gabrielle who decides to make a young jazz musician in post-Katrina New Orleans her consort. His name is Tristan, and to do that, she must convince him to give up everything he loves and become a vampire like her. That's where the erotic part comes in; seems the way to every man's heart is through his dick, be he gay or straight.

The shrine is basically a printout of this photo of Jonathan Togo, who looks exactly like Tristan, in my mind. (My ideal Gabrielle would be Christina Ricci.) Long before Katrina, I was in New Orleans and was given a gold and a hot pink tin medal, so  pasted each one to it, Then I hung a couple of cheap crosses (sent to me by some Catholic group begging for money) from the pins that hold it on the board. It's tacky and a bit like the shrine Antoine Doinel builds to Balzac in "The 400 blows"...just without the candle and accompanying fire.

I set it up five years ago, just as I was starting to send the script out. I did well in a few competitions, including coming in second in one based in Chicago that led to a writing job. I even worked up a $5m budget to shoot in New Orleans and was pulling together a plan to start seeking money to make the movie. I knew if I got Brad Rushing to help me, it would come out perfect. But then life happened and now it's years later...and I still have that shrine on my board. And there are so many vampire movies and TV shows out there, they've become trite.

Of course, mine would still be relevant because it's not one of those "vampires are people, too" kinds of stories meant to symbolically mean gays or Latinos or African-Americans or whatever minority is being jumped on by the right-wing establishment. Yes, it's erotic and romantic and horrifying -- I have a moment where Gabrielle coldly throws a man off a roof to his death because he interfered with her, being true to her character -- but it's also a tragedy. I used Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" as my guideline for the story, with Jan Garabarek's exquisite "Parce Mihi Domine" as its modern musical influence. It's a elegy to New Orleans, which is now dead...and yet undead.

Perhaps it would work better as a book. Perhaps chasing film was worse than a mistake...it was a distraction from what I was meant to do. I dunno. I just know...I just know Jonathan Togo's haunted eyes and Christina Ricci's calm control would have added so damned much to the story. Sometimes visuals are best to work with. Sometimes.

Forgetfulness is my middle name

Or maybe "lack of focus." I just plain forgot to blog, last night, and I'm trying to make it an ingrained habit to do every evening, sort of a purge to relieve me of what's been the day's issues...or whines...or achievements...or whatever.

Thing is, I was tapped out...in every sense of the word. I have too many distractions going on, right now, so it's hard to keep zeroed in on IF or any sort of writing. I remember a scene in "Amadeus" where Mozart's wife and father are loudly arguing and he's in a separate room, writing his music. All he does is vaguely look around at their raised voices and then turns back to his music. He had focus. Of course, he also died before he was even forty.

As for me, I didn't really get into writing until four years ago, when I finished HTRASG. I think I did four drafts on that before I sent it out, then when the publisher accepted it, I did another and a polish. And while the sex in it is raw and brutal, the story itself fit together so neatly, it surprised me. And this was the first time I honestly felt I'd written a fully three dimensional character, in Curt.

It's also the bravest work I've done. Because it does skirt close to pornography, to be honest. I don't think it is and Amazon's agreed with me, but not everyone out there will share my sentiments. And I knew that going in. And I still not only published it but put my name on it. And told friends and family about it. It would've been nice if it'd turned into some cash, too, but I didn't expect it ever would and the fact that it's still my best seller says a lot about my work.

Because while the title is very in-your-face, the book wouldn't still be selling if the writing wasn't good. Nazca Plains has some other in-your-face novels available, but they're mostly crap writing that barely even rises to high school level, and they hardly sell anything while my books are consistently in the top 25% of their sellers...often in the top 10. Bragging, yes...but true.

Even that one vampire series I followed...it was more because I really enjoyed the characters than anything else. Though I have to say, reading it did help me loosen up with the characters in LD. The simple yet effortless way he established and expanded on his books' inhabitants was elegant.

Hm...I think I've found out what the problem is with IF. Vinnie got married and lost his joyousness. Which is an odd thing to consider as an issue when the book HAS to start getting serious and intense at this point. But that doesn't mean he's got to be a slug or a cypher. I'm holding back, somewhere, and need to find out why, what, and how to correct it.

Guess I'll need more than four drafts with this puppy to train it right.

The boring-ness of it

I'm at that stage where my work is coming across to me as tedious. Boring. Irritatingly bland. I'm also up over 59,000 words and still have a hundred pages to finish honing. And that's with me cutting a section I'd duplicated. So I'm still moving forward, but damn, this story is going to rely way too heavily on the voice of Vinnie to keep the reader's interest, and that can be a problem.

With Brendan, I have the times around him as backup to his tale. The growing sense of a world spinning out of control and warping everyone with its violence. It almost seems he is the eye of calm in the midst of the storm until he makes direct contact.  And thinking about it, the section in Houston, where he's rebuilding his life, is the most tedious, as well. I have none of the sense of the city's danger really layered behind it...because I don't want him to see it, yet. Because it has to creep up like a cat stalking a bird, but still be there for the reader to notice and fear. Yeah, that'll be easy to pull off.

Hm...this may be something I need to face head on. Maybe this is why I'm confronted by it with Vinnie and his tale -- to find some way of putting excitement into the background of the commonplace and the veiled simplicity of the world around them. Expose the deeper complexities and dangers and beauties of it all...and still keep the character's voice honest and true.

Just the thought makes my head hurt.