Ghost Creek, Episode 3

PREVIOUSLY- Sean and his friends explored the mysterious abandoned house in the woods, finding nothing inside but a mutant rodent-eating frog. Sean led them into the basement, the place where he was kept during his abduction experience. There they found a room drenched in red paint, an anachronistic CD player (the source of the screaming which had led them inside in the first place,) and a strange man claiming to be Sean, who offers them pudding.

BAKERSFIELD, IL. JUNE 1981-

“What do you mean,” said Sean, “you are me?”

“Just that,” said the older man. “I am you at the age of twenty-eight. To save you doing the math, that means I’m from the year 1999.”

“Yeah, right.”

“See, I knew there’d be this whole awkward ‘trying to convince you’ thing, so listen up. When you, we, whatever, were seven, we were riding our bicycle, pretending to be Luke Skywalker in his X-wing fighter, and Dad’s Mustang was the Death Star. We got a little too close, and put a big scratch in the paint. Dad freaked out when he found it, but he thought Tommy Stipe next door keyed the car. We never told him, or anybody, the truth.”

Sean gaped up at the older man. “How did you know that?”

“When we were nine, we found a cardboard box by the side of the road with some newborn puppies someone had abandoned. We knew Mom wouldn’t let us keep them, so we hid them in the shed in the back yard. They all died within a day, and we buried them beside the garden. Again, never told anybody. You want me to keep going? Because I’ve got about a dozen of these,” he looked up at Bobby and Marcy, “and some of them are kind of embarrassing.”

“No,” Sean said. “I believe you.”

“Good.”

“Wait,” Bobby said. “This for real? This guy’s from the future?”

“No,” said Marcy. “I don’t believe it. It’s impossible.”

Sean-at-twenty-eight raised a finger. “You’re right, in a way. Time travel is physically impossible. But psychically, astrally, whatever you want to call it, it can be accomplished by certain talented individuals. See, I’m not even really here. This space we’re in doesn’t literally exist. The three of you are asleep on that ridge up there, dreaming this. But it is real.”

The three kids exchanged baffled looks. None of this made sense.

“So, if you’re from the future,” Bobby said, “what about me and Marcy? What happens to us?”

“Let’s see,” said Sean-at-twenty-eight. “You, Bobby, are a very successful psychiatrist. You and your boyfriend Tony . . .”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yeah, you’re gay.”

“I’m gay?”

“Don’t look so shocked. You told me yourself that you always knew.”

Bobby flushed red and made a slight sputtering noise.

“What about me?” Marcy said.

“You, ah, well, let’s just say you are a very good person who helps a lot of people.”

“What does that mean?”

“I really, ah, I shouldn’t have even told you that. People shouldn’t know too much about their futures. It kind of messes things up, trust me.”

“I can’t believe I’m gay,” Bobby was able to mutter.

“Look,” said Sean-at-twenty-eight. “We don’t have much time. This is a temporary state. I don’t know how much longer I can hold it. Let’s get down to business.”

“Yeah,” said Sean-at-ten. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

“Well,” said Sean-at-twenty-eight. “You ever hear people say things like, ‘if I knew then what I know now,’ or ‘if I had it all to do over again?’ This is a unique opportunity to make some changes in my life. I’m going to finish college this time, do . . . fewer drugs, and most of all I’m going to boink Nikki Phillips in my sophomore year. Plus, I went on the internet and memorized the winning lottery numbers from the week I turn eighteen. Ten million dollar jackpot.”

“What’s the internet?” said Sean-at-ten.

Sean-at-twenty-eight broke into a huge grin. “See? You’re going to have so much fun.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t just come back here and slip into my old skin,” said Sean-at-twenty-eight. “It’s a paradox. Two souls, or whatever you want to call them, can’t occupy the same body at the same time without a lot of complications. So this is like a swap.”

“A swap?”

“Yeah. You go into the future and take over my life. I come back here and take over yours. Everybody wins.”

“I can’t . . .”

“Ah, but you can,” Sean-at-twenty-eight interrupted. “And you will. I know you will. I’m you, remember? We’re science fiction freaks. I know you can’t pass up the chance to actually go into the future. 1999, man. There’s no flying cars or men on Mars, but there’s a lot of other fantastic things. Trust me. And you’ll be an adult! You can do anything you want. We’ve got our own apartment. A gorgeous girlfriend. I’m not going to say any more. You in?”

Sean-at-ten but his lip and considered for just a few seconds.

“What about Wilson?” he asked.

Sean-at-twenty-eight shook his head. “I don’t know. They never found him. We still don’t know what really happened. I think whoever took us did something to us to our brain, though. That’s why it’s possible for us to do this.”

“But the dream . . .”

“I sent you the dream,” said Sean-at-twenty-eight. “Another talent of ours. I’m sorry, but I had to use a potent bait to get you down here. Come on, Sean. What do you say?"

“You can’t trust this guy,” Marcy put in.

“But he’s me. I can trust myself, can’t I?” Sean looked up at his older self. “What do we have to do?”

“That’s the weird part,” said Sean-at-twenty-eight. “We have to, ah, kiss.”

“Kiss?”

“Yeah, I know. Ew. I’m not looking forward to it any more than you are. It’s like a fairy tale thing, though. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, the Frog Prince. I guess the soul can be transferred through the breath, or something. I don’t pretend to understand, but that’s the way it works.”

“You are not going to kiss this guy,” Bobby said. “He’s probably just a child molester, messing with our heads.”

Sean-at-ten shook his head. "I'm ready," he said to himself.

Sean-at-twenty-eight took Sean-at-ten gently in his arms. He leaned down, tilting his head and closing his eyes to bestow the kiss.

“Oh, wait, one more thing,” he said before their lips could touch. “If you happen to run into the forty-two-year-old Sean, don’t listen to a word he says. The guy’s a liar.”

“What?”

But then the man’s lips fastened upon the boy’s with incestuous fervor. Sean-at-ten closed his eyes and the world spun. He had the sense of being dragged into an immense whirlpool, a spiraling backwards plummet into a black void.

And then he awoke.

NEXT TIME: Party like it’s 1999. Another strange frog. Idiot box.

Ghost Creek, Episode 2

PREVIOUSLY- Ten-year old Sean Preston has been subject to prophetic dreams since an abduction experience three years before. Now he has dreamed of finding his friend Wilson, who was abducted at the same time but was never returned. Following the sign-posts of the dream, Sean leads his friends Bobby and Marcy to an abandoned house in the woods near the rumored-to-be-haunted Ghost Creek. From inside the house, they hear a boy screaming.

BAKERSFIELD, IL. JUNE 1981-

Hands were on Sean’s shoulders. Bobby and Marcy each had grabbed him and were trying to pull him away.

“Let go!”

“You were right, OK?” Marcy said. “But we have to call the police.”

“Didn’t you hear? He’s in trouble. We have to help him!”

“What are we going to do?” Bobby demanded. “If we go in there, they’ll just get us too.”

“Dammit, let me go!”

Sean swung out blindly. The punch landed on Bobby’s soft sweater-padded belly. It was not delivered with much force, but Bobby doubled over with a comical-sounding ‘oof.’ Marcy let go and Sean bolted forward, through the unlocked door.

The light inside the house was dim and oppressive, filtered through shrouding trees and dirty broken windowpanes. The air was heavy with hot summer dust and the smells of old wood and rodents. The screaming had stopped. The dead silence was so absolute it was difficult to believe the sound had ever existed.

His friends were behind him in the house, Bobby red-faced and sputtering anger.

“You hit me!” he whisper-hissed.

“Sorry.”

Missy looked around, surveying the gloom. The room was bare of furniture except for an ancient, cabinet-style television with a tiny round screen.

“There’s nobody in this house,” she said. “You can tell.”

“You heard the screaming,” Sean said.

“Maybe that was just . . .”

The front door slammed shut with a sudden burst of wooden thunder. All three kids jumped, grabbing each other tight.

“Just the wind,” Bobby whimpered.

“Oh, yeah, it was blowing like crazy out there, wasn’t it?” Marcy said. She ran to the door and rattled the knob. “Locked.”

“No.” Bobby bubbled tears.

“It’s all right,” Sean said. “That happened in the dream, too.”

“Yeah?” said Marcy. “Thanks for warning us.”

“Come on,” said Sean. “The basement stairs are just off the kitchen.”

“Basement?” Bobby’s voice had degraded to a squeaking rasp, like an oil-parched hinge.

Sean led and, rather than being left alone, the other two followed. Through a swing-hinged door into a dirt-crusted linoleum kitchen. The light in here was even dimmer.

“There’s a back door, isn’t there?” Bobby said, blinking behind his glasses. “Please tell me there’s a back door.”

Darting movement caught their attention. A small rat scuttled across the counter. It ran smack into the protruding tongue of a fat bullfrog squatting motionless by the sink. The twitching furry thing was pulled into the amphibian’s mouth with a squealing shriek. Two grasping bites and a gulp and it was gone. The frog let out a burping croak and licked its lips. The creature had a disturbing profusion of mutant legs, more than could be counted at a glance. Like some abominable cross between frog and spider.

“OK, I did NOT just see that,” said Marcy.

“Was that in your dream, too?” Bobby asked.

“In my dream, it ate a little bird,” Sean said. “Come on.”

There was a door in one corner of the room. Sean opened it and they all looked down at stairs leading into utter darkness.

“Got a flashlight?” said Marcy.

Sean reached over and flicked the light switch on the wall. A line of bare hanging low-watt bulbs filled the dank concrete basement below with dusty yellow light.

“I didn’t see any power lines outside,” Marcy said. “Must be a generator.”

“No,” Sean said. He descended the stairs.

The basement was empty except for some scraps of wood along the walls. Across the room was a door, painted a lurid red which seemed to glow with a light of its own. They were halfway across when the boy’s scream came again, bouncing about the concrete chamber with ringing echoes.

Bobby shrieked. Marcy grabbed Sean’s arm hard enough to bruise it. Sean pulled from her grasp. He ran forward and opened the red door.

At first all they saw was the blood. It was everywhere. Great red splats covering the walls and the floor. Ribbons of gore dripping from the ceiling, into their hair.

Bobby tried to step back out of the bloody room, but smacked the back of his head on the door frame. He collapsed to the floor with a hiccupping moan. Marcy threw her hands over her face and screamed.

“Not blood!” Sean had to shout to make himself heard over his friends’ terror. “Paint! Smell it! It’s just red paint!”

After a few moments the adrenal spiking of their hearts subsided enough for them to understand. Marcy reached a hand down and helped Bobby up off the floor.

Now they could see the room. It looked like somebody’s Dad’s garage workspace. Tool shelves and work benches. Fluorescent lighting. Another door on the opposite side of the room. In the center was a table with a portable stereo. As soon as they saw this item, the boy’s scream came again, issuing from the speakers.

“It was just a recording,” Marcy said.

“Great,” Bobby said. “So I pissed my pants for nothing.”

Sean went to the stereo. He pushed a button and a strange silver disc was ejected. Black letters on the front read: “Hollywood Sound Effects, Volume 6: Sounds of Terror.” Sean flipped the disc over. The back side reflected sharp lines of brilliant rainbow color when held at an angle to the light.

“What is this?” he said.

“Some weird kind of record maybe,” said Marcy.

“It’s a CD,” came a man’s voice from the opposite door. “Compact Disc.”

The three children looked up. The man was about thirty, not very tall with a mass of uncombed dark hair. He was eating what appeared to be chocolate pudding from a small plastic cup. The resemblance was immediately remarkable. He looked enough like Sean to be his Uncle, though Sean had never seen him before.

“Hey, you kids want a pudding cup?” he asked. “I got a whole fridge full of them. My favorite food in the world, and in here I can eat whatever I want.”

Their gaping jaws could issue no speech. Sean finally recovered enough to say: “Who are you?”

“Well, Sean,” said the man. “I . . . am you.”

He chuckled at their looks of identical stupefaction. “You sure you don’t want that pudding cup?”

NEXT TIME: Sean at twenty-eight. A proposition. Sean’s first kiss.

Ghost Creek, Episode 1

A New Year and something different with this silly blog. (Less eye-straining look, too.) The sporadic attention I've paid to this thing has been in part because there's not much I want to say ABOUT my writing that I don't already say THROUGH my writing. In that spirit, here's some actual fiction output; an on-going serial that is very representative of my work. I promise I will be dilligent about posting episodes, and that I will do my best to keep them short. Please post comments (the course of the story may be influenced by reader input) and, if you like it, tell yer friends already!

This is very much an experiment. I'm not sure if anyone will even read the thing and, truthfully, I have only vague ideas about where the story is heading. But, writing "without a net" is also exciting to me. So, as my good friend The Lash might say . . . come weez meee and I vill take you on an exciting journey . . .

BAKERSFIELD, IL. JUNE 1981-

Sean Preston, ten years old, squinted at the twisted rusty remains of the derailed train. The accident had been three years before. Everything valuable or dangerous had been removed in the days following the wreck, but the rest of the stuff was just left here to rot. Misshapen tadpoles swam in the pools of orange rusty water which had formed about the train detritus. Sean had caught a few to keep as pets in his bedroom. They grew into five and six-legged frogs which never lived very long.

“It is so muggy,” Bobby said. “I swear, I’m going to wilt.”

“Quit your bitching,” said Marcy. “God, you complain so much.”

Bobby Dent and Marcy Rollins, Sean’s two best friends. He had brought them along because they had been in his dream. It was important to remain as true to the dream as possible.

“Where are you taking us?” Bobby demanded.

“Down to the creek,” said Sean.

“Come on,” said Bobby. “I just got ‘Asteroids’ on my Atari. And my house has air conditioning.”

Sean walked down the tracks away from the site of the wreck. A few moments later, Bobby and Marcy followed.

“You had a dream about the creek?” Marcy asked. “That’s why you’re taking us down there?”

“I remembered something about what happened to me and Wilson,” Sean said. “I remembered where we were kept.”

“Kept?” Bobby gulped.

“Yeah,” said Sean. “In the dream, Wilson was still there. We found him.”

Marcy stopped. “You mean we found his body?”

“He was still alive,” Sean said. “Actually, he was still seven years old.”

“OK,” Bobby said. “Is anybody else freaked out by this? We should not be going down there by ourselves. If you really remembered something, you should tell your mom. Or the police.”

“They wouldn’t believe me,” Sean said.

“They’d believe you, freaky dream boy.”

They had come to the point where the creek ran under the tracks, through the big concrete pipe.

“There’s the creek,” Sean said. “When we get down there, we’ll see a snake swimming in the water.”

“Oh good, a snake. That really makes me want to go,” Bobby said.

“Come on.”

Without waiting for his friends to follow, Sean slid down the rocky hill. At the bottom, he saw the curving ‘S’ of the swimming snake slip from the mouth of the pipe.

“There it is,” he noted.

In his dream, it had been a milk snake, with colorful bands of red, black and yellow. This was just a common garter snake. The dreams often worked like that. Correct in the general but off in the particulars. Like when he had dreamed of buried treasure in his backyard, and had dug up the exact spot only to find a cache of old nudie magazines.

“All right,” Bobby said. “So you were right about the snake. That doesn't mean you're right about everything else.”

“We just follow the trail beside the water for a while.”

They walked down the wooded trail beside the gurgling creek, deeper into the timber than they usually went. Their heads were up, attuned to danger. Older kids, teenagers, also hung out down here and sometimes tormented the younger ones just for sport. There were whispers of darker things, too. The stream was called ‘Sugar Creek’ on all maps but among the children it was known as ‘Ghost Creek.’ Schoolyard rumors told of haunts roaming these woods at night, though anyone who claimed to have been down here in the dark was certainly a liar.

The creek forked and they made a splashing cross to follow the Southward tributary.

“God, are we almost there?” Bobby cried.

“This is where we get off the path,” Sean said.

Marcy looked at her watch. “I have to be home for dinner. It’s almost four now. It’s going to take us at least an hour to hike back.”

“It’s just a little further,” Sean said. “I promise.”

Sean led his friends off the path into the crunching undergrowth of the deep woods. Walking faster as the sights became more familiar. Every tree, every rock, every call of every bird was exactly as he had dreamed it.

“Just over this hill,” he called, breaking into a run.

Bobby and Marcy caught up to him just as he crested the hill. In the clearing below was a house.

“I knew it would be here,” Sean said. “I knew it.”

“That’s where,” Marcy swallowed dry spit, “you were taken?”

“Yes,” Sean cried. His eyes gleamed with tears of joy, or of terror.

The badly dilapidated two-story farmhouse had once been white, but the paint was flaked almost completely away, exposing weathered grey wood. Half the shingles were missing from the roof and a few gaping holes were visible. Every window had at least one pane busted out. The driveway led to a rutted, grown-over trail which might have once been a dirt road. Trees shrouded the property so completely it was not hard to imagine the house staying hidden for years.

“We are not going inside,” Bobby said. “Now that you know this place is here, we should just go home and call the police.”

“I hate to say it, but I’m with wuss-boy on this one,” Marcy concurred.

“You guys can wait outside if you want.”

Sean ran down the hill. His friends called after him, but he barely heard them. The old house held the answers to questions which had tormented him for three years.

Who had taken him?

What had they done to him?

What happened to Wilson?

Why couldn’t he remember anything?

The thirst for revelation outweighed everything else. Before Bobby and Marcy could catch him, Sean had stepped onto the rotting wood of the front porch. His hand was on the knob. He knew the door would not be locked.

From inside the house came a sound which Sean could not recall from even the darkest of his dreams.

A boy was screaming. Screaming for his life.

NEXT TIME- An unusual method for rodent control. A discussion of the weather. Why the caged boy screams.

'TIS THE SEASON . . . FOR SOUL-CRUSHING REJECTION!

Well, I got a cruddy little lump of coal in my stocking a couple days ago. I finally heard back from "Strange Horizons" concerning "The Eternal Movie." DENIED!

One of my real strengths as a writer is my thick skin and high tolerance for rejection, a talent honed while trying to get a date in high school. Still, this one stung. I felt good about the story, and I really worked hard on it. Plus, we really could have used the money. And, lastly, it's freakin' Christmas! I mean, come on! My birthday's only a couple weeks away. Couldn't they have waited to crush my spirit until then?

Another frowny face- they sent me a generic form rejection e-mail. That sucks. This also reminds me of high school. I liked it better when the girls told me exactly what they found unattractive about me. I used to hand out little "feedback" cards like you find in restaurants. Gave me something to work on. The icy "Uh, no thanks," just rubs me raw.

Oh, well. It's like Lea said: "You can't win them all." To which I of course replied: "Yeah, but I can't win ANY of them!"

Thus ends my pity party. (Jeez, a party would have been nice.)

I am soldiering on. Just started work on a new screenplay, about a female rock star/ actress who uses black magic to become famous. I changed all the names, though, so Courtney Love won't put a hex on me. (Or maybe she already did. I knew sending her locks of my hair was a bad idea.)

For the past six months or so, I have been cycling through all of my 20+ active projects, doing a little work on each one. I am nearly at the end of this rotation, and from there I will knuckle down and actually (gasp) finish "The Black Monkey." Here's to happy writing in 2007!

I hope this blog finds you and yours happy, healthy and in good holiday spirits. May Santa Claus bring you everything you want, and may the Scrooges, Grinches and on-line sci-fi magazine editors pass you by.

Happy X-Mas, War is Over (if you want it.)
Love, Christian

NIGHT FLIGHTS & FLASHES OF HONEY

That sounds dirty, doesn't it?

First off, I want to tell y'all about yet another piece of flash fiction I've posted, over at DZ Allen's "Muzzle Flash," a new pulp/ noir flash fiction page. My entry's entitled "Honey," and in keeping in the "pulp" spirit, it's a nasty piece of work. (As much violence as I could pack in 300 words or so.) It's also a stab at a "juxtaposition of horror and beauty," which is the best description I've heard of David Lynch's unique appeal. Not that this piece is particularly Lynchian (Lynchesque?) As always, I'd love for everybody to check it out and post all kinds of flattering comments.

I still haven't heard back from "Strange Horizons" about my sci-fi story, which is causing some anxiety. Their submissions page said they usually respond one way or the other after an average of 30 days. It has been 32. Not that I'm counting. Rejection I can handle, it's waiting for it that drives me crazy. Still, I persist in having high hopes. My first "real" publication would be one sweet Christmas present, let me tell you.

I had attempted to post an entry here a few days ago; a long, rambling history of the evolution of my filmgoing tastes. I started with seeing "King Kong" on TV when I was 4 or 5, and went all the way through my adolescence. Fortunately or un-, Blogger chose to swallow everything I had written. (It was probably my fault- I have a tendency to click when I oughtta clack.) I didn't have the heart to recreate the whole thing (sparing you the task of reading it,) but writing all that out did bring up one memory I would like to share.

There was a brief period back in the 1980's, after the advent of 24-hour cable channels, but before late night TV was completely overrun with infomercials. It was actually possible to see interesting things on TV late at night. I know, it's hard to believe now, but trust me on this one. I was a teenage insomniac with no social life, so I was in the right place at the right time to bear witness to this anomoly.

I had two favorites. The first was Cinemax's "Friday After Dark" offerings, which included such classics as "Young Lady Chatterly" and the "Emmanuelle" series. I won't go into any further detail except to say I always watched them with the sound turned WAAAY down.

My other favorite was the USA Network's Friday and Saturday overnight programming block, which they called "Night Flight." "Night Flight" showed all kinds of crazy stuff. Music videos, short films, full-length movies; all of it culty or fringy in nature. I've read fond internet reminiscences of people who recall coming home stoned from parties and stumbling upon some bizarre thing which fit very well in that frame of mind. I didn't do drugs back then (or go to parties for that matter,) but some of the "Night Flight" stuff could produce a contact high all by itself. Old silent movies dubbed over with Pink Floyd music. Black and white Looney Tunes and Betty Boop cartoons, including one where Porky Pig bashes his thumb with a hammer and actually says "son of a bitch." (I swear.) Many other truly strange and beautiful things.

But what influenced me most was an hour-long special on cult movies aired on "Night Flight," circa 1984. Prior to seeing this, I didn't even know most of these movies existed. They showed clips from: "Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," John Water's "Poleyester," "Repo Man," ("the more you drive, the less intelligent you are,") "Forbidden Zone," (featuring Herve' [da plane] Villechaize as 'the horny midget king of the 6th dimension,') "Liquid Sky," (easily the best nihilistic no-wave aliens-seeking-heroin sci-fi movie of all time,) Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," "Reefer Madness," Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise," the films of Paul Bartel and Firesign Theater, "I Was a Zombie for the FBI," and many others.

Most significantly, this program introduced me to David Lynch's "Eraserhead," showing the nightmare comedy scene where the miniature chickens start oozing blood. The tagline, "If any movie can cause permanent brain damage, that movie would be Eraserhead," was irresistable to me.

I taped the special (on the family's trusty Sony Betamax, of course,) and watched it obsessively. Over the next few years, I made it my mission to watch every movie featured on the special. Some of them were hard to track down, but I eventually saw them all. I still have an affinity for bizarre cinema, and this is where it came from. One hour of television over twenty years ago impacted my filmgoing habits more than any other single influence. (Possible runner-up would be Fangoria magazine.)

After blogger ate my original post where I talked about not only "Night Flight," but every other influence, I told Lea about "Night Flight." God bless this woman. She immediately hopped on e-Bay, typed in "Night Flight," and found someone selling 12 hours of the show, transferred from old tapes onto DVD. (You really CAN find anything on e-Bay.) She won the bid, and that's going to be one of my Christmas presents. I love Love LOVE my wife.
Now if I can just get her to buy me "Young Lady Chatterly."

. . . BUT I REALLY WANT TO DIRECT, PART 1

Let's just start out with an apology. OK, I am very sorry for the lapse in taste and judgement which led me to dwell on Britney Spear's (lack of) panties. I don't know what I was thinking. I hereby promise that I will never again sully the otherwise unbesmirched reputation of this forum with anything so base as a discussion of celebrity panties, or celebrities without panties. Unless it's Courtney Love. In fact, I hereby and furthermore shall not ever use the words "panty," "panties," "panty-less," "crotch," "commando," or "up-skirt" again. I swear.

Let's move on.

Before the unfortunate detour, I had wanted to discuss movies. This was prompted by my moving from work on a screenplay entitled "Logan County Lazarus," to getting a fresh start on my long-stalled horror/comedy novel "Midnight at the Heaven," which is set in a haunted movie theater. This just weeks after the completion of my science-fiction story "The Eternal Movie" (still no word from the publisher on that, by the way,) set in a cinema which has been launched into space. It seems that if I'm not writing a movie recently, I'm writing ABOUT movies. So what gives?

It's always been an obsession of mine. I love movies. More than that, I love going to the movies. (Haven't been able to do that much recently.) There's just something about sitting in a large dark room with dozens of strangers, looking up at a massive glittering screen. Going to the movies is one of the most prevelant themes of my dreams. I'm not sure if I love these dreams because they remind me of going to the movies, or if I love going to the movies because it seems so dreamlike.

I think it factors so heavily in my writing because, at heart, I really want to be a filmmaker. In my head, the stories are already movies. I SEE them, as images, rather than hearing the words. (Which may be part of the problem with my strangled prose style.) However, there are several factors which keep me in front of a keyboard rather than behind a camera:

1) MONEY. Making a movie, even a "low-budget" one, costs millions of dollars. I don't have millions of dollars. The people who do have millions of dollars aren't so inclined to give their money to people like me. In contrast, writing a novel costs nothing but time. Time I have.

2) I DON'T WORK WELL WITH OTHERS. I do enjoy collaborative processes. My work with Coyote Radio Theater has been very rewarding. Andrew Johnson-Schmit and I have worked together on several projects, and I've always enjoyed that process as well. But I don't know that I would enjoy putting all the blood, sweat and tears into something like writing a film, only to see my vision diluted. In a novel, the author is the undisputed God. In a movie, the screenwriter is, at best, a minor deity. Even the actors are higher in the pantheon. The director of a film is widely considered to be its "author," even if he didn't write the script. Then there are the producers, the studio, the money people, the focus groups, etcetera, etcetera.

3) FREEDOM. Most of my novels, if filmed "as is," would be 12 hours long, X-rated, budgeted at a billion dollars, and would have almost no mass-market appeal. There are many fewer restrictions concerning length and content placed upon a novelist. Plus, novels have the advantage of being able to describe "internal action," to get into the heads of the characters in ways that movies can't do without cumbersome voice-over narration.

4) AN UNPUBLISHED NOVEL IS STILL A NOVEL; AN UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAY IS NOTHING

5) BOOKS ARE BETTER ANYWAY, RIGHT? Uh, well, sort of. While this holds true with very few exceptions for novels adapted into movies, it's really like comparing apples and oranges. Reading and watching are entirely different experiences. Movies have an advantage of being more direct. The imagining has been done for you. I just watched "United 93," the movie about the 9/11 flight in which the hijackers were overcome by the passengers, and I was RIVETED, experiencing the story in a visceral, emotional way which I've never received from a book.

Anyway, I keep writing screenplays. While I have yet to finish a novel, I have actually completed several scripts. They range from the God-awful ("The Electron Kid") to the actually-not-half-bad ("Night of the Unicorn" would make a great cheesy horror movie.) And I have several more in the works. So why do I torture myself? The movie business is much harder for a writer to break into than getting a novel published (or so I gather.)

But, dammit, I want to SEE my visions on the screen. I want to hear actors speak my dialogue. I want to burrow into people's heads with images that they can't skim over. I want to, in the words of the Soul Coughing song "Screenwriter's Blues," "see my name five feet high and luminous."

I'm not asking much, am I?

Next time I'll talk about the movies which have directly informed my writing. Until then, the balcony is closed. (Bonus points to anyone who remembers what that line is from.)

Fear of a White . . . You Know

OK, after another inexcusable absence, I finally came up something I wanted to talk about here. I've planned out a whole series on what drives me as a writer. Not my name-by-name influences, per se, but more of a general overview of the forces which feed my creativity, shaping it like wind and water erosion shape the land. (That there was one of them fancy metaphors.) This may bore you to tears, but writing these things helps me to define them for my own purposes. You're just along for the ride.

So . . . I had this whole thing worked out in my head about Movies, and how Movies influence me more than books, and I was all set to write it when The News broke. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. The only headline-worthy happening of the past week:

Britney Spears Doesn't Wear
Panties

I'm embarrassed to admit that this grabbed my attention, and even more embarrassed to admit that I clicked on over to check out the pix. (I won't bother supplying a link. If you're curious, just Google "Britney Panties" and you will get 6 million hits. The photos- and there are many- are all over the place.) Apparently, Britney has been hanging out with Paris Hilton and Lyndsey Lohan, and to be in their club you have to flash your naked genitals at the paparazzi every time you get out of a vehicle.

Personally, I've never found Britney Spears very interesting, either as a musician or as a sex symbol. Her music and her image have always been too obviously manufactured to be in any way exciting. Her recent multiple pregnancies, newfound let-it-all-hang-out-there trailer-trashiness and liberating divorce from that loser-boy HAVE allowed some humanity to peak through the cracks. (That was NOT a pun.) But still, she's not that fascinating of a person.

Furthermore, I have no particular prejudice against the whole "commando" issue. (Called "free ballin'" in men.) In fact, I've always thought it was kind of chic.

So why I am I bothering to mention this on my blog? What did strike me as interesting were some of the blogger comments prefacing the photos. Britney's vagina was described by one blogger as "not for the faint of heart." Another advised viewers of the pictures to "make sure to look at them on an empty stomach." Even the (relatively) high-brow news site CNN.com said "be prepared to cringe." (Also, I believe that was the first time I ever read the phrase "panty-less crotch" in a mainstream news web-site.)

What gives? Why all the vag-hate? I mean, Britney's whole career is built on seduction and tease. Isn't this where the seduction leads? Isn't the vagina the ultimate pinnacle of female sexuality? Isn't it, in fact, the whole point? Why react with disgust? I mean, I LIKE vaginas. (In an entirely non-sexist, Eve Ensler, sacred feminine sort of way, of course.) It's where we all came from, after all. Brit's "area" is not in any way extraordinary. (Though I've never understood the appeal of the "bald" look.) So why cringe?

I don't know. Just struck me as weird. I promise I'll get to that movie discussion next time (in a more timely manner) and won't discuss genitals here until my upcoming 12-part series: "The Penis Monologues." Stay tuned.

Any Questions?

I can't talk long today (wife's day off!!!) but I wanted to let everybody know that my new Flash Fiction piece, "Six Questions," which is up over at Six Sentences. Check it out and leave a comment so I look cool. Also, if you want a nice little chill, my good friend Angie has a very short excerpt of her novel up over at the Lazy Artist's Lounge. Wicked good.

In case I'm a Lazy Artist myself and don't write anything else this week, Happy Thanksgiving!

Just Checkin' In . . .

Not much happening here. The Day of the Dead has come and gone yet again. It was a good show, if not as well attended as previous years. We usually do it in the first weekend of November, and now we know why: there are a lot of other things happening in Prescott over the Veteran's Day weekend. (Competition for the entertainment dollar.) If you couldn't make the show, there is a very nice write-up (with pix!) on the blog of a very satisfied audience member.

Another consequence of doing the show a week late: you get through it and realize "holy crap, Thanksgiving's a week away."

In other news, there is no other news. I finally submitted my sci-fi short story and also sent in a new piece of flash fiction. No word yet on "The Eternal Movie," but the flash piece will be up on Six Sentences on Nov. 19. Mark your calendars now. (That one turned out pretty well.) Right now I'm returning to an old project called "Killer's got the Blues Again," which some of you might remember. Heavy revisions on the front end, and writing new material from the last chapter backwards. Hopefully, I will eventually meet in the middle and have a (gasp!) completed novel. After that, Andrew and I are looking at another radio script contest. Just the first step towards our goal of radio theater world domination. (It's a small world, but it is a world nonetheless.)

The kids are doing well, with the exception of Lily's constantly running nose. I thought we'd left all this sniffly business behind when took them out of day care, but I guess not. Lea's got the same bug. Or at least I think she does. I don't really see my wife enough to keep up with her health concerns. She's still working those mad holiday hours. She'll get a break for Thanksgiving Day, but the day after that is known in the retail biz as "Black Friday." (I always thought that would make a great title for a "Die Hard"-in-a-mall action movie. Don't go stealing my idea, now.)

Anyway, the Dyl-man and I have so far proved immune to the cold virus. I credit sleep deprivation and excessive caffeine use. Dylan can thank judicious Halloween candy rationing. Your results may vary.

Revisions and Propositions

Well, I'm still hard at work editing "The Eternal Movie," (the title seems especially apt as it feels like I've been working on it for freakin' ever.) Props must be given to my good friend Angie for her insightful reading. She very properly castigated me for my unfortunate tendency towards excessive, bloated verbosity, including my misguidedly and madly heedless use of crazily proliferate adverbs, not to mention my redundant, repetitive, superfluous and unnecessary wordiness; a habit, as it were, of endlessly explaining with massive amounts of explication and exposition, with sentences that run on and on and on, never seeming to end.

I really don't know what she's talking about.

Seriously, though, it was great advice. Gave some "new eyes" to look at the thing during the editing process. She also had a lot to say about the structure, ways to turn it from a good story into a great one by removing the top-heavy set-up and starting with the action. Sadly, this would require me to tear the whole thing apart and start from scratch and I'm frankly sick of looking at the thing. So, it will go to the publishers with the structure intact, just about 500 words lighter.

It's a strange feeling paring down a story for submission to a five-cents-per-word publication. Sorta like throwing nickels in the trash. Oh, well. I'm feeling even more confident about the story than before. I just can't wait to be finished with it.

I saw a good movie recently. (That's a rare enough occurrence to warrant a blog entry.) I became interested in seeing "The Proposition" when I heard the screenplay was written by Nick Cave. Now, there are a lot of musical artists whose careers follow the familiar arc of early brilliance, peaking at around their third album or so, followed many years of "milking it." Then there are the elite few like Tom Waits, PJ Harvey and Nick Cave, who unbelievably just keep getting better.

I was curious to see if his brilliance extended into this other medium. (He's also published a couple novels, though I haven't read them.) I'm not sure what I was expecting. Maybe a typical rock star vanity project, like Perry Ferrel's "Gift" or Axl Rose's disastrous "Portrait of the Obnoxious Egotist as a Self-Absorbed Young Heroin Addict." What I got instead was a complex, literate and very bloody western.

The nineteenth-century Australian outback has many parallels to the mythical American West of the same period but, based on this movie at least, was an even bleaker, more desolate and violent landscape. Everything is coated with dust and flies. ("The Proposition" has to set some kind of record for most flies in a movie. The record for most flies ON a movie was of course set by "The Life of David Gale.") The sky is a bleached, baking white. The outlaws are violent men. So are the police. So are the aborigines.
The "Proposition" of the title comes when Capt. Stanley (Ray Winstone,) the man charged with imposing some semblance of civilization upon this hellhole, manages to capture two of the three outlaw Burns brothers. He makes a deal with with middle brother, Charlie (Guy Pearce.) Find and kill his eldest brother, Arthur (Danny Houston- son of John) to save the life of the younger brother Mikey, who is scheduled to hang (on Christmas day!) What follows is an unforgiving tale of loyalty and betrayal.

The violence is extreme, but completely appropriate and morally ambiguous. The scene where the young, simple-minded Mikey (a killer and a rapist) is flogged with a hundred lashes is as hard to watch as anything in "The Passion of the Christ" or Mel Gibson's arrest video. (Great close-up of blood being literally wrung from the leather whip.)

In the center of all this ugliness, though, is the surprisingly tender and respectful relationship between Captain Stanley and his wife Martha (Emily Watson.) Both characters are portrayed with depth and complexity. Cpt. Stanley is a man whose decency is being eroded by his position and the land he has come to. Martha's insistence upon English-ness and her notions of justice seem like naivite until they are eventually shattered.

Adding yet another layer of complexity is the theme of racism. The aborigines are of course victims of casual, institutionalized hatred. More surprisingly, the Irish (including the Burns brothers) are referred to "niggers turned inside out."

This was a really great movie, one that lingers in the mind for days after seeing it. If it were the type of movie that didn't scare Oscar voters shitless, it would be deserving of multiple honors. Nick Cave's script and the score which he contributed to are both poetic and minimalistic. The acting is great all around. Especially Ray Winstone and Emily Watson (for her bathtub monologue alone.) Danny Houston's Arthur Burns and John Hurt's bounty hunter Jellon Lamb compete for the title of most morally void and yet poetically well-spoken character in recent film history. The cinematography, too, is exceptional, for finding stark beauty among all the ugliness. The scene where the two older brothers sit on a rocky ledge and watch the sunset is nothing short of miraculous.

So- "The Proposition." I only get to see one or two movies a month nowadays (not counting kid-vid,) so I'm grateful for substantial fare like this. It might be hard to watch, but I guarantee it's worth it.

I'm Back!!!

Yeah, I know. Kind of ironic, considering that my last entry here was about how long it's been between posts, but at least this time I have an excuse. I lost my internet connection for a little while there. It was a billing issue with those bastards over at NetScape. They had been electronically debiting our checking account, but then quite abruptly decided that they needed a credit card. Lea and I both attempted to iron out the problem with phone calls to the helpful customer service branch somewhere in New Delhi (where we were repeatedly asked to spell the admittedly exotic name "Smith,") but to no avail. We're on AOL now. Turns out those free trial discs you get in the mail every other day are good for something other than mini-Frisbees.

Tonight I'm going to motor on down to Prescott for the final rehearsal of the Day of the Dead Dinner Show. Road trips strain the gas budget, make for some creative arrangements of Lea's work schedule and push my sleep deprivation threshold, but I'm glad I can still be involved. Should be a pretty good show this year.

Kids are doing great. Dylan's finally getting the hang of the potty training and Lily took her first shaky steps yesterday! (I felt that warranted exclamation.) Lea's working mad holiday hours so I barely see her, but other than that we're all happy and healthy.

So here's where I promise that my blogging will be more substantial and less sporadic from here on out. (Boy it's hard to type with my fingers crossed.)

I Know It's Been Forever, But . . .

Back when I started doing this whole blog thing, I looked at a lot of other people's blogs and discovered a few cliches which I swore I would never stoop to. The main one being posts which start with the line: "I know it's been forever since I've posted on here, but . . ." followed by lame excuses about being crazy busy, terminally ill, dead, etc. These blogs always end with a promise to be a more faithful blogger in the future. (A statement belied by the fact that the post is 2 years old.)

Well, it HAS been forever since I've posted here and I HAVE been crazy busy (writing, kids, last-minute "Day of the Dead" edits, assorted hausfrau duties, my ill-fated State Senate campaign.) Actually, though, it's been more of a case of a lack of anything to say. My life is pretty routine, and a recent bout of extreme poverty (it's a viral thing- doctor says it might be chronic) has further limited my activities outside the house to not-very-thrilling trips to the park and the library. Not much grist for the web-log mill.

I know my faithful readers (all 2 of you) must be frustrated. My good friend Angie (see her four comments posted on my last entry) was especially vocal in her exasperation. She even took the drastic measure of deleting me from her 'favorites' folder, exiling me to the gulag of her desktop 'Recycle Bin,' an electronic purgatory where I drift in the ether along with her other abandoned interests- like the Milli Vanilli fan-site she used to be so enthusiastic about.

Well, still not much going on worth talking about. I did finally receive my check and free copy from the Canadian smut peddlers. My debut novel is as inauspicious and sleazy as I have feared. Random stock image photo on the cover, with the tag line "The wicked tale of a young woman's descent into depravity." This is somewhat mitigated by the jacket blurb- "Luminous- a tale of grace and power recalling early Hemingway." Thank you, Stephen King. I owe you one.

(Also- a note for any porno editors out there; you can not change a scene from gay to straight simply by converting the pronouns, though in this way you CAN make the scene much funnier.)

Anyway, check's in the bank and we went out for Chinese to celebrate, so I can't complain too much. Right now, though, I am actively searching for a way to wash the 'porn' taste out of my mouth. I'm looking to either enter a writing contest with a cash prize, or submit to a professional fiction magazine (print or on-line.)

In the past, I've gone about getting a story published in the only way which seemed logical to me: 1) Get an Idea, 2) Write the Story, 3) Send it out to everyone who might conceivably publish it. 4) Hope for the Best. This has so far not panned out, so I'm going to try it another way. I'm going to find a contest or a publication which I like and try to tailor a story specifically for the market. We'll see if I have any better luck with this approach.

My goal is to be able to answer the question: "Have you been published?" with a statement other than: "Well, sorta . . ."

Anyway, that's it for now. I promise to be a more faithful blogger in the future. Check back here for a new post in two years or so.

Confessions of a Flasher

Recently, I've posted a couple of "Flash Fiction" stories on various web-sites, "Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time" and "White Moth." (The latter being a slightly edited version of a story I first posted right cheer.) If you're unfamiliar with flash fiction, definitions vary. Most of the web-sites specializing in this unique genre place the word count limit at 750-1000 words. Some especially sadistic editors place the limit in the 250-500 word range. I've even seen one site with the psychotic limit of 50 words max. (A Flash Horror site has the brilliant conceit of a 666 word max count.)

However you slice it, that's dang short. Especially for someone like me, with a very real problem of diarrhea of the keyboard. That's one of the reasons I wanted to write Flash Fiction, for the challenge. The other reason is that people actually seem to read these things. (Oddly enough, that was one of the same reasons I started writing erotica.) There's not much time investment required to look at something just a few paragraphs long.

There's also something to be said for the brevity and compression, the stripping of the narrative down to the barest essentials. It's almost like poetry, except I ain't no poet.

Some of you might remember my first attempt at Flash Fiction, "Indoor Recess," written for a contest I entered a few months ago. I wasn't quite happy with how that one turned out. I tried to accomplish too much in the limited space I had to work with. Hopefully, these two selections work better. Please check them out (click on the links) and feel free to post flattering comments.

In other news, I've also written a rather tongue-in-cheek (I've always wondered about that expression. How can you talk with your tongue in your cheek?) post for the Day of the Dead Dinner Show blog. So, if you've wondered why I haven't posted anything here for a few days, it's because I've been posting stuff everywhere else.

Kind of a strange day . . .

Baby's sick, for only the second time since we took her out of day care six months ago. (At day care, both kids seemed to pick up every bug going around town and had perpetually drippy noses.) Lily's got the stuffy nose thing, along with a slight fever, which conspire to make her a very unhappy little oompa-loompa. Fussy and clingy, she only wants to be held. I am typing this with one hand.

Slacked off writing this morning, to watch CNN.com's "real-time" replay of 9/11/01. Unlike most human beings on the planet, I hadn't seen much of this before. I didn't have cable TV back then, so the horrific images weren't hammered repeatedly into my brain. I think, on retrospect, that this was a good thing. From that day, I do remember that Lea was in the midst of the one of her very convincing false pregnancies, so it was like the ultimate good news/ bad news scenario. I might soon be a Dad, but on the other hand World War freakin' III is breaking out.

Given the filter of time, without the "what the hell is happening? are we all gonna die?!?" factor, the footage is still pretty intense. Seeing it on TV (or computer screen,) though, for me reduces the human tragedy to the level of a great disaster movie. The thrill and beauty of pure chaos. The shameful charge of bad news which keeps getting worse. I had cable when Katrina hit, and I had the same feeling then. What is so attractive about disaster? When I was a kid, I used to pray that a tornado would hit so I could experience this feeling first-hand. Am I some kind of sicko, or just honestly expressing an unattractive aspect of human nature?

These thoughts precluded the writing of radio comedy.

The family went down to Prescott this weekend, so I was afforded a rare opportunity to sit down with Drew and go over material for the Coyote Radio Day of the Dead show. Very productive meeting. I came away with lots of great ideas and energy, which I squandered by watching 5-year-old news on the internet. Oh, well. Back to the grind tomorrow.

In other news, I received an interesting e-mail from my Canadian porno connection: "I think there has been a little confusion... The novel 'The Education ofLisa' has already been published by us. I will be sending out your paymentas well as your complimentary copy as soon as I can:)

This means that they published the version on the Literotica web-site, and all my months of editing were for naught. I guess it doesn't matter. At least the check's in the mail. I am now officially a published author. Woo-hoo. Break out the champagne.

White Moth

A white moth, huge, wings stained with eyes and lines, rests in the corner where the windshield meets the roof. How the hell did it get in the car? How the hell did the car come to stand on end like this? I lie back in the comfortable seat, looking straight up at the black sky, pondering these questions. So sleepy. Christ. I oughtta pull over. Close my eyes for a few minutes. Float backwards for a while.

I snap awake. The moth. It's a big fucker. Never seen one so big. A foot across from one wing tip to the other. Big as a bird. How did it get the car? It's like a dream where you don't remember the thing that just happened, but you do recall the thing which happened just before. We were at a party, Ginny and me. So lit up we actually danced. It was nice. We haven't danced in years. Her smile whispered promises of the tastes we would share at home. On the long drive home, though, she crawled into the backseat and fell asleep. So forget about that. Still, it was nice to dance.

I feel sick. It's not my fault. I'm just not used to this much drink. They just kept pressing them into my hand. I turn my head and vomit blood and glass into the water.

The moth moves; an agitated flutter. Its wings hum. I wonder if Ginny sees it, if she's awake. The rear-view mirror shows her face. She is pale and white in the bright glare of the dome light. Her eyes are open. Ginny smiles at me through the shimmery curtain which has been drawn between the front seat and the back. Her hair floats about her head, bouyant upon a gentle wind. Seems strange that I can see her so clearly. Strange that she looks so white.

She blows me a kiss and a bubble rolls from her lips. Water tickles the back of my ears. The moth flaps its wings, stirring the air before my face. It floats in space turned topsy-turvy.

I read once that moths seek lights and flames because they navigate by the moon. The moth eclipses the dome light. The car is darkened. The moth disappears but the darkness remains. I can't see Ginny anymore. The water in my eyelids is too cold to be tears.

I'm angry for a moment, and seek someone to blame, but this too soon dies. An old song plays on the radio, or maybe it's Ginny singing in the back seat. It is the song we had danced to, or maybe it's not. I can't remember. I try to laugh, but something blocks my throat.

The car dives backwards into the darkness of the lake. I open my mouth and a glorious moth flies from my lips, seeking the moon.

Netflix "Brick" Pic Clicks-

When I lived in Prescott, I was spoiled by a big-city-quality film buff video store, Show Business Video, upon which I cannot heap enough praise. It was an avenue of exploration for off-beat, independent, foreign and art-house movies that wouldn't even hit the shelves at Blockbuster. Plus, there was a definite feeling of community. Walking into the tiny, hole-in-the-wall shop gave you the sense that you belonged to an elite club. Of all the things I miss about living in Prescott, and there are many, "Randy's" is easily in the top 5.

There may or may not be a place like that here in Flag. I kinda doubt it, but I have not expended the time or energy to find out. Instead, I went the lazy man's route.

Ah, Netflix.

It's sooo easy, and so very addictive. With it's click-of-the-mouse browsing and inscrutable and labrynthine "recommendations" programming, I have built up a movie queue which will take me approximately the rest of my life to slog through. Maybe longer. Do they have Netflix in the afterlife?

Recently, I was forced to endure a cold-turkey period of a couple weeks; exiled due to a maxed-out credit card. As it happens, the first movie I saw post-ex-communication turned out to be worth the wait.

"Brick" is a rare cross-pollination which actually does justice to both of its genre parents. It's both the best high school movie I've seen since "Heathers" and the best exercise in neo-noir since . . . Hell, I don't know. "Memento," I guess. Like "Veronica Mars" meets Sam Spade, only much deeper and richer than that facile pitch makes it sound. This infernal mash-up could easily have been played for laughs, but "Brick" is totally straight.

The dialogue is priceless. Contemporary teen slang, hard-boiled 40's style. At first this is a bit disorienting, but it works much like "A Clockwork Orange." At first you don't understand what the hell anyone is saying, but once you catch on to the context, you have completely bought into the stylistic world the movie has created. This also leads to exchanges worthy of Bogart, like in the scene where the hero, Brandon (played with fitting intensity by Joseph Gordon-Levitt,) is pumped for information by the school's vice-principal:

VP: You've helped out this office before.

Brandon: No, I gave you Jerr to see him eaten, not to see you fed.

Some interesting chords are struck with "The Pin," the local drug lord, who is actually a "really old, like 26" goth geek who lives in his Mom's basement. This scenario is a source of comedy, as the mother (the only parental character in the entire movie) wanders into a tense scene prattling about the superiority of "country-style" orange juice. In another scene, though, "The Pin" wistfully evokes Tolkien, giving the character an unexpected human dimension.

So, tight plot: Following an alarming and cryptic phone call, Brandon explores the downward spiral of his ex-girlfriend, Emily who soon becomes his ex-ex-girlfriend when she turns up dead. Obsessively, doggedly pursuing the truth, despite having the crap kicked out of him half a dozen times, Brandon eventually finds out who killed Emily. Then, in a particularly noir-ish twist, he keeps going, not resting until he finds out why and how and who's behind the killer, as if the unraveling has become his sole purpose in living.

Solid acting all the way around: Joseph Gordon-Levitt looks like the kind of kid who would get all kinds of wedgies in gym class, but plays the lead with all the intensity of Fred MacMurray in "Double Indemnity." Likewise, Nora Zehetner channels Barbara Stanwyck as the requisite femme fatale. Lukas Haas gives "The Pin" all kinds of weird edges and Emile de Ravin (Claire on "Lost") is very convincing as the "lost little girl." The supporting cast is excellent, too. Matt O'Leary makes "The Brain," a Rubick's Cube-solving font of exposition, actually plausible. Noah Fleiss is a sympathetic goon. Meagan Good is deliciously bad as the Queen Bitch of the Drama Nerds. Plus, Richard Roundtree, "Shaft" himself, plays a bad-mutha of a Vice Principal. (Practically the only notable adult role.)

And style, style, style: I especially dug the fight scene lit by the spinning mirror. This is the first film from writer/ director Rian Johnson, but it won't be the last. Bonus points, also, for using "Sister Ray" by the Velvet Underground over the closing credits. The best end-title musical choice since "Where is My Mind?" by the Pixies in "Fight Club."

Check it out. You know I would never lie about anything as important as a film review. When have I ever steered you wrong?

Howlin' with the Coyotes: A History

One of the most fun, exciting and rewarding aspects of my creative life has been my involvement with Coyote Radio Theater. CRT is an utterly unique Prescott, Arizona radio comedy troupe which performs mostly original material. It is the brainchild and labor of love of my good friend Andrew Johnson-Schmit, a mere part of his master plan to create a community radio station (and a radio community) in Prescott. Andrew's vision, dedication and uncanny ability to energize people is nothing short of phenomenal.

I became involved in Coyote in October of 1999, when the project was in its infancy. (I still call myself a founding member, though I was not there at the very beginning. I hope my secret is never revealed.) By a chance meeting, I ran into Andrew and his wife Angie (also a vital cog in the Coyote machine.) We'd been good friends in Chicago, and they had actually lived with me for a time in Prescott, but at that point we hadn't spoken in over a year. I won't go into the reasons why, except to say it had everything to do with my psychotic ex-girlfriend.

I was delighted to be reunited. That was a very strange period in my life. I was living by myself in a tiny studio apartment, walking to work at a blueprint shop, freshly released from a 10-year relationship of staggering dysfunction. I felt like a man on parole, unsure of what to do with this strange new thing called freedom. I had little human contact outside of work and a shaky "post" friendship with my ex, so it was wonderful to talk to stimulating people I genuinely liked.

We caught up over coffee. Andrew talked about Coyote, his latest and greatest creation, and invited me to come check it out. He was writing all the material at that point, and sort of wondered aloud if I'd be interested in contributing as well. Andrew had read some of my writing, though at that point it was all in-your-face sexual horror stuff so I'm not sure why he thought I had potential as a comedy writer.

I'll never forget the first rehearsal I attended in their smoky cabin up in Prescott's Ponderosa forest. I had thought I was just going to be a writer, but Andrew handed me a script titled "Kyla Jackson: Temp Spy" and told me that I would be playing the part of "The Lash." Panic-stricken, I affected a voice somewhere between Peter Lorre and Boris Badenov. In that moment of terror, I became a permanent Coyote voice actor and invented my signature character. I picture The Lash in my mind as a tiny man in black cape and tights, with a disquietingly large codpiece. Broo-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Desperate to impress, I went home that night and started work on the first Coyote sketch I would write myself. "Night of the Squirrel" was an apocalyptic horror story about rodents bent on world domination, only to be foiled by the hypnotic power of the Don Knotts episode of "Biography." The sketch turned out way better than I could have hoped, still ranks as one of my favorite pieces, and from then on I was "made." Andrew and I wrote the material more or less 50/50 from there on.

We had our first public performance at the late, great Prescott bookstore Satisfied Mind. The audience was small but enthusiastic, and I'm sure had no idea they were witnessing history in the making.

From there it just grew and grew and grew (minus the occasional misstep like the show in the health food deli where the performers outnumbered the audience.)

In November 2000, Coyote had its first annual Day of the Dead Dinner Show, an event which has gone on to become a community institution.

After that, fearing the dreaded label of "respectability," we did a few uncensored shows, allowing us to get all those pent-up bestiality and vibrator jokes out of our system.

For a while, we were even actually on the radio, with a live monthly broadcast of all-new material. A whole thirty days to conceive, write, rehearse and revise an hour of comedy? Oh, the luxury of time! No. Actually, it was quite, quite draining. The show lasted about six months, but was an amazing experience all around.

At some point during the broadcasts, Andrew and I began to automatically "swap" first drafts for the other person to revise. Up to that point, we'd only truly collaborated on one piece, the dueling bi-partisan psychic classic "The Future's Not What it Used to Be." I'm not sure why it took us so long to figure this out, but we finally realized how much each of us could improve the writing of the other.

The partnership has been, for me, very rewarding. Andrew and I have different styles, methods and sensibilities when it comes to writing comedy, but we "mesh" remarkably well. Much of this comes from the fact that we know, trust and respect each other immensely. Equally important, neither of us is afraid to tell the other when something just does not work.

Writing for radio (entirely for the ear) presents some unique challenges. Stephen King, in the introduction to his short story collection "Everything's Eventual," spoke of his own failure to write a radio play and went so far as to call radio scriptwriting a "lost art."

Amateur.

Andrew and I, rather than imitating old-time radio, have instead set out to create something entirely new. That's not to say we completely ignore the past. I haven't listened to very much OTR, but Andrew has. He takes what he needs, cribbing from the masters. I, in turn, crib from him. Then he cribs back from me, and somewhere in there a new form is created. You might call us Raiders of the Lost Art.

(Pause for laughter.)

Seriously, the first (and hardest) rule we learned was that nothing makes a script feel dead like excessive wordiness. Writers love words, that's why we write, and so it's often difficult to pare back the language to its barest essence. Rule #2: narration is a crutch. Not that "voice-overs" are forbidden, but you should always strive to make it feel organic. Above and beyond the other two rules is this: make it funny. And the difference between funny and flat is often just a word or two.

Of course, the collaboration does not end with the two of us. You don't really "hear" a piece until the actors read it. Lines which made you laugh to yourself as you typed them sometimes fall flat when read out loud. Sometimes you get lucky and it works the other way, too. A line you struggled with suddenly comes alive from the actor's reading. In any case, there's always at least one more round of rewrites after the first rehearsal.

I should stop to praise the actors; we've been blessed with some very talented vocal performers. Angie, in addition to her role as Coyote Quality Control, is also an effective and versatile actress. Pam Martin has a great range, which we've exploited mercilessly, and is also a pretty decent writer herself. Greg Fine adds a fine gloss of professionalism, plus a willingness to go into whatever weird gonzo territory we can come up with. (I especially like writing female parts for him to play, as well as gay monkeys.) Then there's me. As an actor, I make a pretty decent scriptwriter. Of course, I do have the advantage of writing myself parts tailored to my limited range.

Then, after the rehearsals (it never feels like we've rehearsed enough) comes the ultimate: in front of a live audience, with sound effects and music. When it all comes together, there's nothing like it.

Right now we're gearing up to write material for the 7th Annual (7? Good grief!) Day of the Dead Show. Andrew and I are still in the exhilarating "brainstorm" mode where all things are possible. This will soon be replaced by the not-as-exhilarating "practical considerations" stage. ("What do you mean nobody in the cast can do a convincing Samuel Jackson impression?") Then the real work begins.

Here are a few of my favorite Coyote scripts (in no particular order:)

"Dead Man Laughing" First performed at the 4th Annual DotD Show. A comedy-western-horror story set in old Crest Top, AZ. (Crest Top, an anagram for Prescott, has become to Coyote what Springfield is to "The Simpsons.") Our only award-winning script to date.

"Kyla Jackson: Temp Spy" Andrew's delightfully non-linear spy spoof series, in which I get the great honor of playing the happily evil villain, The Lash.

"Frederick Undertakes Censorship for the King" My first uncensored piece (check the acronym in the title) about the definition of obscenity in the small, war- and radio-obsessed kingdom of Nuthertucker. Contains Coyote's only instance (so far) of sexual relations with a horse.

"Bad Day to Be Jesus." If Andrew is the Paul in our Lennon/McCartney partnership, this is his "Helter Skelter." "Anybody who does not want to be crucified today, raise your hand." That's it, he's going to hell. (PS- Just because Andrew is dressed in white and barefoot in the cover of our "Montezuma Road" album does NOT mean he's dead.)

"Se7en Deadly Castaways." A mash-up of "Gilligan's Island" and that David Fincher serial killer movie, which fit together with surprising ease.

"Mystery at the Circus Schmircus." Our first long-form script, complete with a well-populated sideshow tent, a courtroom scene featuring a rhyming clown, and a commercial for "Tootie Fruits," the candy which makes your burps taste fruity.

"Video Killed the Rodeo Star." A rare case of "too many cooks in the kitchen" actually turning out a decent script. Four writers worked on the first draft (one of whom was fired soon after,) then Andrew & I whittled it down to a workable size. Imagine our dismay when we brought it into rehearsal only to learn there was a serious lack of female voice parts. Another draft with several cowboys becoming cowgirls, and we had a top-notch Crest Top episode.

"Night of the Squirrel." I still have a soft spot for this one. Milton Squirrel later went on to hawk Zippity Pea-Bu, the caffeinated peanut butter. "It's pea-nutty-riffic!"

"Porn in the USA." My favorite unperformed sketch. In the wake of 9/11, the adult entertainment industry does their patriotic duty. Oddly, the female cast members balked at playing porn stars.

Lost Tales: "A Love Story from Hell."

I am a complete pack-rat when it comes to my old writing. I hate to throw anything out, even if it is unmistakably garbage. I have, in my voluminous files, several stories written when I was in high school, and sometimes enjoy hauling them out and reading them over. Through the eyes of a (more or less) stabilized 35-year old, the writing of the troubled teen he once was brings both a nostalgic smile and a kind of sadness.

The teen-aged Christian H. Smith (at the time, I believed the middle initial made me sound more distinguished,) while certainly not very polished craft-wise, was at the very least quite unaffected. Even at that age, I was striving to find my own voice, and in fact attempting to create my own genre. The old stories were, if nothing else, completely original. Of course, originality does not equal quality.

I was very into "shock" value, pushing the buttons of my readers, poking taboos in a very confrontational way. Some things never change, right? Well, I hope that as I've grown older, I've not necessarily mellowed, but have learned to challenge my audience in more subtle ways. Attacking them with slow-acting psychoactive poisons, say, instead of with a sledgehammer.

One of the old stories which has been lost in the mists of time is "A Love Story From Hell," which was written in my Senior year in High School. "LSFH" is the story of a mild-mannered young man with the unlikely name of Oliver Crum. He attends the funeral of an aunt (named Mimi) he barely knew. Here he meets and falls instantly in love with a beautiful and mysterious young woman named Cassandra Jones. They go home together. Mind-blowing sex (described by a then-virginal author) ensues.

A few weeks later, desperately in love, poor Oliver is ready to pop the question. He has even has the ring. During a romantic hot-tub evening (after an impromptu bout of underwear-swapping,) the question is on his lips. Cassandra bids him to wait. She has something to tell Oliver which may change his mind. The secret of why she was at the funeral, and how she had known Oliver's aunt. Mimi and Cassandra had been . . . lovers.

Oliver is a bit shocked, but this does not change his feelings towards Cassandra. Not in the least. Cassandra is relieved. Oliver: "Will you . . ." Cassandra: "Wait. One more thing." Then comes the "from Hell" part. Cassandra goes into the next room and returns with the corpse of Aunt Mimi, stuffed and preserved, Mama Bates style.

"Now the three of us can be together forever!"

Oliver screams until he passes out. His cries prompt the neighbors to call the cops, and the next thing Oliver knows he's on CNN. He's exonerated of any wrongdoing, but Cassandra is institutionalized. In the final scene, he visits her in the hospital and finally proposes. Love has won out over all obstacles. I believe I even used the line: "Sure, she was a bisexual necrophiliac, but nobody's perfect."

I listened to the Sugarcube's great first album, "Life's Too Good" repeatedly while writing the story, especially the song "Fucking in Rhythm and Sorrow," and attempted to reflect the band's unique lyrical style in my prose. Like if it was translated from Icelandic and spoken by a vocally-eccentric moon-faced pixie who would later go on to a more successful solo career.

Now, did I mention that this was written for a high school Creative Writing class? The teacher, Mr. Bill Myers, was a fantastic guy. The first teacher to support me in my creativity rather than trying to suppress it. Still, I think I might have driven him towards alcoholism and/or premature baldness, with my insistence on turning out these twisted little sex & horror comedies. This one definitely did NOT make it into the student literary journal.

In later years, "Love Story" went through several revisions and translations. It was actually the very first story I ever submitted to a magazine (I don't even remember which one) and, consequently, my first rejection. I do remember that the rejection letter, in their perfunctory positive statement, said that I had some "nice imagery," but that the story was overall too long and did not fit their needs at this time, thank you very much.

At some point I attempted adapting it into a short film script and even a radio script for Coyote Radio Theater. Neither was produced. Now, I can't find either a hard or an electronic version of any incarnation of "Love Story." It's just gone. Exists only in my memory, in the fond haze of which I'm sure the story is better than it ever was in the hard light of day. So, I guess that's where it belongs.

Sometimes lost tales are better lost. Still, that does not stop one from missing them like estranged children who have drifted off to God knows where.

INFLUENCES #2- Franz Kafka.

My favorite author of all time. Debating Kafka is a favorite topic among literature critics and academics. His work is so strange, so ambiguous, that any number of meanings can be read into it. Was he a modernist or a post-modernist? An existentialist, a surrealist or a pioneering writer of magic realism? A Marxist or an anarchist? I don't know. Frankly, discussions like that make my eyes glaze over. Blame it on my lack of education, but I typically don't dissect what I read in an intellectual way. I respond, emotionally and viscerally. And Kafka kreeps me out. I read Kafka for the same reason I read Stephen King: for the chills.

Everybody knows the one about the man who wakes up one morning to find that he has been inexplicably transformed into a giant cockroach. ("The Metamorphosis") And the one about the man who must defend himself in an absurd trial where he's not even told what he's been accused of. ("The Trial") But how about the one about the executioner proudly demonstrating the tool of his trade: a machine which inscribes the condemned man's crime into his flesh with needles, deeper and deeper until he is completely eviscerated? ("In the Penal Colony") Or the one about the sideshow performer whose entire act consists of slowly starving to death before a disinterested audience, and who finally grows so thin that he is simply lost in the straw in the bottom of his cage, forgotten about and replaced by a performing panther? ("The Hunger Artist") Or, even kreepier, the one about the unidentified burrowing creature fretting about his labyrinth while tormented by a mysterious whistling noise? ("The Burrow") These are nightmares, placed unfiltered on the page.

Franz Kafka was sickly for most of his life, living in the shadow of a vital and domineering father, stuck in a series of Civil Service jobs which he despised, plagued by failed romances, unrecognized and barely published in his lifetime. He died of tuberculosis just a few years before the rest of his family was killed by the Nazis. In his will, he stipulated that all his unpublished works be destroyed. His good friend and executor Max Brod defied Kafka's dying wish and edited and published his voluminous body of writing. God bless him for betraying his dead friend's trust.

The novels were unfinished, but with Kafka this actually works to their benefit. In "Amerika" and "The Trial," the missing chapters and out-0f-whack chronology only add to the dream-like effect of confusion. (I have yet to read "The Castle.")

My favorite Kafka work is the novel "Amerika," (Kafka's original title was "The Man Who Disappeared," but I like "Amerika" better) mainly because it is the most light-hearted and funny of his writings, and also because it presents a wonderfully distorted view of my home country. Kafka never visited America, the nation presented in the novel is wholly a product of his imagination. This is evident from page 1, when the young immigrant Karl pulls into New York harbor and thrills to the sight of the Statue of Liberty, who holds not a torch but a sword. Exiled by his parents for impregnating a chambermaid, young Karl is at first taken under the wing of a rich uncle, but after a typically Kafkaesque transgression, is left to his own devices. What follows is a series of absurdist episodes, Karl trying to make his way in the strange country, plagued by low-life traveling companions, rejected at every turn. Finally, he finds acceptance in the surreal "Nature Theater of Oklahoma," which is reads like the afterlife as the largest, strangest WPA project imaginable.

I actually attempted to adapt "Amerika" into a screenplay, more as an exercise than anything else. I played up the Monty Python-esque humor and expanded upon Kafka's anachronisms and distortions of place. Plus, I added a lot of my own touches, which I'm sure would infuriate literary purists everywhere. The script is unfinished and will never be made into a film, but was still loads of fun to write. Plus, if you want to really understand a book, I can't think of a better way to do so than to attempt an adaptation. (Still, this is yet another case where the book is definitely better.)

So next time you want a good, scary read, forget the King or the Barker. Grab a Kafka. I promise you'll want to sleep with the lights on.

The age-old argument: What's worse, a slut or a whore?

Before you get all up in arms about my rabid misogyny, I'd like to clarify that a bit. I'm referring to myself, and in an entirely literary way.

Here's the story: A few years back, a good friend of mine recommended that I check out www.literotica.com where amateur writers can post erotic stories. I wasn't that floored by what I found, (I was shocked SHOCKED! to find that much of it was really, truly awful) but I was intrigued by the thought of putting some of my own stuff up there.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with pornography and erotica, mostly because I've never found anything which I've really liked. I love sex, of course. In fact, I think sex is widely underrated. (Ha ha.) Sex is beautiful but porn, for the most part, is really ugly. Worse yet, it's generic. People say it's degrading to women, but I would submit that it's more degrading to men. Reducing male sexuality to an unaesthetic and depressingly repetitive commodity is really an insult. Male sexuality is every bit as complex and intriguing as female sexuality, but you wouldn't know it by watching or reading pornography. Big boobs, shaved pubes, the conquest of a sexually voracious female, 3 different types of penetration rotated for meager variety, "cum shot," rinse, lather, repeat. Boring.

Then there’s the genre called "erotica." Better, but I’ve still had a hard time finding erotica which does what I believe it’s supposed to do. That is, turn me on. Sometimes the very "artistic" nature of the piece serves to distance me from the sexual charge it should carry. Sometimes erotica over-compensates for the sins of pornography by being too staid, too implicit. And then sometimes, what passes for erotica is just "porno-lite," the same hoary cliches dressed up and toned down.

When it comes down to it, any distinction between the two is arbitrary at best. "I know it when I see it" is the famous non-definition of what constitutes porn. Assuming the nom de porn "Christian Black," I set out to create something in between. Call it "erotic pornography."

My first attempt was a story called "Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead," about a bisexual woman who has a fling with her step-father at her mother's funeral. I thought it turned out fairly well. It was a decent mix of dark humor, pathos and, you know, an explicit blow job scene.

I posted it on the site and the response was short of overwhelming. For one thing, the site administrators in their infinite wisdom placed the story in their disturbingly popular "incest" category. (But they weren't BLOOD relations!) For another, there is a little "feedback-o-meter," where readers can rate the story on a scale on a scale of 1-5. "Ding Dong" topped out at a disappointing 3.72.

Still, I was hooked. The Christian Black thing is gratifying in many ways. For one thing, writing pure sex is a lot of fun. Second, I actually have an audience. Some of the more popular stories have more than 50,000 hits. Nothing else I've written can claim to have been seen by that many people. Plus, the comments and feedback are always interesting. Sometimes friendly and helpful, sometimes downright scary, but always interesting. And lastly, the stories that average more than 4.5 from reader-scored feedback get a sexy little 'H' (for 'hot') next to them in the site listings. At last count, I have 11 'H' stories.

So, flash forward a few years. I'd been happily posting my little pieces of smut, never expecting anything to come from it, when out of the blue I got an e-mail from a Canadian publisher asking for permission to reprint a few of the stories in their fine print publications. For previously posted stories, they would pay only in copies, but for any original submission, they'd pay the princely sum of $20. Saying "what the hell," I signed their on-line release form and promptly forgot all about it.

A few months later, I received a proverbial "plain brown wrapper" in the mail. Lea immediately demanded to know when I ordered porn and I was at first as baffled as she was. Then I remembered. Sure enough, in the pages of the quality publications, "Bedtime Stories," "Wicked Fetishes" and "Rough Boys," (don't ask and I won't tell about that last one) I received the rare thrill of seeing my work in print for the first time.

Of course, the thrill was somewhat mitigated by the fact that these were some of the cheapest, bottom-of-the-barrel smut mags I've ever seen in my life. And I've seen my share. Cheap, B/W pulp stock, the stories illustrated by generic, stock image skank-o-rama porn shots (the kind where the models are paid in crystal meth.) But still, kinda cool.

A while after that, I received another e-mail from the publishers, saying that they were now looking for novels. I have a few serialized stories up on Literotica, and they were all set to publish the one entitled "The Education of Lisa." Payment: One Hundred and Fifty Dollars! They didn't even seem to care that the story wasn't finished. In fact, based on comments in their e-mail, I don't think they'd read it at all.

I responded that I'd need a few weeks to edit and complete the novel. That was about five months ago, and I'm just now gearing to finish it. Perhaps you can sense my lack of enthusiasm.

That's where the slut vs. whore argument comes in. I've been slutting around on Literotica for years now, squandering my "talent" on cheap and meaningless, but fun, little flings. Now here's a chance to "go pro." Squandering my talent for pay. Becoming a whore. (And a cheap whore, at that.)

I have considered the fact that people make a living doing this. I'm sure that there are outlets out there which will pay more than $150 for a porno novel, $20 for a porno story. I just don't know if I want to expend the time and energy that could be spent on my "real" writing by pursuing this. But then again, maybe getting a little bit of income from even a dubious source could actually free up time to "really" write. Could pay for day care, just for example.

I go back and forth in my thinking on this almost constantly, but it always comes back to the "slut vs. whore" question. I'm not a producer of cheap porn, dammit. I'm a writer of erotic pornography. I don't want to be ashamed of anything I write, and I think I would be ashamed to see something I've labored over on a rack next to "Splat" magazine.

If you've read this far, and you're still interested, the erotic pornography of Christian Black can be found here:

http://english.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=111531&page=submissions

To save you a little time, these are the good ones:

"Biomechasexual" is probably my favorite story on the site. Pretty decent sci-fi erotica that I feel does justice to both genres. A long-distance space traveller and two perfect sex robots. If science is not working towards the development of the perfect sex robot, I ask you what the hell good is it anyway? http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=109318

"Third Person" is an erotic horror novel which I started to serialize here, but stopped due to lack of response after the first few chapters. I will finish the novel someday, just not here. The first chapter contains some of the best "erotic pornography" I have yet to write, and Chapter 3 contains a (hopefully) better-than-Shyamalan plot twist. http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=47815

The "Cassandra" and "Emma" cycles are both pretty good, featuring recurring female characters. Cassandra is the archetypical "crazy chick" psycho ex-girlfriend. You know, where the sex is great but you're afraid of waking up in the middle of the night to find yourself Bobbit-ized. http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=54269 Emma was the star of "Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead," http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=47328 and she has developed into a very sexually aggressive, dominating she-wolf with a gayboy fixation.

The "Four-Play" series is like the "Rashomon" of bisexual porn. A four-way orgy told from four different points of view. http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=48835

"The Strange Case of the Quigley Twins" http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=204813 and "Pyro" http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=210662 are "straight" stories with some sexual content, posted here just so someone will actually read them.

'The Education of Lisa" series, my soon-to-be novelistic debut, is wildly uneven (an attempt to write each chapter in a separate category.) Chapter 5, the "Erotic Horror" installment is the best one. http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=49947

"Awakening Amelia's Malomar" is straight-ahead porn, with a little twist of humor. http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=104209

"A Philosophy of Porn" is an essay which contains many of the points I've already made here.

Have fun.