The last week or two have been very difficult for me. I’ve been fighting off a pretty nasty bout of depression, and feelings of lethargy and frustration had been vying for my attention. I think I’m emerging from the other end of it, though, and taking steps towards a better future. This is improvement, even if it’s minuscule, and I’ll take it.
Cold Streets is close to finished, and I want to bear down and push through to the end of the draft. For weeks I’ve been saying I need to line up test readers. Well, to give myself a deadline, here’s what I’m gong to do.
The first draft of Cold Streets will be finished by August 27. By then, I will like to get at least half a dozen test readers to look it over after that. If you want to be one of them, drop me a comment here, email me, or reach out to me via any of the social media outlets I use. I’ll send you an invite to the Google Document once everything is set up. Thank you in advance!
I’m also going to outline Godslayer, get a character bio document together, and do some other world and universe building. If I’m going to do this epic novel thing, I think I just need to go back and rebuild some things from the ground up. I have most of the ideas lined up; I just need to get them on paper.
After an unfortunate false start last night, I re-rolled for Chuck’s flash fiction challenge “Another Roll of the Dice“. The new rolls gave me the “Grindhouse” genre, with the elements “a troublesome dog” and “a hidden compartment”.
The road stretched out into the inky darkness, pierced only by the headlights of the purring 1960 DeSoto Adventurer plunging into it. Deke knew he had to get out of town, and fast, before the law came down hard on him. It didn’t matter that the bullets they took out of the poor guy were all silver; they’d see it as murder, not the supernatural pest control that it was. Still, a wife (well, widow now) and kids were safe, as was their town, and they’d never have to fear a full moon again.
Zeke perked up from his place in the passenger seat, looking out the window. Deke put his foot on the brake, just a little.
“What is it, boy?”
Zeke’s tail thumped the leather seat, and he began to pant. He was excited by something. Long years on the road had taught Deke to trust the bull terrier’s instincts, and he pulled into the saloon parking lot. The Adventurer rattled to a stop, and Deke stepped out, followed quickly by the dog. Deke looked down at Zeke, his hands on his hips.
“Can I count on you to stay on the porch?”
Zeke cocked his head to one side.
“Yeah… I thought so. Just don’t be a menace, okay? Be nice.”
Zeke responded with a short, upbeat bark.
Inside, the saloon was lit mostly with neon lights. Pool balls clacked on their table in one corner. Deke found an empty table near the back wall and sat where he could see the rest of the saloon. His waitress, tall and curvy with long dark hair, walked up moments later.
“Get you something to drink, sugar?”
“A cold bottle of beer, miss, if you don’t mind.” He put a few bills on the table, and she took them to the bar. Deke had to pull his eyes away from what her hips were doing to focus on the rest of the saloon. His thumbs tapped the buckle of his belt idly, and he took a deep breath.
You’re just keyed up from the werewolf fight. Calm down. It could just be a seedy bar.
He heard the bikes outside moments before the riders entered. Three men, all broad-shouldered under their leather jackets, and a woman walked right up to the bar. Deke’s waitress returned, and he could see her smile was a bit less natural this time.
“What’s your name?”
“Rachel.”
Deke smiled. “That’s a good and lovely name, for a good and lovely lady. Rachel, what can you tell me about the foursome that just walked in?”
Rachel glanced nervously at the bar. “It’s best if you don’t ask.”
Deke leaned forward. “If it’s trouble, I might be able to help.”
Rachel took another glance, then leaned over to whisper to Deke. He tried to ignore how she looked.
“They tore up a lawman who came ’round here a few months ago. All he did was ask about a few missing person cases. Next thing you know…”
She shook, visibly. Deke laid his hand on her wrist, the silver rings on his first and third fingers catching the neon lights.
“Outside there’s a white DeSoto. I want you to go and open the passenger side door, then the glove compartment. Don’t do anything else, and do not get in the car. Do you understand?”
“Not… really.”
He smiled. “It will be all right. Just trust me.”
“Rachel!” The bartender’s bellow was unpleasant. “Flirt on your own time!”
Biting her lip, Rachel nodded at Deke, then dropped off her tray as she said she was taking a break. Deke watched the bikers more closely. The moon was still full, and their arrival was on physical vehicles. That narrowed the possibilities considerably. He finished his beer, stood, and approached the bar to hear what was being said.
“I’m telling you,” the female biker was saying to the bartender, “now that the furball’s gone, there’s nothing to stop us now. His territory’s ours for the taking.”
Deke whispered a quick prayer, then tapped the closest biker on the shoulder. “Pardon me.”
The burly man whirled, clearly ready for a fight. Deke’s fingers flicked the clasp of the hidden compartment on his belt, and the vial dropped into his hand. His thumb popped the tiny cork, and a snap of his wrist put the contents in the biker’s face. The hissing was immediate, and the biker fell back, screaming.
“Holy water,” the woman said, looking Deke up and down. He smiled, and he heard Zeke barking outside.
“I had a feeling. You lot always squabble with werewolves over good hunting grounds.”
She lunged for him, and he stepped back, but not far enough to avoid having his shirt clawed open. His silver cross spilled out into the air, and the trio still standing stepped back. Zeke bounded into the bar, grabbing one of the bikers by the ankle in his powerful jaws. Deke grabbed a nearby chair and smashed it against the bar. The one unfettered male biker came at him, fangs out, a deadly undead missile. Years of training and less than favorable scraps put Deke on his back, a shard of wood aiming up. The improvised stake found its target and the biker rolled away, grabbing the wood protruding from his chest.
“Zeke! Fire!”
The dog let go of the ravaged throat of his victim and shot outside. The female hissed, stalking Deke as he stood.
“You won’t leave here alive, holy man.”
“Who said I was alive in the first place?” Deke pulled at the hole in his shirt, showing the scars across his chest. “One of your kind killed me a long time ago. God brought me back to make sure your kind never rules the earth.”
“I’ll send you back to your god right now.”
Zeke returned, a can of lighter fluid in his jaws, his tail wagging. Deke smiled, producing his matches.
“Ma’am, with all due respect, I think you’ll be getting to where you’re going first.”
I really don’t have anything more important to say today than this:
DOMA is dead. Prop 8 was dismissed.
There have been a lot of vocal arguments on both sides of the issue. Equal rights is a matter of logic more than it is a matter of morality. Think about it. If you want a happy populace within your nation-state, those people should have equal representation. There’s also the fact that who individuals live with has literally zero impact on the forward progress of the nation-state. It doesn’t matter if the legislators or judges or executors of the government live alone or with a spouse or who that spouse might be, what matters is the laws they pass, enforce, and uphold. It is not the job of the government to impose a particular line of thought, a moral code, or a flavor of faith onto the individual. Hell, no one individual should try to impose that upon another. To do so is bigotry and ignorance and hate, and if we are going to survive as a species, we need to do better than that.
It comes down to this.
No matter what narrow-minded courts, bigoted legislators, or shouting troglodytes say, nobody can tell you how to feel or who to love.
And if someone does tell you how to feel or how to think or who to love, you tell that person to go straight to hell.
I still feel like I’m behind the 8-ball. I’m still running on less than my usual level of energy, with long days and longer nights racking up against me. It’s going to be a couple months until I’m officially on vacation, so I’ll just scrape together what rest I can until then.
Carving out time for writing remains one of my biggest challenges, and I feel I’m failing a lot more than I’m succeeding. Even this blog entry is coming in the middle of the morning the day it’s going up. That feels wrong, to me. I’m going to try and correct that going forward. Emphasis on ‘try’ of course.
Most of the other things going on are of a personal nature, and I do try to keep that stuff out of this blog. This is a space for fiction, discussions and criticisms of fiction, examinations of its inner workings, and the occasional update on where I am with things. So let’s just leave it there for now, shall we?
In the words of the inimitable Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast.”
I spent equal parts of this past weekend wrapped up in my Internets and staying away from them. I started watching Supernatural with the missus, got some chores done, played some Magic. I played some games, watched more Doctor Who, celebrated the release of The Avengers on Netflix. That last thing gave me more thoughts on superheroes, which I will share later this week. I fit in a little bit of writing, but didn’t get to Chuck’s latest Flash Fiction challenge. I will roll the dice tonight.
And I resolved to write more letters.
I think that writing actual letters is an art we are in danger of losing. It’s far, far too easy to just dash off an email instead. Or launch out a vindictive or pithy tweet. All you need is 140 characters! Fit in some swear words! Hashtag something relevant! Retweet! Reblog! Go, go, go!
Writing a letter forces you to slow the hell down.
You have to think about what you’re writing more when you’re writing it by hand. Not only do you want it to be legible, you want it to be coherent and lasting. This is especially true in letters. It can take days or weeks for your words to reach your recipient. The words that you write need to remain relevant for that entire time, if not longer. This takes time and consideration. There is actual art involved with this; don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.
Life moves pretty fast. Sometimes, you just have to flow with it. Others, you need to take a deep breath, get some ink your pen, and start writing one word at a time. It’s the same for letters as it is for anything else we write.
Do other writers out there write letters? Do you still get them? Are “pen pals” still a thing?
