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  • Writing Prompt #15

    As usual, let me remind you that you can share your responses to the prompt either in the comments on this post, or in the comments on my response. If your response to the prompt is too long, let me know in the comments and we’ll get it posted as a regular post!
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    So, I really wanted to wait to give you all this prompt until the videos went up from the TEDxSomerville last weekend, which was pretty incredible, but then I couldn’t wait. You’ll have to settle for visiting this guy’s website instead (on which are several cool videos). Schuyler Towne is a competitive lock-picker. How awesome is that. And no, his talk did not center around picking locks, per se. Instead it focused on the symbolism of locks in society–societies around the world, not just here.

    In America, the general perception is of locks to keep people out. Keep our self and our things safe. But other cultures use engraved locks as a symbol of marriage, uniting two people together; other culture may pierce their skin and secure a lock through it as a symbol of their religious devotion. Still yet other, oppressed, cultures may use their locks as a form of rebellion against their oppressors, finding ways around the state mandated rules to give themselves just that little extra bit of warning that the gestapo is bearing down.

    But what do locks mean to you? What can they mean to your character? Here I am, giving you a symbol, a theme. Now it’s your job to start with this item/idea and create a story around it that is not about it. That is the hardest thing with symbolism in a story–how do you not make it overbearing? Sometimes the unintentional symbols are the strongest because they are subtle yet powerful.

    A teacher of mine (Michael Strelow and his The Greening of Ben Brown) once told me that the river and water metaphor was completely intentional, but when an early reader commented on the wonderful light imagery, he had no idea what they were talking about until he went back to look at it. And let me tell you, it is magnificent.

    So, here I shall stop rambling. Your task is to write something involving locks. Go.

    Really old, rusty lock

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  • Just a Geek

    So, when we started cleaning out our offices at O’Reilly Media, we had an epic ton of books that needed to be disposed of. New hires like myself and our intern set about scrounging in the pile for anything that might possibly strike our fancy and came away with mountains of books, including two by Wil Wheaton. I couldn’t hide my joy when I stumbled across these two personal essay collections by Wil–especially since I had just started rewatching the entire Star Trek The Next Generation from start to finish (while studiously drawing figures for all sorts of geektastic books). For me, the bridge of the Enterprise just isn’t complete without Wesley Crusher on board. And I’ve been loving his appearances on things like The Big Bang Theory and The Guild. So, I decided to sit down and read these memoirish books. I’m sad I’ve only started working with O’Reilly and missed the opportunity to work on these books with him, but just knowing I’m now only two degrees of separation away from Wil Wheaton is pretty dang cool.

    So, the two books are Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot. Just a Geek is a fairly long and comprehensive look at this life and career after ditching the Enterprise and Dancing Barefoot is a small volume of stories that basically wouldn’t fit in the larger volume. I read Just a Geek first, so I guess I’ll start with that one.

    Cover of Just a Geek

    I have to say, I was a bit unprepared for the amount of angst that is in the collection of reminiscence. Wil was deeply and truly unhappy with his decisions around TNG and some of the impact that the show had on his life for a very long time. I thought it would be a career launcher, but apparently Wesley Crusher is what prevented him from getting a lot of jobs later in life. That, and not being “edgy” enough. I found the whole thing to be a fascinating journey from angst and loathing to acceptance and happiness. He’s got a great family, loves writing, and finally loves the cons, too. And yes, he’s as much the uber geek as he claims, and that is truly wonderful.

    I found the writing style to be a bit informal for my taste, but that has a lot to do with the fact that a good portion of the book is pulled from his old blog site and simply cleaned up. It didn’t interfere with the experience of the book, but it was an interesting choice. I feel like the five stories that comprise Dancing Barefoot are more polished and of a more conventional memoir style.

    Cover of Dancing Barefoot

    It was nice seeing these additional stories by Wil, though I’m not sure why they all couldn’t have gotten folded into one collection. I know the response to Dancing Barefoot helped to spur on the idea of becoming a professional writer, so maybe that is it. He just wasn’t ready to create the larger memoir yet.

    The one thing I found interesting was his stance about having patience and tolerance for everyone, especially the fans who have paid to see you, and then he has such a mixed bag of animosity and admiration for one “WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER”. I kid you not, that is how Captain Kirk is referred to throughout the entire memoir. Including the capitalization. It just feels a bit hypocritical, but I can understand the anger he felt when he was dismissed by Shatner the first time they met. But they’d had some decent interaction since then, so…

    Anyway, if you’re a fan of Wil or a fan of TNG, these are definitely a fun read. They give a different perspective on the cons, on the cast and crew, and are a unique behind-the-scenes teenage angst story.

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  • A Perfect Blood

    With vampire and supernatural fiction all the rage right now, I have found the one series I can tolerate in high doses: Kim Harrison‘s Hallows series. In this series, Rachel Morgan is a witch, partnered with a living vampire and a pixie, who is dedicated to bringing the baddies down. It’s quite the fun series, cleverly written with characters who are actually multi-dimensional and worthwhile.

    I’m giving you this brief summary because her newest–A Pure Blood–came out this past month and I finally got around to reading it. Once again, the plot was engaging, the action breathtaking, and I have the urge to scream at Hollywood to make them into movies. The premise of this particular novel (not to give anything away) is that a group akin to the Klu Klux Klan (here called HAPA and against all persons magical) is kidnapping witches and horribly mutating their bodies with a curse. And although her magic is currently stunted, by her own choice, Rachel is blackmailed into helping solve these crimes by the magical version of the FBI.

    It was a roller coaster from beginning to end, though I was saddened by the lack of my favorite character, Al the demon. Of course, Rachel is currently blocking her magic to hide from her mentor, so it makes sense he’s not around much for this story. I still missed him. Though the budding understanding and relationship between Rachel and Trent almost made up for it. I’ve thought from the beginning that they’d make an awesome, if slightly contentious, couple.

    I did, however, have a bit of a jarring entrance into the novel. I have been reading so much high literature lately that coming back to a novel written entirely for a mainstream audience hit a little hard. The amount of adjectives in this book would feed a thesaurus-rex for a month. It didn’t really interfere with my reading, once I got into the writing style again, but it was an interesting realization.

    So, if you’re enamored with the vampire lit phenomena, or just looking for a good supernatural thriller, Harrison’s Hollows series is a better bet than most. Very fun, passably well written, and with a fantastic depth of character and plot that is not often found in the genre.

    Cover of "A Perfect Blood"

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  • Illness Flash

    I’ve put myself in a bit of a bind with this prompt. So, I decided to take a brainstorming tact suggested in a TEDxSomerville talk I saw on stage just this morning. Basically, you ask questions until you can’t think of another and then go back over them. It was an interesting concept and I’ll post a link to the video when it goes up. (I’m also going to talk a lot more about some of the other talks I saw today, later, when their videos are up.)

    But for now, how do you write about something this…pervasive, this well-done in literature? It’s been done in anger, in resignation, in determination. What can be unique about writing about illness and injury? Dealing with the actual instigating event and its oddities like Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff? Or approach a longer lasting event? But the long suffering patient has been done. Particularly those sickly sweet ones like in A Walk To Remember. So just how was I supposed to go about creating a unique illness experience? And what do you know…I just had an idea…
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    Janine shuffled her notecards one more time at her podium before she looked up, the lights making the audience into uncertain shadows at their dinner tables. Small kindnesses she thought, before launching into her speech.

    “It began when I was in 8th grade. I was stupid at a scouting camporee and ended up throwing myself into shock. But from that day forward, nothing seemed to work right in my body. I became hypoglycemic, started having some serious anxiety issues which developed into what we thought were panic attacks, I developed an allergy to dairy, and then my heart started to do funny things–racing, fluttering, doing a fancy gig at unexpected moments.”

    She felt like it might do it again now, though she knew it wouldn’t. It never would again. It had been carefully neutered, tamed. It behaved marvelously, even keeping itself at a steady 120 beats per minute on her run that morning. It was just the nerves of being in front of all these people that made her feel like her body might start misbehaving again.

    “Misbehavior, that’s what I called it. And it was getting in the way. I was in med school now, getting my MD in cardiology. I had no time for anything beyond class and had driven my body to it’s outermost limits of stress and poor health habits. They don’t tell you when you start an MD that you have to destroy your body to finish it, which is a bit ironic. The day after I turned in my final papers, I ended up in the hospital.”

    Her heart twinged, but it was simply echoing the pain and spasms of that time, 10 years ago. Janine suppressed an urge to take her own pulse, the old habit of rudimentary biofeedback as a coping technique brought back by the tension she felt addressing such a distinguished audience.

    “They told me that my heart was going to need to be replaced, that it had somehow gotten damaged and that half the nodes were dead already. They wanted to put in a pacemaker and put me on a doner list in the meantime. I said yes to the pacemaker but I knew I was going to be at the very bottom of the transplant list, but that was okay with me. I was going to fix this before the ever got anywhere near me on that list.”

    At this point, Janine looked to her left, at her partner in crime sitting at the head table. She remembered approaching the stem cell researcher with an absurd idea that had come to her as she read his research 15 years ago. It had taken her five years to screw up her courage to talk to him, but this was the last straw. Sometimes it just took being more afraid of something else. He had at first laughed, but sobered quickly, then started asking questions and taking notes.

    “I approached Dr. Mathias about a possible solution. I was not a stem cell researcher, so I didn’t know if it would be at all feasible. All I knew is I wanted to be fixed, and fixed now. And we did it. Together we created a cure for ailing organs, a way to regenerate them as good as new within their own body. Five injections into the organ, that’s all it takes.” She thumped herself on the chest for emphasis. “And it’s as though there never was a problem. It’s been five years since Dr. Mathias injected my heart with our special concoction. And, frankly, finally being able to live healthy means a little more than this nice medallion, though I must say, the thought is quite appreciated.”

    The room laughed, Janine thanked them once again for the honor, and then sat down beside Dr. Mathias. “Next time we win the Nobel Prize, you’re doing the talking.”

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  • Writing Prompt #14

    As usual, let me remind you that you can share your responses to the prompt either in the comments on this post, or in the comments on my response. If your response to the prompt is too long, let me know in the comments and we’ll get it posted as a regular post!
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    So, here’s a topic that’s at the forefront of my mind and is very difficult to talk about: illness. Be it injury or a sickness that has taken hold, the language surrounding being unwell is tired and trite. How do you make a character’s physical suffering unique and compelling? Now go be cruel to an imaginary person and give them boils or something.

    Biohazard sign

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  • Visible Spirits

    Since I only had one other person join me on Leap Day, you don’t get to see any new material for the next novel…yet. Instead, you get to learn about this wonderful novel by my mentor, Steve Yarbrough. Visible Spirits is an incredible racial adventure set in the south in 1902. It follows several families in a small town and the uproar one white man instigates over a black postmistress.

    First of all, this is an incredibly gripping story. I had trouble putting it down at any point because I just wanted to know what was going to happen next. You could feel the tension rise so palpably, and you cringed every time Tandy did something to deliberately raise the racial tensions in the town. This book really engages its audience and sucks them in. It isn’t alienating, like quite a few novels I have read that feature the racial tensions in the south; instead, it readily welcomes the audience in to the town and makes them part of the drama.

    And, of course, the writing itself is quite excellent. I love the way Yarbrough writes because it is so simple and clean that the writing fades back and leaves an vibrant community, history, and story front and center. It allows for full immersion into an incredibly detailed world.

    If you’re looking for a novel that feels truly authentic to the time and place, Visible Spirits is a good bet. Between the griping plot and the clean writing, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read. And, as with others of Yarbrough’s work, the climax was inevitable, yet surprising none-the-less, which is probably my favorite aspect of his work.

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  • Happy Leap Day!

    It is Leap Day, folks, a time that only comes around once every four years. For some people it’s just a regular day, except that they forget it’s not March yet. For others, it’s a celebration of Leap Day Williams (and yes, I will be wearing blue and yellow).

    Now, given that this is a somewhat unique occurance, take this extra day in your life and do something unexpected. Something new. Do an experiment, enrich your life. Involve your friends. Something been on your list for a long time that you wanted to try or get done? Do it. Put yourself out there and finally query an agency or schedule a gig. This is an EXTRA DAY folks, and you get them every four years. Live it to its fullest. And share it with us below!

    Me? I think I’m going to start my next novel. If I get enough people sharing their Leap Day experiment, I’ll post the first writing from my next novel here on Friday.

    And if you think this is lame, or you’re just too lazy, remember, Leap Day Williams is watching you…

    Leap Day Williams from 30 Rock

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  • Superstition Flash

    Hope all of you had a fabulous Monday. Here’s a bit of fiction to finish your night with…

    Gina loved the number 13. She’d pause on the 13th step in a stairwell, gleefully punch the 13th floor in an elevator that actually had one–regardless of whether she had to go to that floor or not–and when she turned 13 she convinced her mother to throw the biggest party and invited most of the school. Maybe it was because she was by nature a contrary person and liked to love things other people hated or feared. She wanted to feel like she was breaking some boundary, some taboo, but in a rather safe and tame way. The number 13 qualified.

    So many people feared it. Friggatriskaidekaphobia being the name of the fear of friday the 13th. They left 13 out of floor directories, off team jerseys, blamed their misfortune on being the 13th to audition. But that had never been the case for her. She tried to schedule interviews on the 13th, and all the better if it was a Friday. She thought it was lucky.

    Then number 13 was present in most of her artwork as well. 13 figures, chairs, columns, flowers…her art installations and sculptures all had some aspect meeting the number 13. And it had started to sell really well. Nobody had seemed to pick up on her numerical theme, but that may be because in some of the pieces the tribute was more subtle; in her post-modern recreation of the last supper, it is only natural to have 13 people. It was unremarkable.

    But this–this was going to be her greatest piece. She had been commissioned by her old high school to create the chandelier for their new performance arts center and by god, she was going to do it justice. 13 tiers of glass icicles, hand blown, interwoven with galvanized steel as delicate as lace-work. It stood a story tall in its own right and the glass and steel distorted the 169 blue-white LEDs at its core. The whole thing looked like it could melt to pieces at any moment.

    She had scheduled the installation for Friday the 13th in April, just a few days after the construction was completed on the building, but she had completed the project months ahead of schedule, thanks to the inspiration and a manic episode after Christmas. (She blamed her mother’s cookies; there had to be crack in them.) And now all she had to do was wait for the install date while working on her other projects.

    While the box sat in a corner, waiting for its glorious reveal, she adopted a black cat and watched him prance across her driveway, repeatedly ducked under her brother’s ladder when he came to help fix a broken gutter, and smashed a mirror for use in her next installment piece.

    But when the salt shaker spilled the evening before the chandelier was supposed to go up, she threw a pinch of the spilled salt over her left shoulder. It really wasn’t worth it to tempt fate like that.

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  • Writing Prompt #13

    As usual, let me remind you that you can share your responses to the prompt either in the comments on this post, or in the comments on my response. If your response to the prompt is too long, let me know in the comments and we’ll get it posted as a regular post!
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    Since this is writing prompt #13, it only seems appropriate to dedicate this one to superstitions. Have a character with an unreasonable superstition? Have a superstition save their life? Let’s hear it for black cats, broken mirrors, and pinches of salt thrown over the left shoulder!

    Black cat under a ladder

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  • Genius Flash

    Terribly sorry for the delay on this, but I had a wicked case of food poisoning over the weekend and am only now really feeling alive again. Thank goodness for scheduled posts or you wouldn’t have gotten a prompt either!
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    The department head had warned her that she was going to have a non-trad student in her class, which usually meant that there was some older person who was coming back to school to finally get their BA or get another one. They typically did their work without complaint and were generally more enjoyable to have in class than the kids fresh out of high school. They had some life experience under their belt and understood what kind of work was needed to get the most out of their college experiences.

    At a minute to the bell, it looked like all of her students had arrived, though none of them looked a day over 18. She rather hated these 8am Intro to Literature courses, but every professor was required to teach at least one a semester and she’d rather get hers out of the way early in the day.

    As she called the role, she noticed a younger looking woman who sat a bit more eagerly on the edge of her chair than the rest, and actually looked awake. Most of the other students were in some sort of pajamas, but this girl had actually taken the time to put on street clothes and do her hair.

    As the professor started running through her usual litany of first class requirements and syllabi, she kept looking back at the girl who had immediately read through the entire handout and then sat there fidgeting. She had pulled out a notebook and was jotting down notes, but the older woman did not think they were about anything she was talking about, they included somewhat complicated looking diagrams and notations.

    “Alright, unless there are any questions, I think that about wraps it up for the first class. I want you to read the first 100 pages of Flaubert before the next class.” When she heard a few groans, she propped her hands on her hips. “What? You have a whole extra half hour right now ’cause I’m letting you go early. The bookstore is open, go get it and get reading!”

    The students straggled out of the room, except for the perky young girl, who, when she stood, looked even younger. She came up to the professor and looped her bag over one shoulder. “I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Shirley, the non-trad.”

    “Shirley, yes.” The professor kept packing up her books and files while they talked. “You don’t look like my normal non-trad. They usually have grey hair.”

    “Well, I’m non-traditional in the other direction. I’m only 15.”

    “That is certainly impressive.” The older woman glanced at her watch and inwardly groaned. Another home-schooled brat who thought she was better and smarter than the rest of the world.

    The girl made a face. “I wanted to come two years ago, but no schools would let me in that young. My parents were fine with it.”

    “Yes. I can see how that age might make it difficult.”

    “But my advisors at the prep school got me into some community college courses so I could start exploring what I wanted to work in and so I spent the last two years determining I don’t want to work in math or science or any of that crap. I want to work in literature, I want to write.”

    The professor was a little bit more intrigued now. The girl had some experience and hadn’t been coddled by her parents through the entrance exams after all. “Any particular reason why?”

    “This is where you can really get into what humanity is. Psychology is all well and good, and I plan to double major in it, just for a solid foundation, but literature is where you can really express and explore the entire breadth of humanity. It’s exhilarating.”

    “Yes, yes it is that. Well, the place to start is with that Flaubert reading.”

    “Oh, I read him ages ago. Actually, I was hoping you might recommend a list of books I might read? Outside of class mind. I think I’ve already read the ones on the syllabus and  I’m really looking forward to the discussions about them; my parents, love ’em, didn’t know anything about anything really.”

    “You’ve read the entire syllabus already? What about classics like War and Peace, Crime and Punishment?”

    “Yes, and in the original Russian.”

    The professor was genuinely intrigued. This young girl really got what literature was about and for and was presenting her with a challenge. What to recommend to a young woman who had read everything. The next class started to trickle in and the professor turned to her student.

    “How about this. Come with me back to my office and we’ll see if there’s something there you haven’t read yet. I’ll get an idea of your taste and we’ll go from there. Sound good?”

    “That sounds fantastic! Thanks so much, professor. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this.”

    “Me too.”