Writer's Blockhead

I spent the majority of last night with my friend Sam, discussing our respective novel-writing. While I'm glad to have had this conversation and feel rejuvenated and excited about a project I've been lacking interest in, I'm still stumped on one point.

Villain of the Day: ?????

Whether it's true or not, I've convinced myself that I can't keep writing this book before I truly understand my antagonist. The thing that kills me is that, once upon a time, I did. I was on a road trip and while soaking up the sun on my face along the open road, inspiration struck. I pulled over and used my trusty Sharpie (attached to my keyring so I'm never without a writing instrument) to scribble my ideas on my arm. Feeling better, I resumed my trip, reached my destination, and proceeded to shower off the road-funk... and my brilliant villain. No matter how much I wrack my brain, it's gone.

I've tried to tell myself that it's enough for my villain to simply be a representative of Evil in the classic, eternal struggle versus Good, but I can't accept it. If I can't accept it, how will my reader? This is a work of Urban Fantasy we're talking about, by the way. Angels, oracles, sandmen, soul mates - these beings are real, among others, and what's more, they've been done. I flatter myself that I'm doing them differently, not just presenting them as belonging to their classic archetypes. What does that mean for the purposes of this dilemma? It means that it's not enough to say the bad guy wants to foil the good guy because he's the bad guy.

Now that the sun has come out, I think I'll go for a jog (this is, by the way, workout #3 of the Couch to 5k program) and hope that, at the most inconvenient time, a muse will visit me again.

Birthday and Deathiversary

Today was my birthday, but I can hardly be my own villain. As luck would have it, it's also the deathiversary of one of Jeri Smith-Ready's brainchildren.

Villain of the Day: Shane McAllister

You don't need me to tell you Shane's story. You can find it here. You might be inclined to think that Shane is a type-2 villain, that is, falling into the second part of the definition you can find in the sidebar to the right. He is a vampire, after all. Go ahead - make assumptions. You know vampires. Or do you? I bet you don't know vampire DJ's who just can't escape the 90's - literally.

If you know what's good for you, you'll quit making an ass of yourself, shine your little shoes, and hightail it over to Jeri's website, and once you're hooked, call upon your friendly neighborhood bookstore to get the rest of her work.

Baroness's note: The above-referenced work of fiction is of a very mature nature. Aside from the sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, death and suicide play major roles in the story. This post is in no way intended to give false hope to anyone contemplating self-injury that becoming a vampire is an option. Should you have any thoughts in this direction, please seek real help, not fiction or oblivion.

April Fish!

The joke was on me when I tried to move this blog to Wordpress today. Ultimately, as you can tell, the blog formerly known as Uncontained and Immortal ended up right back where it was, with this devil I know that is Blogger.

Villain of the Day: Kenneth Anger

Today also brought my first experience with the films of Kenneth Anger. Fireworks was intriguing (and a good tutorial on how to make erotic films using only things found in your parents' basement), and I really liked Puce Moment without being able to tell you exactly why. I couldn't care less about Eaux d'artifice, but I suspect that has mostly to do with my dislike of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, the Winter movement of which is used as the soundtrack for that film. Despite high praise for it by critics, druggies, and Michael, whose taste for weird movies and music usually jives with mine, and who encouraged me to experience Anger's work in the first place, I felt like I could take or leave Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. I think it was just too long for what it was - too long to hold my attention, though I didn't necessarily dislike it. Lastly, and most importantly, I absolutely loved Rabbit's Moon.

If you enjoy commedia dell'arte and Harlequinade type things, especially strange twists on them like you'd find in Lisa Snellings-Clark's artwork* and Neil Gaiman's Harlequin Valentine**, odds are you'll dig this, too. Pierrot, Harlequin, and Columbine are all there, in this pretty little film that I wish I could set to continuous play and hang on the wall so I could visit it throughout the day.



The video quality there isn't very good, but I thought I'd share it here so you can get some of the experience. I'm told that the later version (which I'll see when Netflix sends me vol. 2 of Anger's films) is "differenter" for the changes made to the soundtrack. If you like it, I highly suggest begging, borrowing, or buying a copy of the collected films on DVD.

Let me know what you think!


*Incidentally, I love her work, and have a couple of tiny pieces adorning my writing-space. Also, my birthday is coming up. I leave it up to you to work out if those statements are related.

**Following that link takes you to the Last.fm page where you can listen to the author read the story in its entirety.

The Ultimate Rejection

My birthday is coming up, so lately, I've received all manner of awesome and strange things in the mail (more on that in a later post), but today, I received the strangest package of all, and it wasn't a birthday present. I'm actually pretty sure this is the oddest mail I've ever gotten, and also probably the coolest.

Villain of the Day: Chip Slade

The first thing about this thick manilla envelope that struck me as odd was the return address. It was from Chip, who lives nearby and who I see fairly regularly. I was a little concerned at first, afraid to open it out of fear of what could be in there that he couldn't give me in person (and he'd already presented me with my birthday gift). Still, I didn't hesitate too long.

To explain the inch-thick stack of pages and cards, all on different letterhead, which I found inside, I'll just give you Chip's own words, excerpted from the topmost letter:

"...I haven't been keeping up with my end of the bargen (sic.) when it comes to encouraging you to keep writing. Well, here's my stack of rejection letters...Make a pile of your letters next to it, so anytime you get a rejection letter and it discourages you in the slightest, look at how much less rejection you've had than I have and accept my challenge to build a stack higher. So you will either become wildly successful and never get rejection letters, or you will beat me in an admittedly silly computation*."

*he left the spelling errors and erroneous spellcheck correction there on purpose and highlighted them, knowing I'd be amused.

A few years ago, Chip and I went from being acquaintances with a couple of mutual friends, to writing buddies, exchanging drafts of short stories and chapters of novels for proofreading, opinions, and guilt-tripping if we got lazy. Now, after really getting to know each other, I count him one of my closest friends, often seeming to know me better than I know myself. Of late, however, life has gotten in the way and the exchange of writing has slowed nearly to a stop on both sides, until now!

When I called him to accept his challenge, thank him for such an awesome gesture of encouragement, and inform him that I'd be blogging about it, he only had one thing to say:
"Make sure you tell them about the awesome stamps I used on the envelope."

I didn't know whether to crack up laughing or burst into tears, so I did both, in that order.