Clockwork Betty

Here's a tiny piece of fiction I whipped up and sent to Matchbook Story. Homeboy didn't want it, so I figured I'd put it up here. I also received a pretty funny rejection via email (It was serious, but I thought it was funny). Unfortunately, I deleted it. This version is longer than the one I sent (300 characters apparently includes spaces) and is a re-imagining of a longer short story I wrote a few years ago. Hope you enjoy it.

Clockwork Betty

Two cops found her wandering naked in an old industrial park, no I.D., a serial number stamped in crematory ink on the small of her wrist: BETAy2k10. They covered her in a blanket and gave her a pen, hoping she could write, but ones and zeros were all they got, and her lids snapping up and down like shutters over her liquid crystal eyes.

Writer, Be Stoked

This is what stoked me out as a writer- an oil
painting of the main character, Watanabe
Kenjiro, from my book Ghost of Iga. It was
painted by my friend Jason Cheeseman-
Meyer, and if you want to stoke him out,
you'll go to his website and check out his
work.


If you're a surfer, then you know in your gut what being stoked is. You also know what an ephemeral experience it can be and how stubbornly it defies quantification. If you don't surf and you don't know, then I'll try and lay it on you: Stoke is an aggregate emotion consisting of a sense of mental connection and technical accomplishment, fused with unbridled joy and a certainty that what you've just done and what you may yet do are completely worthwhile, for the simple reason that you are doing it. There is no formula for stoke, unless it's You get what you give. If you don't meet it halfway, it'll ditch your ass in a hot second.

Believe me, I've surfed well in what some would call perfect conditions and had a miserable time. No stoke at all. And I've surfed knee-high slop with my friends and left the water beaming. I've also seen some really great surfers who sit in the lineup looking like they just drank the water out of a sewer pipe, and who nail every wave they want and never once smile. Of course, the reverse of all this is true as well. You get what you give.

So what does this have to do with writing? Everything. As writers, we all have a set of ideal conditions and a list of goals in our mind- money, fame, a sweet publishing deal, critical recognition, wide readership, whatever. Maybe they happen, maybe they don't. The few I listed are long shots for most writers- That's just how it is. However it turns out though, you should constantly seek a reason to be stoked. Otherwise, you should probably be doing something else.

A Writer's Reverie, or Why I Won't Quit My Day Job

I don't really remember when it happened- It was quite some time ago- but there came a point in my writing life when I quit asking Why am I doing this? and started asking myself How am I going to keep doing this? The answer turned out to be Any damned way I can.

First off, let me just say that I hate manuscripts. They look like crap, they feel like crap, and the words trapped inside their barren pages hate them as much as I do. A story in manuscript form is like a bird in a chicken-wire cage: You should kill it and eat it or else set it free. I released mine into chapbooks and gave them to my friends.

Back then, fifteen years or so, it was just me, a sturdy little tank of a laptop computer, an inkjet printer and a bootlegged copy of Wordperfect. A ream of printer paper, a ream of cardstock, and a big-ass stapler. I was in love.

Things are different now.

For one thing, I'm a better writer than I was back then. Quite good actually, thank you very much. I haven't done a chapbook in a while either, though I've kept copies of most of the old ones, and I still have that big-ass stapler. Nowadays I have the internet. I upload files to create print on demand paperbacks. I create paperless PDF's that I've been giving away for free. I keep this blog and I find my way onto twitter and facebook when I can.

But the biggest difference? Back when I was making those chapbooks I used to think that it would be great to be picked up by a "real" commercial publisher. Now, I know that what I really wanted was to be able to play with their toys and dig in their sandbox. I've come to realize that I'm just not terribly interested in writing as a business. I'm not a merchant, I'm not a brand, and I'm not a commodity. And I'm still too in love with my own vision to have it any other way.

Light Always Changes by Levi Montgomery- a Review

Anyone who's read Levi Montgomery's blog, The Write Rants, knows that he has strong opinions about doing things his own way, writing wise. He talks the talk, and talks it well, but does he deliver the goods? My answer is yes, yes indeed. Now, I don't completely understand why Levi doesn't like to label his work Young Adult fiction- I suspect he just doesn't like labels in general- but that doesn't change the fact that Light Always Changes is a fine young adult novel, one refreshingly free of teenage superkids and Beverly Hills High School antics. Light Always Changes is the story of a girl, Lydia, who is scarred not by the acid burn that crosses her face, but by a distorted concept of beauty and its fluid and subjective significance in human relationships. In the years since her accident, Lydia has transformed herself into a stereotype, and the circumstances that push her suddenly and sometimes painfully into becoming a whole human being are what give this novel it's heart and soul. Levi Montgomery has a feel for what makes young people tick, and while I as an adult didn't always agree with the moral choices his characters made, I never once found them false or contrived. This book is Doggerel approved, for quality of writing, independent spirit, and most important, solid entertainment value.

The Heart of the Amateur

You can learn a lot about a society and its attitudes from the origins of certain words. Take villain, for example. In its original French and Latin it meant simply 'feudal serf' or 'farm hand'. Hmmm. . . working class=contemptible class, what a thoroughly barbaric analogy. It's nice to see we've moved past such prejudice in the 21st Century. Of course, it's always better to be rich, and being rich and famous is better still.

That will probably never happen if you're an amateur. Amateurs, by the modern definition, don't get paid for what they do. They haven't monetized (such an elegant word) their skill set, haven't declared themselves open for business (profess, the root of professional). Some, admittedly, can't get paid for what they do because it's nothing anyone would pay for, though the market has proven time and again that people will buy most anything given the right prodding, but there are others, and plenty of them, who don't even give money a thought. Painters. Photographers. Surfers (the only pastime I know where the majority of amateurs look on professionalism with a healthy dose of contempt). Basketball and Baseball players. Writers. They just do what they do, underneath, around, and through the gaps in the corporate structure supporting their professional counterparts, and if the whole damn thing came crashing to the ground they might sigh, might even be a little bit sad to see it go, but the painters would paint, photographers would look to capture fleeting moments of light, waves would be ridden, ballcourts and fields would still host fierce local rivalries, and writers would still struggle in futility to lay their strange visions onto the page. And why? The answer lies in the root of the word amateur: from the Latin amator, lover, from amare, to love. And if it is really true that the desire of money is the root of all evil, then the root of love can only be called the spark of the divine.

New Year's Miscellany

Most years, at their end, seem to carry in their outline a theme, or at least a loosely discernible shape, but maybe that's just a narrative gloss we drape over top of our dwindling days to convince ourselves that we haven't wasted our time. Who knows? Last year most definitely had a theme for many people, myself included: Uncertainty. Of course, Uncertainty is just another way to say Reality, and it's probably not been a bad thing for us to become reacquainted with the fact that there are no guarantees from minute to minute, let alone day to day, month to month, or year to year. Still, it gets old when you're being bludgeoned with the same message five days a week and twice on weekends. As for 2010, it's too early to call a trend, and the only reason to try would be in the hope of proactively coaxing the year into a personally beneficial orbit. Nothing wrong with that, but since I believe very strongly in the jinx, I'm not gonna do it here in public. Instead, I'm going to do what human beings have generally done when other humans are around to listen (or read), in times of peace and plenty, in times of war and famine, whenever the big, important issues have become tiresome, or glaringly self-evident, or just plain overwhelming and unappealing:

I'm going to engage in small talk. Here goes.

About four days ago, I finished the first draft of a novella I've been working on, a work that I mentioned in this post, and in finishing it I discovered a new use for Print On Demand technology- creating manuscripts. I have two on the way, printed and bound, for the same cost or less than going to a copy shop or using my own printer. On top of that, the manuscript is now stored on the printer's server, where I can access it at any time. For people like me who like to play at being real writers (insert big sh*t eating grin) this abundance of inexpensive technology is the bee's meow. Art for its own sake has really come into its own, and I for one couldn't be happier.

Now, on to what I've been reading. Following my friend Kyle Hague's recommendations, I've recently finished three graphic novels, Garth Ennis' War Stories, volumes 1 and 2, and The Filth, by Grant Morrison. Up until now I've never really liked Garth Ennis. It seemed to me that any time he saw a chance to go over the top, he would indulge his worst impulses and go way over the top, and that always turned me off. But it turns out that what everyone says about him is true: He's the best writer of war fiction in comics today. War Stories is unbelievably good, as good as nearly anything you'll find on the page, be it prose or comic. Nothing in these stories rings false or contrived or over the top. They are masterful, and I have a newfound respect for Mr. Ennis.

As for The Filth, I'm really not sure what to say. It's going to take me at least two more readings before I decide whether I need to punch Kyle in the face or kiss him hard on the mouth. It's probable I should do both, but the order of operations (Punch, kiss, or kiss, punch?) eludes me. He's right about this though; the story Grant Morrison lays down in the pages of The Filth is untranslatable into any other medium. Absolutely. Untranslatable. Whether it works or not (my gut says it does but my brain says give me two more reads to be sure) it is without a doubt one of the most ambitious comics I've ever read.

So, here's a question. What's more satisfying than teenage vampire romance? Why, young wizards coming of age in an English boarding school, of course. But what's better than that? Really. Honestly. I'll tell you what's better- Forty-two junior high schoolers on an island killing the crap out of each other, that's what. Battle Royale, baby, six hundred pages (yes, six hundred!) of mayhem and carnage by writer Koushun Takami, that against all odds manages to have and to keep a heart and a soul. Battle Royale isn't really a teen book, it's more like a teen book's older angry brother, but I know a few YA lit fans who are thirty years old going on thirteen that could use the shock back into adulthood. This is a unique book and well worth the read.

I'll leave you now with what I'm reading at the moment. It may surprise, knowing how rabid a fan of Planet of the Apes I am, that I have never read the actual novel by Pierre Boulle. In another fifty pages or so, that gap will be bridged. The edition I have is a British one, published by Penguin and translated from the French several years before the movie was made. The English title is Monkey Planet, an illustration of just how flexible translation can be. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It's lighter in some ways than the movie, but there are also many more touchpoints between the two than I expected. Below is a cover of the book, but not the edition I have, unfortunately.

And with that, I bid you good day.

Kickin' It Old School

Well, it's a new year, and by popular consensus a new decade, and my family and I have appropriately turned over a new leaf. We've ditched the desert and returned to the promised land. For me that means one very, very, important thing.

Surf's up.

Does that sound trite? Well, if it does then there's nothing I can say that will change your mind, and I wouldn't want to waste my time trying. For me, however, riding waves is one of the three legs of a well balanced life, and my stool has been wobbling for several years now. I'm eagerly anticipating the regular cycle of check the beach, grab the gear, suit up and paddle out.

What's that? You want to know what this has to do with writing? Maybe the zen of the wave frees the mind, or the fresh air and nature releases the inner creative spirit? Bulls**t, I say. I actually wrote less when I was in the water all the time. But I did do one thing religiously: I kept a surf journal.

A surf journal. A record of every wave session, good, bad, and ugly. The animals I encountered (an angry mating seal springs to mind). The memorable waves. The frustrations and the joy, and the time I almost drowned. I ended it just before I moved to the desert, and now that I'm back I've started a new one. It would make a great blog- I write these things for public consumption- but there's only one way you can read it, and that's by picking it up, opening the leather cover, and thumbing through it, page by page.

Some things just can't be done any other way.