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I imagine that some of you are wondering how things are going on the book right now. I have to say that I made a lot of progress today--16,000 words worth of final rewrite. I've been stuck trying to figure out the perfect endings for the first two Margee and Jerry stories and I have finally got something I can live with. I still have to do the rewrites for the Heinlein Centennial, my futurist posts, and the two Titan stories (one of which is a short-short). I figure that if I keep going at this rate, I should be ready for the final pre-book readthrough around the end of the first week in June.
I have a new short-story (Ed Morgan's Ride) finished and I think that I am going to include it in the book, since it's in the Iona universe that the M&J stories are in. It's better than the third M&J story so may substitute it. In any case, writing it did interesting things to me.
I started the story writing about someone else, and somewhere in the first third, it became about me. I've spent a lot of my life dealing with the results of being an alcoholic--I've had to wall up an entire side of my life, keeping my good angel as my advisor and imprisoning my bad angel.
All that changed while I was writing the story. I needed the feelings, the desires, the hopes of the bad angel. I fought hard and long trying just to sit with him in the visitor's center in my brain, discussing all of this through the bullet-proof glass, without having to invite him back into my life. Finally, I realized that the story would never be finished without him, so I let him out.
He changed me when he integrated back. My obsession with sameness and safety shrank. I remembered what it was like to take risks when the prize was worth it, so I did. I told a truth to someone despite the fact that doing so would make me more vulnerable than I had been, perhaps ever. I was rewarded for doing so more than I ever hoped or dreamed and got something beautiful and precious that will last me for the rest of my lifetime.
I had a conversation last week about my angels. The woman I was talking to asked me, " of all the relationships that you've ever had that have ended well, what incited them, the good or the bad in you?"
I was taken aback for a moment, never having considered the question. I looked back on my life and realized that the good angel had always been in the wings, watching and waiting for women who needed help, who needed saving, who became projects that would be able to live better lives if I were to help them--they just needed my sacrifice.
Not one of those relationships ever turned out good for me. Time and again, I would help my projects to get back on their feet, to overcome their obstacles, to finally become the person that they wanted to be. Each time that worked, I watched them go off into the sunset with the man they found after I was done with them. Each time.
The good relationships, the ones that lasted, were never based upon such things.
I looked over at my good angel, who was trying to seem innocent. "Is that the case?" I said. The good angel smiled and said something about virtue being its own reward.
Fuck that. It's time for the bad angel to come back. I have time left, I need to pursue the things that I still want, the people that I need, the life and love that I desire. Nothing that I fear is strong enough to kill me. If I must wait for something, the gamble of waiting is worth the chance of the payoff. I am alive. I know this because I can be hurt. I had forgotten how important that was.
TC Tags: life, love, personal angels and demons, writing
Current Location: halfway between heaven and hell
Current Mood:  exhausted
Current Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h13WA8XY9ws
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Cross-posted from Urbanagora...
Once upon a time, there was a virtuous Public Relations man named Marty. He was always careful to cross the street only at the corners, gave beggars his spare change, and drove his car under the speed limit.
One day, while Marty was at Culver’s, God spoke to him.
“MARTY, PUT DOWN THAT CHEESBURGER.”
Marty looked around, figuring that the voice had come over the speakers in the restaurant. He was just about to take another bite when a spark flew between the burger and his nose. He dropped the unfinished sandwich and dabbed the scorched spot on his face with a napkin.
“I TOLD YOU TO PUT THE CHEESBURGER DOWN. THIS IS GOD. I AM IN NEED OF A PROPHET, FOR MAN IS EATING THE ANIMALS WITH WHICH I HAVE GRACED THE EARTH. THIS MUST STOP, NOW, LEST MY RATH BE FELT. YOU, MARTY, SHALL BE THAT PROPHET.”
Marty looked around, but no one else seemed to have heard the booming voice. Since one does not refuse God, he agreed to be His prophet and guide mankind away from the misuse of His creatures. He left the restaurant that day with a mission.
Marty was a good ad-man as well as being a good man. Soon, pamphlets and posters were everywhere, outlining an irrefutable case for vegan living. Converted movie stars bought full-page ads in the New York Times that showed imprisoned chickens and tortured veal calves.
The CEOs of the food industry called a special meeting to deal with the problems that Marty presented. They launched an ad blitz to counter the one the vegans were promoting. Their lobbyists in the government got legislation passed that would tie subsidies for school lunches to a minimum amount of meat in them. They gave grants to research institutions that would prove animal products to be essential to the health of human beings, especially children.
Now, Marty’s followers were in a panic. There was now no way in which they could live their lives without having themselves and their children surrounded by the foods that God had forbidden. One teenage girl, Nellie, became fond of lying to her parents and going to Steak n’ Shake after school instead of Bible study. Others of the followers had just one egg, every now and then, with breakfast.
Marty realized that they were all in trouble, so he prayed. “What shall we do, God? My followers are being tempted by the fleshpots of the world. How can we stay pure to our message and do Your Will?”
“MARTY, YOU SHALL GO TO TEXAS.”
“Please, God, not Texas, take this bitter cup from me, please.”
“YOU SHALL GO TO TEXAS AND MAKE A CITY FOR ME. IN THIS CITY, ANIMALS SHALL BE HELD SACRED. YOU SHALL WEAR NOTHING FROM THEIR SKINS. YOU SHALL NOT DRINK OF THEIR MILK OR EAT OF THEIR EGGS. YOU SHALL NOT EAT OF THE MEAT OF THEIR BODIES, LEST YE DIE. GO NOW; LEAD YOUR PEOPLE TO THE PROMISED LAND.”
Doing as he was told, Marty gathered his followers—young and old, white, brown, and black, Republican and Democrat, and took them to a place in Texas where there were only a few other people. There, they built a prosperous city and lived in harmony with each other and the world.
All was not well, however. The others who lived within that county were jealous, for the vegans were prosperous, had beautiful homes, and voted for those who agreed with their God’s plan.
The minister at the Baptist Church said, “God doesn’t talk to anyone directly. Marty must be a false prophet. They are doing the work of Satan and must be stopped.”
The old fat lady at the beauty shop said, “Have you seen the way that they dress? None of them weigh much over 150 pounds—it’s not natural. They never come into town to go to restaurants or buy food at the grocery stores, there’s got to be something wrong going on out there.”
Then, the cattlemen said, “They don’t eat meat. Look at this here research—meat is essential for the well-being of people. It’s all right for adults to act in crazy ways, but think of those poor, abused children who will never be healthy in their lives.”
The county officials shook their heads. “We can’t do anything about this. No one knows what really goes on inside their compound. We can make contingency plans for a case where we have justification, but don’t expect anything anytime soon.”
Nellie, the girl who liked cheeseburgers, was hungry at lunch one day. She pushed the tofu on her plate out of the way and speared the broccoli with disgust. She would have liked to go into town to the Jack in the Box, but her parents had forbidden it. Damn it, she knew how to get even. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket as soon as her parents were working in the garden and punched out the number of Child Protective Services.
“Hello, I’m from the compound down the road. Yeah, I want to report child abuse. I am being forced to eat an unnatural diet that doesn’t have what I need, nutritionally. No, I can’t give you my name, I’m afraid I’d be punished.”
This was the chance that the officials had been waiting for. The friendly judge issued a warrant and police and social-service agents raided the compound, hauling off all of the children who lived there. They grudgingly allowed the children’s mothers to come along with them to the compound where they were taken, but neither Marty nor the other men were allowed to come along. Nellie smiled to herself as she rode in the van with the other children.
Lawyers were appointed for the children, even though none of them asked. Four or five days later, when none of the children had told of anything unusual other than the restriction of diet, the mothers were sent back to the compound, since the social-service agents claimed abused children were more likely to tell of it if separated from their parents. Finally, after repeated questioning, a few of the children told of being punished by spanking or of being sent to their room without supper for discipline.
This was all that the authorities needed. Mass trials were held, the vegans were held as unfit parents and the children were sent to adoptive homes where they ate meat and wore leather and furs, just like everyone else. None of them ever saw their parents again. Nellie devoured steak after steak and married a cattle rancher.
Marty was convicted of child abuse and endangerment and sent to prison for twenty years where he died after being raped by three men who chanted “child abuser” while they took turns beating him during sex.
God, realizing mankind had not learned anything in the last two thousand years, sadly pushed his halo back and returned to making Dark Matter.
Tags: fables, libertarianism, polygamy, religion
Current Location: ManCave
Current Music: We're Not Going to Take It
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Cross-posted in Urbanagora...
Today was my second marathon editing session for Hell-Bound Train. The day began with helpful comments from a friend in the Southern Hemisphere and the evocation of Stephen King, chanting, "The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
Once alerted to the adverbs' presence, I cannot avoid seeing them. They're laired everywhere within the manuscript--weasels lurking to pop out and slow down the action or muddy my descriptions. Mentally, I throw my hands into the air, hyperventilate, and run around my desk like Kermit the Frog before a Muppet Show. "Ah, ah, ah, AH," I realize I am yelling out loud. My cat, Mitzi, jumps from the desk and stares at me as if I had transformed into an inhuman monster.
I lift my pen like Tony Perkins in Psycho and begin stabbing at the adverbs. Almost, suddenly, nearly, closely--they all fall before my onslaught. There are ls and ys flying to either side of me as they're excised. I realize that in the early days of my Urbanagora content, I used those words to shield me, to enable me to equivocate or retreat from an untenable position if a critic attacked. I don't need them anymore, by God.
Now it's passive voice that's everywhere. These columns sound like goddamn lab reports. Slash, rewrite, annotate, cross out entire redundant paragraphs. Pant, pant. One entire piece goes in the trash--not worth saving.
My word babies crawl from beneath the wreckage of a demolished essay on polygamy, mewling like kittens calling for their mother. They stop to lick remnants of the blood and gore of murdered language from their fur. They stare up at me, wide-eyed, and ask, "Is it over? Is it safe to come out now?"
"Very soon, my darlings," I reassure them.
I've made progress. Nine more weeks of this to go. , Tags: language, madness, writing mechanics
Current Location: ManCave
Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: the humming of Sean's new box
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I wrote this story for Cheron's granddaughter Lilith. Feel free to copy it, draw crayola illustrations for it and pass it around at grade schools or homeschools. All I ask is that you put my name on it as author. Violet and the Little Giant By TC Trumpinski There once was a little girl with golden hair and beautiful purple eyes. It was the custom of her kingdom to name their girl children after flowers, so her parents named her Violet. Violet lived in a warm brown cottage at the edge of a rich village. Her father grew wheat and her mother baked the wheat into bread the villagers bought from her in the morning. Violet had a lot of time to explore and to play all day, because school had not yet been invented. Behind the house, in a barn with lots of levels to sleep on and soft moss on the floor, Violet kept her riding cat, Chauncey. All of the people in the kingdom rode riding cats because the cats had eaten all of the horses and ponies a long time before. The riding cats were the size of tigers, but didn’t scratch or bite because the people fed steaks to them morning and night. Violet had her own little saddle which fit right on the back of Chauncey. They were good friends and rode together through fields and forests. When Chauncey would come to a creek, he would jump from one bank right to the other so he and Violet did not get wet at all. One day, Violet was going for a ride with Chauncey. She put on her riding pants and a bright yellow blouse with red buttons. Her mother tied a bonnet onto her head and kissed her on the cheek. “Stay close to the village, Violet,” she said. “There are creatures in the forest—wolves and spiders and giants who will chase little girls and eat them up. Come home by supper time.” “I will, mommy,” Violet said. “We won’t get into any trouble at all.” Violet put Chauncey’s saddle onto his back and tightened it so it would not fall off while they were riding. Chauncey let out a loud meow and a roar when Violet climbed into the saddle. They rode south into the forest which grew near the village. At first, Violet was very careful, because her mother had warned her to watch out for dangers. A little later, though, she and Chauncey spotted a rabbit and began to chase it. It jumped over logs. It ran along the side of a cliff, Violet holding on for dear life. Finally, the rabbit jumped over the widest creek Violet had ever seen, and the riding cat could not follow. They had gone further from home than ever before. The sun was overhead, since it was noon, so they could not tell east from west or north from south. They were lost and Violet began to get worried. Where were the wolves, spiders, and giants? Were they hiding somewhere, behind trees or in the bushes, to jump out and eat her and Chauncey? She got down from Chauncey’s back and looked around. The insects in the bushes made squeaking sounds, and when they did, Violet would jump. She could not find any path or way out of the woods, so they decided to follow the creek. The two of them headed back they way they thought they had come. The woods were getting darker and scarier the deeper they went into them. As they came to the bend in a creek, they heard a very loud splash from the other side, behind some trees. Violet crept forward, pushing bushes aside to see what had made the splash. It was a giant! He stood twice as tall as her father and wore rough green trousers which came to below his knees. He was barefoot and the tops of his feet were covered with rough black hair. Above his trousers was a checkered shirt, red and black, and he had a brown belt that had a golden buckle on its front around his waist. His head was huge and had a mop of black hair on his head which looked like it had never been combed. A robin was nesting just above his right ear, hiding in the tangles. Violet tried to be very quiet, for she did not want the giant to eat her. The giant did not notice her or Chauncey as he picked up more stones to throw into the creek. The creek had widened right here and had formed a wide, wide pond. He picked up a flat stone the size of Violet’s head and skipped it across the pond—once, twice, three times before it finally splashed and sunk to the bottom of the pond. The giant did this for quite a while, then stooped and picked up a huge boulder. He raised it over his head and threw it into the pond with all of his might. A big wave of water splashed up over Violet and Chauncey. Violet let out a high-pitched “eek” and Chauncey roared, for the riding cat did not like getting wet. They were both frightened because they could tell the giant had heard them. The giant put down the next stone he was going to pick up and looked toward the place where Violet and Chauncey were hiding. He began walking closer, a little bit at a time. Finally, he pushed the bushes aside and saw the two of them hiding there. He let go of the bush and backed away across the clearing. “Please don’t eat me,” the giant said in a frightened voice. Violet and Chauncey came out from behind the bushes. “We don’t eat people,” Violet said. Chauncey nodded his large head in agreement. “You don’t?” The giant seemed surprised. “Well then, what do you eat?” “We eat vegetables and beefsteak and hot baked bread,” Violet told him. “So do we,” said the giant. “We don’t eat people either.” Violet wondered about this. Her mother had said giants were dangerous, but this one seemed friendly. Maybe she had never met one, so she didn’t know any better. Violet decided to watch the giant closely and run if he showed any signs of being hungry. “Would you like to skip stones?” the giant asked. “Sure,” said Violet, and reached down to pick up a small, smooth one. The two of them played together for quite a while. When they got tired of throwing stones in the pond, the giant took out his huge fishing pole and put a snake on the hook, which was as big as Chauncey’s paw. It was not long before a fish took the bait, and the giant put the largest fish that Violet had ever seen into a basket. It was getting late when Violet and Chauncey heard a deep voice growling from far away in the forest. The ground shook with footfalls and trees were pushed aside as the source of the noise came closer. They were scared, but the giant shook his head at them and told them not to worry. “It’s my dad,” he said. Violet and Chauncey bent their heads way back to look up at the giant who came into the clearing. He was as tall as the tops of the pine trees around him. He looked down at the little giant and the other two of them by the pond and said, “Who are these creatures, son?” “They’re people, Father,” the little giant said. “They live in a village where the forest road reaches the plains. They’re really nice and they don’t eat us after all. She and the cat are lost.” “I told you not to talk to strangers, son, but they seem harmless enough. Lost, you say? I can take you as far as the forest road and sent you off on the right way to go. You need to come home now, son, supper will be done soon.” True to his word, the little giant’s father led Violet and Chauncey to the forest road and pointed to the north where her village lay. Violet thanked the giants and said goodbye and she and Chauncey started for home. They arrived home just as the sun was going down. Violet’s mother was in the barn looking for her when they got back. Violet took off Chauncey’s saddle and brushed him down while her mother fretted over her. Violet promised never to be late for supper again, for as long as she lived. Her mother forgave her and gave her extra jam on her bread, since Violet looked extra hungry. The next morning, Violet woke up to lots of noise outside her house. She opened her window and looked down. As far as she could see, there was a line of villagers heading toward her house. They seemed very excited and more than a little bit puzzled. She threw on her slippers, headed for her front door and opened it, her mother walking behind her. There, on her doorstep, was the little giant in his play outfit. Behind him, the villagers stood, their mouths open, for none of them had ever seen a real giant before. “Can Violet come out and play?” the little giant asked. “Yes, she can,” Violet’s mother answered. “But you have to come in for lunch afterwards. I’ll make really big cookies.” And Violet and the little giant were best friends forevermore.
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I recently became enamored of the character of Red Molly from Richard Thompson's 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. The song is about a young outlaw who robbed enough to buy the mentioned motorcycle and then fell in love with a fire-haired woman in black leather.
Here's a webpage with a video of Thompson singing the song.
In any case, after I heard the song on the radio, I began thinking of Red Molly as a pooka, fond of leading bikers on wild rides. I sent him an email the other day, asking him if I could use his character in a story. He wrote back and said:
Hello Tom, Thanks for writing. You are welcome to use the character's name and/
or likeness in the story without permission (from the record company), as long as you're not
quoting directly from (the) lyrics... Best regards, The Beekeeper
Wow, just wow. I mean, like, this guy sang with Sandy Dennis in Freeport Convention. He's one of the greatest (and most underappreciated) folk-rockers of all time. He's a British Dylan.
Goddamn. In any case, the story will come out in the next couple months. I didn't really expect permission, so I haven't plotted much of it yet. Way too late to put it in the book, even though it is a sequel to one of the Margee and Jerry stories--Maxwell's Gremlin.
TC Tags: folk music, woo-hoo, writing mechanics
Current Location: ManCave
Current Mood:  ecstatic
Current Music: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, Richard Thompson
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