Hypnerotomachiapet

Over on my writerly blog, A Taste of Strange, author Kathryn Meyer Griffith is guest blogging The Story of Egyptian Heart, the tale behind her long-gestating novel "Egyptian Heart" (which is now available, reissued by Eternal Press). Do please check it out!

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Over on my writerly blog, A Taste of Strange, author Kathryn Meyer Griffith is guest blogging The Story of Vampire Blood, the story behind her 1991 novel "Vampire Blood" (which is now available, rewritten by Kathryn and reissued by Damnation Books). Do please check it out!

In other news that may be of interest to a few reading this, there's a new anthology open for submissions, looking for stories on the dark side of people with superpowers. Open until October 1st!

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(x-posted from here, because... because I can.)

So... it looks like Brutal Light has found its publisher.

I can't give out details at this point... but it's happening. It's really happening.

More info when I can tell it. I'm going to go have myself a little lie-down now.

(squeeeeeee!)

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There once was a lad who wanted to tell stories. He started telling stories just for fun, and eventually discovered it was more than just fun--it was what he wanted to do. What he wanted to be. And since the entrance exam for becoming a writer was fairly easy ("Q. Hey, kid, wanna be a writer?" "A. Yes." "Oh, great. I'll go tell Shakespeare and Milton to scooch down some."), he became one.

He wrote a lot for Internet consumption. He wrote short stories, three of which saw publication. He made four or five attempts at writing a novel, only one of which turned into a finished manuscript. He seemed on his way. Then the... I dunno, what are we callin' 'em, the Oughts? the Two Thousands?... sure, let's go with that... then the Two Thousands happened.

Things got strange. He got married. He got a house. He got way too much debt. He worked. He had troubles large and small. He managed to write another novel during all this, but his other output was nearly nil. He struggled. He moaned. He wore a saggy diaper that leaked.

By 2010, however, things had changed again. He was out of debt, and had short-sold his house. Now living in a rented townhouse with his wife and cats, he found himself wanting to tell tales again, to whatever audience he could manage. He reapplied himself to trying to get his manuscripts published, and discovered that many publishers look for authors who are craven little self-promo monkeys stand ready to do their responsible part to promote their works. He also discovered that some prime evidence of this willingness would be to--as put to him in the least-technical terms possible--'make a thing on the internet.'

So he did. And he called it...

GaryWOlson.com

...which was pretty stupid, since his name was Bob Jenkins.

Anyway, long story short, Bob ran away and is presently believed to be a flamenco dancer in Antigua. As I was looking to make a fresh start after getting in for 50 large to the Swedish mob an exciting career in accounting, I bought the website, married Bob's wife, and changed my name.

The website has some semi-exciting biographical information about 'me,' some capsule descriptions of 'my' published stories, and some other dross you'll probably only want to read once, if that. It also has a blog, A Taste of Strange, which you will hopefully want to return to again and again as I desperately try to be interesting, or at least amusing, on subjects such as writing, fandom, and things of that nature. (Or, if you are sane, use the RSS feed instead, in conjunction with your favorite RSS-supporting program or app. If you have a Dreamwidth account, you can subscribe to the syndicated feed on Dreamwidth and see new entries on your reading page. If you have a LiveJournal account, you can subscribe to the syndicated feed on LiveJournal and see new entries on your friends page.)

That's all. Please enjoy the bran muffins.

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I've finally been able to take some vacation time this year, for the first time since last November. The garganto-work-project-thing that was, as last reported, jumping up and down on my head has now been staked, beheaded, and buried at the crossroads beneath the light of the full moon (or, if you want the technical jargon, 'put into production'), so work pressures have suddenly gotten much lighter, to the point where I can actually be leisurely during my leisure time. Hurrah!

All the things that were causing me stress in the past few years -- job, finances, other stuff -- are causing much less these days. Plus, I'm writing again, on a new short story. Plans for my next novel are coming together. I'm actually feeling kind of...

Wait, I'd better not say it.

Um... attention universe, ignore all that I just said. I feel, um, really bad and stuff. Argh. Because reptilians from another dimension are making my head all explodey. That would ruin anyone's day.

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Meme pinched like a nickle bag of funk from flemco:

"When you see this, post a little weensy excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y."

( Excerptation behind the cut! )

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I've been editing up a storm in my campaign to Finally Finish The Freakin' Novel And Mail It Out Already, which is the principal reason I've not been making posts to LJ of late. (Well, that and a very nasty stomach bug that had me laid up most of last weekend and then jumped over to my wife, who is just now recovering.) This period of me not posting to LJ (and not doing very much commenting on friends posts, though I do continue to read them) will likely continue until the glorious FFTFNAMIOA campaign has reached its conclusion (which also means that every other writing project I've got in mind, is On Hold until then).

So... there. I guess.

In fact, the only reason you're getting a post now is because some of you still may have not seen the movie Pan's Labyrinth, and some of that subset of you may still have it showing at some reasonably local theater ("reasonably" as in "somewhere in the state in which you live"). If you are a part of this select group... why the hell are you still reading this? Why are you not out driving, biking, running, or crawling in the direction of that theater like crazed sinners who have suddenly seen the horrifying errors of your non-seeing-Pan's-Labyrinth ways? WHYYYYYYYYY???

Seriously. You should.

In the meantime, I have a grindstone to get fresh with.

This post was formerly friends-locked, and is now not, as the review period for this has passed.

Hi, folks. The beastly thing I call Brutal Light is now ready to be reviewed, critiqued, savaged, and so on. Some of you have already volunteered (and if you have, you should have the appropriate info already from email, contact me if you don't), so this is for the rest of you. ("You," in this case, being folks on my friends list, to whom this message is locked.)

Brutal Light is a novel that I guess would be catagorized as either "Dark Fantasy" or "Horror," depending on the publisher or editor or whoever decides these things. The basic story involves a young woman who experiences, or belives she experiences, direct contact with a godlike entity called the Radiance. Unfortunately for her, there are others who also believe in the Radiance and her connection with it, and who will stop at nothing to take it from her....

Well, okay, there's a lot more than that. That was kind of the "back cover blurb" version of it. I don't want to go too much into it yet, as I don't want to either spoil it or make leading statements that will skew your reactions. Even though this is a second draft, there's still plenty for me to improve, but it's at a point where critical reaction will help me the most.

A note on the content: if it were a film, it would probably be NC-17, or at least a hard R. It has sex. It has violence. It has blood. It has cussing. It has stuff that is just plain wrong. Sometimes, these things are combined. I don't really want to emphasize these aspects of the novel (they're probably no worse than what you might find in a Clive Barker novel or a David Cronenberg movie), but if this is something that ordinarily makes you uncomfortable, you might want to take a pass on this.

So, if you're interested, drop me a line at swede3000 (at) earthlink (dot) net, and I'll shoot to you a username/password for accessing the files. (They are in more or less plain html, but in a password-protected directory on a new website I've just started.)

If you've never met me, or don't feel like you know me well enough to critique something I've written, don't worry about that. Your reaction will tell me things that the reaction of others who have met me (and have thus been charmed and intimidated by my beguiling tallness) may not.

If you would like to read it, but are not sure if or when you will have time to critique, it's okay. Though I'm committed to starting up the next draft sometime in mid-to-late September, I'll keep the pages up through the end of the year (though the earlier you respond with criticisms and impressions, the more likely they will have some kind of impact on the final version).

If you don't want to read it, or don't have the time, or are too busy, or whatever, it's also okay. Believe me, I understand 'busy' and 'agh, I just don't want to, but how do I say so and not offend'. It's all good. Really.

Of course, those of you who do read it and offer cogent criticisms and impressions will get a signed first edition (whatever that first edition turns out to be... probably softcover), though you may have to wait quite a while for me to plow through publishers to find one who will accept (or, if I run out of publishers, to publish through print-on-demand). And a beverage of your choice, the next time (or first time) I meet you.

So... that's it. Thanks for considering!

(Despite popular demand, we bring you the confounding sequel to last fall's Vex, Further Vexed!)

At roughly two in the morning, Delmar Vex, the scientist known throughout every place in the world that makes regular use of 'discombobulate' as a noun, came to the astonishing and really quite overdue realization that he would never become the next 'American Idol.' Or the next 'Norwegian Idol.' Even the people at 'Trinidad y Tobagoan Idol' refused to return his calls. As a result, he embarked upon a time of soul-searching and identity-questing that, forty-five minutes later, resulted in him growing hair in unsightly and unlikely places for reasons not publishable in 'Reader's Digest.'

"I have been hexed!" Vex declared, for no other reason than he had to justify the title of the story somehow. Hexed he had been, and hairy he now was, so he stalked the back alleys of the city, and when the back alleys eluded him (Vex not being a very competent stalker), he stalked into the nearest White Castle and passed out.

Vex awoke within the dream, and, using techniques widely known amongst lucid dreamers, conjured up Kate Beckinsale, a hot tub filled with lime jello, and a surly parrot with mange. Ms. Beckinsale immediately sized up the situation, conjured her fist into Vex's chin, and then sped off in the disconcertingly mobile hot tub to a celebrity party in the La Brea Tar Pits.

"Ha, ha," said the surly parrot.

"Oh, surly parrot!" Vex wailed. "I have been hexed! Tell me who has done this heinous act, and how I might wreak my unstoppable and if-possible-tax-deductible vengeance and blame it on teenagers wearing big pants!"

"You hexed yourself, asshat!" the parrot replied, its voice eerily like that of Basil Rathbone. "Wake up and smell the cheese fries! Caw, I say, caw!"

Vex woke up, and saw, seated opposite himself in the White Castle, a hideous tentacled monster that was slobbering all over his booth table and had eaten all of his sliders.

He screamed, then woke up again, and saw, seated opposite himself in the White Castle, Tom Bosley, who was explaining how he could become stunningly and erotically rich by selling a bunch of crap that some mail-order guys have in a warehouse in Ass End, New Mexico.

Vex tried the whole scream and wake up thing again, on the theory that if he tried it enough times, Kate Beckinsale would turn up again, but it did not work. Tom Bosley was still seated across from him. The crumbs from Vex's sliders coated his mangy, sweat-pitted shirt.

"Next time, don't sit on the TiVo remote," said Bosley, who was doing his best to distract Vex from staring at his tentacles. "Especially the button marked 'Hex.' Anyone who does that is not part of the solution!"

Vex sneered, stood, swayed, and shimmied. "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the discombobulate!" he retorted. Bosley, unable to assail that kind of logic, was forced to say "Caw!" He then used his tentacles to extract three organs from places in Vex not publishable in 'Golf Digest' and juggle them, but nobody forced him to do that.

There's a lesson in this for all of us.

(This is, in some terribly vague and unimportant sense, a sequel to Vex, Vexed, from last year.)

His nostrils redolent with the pungent scent of blood and toner ink, Delmar Vex returned to his office, determined to write up the results of his latest experiment in such a way that it would bring fame and fortune, or at least famous and fortunate women, hurtling like inexplicably gaseous daschunds in his general direction. Toward that end, he was trying to figure out how to avoid mentioning the giant sloth and its angry comments about the sudden disappearance of its 'Sex and the City' DVD collection, and thus distracted, he entirely failed to notice that he was not in his office in New York but was, in fact, in a rundown bar in Lumbar, Wisconsin.

"Janice!" he bellowed. "Take a letter!"

There were three other entities in the bar. One was a dog. One was a massive transcendent entity completely imperceptible to humans, only present because it felt like slumming. One was a bartender. None was named Janice, and none moved to take any letters from Vex. Vex was vexed.

"A letter!" Vex bellowed again. "Must be taken! The scientific world must be made to know... things! Things that it was not meant to know!"

"Like what?" the bartender-not-named-Janice asked, as he took down the shotgun from where it was mounted on the wall (just above the eerie and disturbing freeze-dried body of Spuds MacKenzie).

"I cannot speak of them!" Vex replied. His emotions were bouncing around in his head with the fury of pit bulls, the speed of cheetahs, the grace of dugongs, and the prurient interest of Baptists. He was in a state, he realized, where he might do something terrible, such as consume a 'light' beer.

"If you can't speak of them," the dog-also-not-and-we-can't-stress-this-enough-not-named-Janice asked, "why do you want to dictate a letter?"

This, as was the case with so many questions posed to him by beings without any discernible jaw structure that would allow the English language to be spoken, was a question Vex could not answer. To cover his hideously shaming lack of knowledge, he blustered a bit more. When it was clear that blustering had no effect, he tried fancying a bit.

"Go away," the bartender told Vex, punctuating his words with a blast from his shotgun. Vex, who had never seen a shotgun blast used to make a comma, applauded as he ran out of the bar.

In the end, Vex got what he wanted. Well, actually, he got run over by Jessica Alba on a motorcycle, but it was close enough for him.