"Buck up, Little Camper."

I got a book in the mail the other day.  It wasn’t from Amazon.  It was from a friend of mine.  There was a note with it describing the career of the author and drawing parallels to my journey as a writer.  It couldn’t have come at a better time, or offered better encouragement to keep writing.

The subtext of the unexpected gift was that even while I was struggling with my current novel, reading the fine work of Michael Connelly, and wondering who I thought I was to even try to appear a shelf beside him, there was someone out there who believed in me and couldn’t wait to read my next one.

That’s the thing we struggle with, whether we are writers, artists of another sort, or just trying to make it through life.  We feel discouraged, we feel overwhelmed, and we feel very alone but we aren’t.  Somebody out there is thinking about you, hoping you are okay, and excited that you are in the world.

Buck up, Little Camper.  Carry on.  Tell that mean old world, “You cannot make me quit.”

Have you read Love for Justice yet?  It's available now at Amazon.

I call them Skull Crawlers.



I got talked into going to see Kong: Skull Island this weekend.  It wasn’t too hard, I loved the original King Kong and am always up for hoping another Kong movie will be good.  The last one was a fairly true remake and while long at times, still captured most of the core story and was generally enjoyable.  I had some concerns about another remake, of course, not the least of which is the current trend toward over dosing on CGI in the modern PG-13 action flick, but I can always close my eyes in the theater and add my voice to the hue and cry against reliance on processors instead of good writing afterward.

As always, the following observations on the merit of the story contain light spoilers.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film.  It was exactly what it claimed to be (a PG-13 action movie) and executed itself well.  The acting was top notch with John Goodman doing what he does best and Samuel Jackson channeling Kurtz perfectly.  What an amazing idea.  (Heart of Darkness is one my all-time favorite stories.) And then John Reilly.  I will never see him as any other character again.

There were several good story choices made.  The first was setting the action in 1973.  The world we live in today is too far removed from the original setting of the Kong legend to resonate with younger viewers, but post-Vietnam isn’t.  The choice lent a spectacular soundtrack, political conflict that echoes exactly what we are going through today, and an easier Kurtz connection for those who think Apocalypse Now was the original story.

The second great choice was reimagining the storyline.  I’ve always dozed off when Kong goes to New York.  No worry about that now.  It’s more Jurassic Park III than Jurassic Park II.  And I liked number three.  (Speaking of number three, my #3 left saying, “I have a new favorite movie.”)

The sets were outstanding.  The real-world backdrop was stunning, the actual sets were crafted with attention to detail and added to the realism.  The CGI effects were woven into the real with skill and care.  CGI.  Present.  Absolutely.  BUT!!!!  And this is important; the effects were not the draw of this film and were not used in place of plot.  Just the opposite.  The effects add to the story telling and draw you in.  I actually wasn’t even aware of the CGI until the climactic battle when the analytical side of my brain said, “Wow, that’s good use of CGI.”  I never once worried about getting a headache or said, “Really?  I’d rather see 10 real soldiers than 100k drawn by the computer.”  Remember the original Jurassic Park?  It’s special effects like that.  But with today’s higher resolution.

Finally I want to talk about what is perhaps the most impressive part of the entire movie.  The dialogue.  There are a lot of characters.  Many of them are extremely similar in appearance and costume.  None of them are cardboard cutouts.  You know who they are by how they act and what they say.  That is extremely good writing.  You’d think there was a Gilroy involved.  I am very interested in reading the script.

There are probably purists out there who will lament the loss of certain story elements.  I caught myself several times saying, “Ah, this where they will have the XYZ scene” only to find it missing entirely.  The original King Kong is still a great movie.  I will watch it again.  This Kong is not that Kong and doesn’t even try to be (read: “Not a love story”).  It’s a reimagining of the conceit and it’s told with skill and style standing strongly in its own right. 

I think this summer’s offerings will have a hard time matching the total package this popcorn flick is.  The IMDB “Parent’s Guide” section is spot on, make your ultimate decision accordingly.

And This Bag Was Just Dancing With Me

There's a stoy in screenwriting circles about a floating plastic bag and the inspriation for the film "American Beauty."  I like that story, and I found Mr. Alan Ball's script for the film to be extremely well written.  I don't see the what he saw when I look at discarded shopping bags, but it's stuck with me and I've wondered about how he must feel in places such as San Francisco that have declared the ubiquitious liter to be detritus-non-gratta.

The following is a work of fiction and did not occur (to the best of my knowledge).  Any actual quote of Mr. Ball which I did not fabricate on the spot is intended only as an aid for readers who care to search out what he has to say on the topic of plastic bags using "Ctrl-C" and Google.

A Thing of American Beauty
(by Jonathan Stark, 800 words)

Councilman McTaggart yawned as he shuffled the papers on the table in front of him.  The florescent lights overhead flickered and the blueish bulb in the third fixture went out.  Then it came back on.  He looked at Councilwoman Harris on his right, then Councilman Greene on his left.

McTaggart cleared his throat.  Then looked at Councilwoman Harris again.  She looked up from her phone, said, “Oh, right.  Sorry.”

 Harris opened the folder in front of her.  She’d borrowed it from her daughter and the sight of the kitten falling of the tree branch on its cover made her heart skip a beat.  That poor cat.  Driven by duty to her electorate, she pushed aside her concern for the wellbeing of the animal and read from the first paper inside.

“Next order of business is proposition seventeen dash zero zero zero six,” said Harris.  McTaggart snickered.  So did Greene.  They always did when she said “proposition” and sometimes she’d snicker too but not this time.  Zero zero zero six was important.

Harris continued, “The council proposes a ban on the issuance and use of plastic bags within the city limits by grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores, food carts, Yancy’s Lumberyard, and school lunches due to the unsightly problem of excessive plastic bags on the sides of city streets, in yards, clogging parks, congesting sidewalks, blocking bus grills, and filling the shopping carts of homeless people.”

McTaggart said, “All in favor say, ‘Aye.’”

A well-dressed man transitioning from handsome middle age to distinguished older gentleman, stood and said, “According to bylaw section twelve paragraph ‘C’ you must open the proposition for discussion.”

McTaggart and Greene snickered.  Then McTaggart said, “Everyone is in favor, no need to discuss.”

“I am not,” said the man.  “You don’t realize what you are doing.”

Harris said, in her slightly schrillish voice, “Sir, the plastic bags are an unsightly problem in our city.  This prop-“ she stopped, bit her lip with a sideways glance at McTaggart, “-plan will solve that problem.”

“You may as well solve the problem of flowers,” said the man.  The bluish bulb went out again, but this time with a dramatic pop.

Henry Steed, well ensconced in distinguished gentlemen, attended every council meeting.  His quiet snoring always comforted the councilmembers, reminded them of the importance of their work.  The sudden interruption in the rhythm of the snoring when Henry awoke at the comparison of trash to flowers was disconcerting.

Henry said, “Are you mad?  What do flowers have to do with plastic bags?”

The other man opened his mouth to speak but stopped.   Henry’s face changed, lightened with sudden realization and agreement.  “Councilman McTaggart, my esteemed colleague –“  he paused, turned to face the man, “Sorry, what’s your name?”

“Alan,” said the man.  “Alan Ball.”

Henry nodded his thanks and then went on.  “My esteemed colleague Mr. Ball makes a valid point.  You have not included Shane’s Florist in the ban.”

“The amendment is approved,” said McTaggart, casting a commanding look at Harris who dutifully wrote ‘Shane’s Florist’ in the margin of the proposition.

“That’s not my point at all!” exclaimed Alan.  “Have you ever seen a plastic bag caught in the wind?  Drifting along an alley, dancing on the updrafts and floating down only to be swept further along?”

Nobody had.

“I have,” said Mr. Ball.  “And was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”  They looked at him strangely.  Everyone.  “There’s a Buddhist notion of the miraculous within the mundane, and-“

Steed interrupted.  “We’re all good Presbyterians here, Mr. Ball.  No need to confuse things.”

Alan lost his flow.  McTaggart leaped into the void and dragged the rest of the council with him.

The ensuing debate ultimately resulted in a series of amendments that allowed school children to bring their lunches to school in plastic bags because the council, as eloquently expressed by Councilwoman Harris, “Did not want to discourage the arts among the young people of our great city.”

Henry Steed, who had been to Canada once, expressed his displeasure.  “The plastic bag is garbage, a thing of American pestilence that should be eradicated.”

Mr. Ball said, “You are mistaken.  It is a thing of American Beauty.”

Henry Steed rose from his folding chair, removed a carefully folded plastic grocery bag from the left breast pocket of his blazer, shook it open, and tossed it into the air.

The bag hung for a moment, as if orienting to the room, then gently floated downward only to be caught in the sudden down draft of the overhead HVAC duct.  Just as it was about to crash onto the vinyl tile of the floor, it whooshed toward the council table and rose on an updraft.

Councilwoman Harris squeaked and covered her mouth.  Her eyes were wide, filled with unshed tears, and she shook.  Never, in all her days had she been so moved.

“It’s just Steed’s bag,” thundered McTaggart, oblivious to the miracle he witnessed.

Councilman Greene snickered.

Who Am I Talking To?

Split.  The latest from M. Night Shyamalan.  Let’s have a quick refresher – I’m not a Shyamalan fan boy.  I believe The 6^th Sense was one of the best movies made, even if you know the twist.  I thought The Village was a masterful thriller.  The rest?  Not so much.  I freely admit I didn’t get Lady In the Water and honestly, did anyone anywhere like Devil?  Truly one of the worst films ever.  I’m glad to know it wasn’t a career killer but still, I almost didn’t bother with Split because of it.

However, #2 told me it was very good.  And my wife wanted to see it.  So off we went.

When I first started writing scripts, I read voraciously on the subject.  One of the recurring themes was that I would never watch movies the same way again.  Split proved that warning to be true for me.  Within 5 minutes I was analyzing everything from the inspiration to the introduction of characters.  I kept stopping myself from trying to figure out what was going to happen because I wanted to enjoy my large popcorn.

Depending on your definition, spoilers follow.

Really.

I’ll give you a minute in case you read faster than you process.  The characterization was pretty good.  I didn’t confuse any of the main cast and the dialog was extremely well done in the sense that I always knew which personality was talking, even without costume cues.  However, the dialogue was not extremely well done if you’re looking for lines that will become part of pop culture.  In fact, there were a few lines I found a bit cheesey.  But they never drew me out of the story far enough I couldn’t get back in.

Split was creepy the way The Village was creepy, a few gotcha moments and a setting that created tension.  It was not a horror movie and the gore was minimal.  My wife suggested that might be because I’m color blind, there were a few scenes where I didn’t know what happened because I didn’t see the blood.  Still, in this movie the violence was mostly suggested rather than witnessed.

It took a few twists and turns which played with stereotypes for the genre and were logically supported, but nothing earth shaking – there was no big twist like in the better films.  I’m also not sure it was entertaining.  It was dark in the way Prisoners was dark, but lacked the resolution.  I was disappointed by the ending.  There was the general sense of unease, discomfort even, and depression like his so-so The Happening.

I thought of Prisoners several times while watching.  And I had the sense that had an unknown written the film, it would only have been produced by a bit of luck.  I don’t say that to take away from the quality of the story, but to make the point that Split wasn’t any better than many of the unproduced scripts I’ve read and worse than several.

Perhaps the take-away is aimed squarely at struggling story tellers – the world is dark and bleak, but somewhere, somebody has the money to make your movie, whether it’s amazing or just pretty good.

What Happened to Space?

Do remember being a kid and wanting to be an astronaut?  I don’t hear that anymore.  None of my kids want to be astronauts.  None of their friends ever talk about it.  But I did, and so did all of my friends.  I have been wondering where the cut off was, when it stopped being the great adventure.

My first thought was it broke evenly along the generational line.  For my generation and our parents, space was exciting and still very new.  We knew the names of ships and their crews.  I suspect Topps even had collector cards for the various leagues.  Now it’s old hat, like sailing around the world in a small boat.  Not something many people do, but enough we don’t think anything about it when somebody does.

Then I wondered if the demise of the shuttle program and privatization of the industry led to decreased interest.  I was in second grade when the first shuttle lifted off and we stopped classes and gathered to watch the first two scrubbed launch attempts.  Everyone was disappointed the actual launch was in the middle of the night.  But we watched the landings and other launches.  And I watched the reentry and landing of the last shuttle flight on the TV in my office, felt the weight of history.  Thinking about it now still gives me chills.

My kids didn’t really care.  It meant nothing to them.  They never had toy space ships or a Boeing 747 with a spring launch system for the red plastic shuttle on its back.

I could blame video games but I’d rather blame Facebook.  Neither one is the likely culprit.  It isn’t a lackadaisical attitude by my kids either, they want to do big things.  They want adventure and meaning.  But my oldest wants to explore the dark depths of caves rather than space, my second to rescue people stranded on ships in the oceans rather than orbiting planets.

With the success of books and movies like The Martian I believe there is still a yearning for the great unknown beyond our atmosphere.  Just not in the next generation, not the way it was.  My daughter thought The Martian was great for the same reason she liked The Green Zone (Matt Damon).

Electricity.  That’s what it is.  If we turned off the power, looked up at a night sky unpolluted by city lights, someone in the next generation would say, “I wonder what’s there?”  And people would go.

Ore-Ida Then

I grew up with Ore-Ida French fries.  Now my kids are.  Still yummy, now in even more varieties.  Curly, tots, extra thin, waffle.  Maybe they were always there and I was kept in the dark?  Doesn’t matter.  The important thing, for this post, is that I didn’t make them back then – you know, when TV was black and white and Hi-Fi was a big deal.

Maybe I did make them but didn’t bother with the directions? I actually rarely read directions in my youth.  I always thought there wasn’t time.  Us “old folks” like to wax rhapsodic about the simple life of the good old days and maybe that simplicity is why I didn’t need to worry about such minor details as instructions.  More likely, as I’ve aged, I’ve become a bit more compulsive about things.  Things like reading directions.  Twice.  Every time.  Even when I’m making something I know by heart.  Like pancakes – ¾ c milk, 1 egg, 1/8 vegetable oil mixed; add 1 c flour, less than 1/3 c sugar, 1 Ts baking powder, few shakes from the salt shaker, healthy sprinkle of cinnamon.  Mix with wire whisk.  Place on hot grill until ready to flip.  Flip.  Cook until you remember there are pancakes on the griddle.

I digress.  This is about Ore-Ida.

If you have a bag these tasty treats in the freezer, I encourage you to get it out and read the directions.  Then come back and tell me if I’m crazy.

There are directions for cooking ½ bag.  There are directions for cooking ¾ of the bag.  That’s it.  There are no directions for cooking the entire bag.  No directions for cooking ¼ of the bag.  I’m a smart guy, I can figure out that I should double everything to cook the whole bag but what do I do with the ¼ left over after cooking 3/4?  (Did you react in horror?  I’m not actually crazy.  I know that I’m not supposed to double the ½ bag cooking time for the whole bag…)

But what am I supposed to do for the missing ¼?  Is that considered advanced?  The sort of thing only experienced Ore-Ida re-heaters would ever attempt?  Is it some sort of marketing scheme aimed at tricking engineers into buying 2 bags? (So when they cook ¾ of one, they have to cook ¾ of a second so there will be ½ left.)

Does anybody know?

Does anybody care?

Love for Justice

It's happened.  For real this time.  Love for Justice has entered the world.  I know this because instead of holding a "proof," I am now holding proof.  My author copies.


My blog has always been sort of not quite the usual author's blog and I plan to continue it as such.  Writing is challenging business and there are a million reasons why nobody should ever pick up the proverbial pen and start.  But we do anyway and I hope that my story, as well as my stories, are able to inpsire and encourage others to take on the challenge, to follow the dream, and press on toward the mark.  So R&A will stay as it always has rather than turn into the commericial site of an elusive best selling author.  (Please help make me a best selling author...)


I have to be completely honest, which is hard for a fiction writer who grew up hearing influential adults confide that they, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."  I did not think I would ever see a novel of mine published.


I had no idea how much work was going to be inovlved.  I'm not saying I wouldn't have written it anyway, but holy cow.  The revisions take a long time and they are hard.  And you're never actually done until you say, "Okay, that's it, it's good enough."  (Every book out there is published to that standard.)


It took nearly as long to get from finished draft to publication and that's because I have a great publisher who loved my book from the beginning.  If I'd had to struggle to find a pulisher and/or agent, it might still be in limbo.  There is a lot of work to get from "The End" to "Now on Amazaon."


The good news is that I'm still not done.  Now that's its available, I have to promote it and that's something I don't know anything about.  Because I never thought I'd get here.

Not Published!!!!

Apparently I am not yet published.  The errors discovered in the proof copy have not yet been corrected and the print run has not occurred.  Therefore, Amazon now indicates the book is not available.

I'm sorry for the confusion and misinformation.  I continue to learn about this business.

Word of the day: perseverance.

Have a happy new year.  I will be eating pigs in a blanket.

PUBLISHED!!!

Greetings, True Believers.

I know I used exclamation marks, but can you blame me?  I mean, really, isn't this the sort of thing they are for?

"Love for Justice" print edition is available on Amazon.  A print book.  I held the proof copy in my hand.  Hand delivered by my publisher.  This is literally a dream come true.

Which brings me back to the purpose of this blog...

Don't quit.  Ever.

"Watch it, Bub."

There was a giant crashing sound at my house last night.  I didn’t hear it.  Everyone else did.  They said, “Dad, what was that giant crashing sound?”  I said, “I didn’t hear it.”

There have been a lot of giant crashing sounds at my house over the years.  Once it was a transformer a few houses down.  Another time it was my neighbor crashing her car into a tree across the street.  Most recently it was a tree falling onto my fence.  That was the week before Christmas.

Because the crashing sounds usually mean something has crashed and I’m always late to the party because I don’t check, I decided to check.  Turns out the noise last night was a tree crashing across my fence and into my neighbor’s house.  I live on a corner so what actually happened was one neighbor’s tree fell across two section of my fence (corner) and across the yard of my other neighbor reaching up their deck and against their house.

Very exciting -- for the first smartest dog who was outside when it happened.

Another exciting thing I saw last night was “The Wolverine” which really surprised me.  I wasn’t expecting much more than an over-the-top CGI sendoff.  Turns out it was actually a movie with a story.  Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that there is a copy of Wolverine #1 safely stowed away in a secret hiding place in my bedroom.  (Just like when I was 18 and bought it.)  But don’t dismiss me as just another fan-boy, rather, you should recognize that I’m old school and especially critical of how the big screen treats my favorite characters.  Case in point – there hasn’t been a single Punisher film that I’ve liked.

The Wolverine offered honest character development, a real and complex storyline involving solid A and B plots, and kept the CGI in the background.  Until the last twenty minutes at which point we were rudely reminded that it was a comic book film in much the same way that James Cameron’s Titanic was interrupted by an iceberg.  But I can’t fault Marvel.  It was consistent with the character’s tradition and my goodness, we went over an hour and a half with a story that was part Inception, part Karate Kid II, and part Skyfall.

Don’t just pop it in for the kids if you haven’t seen it.  There was a lot of discussion when it came out about the PG-13 rating.  The IMDB parental advisory is accurate but I’d add the caveat that nothing was gratuitous.  Wolverine is a haunted character and the film captures that.

Do Not Quit. Ever.

The blog has been silent for a bit.  I’ve been considering whether or not to keep it going.  It’s got a cool name, but as anyone who watched “The Phantom Menace” knows, it takes far more than a cool name to make a good product.

The goal of Rejected and Alone has, all along, has been to keep me writing.  What I’m finding is that it now keeps me from writing.  Every post takes away from the bigger projects.  Since the end goal is to produce professional, saleable work, it makes sense (personally) to shift my effort into those projects – like the two novel drafts I’ve finished but not finished or the score of screenplay ideas that need to be broken, written, and polished.

I’ve gotten some very positive rejection letters on my short stories with comments that tell me I’m close.  So.  Very.  Close.  I’m ready to close that deal.  And I plan to publish a novel this year.  Commercial ventures, unlike the blog which I have pledged (even if only to myself) to keep ad free.

So I was going to pull the plug.  After all, how many of you are actually reading these words because you want to be better authors?  How many times do you want to read me saying the same things in different words?  Listen, I can sum up the message of my blog in four words.  Do not quit.  Ever.  Everything else is just me talking and you being polite – and hopefully entertained.

First smartest dog

Then I got an email comment from a stranger who liked some of the content.  And some of you have been asking what happened – am I alright?  Why has the blog been silent?  I talked to my wife about my plans to shut down R&A and she said, “What?  You can’t do that.”  Hmm.

How about this.  How about one post a week?  I’m thinking Tuesdays.  Maybe because today is Tuesday, maybe because Tuesday is a day that needs a little something.  Doug Richardson posts one day a week and I really like his format.

So here is my pledge for Rejected and Alone, version 2015.  One post a week.  And it will make you smile.  To make sure you don’t miss it, please get an email subscription (there’s a link at the bottom of this page).

This was all pretty serious and nobody has smiled yet.  I could say it isn’t 2015 yet, which would make some of you laugh, but instead I’ll tell you a funny story.

Yesterday was my last day of vacation.  It was a good day and I cooked a dinner of twice roasted potatoes, creamed sweat corn, a roasted onion (butter and beef bouillon) and grilled rib eye.  The dogs get very confused when I cook.  I’m not the sort to toss them scraps.  Doesn’t keep the third smartest from hoping though.  Thing is, she’s terrified of pretty much everything, even Norah Jones on the Pandora, so when I was chopping the potatoes she wouldn’t come over and get the ones that fell on the floor.

Then I was rushing in and out between the skillet (olive oil, parsley, ground black pepper with the roasted potatoes) and the grill.  She kept smacking into the cabinets to get out of my way.  The first smartest dog was jumping over her.  The second smartest did some barking.  I put them out.  They still didn’t know what to do.  I felt bad for them, the steaks looked amazing, so I dropped a bouillon cube into their big water dish.

That was a trick because they catch really well, I had to chase them away from the bowl.  Then they rushed up to see what it was I’d dropped in.  I laughed out loud watching them try to figure out how to get to the cube at the bottom of the deep bowl.  They started drinking like crazy and I thought for a minute they were going to drink it all, just to get to the cube.

But they didn’t.  The first smartest was distracted by a tennis ball and the third smartest ran away when I clicked the igniter of the grill.  Maybe you had to be there.

Third smartest dog

Kent Haruf speaks the truth

I heard a wonderful excerpt from an interview of the now deceased author Kent Haruf.  He said that in his experience there is no shortage of creative writing students with talent.  The shortage is in creative writing students who are willing to put in the work required to write something truly good.

It was a fine articulation of a truth you must come to terms with if you plan to succeed in the arts.

I spent a month writing a short novel.  I’m finishing up the first draft now, probably by Friday.  60k words written as fast I can go.  The next part is where the work is.  I’ll have to take that mass of gobbly guck and refine it into something worthy of your time.  That’s a lot of work.  It’s so much work that the first draft of the short novel I wrote last year sits idly on my hard drive, taunting me, telling me I’m not a pro yet because I’m not willing to go back and do the hard part.

Thousands of people finished novels during NaNoWriMo this year.  I suspect that the published results will show Mr. Haruf to be correct.  Only a few of the authors will be willing to put in the work required to write something truly good.

I expect to be one of them.

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to Rejected and Alone and receive each post delivered directly to your inbox.  Want to comment?  Just click on the link in the email and it will bring you to the page.

Bad Luck

Finished NaNoWriMo.  Now I need to finish the novel, probably another 10k words or so.  Should be Thursday if I can keep the NaNo pace up.  Also ran a 5k with my family.  It’s been 17 years since I ran in an organized race and this one was very crowded.  It was a little frustrating at first but after about ½ a mile the pack sort of settled and then we spent the rest of the time passing people.  That felt pretty good.

Thought I’d try something different for today’s story.

Bad Luck
by Jon Stark
December, 2014; about 700 words

The Squids came about five years ago, best we can figure.  Bounced off Mars and smashed into the moon.  Broke it and their ship.  Of course at the time we thought they did it on purpose and all those smaller ships descending on us were attack craft.

It didn’t help that they took out a U.S. carrier group somewhere in the North Atlantic.  Or that one of them burned into Beijing.  Sort of galvanized our resistance, global cooperation kind of thing.  It took two years and five billion people to beat them.  Worst luck we ever had.  As a race.  Squids killed clean.

Thing we didn’t know in time was that the Squids weren’t invading – those little ships were lifeboats and they were running.  Didn’t know that until the Cha’ah showed up.  We were trying to put things back together, one hand on the wall and the other on our extraterrestrial blast rifles so to speak, always with an eye overhead.  Wondering when round two was going to start.

We didn’t know there wouldn’t be a round two, that we’d destroyed the last of the Squids.  Ironic.  The Cha’ah pulled Pluto into Neptune’s orbit and then recycled it into a forward operating base.  They put an Illuminator in orbit around Jupiter and focused the ten jiggawatt beam on earth.  You want night?  Go underground.  There’s not a dark place left on our planet.  Seasons were messed up, clocks were already fried, we sort of lost track of when we were.

The Squids were NBA sized -- tall aliens with tentacles and beaks – but they had faces and spoke.  They wore suits and carried their weapons.  And we could kill them.  The Cha’ah are bugs.  Big, nasty, spidery things -- all legs and hair and eyeballs.  They’ve got these antennae things that sort of flop around and they chatter.  Clicks and whirs all the time.  They sound like tap dancers or drill sergeants when they walk on our ruined streets, clattering on claws and they swarm everywhere and I’ll tell you, doesn’t matter how you feel about spiders, they are terrifying.

Our weapons didn’t seem to touch them.  Worse, the best weapons we had were captured from the Squids and they had been beaten soundly by the Cha’ah.  You know how in the movies when the zombies or vampires or aliens showed up there was a guy, either one of the heroes or somebody they found, that knew how to kill the evil?  The guy who would say, “Garlic doesn’t work on them.  But Holy water does.”  Well, that guy hasn’t shown up.  Not here.

And if there’s a secret base somewhere with a captured Cha’ah ship that we’re reverse engineering, nobody has told me.  Nukes can’t stop them.  The President of the United States leading a fighter attack can’t stop them.  The unbreakable human spirit can’t stop them.  Even the common cold seems to be powerless against them.

They just march over us.  They suck the life out of you if they touch you.  They call down fire from orbital systems if you run from them.  We’re out of food.  There’s disease we can’t cure.  The oceans have nearly boiled away.  I’m not sure we’ll be able to make it even if we beat them back.

Not that there’s any chance of that.  We’ve been running and hiding and they just keep coming like a line of tanks advancing through the desert.  We run from hole to hole but none of them are deep enough.  There was one place -- might have been Colorado but who knows – where we hooked up with a military unit for a few days.  They had a Colonel who told us that he’d heard about somebody standing against the Cha’ah.  Somewhere in Europe.  Albania or Romania or something.  A group came out of the mountains and when the aliens attacked they were beaten by a man who used their own power against them.  Sounds too good to be true.

Sounds like a dying man grasping at straws to keep up the morale of his troops.  They fought well, when the bugs dropped in on us.  Left us wandering again.  But now we’re wandering east.  It’s a long walk to Moldova but that’s good.  A man needs direction, some sort of purpose, to keep going.  To get up in the morning and not quit.  To fight.

And who knows?  Maybe there is a secret base somewhere.  Or a man that has power against the scourge destroying the world.

Snapping the Pieces Together

Snapping the Pieces Together by Jon Stark
November, 2014, about 1100 words

Blustery is probably the best word, because the wind was fierce and when you’re on the corner of 31^st and Avenue of the Americas it’s hard to find someone to help you.  There was one nice man but he apologized, said he was from Brooklyn, and had no idea where Garrett’s was.

If you have never been to New York City than you can’t imagine how big it is.  Not really.  You can’t sympathize with the man from Brooklyn who didn’t have a clue about the iconic popcorn shop that I hadn’t even heard of before this trip.  And I lived there for years.  Brooklyn, not Manhattan.

Which makes another interesting point.  If you’ve never lived in New York City you don’t know how small it is.  You know how Legos all sort of snap together and make up interesting things but all the interesting things – death stars and Hogwarts and race cars – are made up of the same blocks?  That’s New York.  A thousand small towns where everybody knows everybody all snapped together and connected by a half dozen bridges and tunnels into a 7 million person metropolis.

I don’t live there anymore.  And my girlfriend said that when I came back I’d better have a bag of caramel corn from Garrett’s.  Apparently, to her, Garrett’s is New York.  I have another friend who told me to make sure I had a knish.  “It isn’t a trip to New York without having a good knish.”  For me it is.  I don’t like them.  Maybe a slice from Cosimo’s or D’Angelo’s but I didn’t bother with that this trip, New York isn’t about the food.  Not once you’re from there.

Not that I was ever from Manhattan, but I spent a lot of time in the lower part, down by Battery Park and Pearl Street and the towers.  That’s New York to me.  They’re gone now.  What they’ve put back is a sign of the city’s decline.  They dress it up with fancy language, but the truth is obvious.  If New York was still the center of the universe and a place of opportunity and growth, they’d have built something big.  Real Estate that valuable wouldn’t have been used for a memorial.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a memorial is good.  When I was dating Toni -- when I lived in Brooklyn --she and Mike’s wife had to go across the bridge for a procedure so Mikel and I went too.  And her son Brandon.  He was probably about three.  I didn’t know anything about being a father, wasn’t interested in being a father, but Mike was so it was a good day.  Sometimes I wonder if Brandon remembers that trip or if we were just part of the blur of faces that came in and out of his mother’s life.

The twin towers of the World Trade Center were huge.  You know what I mean if you’ve ever stood at the foot of them and looked up.  I remember one time driving across the Brooklyn Bridge and seeing the towers disappear into a cloudbank only to emerge into bright sunlight a few hundred feet later.  They were like mountains, sheer unassailable cliff faces rising from the bedrock with more concrete and glass than my hometown.  We wandered in their shadow and stumbled across a firehouse.

There was no Dalmatian but the young men working there were friendly and went out of their way to show Brandon everything there was to know about their truck and the garage.  They even took us all upstairs to see the barracks and kitchen.

I think of those men every time I see smoke in the towers.  I hope they transferred before September.  It doesn’t change the tragedy of what happened but maybe the people who died weren’t as nice.  Bad things should happen to bad people.

There was a girl I knew who worked there.   In the towers, not the fire house.  Her name was Tricia and she liked Pinot Noir and I couldn’t afford to take her out again.  We’d meet socially on occasion and I liked to think she always wanted me to ask again.  I almost did a couple of times, but she was out of my league.  Or I was just scared.

When I stood at the construction site of what used to be the towers I overheard an old woman complaining to her daughter and grandchildren that she’d never been to the top of the towers.  She’d had the chance but didn’t want to spend the $17.  It was a regret, she said.  Don’t be cheap when life offers you a chance for something wonderful.

It made me think of Tricia.  I don’t usually think of her when I see the towers.  But it did then.  Her office was above the line.  Impossibly high.  I thought about her fear.  Her terrible choice.  I think she would have jumped.  I looked at the street, the broken sidewalk where I stood and wondered if maybe that was where she landed.

Or someone else.  I was suddenly overwhelmed and my knees buckled and the city around me became a blur and I had to get out and I couldn’t understand how the woman could complain about her life being incomplete when she was still alive and how could anyone blow their horn in impatience there, in the cramped quarters of the final resting place of thousands of souls who had loved the city and hated the city and gone to work excited or hung over and had plans for weddings or birthdays or were expecting children or grandchildren and it made me terribly sad.

And that was New York to me, not knish and certainly not Garrett’s Gourmet Popcorn but here I was, wind tearing at my ears and killing time before my train following directions on my iPhone that told me I was right there but I couldn’t see it.  The man from Brooklyn couldn’t see it.

And then I did see it.  I’d over looked the door a hundred times.  You know how it is, if you’ve ever looked for a special place in New York.  No awning.  No real store front.  Just a door and a window and a small sign that said, “Garrett’s.”

The door was open.  A woman held it for a family that must have been from North Dakota because they were in shirt sleeves and the rest of the world was freezing and I saw her face and it was Tricia and she was alive.

Strings Attached

I hope you enjoy today’s no-frills story.

Strings Attached
by Jon Stark
November, 2014

“Just us?”  Stephanie smiled.  His voice had that power.  It did other things too.  If she was fourteen she’d be up until midnight listening to his radio show.  That she hadn’t been fourteen in twenty years and he wasn’t a DJ didn’t diminish the fantasy in the least.

He always dressed well, one of the many traits she admired.  She took fact that he was wearing the tie she’d bought him for his birthday as a good omen.  She said, “You look good in that tie.”

He looked down at it.  “Thank you.  I think my kids got it for me a couple of Father’s days ago.”  She frowned, almost corrected him, was distracted by his eyes.  Oh, those eyes.  He said something about the restaurant being a nice place.

It was a nice place.  She didn’t remember it being so expensive.  She’d wanted nice, but the prices.  How did they stay in business?  There was hardly anyone even there.  When the waiter came she ordered soup.  Not even with a sandwich or salad.

He ordered the Beef au Jus without hesitation.  It made her shiver.  He was a hunter, a strong meat eating man, confident with what he wanted and rich enough to get it.  He hadn’t even looked at the menu.  This was his kind of world.

They made small talk.  Mostly he talked.  And smiled.  He could be reciting the Oxford Dictionary for all she cared.  As long as it was the unabridged version so that it would take longer.  Watching the big words roll off his tongue, between lips that had been sculpted by some divine agent.

He paused when the food arrived.  She made her move.  Asked how he was getting on with his family out of town.  Through a mouthful, slow trickle of au Jus on his chin, he said, “I’m not going hungry.”

Her turn.  A nod.  Then, “You sure?  I’ve got the afternoon off.”  She hadn’t practiced the words, exactly, but she’d been working on the tone.  And the look.  Combined with the outfit she’d bought on Tuesday he got the message.  Knife and fork stopped moving.  She could barely hear him over the rush of blood through her ears.

“Steph, I hope I didn’t give you the wrong idea.”  That wasn’t his line.  He was saying it wrong.  She missed most of the rest of what he said.  The crackers were stale.  $30 for a bowl of soup and the crackers were stale.  It made her so angry.  “… what you’re offering.  I’m flattered, truly, but it isn’t what I want.”

“What about what I want?” she said.  It sounded harsh, even childish.  She hadn’t practiced this at all.  How could he be saying that?

He shook his head.  “What about what Leslie wants?”  Our kids?”  So he’d thought about it.  She tried to get back to before, to when she had him.  “I’m not like that.  Never have been.  Never even thought about it.”

That couldn’t be true.  She didn’t want it to be true.  Those eyes.  They said it was true.  And the crackers.  Could it get any worse?  She needed something.  Tears were dangerously close.  He had to give her something.  “What if you didn’t have Leslie?  What if there were no kids?  What then?”

He did her the courtesy of thinking about it.  She thought he might even be appraising her, appreciating the effort she’d put into her hair.

“If I hadn’t found Leslie?  Was unattached?”  She nodded, encouraging him.  “I think I would probably be very interested.  You’re a remarkable woman.”  The words washed over her, cleansed her, warmed her.  She forgot about the crackers.  Move the conversation on.  Worked on getting back to normal.  He played along.  Nothing had happened.

She thought about what he said, nodding as he spoke now but not really paying attention.  If there was no Leslie he’d be interested.  She didn’t remember slipping the knife into her purse when the check came, but fishing for her keys back at the car, wondering where to go now that she had a free afternoon, it was there.

Different isn't bad when it's done well

I’m reading a John Hart novel.  I’m writing my own novel.  (Not nearly as good as his.)  It’s really showing me just how different novels and screenplays are.  He’ll spend two paragraphs describing a scene, vividly and well, but in a screenplay I’d have to do it with a single sentence, reduce it to the most visceral part.  That’s the advantage and bane of many pages.  I’m a feature length script into the book and have barely passed the introduction.  It’s why books are almost always better than films.

I’m playing a game with the book.  It’s called, “How would I turn this masterwork into a screenplay?”  It’s making me do the sort of analysis that high school English teachers dream about.  BTW – Mrs. Odell, if you are reading this, I still don’t think you’re right about the black pot in Red Pony but I’m mature enough now to let it go.

Novels are hard to transpose to screen.  That’s why a lot of films start with the words, “Based on the short story XYZ.”  Last weekend I watched a movie based on a children’s book.  It was nothing like the book.  Really.  Not the least bit.  That’s okay.  Alexander’s Bad Day was still fun.

If you like Steve Carell, you will like the movie.  If you don’t?  You won’t.  I haven’t met anyone who is indifferent about him (sort of like Woody Allen) so I don’t see a need to comment on that further.  Instead, let’s look at book to screen conversion.

Similarities:

1         * Almost the same title.

           * Has a character named Alexander.

Differences (described from movie):

1         * Doesn’t take place over a single day.

2         * Has magic involving birthday wish.

3         * Takes place in the burbs.

4         * Alex isn’t the guy with the bad day.

5         * Has crocodiles and male strippers.

6         * Is about Steve Carell.

It’s sort of like how The Perfect Storm is based on a true story but 75% of it is a total fabrication, including most of the conflict and character development.

I loved it because it was fun and exactly what was advertised.  Nobody in it expected to win an Oscar.  My wife called it her new favorite movie.  Different isn’t bad when it’s done well.

Creation is an act of will.

I was talking about NaNo with a friend of mine the other day – he decided not to participate “this year” – and another acquaintance of ours joined in.  He was surprised that I wrote, then wasn’t.  But he did ask an insightful question, even if it is common for those of us with a second, non-writing job.

“Where do you find the time to write a novel too?”

I said, “Usually I write screen plays and they aren’t quite as long.”  That was a joke but I don’t think anybody else got it.  I then told him, “I ride the train.”  ‘Nuff said, that’s 2 hours a day where my choices are limited.  He nodded, like that was all there was too it.

Thing is, it isn’t.  I used to say that if I rode the train I’d write a novel.  Said it for years.  Then I started riding the train and after a couple of weeks I actually tried to write a novel.  Two days in a row.  Then I stopped.  Went back to reading and playing games.  Did that for over a year.

What I’ve learned is that creative art is something you make time for.  The same way you make time for going to DMV or grocery shopping.  In the novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” Phillip Dick gives us the idea of kibble – stuff that fills all available space but has no value or purpose.  Our schedules fill with kibble, can be over-run by kibble.

I’ve just come off a very nice break, a five day weekend if you will.  (An expression I really don’t like but seem to use anyway.)  No train.  No agenda.  Still wrote.  It was about showing up.  Yesterday I showed up three times, wrote for about an hour each time.  Got 2800 words.  Day before?  Only showed up once.  Got about 1k – split it between the blog and the project.

You get what you put in.  If you like the idea of writing or the act of writing itself is all you’re after, feel free to show up when you find time.  But if you want to actually create something, finish it, then you’ll have to make the time.

And show up.  Otherwise the kibble will stifle you.

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Somebody, somewhere.

I sat down to work on my NaNo project and remembered it was Monday.  Story time.

Untitled
by Jon Stark, November 2014

Henry drove east.  The fading sunlight blinded the folks coming at him, swerving a bit here and there, creeping over the yellow, not in a dangerous way but he was glad to have it at his back.  Gave him a Red Baron sort of confidence.  And a red tint to the world, maybe more orange.  Either way, it was on the way out and reminded him of the body in the car.

He was okay driving with a body.  He’d been on the detail back in ’90, driving a half-track through the desert loaded down with bodies.  Didn’t know them.  Didn’t want to know them.  Some of the guys freaked out.  Davis walked all the way from Nasiriyah to Kuwait just so he wouldn’t be with the corpses in the truck.  Henry was just thankful to be driving away from the killing and out in the desert there no SCUD drills.

Stateside was different.  He and Donna were married during his tour at Ft. Benning and then with the baby he decided not to re-up.  Didn’t have a lot of call for an infantryman in the civilian world.  School didn’t suit him although he did end up taking a custodial shift at the high school.  He also worked part time for his brother who, for some gruesome and inexplicable reason, had purchased a mortuary business.

Henry did a lot of driving for his brother.  Picked up bodies, delivered bodies.  He made a few runs to Florida.  Even went way out to St. Louis one time.  That was the trip he started talking to them.  It was a long way.  And a soldier.  He felt like they had something, some sort of a connection.  He wanted to encourage the boy, thank him, tell him it was going to be okay down here.

It was a good chat.  He had a few others, over the years, on those long stretches of interstate between bubbles of ticky tacky.  He liked talking to them.  They listened, gave him time to think through what he was trying to say.

Henry didn’t talk now though.  Nothing left to say, really.  Not to this one.  She sort of looked asleep, headlights sweeping across her face.  He drove on long after they should have been home.  The ride was nice.  Traffic wasn’t too bad.  The company was good.  And he’d driven for his brother.  He knew what would happen when he finally did stop.

And he wasn’t ready for that yet.

Gordon Bombay. Dream chaser.

We watched The Mighty Ducks.  It has held up well.  Except for the hair.  My goodness and people make fun of the eighties.  Emilio Estevez was at the top of his game and turned in a typical EE performance.  There was nothing the least bit surprising about the movie or story and it didn’t matter.  It was just plain fun.

And let’s face it, you don’t watch a sports movie with kids in it if you are looking for plot twists and surprises.   #3 summed it up best when he said, “It was pretty good.  I mean, it’s a movie about sports so you know what’s going to happen, but there aren’t very many about hockey so it was cool.”

If you’ve studied screenwriting at all you’re familiar with the “Same but different” mantra.  TMD delivers on that and manages to somehow rise above most of the other films in the genre.  Interestingly, the story is about learning to play by the rules and the triumph of everyman over the wealthy.  Team work is a distant backseat.  It’s there, but you’re fare more likely to hear, “Get out of here, Cake Eater,” than “That’s what teammates do for each other.”

Maybe it’s because I’m reading Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art,” but I thought it was interesting that in the movie, Gordon (Emilio) leaves a high paying job on principle and then pursues the crazy dream of becoming a professional hockey player.  It plays well and gives us a wonderfully satisfying ending that everyone loves BUT if Gordon was our friend, would we encourage him to quit the law firm and follow the dream?

If you’re a writer, you are shaking your head and laughing.  It doesn’t work like that at all.  Unless you are blessed as I am with family and friends and who really think I can do this.

Children's theater

There is something truly special about seeing your work brought to life.  I’m fortunate to be enjoying a second helping of that specialness.  You may recall that last year I wrote a Christmas play that the teens in our church performed.  This year – surprise, surprise -- I’m doing a reprise.

Not a true reprise, the story is completely different, more like Fierce Creatures as a reprise of A Fish Called Wanda.  (When I saw Wanda, I was a middle teen watching it with a lot of old (70+) people and was horrified that they were laughing at the sex jokes.)  What I mean is, the cast is mostly the same even though the story is not.

Working with the actors is great because you can see what works and what doesn’t.  The kids laugh at me because they’ll deliver an exchange perfectly and I’ll bust out laughing – it’s funny – and they’re all like, “Why are you laughing?  Didn’t you write this?” and I’m all like, “Yes and I thought it was funny then but you guys nailed it and it’s hysterical!”

What really struck me this year was how little direction the actors needed for the proper way to deliver their lines.  They knew, from the words and context, exactly how to say it.  I wasn’t that good last year.  This is proof-positive that I’m getting better.

If you want your very own copy of “You Don’t See That Every Day,” send me and email.