Archives for July 2005

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I just added the most devious twist to the story I was polishing. And it’s so perfect, I barely had to change anything. And forget Use of Weapons. My story is now the sine qua non of sneaky viewpoint tricks, hiding from the reader that no fewer than three characters are not who you thought they were. (And it’s only 15 pages long.) Am I going too far? Well, in the words of Ferris Bueller, “You can never go too far.” Well, okay, maybe I’m going too far, but I don’t think so. I’m 90% sure I’m going to keep the new twist. And even if I don’t, it’s still pretty damn clever.

So I finally took the plunge and arranged to have some of my stories sold through Fictionwise.com. Fictionwise is a site where you can buy books and short stories. (It’s sort of like the iTunes of prose fiction.) Some of my friends are on it, and have had good experiences.

It’ll probably take a few weeks to get rolling, but these are the titles of mine that’ll be available: “Seeds-for-Brains,” “Seven Brothers, Cruel,” “They Go Bump,” “The Prize,” “The Skull-Faced Boy,” “The Disciple,” “The Black Bird,” “The Second Rat,” “The Trial of Thomas Jefferson,” and “Lest We Forget.” Basically, most of my published work since I was 18.

So for the last few days, I’ve been madly giving all these stories a final polish before sending them off again. I’ve already read and edited each of these stories hundreds of times, so the fact that I’m still able to spend days making line edits really drives home how much my prose style has evolved in the last few years. (Plus I’m still finding really blatant typos. Argh!) I don’t think any of these changes would be really apparent to the casual reader, but to me they make a huge difference.

I’m particularly proud of the edits I made to one story. I was always dissatisfied with one aspect of this story, but didn’t know how to fix it. Basically, I have a character who’s pretending to be someone else, and the viewpoint character knows this, but the reader isn’t supposed to. If the viewpoint character refers to this character by their real name, it gives away the surprise, but if the viewpoint character refers to this character by their assumed name (which is what I did), it’s really cheating the reader.

There is a sneaky solution to this, which I’ve learned in the intervening years, and have lectured about, but I didn’t realize I could apply it to my own story until I just went back to polish it again. Basically, you only refer to the character by name in the dialogue, and in the exposition only refer to the character by pronoun (he) or descriptor (the man). This requires a lot of massaging to make it not draw attention to itself, but I think I did a pretty good job. (For a real tour de force example of this technique, see Iain M. Banks’s Use of Weapons.)

Of course, some purists argue that any critical information withheld from the reader by a viewpoint character is unforgivable cheating, but I think that’s too restrictive. I wouldn’t make a habit out of it, but really, what’s the fun of writing fiction if you can’t just screw around with the reader every once in a while?

Played softball in Manhattan again yesterday. I did all right, and had fun. I got my first invitation to an L.A. party — one of the softballers is a clothing designer, and is having a reception at her L.A. retail shop a few days after I arrive. Another softballer said he’d put me in touch with a friend of his who’s also starting at USC this fall to study screenwriting (though she might be in a different program), so that was cool too. After the game, I went out to dinner with a bunch of people, then a few of us went over to Central Park to watch a free, open-air modern dance show. It was actually pretty interesting, though our location was pretty uncomfortable. (We were seated on a carpet with the texture of steel wool, and our view was mostly blocked by people in front of us in folding chairs.)

Back in April, I applied for grad student housing at USC. Given the multitude of students and the paucity of student housing, I thought the chances of me getting anything were pretty slim, particularly after they emailed me a few days ago and told me to forget it. But they just emailed me again last night and offered me a spot in a 2 person 2 bedroom place at the Twin Palms dorm. (Certain to be known, after my upcoming wacky time travel adventure, as the Lone Palm dorm. Haha. Anyone? Is that too obscure?) I have until July 26th to decide whether I want it. I’ve heard that the dorms aren’t great, but right now I’m leaning toward taking it, just in the name of expediency. Hopefully once I’m out there and start meeting people, I can find something cooler.

Tonight was my last night (for the forseeable future) attending the monthly fantastic fiction reading series at the KGB Bar, as I will be in L.A. by the time the next one rolls around. I will sorely miss my KGB, where everybody knows my name and they’re not infrequently glad I came.

Tonight’s readers were Kelly Link and Michael Blumlein. Kelly Link left no doubt as to her mojo, packing in the largest crowd I’ve ever personally witnessed there, with audience members perched on every available horizontal surface. In fact, I had invited a new acquaintance to come check out KGB, and had assumed she hadn’t shown, but she emailed me later to say that the crowd was so voluminous that she’d been unable to even get within listening distance, and had eventually given up.

The highlight of the evening for me was my brief chat with Firebird editor Sharyn November, during which I described my short story “Seeds-for-Brains” that was in Realms of Fantasy, and she exclaimed, “Oh, I liked that one!”

Back in the spring, I gave a radio interview for Jim Freund’s Hour of the Wolf program on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York. I have audio clips from the interview up on my site in mp3 format. If you’re curious, you can listen to them by clicking these links: 1, 2, 3, 4.

The Quotable DBK

On Pets:
“All I’ve done, I’ve done for my pet turtle. I love you, Fluffy.”

On Religion:
“Metatron! He’s the angel that can turn into a truck.”

On Language:
“I didn’t know the Romanian language contained
any words that didn’t mean ‘I am a vampire.'”

On Romance:
“Why thank you, I’ve been secretly wanting some
exciting strange man to break in and lick my toes.”

On Perseverance:
“WOMBATS DON’T LAUGH! On your feet!”

See more quotes heard at Alpha here, here, and here.

I’m home now from teaching at Alpha, the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Workshop for Young Writers. This was my third summer there. This year, the sheer awesomeness of the workshop was pumped up to near-apocalyptic proportions by the addition of my onetime Clarion classmate and perennial partner-in-crime Tobias S. Buckell. Toby and I tag-team-taught a number of lectures, including ones on Originality & Ideas, Character & Dialogue, Plot & Structure, and Titles. We also critiqued stories, organized after-dark frisbee games, and stayed up late dispensing almost terrifying quantities of wit and wisdom.

Then after that was Confluence. I did a couple panels. I wasn’t scheduled to do a reading, but due to overwhelming demand, I offered to do one in my room. Since I was reading my scary demented pirate story, I decided to trick out my room in haunted house decor. I downloaded scary sound effects off of iTunes, and then, in less than an hour and using only common hotel items, created a freakishly glowing throne fronted by a spooky altar, placed one gruesome corpse under the covers of the bed and hung another (well okay, it was a bathrobe) from the the sprinkler. I also conjured up a squamous fiend, the Lurker in the Bathroom, to devour anyone foolish enough to disturb my toiletries. Unfortunately, one student dared its wrath. Aside from her hideous shrieks of undiluted terror, she was never heard from again.

Then yesterday I hugged everyone goodbye, shuttled over to the airport with a bunch of people, said goodbye several more times, and flew home. The view out my airplane window was staggering. I mean, I’ve flown on hundreds of planes, and I’ve often looked out the window, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Huge — I mean just gargantuan — columns of black thunderheads stretching for miles, and behind them a blazing red-and-yellow-streaked sunset. Then later we flew among the lightning, which lanced toward the earth and lit up the clouds above like bright-white fireworks. It was the first time I’ve ever really been tempted to skydive, to be just plunging among all that beauty and power and majesty.

Then, walking out to the airport parking lot, I found a $100 bill lying on the floor.

Update: And hey, if there are any Alpha students reading this, I am making the super secret Alpha gang sign at y’all.

Attention fellow Confluence people: I’ll be reading my demented pirate story in my room (Room 203) at 10:00 p.m. tonight (Saturday). Anyone is welcome to come.