ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE, PLEASE (AN UPDATE AND SOME PULPY STUFF)

        I'm pretty wiped out this morning, even after I guzzled my first cup of coffee. I had a late night last night, typing up a story I had in a new book to get it ready to post on the Saturday Night Pulps blog. It's not finished, but its close, and I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment for getting it done.

It's the first story I've transcribed entirely from a notebook in a while and it took about six hours. I used to write them in a notebook, then type them on a typewriter, then put them on the computer. It was a long process, but it allowed for a lot of editing, and really getting to know the story. I might go back to that, but right now, I'm going to continue to bask in the glory of finishing what I started.

Basking

        That's the thing. I have about five projects I'm currently working on, not counting this little blog. I have that story, which I'm calling THE PANICKED AND THE DEAD, a second draft of a novel I'm trying to get done, and several short story ideas I'm working on. Once one is finished, I move on as quickly as I can to the next, not letting the idea that just because one is finished, I can take a break from writing. That's not how this gig works. You have to throw words at the paper, and hope they fall into order somehow. It takes a little more work than that, but its essentially the idea.

           I read a book recently called, HOW TO WRITE PULP FICTION. It was a short book geared to fans of the genre, but there were a few ideas and anecdotes about the originators of pulp, those brave souls who decided to make a living, or try to, throwing words onto paper.

          The major theme of the book, was to write hard, and write fast. This was a time when there were hundreds of markets for short, plot driven stories, and a writer could actually make a living doing this, if he cracked the formula and wrote hard and fast enough to sell to all the different pulp mags.

         Another anecdote was a about a guy who was throwing a party. Around ten o'clock at night, he announced he was going into the bathroom to write, because he had a deadline in the morning and needed a six thousand word story to meet it. Six hours later he appeared, story in hand, ready to party.

         

"I just wrote a timeless classic while I was on the can. What did you do last night?"

         A lot of these guys were hard drinking, hard writing, pulp masters. Of course, not all pulp writers were all that good. Like I said, there was, and is, a formula to the genre, but some literary greats did come from the school of Pulp. Raymond Chandler was one. Dashiell Hammet was another. That's just two, off the top of my head, but there are more.

         Even if you don't write pulp, or aspire to some literary achievement beyond merely getting published, there is a lot to learn from these guys.

         Number one, is write. Write, write, write. They never stopped. Like I said, to make a living at it, getting paid one cent a word (probably more than most get paid now) they needed to sell hundreds of stories. So they wrote, wrote, wrote.

        Number two is plot. These guys knew plot. They saw plot everywhere, and took inspiration from the people and places around them. A guy and dame at the lunch counter? Who are they? Where did they come from? And why did that guy murder the dame's husband?

         Not all writing is plot driven, but there is plot in all writing. It's what makes the story go. It makes the reader read. Even a tired old plot like the husband murder I just mentioned, can pull the reader in, if its done well. Change it up. Why did the dame murder the man's wife? Or, the man's husband? Whatever you want to do. Just make it interesting. Pull them in.

         Number three. Writing is a profession. A job. Like any job, it takes training and practice and motivation to do it well and get that promotion. The promotion here, I guess, would be to get published. Writing is a job, like musician's gig, once its over, its over, and you have to get another one, or in this case, write another story. Even if that one didn't get published. Even if that one, the one you worked so hard on, draft after draft, and viola, its a masterpiece, you still have to get up the next morning and start it all over again. You have to make that magic happen, story after story. It's not an easy task, believe me.

          Sometimes your mind feels like its been flushed empty and you've done every possible combination of stories you possibly can, you have to get in front of that blank screen and stare it down, and say, “Today I will write another masterpiece!”

I think the hat goes with the theme I'm cultivating here.

            You have to, if you're a writer. If you're not, then close the word processor, pull up the internet, and browse through the political posts until your mind is numb.

          But, if you are a writer, or an aspiring writer, guzzle that next cup of coffee, or whatever you use to get your mind going, pull up that blank screen, and start writing.

        Don't worry. The words will come. They always do.

MY ADVENTURES IN DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS (WHAT PLAYING WITH SATAN TAUGHT ME ABOUT WRITING)

        I've mentioned before how I was a big comic book addict when I was a kid. Besides inspiring me with stories about heroes and villains, another thing the world of comic books brought me was Dungeons and Dragons.

When the back covers of the comics weren't pushing Hubba-Bubba and Genesis games on my young, impressionable mind, they were advertising this strange game I had never heard of called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2^nd Edition.

But what is it?

            What is this, my young mind wondered, as I gazed at the painting of a Knight or barbarian doing battle with an awesome looking demon or dragon. I had never heard of the first edition of this game, let alone the second. And, is it a game? I had no idea.

It was several years I think, before I came across the actual Dungeons and Dragons rule books in a book store. There, as I pilfered through the pages of the Player's Handbook, I was filled with more intrigue and curiosity gazing at the paintings inside the books. They were beautifully packaged, with hardbound covers, and the artwork inside drew me into the creative worlds that waited to be explored.

The book that started it all

        For those who don't know, Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game. One person, the Dungeon Master, creates a world and circumstances for the other players, who have created their own characters, to explore.

You ain't the Master until you read this

        When I first discovered the game, I had no one to play with. I was alone with all of this wonderful, creative information that begged for stories to be told. I made my little brother and his buddy play a few times, but that wasn't it. They weren't as like minded as I was about delving into the realms of fantasy.

      So, I waited, not knowing if I would ever find a group of adventurers to put forth on a quest of good versus evil. Back then, Dungeons and Dragons was this mysterious thing no one knew about, or if they did, it was because they had heard it was the game Satan played with his minions. Needless to say, it took a while for me to find a group of friends to play with.

      One fella, shortly after meeting me, says he saw the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide in the backseat of my car. He knew we'd be friends after that. And we still are, by the way.

We spent many late nights campaigning in worlds I created, where the good guys, who weren't always good guys, fought mighty battles with undead dragons to claim their treasure, only to be zapped back in time to find new kingdoms to conquer.

    

I wish I had been as cool as this kid...he's got friends. And cool over-alls.

         It was a lot of fun. But it was also good training for a young writer. Being a Dungeon Master taught me a lot about writing. It taught me to keep the story going. Keep the action and suspense vivid for the players. It taught me not to get to hung up on an outline or idea I had that's not working, because the players will always do something unexpected to deviate from the plan. And that's what a writer wants. A writer wants to entertain and to create something unexpected. In Dungeons and Dragons, no outline is concrete. No character is invincible. There's always a hint of danger. As it should be in good writing.

       I'm glad I discovered Dungeons and Dragons when I did and I'm thankful good players found me and allowed me to weave their characters into my stories. With them, the stories were no longer mine, but ours.

      I think that's one of the goals of a writer. To create something other people feel is theirs to experience.

      So, break out the twenty-sided dice and let's roll up an adventure.

Friends make everything better.

Happy Birthday Jack Kerouac

Today is Jack Kerouac's birthday. Had he not drank himself to death at the age of 47, he'd be 94 today.

Kerouac made his mark in literature back in the fifties. His book, On the Road, inspired millions of imitators and launched a new movement in literature. He may not have been the best or most talented of the Beats, but he is by far the most famous, aside from Allen Ginsberg.

What makes Kerouac different, sets him apart from the rest of the Beats, is how dangerous he was, especially to the movement to which he gave name.

On the Road was published in the fifties, when America was perhaps at it's height of conservatism. On the Road, a biographical account of Kerouac's trips across America, where he explored jazz dens and smoked reefer across the border in Mexico, gave the underground currents that buzzed across the great wide states of America, a voice. It opened the eyes of people who had perhaps never even conceived there were other possibilities than those set before them by their parents. It was this voice that made Kerouac the King of the Beat Generation.

This is all great stuff for a kid living in a small town, waiting for their chance to see what's out there on the horizon. The basic theme, I found, was to dig life, to dig the ups and downs, and to realize its all one beautiful journey.

It took Kerouac ten years to write and get his book of “spontaneous prose” published. It coincided with the rise in Jazz and Bebop, of which Kerouac incorporated into his prose. He wrote with a beat in his head, which gave the Beat Generation its name. Had Kerouac never written another book, he would have been a mere footnote in history, if that. But he did. After the success of On the Road, his publisher wanted more of the same. It's what happens when an artist becomes successful. The ones who made money off them, want more. So he churned out more experiences, the best of which was The Dharma Bums. His books all follow the same characters, and it was his idea to incorporate them into one large story, called The Vanity of Duluoz.

Kerouac had many critics, and even today, he is often dismissed as anything more than a fad or an adolescent's vision of what a writer should be. Truman Capote famously said of Kerouac, “That's not writing, that's typing.”

What these critics fail to see, is that while his prose breaks so many literary rules, often sending a single sentence trampling across several pages, is that there is a beat Kerouac is working too, and if read aloud, as evidenced in his Steve Allen performance, it creates something new. Something that had never been done before.

And while Kerouac, as a man, should be nobody's idol, his work will last forever, drunken warts and all.

So, here's to you Jack. Happy Birthday.

Person Of Interest: Margaret Brundage

I'm starting something new with this post, called Person of Interest. These will be about people who interest me in various ways. Since it was recently Women Appreciation Day, I decided to start if off with, you guessed it, a woman.

Margaret Brundage

Margaret Brundage was known as the Queen of the Pulps. She is chiefly known as the cover artist for Weird Tales Magazine, where she painted the first depiction of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. Her work was so popular at the time, writers would put scenes in their stories they thought would make a good Brundage cover.

The first depiction of Conan The Barbarian

             It's interesting to note, the magazine received more criticism for their sexy covers once it was revealed M. Brundage, as she was credited at the time, was a woman.

One of her more famous pieces, "Bat Woman"

      She worked steadily, until there was a public backlash against the pulps for their racy covers and violent stories. When New York prohibited pulps with half-naked women on the cover displayed at news stands, it pretty much put her out of work.

The art she did for the pulps contain half-naked damsels in distress, befitting the genre, but for me, there is something more in her paintings. They grab you, and tell you a story just by looking at them. She worked in pastels, and the colors are striking, even the faded copies of the old magazines radiate a brilliance through the years.

Cover for another Robert E. Howard story

Margaret never really recovered from her drop in sales to the magazines, which supported her, her son and mother, and her bum of a husband. She lived the rest of her life in poverty, making the rounds at pulp conventions when they cropped up.

I look at her work, though, and I see something exciting. I see other worlds. Other places. I see stories to be told.

Update from the Writing Factory

You may have noticed I missed two posts recently (or maybe you didn’t), but the writing factory is still open. I chose to forgo my last two posts because I’ve been working on a story for my other blog, Saturday Night Pulps, which has run into a longer project.

                This happens sometimes. You start writing, grabbing ideas from the ether, not sure where it is going, and bam, your short story turns into a novella, or novel, or an epic ten book fantasy.

                It’s one of the things I love about writing. Sometimes, no matter how well you plan or outline, if you do plan or outline your stories, the characters take you by the arm and lead you down some ally way you weren’t expecting to go down.

                I don’t usually plan or outline my stories. I start with one sentence, or idea, or a vague notion of a character I want to write about. But this new story I started did start with an outline. I thought it would make it a tighter story to fit within the framework of my SNP blog. Well, I was wrong.  The characters took me by the ear this time, and said, “Uh-uh, Donny boy. This story is bigger than you thought.”

                When a story does that, you have to go with it. To deny it, would be to deny the very fabric of what makes a writer write. It makes all those other stories I’ve started, just to toss them out because they weren’t going anywhere, worth it. When inspiration strikes, you strike back, because you never know when she’s coming, or if she’ll ever return.  It’s a fear I think all writers have.  To one day wake up with the stories gone. The ideas and characters you dream up vanished back into the regions from which they came.

                You also never know what the story could have been if you don’t see it through.  Even if it’s garbage thrown into the recycle bin, it’s all going somewhere. Tools you can pull out when you need them.

                I have this one character I created when I was a kid and was first seduced by the goddess creativity.  He was a cowboy and a lot of him was taken from other cowboys I had seen in the movies or read about it books. But he was my cowboy. I created him, and I wrote about his adventures.  This cowboy might never see the light of day. His adventures might always be for me and my own enjoyment. But the tools and experience I picked up writing about him will always be useful to me and will always show up in the stories I do share.

                So, off I go, to whip the workers in the writing factory into shape to meet an all to quickly approaching deadline. Maybe I’ll give them a bonus if they can fit this weekly blog into their schedule as well. Or, maybe not. A writer’s life is supposed to be torture, after all. Can’t let them get to comfortable.

Jeeves keeps the monkeys in line

Lost in Notebooks (I think I took a wrong turn in Albuquerqe)

My article is late because I’ve been working.  I start lots of stories that I never finish, and sometimes they aren’t worth finishing, or I just get stuck, or I lose my motivation.  So, this week I sat down to finish a couple of them.

                These are long stories.  Stories I envision will turn into short novels.  But it took some work just to get them going again.  Both are buried in notebooks.  And not just one notebook, but spread out amongst many, and so to transcribe them on my computer, I had to go through just about every notebook I have, just to find excerpts.  Slowly, like a puzzle, I piece these excerpts together and follow them like a treasure map to rediscover the characters and plots I had stored away until they were almost forgotten.  One of them goes back two years. The other only a year. And now, I’m dusting them off, gently, like an archeologist digging up bones and trying to figure out what goes where.

                It’s hard work.  I see the words fresh.  Like someone else wrote them.  In one of them, I see a style I was going for, and maybe I don’t like that style anymore, or it doesn’t suit the story, or maybe it does, and I’m just not the same writer I was when I began the story.  But I recognize it, and the character still wants me to tell his story.  He’s there, in the work, telling me, “You must finish this.  You can’t leave me here with no conclusion. You took my arm and left me alone.  Finish me!”

                It’s hard because I know once I get the notebooks transcribed, I have to finish the story.  Not only that, but I’ll have to revise the story.  It’s a daunting prospect, like any expedition, and it leaves me a little nervous. I have to put aside other works. Short stories and revisions I’ve been working on.  I have to pick what I think is more important or advantageous.  I have to be selective, because it’s not easy.  It’s not. 

                But it is fun. It is rewarding.

                I watched a Ken Burns doc about the first guy to drive a car across the United States.  This was in the early 1900’s.  There were no highways and the roads were unfit for automobiles.  It took him 60 days and thousands of dollars in 1910 money.  He did because a man bet him $50 he couldn’t.  So, he climbed in the car, with little preparation, and hit the road to prove to himself he could do it.  And he did.  He won the bet.  But he never bothered to collect his winnings.

                Take what you can from that analogy.  I think it says something about the human spirit.  If you want something bad enough, you’ll do it.  Not because of some bet, or someone else’s expectations, but because there’s something inside of you, that makes you go on.  Even when there are no mechanics, no roads, and no highways.  You’ll get to the end, and you’ll say, “I did it.”

Bud - the first dog to wag his tongue out the window on a road trip

GOING FISHING

It’s cold outside.  It’s the middle of winter.  The sky is gray, the trees are bare and, an icy wind is blowing in from the north.  I think I’m going fishing.

                I need to.  I need to check out on this last day of January.  I’m going to stay inside and go fishing.  Bury my head under my blanket and reset my psyche.  See if I catch anything.

                The rejections have started to come.  Four so far, this year.  That’s not bad.  I haven’t set a goal or anything, but four rejections this early in the year is doing all right by my standards.  I usually expect them about four months after I send a story out.  When I get the email back, I know what it’s going to say before I read it.  “Dear so and so, thank you for allowing us to read your work, however…” and you can fill in the rest. 

                Now, normally it doesn’t bother me.  I’ve gotten a ton of rejections since I’ve started sending out stories. It comes with the territory.  When I first started seriously writing, I printed out my rejections and kept them in a box.  But that takes up a lot of ink, and since it was all done through email, I just started to save them in a file.  I got tired of that as well, so now I just note it on the list of manuscripts I keep.  I write down every story and who I send it out to, with the date.  When I get the rejection, or, sweet Lord how did this happen, an acceptance, I write that down and the date I received it.  I also write down any notes they happen to give, which is very few.  Usually, I get the the blah blah blah same note they send to everyone about how your story doesn’t fit their magazine at this time.  But hey, they always wish you luck sending it elsewhere, so, you know, there’s that.

                It’s fun for me, to send stories out to markets (the industry calls the magazines and journals you send your work to markets) where I know it will get rejected.  For instance, The New Yorker, is almost always first on my list.  They pay well and are respected in the industry, but the chances of getting in are slim to none (at least from my experience).  But, I read somewhere, if you’re going to get rejected, get rejected by the best.  Good advice, I think.  They’re also pretentious as hell, and if I was to get in, I would get a big laugh out of it.  Well, I haven’t gotten in yet, so I’m not laughing.

                There are some markets I would really love to get in.  I write stories just for them, and go over them and over them, making sure it’s the best it can be (as a general rule, I do that with every story – even these little articles) and when I think I’ve nailed it shut as tight as I can, I send it off.  These are the rejections that hurt the most.  The rejections that pile up, weigh me down, and leave me wondering why I even do this if I’m not good enough to get into some magazine most people have never even heard about.

                They say rejections make you a better writer.  Well, I’m waiting…

           Anyway, I have four stories that have come back to me that need more work.  That’s what a rejection means.  It means its still not good enough.  It’s not great.  If it’s not great, no one is going to waste their time reading it, and if there’s one thing a writer wants, its to be read.  It’s certainly not the money.  There’s no money in this.  None at all. 

                So, if you like rejection, if you like spending hours and hours working on something, trying to make it readable and sellable to a market that doesn’t pay, then maybe writing is for you.

                Me?  I’m going fishing.  Maybe I’ll land a big one.

The author...fishing

The Best Guitar Player I Ever Knew (A Letter to Shredder)

Prognosis Negative outside a gig in San Francisco

The best guitar player I ever knew was Shredder Hernandez.  You have to be pretty good, if you’re going to call yourself Shredder.

                I met him back when I lived in L.A. and was playing in a band.  Our drummer brought him around one day and introduced him as Jason.  He wore all black, had long black hair, and had eyes that whispered hidden talents.  He said he was from El Paso, in his soft, clipped way of speaking, and before long, he plugged in the guitar he brought slung across his back, and we started playing. 

                The guy had talent.  It was obvious.  I don’t know how he got the name Shredder.  If he gave it to himself, or if people just started calling him that.  But it’s the name he went by, and it wasn’t pretentious if knew him.  He earned the name, and he lived the name.  He was a real guitar player.  Could play anything, could listen to anything and appreciate its musical worth. 

                Shredder stuck with the band.  When the drummer quit, it was just me, my brother, and Shredder, making noise with our guitars in the rehearsal space, still writing songs, still dreaming the big dream. 

                It was Shredder who brought us our next drummer.  A guy he met on the bus, squatting in an abandoned office in North Hollywood.  The drummer fit us perfectly, because we were all homeless, or had been at some point, squatting somewhere.  It was sort of a bond we had between us all.  We had a song called “Sink Shower”, and it became something of a theme song for us.

                Shredder had a problem.  Shredder liked to drink, and when he drank, he drank to much.  He was a sweet guy.  Even drunk, he was a sweet guy.  But he hung with a crowd who liked to drink and who weren’t sweet guys.  He brought them around to a party we had, and they busted it up, got into fights and just being big drunk assholes.  Shredder tried to stop them, but he couldn’t.  I think he only tried to stop them for our sakes, but either way, the party was over, and we had to march those guys out of there.    

                Shredder said those guys were his brothers, but they weren’t his brothers.  They were just drunks. 

                The party was over, those guys left, and we hear bottles breaking outside the rehearsal space.  It’s Shredder, drunkenly throwing beer bottles over the fence into the parking lot next door.  It was a last straw for us, and we did something I regret to this day.   We kicked Shredder out of the band.  It wasn’t an easy thing to do.  It was hard, and the look on his face made it even harder.  But he accepted it, and we moved on, and he moved on, and our band was never the same. 

                After that, I saw Shredder a couple of times.  Once, I found him walking on Sunset Boulevard.  I picked him up and gave him a ride.  It was about ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, and he was drunk off his ass.  I don’t think he knew who I was at first, and I don’t think he remembered the ride. 

                The last time I saw Shredder Hernandez was on Hollywood Boulevard.  We ran into each other and he told me about his new band.  He was decently sober, and seemed excited about it.  I was glad for him.  We made plans to jam again, and I told him I’d go see his new bands gig.

Shredder Hernandez

          I walked away feeling good.  We were friends and we both knew it.  I went to see his band, but they didn’t show up to the gig, so I didn’t see him after that.  I heard stories about him.  Most of them were like the story of me finding him on Sunset Boulevard.  Or worse.  But I always pulled for Shredder.  He lived life the way he wanted, or the way he said he wanted.  He called himself a Gutter Rat, and said it with a pride I couldn’t really understand, and still don’t.  I feel like he surrounded himself with people who lived the same way, but for different reasons.  And I don’t think he realized, or maybe he didn’t care, when those people would take advantage of him and his talents.

                Shredder Hernandez died.  He fell off a bridge.  An overpass he was living under.  It was a strange, mysterious death, and there were a few different versions of it.  But it doesn’t really matter how Shredder died.  I’m just glad I got to live with him, jam with him, play on stages with him.  There was so much more we could have done together.  Man, we had some good times. Mistakes were made on both sides, but that’s life.  You live, react, and move on, carried by the unstoppable currents of life. 

I’m glad I got to see him on the Boulevard that last night.  We walked away friends, and friends we will always be. Rest in peace, Shredder.

Broken Lightbulbs and Onion Sandwiches

My teeth

I had a dream the other night.  It was a scary, freakish dream.  One I’ve had before, and one I know others have had.

                I was going about my life in the dream world, when suddenly my teeth shattered like a lightbulb.  There was no reason for it.  None that I could remember anyway. One moment my teeth were just fine, and the next, they were little shards of brittle glass floating in my mouth. 

                I rarely remember my dreams, and even this one, the only part I remember is about the teeth.  Broken like so many dreams, to become nightmares upon waking.

                I’ve heard dreaming about broken teeth means you are suffering from stress.  Depending on when you ask me, sometimes I believe dreams have meaning, and sometimes I don’t.  They’re just synapses firing off in our brain while we’re trying to sleep.  Shooting off micro worlds of thoughts and memories.  Excising gas and waste produced by our minds throughout the day.

                They have no more meaning than onion sandwiches.

This means something!

            Onion sandwiches are good.  A few slices of onion on white bread.  Maybe some mustard.  Maybe some cheese.  Whatever you happen to have.  It doesn’t sound that good, but trust me, they are.  I don’t blame you for squenching up your face at the thought of biting into an onion sandwich, and I myself never would have tried one if I hadn’t read a Hemingway story, Big Two-Hearted River (I think) where his protagonist Nick Adams has some onion sandwiches packed for his fishing trip.  If you haven’t read any Hemingway, or despise his work, as a lot of people do these days, I recommend The Nick Adam’s Stories.  It’s a collection of short stories that spans decades, all about the Nick Adams, from his boyhood growing up in rural Michigan (ex. Ten Indians) to his life after World War One (ex. Fathers and Sons).  I’m not going to get to much into it, but it’s a great work that spans Hemingway’s own literary career.  It inspired me to try an onion sandwich.

                What do onion sandwiches have to do about stress-related dreams?  I’ll tell you.

                Writing these articles have been great for me.  They allow me to write about things that I would never put into my fiction.  Maybe things I would want to, but never get around to, inserting into some story I’m working on.  The flip-side of that is that I promised myself a deadline.  I haven’t had to work with a deadline in many a moon.  That unto itself is one of the reasons for these articles.  To push myself to write when nothing else is pushing me.  To find the motivation, even when catching it is like holding your hand beneath the water spout.  In the end, I think it will make me a better writer.

                At the same time, the stress of writing something that might interest a reader, something that is non-fiction, is somewhat of a strange and foreign concept to a person who has only ever written about made up characters and places.  Even the most honest fiction, to me, comes from some ethereal place where facts are changed, and the names are replaced to protect the innocent. Throw in a few murders and calamitous adventures, and maybe, if you dig deep enough, you’ll find some truth buried in there somewhere.  But here, in this blog, I’ve given myself some reign to divulge a little about what makes me tick.  Not a lot, maybe, but some.  And as the week draws to a close, with my deadline lingering at the end, the pressure of figuring out what I’m going to say, or divulge, becomes somewhat stressful.  Not enough to make my teeth shatter like a lightbulb, I don’t think, but maybe its there in my subconscious (if you believe in such a thing).

                So, this morning, with my self-imposed deadline a day or two past due, I look on my refrigerator and see a note I left to myself.  Onion sandwiches.  

Eureka!

        I don’t know why I left that note.  I suppose I was going to incorporate it into a story but never got around to it.  Hemingway had already done it for me.  Hell, the note would never have been there if it wasn’t for Papa.  But it gave me a starting point.  Something to latch onto as I thought about my shattered teeth and my past due article.  It gave me that little extra push I needed to jump right in and start typing.

                Sometimes, you need to take a bite into an onion sandwich to see how good it is.  Despite your shattered teeth. 

Revisiting Tales From the Crypt

“Greeting, boils and ghouls!”

                It’s probably been twenty years since I heard my old fiend the Crypt Keeper greet me with that pun, and then follow it up with his cackling laughter as he introduced another episode of the Tales of the Crypt. 

                For those of you who don’t know, or never had the privilege of watching Tales From the Crypt, you’re missing out on one of the greatest horror anthologies television has ever produced.  Premiering in 1989, Tales From the Crypt combined campiness and horror as it retold stories from the old E.C. horror comics line with titles like, Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, and Crime SuspenStories. 

Crypt Keeper as Elvis

The episodes were hosted by the Crypt Keeper, who filled the intro and outro with his pun-filled monologues.  The stories may have been able to stand alone, but the Crypt Keeper definitely made the series stand out from its contemporaries like The Dark Side or the remakes of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone.  He made each episode fun and stamped it with a signature, much like Rod Serling did with the original Twilight Zone.  Did I just compare the Crypt Keeper to Serling?   Yes.  Yes, I did.

How could you not love this mug?

                Anyway, though some of the special effects seem a bit dated now, the show holds up well overall.  I think part of the reason for this, is they didn’t go overboard trying to produce truly hideous monsters or creatures.   Like I said, the Crypt Keeper himself is a puppet, and an obvious one.  If they had tried to use computers to portray him, it would never hold up today.  We focus instead on his personality. 

                The episodes themselves vary in theme, from the truly horrific and straight up slasher flicks, to Hitchcockian (Al actually makes an appearance in an episode) twists and turns.  Every episode is different, and there-in lies its charm. 

                Like I said, the show first aired in 1989 and ran to 1996, and it is a very 90’s show.  You’ll see a lot of familiar faces from that era, and not all of them come from horror backgrounds.  Arnold Schwarzenegger directed an episode, and some of the stars include Bobcat Goldthwaite, Leah Thompson, Morton Downy Jr., John Lovitz, and a host of others (way to many to name here).   The list of directors is as long as impressive as the actors.  I mentioned Schwarzenegger (not that he’s known as a director) but others include Tobe Hooper, Michael J. Fox, and Robert Zemeckis (who also served as a producer).

Don Rickles and his hand in the memorable episode "The Ventriloquist's Dummy"   

                Tale From the Crypt was produced by HBO (why they don’t stream it, I’ll never understand), so they were able to get away with a lot of the violence and sexual content other anthologies from the era weren’t allowed to show.  I watched this show as a kid when my parents let me stay up late (or when they had already gone to bed) but I wouldn’t call this a show for kids.  While the cartoonish Crypt Keeper may assuage some of the edge of the horror series, with his puns and comical innuendos, the show is very much for adults. 

                The other side of that argument is that its based on old horror comics.  The producers probably grew up with these comics as kids, and knew that kids like me would be pulled into their show by the host, and stay tuned for the thrills provided in each story.  Watching Tales From the Crypt was fun, because it felt like you weren’t supposed to be watching it.  Much like reading those old EC Comics.  The love of the show has stuck with me for over twenty years now, and if I had kids, I might let them stay up late on Friday nights to watch another tale brought to them by the Crypt Keeper.

                If it causes nightmares?  Well, then I guess it means the show aged well.  Unlike the Crypt Keeper.  Heeeeyahahaahaaa!!!!!

A New Year's Letter to Elmore Leonard

So, this is the New Year, and its starting off cold as hell.  The sun is out, shining over the bare gray trees, and the sky is a warm clear blue.  But the air is as frigid as the cold hand of death.

                I broke one of Elmore Leonard’s ten rules of writing with that one.  Never talk about the weather, he says.  Now, Leonard is a highly regarded writer with more than thirty books and hundreds of short stories under his belt, so he knows what he’s talking about.  It goes well with his other rule of leaving out the parts the reader is going to skip.

                Well, Mr. Leonard, I just broke your rule.  I started off with the weather, in the very first sentence, mind you, and carried it on through the first paragraph.  What do you have to say about that?  What’s that?  Nothing? 

                Well, that might be because you’re dead. 

                It’s too bad, really, because I really want to know why reading about the weather is such a bad thing.  After all, isn’t “It was a dark and stormy night” a literary trope for a reason?  Weather can set the mood.  Creates a setting.  Gives our characters something to struggle with right out of the gate.  There’s plenty of stories where the weather stands as an obstacle for the characters.  Remember the little matchstick girl, Mr. Leonard?  What about her?  The weather was a big part of that story, wasn’t it?  Or was that the part you skipped over?

                Listen, I’m sorry for giving you a hard time, Mr. Leonard, and your list of writing does and don’ts  has become an essential part of my creative writing process, but this one I don’t understand.  I mean, its not like I went on and on about how cold it is outside, even though it is freezing, and it has forced me indoors to contemplate what you have against the weather.  I don’t like it anymore than you do, but there it is.  And I use it a lot.  It sets up some of my stories.  The weather is always there in the background.  The characters have to bundle up or strip down, depending on the circumstances. 

                So, Mr. Leonard, I’m going to have to go against you on this one.  Just this one, so far.  But maybe I’ll come up with a few more to disagree with.  This is a New Year after all, and its time to change some things.  To raise some questions.  I know I’m giving you a hard time, and I don’t mean to, but just because you wrote so many great books, that doesn’t make you an expert on what works in fiction, does it?

                Does it?

                Well, maybe it does.  But it’s cold in here, so I’m going with it.