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.