I submitted the following short story into a contest. The rules were it had to be under 50 words, and include the words tiara, sparkly, and princess.
Creeping across the wooden planks and ignoring the hundreds of sparkly eyes peering from the dark, I grabbed the rolled paper that documented my three year descent into hell. And then I paused. “What are you waiting for, princess, your lawyer tiara?” It was just the beginning.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Garage Sale Disappointment
I was garage sale shopping with Grace this afternoon in a VERY wealthy suburb of St. Paul. We were driving through an area rife with McMansion and hideous landscaping when we saw a small sign directing us to a garage sale. We followed the sign, going more than a mile out of our way, only to discover a ginormous mansion with a few dirty items thrown on a cardboard table. I wouldn't give the crap they were trying to sell away for free.
I was rather offended by this, people with gobs of money trying to unload their crap on unsuspecting garage-sale goers. I think it's false advertising, especially considering how far out of our way we went for garbage.
I was rather offended by this, people with gobs of money trying to unload their crap on unsuspecting garage-sale goers. I think it's false advertising, especially considering how far out of our way we went for garbage.
Side tracked!
I should be done with my first draft by now, but the criminal defense boys keep giving me paying work (which I love them dearly for, but this is the second weekend in a row where I have a Monday deadline).
Heading to the cabin this weekend, so hopefully I can get my legal writing done, and finish my first draft. I was struggling with a story transition, but it came to me during a bike ride, so it's just a push to the end.
My wonderful new friend Grace is going to edit it for me. She doesn't know it yet, but I am paying her with a ton of booze. Best deal ever!
I know that this is the most boring blog ever, and I need some blog writing tips, but I am sure I will improve as I go.
Heading to the cabin this weekend, so hopefully I can get my legal writing done, and finish my first draft. I was struggling with a story transition, but it came to me during a bike ride, so it's just a push to the end.
My wonderful new friend Grace is going to edit it for me. She doesn't know it yet, but I am paying her with a ton of booze. Best deal ever!
I know that this is the most boring blog ever, and I need some blog writing tips, but I am sure I will improve as I go.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Back to the Basics
The last few thousand words are killing me. I've edited and edited and edited, know where the book is going, but it's missing something, a dash of salt here, a clove of garlic here, and I'm getting frustrated on what to add and when.
So, I am taking a day or two off and rereading my favorite books just to empty my mind for a
bit.
It don't have writer's block, exactly, just writer's frustration. Wish me luck!
So, I am taking a day or two off and rereading my favorite books just to empty my mind for a
bit.
It don't have writer's block, exactly, just writer's frustration. Wish me luck!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
FIRST CHAPTER
TISIPHONE’S REVENGE or GOD FROM THE MACHINE
“Fast bound in sleep are the loathsome maidens, ancient daughters of Night. Yet thou must fly, for they will chase thee through the wide mainland, over sea and island, till thou come to Pallas' city. There, clasping the ancient image of the goddess, thou shalt find judges, who at last shall free thee wholly from these ills." The Oresteia, Aeschylus
Chapter 1
It is almost time. Tisiphone claps her hands in glee, giggling girlishly for the first time in several decades. For almost 400 years her hands have been tied. She’d been banned from the earthly realm on a technicality following a particularly gruesome grudge murder during the Spanish Inquisition, and she still had more than a century before she’d be allowed back on earth. It irks her that she was not there to stop the Holocaust, the purges in Russia that particularly devastated the Ukraine, that she was unable to prevent millions upon millions of women and innocent children from going to their graves. But Zeus is still angry over his mortal son. The stupid brat was going to die anyways, give or take a few decades, so when she struck him down with a single bolt of lightening after he killed his wife over a suspected affair, she’d been surprised at Zeus’ wrath. She still thinks that killing his son with his trademark lightening technique is what drove him over the edge of reason. She sighs. Even the gods make mistakes.
Of course Tisiphone is not the only Fury on Mount Olympus, but over the ages, her two sisters have become fat and dumb and lazy, and have given into the everyday addictions that plague mankind in the 21st Century. Alecto, who wants everyone to call her Alex, spends most of her days watching the insipid, and indeed invidious, soap operas while lolling on the couch, eating chocolates straight from the box, an immortal cliché of bored-to-tears housewives the world over. She’s also developed an unhealthy obsession with fast food, particularly the cardboard meat patties from McDonald’s. As lesser immortals, they are still vulnerable to the effects of saturated fat, and Alecto can no longer fit into the Grecian robes that used to clad her slim figure, not that ambrosia was ever a diet food, but at least it wasn’t laden with preservatives and artificial coloring. She still wears voluminous gowns, only they look more like muumuus than classic robes, and she has developed a penchant for gaudy florals and animal prints. Once the proud daughter of Gaia, fertilized by the blood spilled from Uranus when he was castrated by his son Cronus, Tisiphone cannot remember the last time her fat sister punished a mortal for a crime against morality in a world dripping with vice.
Megaera, who will answer only to Meg, prefers the inanities of reality television and detective shows over punishing people for marital infidelities. Stupid bitch could still wreak havoc if she would just lay off the booze, but her rampant alcoholism is not unexpected given her fondness for Greek ouzo back in the day. It had taken centuries for the disease to progress, but now she downs drink after drink sitting in front of the 52” flat screen plasma T.V. she’d insisted on buying, before passing out on her brocade divan, surrounded by the mess that’s been accumulating for decades. After a nasty incident involving the Greek liquor, (she drank two entire bottles during a particularly impressive binge and Hera discovered her passed out in her own vomit by Mount Olympus’ most revered fountain), she no longer can stand the sight of ouzo and consumes bottle after bottle of cheap Russian vodka. And she’s gotten so thin, just skin hanging off bones like one of those obscene fashion models trotting down the runway. Even though Tisiphone is disgusted with her sister, she feels a tinge of concern when she thinks of Megaera’s skeletal frame. Tisiphone fondly remembers the days when her sister would swoop down on flaming wings, eyes dripping with blood and hate, striking her hapless victims to the ground. But she cannot remember the last time her sister incited husbands and wives to become murderous from jealous rage, and every day she lets thousands of acts of marital infidelity go on unpunished.
She is forced to live with them for another century; they were assigned a large home separated into three apartments on Mount Olympus, and Zeus isn’t one for letting her out of the contract. Although a few gold coins a month seemed like such a good deal at the time, she regrets signing a 3,000 year rental agreement. It’s not as if Zeus even bothers to collect the money, but rules are rules, the statutes of Olympus have grown especially onerous over the centuries, and above other rules, Zeus must be obeyed. She wishes sometimes that they’d never left Tartarus, but even the most malignant of spirits sometimes craves the light.
There’s a loud knock on her bedroom door. “Tisiphone, open the door!” It’s her sister Megaera, screeching in her characteristically piercing voice.
“Leave me alone, I am planning revenge,” she yells to her already drunk sister.
“I am bored, I want to help,” she pleads, and Tisiphone knows that she is lying. Megaera always feigns boredom to access the rooms she keeps locked against her sister, and when Megaera leaves, Tisiphone inevitably finds one of her cherished knickknacks missing. It’s such a hassle finding another lesser god to convince don mortal garb and ransack the pawnshops until the missing item is located. The last time she stole a beautiful Roman glass perfume bottle and her favorite bauble ended up in a museum before it could be properly retrieved.
“Go away! You haven’t been interested in vengeance for decades, and I am not giving you any money.”
Megaera grumbles for several minutes on the other side of the door, but she quickly bores of pestering her sister deity and leaves. Tisiphone can her cursing Gaia for ever giving her a sister, but the vengeful goddess returns to her ministrations, willing the woman she watches below to sleep.
Surrounding her are marble walls that glisten from their daily wipe down to eliminate any prints or imagined dust that may have accumulated during the course of her day. She has a sumptuous bathtub, which holds gallons upon gallons of bubbling water, filled so that the soothing heat reaches her chin. Her bed is covered with Egyptian linens, her servants iron the high thread count sheets until they are crisp and smooth. Se sinks deep into feather pillows as she rests her head for blissful slumber, awaking cool and refreshed every morning when Helios ascends the horizon. She dines on the finest of foods, caviar, lobster, and drinks the finest aged wines.
But every day is more of the same, and the luxury of her surroundings does not diminish the longing in her soul. She wants blood, and death, and revenge, she imagines her marble walls dripping in viscous red as brain matter seeps to the floor. The smell of death has never bothered her, and like an epicurean who thrives on stinky cheese, she appreciates the rot of human flesh as it slowly disintegrates, the writhing of maggots beneath too pale skin, and the extended bubbles of putrification hovering just below the surface.
She imagines bodies exploding from the gas that builds up during the natural process of decomposition. Eyes desiccated and empty, the stretch of leathery skin as the adipose material beneath the epithelial layer melts away into the ground. Eventually the corpse is leather pulled tight over bones, until the leather wears away and only the bones are left. But the bones are the best part, and scavengers ravish the skeleton, sucking the marrow until nothing is left but ivory remnants that eventually fade to gray.
And soon she will be rewarded. The bodies are about to pile up once again.
“Fast bound in sleep are the loathsome maidens, ancient daughters of Night. Yet thou must fly, for they will chase thee through the wide mainland, over sea and island, till thou come to Pallas' city. There, clasping the ancient image of the goddess, thou shalt find judges, who at last shall free thee wholly from these ills." The Oresteia, Aeschylus
Chapter 1
It is almost time. Tisiphone claps her hands in glee, giggling girlishly for the first time in several decades. For almost 400 years her hands have been tied. She’d been banned from the earthly realm on a technicality following a particularly gruesome grudge murder during the Spanish Inquisition, and she still had more than a century before she’d be allowed back on earth. It irks her that she was not there to stop the Holocaust, the purges in Russia that particularly devastated the Ukraine, that she was unable to prevent millions upon millions of women and innocent children from going to their graves. But Zeus is still angry over his mortal son. The stupid brat was going to die anyways, give or take a few decades, so when she struck him down with a single bolt of lightening after he killed his wife over a suspected affair, she’d been surprised at Zeus’ wrath. She still thinks that killing his son with his trademark lightening technique is what drove him over the edge of reason. She sighs. Even the gods make mistakes.
Of course Tisiphone is not the only Fury on Mount Olympus, but over the ages, her two sisters have become fat and dumb and lazy, and have given into the everyday addictions that plague mankind in the 21st Century. Alecto, who wants everyone to call her Alex, spends most of her days watching the insipid, and indeed invidious, soap operas while lolling on the couch, eating chocolates straight from the box, an immortal cliché of bored-to-tears housewives the world over. She’s also developed an unhealthy obsession with fast food, particularly the cardboard meat patties from McDonald’s. As lesser immortals, they are still vulnerable to the effects of saturated fat, and Alecto can no longer fit into the Grecian robes that used to clad her slim figure, not that ambrosia was ever a diet food, but at least it wasn’t laden with preservatives and artificial coloring. She still wears voluminous gowns, only they look more like muumuus than classic robes, and she has developed a penchant for gaudy florals and animal prints. Once the proud daughter of Gaia, fertilized by the blood spilled from Uranus when he was castrated by his son Cronus, Tisiphone cannot remember the last time her fat sister punished a mortal for a crime against morality in a world dripping with vice.
Megaera, who will answer only to Meg, prefers the inanities of reality television and detective shows over punishing people for marital infidelities. Stupid bitch could still wreak havoc if she would just lay off the booze, but her rampant alcoholism is not unexpected given her fondness for Greek ouzo back in the day. It had taken centuries for the disease to progress, but now she downs drink after drink sitting in front of the 52” flat screen plasma T.V. she’d insisted on buying, before passing out on her brocade divan, surrounded by the mess that’s been accumulating for decades. After a nasty incident involving the Greek liquor, (she drank two entire bottles during a particularly impressive binge and Hera discovered her passed out in her own vomit by Mount Olympus’ most revered fountain), she no longer can stand the sight of ouzo and consumes bottle after bottle of cheap Russian vodka. And she’s gotten so thin, just skin hanging off bones like one of those obscene fashion models trotting down the runway. Even though Tisiphone is disgusted with her sister, she feels a tinge of concern when she thinks of Megaera’s skeletal frame. Tisiphone fondly remembers the days when her sister would swoop down on flaming wings, eyes dripping with blood and hate, striking her hapless victims to the ground. But she cannot remember the last time her sister incited husbands and wives to become murderous from jealous rage, and every day she lets thousands of acts of marital infidelity go on unpunished.
She is forced to live with them for another century; they were assigned a large home separated into three apartments on Mount Olympus, and Zeus isn’t one for letting her out of the contract. Although a few gold coins a month seemed like such a good deal at the time, she regrets signing a 3,000 year rental agreement. It’s not as if Zeus even bothers to collect the money, but rules are rules, the statutes of Olympus have grown especially onerous over the centuries, and above other rules, Zeus must be obeyed. She wishes sometimes that they’d never left Tartarus, but even the most malignant of spirits sometimes craves the light.
There’s a loud knock on her bedroom door. “Tisiphone, open the door!” It’s her sister Megaera, screeching in her characteristically piercing voice.
“Leave me alone, I am planning revenge,” she yells to her already drunk sister.
“I am bored, I want to help,” she pleads, and Tisiphone knows that she is lying. Megaera always feigns boredom to access the rooms she keeps locked against her sister, and when Megaera leaves, Tisiphone inevitably finds one of her cherished knickknacks missing. It’s such a hassle finding another lesser god to convince don mortal garb and ransack the pawnshops until the missing item is located. The last time she stole a beautiful Roman glass perfume bottle and her favorite bauble ended up in a museum before it could be properly retrieved.
“Go away! You haven’t been interested in vengeance for decades, and I am not giving you any money.”
Megaera grumbles for several minutes on the other side of the door, but she quickly bores of pestering her sister deity and leaves. Tisiphone can her cursing Gaia for ever giving her a sister, but the vengeful goddess returns to her ministrations, willing the woman she watches below to sleep.
Surrounding her are marble walls that glisten from their daily wipe down to eliminate any prints or imagined dust that may have accumulated during the course of her day. She has a sumptuous bathtub, which holds gallons upon gallons of bubbling water, filled so that the soothing heat reaches her chin. Her bed is covered with Egyptian linens, her servants iron the high thread count sheets until they are crisp and smooth. Se sinks deep into feather pillows as she rests her head for blissful slumber, awaking cool and refreshed every morning when Helios ascends the horizon. She dines on the finest of foods, caviar, lobster, and drinks the finest aged wines.
But every day is more of the same, and the luxury of her surroundings does not diminish the longing in her soul. She wants blood, and death, and revenge, she imagines her marble walls dripping in viscous red as brain matter seeps to the floor. The smell of death has never bothered her, and like an epicurean who thrives on stinky cheese, she appreciates the rot of human flesh as it slowly disintegrates, the writhing of maggots beneath too pale skin, and the extended bubbles of putrification hovering just below the surface.
She imagines bodies exploding from the gas that builds up during the natural process of decomposition. Eyes desiccated and empty, the stretch of leathery skin as the adipose material beneath the epithelial layer melts away into the ground. Eventually the corpse is leather pulled tight over bones, until the leather wears away and only the bones are left. But the bones are the best part, and scavengers ravish the skeleton, sucking the marrow until nothing is left but ivory remnants that eventually fade to gray.
And soon she will be rewarded. The bodies are about to pile up once again.
Deus Ex Machina
After struggling to make my thriller thrilling enough (don't know where I got the brilliant idea to write suspense), I almost chucked the book for good, but then the gods interfered, quite literally, and now my book is a gentle parody of cliched thrillers with a little interference by the ancient Greek gods thrown in for good measure.
So, now I have a tragicomic tale of literary fantasy suspense.
So, now I have a tragicomic tale of literary fantasy suspense.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
New Book
Working on the new book, and almost done with the first 50 pages. I've written them according to agent specifications. No back story. First page begins in the middle of action. Lots of conversation to drive the story. Showing, not telling, what is going on with the characters.
Not sure whether it's any good, but it's good practice. My goal one day is to write a novel of true literary merit, but for now, a commercial thriller is keeping me out of the pool hall.
Not sure whether it's any good, but it's good practice. My goal one day is to write a novel of true literary merit, but for now, a commercial thriller is keeping me out of the pool hall.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Welcome to the Blog
I've spent all day reading Agent's blogs and querying specific to their recommendations. No bites yet, but I have 41 pending queries. I realized I made a HUGE booboo in several of my queries. Apparently, agents despise prologues. My book starts with a prologue so I spent most of the afternoon revising the book. I still think it needs the prologue and that it adds a lot to the beginning, but I need to hook an agent more than I need artistic integrity right now.
More posts to come.
More posts to come.
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