Love In The Asylum

I am back from my reading! Which went awesomely, by the way. It's weird - the idea of going up to a stranger and asking for directions makes me start to hyperventilate, but I have no problem at all with public speaking, once it's a group larger than about ten or so. So I was a little bit nervous about this (and I think I was bright scarlet the whole time, I have no control over my blushing), but mostly it was a lot of fun. All the other Levinthal students were great (omgggg some of the poets, so awesome), and I got several very flattering compliments about my reading/story. All in all, a smashing success!

Here is the except that I read. It is from one of the short stories I've been working on this quarter, Drowning Thessolonike, which is about a brother and sister meeting for the first time after their father dies in prison. Fun times!


They talk about Michael’s job as a dermatologist – more embarrassing rashes than life-threatening surgeries – and the skin cancer conference he’s in town to attend – boring speakers, but good swag at the demo booths – and Aubrey tells him a few jokes about the sociology department at the university, and that gets them through most of the meal. They’re onto coffee and picking at the leftover breadsticks before Michael starts asking her questions about their father again.

“I just want to know more about what he was like,” Michael says, taking another sip of wine. Aubrey notes absently that he’s on his third glass now. “You have to have some good stories about him.”

She sucks in a breath, feels her shoulders tense, but after a few seconds of sitting there she relaxes again. This is easier than it seems. It’s the same kind of thing her teachers always asked in class when she was younger, when they wanted to give them essays they didn’t have to think about. Write about a family trip. A day with a parent. Your favorite memory. She’d kept a mental list of stories that were acceptable, just true enough to be interesting but with anything censored out that would have led to awkward questions. It wasn’t like anyone was going to notice if she reused the same stories from year to year. It wasn’t like Michael would be able to tell the difference now.

“The summer I was seven,” she says steadily, “Dad decided one day he needed to teach me how to fish. So he stole his buddy Charlie’s extra rod and threw his tackle box in the back of the pick-up and we drove up to Cochiti. Dragged me out of bed at three in the morning, drove 50 miles to get to the lake, and we can’t catch a damn thing. He’s sitting there, pounding back Coronas and getting more and more pissed, and I’d rather be playing in the mud, but he’s going to teach me to fish, damnit. He keeps saying that.”

She pauses. It’s always hard to get the inflections right on this part of the story, to convince whoever she’s telling that it’s actually supposed to be funny. She’s had a lot of practice at it, though. “So finally he just loses it. He stands up and and says “fishing this way is for pansies,” and takes Charlie’s .22 out of the back seat of the truck and just starts shooting into the water, at all those fish he’s sure are right there. Five different people called the cops on us, and we got banned from the park. And we still didn’t catch any fish.”

She doesn’t usually mention the fight that he and her mother got into when they got home and she found out what he’d done. That part wasn’t really very funny.

Not that Michael’s laughing in the first place. Just kind of staring at her, eyes a little wide, like he’s not quite sure how he should be responding. “You have to be making that up,” he says finally, and a small sarcastic voice in her head says of course, what do you expect from a dermatologist from Cleveland. But that isn’t really fair.

“I swear on our father’s grave,” she replies instead. “He was kind of a crazy drunk. I haven’t even told you about the time he set the juniper bushes in the yard on fire trying to clear weeds. I’ve got a few stories I can tell you.”

This, Aubrey thinks, is where the whole thing starts to fall apart. Because she means it as another joke, gosh, wasn’t dad wacky, but she can tell as soon as she says it that all she’s done is make Michael feel sorry for her. He’s back to folding his napkin fastidiously and not quite meeting her eyes and she just – she’s never been able to handle other people’s pity. It makes her feel weak, out-of-control, puts her on the defensive, and that’s not quite Michael’s fault but he doesn’t have to sit there looking so damn disappointed.

“Forget about it,” she says, folding her arms tight across her chest. “It doesn’t matter.”

Apparently the universe doesn't hate me quite as much as I thought it did. I was panicking about meeting with my Stegner Fellow today, because I hit a massive wall with the story I'm working on and had no draft to give to her. But I just got an email from her saying she is cancelling our meeting since she has the stomach flu. I am sad that she is sick, but seriously, thank the goddess for temporary reprieves.

I don't know why I'm having such a difficult time with this story. Part of it, I guess, is the challenge of figuring out how to structure a plot and make it interesting when the body of the story is basically two characters sitting in a restaurant failing to have a conversation with each other. I am used to writing about explosions and ninjas and suspiciously handsome fox demons, but this plot has none of those things! And part of it is performance anxiety, because omg what if my Stegner Fellow hates it and wishes she'd never picked someone so faily to do the tutorial? Aaaand part of it is just that I'm having a hard time separating out what needs to happen in this story from my personal investment in it. I mean, a story about a queer liberal arts student in Albuquerque meeting her estranged half-sibling for the first time? That is totally not me projecting my own issues onto my fiction!

So yeah, I'm going to take a nap and keep my fingers crossed that when I wake up there will actually be some words in my brain, rather than the current haze of low-level incoherent literary terror.

I think I have been listening to too much Voltaire this week (is there such a thing as too much Voltaire?). I can't get Zombie Prostitute out of my head, and that's the kind of song people look at you for when you start singing while you are walking in the quad. And I can't stop thinking about Goodnight Demonslayer, which on its own is fairly adorable, but when my head puts it together with tiny!SamnDean, suddenly becomes kind of heart-breaking.

Anyway, it's Tuesday, and that means Int Fiction, and that means I have writing to share!

 

( the one about wanting to kill your boss )

 

 

( the one where Fox is a creepy stalker )

 

( Five People That Mara Took Home With Her )

I spent the entire afternoon playing phonetag, trying to get any one of a half-dozen people to talk to me to distract me from terminal boredom while waiting for the bus/bus-sickness once the bus finally came. How dare everyone I know have lives that include plans on a Saturday afternoon that aren't talking to me! *huffs*

The evening was devoted to watching the White House Correspondents' Dinner on C-SPAN, because I am a gigantic dork. But, but, you guys, my president! He is so awesome! And adorable! And funny! And he made jokes about Michael Steele, and Rush Limbaugh, and people pissing on poor Timmy! And a joke about gay-marrying Axelrod OMG HOW IS THIS MAN THE PRESIDENT I LOVE HIM SO FUCKING MUCH.

(Also Wanda Sykes was brilliantly fabulous and I want to marry her in Iowa. I could not stop cracking up all through her bit about Michelle's sleeves, and Faux News' blow-up tomorrow about her calling Limbaugh treasonous and how Keith should waterboard Hannity is going to be beautiful to behold)

I've been writing a little. On occasion. When I'm not distracted by shiny things like the President. Aside from all my non-finished yet fanfics, I'm (theoretically) working on a bunch of Five Things stories for The Big Damn Superhero Novel - it's a good way of getting a grip on my characters and their backstories, and adding to my lists of Things What Happen In The Novel.

From the Jake/Shane list (Five Times Jake and Shane Held Hands): the first time Jake meets Shane, he's a stranger in a mask, asking him to join a team.

“So you’ll do it?” Shield asks, and Jake likes to believe there’s a trace of a hopeful waver under that infernally calm and even tone.

“I’ll think about it,” he growls. It’s a lie. He’ll give it a few days maybe, but his mind was made up before Shield spoke. If the man had asked him to jump out a twentieth-story window, his boots would be scraping the windowsill before he had second thoughts. But he can’t say that.

Shield holds out a gold-gloved hand for him to shake, and Jake ignores the momentary impulse to refuse it, just to see that steady smile fade. Even through two layers of thick, stubbly leather, he can feel the heat of Shield’s skin, all the energy pulsing through his veins. His grip is measured tight, his handshake is firm, and Jake can’t resist holding it a beat too long.

“I will see you again,” Shield says, and steps backward off the rooftop.

Jake stands still as a shadow, studying the scrap of paper left in his hand. It refuses to give him any answers – just a date, an address across town, and the scrawled words ‘meet me here.’ He does not think about the lingering warmth clinging to the black leather where his hand touched Shield’s.

Three blocks away a siren wails to life, and the Watchman hears it.

I blame this on The Ballad Of Barry Allen. Which I Cannot. Stop. Listening. To.

Jake/Shane snippet from the unwritten superhero novel of doom.


This is how Jake remembers their first kiss: it's late, 2 or 3 in the morning. The league's rotation (thank you, Jamie) had him and Shane patrolling together that night, and they've just finished up. It was a quiet night, nothing more troublesome than muggings and drug dealers, not enough for them to break a sweat.

Shane says, a little shyly, "would you like to get a cup of coffee, before we head home for the night?" And Jake knows it's innocent on his part, but hey, he's not tired, and it's not like he's going to turn down the chance to spend a few more minutes with Shane. Which, when he thinks about it, is just pathetic, acting like a lovesick teenage girl, but he's still not going home.

They change back into their civvies on a rooftop, and Jake very carefully averts his eyes, and knows Shane is doing the same, though probably for different reasons. And then they drop silent back onto the street and become just part of the city again, just two men walking down the sidewalk and laughing softly to each other, on the way to a twenty-four hour diner nearby Jake knows that serves phenomenal coffee. It's that simple.

The coffee is good. The conversation is better. And after, standing in the dim sodium glow of the streetlamp outside, neither of them quite want to leave. Shane fidgets nervously, half turning like he's going to hail a cab, but oddly reluctant, and Jake's on the verge of finding some crazy excuse (I think that mob boss from last week figured out where my apartment is) to follow him home. He gets as far as Shane's name, and is surprised by how low and broken his voice sounds. It makes Shane turn back to him, eyes wide, and in the aching silence that stretches between them, everything suddenly comes together - this moment, this night, his entire life - and he leans forward, and he kisses him.

Jake doesn't know if he'll ever get the chance to do this again, so he makes the kiss last as long as he can. He's never been more glad of his powers than he is right then, when it lets him pretend he can keep this from ever, ever ending.

This week in NaNo, we worked on creating characters, which was pretty neat. The main exercise we did was a group character sketch thing - we started with one random piece of characterization, and then people shouted out details until we had a full character drawn out. Our first character was a 22-year-old redheaded volleyball player named Alex who grew up on the run from the Russian mob with his vacuum salesperson/Vegas showgirl mom. The second character was a girl named Audean who ended up sounding more or less like what would happen if I reproduced. I got bored after and ended up writing a little bit of her.



( If I ask myself when it started, I have to say it's when my mother named me Audean. )

DDDDDDDDX THE STANFORD BOOKSTORE FAILS I HAVE HOMEWORK I CAN'T DO BECAUSE I HAVE NO TEXTBOOK
ALSO I HAVE A SONG ABOUT THE BLACK DEATH STUCK IN MY HEAD WTF?

So the Jake and Shane superhero novel is slooooooooowly starting to take shape in my head. It'll be awhile before I do any writing on it, I think, but I am getting there! Right now I'm mostly working on fleshing out the main characters; since this is a superhero novel, I need at least vague ideas of their powers, origins, costumes, etc! And a lot of random characterization bits like family history, jobs, that sort of thing. A few things I've figured out so far:

I don't think I'm going to make Jake an alcoholic, at least not before Shane's death (and probably not after). I'd toyed around with it a bit - it's /such/ a jaded, angry cop thing to do, but I don't think it really works for him, either because his self-control is too tight (a problem in and of itself), or because he channels that self-destruct urge into other directions (possibly into violence against the criminals he fights, which is Not Good). There will probably be a side character who is an acoholic, though, because one of the major themes of this story is Superheroes Are Fucked-Up.

Shane's power is going to be something based on force manipulation - i.e. he can generate and manipulate force fields, which he can use defensively (as a shield, duh), or offensively (on the hammer principle). He can also use them to fly by projecting a steady downward force. Because I say I want one of my boys to fly. This power is pretty strongly linked to one of the major characterization points I've got for Shane - basically that he is a very defensive, closed-off person. He is nice to everyone, everyone likes him, he has great faith in people, but he never gets close to them, always keeps him at a distance. I think the idea behind this is that he is a very idealistic person who got very badly hurt, and has decided he'd rather stay idealistic and just shut himself off a bit, rather than getting close to people and risk getting hurt again.

Jake's powers are looking to be some sort of time dilation thing - essentially the inversion of superspeed, I guess? He has the ability to stretch out a moment of time, so that he can move around in it while everyone else is frozen. This has enough variability to be tactically useful, I think; he can time-freeze ass-kick, he can use it to be several places in a short amount of time, he can use it to do things without being seen, etc. He can also bring someone in with him, as long as he is touching them when he does. But it's a limited power - he can't do it for very long periods of time, since time does not like to be going at different speeds in different places, and the longer he does it the harder it gets - when another person is involved, the difficulty is tremendous - and when it snaps back into place, the backlash is horribly painful. So that's good. And it provides extra-angst for the dead!Shane bit, and the potential for time-dilated kissing/sex. Yay!

In related but less relevant news, I realized that Jake is to all effects and purposes Sam Vimes. In the alternate universe where Things Went Badly. Conclude from that what you will.

ETA: I'm pretty sure Jake's superhero name is going to be The Watchman. I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON, OKAY?

Have I ever mentioned Kuusho Rasa on here? I don't think so...well, it's a project a few friends and I came up with last year, and started recruiting people for - a non-existent anime that we tried to convince people really existed on a veriety of fronts, mostly ff.net and some anime/manga forums. We drew up backgrounds and descriptives of the main characters, sketched out a general timeline and even wrote a few episode recaps. I've been out of the loop for awhile so I'm not sure where the project is now, or if anyone's still writing. But, um, I kind of want to write it now. As, like, a real novel or manga. It has everything - amnesia! Princes in disguise! A Super Sekrit Training School that turns out soldiers! Angsty pasts by the bucket! Subtextual and contextual boylove! But mostly, it had a villain that I really really want to write, because we came up with a facinating backstory for him - Terazi escaped the destruction of his country as refugee, and ended up at the school that trains the military of the country that destroyed his homeland. He rises through the ranks fast, being an excellent soldier and whatnot, and becomes the head of the military. He has, obviously, managed to fake convincingly an overwhelming loyalty to the country, but secretly, he plans to use the military he controls to engineer a conflict with a neighboring country that will destroy both of them. So yeah, want to write soooo muuuuch.

In my Madric Thorn story, I just realized that the leader of the rebels is a girl. Go figure. But she totally is. And telyanofcelore's been wonderfully helpful in helping me flesh out Soldier Boy a little - his motivations and personality are frustratingly difficult to pin down, it's driving me crazy. At this point, I think he's a very black and white type of person, very sure he knows what is right and wrong, and he joins the military because it is the Right Thing To Do. But then Madric comes along, and he's supposed to kill him, but this is clearly wrong that it yanks his whole foundation out from under him. A lot of the Madric and Soldier Boy On The Run part of the story is, I think, going to be him trying to get his feet back under him - first by imprinting on Madric, and then, when that is unworkable because of Madric being, well, Madric, by actually starting to think for himself for once. This could be fun? If I ever start writing it. And if he ever gets a NAME. The Soldier Boy thing is going to end up being a joke in the story though!