Christa Faust's Blog, page 11

A Black Valentine for the Film Noir Foundation

This is the kind of thing that warms my cold, cold heart. I'm in, and you should be, too. Deets here.

So stop by on Valentine's Day to check out my love letter to forgotten Film Noir.

NoirDog's Vet Bills

Many friends and readers have asked if they can donate money to help with Butch's astronomical (and still growing) vet bills.

Here's what's going on with him. About a week ago he started acting very lethargic, flinching and crying when touched like he was in some kind of terrible pain. He didn't want to play, eat or even stand up. Over the next few days, his eyes started to bulge outward and go wall-eyed. I was convinced he had a brain tumor that was pushing his eyes out from behind, or something equally awful and incurable. So I took him to a neurologist for a spinal tap and MRI and it was revealed that he had a disgusting but curable "superative infection" behind his eyes and in his sinuses, causing this horrific inflammation. The MRI showed that the infection was spreading rapidly and was just starting to creep up into the lowest edge of his brain. If I had waited another day or two, it might have been too late to save him.

He's not out of the woods yet, and will need a follow up with his opthamologist to make sure he hasn't sustained any permanent damage to the eyes or optic nerves. But he's alive and alert, eating normally again and even playing with his toys a little bit. Which, for me, is worth every penny.

I've been blown away by all this amazing support and generosity. I wasn't planning to ask for help, but since it's been offered, here is a donation button for those who would like to contribute.



Help pay NoirDog's tab!

More Out Of Context Theater

Starring Dean Winchester:

Dean considered himself to be pretty open minded, but what happened next was probably up there in the top ten weirdest things he'd ever done with a naked woman. Well sort of naked. Sort of a woman. Anyway it was pretty damn weird.

Putting Words In Dean Winchester's Mouth, Again

Some random silly dialog that may or may not make it into the final draft of my Supernatural tie-in. That first line is from Xochi Cazadora, the foxy Mexican huntress who teams up with the Winchester boys to fight Aztec demons.

"I suppose you think you're more tough than me because you don't put sugar in your coffee."

"No," Dean said. "I'm tougher than you because I know all the lyrics to 'Eye of the Tiger.'"

"Yeah?" Xochi said. "Well, I know all the lines from Die Hard. In English and in Spanish."

"I once ganked a demon with a match book and a handful of pocket change."

"Last week I killed six mummies with my chonies," she said. "And I was wearing them at the time."

"Chonies?"

"You know, panties."

"Damn," Dean said. "You win."

Messages in Bottles

Social networking isn't optional for writers these days. No point bitching about that. But I've been noticing something odd lately on both Twitter and Facebook and I wonder if it's a more recent development or if it's been there all along and I just didn't care enough to notice.

Anyone who knows me personally knows that my sense of humor is very referential. I'm an in-joke kinda girl. Even if I've only met you once, the next time I see you I'll probably make some comment about something that happened when we met. It's just the way my mind works. In my closest inner circle, I trust that if I quote some obscure, terrible movie, my friends will instantly get the joke. All I have to do is say the words "Long Handled Saucepan" or "Iguana Boy" to certain people and they'll fall over laughing.

Now, obviously, many of these really obscure in-jokes are going to go over most people's heads. That's fine and to be expected. But what's been bugging me lately is more a generalized lack of continuity in the social networking stream.

Example: I'm working on a Supernatural tie-in novel right now. Supernatural is a television show about two brothers named Sam and Dean Winchester who drive around the country in a 67 Impala and fight monsters, ghosts and demons. So naturally, I'm tweeting about Supernatural a lot. About the characters and my book and cracking jokes relating to the show.

Almost every day, I get people responding to these posts with confusion or surprise. Apparently, I have to explain that I'm writing a Supernatural tie-in novel not just every day, but in every individual post. Which, when you only have 140 characters, is kinda tough.

This also seems to be true for the series of "pulp tips" I've been posting. I assumed that people would understand that I was talking about work-for-hire writing, not my more personal work, because work-for-hire is what I'm working on (and tweeting about a billion times a day) right now. Man, was I wrong.

I noticed this phenomenon on Flickr too. People never look at my photo sets in order, as a series. They look at each snap like it was the only one in the universe. So if I post a series of photos taken in Scranton, PA, every single photo better be labeled "In Scranton." And forget about captions that refer to a previous shot in the series. No one has seen it. Or they'll see it later, after they've already forgotten about the other photo.

So what I'm starting to understand is that every single post, every tweet, every photo is essentially an only child. Every utterance or image must be completely self contained, a stand-alone. Sure there are some readers who follow the larger continuity of my stream, but the majority do not.

This is a real challenge for me, because that's just not the way I think. But I obviously can't expect the interwebs to change to suit me, so I need to find some kind of happy medium. A way to include readers who only see one out of every hundred posts without boring the ones who see them all (or myself.) And without becoming one of those people whose tweets all read like press releases.

So, fellow writers, how do you deal with this apparent lack of continuity? Or do you not have this problem? Readers, do you follow every single post from your favorite authors? (I do.) Do you ever feel lost or annoyed with tweets that expect you to be following along with the previous posts?

Putting Words In Dean Winchester's Mouth

For Ian, and everyone else who requested another little excerpt from my Supernatural tie-in novel in progress.

Dean, on why he won't dress like a masked wrestler:

"When I'm facing off against an unholy soul-sucking abomination from beyond the grave, I want something a little more substantial than spandex to protect my future children."

Hardboiled Valentine

I'm really gonna try to make it down for this:

After 57 years Pearl (Cissy) and Raymond Chandler are going to be reunited.

Place: Mount Hope Cemetery, San Diego, Imperial Avenue gate & Hope Ave
(between South 39th & 38th streets).

Time: 1 PM

Event: New Orleans style processing led by Crown Island Jazz Band carrying
Cissy's Urn 2/10s of a mile to Ray's Grave. Service by Randal B. Gardner,
D.Min., Rector of St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, La Jolla.

Reception and Gin Gimlet toast to follow at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront,
followed by optional Dinner at the Vela Restaurant in the Hilton.

Postcard from the Front Lines: Round 2

Rough writing day today. I just can't figure why some days are like this and some days aren't. Especially when it's a straightforward tie-in project and I've pretty much got everything laid out in advance.

For the curious, I'm required to submit a very detailed outline for approval by my editor before I even get started on a job like this. After all, it's their world, I just write it it.

Anyway it's getting down to the wire now, and there's no time left for bad days. But this is the job. Writing my way through days like this.

On a related note, I seem to have collected a disturbing number of photos of Sam and Dean Winchester in bondage. You know, for research.

Scenes From the Cutting Room Floor

An excerpt from my Supernatural novel in progress that probably won't make it into the final draft:

"Dean never imagined his life might end like this. Naked in a Tijuana brothel with an eighty year old woman dressed like Janine from Spinal Tap sizing up his junk and looking distinctly unimpressed. He really wished the room wasn't so heavily air-conditioned."

Adventures in Ghetto Phlebotomy

I had my blood drawn today. No biggie, just some simple tests. Thing is, doctors can't seem to be bothered with this kind of menial gruntwork anymore. So they gave me a list of the tests they wanted done and send me off to a nearby "lab" on Beverly and Alvarado. I should have known I was in trouble when the directions they gave me included vagaries like "Well, it's a big brown building across the street from the donut shop." Of course there's no sign visible from the street.

I eventually managed to find the big brown building in question, which turned out to be a miserable 70s era ant-farm of low rent offices with bizarre, barely legible signs written in Spanish, Korean and Tagalog. It took me even longer to find the right door, because the lab I was looking for shared its tiny office suite with a fly-by-night insurance company. The insurance company got the bigger sign. At that point, life insurance was starting to sound like a pretty good idea.

After a disconcerting half an hour of sitting in a room the size of a portapotty, listening to someone on the other side of a plastic divider drone on about bodily injury and uninsured motorists in a thick Filipino accent, I finally got spiked by a cute Mexicali girl named Elvira.

Elvira was apparently the one and only employee, since she also handled my paperwork and rang me up. I have no insurance, so I had to pay in advance. She did the deed in another tiny room, which felt even tinier because the majority of the space was taken up by a huge, full-sized trash barrel labeled: MAY CONTAIN SHARPS. May? What, like you're not sure? I certainly wasn't gonna check.

The actual drawing of blood was kind of a letdown after all that build up. What can I say? That Elvira's pretty good with a needle.

Having survived my strange adventure with nothing to show for it but a cotton ball taped to the crook of my arm, I decided to hit that donut shop. I'm happy to report that it was much easier to find.