Michael Offutt's Blog, page 166

I Hope Good crushes Evil

Today I am participating in the "This Stupid Pineapple" blogfest that is being held by Briane Pagel, Esquire over at his blog located here. To participate, all you have to do is write a post that begins with the words "This Stupid Pineapple..." and go from there. Please visit his blog so that he can generate more ad revenue and so that he'll have someone reading his 100,000 word blog posts.

Now...off to my entry of this illustrious contest.

This stupid pineapple makes me think of football. Can you blame me? Afterall, the shape seems to be of similar size. ===>

And because I'm thinking of football, I've decided to pick a side for the Superbowl. This is the first year that I've really done so, and I blame Tim Tebow who got me deeply interested in a sport that I otherwise could have cared less about. And I'm serious. I really had no interest in football two months ago. And now I've made three bets with people at work, mostly because my father said that the only way a game is interesting is if you have something at stake. To test out his theory, I made several wagers from people who were more than willing to take my money because they think that the Patriots will win (that also makes them supporters of Evil).

I'm not scientific (is there science to picking a winner) when it comes to this exciting game. I merely read everything I could about the two teams and went with my gut judgement. In short, here is what I've decided upon.
EVIL = TOM BRADY Tom Brady as you can see here is evil. He's like an angry angry upset
inhuman robot that hates anyone that isn't perfect like he is. If he were
a scientist he would clearly support Eugenics and widespread culling
of imperfect humans and genetically inferior offspring in his search to
conquer all of mankind.

If you don't believe me take a look at the next picture. The juxtaposition of evil in fiction and in real life is easy to make.

GOOD = ELI MANNING This is the guy that I hope wins. He is filled with the force
of good. He has triumphed over evil before so I hope that
he has the power to do it again. I have to say, the expression
on his face is pretty adorable. I just don't see how you people
out there can not root for him. Again...how can you not root for
a guy that has a smile like this?So that is my "scientific" analysis, and I did follow my father's advice in order to make my television watching more enjoyable. I hope that the adorable Mr. Manning crushes the Patriots and their evil Dark Side empire into the dirt for they seek only to suck all of the joy out of the world.

For you Patriots fans out there that are screaming revenge for the 2008 loss, I hope you lose again. But no hard feelings, okay? If there are...just remember, Briane Pagel made me say these horrible words for his blogfest. Go blame him.

Perspective is everything

What you see really does depend on your perspective. Take a look at the shadow art below and decide for yourself:










What can all of these pictures tell us about our writing? Sometimes we just need the right light and everything becomes clear.

Happy Thursday!

When something is wrong and something is right

First off is the something right. My book SLIPSTREAM got reviewed by Jeff Adams over at his blog. He's a New Yorker that I made friends with via twitter, plays ice hockey, and he writes books for Dreamspinner Press. I really liked the review I got so if you would, please go check it out (warning there are some details that could be considered spoilers).

It's February 1st and it's Wednesday. It's time for Alex's IWSG from the man that may not have invented blogging, but has certainly defined it.

Because Valentine's Day is almost upon us, this month's insecurity is about love...loving your characters and/or secondary characters too much. My editor finished with my sequel (called Oculus) and remarked that my pacing seemed "off" in it. However, she couldn't pinpoint exactly what made her think this (and a pacing comment can be as general as they come).  It's like referring to something as "interesting". So yeah...this is the "something wrong" hinted at in the title above. Meaning that I know something IS wrong, but have no clue on how to go about finding it.

"That's so...interesting...hmmm." <== what exactlydoes this mean?
So, I've had some serious pondering to do. And I've been doing this brain crunching for months while I've completely avoided writing anything other than blog posts and preoccupying my mind with television, movies, and books. Unrelated segue...you should watch the "Touch" pilot because it's amazing.
So now that it's almost spring, have I come up with anything?

Well, maybe.

I think that it has to do with two or even three characters that I stuck into the book that probably take up 5,000 words in the overall story and really have no purpose other than to irritate my protagonist (he finds them annoying). Why would I want extraneous characters? Well the intent is to have them available so that I can explore their potential in sequels. In other words...I have no official plan for them in the book I wrote right now. But having them there with no real plan is possibly behind the derailment of the pacing.

Maybe. That at least is my "idea".

But, I don't want to get rid of them. I like them. I find myself feeling repulsed with the thought of unmaking these fictional people. Especially if I'm wrong. Could I be wrong?

It's always possible.

I wish she was my editor right now but sheprobably would charge thousands of dollars of which neither I or my publishercould possibly afford. My publisher hirespeople with barely a high school educationafter they pass a grammar test. I imagine it's thesame with most small pubs (with few exceptions).So anyway, it has me insecure and apathetic at the same time which is why I sit around watching television and reading books. I think I may start to tinker with it, and see if I can more closely identify what she "sensed" when she herself couldn't precisely identify what was at issue. To clarify a little, my editor is what I call "decent". This is the same word I would use to describe the food at 7-Eleven. You go in, drop a few bucks, get a slice of pizza and some wings and you are good to go.

I honestly wish I didn't have a "decent" editor right now. I wish I had a no holds barred kick-ass one. A stellar one. One that could eviscerate a manuscript and identify everything that isn't working and wouldn't care about tact. I imagine this glorious person looking like Elektra from Marvel comics, only with huge sharp fountain pens rather than a pair of oriental sais.

To use a food analogy, how would this compare to food from 7-ELEVEN?

Well for one, it wouldn't. That's like comparing frozen dinners to eating at a four-star restaurant.

The kind of help that I imagine Big Six authors get with their books is something akin to a dining experience at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. It's fine dining, you get a wonderful experience, blow a few hours with a date, and eat healthy food that doesn't make your skin greasy and has no chance of making you sick. I'm a poor bastard that simply doesn't have access to that and my publisher doesn't have the money to hire that level of talent.

But that is just how the cookie crumbles, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is my insecurity of the month.

My expectations for Game of Thrones Season 2

The second season of "A Game of Thrones" that was brought to the screen last year by HBO pictures in conjunction with the genius that is George R.R. Martin will soon be upon us. They just released the second trailer that gives us a more in-depth look into the upcoming season. The name isn't changing but the story will be taken directly from A Clash of Kings as the first season exhausted the plot from that book. Here are the things that I'm looking forward to seeing:
1) The arrival of Jojen and Meera Reed at Winterfell. They are influential in taking Bran north of the wall and to awakening the powers that reside within him.

2) Melisandre of Asshai. This witch is able to "birth" a demon from you know where (completely nude in the process). It literally crawls out of her birth canal when she summons it. I'm wondering how they are going to do this one.
Carice Van Houten plays the priestess Melisandre3) Tyrion as Hand of the King. His lines are the best written so there will be much conniving going at King's Landing between Tyrion, Cersei, and Varis.

4)  North of the wall we see Craster's keep. This is a guy that has twenty or so wives, and they are all his kin (daughters). He's a complete and utter pig. Any boys that are born (he doesn't want competition) are given to the White Walkers as a sacrifice of sorts. It's about as disgusting an act as I've seen in an epic fantasy.
Robert Pugh plays Craster. He doesn't look so bad here, but in the book, he
was pretty ignorant and vile.5) Battle at the Fist of the First Men. The White Walkers a.k.a. the Others attack the Night's Watch in a battle that should raise the goosebumps on anyone watching. This is one of the most hair-raising moments in the book.
This is an artist rendition of the Fist of the First Men.

The Wisdom or Madness of Haruki Murakami

I just finished book one of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 (he was a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature in 2011). I'm really enjoying this science-fiction novel (a big one when you consider that there are three books in one and thus over 1000 pages total), even though the "science-fiction" aspect of it seems to be at this point, specifically limited to two moons in the sky for one of the main characters, while the other, a writer, appears to be firmly rooted in the "real" world.

One of the characters, Tengo, is a writer, and he participates in publishing fraud by rewriting a brilliantly plotted novel whose idea originated in the mind of a girl who is illiterate. The other main character is a woman named Aomame who reveres her body as a temple, is bisexual, and has the skill to kill evil men with an icepick so that the deaths look natural. The story revolves around a bit of philosophy: If our collective memory is taken from us--is rewritten--we lose the ability to sustain our true selves. So Tengo rewrites a story of a teenage girl's and inadvertently she loses the ability to sustain herself.

Now, the story goes back and forth chapter by chapter between Aomame and Tengo. I have no idea if Aomame is the character being written about by Tengo (she seems just as real as Tengo to me but is living in a world with two moons), or how she ended up in the world with two moons other than the conscious decision to leave a taxi during a rush hour (a world with one moon), to climb down a utility ladder from the elevated expressway, and all so that she could meet a deadline in order to kill a very bad man. I find the fact that the taxi driver knew that her getting out of his car would change the universe in which she lived somewhat eerie. But I doubt if Murakami will ever return and explain how the driver knew anything at all much in the same way that J.J. Abrams provides very little as far as answers to fans of the television series LOST.
Aomame sees two moons in the sky. She is afraid to point itout because she doesn't know if others in her world havenoticed or if she is the only one, and what exactly that mightmean. She is aware that the world is different.One of the things that I find most intriguing about book one of 1Q84 are all the statements that Murakami makes about the profession of writing through the point-of-view of Tengo or through Komatsu (his unscrupulous editor). Here are some of them:

"It has absolutely none of the usual new writer's sense of 'I want to be another so-and-so'." <== interesting observation on all new writers, or no?

"Good style happens in one of two ways: the writer either has an inborn talent or is willing to work herself to death to get it."

"When I'm writing a story, I use words to transform the surrounding scene into something more natural for me. In other words, I reconstruct it. That way, I can confirm without a doubt that this person known as 'me' exists in the world."

"He selected his words with all the care of a craftsman choosing the perfect piece of tile to fill a narrow gap in a bathroom floor...The slightest difference in nuance could bring the passage to life or kill it."

"The exact same text was subtly different to read when viewed on the printed pages rather than on the word processor's screen."

"[Editors] like [Komatsu] are looking for just one thing, and that is to find, if only once in their lifetimes, a work that is unmistakably the real thing. They want to put it on a tray and serve it up to the world."

"The conclusion of things is the good. The good is, in other words, the conclusion at which all things arrive. Let's leave doubt for tomorrow."

"When you introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction is the description of things that most readers have seen."

"The point of [writing about] a world that isn't here is in being able to rewrite the past of the world that is here."

What do you think of the statements Murakami makes about the business of writing and/or editing through the voices of his characters?

Prometheus Fan Art and a Mystery

This is from a still capture of the Prometheus trailer. Who is that on the right?
Many people online seem to think it is the Space Jockey himself. Oh Ridley
Scott...I want to know more dammit! (Click to make bigger so you can see said
strange looking being in greater detail).I found these pics online. They look amazing don't you think? These are by artist Rado Javor, and if you're like me, these can possibly hold you over until another movie trailer gets released later this spring. You can click any of these to make them bigger.













Some people are so talented. Have a great weekend!

The fiction that reflects our troubled times

Is there a more disturbing line in Shakespeare than the one in which Shylock promises to Solanio in the Merchant of Venice when he says:

"If you prick us do we not bleed...and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
It is a promise, delivered via monologue, that Shylock shall stop at nothing, even if it means to sink to the level of those that wronged him. In my reading of the December issue of The New Yorker, I thought of this line.  It happened when I came across a remarkable story written by Margaret Atwood called "Stone Mattress" which is part of what I see as a new surge or re-invention in crime fiction. I'm going to say that this genre caught fire with Stieg Larson and the publishing of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

If you think about the plot, you know it already. A man terribly wrongs a woman via a brutal rape. The wrong that is done to the protagonist of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the same thing that is done to Atwood's Verna in Stone Mattress. A few generations ago, or even on Law & Order, this kind of story would focus on how terrible the villain is and then follow some law enforcement agent to tracking down the villain and bringing him to justice. Usually there would be some moral authority present to assuage the woman's anger at being brutally violated.

Well this story is cliche and has been reinvented. Now it's all about revenge. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo empowers herself over her rapist and effectively castrates him (if you consider that rape is not a sexual crime but one of power). Atwood takes this a step further in the Stone Mattress and makes a life-long female serial killer out of Verna. Many of the men that Verna kills are actually innocent of any wrong-doing toward her. Yet she destroys them anyway, because well...she was wronged.

At first upon finishing this story, I wondered if the writer took some sick pleasure in living within the skin of a protagonist in order to experience a complete evacuation of character and complexity. It's a touchstone of moral ugliness the same as a scene from American History X where Edward Norton curb stomps and kills some black gang members when he finds them breaking into a truck left to him by his father. In this case, the justice DID NOT fit the crime. But you can't help but watch because you realize, yes...humans are capable of such things. And therein is the horror. Anger, rage, and hatred that are allowed to flow so unchecked that there is nothing that we can recognize left behind, yet to which any number of us can relate. Is that ironic? That in a state of pure hatred we are perhaps at our most human?

Margaret AtwoodSo why are these stories so popular? I would never classify The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Stone Mattress as dystopian because I feel that definition applies to "setting" and not "character". Both literary works take place in settings that are no different from what we see every day. If anything, they are stories of an internal dystopian that takes place in the latticework of the human soul. If you were to go into the dreams of these people, would you experience the empty, urban, and utterly Escher-like metropolis that Leonardo di Caprio built in the deepest layer of his subconscious in the movie Inception? Is it because the idea of an "eye for an eye" is no longer acceptable? The United States is a pretty divided place right now. The country has a lot of anger, and based off of the riots that we witnessed in London and the Arab Spring that took place in 2011, I think it's safe to say that the whole world is also pretty angry.

There is no question that rape has a life-altering effect on its victims. But I can't help but wonder if the rise of these kinds of stories are a temperature gauge for the anger felt by men and women the world over who are sick and tired of being exploited, economically raped, and who long for a better life because people finally feel that they can rise up and be successful against brutal oppression. So my question to you is, do you think there is any merit to this hypothesis? And when you write, do you use your writing as a catharsis for the expulsion of feelings and frustrations that you may live with and can find no other outlet?

A Discussion About Dystopia

This book by Martin Cruz Smith is the latest in his Russian-themed novels. The plot is pretty simple. A girl on a train has her baby kidnapped and then finds her baby by the end of the book. I didn't read this book for the plot. I read it because I was so horrified by the new Russian reality that my "disgust" button became overpowered by my desire to stand as witness to all things horrible.

I admit it. I'm a voyeur. But I don't think I'm alone in this. Are you a voyeur to misery? Do you like it when characters suffer?

As for the book, it's a great, fast read. But I'm not going to give a book review as much as I'm going to talk about the setting in which the story takes place.

My attention as of late has turned to real-life dystopias since I see them cropping up all over the place in young-adult fiction. I started asking myself...why are so many writers making up dystopias when we really only have to look at North Korea, China, and Russia for real world examples? On the surface, the world of Russia is as dystopian as they come...at least that's what I get from Martin Cruz Smith.

NPR had him as a guest when the book was released back in 2010. I remember being hypnotized by his interview because he spoke of Russia so "colorfully" (colorful in this situation is not a compliment).  He's what you would call a "hands on" writer since he goes there to pen his novels. The man observes everything. It begs the question though...how much of what he relates to us is fiction? Probably some. But I bet it isn't too far from the truth. Much of it has to do with exploitation of kids and human trafficking. What does the nightly news have to say about human exploitation in Russia? Quite a lot actually.

For one, underaged Russian pornography has gotten a lot of news coverage because the West (read United States) is such a huge buyer of it. America certainly has its fair share of pedophiles. They hide in the ranks of Boy Scout leaders, FLDS prophets, priests, and assistant football coaches to legendary collegiate programs. But sooner or later, they get caught. And when it happens, people act sooo schocked. They say things like, "I had no idea he was raping all those girls/boys. He always played with them in the park. He goes to church, has a wife, and plants trees on arbor day!" Blah blah blah...this kind of argument will continue to play itself out until the end of time (hyperbole? maybe some).

But back to Russia. They're the ones with they dystopia, not us, right? So what are the three stations for which the book is named?

They are Leningrad Station, Kazansky Station, and Yaroslavl Station situated on Komsolmoskaya Square in Moscow, Russia. By day, they are a hubbub of activity. Picture all the stereotypes you have heard of Grand Central Station in New York City and you pretty much got the picture. But by night, it's a whole different story. If you get caught there the best that could happen is someone mugs you. The worst is that you'd end up shot, stabbed, or beaten to death. Usually what really happens lies somewhere in-between. Here's a rundown of stuff that I played witness to simply by turning pages:
Russian prison tattoos all have a meaning.Homeless kids are everywhere. They're skinny, good-looking, street-smart and opportunistic. Because they are good looking, many are prostitutes and whores. Pedophilia is normal. Men cruising in their fancy cars pick up kids to get some sex, to abuse, or to outright murder them.Girls end up raped or dead. The bodies are found but rarely does anyone own up to seeing anything. This isn't C.S.I. No one gets caught. It's just another dead body to deal with. When they have babies, the babies are kidnapped and sold to wealthy westerners who want to adopt. Why have a baby when you can buy one, right? It's against the law? Yeah sure...whatever.I discovered how to make prison ink. It's made from urine and soot mixed together and done with a hook. That's why all the tats look blue. Also the prison tats over in Russia all mean something (I don't know if the prison culture in America has the same thing). Example: a web on the shoulder means the person has some kind of monkey on their back...drugs, alcohol, something from which they have overcome or are trying to overcome. Imagine getting a tattoo from ink made from some guy's urine. Nice image, huh?Kids hustle at chess the same as people hustle at pool here in the states.Everyone drinks vodka. They have rehabilitation clinics with beds low to the floor where people can crash for a night. They're close to the floor so they don't hurt themselves when they fall off the bed. Unscrupulous men show up at these places and have sex with the people crashed out on the beds.There's basically two classes. The oligarchs and the proletariat. The oligarchs are filthy stinking rich and as corrupt as they come. Tangle with them and you end up getting your head wrapped in cellophane until you can't breath while tied naked to a chair.Old, fat men always pay for underaged sex. That's just the way it is. But the sex isn't descriptive because it's over in 30-seconds, erectile dysfunction not withstanding.Here's a sentence that I think captures the full flavor of the novel just in case you had any doubt as to how well the writer is able to capture the setting:

"Victor Orlov stood in a shower stall, his head bowed and his eyes shut while an orderly clad in a surgical mask, goggles, rubber apron and rubber gauntlets poured disinfectant on Victor's head until it dripped from his nose and four-day stubble, ran down his sunken stomach and naked ass and pooled between his feet."

Kinda cool, huh? Makes you want to know more? All I can think of is that Victor must be miserable. So what's behind the boom in dystopian fiction for young readers? Maybe it's as simple as to admit that the gritty harsh worlds of dystopias are a place where no one really wants to live but to which everyone is a voyeur. Are you a voyeur? Are you drawn to the sickness of humanity for a good story?

I just have three words for you.  The Hunger Games.

Thinking About the American Dream

Tonight is the State of the Union address and because of that, I've been thinking about the American Dream. The New York Times recently featured an article with the title "How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work". The complete article can be found online here. I read it completely through, and I wanted to talk about what I read because it's a rather bleak commentary on the disappearing middle class.  By way of Apple as an example of the ultimate capitalist paradigm, the author pretty much tells us why prosperity for the middle class (as was realized last century) is never coming back no matter what politicians want you to believe. If you don't have time to read it, here are my highlights:

1) Barack Obama asked Steve Jobs at a dinner, "What would it take to make iPhones in the United States." The late Mr. Jobs replied, "Those jobs aren't coming back."

2) Apple's executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that "Made in the U.S.A." is no longer a viable option for most Apple products. 

There's so much wrong with this picture and the intentional misspelling
of "America" that I don't even know where to begin.

3) Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to the White House, said "Apple's an example of why it's so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now." 

4) FoxConn in Shenzhen built a factory, stocked it with already cut glass to Apple's specifications, and had workers living in dormitories ready to work 12-hour shifts even before there was a contract to work with Apple. They did this to be more appealing to their potential customer, and it worked. This simply couldn't be done in America.

5) The facility employs 230,000 people working six-days a week making less than $17 a day. 

6) One of the selling points for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple's executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company's analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States. In China, it took 15 days. 

7) "[T]he challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force," said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor's degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. "They're good jobs, but the country doesn't have enough to feed the demand," Mr. Schmidt said. 

8) "We shouldn't be criticized for using Chinese workers," a current Apple executive said. "The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need."

This is from the Global Competitiveness Report. It measures America's educational
system rank as compared to other countries. The criteria is education expenditure,
quality of math and science education, and quality of primary education.

9) In the last two decades, something more fundamental has changed, economists say. Midwage jobs started disappearing. Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today's new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations — at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers — that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.

So my question to you is, do you agree with Apple that the U.S. no longer produces a workforce with enough education to meet the demands of technology companies? If you agree, why? Are people just not motivated to go to school anymore?

In number 2 above, Apple basically calls Americans lazy. Would you agree? Are Americans fat cats sitting around waiting for a lot of money for a little work?

Does the item printed in number 4 at all surprise you? That they would stock and build a factory without any promise of money? Is that what it's going to take to be competitive?
These are workers submitting resumes for jobs at one of the factories at Shenzhen. There's such a huge pool of people just begging for a job that all the power rests with the employer. Basically, a single worker on hisown is completely disposable. It makes me wonder if the babies brought into this world will know a life better than us, or if in fact, we are bringingthem into a world where they will not be able to support themselves and will be doomed to live in poverty while the rich remain rich.

February is looking pretty exciting

With February just around the corner, I thought I would take a look at what's going on at the beginning of the month.

From February 6th thru the 10th I will be participating in the "I'm Hearing Voices" blogfest. Signup is on this blog here.
Basically, you'll be roleplaying and interviewing your characters. Kinda fun huh?
Next up there is a blogfest being promoted by Alex J. Cavanaugh but is the brainchild of the Cruising Altitude 2.0 blog.
Here's what it's about:
On Monday, February 13th, post your own origin story. Talk about where your writing dreams began. It could be anything from how you started making up stories as a child, or writing for the school newspaper, or even what prompted you to start a blog. How about stories about the first time somebody took an interest in your writing, or maybe the singular moment when you first started calling yourself a writer. It all started somewhere and we want you to tell us your own unique beginnings.

We all need blog posts and these kinds of blog fests are great to get the juices flowing and to meet more people. I of course have signed up for both and hope that you join me :)
Also this week, I may get my cover art! My book will no longer be blank. I'm excited. Have a great Monday.