Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 61

Wow, so I guess this is really happening, huh?

If you'll glance over to the right, you'll see the cover design for my book, Detours, which is coming out in fall 2011 from Bold Strokes Books.

Yeah, I know. (Inhale, exhale, gaze in wonder, repeat.)

Back in September, former agent and (still) writer Nathan Bransford wrote a post about the experience of seeing your cover for the first time and how it resists comparison. That's really true. Full disclosure: I'm a graphic designer at my day job, but I have zero experience in book design. In the end what I have to say is that I am completely in love with this cover.

And no, not just because of the hot guy on the cover. (My own book cover makes me feel fat. Go figure.)

If I haven't talked your ear off about my book already (and if I haven't, go to my author page linked above and read the synopsis—pretty please?), I've been describing it as a road trip with a romance surrounded by a ghost story. I've been working on it since 2003, when I walked through the Missouri Botanical Garden with my friends Jim and Laura, along with Michael (this was before we began dating again), and we concocted a harebrained plot that was broad slapstick and which bears only scant resemblance to the novel I turned in to my editor.

Which is a good thing.

When I read a book, like everyone else I get a picture in my head of what those characters look like. The writer has hopefully given me the information I need to make that character alive in my mind. Sometimes the picture is also influenced by friends, people I know, celebrities, random strangers. Sometimes it's influenced by the book cover, if a person is depicted there.

In this case, the guy on the cover could be a dead ringer for Lincoln, a character who is clearly bad news but is hard to resist. The thing is, I knew what he looked like when I was writing the book, but now that I've seen the cover, my image of him has changed a bit.

In most cases, everyone is going to have their own mental image of what the characters look like (until it gets made into a movie… Is anyone in the film business reading this?). And like Nathan Bransford said, it's at that point that you realize that the characters aren't completely your own. The reader, using her imagination, works together with the writer to visualize the character, and if the writer has done his job well, that visualization is vivid and realistic.

I hope I've held up my end of that agreement with my future readers.

"Couples Retreat," or "Two hours of my life I'll never get back"

After watching portions of the execrable film Couples Retreat on DVD from Netflix (no, I am not going to link to the film in any way, except to say that Rotten Tomatoes ranked it a whopping 12 percent, which I think is too much credit), it occurs to me that Netflix's 5-star ranking system should give reviewers the option to rate movies zero stars, instead of the overly generous.

It also occurs to me that the last movie starring Vince Vaughn (three words that should strike fear in the heart of any filmgoer) that I saw—under duress, I might add—was Dodgeball, which was also a fucking piece of shit. I expected that, however, since it also starred Ben Stiller, whom I believe should never be given the funding to make a film again. But, like Ben Stiller, I am now adding Vince Vaughn to the list of people whose films I will never. Ever. See.

The list is shaping up thusly:

Ben Stiller
Eric Balfour
Vince Vaughn
Jon Favreau
Tom Cruise
Sylvester Stallone
Casper Van Dien

It also pains me to say that Kristen Bell is perilously close to being added to this list as well. Her project choices have been unfortunate, I think, and she can only rest on Veronica Mars' laurels for so long.

So, who's your box office poison?

Our Fantastic Four

The Fantastic Four



Originally uploaded by jricker

Growing up, I had a dog named Rocky. He was a boxer (before Sylvester Stallone, honest) and lived to the ripe old age of 14—which, apparently, is quite an accomplishment for a boxer. Somewhere, I have a photo of him lying on his pet bed, and he is surrounded by four or five little balls of fur that were (some of) our cats.

My mom always said the cats were what kept Rocky young, so seeing this scene in our living room gives me hope that Dakota will live a long and eventually curmudgeonly life. Shadow, the one closest to him, seems particularly taken with Dakota. Actually, I think Shadow's kind of gay.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

There's gratitude for you

Things I'm grateful for in no particular order:

Mike
Coffee
Cats
Dogs
Lists
More books to read
More books to write
Gainful employment
Friendship
Having a good editor
Being a good editor
Parents
Friendship
Kylie Minogue
Kate Bush
Friends in distant places
Did I mention coffee?

What are you thankful for?

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'Lifeblood' and resurrecting old ideas

So as you probably know, my story "Lifeblood" is in the collection Blood Sacraments, which came out this month from Bold Strokes Books. (If you've been paying attention, you know that they're the ones who will be publishing my novel next fall. If you haven't been paying attention, well, I've just caught you up! You're so lucky.)

This story had a long, complicated, torturous gestation. When I first wrote it, back in the early 2000s, it was, frankly, awful. No, really, it was. This was driven home to me when I was in an advanced writing workshop class in 2003, and I didn't have anything to turn in. I looked in my slush pile and pulled out "Lifeblood," read the first page, and cringed.

Oh, I thought, this is awful. When did I think this was actually good?

I should have revised it right then before I turned it in to the class. But, it was due that evening, and the other story I was working on was a long way from being ready for prime time.

It was this or blow my deadline, and I hate to miss a deadline. I printed it up copies, swallowed my pride, and turned it in. I spent the next week steeling myself for the inevitable blowback.

Oh, they were merciless. And you know what? I deserved every bit of that criticism. It was contrived. Stilted. The language was florid. It was too long. Nothing happened. The instructor (whom I didn't really like, which probably meant he had something to teach me) pinpointed the relationship between the two main characters as the best part of the story. It was honestly felt, he said. Everything else was pretty much crap.

I put it in the drawer and forgot about it for  a while. I'd written two more stories around the main character, and I still haven't brought myself to look at those for fear of how dreadful they'll be.

Time passed (cliché alert!) and I got a request from a good friend to submit to a vampire anthology. I like vampires, but I didn't have anything in my "current ideas" bin that revolved around the undead or that I thought could be adapted to focus on bloodsuckers.

But "Lifeblood," which had been DOA when I submitted it to that workshop, was still lying in the drawer. I pulled it out, read it, and tried to look beyond everything that was wrong with it to find what worked. I went back to what the instructor had said.

I didn't just revise the story. I put a clean sheet of paper in the typewriter (yes, I still use one when I need to), found my first line, and started typing:

Let's get one thing straight: I never bit Darren.

When I got my contributor copies earlier this month, I sat down and read the collection. I usually skip my own contribution when I've done this sort of read in the past, but this time I read it. After all the time I spent laboring over these characters, it was funny to read it and realize how much I cared about them. I still do. I may have to revisit the other two stories I wrote and see if they can be salvaged.

Oh, that other story I was working on for that workshop back in 2003? It was called "Next Stop," and it was about 28 pages. When I turned it in, I thought, there's more to this story. The class reacted positively to it, but they generally agreed. I put it aside for a little while and then pulled it out of the drawer about a year later.

It's now called Detours.

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What a truly wretched movie taught me about writing

Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I saw Skyline this weekend. Since I saw Skyline this weekend, they probably know that I also did not see any reviews of it beforehand. I usually have a policy of not denigrating anyone's creative efforts because a) I know how much that can hurt and b) I know that even so, they probably put a lot of their heart and soul into the effort.

However.

Upon leaving the cinema, I wanted to warn everyone standing in line for the next showing to do something before they spent two hours-that they'll never get back-on something truly atrocious. And then I wanted to punch every person involved in the making of this movie experience. Including, perhaps, the popcorn seller.

Actually, no. The popcorn and the company (my partner Michael and one of my best friends, Ryan) were the best things about the movie.

I was still mad about this movie when we discussed it further on Sunday. "Let it go!" Michael said. "You're giving that movie too much power over your mood." Which was true, but I still had to wonder, why was I so infuriated?

The story, naturally. If I had to boil down what got me boiling, I think I could sum it up in four points. (Please note, as River Song might say, "Spoilers!" I will probably let the cat out of the bag in my explanation below. Trust me, if you still go ahead and see the movie, I have no sympathy for you.)

First of all, tell a story. Aliens are descending from the sky like a bunch of great big Dysons and sucking up the population of Los Angeles? There had better be a point to it. That involves not just telling us what's happening, but why. If you don't do that, we are (by which I mean I am) going to lose interest, and patience.
We need to care about the characters. When aliens are hoovering up the population of the world and you show me a handful of self-absorbed morons in a Los Angeles apartment complex whom I wouldn't want to spend three minutes with in an elevator, much less two hours of an apocalypse, that's a problem.
Special effects will not carry the day when everything else is dead on arrival. If you don't have something to say, if your characters are idiots, and you think you can cover up these problems with exploding ships and monsters eating people and ripping their brains out, you are also delusional, which is an even bigger problem.
Finish what you started. After I saw The Matrix, I couldn't wait to see The Matrix Reloaded. After seeing the latter, I never saw The Matrix, Dance Dance Revolution or whatever it was called. Why? Because the second part didn't tell a complete story. Now, I don't mind cliffhangers—on TV. Even in some movies it can work. Look at The Lord of the Rings (the books as well as the movies). Look at The Empire Strikes Back. We're left at the end with Han Solo in deep freeze and Luke with a major parental problem. But that movie told a complete story from beginning to end and ended up being my favorite Star Wars movie of the trilogy. Skyline didn't even try.

And that's the part that really pisses me off. We shelled out $10 of our hard-earned money to spend two hours seeing a story the Brothers Strause (the people responsible for this tripe) didn't even bother to finish, because they think I'm going to spend another $10 in two years to see what happens next?

Which brings me to my last point:

5. Don't insult your audience.

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Blood Sacraments

I don't think I'll ever tire of getting my contributors copies in the mail….

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Eating in the Gateway City

Joanna Campbell Slan's recent article on St. Louis slang was fantastic, and it made me think about another aspect of my adoptive city that makes it unique. (No, I'm not talking about their penchant to pronounce fork as fark, forty as farty, and quarter as quatter—though I could go on and on about their ritual mangling of French pronunciation. Rather, I'm talking about the local cuisine.

I'll be upfront in my opinion: some of these things are godawful. That said, St. Louis has more than its share of fantastic restaurants and eateries. If you can't find a good meal in the Gateway City, you're not trying hard enough.

St. Louis style pizza—You've heard of thin crust pizza, no doubt. This is even thinner. Think saltine-cracker-thin, especially if we're talking about Imo's, the local pizza chain that is probably the gold standard when it comes to this style of pizza. It's so thin that a regular pie slice wouldn't hold up under the weight of the toppings. Instead, it's sliced into squares. They call it the square beyond compare-incomparably bad, if you ask me. The crust inevitably gets soggy and they commit sacrilege by topping it, not with mozzarella, but with Provel cheese. More on that later.

It's possible to have decent St. Louis style pizza, though. Joanie's Pizzeria in Soulard serves a great pie with thin crust that stays crispy, a sauce that's a bit sweet but has a lot of flavor, and thankfully, mozzarella cheese. That last bit may not make it truly St. Louis style, but it redeems it in my eyes.

Provel cheese—This is quite possibly the Worst Cheese Ever. Calling it cheese is criminal in my estimation, because it's pretty much tangier Velveeta, only white. It's a combination of cheddar, Swiss, and Provolone. What's so bad about it? Well, first there's the texture. When you bite into it, it's not gooey and stringy like traditional mozzarella cheese; the best word I can come up with to describe it is gelatinous. (Scared yet?) Then there's the flavor. Is it possible to be distinctive and bland at the same time? Even that's not the worst thing though, no. This is: It sticks to your teeth.

I have not encountered Provel outside of St. Louis. The rest of the world should be happy for this.

Toasted ravioli—St. Louis lays claim to this breaded and deep-fried ravioli, though that's open to debate. It may have originated at one of the many family restaurants on The Hill, St. Louis' predominantly Italian neighborhood. Local lore says it came into being at either Angelo's (now Charlie Gitto's) or Oldani's (now the home of Mama Campisi's). It's filled with either meat or cheese, breaded and fried. This is quintessential appetizer food here, served with sides of sauce for dipping. And really, how can anything breaded and fried be bad?

Mostaccioli—Now this is an odd one. First of all, though I wasn't planning to go here, let's talk about the pronunciation. Do you see a K in that word? No. And yet, when a St. Louisan says it, the word sounds like "muskaccioli." I know, it makes no sense.

Basically, this is a baked pasta casserole made with penne, marinara, and (often) ground beef or sausage, topped with mozzarella cheese. You can't go to a wedding in South County without encountering this dish. When I was growing up, my mother made something similar, only with elbow macaroni and it was called American chop suey. Put either of these in a can and it would be Beef-a-roni.

Gooey butter cake—Now you're talking. According to local lore, this was created, again by accident, when a baker making a regular cake accidentally reversed the proportions of sugar and flour. Thank God, I say, because this dessert is worth saving room for, and a little goes a long way. Locally, Gooey Louie and Park Avenue Coffee make some of the best-Park Avenue in particular boasts over 70 varieties.

Frozen custard—If you ever come to St. Louis, you cannot leave without going to Ted Drewes and trying this concoction, similar to ice cream but oh, so much better (and oh, so much worse for you, since the fat content is higher). Served as a concrete (similar to a Dairy Queen Blizzard but, again, so much better), this stuff is so thick the kids who work at the Ted Drewes stand will tip the cup upside down before they hand it to you. Not a drop will be spilled. It's that thick.

If you really can't stand the lines at Ted Drewes-to give you an idea of how crowded it gets, in the summer there's a police officer posted there to keep people out of the street-you can also go to Mr. Wizard's or Silky's. They're good too. Standing in line at Drewes, though, is part of the St. Louis experience. Why would you want to pass that up?

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Where the wild things are

I was listening to a podcast of "To the Best of Our Knowledge" earlier this week about having a different perspective of how we view nature and the concept of wildness, how its danger persists and we are not the only apex predator and we forget this at our peril. Last night, it occurred to me that wildness is not restricted just to the wilderness, but can exist in the city as well.

I woke up last night around one and heard hooting outside. For once, it was not the little demon children of the neighborhood. When I opened the blinds, I didn't see anything other than a cat trotting down the sidewalk across the street. Though he (or maybe she) didn't appear to be in any great hurry, he looked behind him as he went. When he was under a streetlamp, I saw an owl swoop down toward him, and miss. Judging from his wingspan, if he'd made contact, I don't doubt the owl could have carried him off.

There was no trace of either the owl or the cat when I went outside (in pajamas and flip-flops, I'm sure any neighbors who saw me think I'm nuts—they're not wrong). There was no trace of foul play either.

We live close to Tower Grove Park, which is a Victorian strolling park in the middle of the city. A few years back, while running in the snow, I saw a red-tailed hawk perched in a tree. I've also heard stories of them trying to carry off small dogs. The world is wilder than we, or at least I, sometimes realize.

What I'm working on when I'm not working on something new

I'm fortunate to have a massive backlog of unfinished crap stories that need to be completed or revised. At the moment, while I procrastinate on revising the second novel, revising old stories is exactly what I'm doing. Specifically, a short story that I originally wrote in 2002. I workshopped it in 2003, and the workshop leader (a name you might recognize, but I'm not a namedropper) said it contained enough to spend a whole career writing about. It also contained seven boxes and the main character had only opened three. You need to open the other four boxes was the general consensus of the workshop group. So that's what I'm doing.

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