Magen Cubed's Blog, page 48
March 6, 2011
Every girl's crazy about a sharp-dressed zombie
Can you guess what arrived in the mail yesterday? No, it's not that. Nope, not that either. (I wouldn't be blogging about anything that came to my doorstep in a plain brown package, thank you. I do have some tact and grace.)
My copy of Ain't No Grave, illustrated by John David Brown and originally penned by yours truly. Consider this all of my awkward, pimple-faced adolescent fantasies of seeing my name in Comic Sans come to life. John is currently at Staple Con this weekend, braving the crowds to get the comic into the hands of as many Austinites, attendees and industry representatives as possible. My broke ass, as you all know, is broke, and I can only be there in spirit. So far I hear things are going pretty good though. Keep your fingers crossed.
I know some of you have asked, but no news yet on larger publication/distribution. That's a work in progress as it stands now. But as soon as I have some information to share I'll tell you all how to get your hands on one of these bad boys. John's art is astounding, and the story's half-decent. You know, or so I've been told. It's a win/win, really.
March 5, 2011
If you're going to misrepresent me, at least get it right
I see it all over blogs every day. Personal blogs, author blogs, feminist blogs, political blogs. It's the same question we all ask every time we pick up a book, or turn on the television, or go to the movies, and see a bunch of people we don't recognize. Why aren't there more female characters? More gay characters? More black characters? More fat characters? More Jewish characters? More Hindu characters? More red, green, purple characters?
Why aren't there more realistic representations of these cross-sections of our society?
Why is everything so…safe? Why do we still have doe-eyed female characters who can't cope with the world, or tramps who need to be punished? Why do we still have sensitive white characters "reaching out" to characters of color, because they can't help themselves otherwise? Why do gay characters still have to have coming out specials? Why do fat characters still have to go on journeys of discovery, to conquer their self-esteem and body issues, in order to justify their existence in the story?
It's 2011, for god's sake. We're supposed to have rocket-packs and flying cars, but we're still here. Unable to figure out why we keep misrepresenting one another.
Everybody puts their heads together and talks about what's wrong with writing and writers, who keep recycling safe clichés and characters instead of putting bigger ideas out there. We all feel bad about it, maybe a little alienated, maybe a little angry sometimes. We all want to write these characters "respectfully," see them portrayed "with respect." But by recognizing it, we all say, we feel we're taking steps to move past it. Do better, write better, in the future. We all feel just a little bit better about it, even though we all agree that nothing really changes.
Turn on the TV, go to the movies, pick up a book. You still see something so stupid and contrived that you just get mad and walk away.
Then I go around the corner to one of the writing blogs, the writer's self-help columns, the publishing news sites. I see the same advice over and over, the same articles and essays. Selling manuscripts is hard. Publishing is competitive. Publishers are picky. If you want to write something that doesn't fit into neatly defined genre categories, you probably won't make money. So follow market trends. Write what's going to sell. Write what's popular. Write for the moment. Play it safe and sell your manuscript. Oh god, please, be a visionary, but don't say anything too scary. Don't rock the boat; otherwise you'll have trouble publishing.
So what's safe? Safe is primetime television and national bestsellers. Safe is money. Sometimes something new and scary slips through the cracks, and maybe it sells a million copies. Most days though, we sigh and shake out heads.
Hey, publishing is a business and a business is supposed to make money. Publishing companies sell what's going to make them a profit. They're not all evil, but they're not exactly on the pulse of changing culture, or worried about fair and equal representation. And as a writer, you want to make some of that money they're making, so you play ball. I get that. I can't fault you for that, either. So maybe writing familiar stories about familiar characters will help you a book deal in some places, plus movie rights and a line of t-shirts. But if people keep writing these stories, they'll just keep getting published, and we'll still all ask where our characters are. We'll all still ask why.
So the question for me becomes, if you write safe stories, do you get to complain when safe stories are the only ones getting published? If you don't try to practice what you preach, do you get a say? Either we all write characters with the respect we say they deserve, or we go home. We don't get to have it both ways.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I do have a white male protagonist in my novel. He's also gay, broke, misanthropic, and hates authority. He enjoys gardening, burnt hamburgers, and arguing with his therapist. If you try to argue his status as a cliche, he may fight you for it.
March 2, 2011
It's not jumping the shark if you never come back down
Really, my life no longer has a point. I'm free. This and I stand to inherit twenty thousand acres of central Nebraska.
Tender Branson, Survivor
Get up. Twenty minutes of stress relief yoga. I can't get my dog anywhere near that downward-facing. I can't fold myself in half and nothing about me is "supple." Eventually I melt into the carpet and I remember why I keep doing this.
Feed the mammals. Check up on the amphibians. Maybe some yogurt, or granola, or soy-free, gluten-free hypoallergenic cereal. I have a soy allergy. It's a bummer because it's cheap and holds together all your processed non-dairy future foods and meat byproducts. What's good for your heart makes me itchy and paranoid, covered in hives and having panic attacks. So yeah, I don't eat soy. Tea is strawberry pomegranate, coconut mango, white peach. It's probably healthy but I just know that it tastes good. Watch the news. Search for a job. Send out resumes and hope for the best. Take a deep breath. Go for a walk, maybe punch the punching bag. Get back to work.
That's the gist of what my life looks like right now.
I refuse to be in a holding pattern.
It's just been me and the Flesh Trap manuscript. What started off at 65,000 words has been cut down by 6,000 or so. I'm nowhere near finished. Yeah, I know, I'm not supposed to be editing. Manuscripts are supposed to age like fine wine. Whatever. I hid from the first half I had typed up when I broke for a month to rewrite the back-end in longhand. I'm entitled to make a few cosmetic alterations for continuity's sake. I've been putting up excerpts of cleaned-up chapters up here and there, Facebook and Twitter and the usual suspects, getting comments and feedback. I've also gotten a lot of passive-aggressive inquiries about the status of the novel. I'm going to take as a sign of interest. I can't think of any other reason for it, no matter how ironic. I'm going to take it as a compliment.
I'm sketching up possible illustrations. I'm outlining the next book. I'm researching my settings and dog-earring the Greatest Hits of Greek Mythology for reference. I'm pondering my mission statement for this year's Summer Sessions. I'm trying to get stories in some larger publications. I'm trying to keep moving, keeping evolving, keep producing.
My life is going on.
March 1, 2011
The Talisman project update
Back in December of FEARNet wrote a five-page script called The Talisman and released it to indie horror filmmakers. Only asking that the dialogue and key plot elements remain the same, he gave directors full discretion and creative room to develop the script into their own individual vision, with the intention of putting a website together to host them in September. Kind of a miniature horror film festival, if you will, to celebrate the fruits of this project.
Now a lot of these films are beginning to come together. The first to be brought to my attention is from Edwin Pagan, filmmaker and founder-in-chief of Latin Horror.com. I've been given a chance to get a little dirt on the upcoming movie.
Details about the film are coming along, including talk of a surprise ending. Which, from what I've heard, is going to be worth the cost of admission. The official synopsis is out now, and as the tagline suggests, there will be hell to pay:
A nomadic drifter is contracted by a hideous creature to deliver a sacred item – The Talisman – to an abandoned warehouse where he encounters an eternal, evil force that reveals his fateful destiny.
The film stars Ross Beshear, Adele Maria Bolet and Paul Bosche. Produced by Leonardo Rodriguez (director of Zombie Rocker), The Talisman features special effects makeup by Meagan Hester and puppets created by renowned animator Carl Paolino of MTV's Celebrity Death Match fame. Edwin Pagan performed two roles in the project, both as the director and cinematographer, after finding himself hooked by the script and the theme of the work. The script "also struck a chord with him for how open it was in terms of visual interpretation and symbolic metaphor," and dealing with themes of fate of an individual as result of immoral action, was influenced by Dante's Inferno in terms of set, costumes and makeup design.
Sound good? Good. It begins its film festival tour later on this year. You can find more info on The Talisman at Facebook and IMDB.
February 27, 2011
Fake it til you make it
The worst teacher I ever had told me you can't write something you've never done. He sat behind a desk lecturing about his disparaging opinions on community colleges and how people with GEDs didn't apply themselves, and assigning us literary critiques on short stories he had to self-publish. Publishers were out to get him, apparently.
Fiction is about telling the truth, he said. People won't believe you unless you've lived it. I never really got what it was I was supposed to be living. After all, I had a GED and was sitting in a community college classroom at the time. Apparently I didn't apply myself.
The best teacher I ever had said art is about telling convincing lies. We were sitting around in a studio talking about 70s metal and bad television shows, and how all artists steal from each other. That's part of how we all learn to do anything. Masters teaching apprentices, teaching apprentices, teaching college classes, borrowing and perfecting on one another's techniques.
You have to use lies to tell the truth, he'd say to everybody. People just have to believe in the brand of truth you're selling them. Be a good bullshitter, he said, and you can get anywhere. Well, hell, I can do that.
This is all a bit above my pay-grade, to be honest. I like to think that truth lies somewhere in the middle. All I can do is tell truth as I see it and let people see shades of it for themselves. Read what you will into that.
February 23, 2011
Monster reviews from Exaggerated Press
A favorable review of of M is for MONSTER by Terry Grimwood from Exaggerated Press has recently come to light. I've got to say I'm pretty pleased with the reception.
This is a big anthology, picked with fangs, claws and torn flesh, but also with subtly and shadowed menace. Yes, the familiar is there, the werewolf, the demon, but for the most part, they've been given a fresh set of clothes, an injection of steroids and sent out to play once more. There are some very well written tales here, and some that are great stories though told in a more workmanlike style. These are few and more than compensated for by the sheer glee with which humanity is chased, clawed, tormented and eaten by the thing that haunts us from the day we first become aware of the dark.
My story T is for Trap was briefly mentioned as well, which I think bears repeating.
My own personal favorite is T by Magen Toole in which the clockwork working life and domestic routine of an ordinary, somewhat dull, man is shattered by his first glimpse of a young woman standing outside her house as he drives home from work one evening.
You can read the rest of the review here. It's a nice shot in the arm, if nothing else.
February 21, 2011
An open to letter to the ghosts in my life
It's part of the noise when winter comes
It reverberates in my lungs
Dear You,
I always thought I would be at your wedding.
I always planned on it, really, since we were children. Running around in my parent's backyard, dirt on our hands and scrapes on our knees, riding bikes during summer breaks. I can see it all so clearly now, lit up by Fourth of July sparklers. It's muddied by eyes red from chlorine and breath-holding contests, still scribbled out on notebook paper, underscored in crayon or Magic Marker, twice folded and stuck in the bottoms of dresser drawers. It was something that we always talked about, an inevitability that we all took for granted. These were promises that we made, before we were old enough to know what we were promising.
We used to be family then.
Now we're not.
I missed your wedding. I'm going to miss the birth of your children. I see now that I'm going to miss everything.
Yeah, things change. I get that. Somewhere along the line we fell out of each other's lives. Things were said. Mistakes were made. I'm not keeping score anymore. I hope you're not either. For a long time I thought we couldn't live without each other, but I see now that we can. It hurt at first, but it doesn't feel so bad. Even when I look at your wedding photos, and think to myself that we've closed this book and we can't go back.
I think to myself, maybe it's for the best.
I'm not the same person I was at ten, or fifteen, or twenty. You're not either. Yeah, I get that too. We'd recognize each other on the street now, but I think that might be it. It used to scare me, but now it doesn't. You've gotten married, started a family; I've dropped three dresses and a few bad attitudes, gotten my priorities straight. I punched some holes in my face and started working on stories that I care about, and that maybe other people might care about, too. I'd like to think we've both buried our skeletons, even if that makes me sentimental. But if I saw you on the street now I'd still say Hello. I'd like to think you'd do the same.
I guess what I mean to say is that I miss you. I miss us. I miss summer and I miss being a family. But I'm okay with that.
I'm finding I'm okay with a lot of things these days. Maybe that's for the best, too.
I hope you're doing well.
Best,
Magen
February 20, 2011
Find yourself a pair of cheap sunglasses
It's been quiet in here. Maybe too quiet. Typing and editing manuscripts is quiet business, I'm afraid. So is waiting on editor responses, be they good or bad. I could open my mailbox to find an awesome publishing offer, or another one of my submissions mailed back unopened with "PLEASE STOP SENDING ME STORIES" scrawled desperately across the envelope in red ink.
(There's a story behind that second one, but I'll save that for another day.)
My brain's a bit empty these days. I finished around fifteen assorted short stories and flash fiction bits in the last three months, all of which are awaiting responses, in line to be published, or sitting in the drawer in need of a tune-up. So, yeah, it's been a bit quiet. I'm working up novel manuscripts, working on outlines for follow-up novels, and kicking around ideas for an upcoming short story. It's kind of like Eastern Promises, but with less Viggo Mortensen and more vampires. Well, not vampires, per se. (They don't glitter, if that's what you're asking.) This, too, is a story for another day.
Flesh Trap is my main focus at the moment, typing up the second longhand draft and lining out the edits. I have a lot of work to do. The response I've gotten from the people that have read it, in bits and pieces, in different stages of development, has been pretty overwhelmingly positive so far. I feel like I'm on the right track. In the meantime, I've been sketching and painting again, after an embarrassingly long hiatus from drawing pursuits. I want to release Flesh Trap as a web serial with a series of companion illustrations, because I'm dumb and I micromanage stuff like that, and you're going to get illustrations because I said so.
So I've been experimenting. I call them Skull-Babies. I think they're cute and fun. I'm sure I have art professors out there who would probably disagree, and swear they taught me better than that. Oh, well. Watercolor, acrylic and pencil.
Hopefully next time you see me I'll have more to show for myself. Today is just not that kind of a day.
February 12, 2011
New story for octopus enthusiasts
On Tuesday my newest flash fiction bit went live at The New Flesh, run by William Pauley III and company. It's called The Ocean Machine, about a burlesque dancer's inappropriate relationship with her pet octopus and some Frenchman that's stalking her. If you love cephalopods as much as I do, you'll enjoy it. And if you don't, well, you should read it anyway. Did I mention the burlesque dancer?
Every night Lorelei held a captive audience at The Ocean Machine, double-jointed, doll-slack in the embrace of her red octopus Gustav.
Lorelei danced the main stage under neon flush and sweat. Gustav had hard eyes like yellow marbles, fat muscled arms snaking up her back and down her thighs to lure the viewer's gaze between them. The sailors loved Lorelei, with wild orange flowers in her hair and black glitter on her eyes, amorous for the way she folded herself in two and held her breath beneath the skeletal jut of her diaphragm. Her arms were loose like tentacles reaching for the North Star, her belly rippling in ocean waves. On stage Lorelei was more octopus than woman, Gustav more lover than octopus. Moving across the stage as one, Lorelei never said which was truer than the other.
February 8, 2011
Writing Horror while Female
I have an idea for a role-playing game. I want to call it Writing Horror while Female. It's where you play a girl who writes a horror novel. You then take your book and go around the town, talking to people about the horror genre. It'll look a little something like this:
SCENARIO ONE
RANDOM GUY: So you write horror?
YOU: Yeah.
RANDOM GUY: *backs away slowly*
SCENARIO TWO
RANDOM GUY: So what, you're some kind of feminist, right? Cutting some dude's balls off just to prove a point?
YOU: Uh, no. It's about monsters. They eat people. It's kind of cool.
RANDOM GUY: But why would you write horror? Shouldn't you be writing, like, Sex in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants?
YOU: …Because I like horror? And I'm free to pursue ideas in whatever genre I choose to write about, even if I don't have a penis?
RANDOM: Whatever. Freaking bra-burners.
YOU: *quietly sharpens prison shank in the corner*
And let's not forget the ladies.
SCENARIO THREE
RANDOM GIRL: Oh, so you write horror? You must write paranormal romances, too!
YOU: Uh. No.
RANDOM GIRL: You mean you don't write about women falling in love with vampires, Yetis, or aliens? What else do girls write about?
YOU: *backs away slowly*
SCENARIO FOUR
RANDOM GIRL: You know horror's misogynistic, right?
YOU: Well, yeah, it can be. If you allow people to continue writing sloppy, two-dimensional female characters without putting forth any effort to change the genre on your own. Then horror will continue to just regurgitate clichés, further expanding the gender divide and hindering the development of good storytelling in the future.
RANDOM GIRL: Oh, well. I don't even read horror/watch horror films. I just know it's misogynistic so I don't bother.
YOU: *aneurysm*
If you can get through the day without beating anybody to death with your book, you win the game. Now you get to work on your second novel, without going to prison!
(Mind you, not all guys are like this. Just a few on the internet, and the ones I've met in art school who don't wash their hair and wear the same Friday the 13th t-shirt to class every day. I think we can all agree that their opinions probably aren't that valid. And if you write paranormal romance, or Sex in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, I have nothing against you personally. I just, uh, probably won't read your book.)
