Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 37

O, Carol, Where Art Thou?

Tonight’s episode deals with a very important problem: people leaving Alexandria. Darryl does it because he wants to get revenge against Dwight and Carol does it for reasons I’m still not entirely sure of. By now everyone knows that people know where they are and that they want to get in which makes even less sense that people would leave unnecessarily.

But in the spirit of realism, people do do things that are against their own best interests. At this point, we can all sense the choke point coming. The event is almost here. There’s plenty of theories out there, but with the preview to the 90 minute season finale, we get a glance of Negan and Lucille. With certain people being captured who the eventual victim will be has been narrowed down. My guy is still in the running.

I have a minor theory, though. I think the showrunners have floated the theory that it will be Darryl themselves. Even if it actually winds up being him (which it won’t), I think they redirected the conversation that was established by the comic book.

What better way to create a little misdirection and ratchet up the tension by having the audience try to figure out which inner-circle character is going to be the next to die?

But back to Carol. At this point, we don’t know if she’s alive or dead. We hear the gunshot just after Hiro rises with the knife to stab her. Did she hesitate? Did she miss? Unless I’m mistaken, Hiro was not amongst the dead on the road. Was she injured and crawled off somewhere to die?

I doubt it. She’s too rich a character to waste with an offscreen death from a one-off character. If and when the character does die, it’ll be in a sea of walkers or her death will be poignant somehow. Like Glenn being beaten to death by Negan. As of right now, Carol is in the wind and no one will find her until she’s ready to come out of her hidey-hole.

I haven’t worked out the Maggie bit yet that happened near the end of the episode. Maybe it’s a sign that happiness is coming to an end. Here’s another theory about a completely different character who may be on the chopping block next week on Forbes.com.

This blog is going away soon! Please join me over at http://www.geralddeanrice.com! And don’t forget to download a book.

One Step Closer to Negan #TWD #TheWalkingDead

Negan

Tonight we moved one step closer to Negan and the eventual beating death of Glenn (sorry, despite all the internets being aflutter with other possibilities, I still say it’s going to be him). It was mostly a stay-busy episode, a time filler until a repeat character dies.

Read the full article at my new site, www.geralddeanrice.com…

#TheThing Should be on Your #Christmas Watch List

Like every horror writer, I’m a fan of horror movies. I saw movies like Creepshow and The Howling when I was five years old. I’ve seen my fair share of really bad ones and some good ones too. Occasionally, there are great horror movies that I see something new even after watching them hundreds of times. One such movie, my favorite of all time by the way, is John Carpenter’s The Thing.

The Thing is the 1982 version (not remake) of the John W Campbell, Jr. short story, “Who Goes There?” which was originally made as The Thing from Another World. Everyone who’s even a casual fan of horror over the last 30 years has seen this movie, so I don’t need to rehash the plot. But there is one key sentence that reveals that the story unfolds during the holiday season.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is an allegory for what happens to bad little boys at Christmas.

Five words are all that’s needed to set up my argument. “First g***amn week of winter.”

Those were MacReady’s words after the two Swedes Norwegians landed at the U.S. outpost, intent on killing what appeared to be a malamute, but who wind up getting blown up and shot.

The first day of winter back in 1982 was December 22, a Wednesday, three days before Christmas.  The movie is seen over the course of five days–from the helicopter firing on the malamute to Mac and Childs sitting near the burning camp, exhausted. Now your first assumption might be that the first day was a Wednesday, but had he meant that he would have said it was the first day of winter. So how do we know what day it is when Mac declares they’re turning the corner of the Winter Solstice? The week starts on Sunday, the 19th in this case, to Saturday, the 25th.

The movie begins on a Tuesday. And before you say I have no evidence to back that up, let me lay out out my argument over the course of days and you’ll see how I backdated to this day.

We all know the story (and in case you don’t, I’ll wait while you purchase and watch), but let’s go through the chronology. I’ll just hit the highlights.

Day 1 :

Dead Norwegians
Malamute infects Palmer and Norris

Day 2:

Norwegian camp and two-headed corpse
Malamute eats sled dogs

Day 3:

Bennings is assimilated
Blair goes nuts
Fuchs is killed (or assimilated?)

Day 4:

Nauls goes with Mac to his shack
Mac takes control with a stick of dynamite
Norris-thing kills Copper
The test
Palmer reveals itself
Blair-thing kills Garry
Outpost 31 is systematically blown up

Day 5:

Blair-thing gets blown up with a stick of dynamite
Mac and Childs are the last two left

You might dispute the chronology slightly, but the last item for each day could just as easily bleed over into the morning of the next considering there weren’t any clocks and I do have to concede the Blair-thing could just as easily have revealed itself at 8pm as 2am, but if movies like to do anything, they like that sense of arbitrary balance. The monster tends to like popping out at midnight and that’s what I believe happened here. Starting from Tuesday the 21st that makes the Blair-thing blowing up happen on the 25th. Merry Christmas.

But that’s only half the argument. What do bad little boys have to do with anything? The first two clues are staring each other in the face at the end of the movie: Mac and Childs. Childs is obvious, you know what a child is. MacReady is a Scottish name and the nickname Mac is Scottish for son. Childs has a temper, Mac breaks his toys (pouring booze into his computer), Palmer smokes weed, Windows falls asleep instead of getting his job (or chore) done, Nauls plays his music too loud, Blair doesn’t play well with others, Fuchs plays with fire, Garry loses his keys, Clark lets the dog make a mess, Bennings has a boo-boo and Norris is a follower. I couldn’t really think of what Copper did that could be considered bad and the Bennings one is weak. Perhaps that one can be swapped with Bennings running with scissors (his hands after he’d been assimilated). Also consider this: Windows’ name originally had been Sanchez in the script. Sanchez is a Spanish surname that means holy or blameless. Another word for blameless is innocent. You know, like children are.

And as long as we’re bringing up religious undertones (it is CHRISTmas, afterall), a palmer is a pilgrim who has returned from a trip to the Holy Land. The name Bennings derives from the Roman name Benedictus, which means blessed. A clark is a person of a minor religious order. When Blair says to Mac he doesn’t know who to trust anymore, Mac responds with, “Trust in the Lord.”

Finally, also consider what a present is. It’s a container that has something in it that is unknown until it is unwrapped. Just as Palmer had something in him that was unknown until he was unwrapped. A large part of Christmas is the unknown as gifts are put under the tree where they await opening. A large component of The Thing is fear of the unknown. By the time Nauls comes back  from Mac’s shack without him, no one trusts anyone and Childs is about ready to burn everybody just to be on the safe side. Oh, and Copper derived from kuper which derived from kup, which is also a container.

Although my evidence is admittedly akin to circumstantial, taken in total it plainly shows how Bill Lancaster either intentionally or subconsciously had a horrifying idea that bad things should befall little boys around the Christmas season. There is no way to see this from any other angle. Nope. None.

…Unless when Mac referred to the first week of winter he wasn’t harkening back to the northern winter solstice (I assume by his accent he’s American) and really meant the winter solstice of the southern hemisphere, where the Antarctic and Outpost 31 are which occurs sometime between June 20th and 22nd. No, my carefully laid out, time-devouring argument is right. It just has to be.

Lionel Richie Calls Adele

DO NOT STOP

I needed a little palette cleanser after the first draft of my Santa story was done. I’m not sure where this is going, but I hope you enjoy what I’ve written so far of Do Not Stop. And don’t forget to stop by the Amazons and download a book.

 

This would have been the perfect stretch of road to have a breakdown and never be heard from again. Bill had just crossed over from driving for a long time to driving forever when he began picking out plots where he could potentially be buried. He had never driven across state before and hopefully would never have to again. At least not this state. There was nothing to see here, nothing people would have to write home about, as the saying went. Just long stretches of tall grass to either side of the road, blue sky, and endless paved road.

The steady susurrus of his tires on asphalt tugged at the edges of his consciousness. It was an extraordinarily clean road, more free of debris than he’d seen anywhere else. No broken glass tinkled along the roadside, no shredded tire treads to weave around, no billboards to distract him along the way, and no road signs to tell him how far to civilization.

The most interesting thing worth seeing was on the underside of his eyelids.

Bill slapped himself awake and returned the hand to the two o’clock position on the steering wheel. His hands had gone numb from gripping it so long but he had four minutes before he could rotate position. It was as much a game he’d made for himself for added mental stimulation as it was to keep him at least slightly uncomfortable for physical stimulus. Coffee wasn’t doing the trick but he picked up the giant cup he’d gotten at the 7-11 what felt like a million years ago and took another healthy yet tepid swig.

That reminded him he was going to have to pee soon. At least there was that.

Before his lids grew too heavy again he decided to pull over and relieve himself. Bill couldn’t understand why it was so hard to stay awake, it wasn’t even noon.

There was no shoulder. He wasn’t worried about a vehicle coming along and swatting him like a bug, there was literally no one else for miles. He’d created a hundred miles an hour several times, mentally inviting a hidden police car into existence so the cop could have pulled him over and issued a ticket. It would have been a welcome change of pace and a swatch of conversation he could have fed on for at least a dozen miles.

As he unzipped he wondered how far away he must have been from any radio towers that even in flatlands he could get no signal. He would have taken anything—country, gospel music, classical, even the farm report. Anything besides his own voice that he’d grown tired of listening to after three hours. He’d grabbed his CDs but the rental he’d gotten at the airport didn’t have a CD player, only a port for an MP3 player.

As he zipped up something in the distance caught his eye, sticking out like a fire hydrant in a forest. It looked like a sign.

It had to be a mile away at least and could have easily been a number of other things, although he couldn’t imagine what.

Bill climbed back in his car, excited something was coming to break up this monotonous landscape. It was on his side too, so it was bound to have some sort of direction for him. Maybe there was an exit coming up, he’d even take a rest stop. Bill drive at an even sixty, letting anticipation build like the last few days before Christmas.

As he drew closer he saw clearly that it was a warning sign by its yellow color and diamond shape. He wondered what would anyone would need to be warned about out here. Maybe deer or some animal that crossed the highway, although the cleanness of the highway also included a complete lack of animal carcasses.

Bill snorted in annoyance when he finally could make out the three words in bold black print. They made absolutely no sense.

 

DO NOT

STOP

 

“Don’t stop?” he said aloud. “What the hell does that mean? Of course I’m not going to stop. What for?”

Maybe it was some sort of goof, he thought. A bunch of high school kids with nothing to do drove out to the middle of nowhere and put up a sign just to annoy passers by. Bill had been an obnoxious teen once although he couldn’t see him and a bunch of his buddies with that much inclination to be complete dicks. Okay, maybe he might have done that, but that sign wasn’t something somebody had done up in their garage. It looked professional enough, not even a bullet hole in it. And weren’t those signs expensive?

He saw another warning sign a little bit ahead. Bill pressed the gas to catch up to it faster and was even more agitated once he’d read it.

 

KEEP

WINDOWS

UP

 

“Okay, what the hell?” The remnants of his errant teenager theory were trashed, leaving him with no clue as to what the sign—correction, signs—were for.

“That couldn’t be for real, could it?”

As a precaution he slid his cracked window the rest of the way up. Maybe there was an actual reason for the signs. Maybe there was something out here…

Bill looked around him as if for the first time. The danger couldn’t be other drivers. Perhaps there was a prison nearby and they wanted to discourage people from picking up hitchhikers. But then again, circumspection was not a good idea in such a case. And he’d actually seen signs that spelled out that he was in a prison area and not to pick up hitchhikers. Coy wasn’t the best policy in such a circumstance.

So if the danger wasn’t hitchhikers or other vehicles he wondered what that left. Rabid birds? Sinkholes? Poison gas?

That last struck the biggest chord. The air had smelled clean. A little too clean. It didn’t smell like anything in the city and it didn’t smell like any country area he’d ever been through. No cow patties or horses or anything like that.

 

One Last Push #NaNoWriMo #amwriting #iartg

Okay, so this is it. You might have been keeping up with my progress, but tonight is the last night and I have to hit my 35,000 word goal. As of right now, I have written 32,184 words and while you may say that isn’t a lot I have just a little over one hour to do it. That’s 2,816 words or about 47 words per minute. I type at a max of 70 WPM but as any writer will attest, sometimes it takes a little bit of finagling to get the words out.

But here goes. I have my feet up, putting on some music and I have a beverage to help grease the skids. Wish me luck.

I Got There! #nanowrimo #amwriting

Read my last post about writing goals and tracking progress.

If the above picture is too blurry to read, I’ve done it. I’ve finally pushed through and nailed my goal. Through a try-try again attitude and actually actively seeking out the time, I’ve managed to hit 2,501 words in a day!

That’s the true point of spreadsheeting your writing progress (and there are plenty resources you can utilize to help do that) is to make yourself accountable to your current WIP and bring you back more often. If you know you have a looming word count dangling over your head you’re more likely to write and write for longer periods of time.

You certainly don’t have to use my method, the NaNoWriMo site helps track writing progress and maybe your local library participates in the month-long event like mine does and offers prizes when you hit certain milestones.

The point is, however you get there, get there. And don’t stop going.

Please check out a few of my books before you go, including the first installment of The Zombie Archives!

Going Low-Tech #amwriting #nanowrimo #writing

I think I may have found the trick. I’ve talked about it in prior posts but the thing in the picture above is a word processor. I stopped using it after I discovered I could use Google Drive on my phone which lets me write virtually anywhere but I had an all-too familiar problem rear its ugly head.

My iPhone has apps. Apps are fun.

While writing is immensely enjoyable it’s not mindless and requires a good deal of consideration to do well while if I suck at Scramble with Friends nobody cares except my wife who kills me on a regular basis.

So I’ll revise my initial statement on ‘evolving’ from my Neo to a smart phone. Sure, I can’t lug this everywhere I go even at about three pounds. But I can’t continue to write on a computer or my iPhone because it’s too easy to just check my Facebook account.

I’m going to adopt a hybrid approach to writing from here on, using a computer or my smart phone when I’m away from home and my Neo when I sit down to write in bed or at the table.

I can’t check my email or respond to FB posts or tweet with it and that’s exactly what I need right now.

And don’t forget, this Thursday I’ll be putting on a self-publishing workshop.  If you’re in the Troy, MI area stop by!

And while you’re here, why not download an eBook?

PS- I wrote 1421 words yesterday thanks to my Neo.

Still No Good… #amwriting #books #nanowrimo

So I’m still below my goal word count (not for NaNoWriMo, I’ve had a cut-off before the end of the month). I intentionally set an aggressive word count and while I haven’t been able to hit 2,500 words a day, I have accomplished two things:

I see exactly how many words I’m writing.
It helps spur me on to write a higher word count than I do on average.

Now that I see how many words I’m averaging a day I can see how short I am and figure out how much adjusting I need to do to get where I need to be. Maybe that means I need to cut back on my iPhone activities (I’m probably on Facebook too much) or increase my visits to the library on my lunch break (like I’m doing right now).

 

I’ve writing 683 words per day over an 11 day stretch. So I’ll set a smaller goal for myself. To at least break my 683 a day word goal. Let’s say 700 words.

I have 9 nines to finish what I’m working on. Here goes.

Also, this Thursday, if you live or work around the Troy, MI area, I’ll be putting on a workshop on self-publishing. Why not sign-up and drop in?

So Far, No Good

As you may have read on my last blog, I’ve set a highly aggressive writing goal for the next couple weeks. As of right now, I have some catching up to do. Since the 29th of October, I’ve written 1858 words.

I’m supposed to be writing 2500 words per day.

So that means I need to get more creative about my writing. As of 11/3/2015 I’ll be cutting out any excess app usage and audiobooks on my Kindle (when my hands aren’t otherwise occupied) until I catch up to where I need to be.

I’ll be following my own advice on finding time to write so I’ll be sure to smash my goal and turn in my manuscript on time.