C.K. Edwards's Blog, page 21

Late post

Not one of the cute girls who
came to see TannerThat isn't my arm but it is a family member's.

This is why I didn't post first thing this morning. Yesterday, my son Tanner got hit from behind by a snowboarder. The accident was good enough to produce a 48-stitch visit to the hospital. I could produce a much grosser picture, but that would exceed the MPAA rating for this blog.

Frankly, the thing I learned from all this was a little disheartening. Mary Shelley was completely off when she wrote Frankenstein. Horrendous scars do not repel people or make one a pariah. Scars are a chic magnet. I lost count of how many cute girls came to look at Tanner's soon-to-be scars.

The whole episode makes me question the idea of classic literature at a foundational level.

Daily Ambivalence - gum disease

There's nothing funny about gum disease.

What I imagine when I see a line like that is a guy in a white lab coat with an office as background making this pronouncement as he stares at you through the television.

That's a freakin' smart tomato. Too bad it can read.Which kind of makes me want to find something funny about gum disease.

Hormonal changes such as puberty typically correlate with the presence of gingivitis, and any mention of puberty seems fraught with comedy potential. There was that song called Puberty Love from the movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Total classic. My sister Stefanie used to fly into a rage anytime me or my brother John sang it to her.

But I'm an adult now. Puberty isn't that funny anymore.

I guess as hard as I try I just can't find anything funny about gum disease.

Gum disease . . . eh.

13 Going on 30

Yeah, there was that movie. I didn't see it but I'm pretty sure I own it. Or my daughter does. Or I own it but my daughter has possession of it.

The girl in the movie is thirteen, as the title suggests, but she wants to be thirty and so she makes a wish and becomes Jennifer Anigarner or something like that. So, we're talking the mind of a little girl but she's old. Well, not old. Thirty is still a good deal younger than me but I digress. Like I said, I haven't seen this movie but she probably hooks up with an old guy. It is a romcom. Did anybody think it was strange that this womgirl was doing grownup stuff with a guy? I don't remember any outrage. Come to think of it, Tom Hanks did the same thing in Big, didn't he.

The reason I bring this up is that my book Dream Ender has a guy who is actually somewhere in his 80s or 90s, but his body looks like it's fourteen. This character ends up having a relationship with a girl in her 20s. I was counseled by one or two people that readers wouldn't accept that. I think I'm actually going to agree and change the kid's age to seventeen, but I'm fighting it a little bit.

I like to complicate things for the characters in my stories. A hero should really have to fight for a happy ending. And then not get it completely.

Fourteen-year-old hooking up with a beautiful twenty something really kind of called to me. I suppose making the kid seventeen won't change that much.

Daily Ambivalence - there's a vase full of flowers next to me

There's a vase full of flowers next to me and what if I was allergic to flowers?

Or vases?

Sure, it looks niceYeah, what if I was allergic to vases? Are people allergic to vases? How about table cloths? Im actually writing this on top of a table cloth right now. Or books? Whoa, I hope I'm not allergic to books. I love books. Hey, I write books! It would be a disaster if I was allergic to books!

I don't like where this this particular blog is going. I'm going to abort this one . . .

I better not be allergic to Q-tips. I have a thing about clean . . . No! Right here. I'm stopping right here.

Or hot cocoa with a big fat marshmallow in the . . . aaahh!

There's a vase full of flowers next to me . . . eh.

Shadow and Shade/Chapter 8

This is a reading of Chapter 8 of the first book in my fantasy trilogy.

Without Mother Without Father trilogy
The book Shadow and Shade

I will release one of these each week on Friday until I have read the entire series. 54 weeks in all, I think. I hope you enjoy.

I like to pound my head against walls

Couldn't find a pertinent pic
so I chose this. I just really like
Brent Spiner.Some people say that but they don't really mean it.

I have a friend who nods in agreement when I say I like to pound my head against walls, and maybe he does, but when it comes right down to it he usually chooses a a softish kind of wall like sheet rock or plaster. I embrace the art of head pounding and use only cinderblock. Or, if sheet rock, only if it is wired to explode or shoot acid.

Case it point. I was talking to some writer friends, Jen Johansson and Renee Collins, and lamenting my woes in regards to queries and form rejections. They asked how many queries I had sent without getting a request for a partial and I told them around sixty for a particular book. They both said, without much hesitation, that my query probably sucked then. Even poor manuscripts will get a few look-sees, they said, if the query is good.

I know that. I mean, I know that, but in my head for the last few months my thought process has been the following: okay, the query might not be great (I really, really hate writing queries) but most of these agents ask for the first five or ten pages so no big deal. They'll be underwhelmed by the query but then get to my book and abruptly have a compunction to write A + A + A + on the nearest blackboard.

Jen and Renee voiced gentle disagreement over my reasoning. Renee actually punched me. In the face. Anyway, I'm used to banging my head against walls so the punch was no big whoop. I did agree to work on my query though. They even said they'd help me. Thanks, guys.

Daily Ambivalence - the first person that ever drank orange juice

Sometimes I wonder who the first person that ever drank orange juice was.
It was probably a long time ago but I wonder if that guy drank the orange juice for breakfast. You know, and that's why orange juice is traditionally a morning drink?
Nothing jumps out at me when it comes to orange juice that makes me think it should be a morning-only drink.
I hate it when we do stuff just because that's the way everyone has always done that thing. Tradition is fine but we shouldn't be chained to it. We're not sheep. We're humans.
So last night at 7:45 PM I drank a tall glass of orange juice. It was disgusting.
The first person that ever drank orange juice . . . eh.

LTUE Insight - Ideas are aliens

I've never heard a writer ask another writer where they got the idea for their book. That's kind of one of those questions a non-writer might ask, where the writers in the room will roll their eyes as the person questioned makes something up.

I was thinking that maybe writers should ask that question every once in a while. Sure, ideas are a dime a dozen. I can sit down with a piece of paper, do word/idea associations, and in twenty minutes come up with twenty different ideas for a story. And I'm slow.

As a writer though, I'm not interested in just an idea. I'm looking for the right idea. Actually I'm looking for the perfect idea. Perfect ideas are not cheap.

I like what Stephen King says:

"Good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky. . . your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up."

If Frank Herbert were still alive, I probably wouldn't be all that interested in asking him where he got the idea for Dune Messiah or Children of Dune. Those are fine books but I would guess he got those by asking himself what if questions based off the first book.

Dune though. Hey, when that one sailed out of the air, holy crap. How did Frank sort through the good ideas and the bad ones to come up with that masterpiece? That would be worth knowing. Even for him, apparently. He only wrote one Dune. I'm not discounting all of his other works. He was a brilliant writer, but Dune is arguably the greatest science fiction book ever written. He never even approached that again.

So how do you consistently recognize good story ideas when they come? Strike that. How do you recognize perfect story ideas when they come? I don't see why you should even bother writing the good ones? I want perfection.

Problem is, if you believe King, those ideas come down out of the sky like an alien wanting to probe and measure. I say it might be a good idea to find those writers who have just been probed and ask them where they got their idea.

Daily Ambivalence - driving on a highway

I was driving on a highway about an hour ago.

The thing about highways is that everyone seems so busy. If you stop and smell the roses people honk at you or call you names. Cops come and write you tickets or arrest you. And don't even get me started on the toxic fumes from all the cars.


I would totally do donuts all day
long if a highway look like thatI wish people would build highways that were more like the great outdoors. You know, Yosemite would be nice, even a Japanese moss garden.

We can do such amazing things nowadays. I mean, there's this app that uses your phone's camera so you can see where you're walking. You never even have to look up. Blows my mind.

Seems to me that if we can make amazing apps like that we could create highways that reminded people of the Ardennes in Norway. Only made of cement.

I just think we choose not to. Sad.

Driving on a highway . . . eh.

Shadow and Shade/Chapter 7

This is a reading of Chapter 7 of the first book in my fantasy trilogy.

Without Mother Without Father trilogy
The book Shadow and Shade

I will release one of these each week on Friday until I have read the entire series. 54 weeks in all, I think. I hope you enjoy.