Zachary Tringali's Blog, page 2

Movie Talk: Pacific Rim and the sum of our parts

Pacific Rim! Giant robots fighting giant monsters. What’s not to like? The movie is basically a love letter to anyone who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons ever, or anyone who has ever watched anime.

I went and saw this a couple of weeks ago and I’m still thinking about how much fun it was. We get a lot of things in movies these days–explosions, big greenscreen sets, etc., etc., but sometimes the pure fun and spectacle of it all can get lost in the grimdark, ultraseriousness. Not that there’s anything wrong with grimdark seriousness with the right story.

One of the great things about Pacific Rim is that it never forgets what it is. It embraces being an action movie with a great visual style and a lot of punch (ha-ha, how about that wordplay?)

One of the OTHER great things is that the story in the movie is all about knowing what you are and embracing it, too. The characters are all allowed to just be. There are jerks, people who are stuck up, people who are tough to work with for whatever reason, and the point of the movie is that they all manage to get over themselves at the end of the day and work together. Because working together, they’re infinitely better than being alone. No one has to go through some life lesson about how they need to become a better person. It’s the end of the world and, regardless of baggage, everyone has to come together.

Individuality is given a lot of value in movies and books, generally. In movies like these, you usually have the one person who rises above everything else to save the world, to be the hero. But in Pacific Rim, nothing would happen without the people who come before you, after you, and with you.

It goes without saying (based on the director alone) that the movie has a ton of visual style. Not only does it look cool, but it manages to use the visuals in a way that helps to tell the story. Everything from the design of the robots (Jaegers) to the look of the cities and the world help to build up this world without spending a lot of time handholding and explaining to us. We can infer things based on appearance, and the movie trusts us to do that.

The movie does stumble a little here and there. The first half feels a little disjointed at times, but overall it’s a very smooth experience with an absolutely fantastic pace. And once the action scenes start and that amazing music starts pounding and getting your heart pumping, it’s pretty much impossible to think of anything other than just how cool it is.

Filed under: Life

Book Talk: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Sum it up: After the sudden death of her mother, Cheryl Strayed embarks on a journey to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Non-fiction.

Thoughts: It felt like a few months ago I was hearing about this book everywhere, and now I know why.

Here’s the thing about non-fiction: Translating your emotional mindset and thought process accurately onto a page is hard. It’s harder when it’s during an emotionally trying, personal time in your life. It may not seem hard, but it’s easy to put emotional barriers between yourself and the truth, to distance yourself between something that was painful or embarrassing. When the emotional core of a book falters, at best you have a book about a topic you might be interested in, but at worst you won’t even be interested enough to get to that information.

I mention all of this because at times, Wild feels more like a fiction novel than a nonfiction one. Not because of any unbelievable events in the book, but because Strayed is just so good at finding and leaning on the narrative thread (and the emotional core) that ties her entire story together. She’s able to look at herself without putting her own ego in the way, without softening or shying away from anything, and it’s that confidence that gives us such a frank and engaging picture of who she was.

That’s what takes Wild and makes it into something special–a really great book.

There are a few stories here going on simultaneously as Strayed hikes the Pacific Crest Trail and thinks about all the places her life has gone wrong. From a failed marriage to the death of her mother. The narratives are woven together so well, with the painful emotional aspects of the past contrasting with the physical demands of the trail in a way that mirrors the journey and transformation that Strayed herself went through.

The picture the book paints isn’t always pretty. A lot of times it’s painful. But if the book is about anything, it’s about hope and moving forward whenever you can, past pain and mistakes in the past.

Needless to say, I’m glad I finally picked this book up.

Writing talk: Pulling from multiple sources, inspiration, and “filling the tanks.”

I read an interview with Joss Whedon about being prolific recently and one of the things he talked about was what he called “filling the tanks.”

“I read The Killer Angels. It’s a very detailed, extraordinarily compelling account of the Battle of Gettysburg from the point of view of various people in it and it’s historical. It’s historically completely accurate, and the moment I put it down I created Firefly, because I was like, ‘I need to tell this story. I need to feel this immediacy. I so connect with that era, the Western and how tactile everything is and how every decision is life or death, and how hard it is and how just rich it is, and how all the characters are just so fascinating.’

- Joss Whedon, from coCreate.

He touches on a couple of things that I thought were really interesting and really similar to the way my own process of writing things goes. After I finish a big project like writing the first draft, or even editing a book later, I need a little break where I can just binge on things. Books, movies, TV, whatever. As long as it’s creative and has a story, as long as it’s entertaining? Gimme.

A big part of this, for me, is that multimedia-ness of it all. Reading good books is important. It’s how you learn what works and what doesn’t in writing. But watching good movies, seeing good plays, listening to good music, even, can all be just as important in refueling the tanks and getting the imagination going. I think I’ve been just as influenced by shows like Battlestar Galactica or Breaking Bad as I have been by novels. It’s not always in the same way, but it helps give a different perspective.

I bring it all up because I used to honestly feel guilty at times if I was watching a movie or doing something that wasn’t reading. Somehow, I got it into my head that it was unproductive and that I couldn’t get anything from it. I remember a friend of mine, though, telling me that rather than making it a point to read X amount of books per week, or month, or whatever, he instead made it a point to experience X amount of creative things per week. And that could be movies, or it could be comics, or it could be novels. It didn’t matter as long as it made him think and it was interesting.

That stuck with me.

I don’t know how I got so off topic–I don’t know that I really am, I guess. It’s all about filling the tanks with any good stories you can, because your brain will pull from anything and everything.

I find the bit in the article about making sure you reach outside of your genre particularly interesting in the same way. I’ve read authors say before that they don’t read in their genre at all because they just don’t get anything from it, and while I love fantasy and could never give it up, that makes sense to me. By and large I feel like I get the most, in my own writing, out of reading outside.

Reading horror and genre lit and contemporary YA and whatever else helps me think about other ways to flesh out stories.

And I guess I just think that’s cool, and I like reading that other people do the same thing. Writing can be a kind of lonely thing, but thanks to twitter and ready access to blogs and articles like the one above, it doesn’t feel so lonely at all.

Book Talk: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

All right. I’d intended to wait a little longer to talk about this book. I’m not entirely finished with it yet, although I’m close, but the book I was going to talk about didn’t work and… Well, to be honest, I just wanted to talk about Living Dead Girl.

Because this? This is not an easy book to read. And it shouldn’t be, but I guess I didn’t quite expect what a punch in the gut it would be. It does a lot of things that shouldn’t have worked–like starting out in second person (when does that ever work?) and transitioning into third (what?) Like letting me know upfront what the story is and still managing to shock me. And it all works.

Living Dead Girl is about a girl (“Alice”) who was kidnapped by a pedophile when she was ten years old. The story picks up five years later when she’s still living with him, waiting for the day she’ll be too old for him and he’ll let her go. Let her go by killing her, that is, the same way he did to the last Alice.

I started listening to the audiobook while I was out running this week and I’d say after about the first half an hour I wanted to shut it off and just run in silence. I don’t know that I’ve ever really had that kind of reaction before, despite reading plenty of books about detectives and serial killers and blah blah blah. Living Dead Girl took it to a very personal level.

I kept listening because Elizabeth Scott is just that good. Sure, the gross-out parts are there for the shock you’d expect (none of it too graphic), but it’s the characterization and thought process of the main character that really unsettle you. Because it feels real and you can picture how she could be stuck in this situation, how trapped she feels, so totally alone that she doesn’t think anyone in the world notices her.

Maybe I’m just babbling now, but I think it’s a rare thing for a book to promise to disturb you and then to actually deliver in ways you couldn’t even imagine. We’ve all seen Law & Order SVU, we’ve all been inundated with crime dramas and so much else that it can be hard to imagine anything like this that’s really shocking, but here we are.

So far, it hasn’t gotten any easier to listen to, but Elizabeth Scott’s writing is powerful and impossible to turn away from.

Short Story: Among the Wild Things, Still

Everything changes with time. Myths become legends that become stories. Among the Wild Things, Still is a short story about a place, and two people, on the cusp of that change.

Title: Among the Wild Things, Still

Length: 2,500 words

Pitch: Myth becoming legend; gods and myths; lost kingdoms.

Among the Wild Things, Still

Snow fell from branches, dusting the hillside like soft down feathers as Embla leapt from tree to tree. Down the way the stream bubbled along, the rind of ice just melting in the coming sun, and somewhere in the woods the bears made their first stirrings as the spring wind blew through their caves. She stayed one step ahead of change, ducking out of sight of the coming dawn, into the shadows as she watched him come down the road, his cloak the red of autumn leaves, his hair the waning gold of summer’s sun.

“You know you can’t hide from me for long, Embla,” he called, pausing to shake the branches of last-jump’s tree, the snow falling, melting on his lips and brow. “You’ll have to say goodbye to me sometime. I’ve brought cakes and mead enough to last a lifetime.”

“And only time enough to last the daylight.” Embla slipped down into the brambles by the riverside, the water cold on her feet. She pulled the shadows around herself like a cloak, hiding her face from the stray sunbeams spilling through the trees. His music reached for her, a faint beat that thrummed through the air, but she dare not be drawn to it no matter how tempted she was, lest it coil around her ankles and pull her down beside him. It would be too easy to slip into that sleep with him, dozing peaceful in the grass as the world went on without them. “Will you give me up so easily for a scrap of metal? Is a bit of jewel and gold enough to give up your godhood? Speak the word and the mountains will open their tombs of silver and gold to you; whisper to the wind and bring a fire that will forge steel stronger than any mortal hand. You don’t need to do this; we need not say farewell. Stay with me.”

“Come, now, you sound like a child!” Laughter followed his words and though he tried to disguise the barbs of them, she felt them all the same. He came down the path, his boots squelching in the mud and his cloak whipping around his ankles. Blue eyes searched through the darkness for her; the color had risen in his cheeks, pink like twilight. “Sweet Embla, you know I cannot. A god can rule a land, but a king must rule the people. A king of flesh and blood, a man they can write songs about, who can lead wars to win honor and glory in a way no god ever could. And a king must have his crown. Is this how you’d spend our last night?”

“You’re ignoring the point,” she said, and moved in silence through the dark, for fear that his eyes would find her. He could not say goodbye if he couldn’t find her—he couldn’t hurt her with the carefree look in his eyes if he couldn’t see her. “If all you want is a crown, I’ll make you one. Bring me a bit of holly and some birch, a rope, a—”

“And you’re being purposefully difficult!” he said, and then paused to draw a breath. “You’re right. It’s not the crown that matters.” He crouched by the river, looking down at the print of a heel left on the bank, washing away with the course of the river. Running his fingers through the mud, he smiled. “I need to see you, I need to hear you this one last time. Don’t make me do this alone, Embla. Please.” He cast the accusation out into the dark underbrush, maybe hoping for a response to lead him closer—he would be disappointed—she made no move. “I’m doing this for my people.”

“And what about you?” Embla climbed again into the trees, creeping from branch to branch overhead, using her words to disguise the rustle of the leaves. She peered down on him from above, his golden hair a sun in winter. “What about your magic? You’ll have to give it all up. Your nights of coming out here to see me will be over. Once you cross that veil, there’s no coming back.”

“The people don’t need magic now. Nor do they need a king who believes in it and spends half his life wandering across the veil,” he said, his voice so soft the babble of the water nearly hid it. He looked up into the trees and her heart froze—almost she thought he had seen her, but he was only staring into the shadows, his eyes wet. “Please don’t do this to me. Do you think I enjoy this? Do you think I don’t long to run away from it all? I’m not happy to give this up!”

“Then don’t,” she whispered, edging closer, dragging the shadows and holding onto her magic by a breath so that he might not see her. “Stay here with me. Time runs away from us, but if we stay… if we stay and fight it, we can find peace here, still. We can live like this, right here, untouched by anything. Time can pass somewhere else beyond that veil where gods can die, and kings can lead their little lives apart from us. There must be someone else who can sit in that nasty throne and be bored all day listening to men and their problems. You’re more like me than like them. You can’t tell me you don’t sit at the window and look out across the fields and long for something more. Tell me you do not listen for my music calling out to you. You must hear me!”

“Of course I do! Sometimes I hear you so clearly I run to the window and look a fool, half fallen over the sill before I stop.”

“And still you stop.”

“That’s why I can’t come back. I can’t always be chasing fairy stories, half alive in dreams. I thought you understood that, I thought maybe you understood me. I’ll leave. It would have been easier had I never stayed here so long.” Standing, a few small stones tumbled down and plunked into the water as he turned away.  “We are different creatures, you and I. You would ask me to be still, to stay in this place of gods and music while the world moves on without us, but no more could you ask the wind to be still or the sea to stop churning. This time is over now, for me.”

Embla dropped down from the tree, nearly bowling him over as she landed behind him. He caught her hand in his and their music joined together, a budding symphony that rose between their touch. The shadows parted around her as she drew him in, twining her arms around his waist and burying her face into the crook of his neck. She wept.

“They will make mortals of us all, one day,” she said through tears, the fabric of his tunic soft against her hot face. “They’ll put crowns on our heads, or bind us in voice, singing songs of heroes and men, making us little more than flesh and bone because they can never understand what we really are. But I will not go, not yet, not ever. I’d rather disappear with this world, with the fog. I cannot go to that place. I can’t be made small.”

“And I would never ask you to.” Frozen at first by surprise, he softened and pulled her against him, whispering by her ear, “It’s all right. We still have time.”

“The sun will be gone soon and then comes the moon; the veil is getting weak. Soon you’ll be gone.”

“But not yet,” he said, pulling back enough to see her face, so she could see the pain in his eyes had melted. Touching her cheeks, he smoothed the black hair back from her face and drew in the scent of her. “We still have all of the day to get through.”

“They won’t miss you?” she asked, dreading even having to. The castle loomed like a great beast beyond the hills, past the mist covered fields, the torches on the wall shining dimly through the veil.

“Who cares? I’ve given the rest of my life to them. Let them look for me, they won’t find me here. If they should have to worry about me for one night so that I can have the only thing I want, the only thing I cannot have, then it is a small price to pay.” Catching her chin on his finger, he turned her face up to him. Embla ducked away from his kiss and retreated as far as his arms would allow. “Why?”

“You have to promise me that you won’t forget.”

“I could never—”

“Not me.” She pushed her palm against his chest so he could feel the warmth that had grown there, so he could better hear the quiet fluting of her own song, like the wind blowing through a flute in the crisp fall air, twining around his own song. Pulling her hand away, she showed him the light she’d drawn from him, the way it danced against her fingertips and burned through the shadows truer than any flame. “This. Your magic.”

“It cannot be a part of me anymore. You know what this means, Embla. I give up everything for my crown. I will turn the fields by hand and I will fight the wars with just my arms. I will be the king they need, if not the god I long to be, calling up the sun so that I might glance upon the moon.” His thumb brushed her cheek; his lips touched her ear. “There won’t be any more magic, not for me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m not. Let me go to my crown, to that silent life, at least knowing that you are out here, that this life still exists somewhere.” He lingered, releasing her from his hold and for a moment she feared he would leave. Quickly, he continued, “I would have you take my magic now. Let that part of me live here with you, at least. It’s a pitiful gift, but it’s all I have to offer you.”

“It’s not pitiful,” she said, “but it’s not right, either. You shouldn’t go through life deaf to everything, not for anything. I won’t do it.”

“Not for anything,” he repeated, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “For you. None of this is right, Embla. If my brother hadn’t died, if my people didn’t need me…” He looked away, finding her hand in the dark and placing it against his chest. Through the rich weave of his shirt she could feel his heart hammering around her palm. “Everything would be different. Tell me, Embla, what use do I have for my song without yours to join it with? What purpose could it find?”

“You don’t know what you ask of me,” she said, drawn as far away as the circle of his arms would allow her. “How could I live that way? With that kind of burden?”

“When all the world changes, Embla, my love will hold you here.” He drew his arms away, a slow retraction as if worried she might flee; he placed his hands upon her face, tracing his fingers back through the dark curls of her hair. “Let me live alongside you and our song will sustain us both. Let me go and this magic will stay a dead thing in my heart, for how can it live without you?”

“I—” she began, but stopped at the look in his eyes. She eased the nerves from herself and smoothed her palm against his chest, seeking the warmth hidden behind cloth. Her hands slipped beneath his tunic, cold fingers skittish on warm skin, trailing the tautness of his belly to his heart where she could feel the song singing through his veins. Twice she made to pull away, the wrongness of it sending gooseflesh up her arms, but he put his hand over hers and held her steady as she curled her fingers and drew away his song.

His music was like a harp, strings warmed by the summer sun, sound like honey from the crock. He gave a gasp, his pale lips parting slightly, but she pushed past that look—forced herself past how wrong it all felt and dove inward, pulling more from him. She took everything and let his sound fill the hollows of her bones, the blackness of her shut eyes.

When she finished, he was too weak to stand and she had to help him down to the river. Embla sat with him cradled in her lap, scooping cold water into her palm and helping him drink. Finished drinking, he held her hand aside and turned his head to look back at her. She cursed herself for a moment of weakness, looking away. She couldn’t meet his eyes. He drifted for a time, his eyes shut and his body lax in her arms.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The music is gone. You’re so quiet, now…” She held him still and listened to the silence enveloping them; she did not tell him how empty he seemed, now—how empty he would always seem, past the veil. Another mortal, shining among their own kind, but a shadow of his true self, so dark that she dare not even look at him and yet still her heart yearned for him. He reached out, his fingers curled around her own, and she let out the breath she’d been holding. They spent their last moments like that, holding one another and watching the water flow silently down the river.

Embla fell asleep, the last fingerlings of waning light warming her eyelids, and when she awoke darkness had settled and he was gone, just a warm memory in her arms. Back beyond the hills she could hear the trumpets blaring from the keep. The fanfare swelled, but no music—no real music—could be heard in the king’s coronation day. She had taken that and she held it in her now; she would hold it for the rest of her days, a heavy twining rooting her to the forest floor. Spring would come and melt the winter, and then summer would burnish the sky to cold blue, but she would remain.

Embla went often to the edge of the veil, to sit among the branches and look out through the fog; she watched the dryads become trees, the selkie become seals who would never again slip into their mortal skin; she watched gods become kings and kings become cold bodies in the ground and still she held his song and with it weathered the coming change, because she remembered once the way things had been: a kiss, a blush of frost, a young god who laid in the hollow of the world with a girl whose hair, as dark as night’s last breath, curled around his fingers.

Alone, she carried that memory with her into the night, the fog beckoning at her heels.

Book Talk: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Sum it up: A few days after Clay’s crush Hannah Baker commits suicide, a box shows up on his doorstep. Inside are a set of cassettes, and on those tapes–if he’s brave enough to listen–Hannah is going to tell him, and the other thirteen people responsible, why she committed suicide.

Thoughts: So, here’s the thing: I know, the description sounds like the novel version of a “very special episode” from in all the glory of 90′s TV show. But it’s not that. It is a book about social issues, and in some ways you can feel that Asher wants to educate you about these things, but it comes across as very real, honest, and at its heart it’s a book about the characters.

It would be so easy to over dramatize this book, to make it about one, singular inciting incident that led Hannah to her choice. Asher wisely avoids that path and instead does something that feels much more plausible, like the kind of thing that could happen every day.

Asher takes seemingly small incidents in life–a lie about a first kiss, something said in passing, and he shows the way they can snowball and effect people in ways we’d never dreamed. Especially young people, who maybe haven’t quite finished defining themselves on their own terms yet and now have to contend with all this outside noise. As Asher describes it, it slowly takes away Anna’s sense of self, and it’s not just one thing that does it, it’s a million (well, 13) small things that give an example of how powerful words are, even when we don’t necessarily mean to give them that much power.

It’s a good book. A book that people should read, because I think it bridges the gap between helping to understand and telling a good story. There are a few foibles here and there, I think–parts that maybe run on a little long, but none of it effects the overall shape of the book in any way.

Hannah Baker is dead. We know this almost before the novel even begins, so it begs the question: as a story, why should we care? And the answer: Because Hannah didn’t have to die.

If you liked this book: Okay, you may need to bear with me a little here, because the book I want to suggest (A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness) is not really that similar. It’s a middle grade book, for starters, and it’s a book about a young boy dealing with cancer (his mother’s cancer.) It’s also a kind of fantasy book (there’s a monster!)–but, but, it has a lot of the same heart. It’s another book that will help you see some of the issues kids face in a new light, all while telling a really compelling story.

TV Talk: Defiance — That’s a wrap! Spoiler free thoughts.

Defiance! One of the two shows this season that won me over after having me adamantly disliking them based on their pilot episodes. The other was Elementary, but more on that another day.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, Defiance is something of a new breed of TV show. It’s paired with an Massively Multiplayer online game of the same name and, supposedly, events that take place within the game world and the players there have some effect on the television show. It seems like a risky proposition, as if either show or game tanks, you’d think it might very well take the other with it. But the show has been renewed for a second season, so something must be working. Anyway, on to the thoughts on season one and the show in general. What follows is a SPOILER FREE review!

Sci-fi television shows seem to have a certain barrier to entry, for me at least. Confession time: the first time I saw the Firefly, the pilot episode had me ready for a nap. Same with Battlestar Galactica (pilot meaning the mini-series, not 33, which was a fantastic episode.) I was able to appreciate both of these outings later, but at the time it was only the positive buzz that had me push play on the next episode. Defiance was the same way. The start was a little slow, it was hard to get into, and to be honest some of the alien races looked more than a little goofy.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve always been more of a fantasy guy than a sci-fi guy, at least when it comes to novels. But I still appreciate the cinematic take on sci-fi, and I’ve learned not to trust pilot episodes by now.

Anyway, the first season is over now and my opinion has changed pretty drastically since the first episode.

Sure, some of the races still look goofy. I still laugh every time the giant monkey-like things are on screen, to say nothing of the weird machine men. Some of the characters are a little… flaky. Irisa, the lawkeeper’s adopted daughter, for one, who goes for the badass warrior vibe but fails to connect in a few key elements (such as: her lack of apparent empathy for father-figure Nolan for most of the season. The moments where she appears to care for him are few and far between and her aggression towards him can make it hard to sympathize with her.)

But those are really minor quibbles when you consider the scope of the show and the types of stories they’re trying to tell. Because Defiance is doing it “right” — in so far as genres have a right way to do things. From my own particular viewpoint, anyway. I’ve always seen speculative fiction as such: a lens that allows creators to tell intricate stories that, by using an alternate setting (Magic! Spaceships!) allow us the distance to get a closer look at ourselves and our own situations.

Sci-Fi and fantasy give us the distance to step back and look at our own situation from a comfortable distance. It’s like being able to have hindsight without all that pesky waiting. And Defiance takes advantage of it by telling timely stories about political struggles, racism, sexism, and war. I thought the show bit off more than it could chew in the pilot episode, setting up this sprawling, weird town with so many alien creatures, but the thing I thought was going to be its fault ended up being its strength, and I’m super happy about that.

It’s not perfect, but it’s compelling and the risks it’s taking to tell it’s story are paying off.

On Road Trips and Camp NaNoWriMo

Home, home at last!

Well, really, we got back from our road trip a few days ago, but it takes a little while to recoup from an adventure. What kind of adventure, you ask? One with DRAGONS!

Because it’s not a real adventure unless there’s at least one dragon. This was taken at the arboretum in Raleigh, NC–a place we decided to visit on a whim because we were in town, had no idea where to go, and the arboretum popped up on the GPS as something to do. And it was great. Thank you, technology!

A flower from the arboretum!

Our next stop after visiting the dragon trapped in the arboretum (alas, we couldn’t free him. We weren’t actually sure you could walk on the grass there. Technicalities!) was the library at NCSU. We’d been told by the friend we were visiting that it was really cool and something we should check out while we were in town. I’m all for libraries, but I had been in plenty and wondered what made this particular one stand out as something to visit.

One word: BookBot.

One of the first things you notice in this huge library is that there seems to be a startling lack of books. There are some here and there, but mainly there’s a ton of seating, meeting rooms, and amazing views. I kept seeing signs for this supposed BookBot, but it wasn’t until we were on our way back down (the library is 5 stories) that we caught a tour group coming through.

The view from the top floor of the Hunt Library at NCSU.

BookBot!

Think of the BookBot as a huge vending machine filled with books. A RedBox of books. It stores and organizes up to two million books (!!), so rather than browsing endless rows of shelves, you can search for the book you’re looking for and have it brought to you.

I admit, a library without shelves is… weird, and not being able to browse said shelves is even weirder, but you have to admit, having that many books available at the press of a button is extremely cool. And definitely worth a trip out to see.

Other highlights of the trip: Savannah, Georgia! We took a carriage ride at night and it was fantastic. I had no idea how haunted Savannah was. It seemed like you could hardly turn a corner without hearing from the guide about how this or that building was haunted.

We passed many a building where the guide would point to a window and mention that ghostly figures were often seen there at night. Even one window of an old Inn with a mannequin in the window, which we were told had to be kept there or the spirits in the room would get antsy. I guess even ghosts want a little company.

It was a fun trip, but now we’re home. Just in time for Camp NaNoWriMo, which started yesterday! I just finished editing a book before we left on the road trip, so it seems like the perfect time to start something new.

And new is what I’m thinking–and different. I’m going to use this NaNoWriMo to try to write something a little different from my usual thing. Maybe dip into horror a bit. Why not! So, I’ll be busily working on that all month of July.

I’ve got a few book review posts formulating in my brain now about books I read over the road trip, so I’ll be getting those up here soon!

Santa by way of GRRMartin

I’m away on a road trip this week! But before I left, the writers group I’m part of decided to have fun by writing short stories for illustrations in an artist’s subforum.

I picked an illustration of Santa Claus in plate armor with a huge sword. The text read “House Claus, Ours is the List.”

Thus, a gritty Santa was born! The story is just under 1,000 words. Enjoy!

Ours is the List



The north was at war.

The north was always at war. Children were born into it, men and women died in it, and the gods took great amusement in it all. Nikolas squatted in the ruins of another little town off the road, another casualty of war, burned to nothing but stone and ruin. What little sunlight remained glinted off a few silver coins strewn about in the ash, forgotten.

“Bring me the book,” he called back to the men on the road, puffing white breaths as they hauled their packs off their saddles and stomped the mud off their boots. “And get back on your horses. We take our dinner in the saddle tonight.”

“My lord,” Rolf said and groaned as he settled down onto his haunches by Nikolas, dropping the old leather book into a snow drift. He cuffed at his nose, red and running in the cold. “The men need a night at least to rest. The horses, too, or else they won’t even be good for eating, let alone riding. Surely you can give us at least one night.”

“How long ago did you swear your oath to me, Rolf?” Nikolas bit the finger of his glove and pulled the garment off, fishing with his other hand for the crock of ink and the quill stashed in his cloak.

“A year ago now, lord, but—”

“And how long did you pledge to be my tracker?” He didn’t look up as he opened the crock and dipped his pen in it. The old book creaked when he opened it, the pages so thin with wear, filled with names. So many names. More bad than good, of late. “Well?”

“Oaths are made for life, I know that. I just—”

“So you do.” Nikolas smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling when he did. He clasped Rolf on the shoulder with such a force that the narrow man nearly fell, frowning. “Then you go back there and you tell the men to saddle up again. I have a sense these men haven’t gotten far, and I’ll need your eyes if we’re to find them in the dark.”

“Aye, lord,” Rolf said and grumbled a good bit more, but he stood and shook out his cloak, the gold thread of the antler sigil on the back bright even in the dark. “Though it seems these days we do more killing than giving. There was a time we traveled through good, wholesome land and littered the ground with coin instead of blood. Good, hard coin that would fill a lad’s stomach with bread for a year. Now we’re little more than mercenaries.”

“There will be a time again, I’m sure. Through all of this darkness, somewhere.” Nikolas looked away, squinting as he came upon the newest page in the book. The names all blurred together, now; he was getting old. So old. But there was still so much to do. He set the tip of his quill in the crock and wrote a name: Ioan of house Frost. While the ink dried, he thought on Rolf’s words: little more than mercenaries. Squinting through the fading light, he looked at his nine men, the only men left who hadn’t died or left to pledge to some other lord who wouldn’t ride them so hard.

Nine good, strong men, and he owed them more than they got. Better food than the sheep’s milk and hard little sweet breads they ate to keep their strength up; better songs than the sound of steel breaking bones. More to live for than the next king they’d kill to try to establish some kind of peace in a country beyond broken.

And then he sighed, dusted the snow off his cloak, and stood.

“We ride,” he said, and crammed the book back down into his saddle pack. It was a long road north, he knew, and it was paved with blood and bones. They went on in silence for a time, snow shaking down from the clouds as they chewed on old stale bread.

“Ioan is this way, Nikolas,” Rolf appeared at his shoulder in the dark, dropping back from where he’d been up ahead tracking. “Where the road forks. To the east lies Dondeion and to the right Ioan and his band of brutes.”

“Lord,” Donnar called as he trotted his horse up the road. “Will it ever end?”

It was an old question; a good question. One he wondered often.

Nikolas pulled open his satchel and looked down at his book, its spine crinkled. He put his hand over the hilt of his sword, Frost-Breath, and took a deep breath. “Perhaps, my friends,” he said, and turned to look east to Dondeion, where hearth fires were lighting little windows and the smell of warm, fresh bread drifted on the air. “We should spend at least one night reveling in the light.”

“Truly, lord?” cried Vixen, who stood up in his saddle at the news.

“Ioan, miserable bastard that he is, will keep another day at least.” Nikolas dropped his hand away from his sword; that, too, would keep another day. He fingered the coins in the pouch on his belt. “Let’s see if we can find a bit of ale, and make merry for the night. Take out the harps, bring out your gold. Let the people here look upon us and feel joy and safety for this night at least.”

“Aye!” they cried, and on they raced down the hill with Rolf at their head. Nikolas hung back and watched, and laughed, and if he cried from the hardness of his life, his task, no one was there to see it.

That night, at least, they would be at peace.

They would add a few more names to the list, but these would be good names. Names to cherish.

Book Talk: If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Sum it up: Told primarily through flashbacks, If I Stay takes place in the wake of a car accident that kills Mia’s entirely family and leaves her in a coma. She could still wake up, but the question is, does she want to?

Thoughts: Okay. I know what you’re thinking. I thought it too. If I Stay could so easily be a book that rests on the depressing nature of its premise. You instantly picture a lot of “Oh, what’s the point of even going on?” set to a soundtrack of Dashboard Confessional.

Do people still know who Dashboard Confessional is anymore, even?

Anyway. The book could have easily become mired in a kind of sad sentimentality, creating a shallow experience, but If I Stay manages to avoid this pitfall at every turn. Gayle Forman uses flashbacks to masterfully pull the heartstrings by focusing on the good things in life rather than the bad, providing a contrast that has you smiling only to one minute later be crushed by the reality of the situation.

And if you’re like me you’re also wondering how you write an entire book based on this one question with a character unable to interact with anyone around her. Forman does it. I’ll say something else, too: she does it in the perfect amount of words. I was skeptical about being able to carry this point for its 250+ pages and figured it’d end up getting tiring more than anything else.

But I cracked open the book to read a few pages and ended up reading the entire thing in one sitting. So, there you have it.

I know at this point I’m gushing, so let me wrap up by saying: read this book. Does it fumble once in a while? Sure. There are one or two scenes I can think of that felt a little forced, but at its core the book is solid. It’s more than solid, and whatever missteps it took were brief and quickly corrected.

If you liked this book: Despite an entirely different subject matter, the book that most reminds me of If I Stay would have to be Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins, because they both have strong characters and a lot of heart.