Sam T Willis's Blog, page 5

The Limited-Time Offer of the Night (Dragon(s))

(s)

The Night Dragon crashed
Her second stolen motorcycle
Into the revolving door
At the front of the MacGuffin Brands Giant Cell Phone Emporium.
The motorcycle exploded,
Blowing the door (which was unlocked) to pieces
Thereby allowing The Night Dragon to enter
Once she pulled herself up off the pavement
And verified that she only had a few broken bones.
Immediately upon entering the MacGuffin Brands Giant Cell Phone Emporium,
Which had recently renamed itself to The Night Dragon Brands Giant The Night Dragon Cell Phone The Night Dragon (the new signs weren’t finished yet),
The Night Dragon was accosted by twelve different sales representatives
Each of whom said some variation of the following words:
“Welcome to The Night Dragon Brands Giant The Night Dragon Cell Phone The Night Dragon,
Formerly known and MacGuffin Brands Giant Cell Phone Emporium.
We all work as a team here and pride ourselves on our
low pressure sales environment.
With that said,
Can we interest you in a The Night Dragon 5: The Night Dragon phablet?
If you buy in the next four seconds it’s only $1.25.
Though, sadly, while I was talking, that promo expired
And now the price is $140,002,700.
Luckily for you we have a flash sale starting in twelve second
Which lowers the price back down to $999.99
With purchase of any thirty accessories,
And nine supplemental accessories,
And service plan,
And maintenance plan,
And service maintenance plan,
And under coating,
And undertaking,
And fish maintenance plan,
And The Night Dragon plan,
Along with a low-low one-time fee
(due every month during your regular billing cycle)
Of $600,000.”
The Night Dragon punched one of these sales people in the face at random
Just to make the insanity stop.
They seemed to get the message.
Then she said:
“I need your biggest cell phone in order to save the world from The Dragon of The Night.”
The sales team gasped in unison.
“Surely you can’t afford our biggest cell phone,”
Said they, all at the same time,
Which was creepy.
“But I can,”
Said she,
“Which I will prove to you just as soon as you get me the phone.”
They conferred amongst themselves for about seven years
Before finally deciding that they liked the cut of her gib, and would
Agree to get her the cell phone before she paid for the cell phone
For the low, low, one-time, low, once-in-a-lifetime, low again, price of $3,412.211211212112121211111.
While they were conferring like that,
However,
The Night Dragon chose to take matters into her own hands.
She went in the back of the store and stole a cell phone
That was roughly the size of an aircraft carrier.
Using a hydraulic lift that she had handy for some reason,
She threw the thing onto a truck that was parked inside the store
And big enough to carry the giant phone,
And drove the whole thing out of the place,
Running over several motorcycles in the process.

President Shinra

Fake President Donald Trump seems like he was built in a lab somewhere expressly for the purpose of drawing comparisons with every villain that’s come before him, both real and fake.  The Hitler comparison comes up more often than any other–besides, maybe, Nixon–while Benito Mussolini is probably a better parallel for the guy’s politics.  Then there’s the idea that his campaign was pure Audrey II, his relationship with the press at this point seems to actually be based on Orwell, and he goes after his enemies like Negan with a baseball bat.  We’ve got The Joker reading his tweets, he’s stealing foreign policy positions from Westeros, and there are theories that he’s literally the Death Star floating around the Internet.  The guy is literally leaning on Andrew Jackson to justify his actions.  I’m starting to wonder if his whole plan is to undercut any attempts to satirize him by physically transforming himself into C. Montgomery Burns.

But I was thinking about video games from the nineties the other day, because sometimes that’s the only thing I can do to stop myself from retweeting literally everything negative I see about Cheeto Voldemort, when I thought of one I hadn’t seen yet.  And then I dug into it a bit.  Turns out they match up pretty well….

 

The Night (Dragon(s)) of Excellent Customer Service

(s)

Soon, the receptionist was on the phone

With a technician

Who was already working on fixing the cell tower.

The receptionist told that technician to hurry up,

Because not fixing the tower fast enough would probably result

In the destruction of all human life.

The technician said no.

The receptionist said “Yes!”

The technician said “Stop bothering me.”

The receptionist said “No!”

The technician said “Bye.”

The receptionist said “Don’t you dare hang up on me!”

The technician had already hung up the phone.

The receptionist called the technician back.

The technician didn’t answer.

The receptionist called the technician back from a different line.

The technician said “What?”

The receptionist said “Stop talking on the phone and fix the cell tower faster!”

The technician said “Think about what you just said.”

The receptionist thought about what she had just said.

The two of them sat on the line in silence for a good long time

While the receptionist thought.

The Night Dragon, meanwhile, said “Can we hurry things along here?

“There’s kind of a Dragon of the Night situation going on.”

The receptionist said “Shh!”

The technician said “I didn’t say anything.”

The receptionist said “Shh to you too!”

The technician hung up on her.

The receptionist called the technician back from the first phone line

And got no answer.

Then she called the technician from the second phone line

And got no answer.

Then she found the super secret third phone line,

Which was actually her cell phone,

And she called the technician from that phone.

The technician said “For the love of The Night Dragon,

“Why do you keep bothering me?”

The receptionist said: “My cell phone works.”

The technician said: “Congratulations.”

The receptionist said: “Your cell phone works.”

The technician said: “Sure does.”

The receptionist hung up on the technician.

The technician called back on all three of the receptionists lines at the same time

Just to be a jerk.

But the receptionist didn’t answer.

She was more interested in customer service,

And thus she was busy servicing the customer.

Thusly:

“It appears that the cell tower is already fixed.

“Service has been restored.

“Is there anything else we can help you with today?”

The Night Dragon looked at the receptionist,

And she almost said something.

But there was no time.

And there were so many phone ringing in that room

That it made it hard to concentrate.

So she ran back outside

And stole a new motorcycle.

About that book…

A ways back I posted a cover for Headless on this very blog.  I posted a post about making the thing, and a post about how I decided I hated it after the fact.  A lot has changed since then.  I’ve gone through the book at least half a dozen times since then, and it’s changed in some pretty fundamental ways.  Those changes are so dramatic, in fact, that the book title had to change with them.  So here’s the new title:

There’s a new cover to go with it, but that’s a secret for the time being.  Expect to see it when I announce the release date for the book, which is forthcoming.  I’m totally getting there.  Way faster than George R. R. Martin.  Not that that’s a very high bar.

The other thing you might notice is that this particular title isn’t written in brain letters.  Turns out I hate those.  I was pretty sure I didn’t hate them before, but that was probably a bout of temporary insanity.  The new font is called Silk Remington by Jadugar Design Studio.  Only I stretched it out a bit vertically because I have to tweak all the things that I encounter.

The latest pass on The Volunteer (subtle transition to the new title!) is complete as of Tuesday.  I’m going to comb through it one last time, just in case, but I’m pretty sure we’re looking at a finished manuscript here.  Exciting times!  If I had to guess, I’d put the release date in May.  Which is less than a year later than I intended, and that counts as a victory.

Laters.

The Night Dragon(s) Congeal

(s)

In the river of lava

A bunch of people had recently melted.

People named The Night Dragon.

Also a raccoon of the same name.

But this lava wasn’t normal lava,

Because this lava was still underground

Even though the ground above it had been removed.

It was, therefore, an unholy combination

A sort of “lava-magma,” which inexplicably

Gave it magical properties.

Those magical properties included the ability to not kill people

(And raccoons)

That fell into it and melted.

They still melted,

Because the magic didn’t make the lava-magma not super hot

Because then it would just be rocks and no one would even care.

So all those The Night Dragons

Who were in the lava-magma and melted and not dead

Started to congeal together

Along with some rocks and bicycles and a bunch of plantains and stuff

Into one magically-infused super organism

The likes of which had never been seen.

Thing was, since they were all still alive

They all had their own minds

(Except for the plantains,

Which function as a sort of hive-mind,

As everyone knows)

And since it was super hot in the river of lava-magma

All of those minds were very busy being in pain

So none of them knew that they had congealed together

Into one magically-infused super organism

The likes of which had never been seen.

If they’d know they probably could have climbed out of the river

And maybe punched the Dragon of the Night in the face

Or something.

But they didn’t and thus they couldn’t.

So this part of the story was kind of a demonstration of tragic irony.

And also a tragic wasting-of-time

Since it isn’t going to affect the rest of the story.

OR IS IT?

The first post of 2017

Is a disappointing placeholder because this week has run me ragged!  Yay!

I was going to write a thing about fantasy football, but I got so bored while I was writing it that I couldn’t remember what I even wanted to say, so the whole thing got dumped into the big pile of deleted words that are secretly hidden beneath the floor of my blog, where they bide their time and wait for the opportunity to congeal into some sort of gigantic Frankenpost, something that is vast, incoherent and boring, but mostly vast.  But today is not that day.  Today the floor holds, and we move on with our lives.

I was going to write a The Night Dragon post, but I don’t have the energy required for that many paragraphs, no matter how short they are.  I’ll do one next week.  The week after that I’ll probably actually have something to say about the book that isn’t “It’s coming someday!”  So there’s that to look forward to.  In the mean time, I am uncategorizing this crap.  See you next week.

The last post of 2016

So.  That was some year we just had, huh?  I launched SamTWillis.com at the beginning of 2016, because when you write books you’re supposed to have a website, and I intended to publish a book called With No Head some time that summer.  Summer came and went, the title came and went, a cover came and went, and the website is still here.  I haven’t been terribly responsible with it, I’ve put a bunch of half-formed thoughts up here and regretted them almost immediately, but in the archives they remain, never to be seen by any but the most interested of parties.

I expect 2017 to be different in some ways and the same in many others.  The website will remain.  The book, whatever it’s called, will be published.  A short story of mine is going to be published in an anthology, and I’ll be sure to link the crap out of that when it comes out.  “The Night Dragon” will come to an end (probably in January), and I’ll start writing some other silly idea instead.  There will be jokes, there will be anxiety, and there will be posts that are much later than they are supposed to be (like this one!).  People will continue to find my website with fantastic search terms like “peed in his pants.”  I will continue to be amused by the links that get people here.  I will probably make a point of mentioning the free copy of Break that comes with signing up for my newsletter a few more times.

The world, which doesn’t even get a mention until the third paragraph because this is my website and I get to be all self-important all over everything, will continue to be a place wherein numerous bad things happen all the time.  There will be lots of good things, too, and it will probably be more important than it usually is to fight for the good things.  We will learn from 2016, collectively, and we will find better ways to share and consume information.  Better ways to determine what information is valuable.  This is going to be very important, because the amount of information available is never going to decrease, not unless the Internet explodes or zombies eat our power plants (possible story idea?) or something like that.

Donald Trump is going to be the important job guy, and I’m going to continue to dislike that.  I’ll probably complain about it more because it’s probably going to be terrible.  I have no illusions about my complaints actually changing the way things will be going forward, but complaining is cathartic and helps me gather my thoughts.  I believe a clear understanding of our problems and obstacles is key when trying to identify and fight for the things we value.

Thanks for reading in 2016.  Thanks for Googling “lunch place new orleans turkey and the wolf” and clicking on the weird short story you found instead of the restaurant you were looking for. Thanks for signing up (told you I was going to mention it again) and thanks for commenting.  Thanks for tolerating me, which as far as I know is not mandatory.  See you in 2017.

-Sam

Reception(ist) of the Night Dragon(s)

Things were going poorly.

The lava river had consumed the vast majority of The Night Dragons.

As a matter of fact, let’s just assume that all of them

Except for one (The Night Dragon)

Were thrown or dropped into the lava river

While you weren’t paying attention.

So now The Night Dragon was alone,

Face to face with the Dragon of the Night

Metaphorically, of course,

Because the Dragon of the Night’s face

Was like six hundred feet off the ground.

She knew that she was ultimately responsible for unleashing this unstoppable terror upon the world

Since she’d taken out cell service,

And she made no move to retreat

For she had accepted death.

And then she realized something!

And she made a move to retreat!

She made lots of moves to retreat,

Including hopping on a conveniently placed motorcycle

And driving on that motorcycle away from the Dragon of the Night

Who was temporarily distracted by the discovery of a series of satellites in geosynchronous orbit,

Which it was eating.

The Night Dragon drove all the way to The Night Dragon Power, Telephone, and Other Stuff Company offices

And she kicked down the front door

By crashing her motorcycle through it.

The receptionist walked over and helped her up,

Because the receptionist considered herself a nice person

And wouldn’t allow the shock of the motorcycle crash to stop her from helping a person.

Then The Night Dragon, who had a mild concussion,

Jumped to her feet

Despite the fact that she had already been helped to her feet

Which made her fall to the floor

After which she jumped (slowly) to her feet.

Then she told the receptionist to have someone fix the cell tower.

The receptionist blinked at her.

 

MEANWHILE

In the river of lava

SOMETHING

Was happening.

Nano Retrospective

Last one for the year, I promise.

I started doing National Novel Writing Month in 2005, during my Senior year in college.  I’d learned it existed the year before and thought I’d give it a shot for the following reasons:

I liked writing stories
I liked novels
I had delusions of grandeur
I was operating under the assumption that I would be writing great, novel-length, works of literature in the distant, nebulous future.

I was not prepared to write a great, novel-length work of literature at that point in my life, because I had classes to take a Busch Light to drink.  My plan consisted entirely of the main character’s name, a vague concept of a parody of The Matrix, and a weird joke about ice cream cones that I thought was really funny, even if I’d never been able to get anyone to agree with me on that point.  I’d written a (terrible) story that was around 50,000 words before, but that had taken about three years of on-again, off-again effort.  I didn’t think I had much of a chance.  Writing a story of that length–actually finding a way to get from the beginning, all the way to the end–seemed like an impossible task to wrap my head around.

I wasn’t worried about the story I was writing.  I, who worry about literally everything (earlier today I was unable to make my contribution to the office Holiday Party fund for hours because I was too worried about not having correct change) wasn’t afraid of writing something dumb, because I knew it was going to be dumb.  I wasn’t afraid of it being stylistically sloppy, because the voice I settled into was defined by its sloppiness.  I wasn’t concerned about literary merit because I knew coming in that I was going to fail, I wasn’t going to wind up with a real book and no one was ever going to read what I wrote.  Maybe I was a little worried.  My first paragraph was a disclaimer dedicated to the idea that the reader probably wasn’t going to like what they read, and that they should give up while they still had the chance.

Thirty days later I had just over 50,000 words of pure, unadulterated garbage.  I still love that manuscript for sentimental reasons, but it reads like I was smashing my face on the keyboard over and over.  I’m keeping the story and the characters, because they’re awesome, and I’m rewriting the thing to make it something worth reading, but there’s something special about the original that edits will never be able to match.  I wrote it, a semi-coherent story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, that was approximately novel-length.  Writing actual novels was no longer a vague plan that I had in some distant, nebulous future that I wasn’t even really sure existed.  I’d written a novel, and I was going to do it again, because I knew I could do it.  And I could do it fast.

These days when November rolls around I come in with a detailed outline, chapter-by-chapter plans on where I want the story to go, and I generally follow my plan.  I’m still working on the same story, even if it’s not the same story any more.  50,000 words is no longer the goal, but a step towards completion.  Writing a novel is no longer this huge, almost unimaginable task.  I know the whole story fits in my head.  I’m 105,000 words into last month’s project, and I’ll be writing it through the end of next week (at least).  The fear of failure and the seat-of-my-pants madness that I brought to Nanowrimo my first couple times through are long gone, but I have a blast just the same.

If you’re on the fence about trying it, if you’re thinking about writing a novel but you feel like the job is just too big, my advice would be to try it.  Come in with low expectations, with a story you don’t necessarily love (this is key–if that story you want to write has to be perfect or it’ll break your heart try something else first.  It’ll take so much of the pressure off.) and just write.  Use filler where you have to.  If a scene just won’t come out right write “This scene just won’t work.  We’re assuming it’s over now and everything went just the way I planned.  Onward!” or something.  There are no rules and you can take all the shortcuts you want.  It can be more terrible than you ever imagined.  You can write yourself into a corner, only to have an army of zombies eat the walls.  The important thing it teaching your brain how to make the words flow.  Once you find that there won’t be any stopping you.

(The) Night(Dragon(s)) fall

The Dragon of the Night roared

Louder than all of the other times it roared

Because this time is was extra angry.

“Extra” probably wasn’t a strong enough word for how angry it was.

It was more like “super crazy angry.”

And the roar was so loud that The Night Dragon, The Night Dragon, The Night Dragon, The Night Dragon–basically all of The Night Dragons–were temporarily deafened.

The Night Dragon wasn’t, though, because it was a car.

Nor was The Night Dragon, because it was a river.

It was boiling, but it could never hear anything to begin with

So I wouldn’t say it was deaf.

The Night Dragon wasn’t either, because he had stolen earplugs earlier

Because he was a vampire

And vampires steal.

The Dragon of the Night started stomping around and junk

Because The Night Dragons were too small and insignificant for it to even find

Now that it was crying a little because it was so mad.

The stomping was so violent that it cracked open the earth

And the river, which was boiling anyways, fell into the giant chasm, onto an underground river of molten lava, and boiled way worse than before.

That poor, poor river.

The Dragon of the Night was being so mean to it.

The Night Dragon,

Who was still trying to stab The Dragon of the Night with a broken bottle like an idiot,

Couldn’t hold on while The Dragon of the Night was stomping around so violently

And so he fell into the molten lava river

Which was molten lava on account of all the ground above it had been smashed away

By The Dragon of the Night

So didn’t give me any of that magma crap.

Meanwhile, The Night Dragon and The Night Dragon were trying to save The Night Dragon from falling into the molten lava river,

By grabbing her arms and holding onto a tree and stuff

But it was hard to work together when you couldn’t communicate

Because you were temporarily deafened by the ridiculously loud roar from a few seconds earlier.

Also, it didn’t help that a helicopter crashed nearby (they totally didn’t hear it coming).

The explosion knocked the tree they were holding onto loose from its roots, and The Night Dragon, The Night Dragon, and The Night Dragon tumbled over the side, down into the river of lava.

The previously mentioned explosion also launched The Night Dragon and The Night Dragon, who had been in the helicopter, down into the river of lava.

There were a lot of The Night Dragons in the river of lava just then.

But The Dragon of the Night wasn’t satisfied

Because, even after it threw The Night Dragon and The Night Dragon (the car) into the river,

It knew that there was still at least one more The Night Dragon

That hadn’t been destroyed.

And one was too many.