Louis Arata's Blog, page 24

Dead Hungry

Flesh:  It's What's For Dinner.

Ghouls are overrunning Chicago.  We're not talking supernatural beasties but rather humans with an inexplicable appetite for the dead -- be it road-kill, bodies from the morgue, or the freshly buried.

For graduate student Tucker Smith, life is now scarier than the horror novels he studies.  His girlfriend is feeling peckish for raw meat.  His roommate dabbles in the Ghoul Culture.  And his grunge rocker brother becomes involved in the black market supply of bodies.

In Dead Hungry, low-budget horror movies, reality TV shows, national food competitions, and cultural sensitivity collide with family secrets.

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First to Final Draft

Check out Writers on Writing:  Writers on Writing

In graduate school, I took a class on writing pedagogy.  For our first assignment, our professor had each of us describe our writing process.  She peppered us with prompts:  Do you write longhand or on a computer?  Do you need a quiet room or is your iPod blaring?  Do you need a glass of Pepsi, not Coke, at your side?

At our next class, we shared what we'd discovered about ourselves.  One student admitted he was messy -- papers all over the floor, lots of sentence fragments, bullet points, red ink, and crossed-out ideas.  While it worked for him, he doubted it was a viable method to teach to anyone.

Another student placed a three-ring binder on her desk.  She had written an entire manual.  "If you follow this," she said, "you will write exactly like me."

At the time, my writing process was like firing a blunderbuss.  I spewed out a rough draft very quickly.  Afterwards, I took stock of what pieces had hit closest to the target.  Those stayed, and the rest got tossed.

In the post above, Michelle Elvy compares her style to her two daughters' processes.  One daughter writes swiftly, while the other "agonizes over words, phrases and rhythms."  Elvy says she uses both methods in her own writing.

After many years of writing, I now accept that my process continues to evolve.  What works for one story may not work for the next.  And that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Rather, it allows me to stop agonizing over the uncertainty of storytelling.  If what I'm doing isn't working, that's okay; I'll back off and reconnoiter.

For years, I assumed there was a pedagogical three-ring binder out there to teach me exactly how to write.  Now I find it reassuring that other writers have nebulous processes, like I do.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view... My cat is s...

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376605

My cat is smoking cigarettes.  I found the butts next to the litter box, alongside Condé Nast and Cat Fancy.How do you deal with this?  You never expect your cat will get addicted.  He sleeps eighty percent of the day, so when does he have time to take on a vice?Maybe I should have recognized his addictive personality earlier.  When he was a kitten, he loved catnip.  I was running late for work and tossed him a sachet of catnip, figuring he’d bat it around for a while as I got out the door.  Instead, he caught it with his teeth, and RIIIIP!  An herbal explosion.  He looked stunned, a kid in a candy store.Generally, catnip is harmless.  Cats will play with it until the sensation wears off.  When I returned that night, it was like walking into a mausoleum.  The pile of catnip trailed into the bathroom.  Behind the cold porcelain toilet lay my cat, stoned out of his gourd.  He lazily lifted his head and blinked at me.  I swept up the remnants.  An hour later, he staggered out to his food bowl. A voracious attack of the munchies.So, now, cigarettes.  I confronted him as he lay sprawled on the window seat.  He is a long orange tabby with a crooked whisker.  “I know about the cigarettes.”He stared stonily at me.  Then he cleaned his butt.There’s no talking to him sometimes.At the dog park, I ran into my neighbor, Roy.  His pug and my golden retriever are great buddies.  I told him about the cigarettes.  He wasn’t surprised.“What else do you expect him to do all day?  He gets lonesome.”The divorce has been hard on him.“He won’t talk about it,” I said.  “He just looks away.”Roy nodded.  “Let him have his fun.  Listen, what’s the life expectancy of a cat, anyway?  Ten, twelve years?  Fifteen tops.  So proportionally, it’ll only shave off a year or two.”“I’m surprised you’d say that, given what you’ve been through.”“Yeah,” he sighed.  We both looked at his pug, who had the spastic distraction of a cocaine addict.  “I still remember finding those glass vials.  Pugs, they snort, you know.”What I couldn’t figure out was how he was getting the cigarettes.  He’s an indoor cat.  So, who’s his supplier?Then I spied my golden retriever digging in the grass.  When I stood over him, he looked at me guiltily – a kid pretending he hasn’t stolen a cookie.  Lowering his head in shame, he vomited a wad of garbage – twigs, acorns, candy wrappers and – cleverly mixed inside – cigarette butts.  Kools, Marlboros, Virginia Slims.Great.  A co-dependent dog.I left a note for my dog-walker to make sure that the dog didn’t bring garbage into the house.  Clearly she didn’t follow my request, because soon I was finding cigarette butts by the litter box again.What bothered me more was the shot glass next to them.  I could smell the whiskey.I called my ex-wife, Marva.  “The cat’s been drinking.”“Again?  I thought he was on the wagon.  Four years sober.  That’s like twenty-eight for a human.”“That’s in dog-years.”“I read there’s a high rate of recidivism in cats.”“What are we going to do about it?”“We?  He’s your cat, remember.  He’s what you wanted out of the custody battle.  Try explaining that to your daughters sometimes.  Do you know why he’s smoking?  Is anything upsetting him?”“He’s a cat.”“Animals can sense when humans aren’t happy.  Maybe he’s picking up something from you.”I hung up.  If Marva wouldn’t stay on the subject, I didn’t want to talk to her.At the dog park, I ran into the regulars:  Roy and Josie, Celia and Ben.  I told them about the cigarettes and whiskey.Josie said, “I had a turtle that was agoraphobic.  Hid in his shell all the time.”“I had a hamster.  Obsessive-compulsive.  Running on that little wheel,” said Celia.Ben said, “I had a Doberman that chewed off his fur.  We had to give him Ritalin.”Though they could commiserate, no one had a solution.I contacted the vet.  He prescribed a nicotine patch.  That didn’t work.  Now my cat’s got a bald patch.I called my dad.  He said, “I had a snake with an eating disorder.  All my brother’s mice.  Then a guinea pig.”“What happened to him?”“Choked to death.  Bunny slippers.”I staged an intervention.  After dragging my cat from under the bed, I placed him on the hassock in the middle of the living room.He growled, his ears back, his crooked whisker flush with the side of his head.  This was going to take Tough Love.“It’s time to face the truth.  You can’t hide it anymore.”  I dumped the garbage pail right in front of him:  cigarettes, whiskey bottles, catnip.He sounded like a freight train squealing to a halt.  I never saw the claws.  First blood.He disappeared into the basement.  The sign of a true addict.Ben recommended a group.  Al-A-Pet.  I checked out their website.  Before-and-after photos of a crack-addicted tabby.  They blanked out his eyes to preserve his anonymity.They met in the basement of the local animal shelter.  Most had brought their dogs or cats, in various stages of recovery.  A chameleon, deep in denial, tried to blend into the background.The leader of the group, Alice, presented her Persian, a big fluffy monster.  “I was powerless before her addiction.  I kept her in diamonds.  A little choker, a tiara.  It got so bad, all she wanted was to watch the Home Shopping Network.  But she’s been clean for two years.”We applauded.  What bravery.A man told a story about his St Bernard who had died in a snowstorm.  “A savior complex.  He thought he could rescue everyone.  But he couldn’t even save himself.”  Overcome, he sat down.A woman had a horse that had been confined too long in its stable and would compulsively masturbate.I have to look up that one.By the end of the evening and all the stories, I felt a strange release.  I wasn’t alone in this.  Addictions are universal, and we all suffer our private grief.Still, I was going to break my cat’s habit if it killed me.Unfortunately, it killed him first.  The next morning I heard him hacking.  Then I heard the thump.  By the time I got to him, he was gone.  In his fall, he knocked over his whiskey, which the dog promptly lapped up.I was sad to see him go, but maybe it’s better this way.  There’s a small pet cemetery in town.  It was a quiet ceremony; no one else came.  I wanted time alone with him.  Maybe if I had tried harder.  Maybe if I had cared a little more.As if on cue, a little boy and girl approached me.  The girl took my hand.  “Don’t cry.”I wasn’t crying.The little boy asked, “What’s his name?”“Morph.”“Like the computer animation?”“No,” I said, “as in anthropomorphic.”They didn’t understand and eventually wandered away.

What do you do when your cat starts smoking cigarettes? ...

What do you do when your cat starts smoking cigarettes? You stage an intervention. A free short story available at Smashwords.com

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376605

Carl Hiaasen and John Green

I finished reading a New York Times bestseller: great premise, terrible writing. The kind of writing that makes me angry because, with revision, it would be serviceable. I can forgive a paint-by-numbers plot if the author spends time on the craft of writing. The next two books I picked up were by Carl Hiaasen and John Green. They were a cool glass of water when I was parched. Both writers have a buoyant style. They know how to keep their characters aloft with refreshing immediacy. Hiaasen’s Basket Case starts with an obituary of a former rock star which leads to a murder investigation. No back-story. No setting the stage. Boom: you’re up-and-running. As the story unfolds, you discover why obituary writer Jack Tagger is investigating the death, how he became an obituary writer, and why he’s obsessed with the death dates of famous people. Green’s The Fault in Our Stars takes a heavy topic: teens with cancer. He balances humor and pathos in a way that makes the characters vibrantly alive (which underscores how imminent their deaths may be). You can feel Hazel Grace struggling to breathe — not an easy thing when you have Stage 4 Thyroid cancer which has metastasized to your lungs. Both novels have gotten me thinking about how I tell stories. Given that my characters often have heavy, internal struggles, I’m learning that I don’t need to weigh down my readers with angst-ridden ruminations. There are ways to succinctly show what your characters are going through. I feel like Hiaasen and Green are the literary equivalent of a leaf-blower: they cleared the detritus out of my brain. Now to turn it onto my writing.

Dead Hungry giveaway

Dead Hungry giveaway:

Enter to win one of 15 free copies available. Giveaway dates from Oct 26-Nov 26, 2013. Flesh: It’s What’s For Dinner. Ghouls are overrunning Chicago. W…

Time is running out.  Only 4 days left to enter for the chance to win one of fifteen copies of “Dead Hungry,” by Louis Arata.

Flesh:  It’s What’s For Dinner.  

Ghouls are overrunning Chicago.  We’re not talking supernatural beasties but humans with an inexplicable appetite for the dead.

A Sense of Community

I hang out with theatre people and musicians.  They’re a sociable lot.  They like to sit aorund telling stories, improvising scenes, and air-drumming entire scores.

Of course, there are solitary times when they rehearse.  As an actor, I’ve spent hours on my own learning lines but always with the awareness that at some point I’ll get together with the director and other actors to devise the scene.

Writing is much more solitary, at least in the initial stages.  Not until you have a viable draft do you share it with anyone else.  At that point, readers and other writers become your community.  There’s the sociable discussion and critique.  But overall, a fair amount of your writing time is spent working on your own.

I’m not saying this is necessarily bad but rather that I sometimes long for the presence of others while I”m working on that first draft.  It’s no wonder I go to coffee shops to work.  Even if I’m working on my own, I’m surrounded by people engaged in their own conversations, full of the dynamic qualities of day-to-day life.

Right now I’m at home writing this blog.  I’m alone.  Even the dog is not here; she’s outside arguing with a squirrel.  The house makes its noises — the furnace kicks on, the joints creak.  Outside, an airplane passes overhead.  

I miss the sense of community.  Not surprisingly, I’m finding it hard to write.

House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski (Part One)

I’m absolutely fascinated by this novel, and I’m about two-thirds of the way through.  It’s so good, I want to start writing a review about it now (hence, this posting).  But I’m going to wait …

Morph

What do you do when you cat starts smoking cigarettes?  You stage an intervention.

Free short story at Smashwords.com

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376605

The Saddest 5 Pages

I was writing about the death of Kenny’s best friend, Bryan.  They’d been buddies from childhood through their twenties.  I knew the scene was coming, but I didn’t expect to be in tears while I wrote it.  Not simply watering eyes but tears running down my face, and a great knot of grief in my throat.

For me, writing is an act of empathy.  I try to conjure the emotions as I write about them.  I immerse myself in the world of the story, and when I surface again, I’m always surprised to find day-to-day life is going on around me. 

I’m certainly not a method-actor, and I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a method-writer.  All I can say is that writing requires absolute honesty.  When I’m working on a first draft, I don’t always have the answers at the ready, but I do trust the process.

This time, however, with Bryan’s death, I had to coach myself through the scene that everything was going to be okay.

I wrote that scene seven years ago.  Since then, the novel has been sitting on my hard drive.  I’ve made a few attempts to find an agent for it, but eventually I set it aside to work on other projects.  A few months ago, I pulled it out again, and I’ve been cleaning it up.

Yesterday, I got to that scene.  And again the tears.

I’m not suggesting the scene is the epitome of pathos.  The kind of scene that ends with an abandoned kitten.  All I”m saying is that it touches me in a very personal way.  An unexplainable way.

It’s a scene that I could plan for, but I couldn’t craft it until I wrote it, and what came out somehow transcends the writing experience for me.