Oct 2018
“Look, Dr. Jekyll. We have to talk. Your patented formula to turn
into Mr Hyde seems to mostly involve a lot of vodka.”
“You could have done something different.”
“I saved you.”
“From what?”
“…”
“Exactly.”
“Monsters aren’t scary, not really. You want scary, you should
meet their mothers. And then explain why their child is a monster.
That will show you a real one.”
“I had a dream that one day everyone would be lollipops and ride
on zebra giraffes to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy while the sky is
devoured by cotton candy, but does anyone want to hear about that
dream? No, sir, they do not. Not even if the truth behind that dream
would shake them to their core!”
“I’m not your biological father, but I am your geological one.”
To stop feeling human, the recipe is sickness
“I am afraid of nothing,” I whispered, and no one understood how
terrible that could be.
“No one has magic anymore, not like they did in the old days. You
could change kingdoms with a song, break an emperor with a poem.
People feared poets then in a way no one does now. They could do
more, you understand? They were more because they had less to work
with. Words mean more when there is less of them. Now there are so
many words and too many mean the same thing or nothing at all. We
have so many that we lose them.
“And with every loss, some of their power went away. And now hey
have only words. And we have only words. And we drown in a buffet
that means nothing at all.”
Every vow to last forever stands in the knowledge that time turns all
mountains into hills.
Every poem remembers
The silence of the poet
“Nothing is as important as the people, my king. And nothing as
important to the wellbeing of the people as trade deals. Every
monster you slay might win you praise, but this – being a proper
king – that wins renown.”
No one has ever eaten grapefruit by choice. The bitter taste and the
grapefruit spoon exist only to
symbolically dig the sadness from your own heart.
They kept saying the grass was greener
Even if our side contained watered lawns
Their side stretched into empty desert –
Perhaps some shade of green we never knew
sometimes change isn’t change at all
you remain who you’ve always been
not needing to find anyone at all just
finally fitting into your own skin
learning how to call yourself home
Waiting in line to vote and had someone come out in tears.
Because she didn’t get a sticker. Her mom explained that she had to
wait fifteen more years to be able to vote, but she wasn’t having
it.
Watching telephone poles shed their leaves for autumn.
*eyes news*
"the shooter surrendered to the police"
aka: they were white
Nov 2018
*begins excavating a novel from inside my head*
From this morning's writing output:
Today isn’t a bad day, but I can feel a bad one creeping up on me.
From this morning's output:
“I don’t think a town that small would have a casino. I imagine
the building you saw was a megachurch, if there is really any
difference between a megachurch and a casino.”
The fun moment when you pause a novel to learn about the politics of
Ukraine because one character invaded the Ukraine to take it over
when they couldn't claim it in Risk.
“But the story of my childhood can’t be autobiographical before
I’m seventeen. That is when I bought my first car.”
From WIP:
The town of Wendover turns out to be quite large and bustling. The
usual scatters of suburbs still desperately trying to raise children
to be normal, the town itself a scattering of major streets, old
industrial plants looming against the hills and enough modern
buildings and layouts to make me wonder how much of the original town
even remains. At a guess, it’s been revitalized so often that they
will soon be levelling homes just to revitalize them again, which is
a weird impression of town.
From WIP:
I doubt even those he worked with saw the old man as a monster. A
middle man can wash their hands of so many things, and sometimes the
most evil people are the ones who tell everyone that what they do is
simply business and nothing else at all.
Me: Aha! This makes sense. Kate figuring out she was wrong and going
back fits the character and progression.
Also me: Wait. This could screw up the timeline badly....
Ah, the joys of novel writing :)
“Things always move toward getting better.”
Emmett turns to Jay. “Even in the darkness?” he demands.
“Oh, especially then!”
“What?” Emmett says, to the joy in the words as much as the reply
I think.
“Darkness isn’t absence of light; the darkness remembers the
light and knows the light will always be waiting for when the
darkness ends.”
“And if there are always been darkness?” Emmett presses.
“Then there’s always been light too of course,” Jay says
happily. “Probably hiding inside the darkness and making lots of
silly faces.”
From WIP:
“Every old person thinks the world is coming to an end, because
their own world has at least twice in their lives.”
The ghost wavers visibly. “It takes everything I am to remain here,
magician, as no one would wish me to remain.”
“And you want my help to make people see you?”
“A man should not ask for help, should not need from others like
cowards do,” the ghost snaps, almost without thinking.
“It is possible for ghosts to haunt each other as well. Or at leas
their voices; you do not have to be that person,” I offer.
“I am dead. It is far too late for the dead to change.” The ghost
lets out a small, bitter laugh.
“Then what do you want from me?”
“I need – I need my granddaughter to see me.”
“I’ll need more than that.”
“The last thing I told her was that she was just like every other
kid, following trends in wanting to be a boy.”
“Trends.”
“I died that night, in my sleep. From nothing else than age. It has
been six weeks since I died, and no one can see me. I cannot affect
them. I cannot –.”
“You cannot what?”
“Apologize,” the ghost says finally.
“And you think appearing as a spirit of yourself will do that? That
your granddaughter – or anyone – would want to see you again?”
The ghost pulls himself together, drawing thin scraps of power around
himself.
“You insulted me when you met me, and I am the only person who can
help you. Think about that, Bob.”
The scraps of power vanish like forgotten dreams, the ghost looking
old and frail even for a ghost. “…can you do this?” he asks.
“I could.”
“I – please. I do not want her – his – last memories of me to
be hate. Tell Dev – I do not know what. Say I am proud to have a
grandson too? I am sorry, but it is too late for words that mean
nothing.”
“If it meant nothing, you would not be trying this,” I say
quietly.
From WIP:
Every ghost wants something; they’re unlike the living in that
regard.
... the fun moment when you have to apologize to someone for messages
a fictional character sent them.
That moment when you check your novel plot file to figure out where
everything is, and realize after adding 30K words of various needed
scenes, you are still on page 4 of 11... heh. Though I have
technically moved down one line on the page.
Forgiveness is a weapon
We so seldom unsheathe
sometimes it feels like we would be lucky to be as blessed as
sisyphus.
From WIP:
“Most people don’t see things as simply as you do, magician.”
“Hardly simple; I just don’t have it in me to care about
unimportant matters that others deem important; your appearance is
one of those.” His smile is bookended by a chuckle.
*that moment when your brain begins surfacing from a novel draft only
to remind you that you need to write three short stories over a
weekend in which you don't have time to*
Dec 2018
“Nothing is ever cheap; the price is always what the market can
afford.”
“My soul is just worth two pennies?!”
“That is what the ferryman accepts,” the demon replied.
I offered the only immortality I knew of, writing you into the book
even if I changed your name at the last moment to protect nothing
that mattered in the end.
We somehow fell in step though never once we danced.
“If the point is to be clever rather than share information, then
it is never about being clever at all. Nor should it ever be.”
“How can you love a system that has damaged you so deeply?”
“I can because I know it has damaged others far more than it has
ever damaged me.”
Writing 900+ words on phone is fun. Deciphering what autocorrect did,
also fun :p
The streets below spire X10 wasn’t vague in itself
When you’re seven feet tall and almost as board
I swore softly but followed him without another wolf.
“I did; I am too heavy to climb that robe.”
“But I can’t die. It’s in the contract that I’m playing
Detective Orland for two more seasons!”
Death paused. “I am afraid the contract for the character you play
in a TV show does not extend to real life.”
“Yeah? Read the fine print, buster.”
The fun of working on a post-cyberpunk universe definitely includes
the equivalent of people whose implants run on Mac, or who use floppy
disks for their cybernetics or don't have the equivalent of a modern
internet connection. The future is not compatible with you, as one
character is quite boastful about.
That moment when a fictional character you made sells a copy of an
anthology you are in on Twitter...
The Warrior About Whom There Was No Prophecy strode into the city,
seeking the Villain Who Must Be Named (because, otherwise, it was
hard to find him). They had been childhood friends, but death and
blood had come between them and the Warrior knew he was under a
terrible curse, but not its nature.
In time he found a woman, who was searching for her heart’s desire,
but his quest went deeper than his heart, and the Warrior did not see
his own True Love, but only information.
“I am looking for Sex. I have been my whole life,” he explained.
“Sex was my childhood friend, but because of Sex my sister and my
parents died in my arms and I … who are you looking at me funny?
You’re calling the guard?! YOU’RE IN LEAGUE WITH SEX!“
And the Warrior drew his very ordinary and unnamed sword and slew
her, screaming about Sex, and had to flee the guard, who seemed to be
in league with the terrible villain as well, never once wondering
upon the nature of his curse.
Somewhere, a magician named Bob was amused.
"The
history of a country is the history of genocide. What do you think
your ancestors came here to do? How do you not know this? Is not your
history also the history of your crimes? How can you not understand
the damage done to others if you never learn how deeply your people
hurt them? I weep for an education system that has failed you so
deeply."
"You
misunderstand. It hasn't failed us: it has worked exactly as it was
intended to work."
The
Grey aliens turned out not to have any conspiracy theories about
humans. There was no need.
“I
do love you. But that’s not enough, not by itself. It never is. You
know that, don’t you?”
...
given that people are willing to pay into a gofundme for a wall they
were a) told they'd never pay for and b) won't be effective (unless
one measures effective by 'how well does this scare a certain segment
of white people' ...)
Can
we start one up to begin restoring/replacing the rings of Saturn? It
might make more sense, and by the time it's a true problem we might
have the funds in the account to deal with it :)
"I
know this isn't our normal Christmas tradition, but unless we use
this Ouija board we're never finding out Uncle Ralph's wifi
password."
“You
claim to write poetry but I see no evidence that you are a poet.”
“…being
published doesn’t count?”
“Not
these days. Anyone can get published now.”
That
moment when you submit two stories to an anthology. (one regular one,
and another that is the same story from the perspective of another
character (....because Jay). And you get 2 contributor copies, one of
which is for Jay.
And
that copy includes comments and notes for the character spanning the
story they are in and some other pages as well.
...
that is when you know your story is in the right anthology
1
star Yelp review:
Inn
had no room. Manager insisted the stables were viable for my PREGNANT
WIFE!! WTH?!?! WOULD GIVE ZERO STARS IF I COULD BUT WE SAW ONE
OVERHEAD,
DO
NOT RECOMMEND.
