Speaking of coincidences...

I have to chuckle at a few interesting coincidences from the movie "2012" and my life.

1. John Cusack plays a "failed writer." I'm not a failed writer yet. Who is?
   
2. He lives in Manhattan Beach, CA.
   
3. I was just in Yellowstone last year.
4. Catastrophic Erosion... nuf said.
   
5. One of the first cracks appears at the end of El Porto on 45th Street, blocks from where I lived for a while. I have pictures taken a year ago of me standing where the crack is.
6. I'll have to wait for the DVD, but I'm pretty sure that the first frame of the sinking of vast amounts of beachfront shows the Manhattan Beach Pier going under first. (Yeah, I did that, too.)
7. Cusack's character and I have a propensity for running into people we know in odd parts of the country... to our benefit.
8. We have a knack for writing fiction which ends up coming true. I have called it "Michael Gavon's Disease" where an idea I tell someone ends up being on the cover of a relevant magazine the next day. It recently happened when I remarked that they should remake When Worlds Collide..

But Judas Christ isn't like that. I'm not making predictions. I'm reverse engineering Revelation to portray it in a plausible way. Emmerich almost succeeded.

Life goes on... literally, 2013 and beyond.

Ok, so...

I finally saw "2012". My intentions were interrupted by the loss of my mother in law. Being touched by a single loss completely soured me on seeing the movie. Knowing the vast loss of life that would be portrayed in the movie, I couldn't muster the courage to sit and watch.

But, this weekend, we made it to the big screen before 2012 gets reliquated to the DVD blockbuster bin. I'm not going to review it. That's not my purpose here. I will make a quick comment about the plausibility of the whole scenario. The whole thing about "mutated neutrinos" putting the earth's core into the microwave served both the audience and the director well. It relieved us of the responsibility to be able to do something. A luxury that Sunshine, Solar Crisis, The Core, Crack in the World, 10.5 Apocalypse didn't have. Although the premise is a stretch, and greatly accelerated for the time allotted the moviegoer, the sheer scope of destruction and thinking the unthinkable made this author proud. The effects were truly amazing, as realistic as they could be, and given some of the 'effects' I am writing, it warms my cockles to think that it can all be done now. (Ok, so I'm thinking about a movie, not a book. Stop it!)

Enough about what Emmerich put on the screen. I'm here to talk about what he did NOT put on the screen. Nemesis. Nibiru, Zyra (an allusion to When Worlds Collide, which I just discovered is being REMADE in 2010 by Stephen Sommer of GI Joe, Scorpion King and Mummy fame.)

I learned that the similarities to my plans for Earth under the stress of Nemesis are minimal. The causes are not even close. Nothing is falling from the sky. Only a symbolic crack between God and Adam in the Sistine Chapel, and an incorrect reference to the Rapture (made by the Art Bell knock-off played by Woody Harrelson) point anything at religion or a genuine Apocalypse.

Ok, so, the entire map is redrawn. Whole continents have shifted, twisted, lifted. I'll be doing a bit of that as well. But to that similiarity I say, 'great minds twist alike.'

Now all I have to do is utterly disavow myself of the 2012 internet mythology... which is too bad, since it IS the Year of the Dragon. I kinda liked that coincidence.

So for now, I'm safe.

The Coming of 2012 (the movie, not the year)

I hope to see the movie "2012" this weekend. I intended to wave it off and let a shameless exploitation of this Mayan 2012 crap float by... until I saw the trailer. (I usually avoid trailers, including plugging my ears and make BLBLBLBLBLBLB sounds to drown them out. I got SO suckered by the trailer to Star Trek VI that I utterly eschew them.)

But the trailer to 2012 left me breathless, not only for the extent of destruction, and not only for the scope of Roland Emmerich's destructive vision. Mostly because I saw scenes which too closely matched my visions, including tectonic shift and really big waves! Whereas he drops an aircraft carrier onto the White House, I turn the beaches of Los Angeles into a tiny island.

Ok, so, I'm saying this because I want to point back at something I wrote many years ago. Call me sheepish, call me paranoid, call me "stolen thunder", but I do NOT want someone to say "oh, nice, you stole that from Emmerich." I didn't. If I stole it, he stole it from the same playbook.

This is an excerpt from a synopsis of Book III of Judas Christ. I wrote this down in the document from which I am copying and pasting on September 13, 2006. I will clip out irrelevant text, but will not alter what you read. Thus:

"...begins an event called "the Week the Whole Earth Shook" where the Earth suffers a constant 4.0-5.0 Richter scale earthquakes, all without epicenters, as if the core of the Earth were shivering like a frightened man. The standing waves from a vibrating Earth create monster series of "triangle waves" of a thousand feet in the mid-ocean and hundreds of feet in the Mediterranean, Black and Red Seas. Shorelines and islands begin to change shape. Antarctica is spitting out icebergs like a sno-cone machine. Nearly every volcano that can begins to erupt, and there is a fear that supervolcanoes such as Krakatoa, Mammoth Mountain and Yellowstone may be shaken into cataclysmic supereruption. The new ocean rift in Eritrea grows at a fantastic rate. At full moon, even mountains and craters on the Moon are seen to be shaken down flat. Dust, ash, soot, sulfur in the sky lends a pall of doom, and the spirits of many fall. Christians who point to “the signs that Jesus is coming” are persecuted, arrested, beaten and in some cases, lynched. But then, so are the skeptics who point to “reasonable explanations”. In truth, most of Christianity feels that if Jesus were going to come, he's too freakin' late.

...Then the greatest earthquake in the history of man changes everything. The Straits of Gibraltar and the Horn of Africa close, land-locking Israel and trapping the U.S. 6th Fleet. The Arabian Plate tilts and the Persian Gulf enlarges, making the perfect invasion beach. The Earth's orbit is altered drastically, dipping in close to the Sun, but then heading far out in a new three year orbit. The Moon is pulled down toward the Earth to where it tidally locks and raises Jerusalem miles above the rest of the world. ...the Sun is peppered and Moon surface is pulverized by ...rocks. One diamond shard pierces the crust and unleashes magma from the mantle. The seventh Trumpet waits..."

"Behold, I have told you this before..."

That being said, I wonder what I'm going to do if this too closely matches what I had planned to write, or have written. For now, I'm only wondering aloud. After all, there is nothing new under the sun. Is there?

"keep in touch"

Two things happened today which got me thinking about "keeping in touch"

1. A co-worker left our firm, saying "Keep in touch." I added her to my Facebook friends, discovering a bevy of mutual friends already in her list (I'm the latecomer). Once that is triggered, I'll see her posts, her friends' posts. But I also ran across (saw friends of friends) people with whom I wished I were still in touch, and wondered how, if, should I keep in touch. I'm not offering the answer, but if you didn't want to be in touch, it's hard to not.
2. Lorelei Armstrong posted something about writing on her blog, and I felt inclined to answer. As I fired up the comment box, it occurred to me... "Of all of the ways that I'm 'in touch' with her, which is the best way to answer?" Meaning, do I reply directly to the blog? Do I post a comment on her FBWall? Do I send her a direct message? Tweet a snarky remark? Or good ole email?

I found myself thinking about how the rest of the readers would receive my remarks. "How do I reply such that this reply is received by the people whom I..." Ok, stop right there. When we start to target our replies based on friends of whom the recipient is 'mutual', then perhaps 'touch' is that in which we no longer are.

The two questions I would leave here are:

• Are we a few clicks closer to the Singularity, the Overmind, the Collective where we can all sense each other? I would have said 'no' a while back, but now, I'm not so sure.
• With all of these ways to stay in touch... are we?
  

Advice for budding writers (as if)

As if I have any advice for a budding writer, still being one, I offer this lesson from SCWCLA*09.

If you are going to a conference, a workshop or anywhere that you would want your manuscript, do this first:

1. Go to the Apple Store (bear with me, this isn't an ad)
2. Buy something. Anything. Buy a headphone adapter. Y0u need one.
3. Take the BAG they give you for small stuff and use it to carry your manuscript. It's an 11" x 13" tough plastic drawstring bag, and will hold at least 600 pages of 8-1/2" x 11" paper.
4. This wrapped baby will now easily fit into a small briefcase or backpack, without worrying about the corners of a box. It sheaths your work, bends, repels water... but the manuscript won't escape, won't shuffle, and won't NOT be there if you need it. You can leave it loose leaf, you can filter through for a passage or few pages without messing with binders, boxes... or computers.

Simple, inexpensive, effective.

Back at the Real World

The SCWCLA*09 conference is done and gone, I'm back at it!

After a great meeting with Trish and Gabriel of BlueJayTech, who did Andrew Peterson's _First to Kill_ website, for our 'real world' project, I flew back home. _America Libre_ by Raul Ramos y Sanchez made the flight quick.

When I got home, I successfully shepherded the BoP 2009 conference, including getting a copy of Jacqueline Novogratz's _The Blue Sweater_ signed for Sue (and me) and spent the Sunday decompressing. I then spent some time following Raul Ramos y Sanchez's advice on setting up Facebook and Twitter. I'm still not on board with this social networking thing, but at least I'm on the pier. (I've been a MySpace member since 2004, and its ROI is zippo!) But, you reap what, later and more than you sow, so sow I will. I've begun adding p33ps from the SCWC, including MSG and Lorelei Armstrong.

I got a chance to read Alwyn's Pinnow's "whole piece", and loved it as much as I did the sample that Laura Taylor read. I think that I was the first to respond after the reading saying "...the best thing I've heard all conference." I was one of several who pressed Laura to nominate this award winning vignette.

Lacey and I have exchanged emails, and I will be reading what she sent me WHEN ITS NOT DARK OUT!

I read Jeff Michaels and Jill Q. Weiss's screenplay. Two thing are certain... 1) This would have made a great installment on Serling's Night Gallery. 2) I have no idea how to write a screenplay. Maybe I don't have to ;-)

Anyway, I've been busy pushing life around since my last post. Time to start pushing words around, again. Including on this plank of my platform.

Committed! (Or should be...)

It's official! I've registered for SCWCLA7 this September 25-27, in Irvine! I slunked in under the wire for the Early Bard discount, and saved $75. Well, not being one to let good money lie fallow, I applied the savings to not one, but TWO Advanced submission readings. I submitted my 20-pager to Laura Taylor at SCWCSD23. This time (since its the same 20 pages) I sent it to someone else: Marla Miller and Jean Jenkins.

Marla got to hear my pirate session reading with Matt Pallamary (the one that I called "Utter Disaster"), but not the first 20 pages. Hopefully, she'll get a better sampling of my writing skills without my blathering mouth in the way.

So, between now and then, I'm moving, getting married, setting up a conference designed to save the world (seriously). Somewhere in there, I need to get some work done. Throwing money at the conference will help me stay committed. And if not, these nice men with the butterfly nets will help.




PS: Of course 'slunk' is a word. Slink, slank, slunk.
OMG! It IS! http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slunk
Who knew?

SCWC SD09 Topic Contest: Rain

Because of storm approaching {gasp!} San Diego, MSG quickly settled on "rain" as the topic of the 250-word Topic Contest. Any homonym of 'rain' qualified. I don't general spend (or waste) my effort, time or creative juice on these contests. But this one leaked into my bilge and wouldn't let itself go unwritten. Here it is:

SCWC SD09 Topic Contest Topic: Rain (or reign, rein, homonyms) "Over Me" by Christopher P. Simmons He should’ve been ready. He’d seen it coming. Over his left shoulder, a dry-land hurricane bore down on him. He twisted the throttle harder. While in a gas station, walking past repellant wipes, the vertical tsunami hit. Too late, he dove out. He donned his rubber duck gear, but the cold monsoon had already funneled down the drain of his turtleneck. The torrent drowned the sound of his iron steed, but not his will to get home, nor the memory that precipitated this power dive. Over the thunder of bikes on the dry and dusty road, he heard her voice on a telephone say "separation." A decade of drizzle, shower and storms had eroded her now-leaking dam. The Amazonian forest humidity fogged his visor. Riding blind, the sky wept with him. Highway became canal in the inundation. His wake at typhoon speed made him hydroplane. "All those moments, lost in time, like tears…" he quoted. Resigned, the leather knight let go, letting his steed run, unbridled. He dared the storm to kill him. Begged it. But it only let him wallow in sorrow; His queen had abdicated. He slogged on, layers of leather and cotton became sponge, boots squished when he shifted, handlebar grips became cannelloni. Defiant, he crashed through the leading crest of the front, and fled, daring not to stop. Cold and exhausted, a toll booth forced his brake lights. The attendant sweltered in the Ante-Diluvian humidity. "What’s the temperature out there?" "74." He stripped to the waist. As if born into a new skin, he swaddled himself in one last dry t-shirt. Thirsting for anything but water, he drank in the dry air as he rode off.

Pop Quiz:

• How many times did I NOT say 'rain'?
• What song do you have stuck in your head now?
• Why did I almost allude to the band "Our Lady, Peace"?
• Do you want to read The Winner?

Sharpening my chisel

The SCWC San Diego 09 rang out as a resounding success! Only one disaster worth reporting. Although agents were everywhere, I didn't pitch to any. I had another, higher priority.

"To Suck Less" -- MSG
I had spent the days since SCWC LA08 re-writing the T7S sequel. I had to see if I had improved the writing or not. Taking to heart, head and pen the critiques of Trai, Laura, Matt/Lorelei & the group, I had tried to "improve my craft." In that, I had to remove the need for a prequel, and I had to capture the reader with Judas' plight. Could I make the most hated man in history the object of the reader's sympathy in only a few paragraphs? Could I instill the priest with enough guilt to replicate his shooting a pregnat woman? I had to find out.

I submitted my 20-page sample to "Advanced Submission." Chaos smiled on me, and Laura Taylor had an opening. Her (positive) reaction at LA08 and referral to an honest agent taught me quickly that (to appropriate Michale Steven Gregory) "my writing needed to suck less."

"Overall, this book will be compelling! Bravo!"
At SD09, Laura's response rated my rewrite VERY positive. She recognized the effort I had put into it, and lauded the result, with a nod to known flaws. I later took it to her "Read & Critique" session. I wish that I had a video of her reading my sample to the group. Where I read quickly, compressing for time, Laura read slowly. Not even legato, but largo! Where I wrote frantic action, she transformed the prose into an indictment, trial, sentencing and execution of Judas. I heard guilt and agony that I never had before. Her pace so tormenting to poor Judas, that calling it "fingernails on chalkboard" proved too kind. I described it as "awakening next to a woman whose arm impedes your escape, so you saw it off slowly to avoid waking her." When I asked if they felt sympathy for Judas, the majority nodded. I ratcheted up the "Success-o-meter" a click or two.

"Bloody Pirates!"
Next, I took a new chapter, starring Calucci and Annie, to Matt Pallamary's Pirate session. His Princess of Darkness, Lorelei didn't attend, but "Me, Usually" Mary dropped herself into second seat. For this session, I had pre-printed a 5 page sample. I used all of my document processing skill to condense out 7 pages to 5. As I started the sample on Chapter 3, I simply removed references to Chapter 1 & 2, which would have borne explaining, had they not read them. My time came, and I read...

UTTER DISASTER!
Titanic? Pompeii? Atlantis? HA! Glitches compared to my debacle!
90% of the issues raised would have been answered had they read the previous chapters. Some worthwhile critique of what remained distilled out, but on the whole, the session leached out a toxic swill. Marla Miller sat in, and she observed (paraphrasing) "You cheated yourself. You didn't get critique of your actual writing... but I think you got me. I like it." I made two notations on the inside of my skull.

1. Don't distill your writing for readings. Read your five pages, and shut up. If they are left hanging... good! heh heh
   
2. This book is not paced for readings. I had tried to give them a good place to start, and a good place to end. But the chapters are too long to squish into 5 pages. Let it go! Like Indy reaching for Grail, wise counsel will save me next time.

"One shot, One Kill?"
Fortunately, this debacle was merely a pirate session. It wasn't a pitch. Wasn't a contest. Wasn't "my chance to blow*" so I took JCX to another slaughterhouse: Andrew Peterson's Read & Critique. Because his book, First to Kill stars a sniper, I chose to read my "flying bullet" chapter. Again, my reading pace careened a bit too quickly. But I restrained myself and stopped reading without resolving the scene. The feedback was good, useful.

The funny thing is that as I read it, I could see things I would change, based solely on what I'd learned from SD09. Adverbs, tenses, POVs. What seemed good before, now needed sanding. Andrew referred to "improving your craft", and I suddenly saw writing as analogous to woodworking (at which I suck, btw) Carving, inlaying, finishing are skills which improve with practice. I saw writing (and re-writing) as carving the same pattern over and over again on a new piece, perhaps a set of chairs. The latter pieces will probably have better carvings, more delicate inlays, smoother finish than the earlier ones.

The Learning

• I learned more of what I had yet to learn.
• I learned that 3 people will have 4 opinions.
• I learned that writing books is really a team effort, involving the editors, the critique groups, maybe even the agent and publisher. Stephen King may not need the team. We do.

Applying the next coat
I have 7 months until SCWC-LA09. I realize much of what I need to learn. And apply... like a coat shellac on freshly carved, filled, sanded wood. The next one will be better. And the next one...


*Eminem - Lose Yourself

Off to the Conference!!! San Diego, here I come...

Just a quick note to anyone reading to say this:

• I'm going to Southern Cal Writer's Conference 23, San Diego in, well, 12 hours.
• I got A LOT done on the re-write. I ripped through to the end of Book I (yes, it's gotta be a trilogy, at least), and next, I have to iterate back. But, I did what I set out to do. I removed Abby and Lucci, and replaced them each with someone else, a wee bit familiar.
• I'm getting my first 20 pages critiqued at the conference. I know by whom, but shant say. I expect that he/she will notice improvement. Near flawless proofreading, except for my penchant to misuse, abuse, subjugate, and obfuscate commas.
  
• I have excerpted out my 5 pages for the Pirate/Rogue sessions. They are dynamite!
  
• I hope to see a bunch of SCWCLA08 there: Trish, Jeff, Lorelei, Josh, Brandon, Stacey & Gloria, Sharmyn, Jan (And the WHALE! We want the whale).
  
• I got all my docs in a row. I'm ready!
  

If yer going, find me! If yer not see ya when I get back.

"If yer goin' to San Dee-aygo..."

Just a quick post to tell all who care, "IT'S OFFICIAL!!! I'm going to San Diego!"

The SCWC*SD09 is February 13-16th, and I have just registered, have my flights and am ready to rock! My re-write is proceeding nicely (or NOT nicely as the case may be >:).

I am 90% done with my 20-pager, and will be sending that off to San Diego first thing Monday morning. I hope to have all of Book I re-written, but with the 20-pager done, I'm good to go. After the conference, I am going to Manhattan Beach. If anyone wants to rendezvous with me, I'll be at The Kettle, drinking a Pomosa!

Happy New Year!

PS: Anyone know whom I have to bribe how much to get SCWC-LA09 to be in Manhattan Beach?