I wasn’t planning on any more blogging this week (especially two days in a row) after the gargantuan beast that was yesterday’s post, but I had to make an exception. I got an email yesterday from Danse Macabre Magazine’s sister site DM Du Jour, letting me know they were publishing my flash fiction story Silence, Please on their site as of, like, now.
It was a nice surprise, as this story was a bit of a departure for me. No, strike that—more of an experiment, really. It was my first (and maybe my only) attempt at writing anything resembling a period piece. It was actually a combination of two things—I was sitting in front of the computer one night after my better half had gone to bed; the TV was off and I was trying to be quiet. I began to think about someone trying to be as quiet as humanly possible, for some unknown reason. My mind filled in the blanks when I looked at this picture of a painting that hangs on the wall to my left. Whenever I turn my head, I see a variation of this:
Painting of Stephen Collins Foster by artist Howard Chandler Christy, circa 1948-1950
I’ve almost finished creating an epic, tragic backstory for this picture/painting, and someday—if I can ever think it all the way through—I’ll write that story. For now, however, I’ve written a much, much shorter one.
So if you have 2-3 minutes to kill, check it out. As far as I can tell it will be on the site for quite some time, so if you decide to read it some other time you might just have to scroll down a little ways until you see my name. If you go today it’s right there on top.
One last thing: directly below my story is my author bio, and directly below that is an image of a book cover featuring a thin young man (and his rather impressive male endowment) wearing nothing but his drawers. That man and his schlong have nothing to do with me or my story whatsoever, lest there be any confusion. It wasn’t by design, but you’re welcome. 🙂
I never talked about my job much here on the blog, and that was generally for good reason: I didn’t like it. I had a steady, good-paying job, but I was absolutely miserable. I won’t go into it much, mostly because I still have friends there, but also because I worked for a large company that probably has an excellent legal team, and I don’t want any accusations of slander coming my way (half-joking). Suffice to say, it was time to find something else. So I did.
No, I’m not a cop now.
I recently started a job with my county’s Emergency Communications team. What’s that mean? For now, it means I take 911 calls. Eventually (as in, in the next few months), it’ll also mean dispatching Fire, EMS, and Police. That’s right—I’ll be sending first responders to active emergencies: building and house fires, car accidents, medical calls and crimes in progress. Me.
Yes, this is an old picture. No, it’s not a mug shot.
Holy shit.
It’s a little surreal. There are connections to law enforcement through my family and one of my friends, but I never thought I’d be involved with anything like this. I just finished training and start the job in earnest this week. So far, I love it. It’s unpredictable, crazy, and—believe it or not—fun. Then there’s the people I work with: with a few exceptions, they’re a little bit mental, loud, obnoxious, funny, and incredibly vulgar. Even though I’m a little quieter than they are (for now, anyway), believe me when I say I’m among my people.
The final step in training before being thrown to the wolves was something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: a 10-hour ride along with a police officer. I was going to go on a ride along with my deputy friend in California several years ago and it never happened before I moved to the Midwest. Then I inquired about doing it about a year ago, but I couldn’t make it work with my schedule. Now it’s finally happened. So how did my day with Wichita’s Finest go? Here’s how.
10:45am: Show up fifteen minutes early as instructed, only to be made to wait until after the squad meeting at 11:00 was done (I had been told I may get to attend the squad meeting—bummer). Around 11:10 my officer—who for the purposes of this post I’m calling ‘Jones’—grabs me so we can head out. Jones is a young guy; I would come to find out he’s around 23-24 years old, married with two small kids, was in the military (and is still technically enlisted), and says he basically just woke up one day and decided to check out going into law enforcement. He’s been an officer around three years, all of it on Wichita’s West side.
We proceed to get in the car and sit for several minutes while he checks to make sure he has all his equipment, then gets signed into the onboard computer. It takes forever, for reasons I don’t fully understand. Finally, somewhere around 11:20-11:30 we leave the station and begin heading southward. I’m listening to the police radio and looking at his computer to see what calls are holding, and I can’t figure out where we’re going. Finally he tells me we’re going back to his house because he forgot something he needed.
12:00pm: Respond to a domestic violence (DV) call. Jones knows the address, has been out there before. Another unit beats us there and already has the situation under control because, in the words of the other officer, she is a “crime ninja.” Jones spends a few minutes or so chitchatting with her, both officers in their cars, with me uncomfortably between them in the passenger seat of Jones’s car. Awkward.
Despite not having anything to drink since 8:30, I’m already starting to have to pee.
12:10pm: Leaving the DV call, Jones spots a flatbed truck that’s been parked in the same spot for several days. He checks it out and sees a tag has been taken off of it, and begins trying to get info on the truck to see if it’s stolen. A string of phone calls follow, until we are finally told the Highway Patrol will come out to take a look at it, and tow it if necessary. We are instructed to sit tight. It takes almost an hour for them to show up, then we find out a neighbor just bought the truck for his business but hasn’t registered yet.
My notes from 1:06pm: ‘Bored. Gotta pee.’
1:15pm: We’re on our way to assist on another DV when we get the call that the officer is in trouble. Jones hits the lights and sirens and punches it. For about 7 seconds we’re in TV-cop mode, sliding around a corner and tearing down a residential street, until the officer we were rushing to assist cancels the trouble call. He was busy with the people onscene and couldn’t hear his radio (if an officer doesn’t respond to dispatch after a certain length of time, it’s automatically a trouble call). Jones laughs and tells me that’s probably the only time we’ll ‘run hot’ all day. He’s right.
On scene at the DV: A young couple fighting. It’s just like an episode of COPS: On one side is a girl crying, holding a baby; on the other side is a guy with no shirt or shoes yelling at the woman for calling the cops. I go with Jones to the guy. Sounds to me like they’ve had lots of problems in the past but this particular incident might just be a big overreaction.
The guy has scratches on him, which I thought would mean the girl was going to jail, but they don’t take anyone—the girl says she and the baby will go to a shelter for the night, so one officer takes her home to get her stuff while Jones puts the guy in the back of our car (the girl took the baby and left their house while they were arguing, with the guy following after her—we were a couple blocks from where they actually lived when we showed up) for a ride back. The guy is very concerned that she’s going to take his video game console and his new pack of cigarettes. After a long wait, she emerges from the house and leaves for the shelter. Our guy hops out and runs in the house to make sure his PS3 and cigarettes are safe.
To be fair, he was almost in tears at one point out of concern for his baby; I’m not trying to paint him as a complete ass, but the video game/cigarette thing had me and Jones chuckling.
I still really have to pee.
2:00pm: Finally pee at a convenience store. We’re on our way to a call when the officer from the previous DV calls for assistance. We meet back up with him, and he informs us that the girl decided she doesn’t want to stay in a shelter after all, and wants to go back home. We follow to make sure there is no drama when she is dropped off. Both officers are fed up with the whole scenario.
2:15pm: Sears calls to advise they’ve detained a juvenile shoplifter. Jones sighs and says he gets tired of these calls, but since his beat includes the mall, they always fall to him. I see why he doesn’t like them. They’re fairly boring; just a lot of paperwork to do, plus transport to jail/juvenile hall. For me, though, it was pretty interesting.
***NOTE TO ANYONE CONSIDERING SHOPLIFTING FROM SEARS: THEY ARE WIRED UP LIKE A GODDAMN CASINO. YOU WILL BE CAUGHT.***
We walk through this little door by the back of the store that 99% of people probably don’t know is there and enter this small, dimly lit office where I see this:
These pictures don’t really do it justice; it really is like the command center for a casino or something. I watch the lady who works there as she sees someone she thinks looks suspicious, then in the blink of an eye has four different camera angles of them and can zoom in close enough to tell if they have dandruff. It’s incredible.
Through that office is a tiny little interrogation room, and there sits a very scared 16 year old girl, her oblivious three year old sister, and two extremely pissed off parents. Jones tells them where they can pick up their daughter and approximately how long it will take for booking, mug shot, fingerprinting, and processing. Dad debates on whether or not he wants to pick her up that day or leave her in Juvie overnight.
The parents leave and Jones begins filling out his report. At one point Jones reassures the girl that although she will be leaving in handcuffs, Jones will not “parade her up and down the mall first,” despite her father’s urging. It takes a while before we finally finish up there and get her transported her to Juvie.
4:00pm: Call of a “rolling disturbance.” In this case, a carload of teenagers driving down the street shooting fireworks out of their car at passing motorists. Despite hearing the make and model get broadcast over the radio, I don’t see the car. Jones does, though, and swings around to try and catch up to them. Alas, traffic is heavy and they duck into one of the neighborhoods off the main street we’re on. We drive around for about 10 minutes but never see them again.
4:37pm: Called to the scene of a non-injury accident. Boring, boring, boring. Both drivers are pretty cool, no arguments, info exchanged and everybody goes on their way. Jones said accidents are his least favorite part of the job, because they are boring (most of the time), usually avoidable (if people would just get off their phones and pay attention to the road), and very time-consuming. He’s right.
5:42pm: Back at the station for Jones to drop off evidence (a DVD of the security camera footage from Sears). It’s about time for the next shift to start, and Jones is anxious for them to get out there and take some of the waiting calls because he’s starving. The note I made while at the station: “hungry thirsty tired.”
6:00pm: Called to a neighborhood looking for a suspicious character: a man going door to door trying to sell people “cable upgrades,” who, according to the caller, didn’t look legit, even though he was wearing an AT&T shirt. Drove around a few minutes, didn’t find him.
6:36pm: Called to an accident on the main highway in town to help with traffic control. On the way Jones stops at his favorite Mexican place for some nachos, since the accident would provide a little downtime for him.
7:03pm: After getting through the maze of gridlocked cars on the highway, helping divert traffic, and getting vehicle info to start the impound process, Jones finally gets a few spare minutes while tow trucks are hooking up the wrecked cars and scarfs down his nachos like an animal—not that I blame him. He gets frustrated by things that take a long time, but he can’t help but laugh as we watch one of the most incompetent tow truck drivers I’ve ever seen hook up one of the cars. It takes a lot longer than it should.
7:49pm: Called to the mall again for two different crimes. One is disregarded after we cruise the parking lot and don’t see the vehicle we’re looking for. The other: three teenage shoplifters. Jones: “Aaaarrrrrggghhhhh!” He said sometimes when shoplifters are caught, they have merchandise from several stores on them. If all those stores want to prosecute, the paperwork goes up exponentially. Luckily, that’s not the case here.
We go in another little hidden door, this time at JC Penneys, and enter another little office/interrogation room. This time we find three 14 year old girls, not looking as scared as they really should, in my opinion. They giggle a little, ask questions, etc., and I have to hand it to Jones: he is actually quite cool to them. He makes sure they understand that they are indeed in trouble, under arrest, and going to juvie, but he doesn’t really preach to them (just a little). Since the paperwork will take until close to the end of shift, Jones calls for someone else to transport the girls to Juvie—enter Officer Hardass.
Officer Hardass apparently worked a long time on the drug task force and is quite a bit more serious than Jones, to put it mildly. He comes into the office and starts getting info from the girls to help speed things along.
Officer Hardass: “What’s your name?”
Shoplifter: “Veronica.” (not her real name)
OH: “Speak up.”
SL: “Veronica.”
OH: “What’s your middle name?”
SL: “Um, I don’t know it.”
OH: “You’re fourteen years old and don’t know your own middle name?”
SL: “No.” (giggles, looks up at OH and smiles)
OH: “Don’t smile at me, you just committed a crime.”
This goes on for several minutes. It’s hard for me not to laugh, as I find this conversation hilarious.
We finish up and get back to the station around 8:45, where Jones has to gas up his vehicle before parking it. He has paperwork still to do from the shoplifters, but says it can wait until the next day. I thank him heartily, shake his hand and head home. It was a great day.
General Thoughts (based solely on my one day with this one officer):
Cop cars are driven hard.The constant hard braking (and I do mean hard braking), sudden accelerating, quick u-turns, etc. was hard to get used to. I can’t imagine how the cars hold up as well as they do.
Cops are people, too. I know that sounds corny, but despite Jones being a self-described “grouch” who “doesn’t really like people,” he was actually really nice to me (which he technically didn’t have to be), and really respectful to everyone he came in contact with. At our DV with the arguing couple he eventually calmed the guy down by talking about video games with him. There was a real transparency with him that impressed me; he was the same guy out of the car dealing with the public that he was in the car with me, for the most part.
Cops are extremely dehydrated. Jones started the day with a can of Mountain Dew, then filled up a fountain drink at the convenience store that lasted him the rest of his shift—not a drop of water all day. I didn’t drink any water (or any other beverages) either, because I didn’t want to have to pee all day (irony). I went home and drank about a gallon of water and still felt dehydrated. And I wasn’t even wearing a vest and all that other stuff, or, you know, doing anything.
Teenagers suck.
Being able to pee whenever you want is a privilege I will never take for granted again.
Cops might be superhuman. I didn’t get any extra sleep the night before my ride along, but I wasn’t sleep deprived, either. By the time I got home from my ride along around 9 o’clock, I was exhausted. I drank a ton of water, ate something, and promptly started falling asleep in front of the TV by 10. And by cop standards, we had a slow day. I can’t fathom how they do it day in and day out, not to mention days when they get their adrenaline pumping like crazy.
All in all it was a great day, and if I get the chance to do it again I’ll certainly take it. And next time I’ll stop drinking fluids the night before.
I’m staying just about on pace for my new year’s resolution of reading a book a month. I got ahead at one point, but between running into a couple of books that were hard to make myself read and other stuff that made me not want to read at all, I slowed back down a tad. I have four reviews here, though I’ll actually be talking about five books. Not that it makes a lick of difference to you, but I’m going in reverse chronological order, starting with the book I just finished. Alrighty then, let’s get to it.
Sharp Objects — Gillian Flynn (2006)
I liked Gone Girl quite a bit (though I understand some of the backlash it received) and was curious to see what Flynn’s other work was like. I was not disappointed.
Her debut novel centers around Camille Preaker, a talented-but-not-living-up-to-her-potential reporter living in Chicago, who is sent back to her hellhole hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri to cover the murders of two young girls, apparently the work of a serial killer—both girls had some (or all) of their teeth pulled out prior to disposal of the bodies.
Camille is not entirely mentally stable herself, as it’s revealed that she’s a cutter: she takes pleasure from carving words into her flesh, and is fresh off a stint in rehab to try and cure her of her condition. As the story goes on, however, and we meet Camille’s mother, stepdad, and half-sister, we see that Camille may be the sanest one in the family.
Thoughts as a reader: This story is dark. As in, near pitch black. It paints an ominous picture of small town life that gave me the feeling it hit very close to home for the author (who, I know from reading about her, also lived in Missouri). Most—though it should be noted not all—of the characters are really screwed up, which of course makes them interesting to read about. The ending, while I did predict it partially, still made me grin at the sick twist of what happened to the victims’ missing teeth.
Thoughts as a writer: I really enjoy Flynn’s writing voice. It’s easy to dive into her work and lose yourself. Her characters are vivid and easy to picture in your mind. With only three books under her belt (and movie deals for all three books), she has already established herself as a force to be reckoned with. Also, reminding myself that Sharp Objects was her debut is incredibly intimidating as I continue to write and rewrite the story I finally decided on to make my own first novel. It reminded me of when I was first learning to play guitar and thinking I was making some progress, then listened to BB King or Eric Clapton and realized I was only a few steps down this new path, and the masters were so far down the road they were almost out of sight.
My rating: 4 stars
The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson (1959)
Shirley Jackson is a legend in the literary world. There is even an award named for her given to writers “for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.”
Widely regarded as one the all-time classic horror novels and the be all end all of haunted house stories, I was thrilled when I happened to find Hill House at my local library. I thought I owed it to myself as an aspiring horror writer (or maybe more accurately, a writer who occasionally writes horror) to check this book out and read it ASAP.
Hill House is an old mansion with a troubled past. Doctor John Montague is an investigator of the supernatural who rents the house for the summer to see what (if any) evidence can support the legend of Hill House. He and three guests occupy the house and…well, you know. It’s a haunted house story, after all.
Thoughts as a reader: I’m afraid to write this. I want to just come up to you all one by one, look in all directions to make sure the coast is clear, then whisper this to you: I did not like this book. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. Seriously though, I don’t know what to think. This isn’t a very polarizing book that some people like and some people don’t. It is unanimously praised as one of the greatest scary stories of all time. To disagree means you’re stupid or you just don’t get it. I’ll leave it for others to decide on which side of that I fall.
The scares are subtle. Very, very subtle. So subtle they’re not even explained, and sometimes barely mentioned. But that’s not my problem with it. This book lost me before it ever got to the scares. This is a very short book, and by the 50-60 page mark I was pleading for something to just happen already.
Thoughts as a writer: After having it hammered into your head to avoid adverbs like the plauge the majority of the time, it’s a bit distracting to read something that has them peppered in so liberally. One character “stretched luxuriously.” What the hell does that even mean? I know I’m not the smartest guy in the room a lot of the time, but seriously, what is that?
Maybe this book is too understated, too subtle for me. I just don’t know what else to say. I literally fell asleep reading this book. I will almost certainly read it again sometime, just to see if anything strikes me differently the second time around.
My rating: 3 stars (because I’m afraid to give it less, otherwise the writers’ mafia might come see me and I might meet with an unfortunate accident, capiche?)
Double Feature — Owen King (2013)
Another find at my local library. Owen is the youngest son of Stephen King (and brother of Joe Hill), so naturally I was curious.
A novel about a young filmmaker trying to make a name for himself in his B-actor father’s shadow. Sounds vaguely familiar.
This is the only book since I started really reading again that I haven’t finished. It was a little slow (albeit interesting) from the get go, with lots of big words I had to skip over or look up. That’s okay—if you have a big vocabulary, by all means use it; it’s good for me. No, where I finally gave up was about 60-70 pages in, where I encountered something I hadn’t seen before:
A sixteen-page-long paragraph. Sixteen pages. One-six. I knew then I wouldn’t be finishing the book in the allotted 14 day period I had from the library, since it was a “new release.” I know I could’ve gotten more time, but I had also checked out Hill House and was excited to read that. I very well may come back to it sometime.
My rating: Incomplete
Pygmy —Chuck Palahniuk (2009)
I didn’t know anything about this book before I checked it out of the library. I’ve read/listened to audiobooks of three of Palahniuk’s novels; some I liked and some I didn’t, but I would consider myself a fan of his, by and large. Earlier I used the word polarizing—you want polarizing? Here we go.
Pygmy is the tale of a covert terrorist agent from an unnamed country, sent (along with a handful of his comrades) to America under the guise of being an exchange student. He’s 13, a complete genius who has encyclopedic knowledge of science and literature, and is extensively trained in some sort of krav-maga style of martial arts—his entire body is a deadly weapon.
Oh, and did I mention: The entire book is written in broken, ‘foreigner’ English. Some people can’t deal with it; it’s distracting, to say the least.
Thoughts as a reader: I read three pages before putting the book down and saying to my wife, “I’m not going to be able to read this crap.” It kept calling me, though, and the next day I picked it back up and made myself read the first two (very short) chapters. That did it. I knew then that come hell or high-water I would finish this book. And believe it or not, I’m glad I did. It takes some concentration to get into the weird, broken English. (Sample sentence: “Here worship shrine, all male neck must bind around with knotted banner, silk banner knotted at windpipe so dangle two long strands down chest to waistband trouser.” Okay, all the men at church are wearing neck ties—got it.) And why is it that this child genius who knows how to kill people with one finger, build bombs and quote famous authors hasn’t yet gotten a grasp on basic English? You just have to suspend disbelief there, as well as a lot of other places.
And yet, the story managed to get its hooks in me and by the end I almost laughed out loud a couple times. I don’t know if this will make sense, but I felt like I was reading the novelization of an as-yet unmade John Waters movie—characters that were absurdly satirical, and lots of lame sex jokes.
Thoughts as a writer: This took balls. To be honest, I don’t know who has bigger balls: Palahniuk for writing the book, or his publisher for agreeing to put it out. I guess it’s easy to have such testicular fortitude when you’re already a best-selling author, versus some (mostly) unpublished schmuck like me. It may never make my list of best books ever, but I admire the work it had to take to make it happen, and I do have a soft spot for it. And if John Waters ever makes a movie version, I want a producer credit.
My rating: 2 stars (although my view has softened and I’m tempted to bump it to 2 1/2 or 3)
The End of Alice — A.M. Homes (1999)
Another book I had heard a lot about. This one makes me feel weird, in both good and bad ways. I saved this one for last for a reason.
Alice is about a convicted pedophile doing his time in prison while hoping against hope for parole, when he unexpectedly becomes pen pals with a 19 year old girl. She knows who the man is (he is quite infamous because of the crimes he committed against the titular Alice, which is what put him in prison), and confesses to him that she is having similar thoughts about a 12 year old boy in her neighborhood. He is both aroused by the girl’s desires and jealous of the attention the girl gives the young boy. As the story progresses, however, it becomes clear that the girl serves as a catalyst to make our convict remember things he’s tried to forget while in prison: his primal urges, his penchant for violence, and what ultimately was ‘the end of Alice.’
Thoughts as a reader: If you’ve been reading the blog for any length of time, you’ve probably realized by now I’m no prude. Quite the opposite. I actually like stories that are weird, strange, dark, violent, disturbing, you name it. Very few books or movies get a very big reaction from me. That said, The End of Alice made me want to run screaming into a Silkwood shower and scrub myself with a Brillo pad, crying ‘unclean…unclean…’ Yeah. It’s that bad. But it’s good…if you can take it.
There is incredibly detailed description of pedophilia and horrific violence, and just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. But the thing is, it’s written so eloquently that it sucks you in (again, if you can take it) to the point that you almost start to empathize with this monster. I doubt many of you have seen the movie Happiness, but it reminds me of Happiness if it was written by a sex-crazed version of Hannibal Lechter.
I actually liked this book a great deal, but I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone because I don’t know many people who could stomach it. If you’re not sure if you can handle it, you probably can’t. If, on the other hand, you can get through the vile acts described in the book, I found it quite good. My only real complaint is that the story was a bit anti-climactic. I thought the story was building toward what was going to happen with the girl and the 12 year old, when instead the climax of the story if finally finding out what actually happened to Alice.
Thoughts as a writer: Again, the balls it took to write something like this. And I hope this comes out sounding the way I mean it to, but I’m astonished this book was written by a woman. I’d love to know what kind of research she did to get in the head of such a despicable, evil person so completely. As sick as it is, I would read this again, even though I half-jokingly wondered once if buying it or checking out of the library put me on some kind of watch list.
My rating: 4 stars
Well, that’s it until the fall book report. I’m currently reading The Ruins by Scott Smith, and despite being intimidated by its size (not to mention having already seen the movie), at 60 pages in I’m beyond hooked.
I’d love to know your thoughts on any of the books above, whether you’ve already read them or plan to go and read them—or avoid them—because of my review. Let me know! Other than that, what about you? Read any good books lately?
I was getting restless. I wondered if people were going to think I was crazy or, worse yet, making it up when I said I had another story being published. I checked Nebula Rift magazine’s Facebook page and website regularly and saw no updates or announcements of new issues, and they never emailed me to let me know when the issue I was going to be in was coming out (which is kinda weird, isn’t it?), so imagine my surprise when I went to their website this morning to discover that sometime in the past few weeks, my issue came out!
My story Tale of the Revolution is in there, and like my other story to be published so far, it’s a bit of an anomaly. Once again, it’s the rare story where no one dies and there are no curse words. Stranger still, it’s my first—and so far only—attempt at writing any sort of sci-fi. I actually thought this story might be hard to place somewhere because it’s very short and it’s not “hardcore” sci-fi. Luckily, the fine folks at fictionmagazines.com (who publish seven, count ’em, seven different magazines) liked it enough to publish it, and here we are.
I really like this story, and I hope you guys do, too.
Netflix is the rare technological advancement that’s totally affordable but I haven’t adopted yet. For the longest time it was because I had no device to deliver Netflix to my TV—my gaming days ended way back at the PS1 (which, not to get on a tangent, but I’m very grateful for. As if writers don’t procrastinate enough, I can’t imagine having video games calling my name from the other room while I’m trying to get some writing done). Then, last Christmas I got a Chromecast, and suddenly Netflix re-entered the picture as an actual, viable option for our TV/movie viewing needs.
I’ve talked to people I know, and read the comments/opinions of people I don’t know on the internet, and there seems to be a resounding cry of “Screw the cable companies! Get Netflix and cancel your service provider! Netflix is all you need!”
I agree with the first half of that statement—seriously, screw cable companies. Satellite providers may be only marginally better, and that depends just on your personal experience with whatever company you use, but I hate cable companies. I mean, like, hate-hate. They aren’t regulated for the most part, and it’s basically like the wild west when it comes to their business practices.
But the second part…get Netflix and cancel my paid TV service altogether? I don’t think I can do that. Why? Funny you should ask.
1. Limited choices
From what little I know about Netflix’s menu of programming, TV shows are pretty easy to find—the vast majority of shows are available to binge watch at your leisure. Still, I’m sure with my luck there would be something I watch not on there. Then there’s the issue of movies. I don’t watch movies all the time, but I like having a wide variety to pick from, which from what I can gather about Netflix, is not necessarily the case. They are constantly working to get better, newer movies on their format faster, but their choices are a little limited for the time being. Again, this is just as I (an admitted Netflix ignoramus) understand it.
2. HBO
HBO holds a special place in my heart. Sure, they show movies. Yes, they have boxing. But how HBO got their hooks in me and kept them in is with their original programming. I’m thinking back as far as I can, and the oldest shows I remember watching are Tales from the Crypt, Kids in the Hall and Dream On. Then I got hooked on OZ, followed by the big daddy, still my favorite show of all time, The Sopranos (R.I.P. James Gandolfini—still missed). Since then, HBO has pretty much kept their momentum, with a few bumps in the road of course, with Six Feet Under, The Wire, and Big Love, and currently with True Blood, Game of Thrones, and True Detective.
Time is a flat circle.
And that’s just the scripted shows.
HBO just struck a deal with Amazon (another alternate TV viewing option) to stream their shows, but only shows that are at least 3 years old. Right now my wife and I are getting ready to watch the final season of True Blood (are they really going to let Tara survive the entire series?), then a cool-looking new show called The Leftovers starts next week, so we’ll be checking that out, and I just started getting into Veep and Silicon Valley. My point is, I’m in too deep.
Damn you, HBO…
Which brings me to…
3. I’m a creature of habit.
I’m writing this on Sunday morning. Once I’m done with this and any other writing I’m working on, I’ll go sit in front of the TV and see what’s on. I’ll look through the onscreen guide, flip to something I’ve never heard of or want to see what it is—I’ll channel surf. That’s what I do, and I can’t imagine not doing it with Netflix.
Last night I found myself watching some show called The Pool Master, about some British guy who was hired to build a dream pool for this (evidently filthy stinkin’ rich) couple in Kentucky. They wanted this dramatic pool built on the side of a cliff, deep enough to high dive off rocks—to cliff dive into their pool, basically—that would have a water feature and a fire pit, etc. It was a massive undertaking as the Brit had to figure out the logistics of digging out the hole for the pool, moving the enormous stones he wanted to use to construct their cliff diving thingie, and it was really interesting…for about ten minutes.
I love doing that kind of thing. Seeing something on and going, what the hell is that? And changing the channel to see just what the hell it is. I know if I cancelled my TV service I could still get a handful of basic channels (the networks) with an antenna, but I’ve been down that road during especially bad storms that take out the satellite signal, and living off antenna is not something I want to do again. Homo sapiens have evolved this far, I’m not going to take a giant leap backwards and watch TV off an antenna like some animal. That’s a slippery slope—where does it end, doing away with my remote and getting up every time I want to change the channel?
I know some of you remember…
Despite all my ramblings, I’ll probably end up getting Netflix sooner rather than later. I think it’s actually a really cool service that would make a nice addition to my TV viewing experience. But to me, that’s all would be: an addition; an enhancement to what I already have. I’m not ready now, and may never be in the future, to cut myself off completely from the pay TV lifeline I’ve been weaned on for so long.
I’m curious what anyone can tell me about Netflix—are you happy with it? Do you find its choices limiting? Have you dropped cable/satellite altogether?
After proudly telling the world (which is, literally, tens of people) I’d finally gotten not one, but two stories accepted for publication last month, next I did the only thing I could—I waited. And waited. I realized that I had no idea when either magazine/journal would actually come out, and started to feel a little uncomfortable that perhaps I’d tooted my own horn a little prematurely. Friday I finally got word that one of them is officially out, on the market and available for sale.
The Rusty Nail Literary Journal May/June issue is out now! Hard copies are available for purchase from Amazon here, and digital downloads are available at their website here. In it you will find my flash fiction piece “Aiden’s Acting Up Again.”
It’s a bit surreal, after all this time finally seeing my name and my words in a real-life, published product. It feels pretty cool.
“Aiden” is a bit of an anomaly compared to a lot of my other stuff. For one thing, there’s not a single curse word, which I can assure you, despite the generally PG-rated nature of the blog most of the time, is pretty rare indeed.
Also, no one dies, making it one of maybe two or three of my stories with a goose egg in the body count department.
This story began as part of my Reddit ‘No Sleep’ Experiment. I uploaded it to /r/nosleep and it was fairly popular, with readers asking for more ‘updates’ to the story. I ended up writing two additional pieces to bring the story to an end, but I rushed through them and don’t really like them. I honestly think Aiden is perfect as a stand alone story, ending the way it does on an unnerving note.
Check out the story (and the entire issue for that matter, it’s chock-full of other great stories), I hope you like it!
It’s been a crazy week or so around here, but oddly enough there’s not much to say as to why it’s been so crazy. There may be something to talk about in the near future, but for now it’s just crickets and tumbleweeds around here.
This is making me homesick for California.
In a smidge of writing news, I finished one of my short stories and submitted it in a contest with a grand prize of publication in a crime magazine. So far it’s one of the top-rated stories, but the reading and submission period just started so I’m not about to count my chickens before they hatch. If any of you have a free account with Lit Reactor (or are bored enough to create one) you can click on the link for the contest and look for my name—the story is titled Early Retirement. (There are also plenty of other killer stories by the other contestants, as well)
Do any of you fellow writers use writing prompts? I’m not a huge fan of them for the most part, but there is one writing prompt website I like: TypeTrigger.com. What I like about Type Trigger is that it’s kind of like the writer’s equivalent of Twitter—you take their prompt and write whatever comes spewing out of your brain with the restriction that you only have three hundred words to work with. I’ve almost reached that already in this post, so you can see it’s not a lot of room to tell a story. I don’t use it all that often, but through their prompts I have come up with a couple of odd little stories I sort of liked. Since I don’t have much else to talk about right now, I decided to share one.
The prompt for this one was ‘a cheap wig.’ I thought for a couple minutes and this is what I came up with. Enjoy.
The Emancipation of Jackie
Jackie smiled at his marks with calm assurance. He knew they wanted the car, and he was determined to make the sale. “It’s the model you said you wanted,” he reminded them. They were a young couple; newlyweds, in fact. They had told him so and he used that information to his advantage. “Surely you don’t want to disappoint your new bride.”
“Well, it’s just…”Jeff began, his new wife’s hand in his. “It’s really a skeleton of a car. It doesn’t even have air conditioning.”
“I see.” Jackie realized the mark was trying to sweeten the deal. If that was what it took to close the sale, so be it. “I can throw in a few extras, how does that sound? What would you like? Maybe a nice leather steering wheel cover?”
Jeff looked at his wife, thoughtful. He turned back to Jackie with a gleam in his eye. “The rug,” he said.
Jackie frowned, confused. “You mean floor mats? I suppose I can make that happen, I might need—”
“No, the rug,” Jeff repeated. “On your head.”
Jackie felt his face heat up. “Sir, I don’t…uh…”
Jeff grinned. “If you take that dead animal that passes for a toupee off your head right now, and promise never to put it on again, I’ll buy this car.” His wife giggled.
Jackie waved as the car drove away, and for the first time in years he felt free.
I’ve been on Twitter quite awhile now, but I never really used it in a “professional” capacity. I followed mostly comedians and the like, and that was how I enjoyed my Twitter: as occasional entertainment, for a few laughs and not much else. I followed some writers, some fellow bloggers, and that was it.
I started noticing that some of the fellow writers that Twitter would suggest I follow had massive amounts of followers, and wasn’t quite sure how they amassed such huge numbers. Then it hit me—it’s quid pro quo. Follow somebody (especially a writer), they follow you in return. So I wondered what would happen if I just started following people like crazy; would they follow me back?
I got my answer. Last Wednesday I had about 175 followers. Today? 1,014. It was so easy it’s ridiculous. Thing is, it’s also ruined what I liked about Twitter, because now I’m also following well over a thousand people as well. Most of the tweets from the people I already know and like get buried by all the others writers I’m now following. I guess that’s just the price of trying to get more followers for your cause, no? I don’t know…it’s just a weird predicament.
Speaking of followers, I just recently—in the past two weeks or so—realized you could follow people on Facebook (if they allow themselves to be followed, that is). What happened is that I saw a comment on a writer friend’s status update from a writer/editor I’ve mentioned here before. I’ve read some of his stories, and he also writes columns to help writers get published, etc. So I clicked on his name to check out his profile and happened to notice next to the ‘send friend request’ button was a button that said simply, ‘follow.’ I went ahead and clicked it, and to be honest, that’s opened my eyes to a world I barely knew existed on Facebook.
Because now I see everything—again, everything he allows followers to see—he likes and comments on, and a good 95% of it is related to his writer friends, magazines and journals accepting submissions, new publishers getting ready to open, all sorts of stuff. It made me feel dumb for not realizing I could/should’ve been doing that way earlier (and, to be fair, my friend Steven Dines was hip to this long ago, I just never noticed—once again he leads the way). Which leads me to Mike.
A few of you who have been reading the blog long enough may remember, but most of you probably don’t know: a friend of mine passed away a couple of years ago from pancreatic cancer. We were fairly close friends many, many moons ago, then drifted apart and reconnected through social media over the last decade. During the time we lost touch, he became a kick ass husband, teacher, and writer. As a matter of fact, finding Mike on MySpace (yes, it was that long ago) and seeing that he’d not only been writing books but getting them published lit a fire under my ass.
While I wasn’t looking, Mike (he wrote under his full name, Michael Louis Calvillo) was out there knocking books and short stories out like a machine, winning Dark Scribe magazine’s Black Quill Award and being nominated for a coveted Bram Stoker Award by the Horror Writer’s Association. I realized then that I needed to get my ass off the couch and back to the keyboard and start knocking out stories of my own. And so it began.
I was still trying to get myself back on the writing path when he passed, so I never got the chance to really pick his brain or get any sage advice on publishing or anything else he had experience with. He was happy with his publishers, so whenever I’m ready to submit a novel of my own I know of a couple that would be receptive to my style of writing, which is admittedly a little tamer than Mike’s.
But here’s the real kicker—as I’ve been expanding my network on Facebook, following writers, editors, and publishers, a funny thing’s been happening: when I look at the person/company’s FB page, it will show we have a mutual friend—Mike. For just a second, when I see his name and the profile pic he used (the cover of the book he was working on when he passed), I feel sad. But then it makes me smile, because it lets me know that even though I’ll never get to talk shop with him like I would’ve liked, I’m assured that I’m heading in the right direction.
I could write volumes about the kind of guy Mike was and the enormous talent he had—I think he literally could’ve rivaled Stephen King’s output if given the chance—but that’s a bit self-indulgent. I’ll just say he was a hell of a guy, and I’ll leave it at that. If you have any interest in reading some absolutely crazy dark fiction (crazy in a good way, of course), check out his stuff here or here.
On a final note, for anyone keeping score at home, my publishing hot streak ended at two. I’ve gotten two rejections since my last post. That’s okay though; big wheel keeps on turnin’. I’ve still got that batch of stories submitted elsewhere, and I have two new short stories in the 3k word range I’m getting ready to submit to some fairly high profile places. One is about a burned out office drone who decides he’s had enough, and one is about a man driven to madness—and potentially blindness—by this rubber bank:
My dad came to visit over Memorial Day weekend. If you’re wondering after reading my previous post about what happens whenever my in-laws visit, you’ll be happy to know that my dad’s stay was thankfully uneventful.
The timing of him coming when he did worked out fairly well—I’d hit a stumbling block with one of my stories, because I was trying to describe a place I’d never been to; I’d only seen pictures/video. By coming when he did, he unwittingly volunteered to help me research by traveling 45 minutes north to the town of Hutchinson, KS (aka “Hutch” to the locals) to visit the Kansas Underground Salt Museum, otherwise known as Strataca.
Admittedly, it doesn’t look like much from the parking lot.
Strataca has been a fully functioning salt mine since the 1920’s, but just opened to the public in 2007. They provide tours of the facility, showing how the salt is mined and how they go about day to day operations. There is also an underground vault and storage area, which was key to our visit. More on that in a minute.
As the name implies, the salt mine is underground. WWAAYY underground. 650 feet, to be exact. And there’s only one way down (or back up, naturally)—a huge elevator that plummets you into total blackness for about 90 seconds. When you step off the elevator you have to remind yourself that you really are underground; the area just off the elevator is just massive. Huge open areas with higher ceilings than you’d expect display the tools they use to cut, drill, and blast into the mine, as well as the vehicles they use to get around, like these Road Warrior-looking monsters:
There was both a train and a tram that would take you around some of the abandoned areas of the mine, which was incredibly cool. The size of it is really astounding; they said they might be in danger of running out of salt to mine in a few hundred years. But, as interesting as it all was, it was not really the true purpose of the visit—as I said earlier, I was doing research:
A secured area? Exciting!
As I mentioned, the salt mine is also home to an underground vault and storage area. Thousands of things are stored down there, with it’s secure, climate-controlled abandoned mines providing near-perfect conditions for long term storage. And the biggest customer to take advantage of the storage area? Hollywood studios. Some of the items are out on display.
Dorothy II !There are a lot of all cool and valuable things in the vault. They also have this suit worn by Cameron Diaz in Charlie’s AngelsProbably my favorite thing I saw down there.
The ‘research’ I was doing was for a story about some nimrod criminals who find themselves at Strataca and realize how much valuable booty is stored inside. And despite being so stupid, they’re also quite arrogant.
A few shelves with dummy boxes, to give people an idea how much is kept in the actual storage area, which is vast.Could these BE better pictures?
They start to get a harebrained idea.
Sure, Dean Cain’s Superman suit is cool…And so is Matt Damon’s outfit from Monuments Men. But do you see all those film reel canisters behind them?
They start to think certain types of people might pay a lot of money for some of the stuff stored down there. Stupidity ensues.
Strataca is a really neat place, and if you ever find yourself in the middle of the country you should certainly take a couple of hours to visit (and, if you have the time, you should also check out Hutch’s other crown jewel, the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center—they have all sorts of rocket/space stuff).
My dad and I walked through the entire mine/museum before heading back to the massive elevator that would take us back up to the surface. While we were waiting, I asked, “So…how would we rob it?”
Great news: another one of my stories, Aiden’s Acting Up Again, has been accepted for publication by The Rusty Nail Literary Magazine. I’m not sure of their publication schedule, so I can’t tell you when to look for it, but of course I’ll pass along the info when I get it.
So, after months (maybe over a year?) of rejections—approximately 42—suddenly I’ve gotten two acceptances in seven days. It’s amazing, to say the least. I don’t really have as good a grasp as I should on the demographics of my followers, so I’m not sure if there are people out there in the same boat I am (aspiring writers) reading the blog. I purposely decided quite a while ago to not write about writing so much, because it bored me, and if it’s boring to write about how must it be to read?
Anyway, if there are any beginning or aspiring writers reading this (or any aspiring anythings for that matter), all I can say is the hard work is worth it. I’m still in the very early stages of my (hopefully long and successful) writing career, but getting these first two stories accepted has wiped away a lot of the frustration I felt writing day in and day out, thinking I was spinning my wheels and maybe wasting my time.
There were many mornings where I would get up at 6am like clockwork, grab some coffee, sit down at the computer and…stare at the screen for fifteen or twenty minutes without writing a word, before giving up altogether and browsing the internet (and on occasion, I still do). Sometimes I would get angry with how little progress I seemed to make. I would think, I’ve been getting up 90 minutes earlier than I have to to work on this crap, and it’s going nowhere—what the hell am I doing? Am I just wasting my time?
Deep down I knew I was getting better—I could see it in the new stories I was writing. But without any sort of validation from an outside source (and rejections swiftly piling up) I began to wonder if I was right. Finding online critique groups helped up to a point; there I get useful feedback, but there’s no shortage of unnecessarily harsh criticism in some of those groups; some people just seem to seethe with bitterness, eager to tear apart anything they deem unworthy. *On a side note: to the person who critiqued a story of mine by saying it was “lazy as fuck, and you know it,” that story was accepted for publication last week, so you can stick your critique where the sun don’t shine.
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to get something published this year; I thought that was perfectly reasonable, but by mid-April I began to have my doubts. Then I read a column on Lit Reactor by Richard Thomas, who seems like a very cool guy; always looking to help writers, not to mention a killer writer himself. In his column, he pointed out that many publications accept simultaneous submissions—meaning you can send something to them as well as others at the same time. Why, he asked, would you send out submissions one at a time when you could send out three, five, eight, etc? He compared it to looking for a job: you don’t apply for one, wait to hear back, then apply for another. You apply for ALL OF THEM. It seems obvious in retrospect, but I never thought of it that way.
In late April, I went for it. I submitted four or five of my stories to three or four different places each, and what do you know? He was right. I’ve seen results.
I hope you all have a good weekend. I’m going to be doing research/planning a heist on a nearly impenetrable underground vault before heading to Oklahoma for a good old-fashioned fish fry.
I’ll end with a word of warning—you’ll probably get sick of me updating when the stories are available to read, so brace yourselves. 🙂
BooksofJobe.com 