MyNoReMo: Story Three

Story Three
Working title: Assassin's Guild

Reading Philip K. Dick biographies (because I can't read the novels, all right? I just can't) put me in mind of the ultimate Reed College paranoia game that seemed to flourish during spring terms on campus. If you haven't been there, you just don't know. The Professor and I can still drive on, say, any east-west street in southeast Portland at a certain time of year, and during a lull in the conversation, I know we're both back at Reed. It's not the fall we remember with the pretty weather and the optimistic new classes, but spring when renewal and flowers and baby birds seem like a joke next to incompletes and finals and hangovers.

In the spring, it's not sunny but it's not cold, nobody is thrilled to see you anymore, the drug of choice is some anti-social speed derivative, half the people in your dorm never leave their rooms, at least one had an abortion (you hear her crying), another is taking LSD every day (you hear him crying), and the rest are playing D & D. All they serve is sheet cake in the Commons; you go and sit for hours in the infirmary because something hurts, you're just not sure what, and your boyfriend's thesis on Walter Pater (for which he will receive the coveted AA) is making the sophomore biology major down the hall look very, very, very delicious. And you haven't gone to French class in a month.

Okay, the story's not about that. It's about a paranoid game called Assassin. Who knew everyone in every college plays Assassin? Called Killer at Reed, all I ever knew about it was one skinny, terrified math major who found himself walking alone to the mail room. "Just walk with me, okay? If I'm not alone, they can't kill me." "Who's going to kill you?" "I don't know."

This article in Wikipedia will tell you everything you want to know about Killer, but make special note of where they talk about umps and cops.

So picture this, a dead body killed with Nerf darts. Our heroine, a detective on the case, has no clues except a phone number in the cell phone. It belongs to a man who has been a cop in Killer games for twenty years. Down on his luck, seen it all, probably has cats. He doesn't know who the killer is but he can guess. How do you catch a Killer killer gone rogue? With a clothes pin.

MyNoReMo: Story Two

Story Two
Working Title: That Story I Always Wanted to Write About Pod People and School Shootings.

Except what if it's the teacher who does the shooting? And what if the adults act crazy but aren't? And it's really the evil children? Admit it, haven't you always wanted to write about this? Think Ghost Story meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I've read Ghost Story many times. After I saw the movie, I couldn't picture Ricky Hawthorne as anyone but Fred Astaire. The author, Peter Straub, internalized the lessons of HP Lovecraft in such a delicate yet persistent way: the surface comforts and predictability of the regular world is only a thin and rather fragile veneer over the rotten secrets of the past. And the past is an engine of destruction that these old men have been avoiding for years.

The best part of all is when the evil thing is trapped in the body of the child and the younger guy (okay, been a few years since I read it and I don't remember the dude's name) drives cross country with the child bound and gagged in the back seat. It was an innocent time.

And then there are pod people stories ("That's not my mother! It killed my mother!"). As a parent, it's not so hard to believe. I once called daughter Chichi a vampire whore when I was at the absolute limit of my ability to understand her. She looked at me with empty eyes, an utterly alien creature with no human feelings. Brrr! She blames me for that now, BTW.

So the story would be a kind of Children of the Corn homage, except the Dad suspects it's his wife who is crazy. Until the end.

I have about four pages and an image of the husband and wife staring into one another's eyes and seeing nothing. I suspect this story will devolve into mayhem at the end, and I will feel unclean. Or stupid. Or possibly both.

I don't know about this one. Am I feeling it?

MyNoReMo

Accept the challenge and weep. While some people are revising their nearly perfect novels in April—revision being another word for reading more dusty old books about historic personages—some people will be forging ahead into the unknown. Yes, creativity, the piquant soup of the empty screen, the doubt, the wretchedness, the glory….

I've spent the last twenty years in dystopic dyspepsia, using my own blood for red ink. But now Madison, After is finished. Done. All 290 pages of zombies, flying saucers, teen sex, and cold canned chili. One last flogging by my critique partners on Saturday (and entering their tiny changes on Sunday) and I will be relieved. Then I boot the novel out the door to collect rejections from people who refuse to see the good in a can of ten-year old pears. It's in there, baby, it's in there.

(Note to agents: the revision took exactly seven months, during which time I was in Nepal for three weeks. It's not like I spent twenty Earth years on MA, though my crit group may measure time differently. BTW it's an awesome book and you really should request it.)

Anyways, here's what I'm doing in April—all new crap no one has ever seen before.

My plan is to post notes on each of my six exciting new story ideas, choose three to work on by the end of the week, and…finish them in April. By finish, I don't mean submission-ready, because that's not realistic for a distracted and distracting dame like myself. Clash of the Titans is coming out and there might be popcorn. Or someone nice (aka The Professor) could cook meatloaf one of these days. And a friend is going to A Dangerous Place in April and there might be some candle light vigils to attend when the guy is clapped in chains and thrown in a tiger cage. At the very least, some CNN interviews. Here's his picture:

Bye, friend!
PS. This was sent out on your birthday party invitation and people still showed up, why?)



That's the plan for the fiendish sport of MyNoReMo, or in my case MyStoReMo.