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: Story 1

Working title: Little Man

A Mormon lady discovers an actual horny little gnome dogging her steps. Is it a homunculus created by her erring husband? Is it her imagination? Or is it… real? Inspiration for this comes from an amazing 1973 Kim Darby movie called "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark." I'd barely learned to sleep without a nightlight in 1973, so I was very, very afraid. Tiny wicked little people torment a slightly crackers wife, and no one else can see them but her. A later and less inspired variant featured an evil voodoo doll which ended when the woman threw the doll into a microwave. After it dings, she opens the door and the evil spirit jumps into her.

What is it about dolls that come to life? My kids Cheech and Chichi (not their real names) had a stuffed panda bear they attacked with scissors because it was EVIL. They also had two identical Linnea dolls, one who was good and one they set on fire. In this photo Linnea has no face and that might have been part of the problem.

As a kid I was tormented by the China Doll story, which second grade girls probably still whisper to one another on the school bus. Late at night, in the dark, I would wonder why no adults knew about the very real dangers posed by dolls. I became a writer firstly to add to the wealth of knowledge about King Arthur, but secondly to warn everyone about those crazy, flesh shredding dolls.

The version I heard as a kid:
http://library.thinkquest.org/J0111082/html/Activities/ghoststories.htm#chinadoll

Here's the adult version:
http://scarystorez.wetpaint.com/page/the+china+doll

I have an early story idea about the REAL China doll, but after the initial shock value, there wasn't any place to go with the idea. It waits for another doll-fueled moment of terror in my life.

Little Man celebrates this neighbor of mine who is all about kicking some serious homunculous ass. I have five pages done, and some ideas for making Barbara the homunculous queen at the end.

Good idea?

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.

Cats, a lot of cats

Reason to believe...in Switzerland. From Lou Reed to 149 cats in one article, check out this link and say meow. I am well on my way to needing my own attorney, but as I like to say: I only have three cats at a time. The rest are outside or under the couch.

Not being a cat person by nature, I've watched my disintegration into a multi-cat housing authority with amazement and disbelief. Their main attractions are the softness of their fur and the satisfying architecture of their forms. And they purr. And they have those vacant eyes, like the blonde girls at the gym who only show up for the tanning beds. Dogs have a certain self-serving cunning that makes them about like your average four year old (I have a black lab and a border collie, both genius dogs). Cats just aren't like that. We have one, Marzi, who wakes up every morning like it's the first day of the rest of his life. I see him sometimes, wandering outside, completely lost. A fluffy white and orange cat on the edge of forever.

I could go on, but I really shouldn't. If you want to do some real good in the world, give to no-kill cat shelters and make it possible for those shelters to accommodate more cats, especially those who get dumped by the side of the road (and make their way to my house). Please. And vote in a health care plan that has psychiatric counseling for people who talk baby-talk to their cats. Ban the word "cute" from the English language. Limit cat condo furniture--that stuff is awful. And send me some aspirin.