NaNoWriMo Progress: Day Thirty

So this is it, done with another year. Once I hit 50k I couldn't be bothered writing any more. Which kind of sucks, but, eh, I kind of got bored of the pointlessness of my novel. I don't think I'll be finishing it any time soon.

At the moment I'm trying to write a novella that has spawned from some of the ideas from within the novel. The Pilgrim is a story that is constantly changing each time I go to work on it. It probably won't even be called The Pilgrim for much longer. Anyway, it's about a teenager who is orphaned when a gang of Deaths come and murder his parents. He takes to the streets, hiding from the legions of Deaths that fester about the towns, and with his pet spider, Stinky, and his television, Telly, he searches for the last remaining humans and a means to overcome Death.

And while I'm here, I'll drop a couple of reviews for the latest books I've read: Punk Land, and Shark Hunting in Paradise Garden.

Punk Land, by Carlton Mellick III:

I really enjoyed this story. It is awesome. It follows a mutated punk called Goblin, a couple of characters from Satan Burger and a Shark Girl ninja assassin as they try to overthrow the organisation that is trying to redefine the term "Punk" and dispose of all the people who fail to adhere to their standards, or who don't have enough "punk points". It's gritty, violent and entertaining, with political overtones running throughout. It's a step up from Satan Burger. It's still random as fuck, but it's a lot more cohesive and engaging.

If you've read Satan Burger, and you liked it, Punk Land definitely won't disappoint, but while it's a sequel, you probably don't need to have read Satan Burger to understand it. It couldn't hurt, but I don't think it's necessary.

Yeah, the book makes for a good read. It's pretty wicked, and the illustrations are quite fun too. It was a quick read for a 280 page book, but I feel that it by no means falls short on substance. It's fast paced from start to finish, and if you're a fan of the strange, violent, and at times, the sexual, if you're impartial to being grossed out now and again, you'll probably get a kick out of this book. It's got me excited for the next two books of his I've got on order: Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, and Sex & Death in Television Town.

Shark Hunting In Paradise Garden, by Cameron Pierce:

As with Mellick's Punk Land, this is the second book I've read of Pierce's. Although, this is the first book he's had published. Now, I don't mean to sound harsh, but you can tell it's his first book. It's wild and random and bizarre and strange, and with giant fucking flying sharks in the garden of eden? You can't really go wrong there. However, I felt like I wanted more out of it than just the strange descriptions that were each one more strange and outlandish than the page before. I loved his short story collection, his second publication, Lost in Cat Brain Land, and I think what is missing from this book is a sharpness of imagery. It's so strange it's hard to picture what everything must look like. I want to really get in there and check the place out, but once Pierce briefly describes one thing, he rushes off to describe another. I suppose you get that with a book that's only just over 100 pages long.

It was a good book, having said that. It's got a lot going on, and subverts a lot of expectations, it really messes with religion and the image of god and that sort of thing. It doesn't really cram any religious themes down your throat or anything, but it does rewrite the beginning of humankind in a really, really, really strange way. It's about a bunch of religious priests from the future, weird and demented and magical, who travel back in time to go shark hunting with Adam and Eve. What they find is a shit load of sharks and weird trees and robots and stuff. It's super messy hyperactive stuff, and while I did enjoy it, I hope Pierce's other works (I'm thinking of going for Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island next) are a bit more cohesive and well rounded.

If you like fast paced and weird books, maybe Douglas Adams knocked up a notch, you may enjoy this book. But I'd suggest checking out Lost in Cat Brain Land and making a decision from there.

NaNoWriMo Progress: Day Twenty Two

Yesterday I hit 50,000 words. I've still got a long way to go in the novel, but I think I'll take it a bit easier over the next few days. Last night I started working out the story I want to write for Eraserhead Press' New Bizarro Author Series. I'm taking two characters from Comarama, The Pilgrim and his pet spider Stinky, and I've started writing a story about those two characters in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I picture it as sort of like a bizarro version of The Road, but I'm still working out how I want the plot to play out within this setting and with these characters. For the most part, I don't want it to be hilarious. I don't want it to be so strange it's funny. What I want is to be so strange yet through the story you grow attached to the pilgrim. I want you to read it and find yourself attached to a man whose best friend is his pet spider. I don't want to feel like I'm ripping off The Road too much, so I think the main challenge will be making the distinguishing features that bring my own story into fruition. I like the idea of maybe a disease spreading throughout the earth and killing everything.

It should be an interesting challenge. For starters, there is only one main human character, so there is very little need to talk. Of course, I'm going to go into the backstory, of the pilgrim living on his farm with his wife and child. Switching between that and his journey to find any sort of human colony yet unaffected by the disease and helping them rebuild society. At the moment it's not sounding incredibly over the top bizarro, but I've got a few elements planned out nicely that won't fall into the category of "weird for the sake of being weird" but will be weird to serve a purpose that progresses the story and has its own weird logic to it. I don't want to go into details too much at the moment, partly because I'm still working a lot of things out, but also partly because I don't want to reveal spoilers of those really intense plot-shifting moments that I hope I can properly execute.

Basically, out of this NaNoWriMo has come a jumble of chapters that are connected to some form of loose plot, although sometimes just doing things for the sake of it, and now, I'm thinking of refining it, and one of the stories that has come bits and pieces from NaNo has been The Pilgrim. Travelling through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the pilgrim searches for one of the last surviving colonies on earth.

I'm undecided as to whether there will be zombies or not. As with The Road, I think there needs to be clear-defining moments of something drastic happening. And I should stop now before I depress myself. I'd hate to think I'm just doing a Bizarro Road rip off. It's more like The Road meets Jack and the Giant Beanstalk maybe with some punk ass mother fuckers along the way.

So, yeah, finished NaNoWriMo in 21 days. But the novel is far from finished.

NaNoWriMo Progress: Day Twenty

Today is going to be a slow day. But that's ok because the last few days have been very productive. At the moment, I'm 44,000 words in and I'm on chapter 11. Still not yet half way there. My dream sequences are starting to revolve around the more popular characters and having some sort of flow. Still doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's fun and easy to write nonetheless.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I have nothing planned for tomorrow, so I'm planning on hitting 50,000 words tomorrow. Today will be slow, so it will balance things out. And after that, it becomes all about keeping on writing, getting as far as I can go, and working on The Giant film script as well.

I sent an email to the Eraserhead Press author, Kevin Donihe, a few days ago and I heard back from him yesterday. It was pretty much all just details for the New Bizarro Author Series he's organising/editing/publishing, so hearing back from him about that is really encouraging. I'm looking forward to post-NaNoWriMo writing, I'm hoping to get my dream sequences together and figure out which one(s) would be best to extrapolate into a bizarro novella.

Aside from that, there's not a huge amount of stuff going on. I'm still just writing, writing, writing, and occasionally I stop. I work, I go out. I went to the WA finals of the Australian poetry slam, which was really good. Entertaining, thought provoking, and sometimes, just totally weird. But it was a lot of fun.

And "I will touch you in the end."

NaNoWriMo Progress: Day Eighteen

I'm almost at 40,000 words and I'm ten chapters into my novel. Ten out of twenty eight. At the moment I'm feeling really good about that. I'm still having a lot of fun with it, and I think I know why. So every second chapter is a dream sequence. I can basically make up anything I want, it can be as ridiculous as I like. My last dream sequence was about my main character Cliff going with his travelling companion The Pilgrim, and The Pilgrim's pet spider Stinky, going into Toyland to meet with The Child.

Then came the real world chapter that somehow needs to compete with that? I feel like I should have written more for that chapter, and for some of the other real world chapters, but I think I ended it short (not too short though) because I wanted to get right onto the next dream. And now I'm there and I brought back Stinky and The Pilgrim. Honestly, I'm fond of those two. And I decided to be sneaky and steal the first hudred and something words from the previous chapter to get it starting in the same place. But basically, what I'd like to do with this dream sequence is give The Pilgrim more of a soul. The last one he was serving the purpose of The Child's dream, where this one I'd like to expose him as more than that.

Anyway, in traditional dream sequence fashion, I've made the plot of this dream about Cliff and The Pilgrim travelling into the mountains to go to the big cheese fountain and trade the lords of the cheese board some magic beans for a cup of cheese each (a saucer for Stinky) so that they can gain divine super powers. It should be a real hoot. And maybe something goes wrong and had a super sad ending.

So, yeah, it's all blistering along, nice and ridiculous. In the real fictional world, there is a book called Crazy Mother Fuckers, a B-grade horror film called Corpse Man and a hypothetical avant-garde film called Man Eats Breakfast. Oh, and in this place that is Perth but isn't Perth, there's this underground second hand shop in the city that sells some REALLY WEIRD SHIT.

So I'll just keep on writing, and letting things get weirder and weirder and I'll probably reach the 50,000 words quite soon ish hopefully. And then next month I might read back through it and wonder where all this crazy junk came from.

NaNoWriMo Progress: Day Seventeen

Last night, I finished my final essay for uni for the year. I also finished reading Satan Burger yesterday too. I didn't write all that much on my novel though. However, now the only thing that's holding me back is work and a social life. Over the next few days I plan on catching up to my 2,500 word a day goal, which is at the moment 6,500 ahead of me, although I expect to most definitely have that well under 5,000 by the end of tonight.

Also, now that uni has finished, I'll be bringing a couple of projects back onto the table to finish before the end of the year. One is the film script for 'The Giant' which will eventually make its way into becoming an actual film. And other short stories for various arrangements, which I probably won't get right into until December, but they're there on the table nonetheless.

So where I am now in the novel is chapter eight, dream sequence number four. It's not as outlandish as the last dream sequence, I probably wouldn't go so far as to call it bizarro, however, it's got elements of the bizarre that could be explored further, perhaps post nano. And it stands to connect with the first dream sequence in that, yes, it will actually progress the plot along in some form. 33,000 words in and my story is finally beginning to go somewhere.

So, yeah, still writing strong, recovering from the hiccup of yesterday's unproductive novelling, and I'm glad I still managed to write something down, even if it was only about 700 words. Keep pushing forward, keep writing, and hopefuly I'll have that 2.5k a day target pegged down soon enough, and maybe I'll even hit the 50,000 word target by November 20. I would be thrilled to achieve that.

Now, on to a brief book review of Satan Burger.

The book is really hard to explain outside of "this shit is fucked up" but I'll try anyway. It's got something to do with God and Earth being sick of regular human beings, so heaven's closed and this portal, the 'walm' has opened up and is feeding on people's souls, turning them into soulless, boring creatures that do little but stand around and stare at walls and shrug. In addition to sucking people's souls, the walm allows strange alien beings onto Earth, and these beings are loved by God and by Earth because they are much more interesting. They're sexual, they're violent, they're very full on. In other words: STRANGE = GOOD. So Satan starts a burger joint to collect people's souls, and the main characters work there so they don't lose their own souls.

It's an entertaining read, no doubt, but it's also got some interesting ideas going on as well. It's quite a clusterfuck, but it ties up some good plot points that initially seem like they're there just to be strange. I'm probably not doing a good job explaining the book, but really, there is so much going on it's really difficult to give an accurate, concise summary without just reading the blurb. I'm not surprised it's a cult classic. It's full on, disturbing, amusing, and occasionally thought provoking stuff. A few basic spelling and grammatical errors slipped through the editing process, but for an underground literary movement just beginning to blossom, I'm more than happy to nudge those little inconsistencies aside and say that this Carlton Mellick III certainly knows how to tell an entertaining story. I am hesitant to recommend this to too many people because it doesn't hold back at all, but if you like being disturbed in strange new ways, I recommend giving it a read.

I've also bought Mellick's sequel-of-sorts, Punk Land, which I'm waiting to arrive eagerly in the mail.

Anyway, back to novelling I go...

NaNoWriMo Progress: Day Fifteen

Day fifteen, the halfway mark. I'm already almost 5,000 words over the 25,000 words, so whatever I have at the end of today I plan to at least double that by the end of the month. However, I have to write my last essay for uni some time over the next two and a half days, so that should slow me down a bit, hopefully not too much.

I have finished the bizarro story that I dropped into the novel as an extended dream sequence, and it turned out to be a 13,000 word long chapter. So I'm pretty happy with that, for four-five days writing. I've got a few other strange dream sequences lined up, which hopefully should be just as fun to write.

I've also sent an email out to the guys at Eraserhead Press regarding their New Bizarro Author Series, because they're looking for young, up-and-coming bizarro authors to publish novellas and short stories and things. So I sent them an email to find out if I'm eligible to get in on that. I would be seriously so amazed and thrilled if they'd be willing to put me into print in book form.

So now my novel's back into the realm of the real, and I'm still managing to roll along with the plotless narrative and still actually have stuff happen. Although I think a few more chapters in, I'll have to start developing the comarama narrative of Cliff seeking the coma kid, but there's plenty of time for that later. At the moment it's sort of turned into a twisted romance novel between the two social outcasts, Cliff and Zelda, and their struggle to resist the social norms. It's a sort of hauntingly sentimental undertone that runs parallel to all the strange things that happen in the novel. I think, as things stand at the moment, no one thing is more important than the other, things just happen and Cliff rolls with the punches and keeps going against the grain.

I haven't plotted out the second half of the real world story yet, but I've got an idea what I want to happen. However, I'm only 7 chapters in, and it'll be another 7 before I reach the half way marker in my novel, so it may be that I only make it half way through my novel over the course of November. Which is both really exciting and disheartening at the same time.

NaNoWriMo Progress: Day Ten

So I'm at a point in my novel where I've decided to just drop in a bizarro novella of a dream sequence in there for no reason whatsoever other than to make things quirky and interesting. However, upon closer inspection, it's coming out sort of like what Cormac McCarthy's the Road would be like if it were written by Carlton Mellick III or Cameron Pierce.

What's basically going on is that the main character and three others are all that remains of the ice-popsicle people that live on the great travelling giant's back. All the others have melted away over the years, leaving them to walk the desolate town north, hoping to reach the giant's head and turn him back north before the spring heat turns them to puddles.

I'm only part of the way through the story, but they've run into a couple of giant ass-tumours trashing the local supermarket. As they go on, searching for shelter by day, walking and walking and walking by night, will they reach their destination in time? Can they turn this monolithic beast around in time? And what other dangerous creatures will they run into, whilst walking up Rupert's great spine?

I'm six chapters and almost 18,000 words into my novel and I'm probably around a quarter into the narrative, if that. Which is really promising for actually giving this novel some real substance, something last year's novel was severely lacking. I figure, the worst I can do is stop writing at the end of November around the 50,000 word mark and leave the novel unfinished, in which case I'll have a bunch of dream sequences which would make for interesting short stories on their own.

Anyway, I was planning on writing a considerable amount more today, so I'll get back onto that, and hopefully I'll be well into my 20,000s by tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo Progress: Day Five

I didn't write much yesterday and I've only got a few days until a major research essay is due for uni. So the next few days are going to be pretty full on. But disregarding that for a moment, I'd like to talk about the subject matter of my novel for a moment.

It's completely and utterly fucked. I knew that it would be, to some extent, going into this thing. Basically, I think the entire thing is going to be about death. I could go chapter by chapter and say what is wrong with each, but so far, four chapters in, there's pedophilia, attempted murder, a ghost that convinces people to commit suicide, amongst other things, and I'm yet to really get into the swing of things.

Needless to say, I think I've really hit the ground running, come out swinging, cue action montage. Sure, it's hard to write some of the things I do, but for the most part, I think my main character is a likeable antihero, and thus, he's not completely cruel or lacking any form of morality just yet. Although I do believe that my novel sounds much more grim and unsatisfying when lining the themes up alongside eachother. In reality, the second chapter is quite charming and the ghost in the fourth chapter is likeable in spite of his wanting you to jump out that window. I think it's this that is making the novel really fun to write. It's all about death and ugly themes that relate to death, but it handles it in a black humour sort of way. Like people jumping out of buildings, the things that go splat in the night. That's Hunter, the ghost in the hotel. :)

NaNoWriMo Progress: Day Three

Ok, progress on my NaNoWriMo novel is coming along great, despite minor annoyances, such as having a cold and uni assignments and all that. I've finished two chapters and plan on getting well into my third by the end of the day. I'm keeping on top of the 1,667 words per day target quite comfortably, although I'm a little behind on my personal target of 2,500 words per day. No matter, things should run a lot faster once these last few assignments are done, I'll really kick things up a notch about half way through the month. I've still got a lot of planning to do for the last 2/3rds of the novel, I'm not exactly sure what will happen there, but I'm only really working off loose outlines anyway, putting a larger emphasis on language and characterisation to drive the novel along. I'm still planning on having a bizzaro novella dream sequence in the middle somewhere but that still won't be for a while. I'm currently over five and a half thousand words in, planning to write quite a bit more this afternoon, so we'll see how that goes.

I think that it's definitely turning out better than last year's novel, and my JulNoWriMo attempt. Hopefully, the finished product will be somewhere around the 70-80,000 word mark.

An all-consuming black hole

If you haven't already, please download my zine 'Splinters'. I'd really appreciate it. And thanks to those who have already downloaded it and read through it, and even exchanged a few words with me about it.

Right now, it seems there's an endless black hole of a 'to-do' list hovering over me at the moment:

Tomorrow I'm performing in the WA heats of the Australian poetry slam, link here.

At uni I have a 20 minute stage play to write (which is coming along fantastically, I must admit, of the 4-5 pages I have written), 2 essays and 2 other little reflection/report things.

After that I'll get right onto wrapping my head around writing a 20 minute film script to eventually produce with a friend.

And of course, the start of next week is the start of November is the start of NaNoWriMo, in which I'll be trying to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

So that's what I'm busy with at the moment. But it should be a lot better in about two week's time where my goals list will be about half the size. I would, however, like to focus in on a couple of things on that list.

NaNoWriMo, there's always 1001 things I can say about it. But I take sympathy on you and will try to keep things brief. This year I'm going postmodern lit fic. Takes place over two weeks, with one chapter for each day (reality) and night (dream) of my protagonist/anti-hero's tragic little life. So it's basically a chapter a day, which I'll probably write in Stream-of-consciousness to make it easier to slip into the 'anything goes' mindset of NaNoWriMo, but also to really sink into the character and be strange/postmodern.

I'm doing a couple of things to warm up, to get ready for NaNoWriMo this year. I've started doing a flash-a-day thing, where I'll basically write a flash fiction piece, usually a sentence or two that hints towards something that needs context to mean something. That's something I'll be looking to maintain over November and beyond. And the other thing I'm doing is typing up Fight Club into my computer. I figure, taking the time to write the words up will give me time to absorb what they're doing, and how it's all set up. I don't know yet if I'll just do a chapter or two and move on to another book or something, but I'm thinking, come November, I might use it to warm my fingers up before I start working on my own novel.

And another thing I'd like to talk about is the books I've read recently. I've been meaning to talk about them, but just never got around to it. You can see on the side there, a list of "currently reading" and "recently read" books. Strangely enough, those lists correspond to books I am currently reading and books I have recently read, respectively.

"Haunted" - by Chuck Palahniuk
Where to start this one is to say that it's not for the faint-hearted. If you get grossed out easily, you probably won't see the appeal in this book. I, for one, loved it. It's dark, it's brutal, it's cringingly funny, I found that while I was reading it I was thinking, 'is this guy for real'? It's a strange and uncomfortable journey, and while there is some doubt whether it's just some elaborate hoax put out by Palahniuk purely to revolt his readers, there is an interesting theme that underlies the narrative, and that is how people transform at the prospect of fame.

The novel (I guess you could call it a novel) consists of a series of short stories and poems brought together by an overarching narrative. Basically, a group of people respond to an ad regarding a writer's retreat. They find themselves locked in an abandoned theatre and the situation turns into a sort of reality tv type scenario, where the writers turn against each other in search of the story that will bring them more fame and glory than the person before them. I highly recommend it if you're not easily grossed out or offended.

"Wild Surmise" by Dorothy Porter
I read this, as I did 'The Monkey's Mask' within a very short time frame. It's the second verse novel of hers that I've read, and it follows a scientist (a biological astrologist? something like that) as she searches for signs of life on Jupiter's moon, Europa. Of course, that's juxtaposed with her domestic life, and the sexual conflicts with her partner and her lesbian colleagues. It's a good read, and she really is a master of metaphor, but I felt that it didn't quite have the edge that 'The Monkey's Mask' did.

"Fahrenheit 451" - by Ray Bradbury
It took me a long while to get into this book, especially considering how short it is. And I'm not sure if I finished it so quickly because I was truly fascinated by it or whether I just wanted to reach the end. It's a dystopian novel about book burning, and the censorship of ideas. The content was really good, but I can't help but feel that the execution was lacking something. It wasn't as richly involving as I'd have liked, it was very narrowly focused on the main character and it ended quite abrubtly. It's a good dystopian novel, I feel I should really get on to reading 1984 and Brave New World so that I've got more to compare it to. At the moment I can only really compare it to 'A Clockwork Orange', which I have to say, there really is no competition. A good book? Yes, definitely. But it's certainly no masterpiece.

"If on a Winter's Night A Traveller" - Italo Calvino
I was really excited to read this book. It didn't take me too long to read this one, and, like with 'Fahrenheit 451' I finished it in much of a fluster. However, I finished this one so fast because I was compelled to read on, I was fascinated by this book.

It's told in the second person, which, I know, will immediately put some people off. However, Calvino has tackled it from a really fascinating perspective, and as the book progresses the "I" character who is posing as the author distinguishes the "you" as a character known as "the Reader", as opposed to the "you" that is actually reading the book. As such, he plays around with the narrative style, and calls to question a number of writing techniques he uses throughout the novel. It's a very clever story, and it's very playful in the way it goes about telling the story. I'd imagine even if you're not a fan of the second person point of view, you'd be able to see the charm Calvino's invested into the character.

The narrative itself follows the Reader as he tries to read the book 'If on a Winter's Night A Traveller', only to find a printing error, which leads him on to the rest of the book. So it's made up of 12 chapters referring to the character trying to find his books, and 10 chapters of the starts of the books he finds but can not finish. It's very clever and very entertaining, and sometimes utterly perplexing, but if you like reading books that make you think then it's most definitely worth the read.

Comarama: NaNoWriMo 2010

It's getting towards that time of year again, my second turn at NaNoWriMo. In the months approaching, I've had quite a lot of ideas buzzing through my head, and at one point I decided to work through bits and pieces of all of them. And then I developed a few ideas for one piece more than the others, and I think I've whittled it down to the one novel I'm going to write over November: Comarama.

In the grand plotting and scheming of things, there is a lot of progress to be made, especially since I want this story to triumph over last year's very basic novel. And considering my JulNoWriMo attempt was just a free for all, make it up as I go along sort of thing, and that it just sort of fizzled out, the plan is to come prepared for something a little more intricate than a stock-standard hero's journey.

Basically, Comarama is a story of two alternating plotlines. The "night" plot which occurs in the narrator's dream world when he's asleep, and the "day" plot which occurs when he's awake. Simple enough. So the concept with the dream aspect of the story is that he's gradually learning that he's tuning in to the bizarre and surreal dream world of a child in a coma. Meanwhile in the real world he's looking for a sense of purpose. The story starts when he takes a two week holiday to get away from his work, his family and his friends. He tells everyone he's heading east, but while he's looking to escape, he's not going to find what he's looking for in another city. He parks his car at the airport and catches a taxi to a hotel in the city, where he hopes he'll find some perspective viewing his hometown as a stranger, a tourist. What makes this place so frustrating? So difficult?

I don't know yet, but I've got until the end of October to really flesh my ideas out before I start writing. At least now, I feel there's some sort of drive in the two plot lines, and clear indicators that somewhere down the path they will intersect. I expect these next few months to be quite interesting.

Reading and writing and all that jazz

I need a new bookshelf desperately. My books are just about overflowing from my little bookshelf in my little bedroom. Literally. I have no room.

But I'll keep buying more books anyway. ;) There's still a few more at the moment that I've got an eye on. I'm thinking of maybe creating a list of the books I own and the books I've read and maybe talk a bit about them here. Well, the interesting ones, at least. A lot of them are classics or cult classics or written by authors who have written classics or cult classics.

The last book I finished was Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis. Which was absolutely brilliant. He had it published when he was 21. Fuck me, people like him make me so jealous. If I write a Less Than Zero by next year I'd be over the fucking moon.

Having said that, I felt that it resonated with me very much like Cormac McCarthy's The Road did. They're both minimalist novels without a difinitive plot and with a couple of holy-fucking-shit moments that really stuck in my mind alongside the rest of the hum-drum narratives. The key differences between the two stories are that one's first person and the other's third, and one's set in '80s LA and the other's in post-apocalyptic American wasteland. Both really gripping reads.

I'm currently reading my way through Neil Gaiman's epic novel, American Gods. I've got about 200 pages to go, and right from the get go, there's a sensation of bliss caused by his elegantly spun sentences. I don't know many authors who can just phrase sentences in such a beautiful and articulate way. It stands out, to the point that I've noticed the occasional sentence that isn't quite that brilliant and it makes me disappointed, where in your average novel the sentence would slip by unnoticed. The man is a syntactical genius.

Now, on to my writing, which is all over the place at the moment. Literally. I've got bits and pieces of poems and short stories all over my desk. I'm currently working on three poems for my experimental writing class, which, I must say, I'm having a lot of fun with. There are a few restrictions, but I feel like I'm starting to balance things out nicely now. 20 lines. First poem has to be a language based poem playing around with colours. I've got a kaleidoscope of overly wordy descriptions of surrealist imagery (the line lengths would only fit on the page landscape style), and I'm playing around a bit with alliteration, rhyme, disassociation and variation. The second poem has to be a referent poem. Based on a core idea or theme. Simple enough. I've got a suicide-poem written on a burger wrapper to play with the idea of consumerism. The third poem is open, although has to relate to the exercises in the first few chapters in our textbook. I've gone with a collage poem, where I've taken sentences from four of my favourite books at random and pieced them into a poem. I need to shorten this poem a bit, but I really love how it fits together and stands on its own, showing very little trace of the original source material.

That's been keeping me entertained, playing around with language and structure and technique. but I've also got a performance script (10 minutes) to write for three weeks' time. I've got a lot of work to do on this one, but I'm going to take the 10 minutes from a short story I wrote recently and pick a scene or two from that. I've started writing out the character list, and that's about it. But I've been doing the list from the whole short story, which, I'm sure all of them won't feature in the script.

I'll have to send away my short stories for the wet ink short story competition soon. I know I should edit through my pieces a bit before I send them but I haven't touched them in a while, and from the last times I went through them nothing really leapt out at me as being horrendously terrible.

Fast forward a few months to November and I'll be trying to write 50,000 words in a month again. Although this time I'm thinking instead of trying to slog it out on one work, I'll cheat and work on several major projects. Basically, there's three that are on my mind at the moment, which I'll probably start planning out quite soon, and one other thing I'd like to try out for that month, to see if it's a viable sustainable option for me. The first project is Utopia Ltd. My quasi-surrealist anarchistic novel that I left half-baked at the end of JulNoWriMo. I'm going to strip it back and try to have more of a logical progression to it. The second project is Perpetual Dreaming. A totally surrealist epistolary narrative about a man who starts having these vivid dreams within the wild and bizarre dream world of a child in a coma, of which he is unsure there is a genuine link to a real boy in the real world, or whether the boy is just a part of his imagination. And the third project is a verse novel. I've wanted to try this out since I read Dorothy Porter's The Monkey's Mask, and I think this would be a great opportunity. I think I'm going to try to adapt my short story, The Giant, into a verse novel (this is also the one I'm writing the script for).

And the one other thing I wanted to try was write a short story a day for the month of November. It could be 500 words, it could be 1,000 words, whatever. Just, at the end of November, have a short story for every day of the month. I read that Isaac Asimov would write a short story every day, and I read that Chuck Palahniuk follows this practice as well. And, yeah, I think Chuck's brilliant, and it's no wonder he can pump out a novel just about every year when he's deep set on writing practices such as this. I'll give it a try, see what comes out of it. Could have something that could become something more substantial, could have something that works into something else I'm writing, could be just gibberish and pointless banter. Who cares, I think it should be a good opportunity to get a schedule and just pump out new ideas. Yeah, it's not how NaNoWriMo 'should' be done, but it's all writing, it's all development, and I hope some really good stuff comes from it.

Plans

There are two different ways I go about my writing: Planned and unplanned. Basically, a planned piece of writing has a lot of thought put into plot, characters, meaning, that sort of thing, you know, so it's all cohesive. My unplanned efforts are, of course, more spontaneous, more experimental, and more prone to failure. I usually have trouble planning large projects. Sometimes I lose interest, sometimes they just suck, and sometimes they just fall through.

My latest proposal is a little less strenuous than a NaNoWriMo type 50k-in-30-days ordeal, but rather, a 20k novella over the next three months. August, September, October. Then on to NaNoWriMo 2010 (perhaps I'll try writing my JulNoWriMo story again).

So anyway, here's the plan:
I'll have my first draft finished by August 20. That's 1,000 words a day for 20 days, not too hard, considering it'll be alongside uni and work, it's not an insurmountable task. My idea at the moment is an Epistolary narrative of a guy who starts keeping a dream diary when he starts having vivid dreams which are actually sections of a continuous dream from the mind of a young boy in a coma. The working title is "Perpetual Dreaming".

Continuing on the target of 1,000 words a day, I'll go through and rewrite the story, aiming to finish by September 9.

Then I'll spend the rest of September spending time on the weaker parts of the story, tightening the narrative up. That gives me 21 days, three weeks. My third draft, of sorts.

That leaves a full 31 days to spend on editing, going through the whole thing with a fine-toothed comb. I'll probably try to go through it all as early in October as I can, so I can sit on it for a few weeks before giving it one last look-over in the last week of October before submitting it for publication in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

I've been meaning to send something to that magazine since I came across it, but I haven't been able to get a working narrative up and ready. I came back to their site the other day, read through the guidelines again, saw their word limit was 20,000, and I thought I'd take up the opportunity to produce something a bit more ambitious than a simple short story.

I'm also going to send a short story to the Wet Ink magazine by the end of August, so, fingers crossed that all goes well. I'm starting semester two of year two at Uni tomorrow, where I'll be studying writing for performance and experimental writing, amongst other things. Hopefully I'm going to have a busy few months ahead of me.

STC and the withering manuscript

He sat at his desk and saw his manuscript for what it was; a series of concentric circles. They're about something, but at the moment, that something is just black lines going nowhere. He listened to music to see if something would inspire, if something would click. It didn't. He tried writing poetry, to take his mind off of things. Nothing. And the days fell away so fast. He found himself clinging to the half-way marker, unwilling to reach for more words, to tip the manuscript over, to spill the words into something more rounded, more balanced, more complete. He looked over the scattered pages, and with less than seven days before his goal dried up, he came to terms with the fact that he wouldn't reach his goal. No novel. Not this time around.

"Maybe," he thought, "I could make a novella out of it. There's time for that yet."
In a world where nothing is certain, he could only hope that bringing his target down would bring his story to an end. It was hard enough starting the thing, with only two characters vaguely identified at the time of the manuscript's conception, and with a plot clutching at a beginning, let alone a middle and end, the challenge was never going to be easy. But when the first draft is done, then his real work will begin. Then the characters will come to life. Then the plot will resonate from within. Then the manuscript will blossom from a scattered and incomprehensible novella into the novel it was meant to be.

Good luck, STC, you've still got a very long way to go. Hang in there.

Novel Excerpt

We pulled up outside the hangar and got out of the car. And I could hear the loud murmuring of conversation competing with conversation. This was a gathering. Gabriel popped the boot. Blindfolded. Gagged. Bound arms and legs. This was Penny. But I'll get into the details later. He lifted her over his shoulder, her short brown hair falling and masking her face.
“Can you get the boot there?” Gabriel called out to me, walking towards the hangar.
I pushed it shut and I looked over at the girl slung over his shoulder, her hair bobbing with each step. I thought of the police, combing the car for evidence. I imagined a group of them pouring across every square millimetre of surface. Finding nothing, finding nothing, finding nothing. Then reaching the boot. A strand of hair. Hers. A set of fingerprints. Mine. A maze of little lines mirroring my own sitting clear as day on the boot. I rubbed the boot where I pushed it down with my sleeve. I didn't want this guy as my enemy. I jogged after him towards the hangar.

I've been reading through my novel sort of as I write it. Like, I'll print out each page as I write it and take it into work and read through what I've written at work. I think this is my favourite paragraph of the novel thus far. Could be a potential opening paragraph (yes, although it is currently in chapter 6, I'm more than comfortable with the fact that nothing is concrete at the moment). I also think it represents the sort of stylised horror that I'm aiming for. Quirky. Bizzare. Because it's not straight up horror, and I think I really need to sort out in the redrafting and editing processes how I want that balance to sit. Because I want it to be as much about character as about plot. That's probably why there's a lot of dialogue in my novel so far. Like, A LOT. I should probably cut down on that a lot and flesh the scenes out more. I guess that's why I like this paragraph. But, you know, it's a work in progress and it's got a long way to go. I'd like to think that people will read my writing and go "that kid's not normal." I'd like that. Because everything else about me is pretty much normal. Or even more normal than normal. Paler-shade-of-grey normal. But, you know, the plan with writing this book is to raise a few eyebrows and maybe suggest a few things. Still figuring out the details though.

88mph

Where we're going we don't need time. Well... time in the linear sense of the word. I'm a measly five-and-a-half thousand words into my JulNo novel Utopia Ltd and I just want to shake it on its head to make all the change fall out of its pockets. I know for a fact that when I write it I will be starting at a different point in time. I just don't know where. At the moment, everything feels on the whole, too linear. When I finish the draft, I'm probably going to cut the story and print it in chapters and do a massive reshuffle of things.

When I first thought of the idea for this novel I wanted to write it about what goes on inside my head, the main character going through an identity chrisis works through his issues which are not too dissimilar to my own. While this may be interesting enough, I did what I always do when things sound like they might put my readers to sleep (my readers, lol), I chuck a bunch of fucking guns in there and see what happens. To make things exciting.

Now it feels like I've got two narratives going on in the one novel, and it's my goal to weave them together. The primary one (primary being more immediately identifiable) is the events of the armed robbery and the rather exciting [insert spoilers here] that follow. The secondary narrative is the one mentioned earlier, the main character's internal anxieties and identity struggles (as externalised through the presence of his psychologist) and his working through that.

I feel like the more I think about it, the more it changes and evolves and grows, and, to some extent, the less capable I am for writing the crazy fucking thing. And now I'm wanting to start at the end and toss the reader around like a ragdoll throughout the jumble of events that occur, giving them a chaotic, yet progressive journey as to how things got to be so out of proportion. I'll get there eventually. I'm actually hoping that once the draft is done, and once I cut it down to chapters and mess about with the ordering of events, I can treat the chapters more like short stories and brush up on the draft, edit through as if it were essentially a novel of short stories.

Fingers crossed I can get into a rhythm where the following forty-four-and-a-half thousand words just click into place. It's definitely been an interesting challenge going into July with minimal preparation (November last year I had character descriptions, locations and whole chapters mapped out before I started officially writing).

Utopia Ltd

Chapter 1: Fifteen Minutes at Gunpoint

Andy Warhol would be turning in his grave, if only he knew what this culture was calling 'art' now. Turning and turning and turning and turning. Art is just another form of advertisement. It's a way of artists expressing their thoughts and ideas on canvas. It's immortalised as a still image of one person's thoughts at a particular marker in time. Replace artists with corporate advertisers and the whole world becomes a canvas. Through artists, companies could buy space, they could manipulate people, they could project their ideas through artists onto walls, onto billboards, anywhere and everywhere physically possible, and it would seem as if these ideas were projected straight into our minds.

“Do you know why you're here?” The question lingered in my mind. Does he mean here-in-this-room or here-in-this-world? I would think a shrink would know better, but I've been disappointed by greater things before.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good.” He ruffled his hands through his hair and sat down at his desk. “Because I don't want to give you the impression that you've 'got issues' or that you're a delusional psychopath needing urgent medication.”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “But that's not to say that I don't have issues, right? I mean, I'm familiar with your type. Preying on the insecure. Convincing people that they have serious psychological problems. Charging a hundred and thirty five bucks an hour to make the problems go away.”
He raised his eyebrow and stared at me for a moment, before saying “I can assure you that I'm not that type of psychologist. After all, I work for the Utopia Corporation, I don't work for individual clients.”
“So you're going to tell me what Utopia wants you to tell me and then send me on my way?”
“No, no, no. Not at all! While I am under their employment, my relationship with them is strictly professional. They hire me to do my job, and to do it properly. They hired me to check your mental well-being, and that's what we're here for. My results are not influenced by who I work for.”
“Ok,” I said. I sat down in the armchair opposite his desk.
“Right off the bat I'd say you're an anxious and sceptical individual, but I'm certainly not going to try to convince you of any problems that aren't there.”
I nodded.

“For this first session,” he said, “I just want you to settle in. I'm not going to try to probe your mind for now. Just relax, talk if you want, we might run through a simple test or two, but for today, we're going to keep things easy.” He leaned on his desk conversationally, to indicate that I had his full attention.
“No notepads?” I asked.
He held up his hands, “No notepads.”
“No recorders?”
He nodded, “No recorders. My time is yours.” His shirt had a slogan on it which read 'CHARLIE BROWN CAN GO SUCK A LEMON'. It made no sense to me, which, I believe was the entire point. I imagine a lot of people have forgotten who this Charlie Brown character is, but I certainly couldn't figure out what lemons had to do with anything.
“Ok,” I said, “so the robbery-”
“Later, later, later. We can talk about that later. I get the impression that you just want to work through this and be done with it. Everything we do here is necessary, I can grant you that. I need to take my time to do my job. Please, ease up. You're so anxious.”
I gulped. “Ok,” I repeated. “I like your office.” I rubbed the arms of the chair. Leather. “It's nice.”
“Thank you,” he said. “It's a bit messier than I'd like it, but it works for me.”
“Sure,” I said. I took note of the large textbooks on psychology that were spilling from the bookshelf. Entire textbooks dedicated to the Rorschach test and to dream analysis and other psychological methods.
“Do you like reading?” he asked when he saw me staring at 'Advanced Psychoanalysis', sitting on the corner of his desk.
“Sure,” I said, “fiction, mostly.”
“Great, great.” He smiled, and I couldn't be sure what he was thinking.

It was like a dance. A great ugly ballet for people tip-toeing around the meat of the show. We were there to talk about the robbery, and, to be honest, it was painful trying to keep it at the back of my mind.

“What's with the shirt?” I asked.
He smiled again, this time with a genuine personality behind his face. “I saw it at a market. Loved it, bought it, wearing it.”
Tah-dah.
“Cool,” I said. “What does it mean, though, 'Go suck a lemon', what is that?”
“Oh, you know, it's just something that'll get the Peanuts collectors all riled up.”
“I didn't think people still read Peanuts, let alone collected them.”
“No. Not many at all. But Charles Schultz is decomposing and I'm still wearing this shirt.”
I stared at him. At the shirt with the slogan. At the cartoon Snoopy below, posing with the one-fingered-salute. Real nice.
“I know,” he said, “I know. I've got issues.”
I gaped.
“Hey,” he said, “I'm a shrink, I can deal with it.”
Was this guy being serious?
“When you've been in my line of work for a few years you start to believe that everyone's got issues of some form or another.”
“Do I have issues?”
“Definitely.”
I waited for him.
“You're anxious. You're not sure what to think of me because we haven't talked about anything significant yet. You think I'm acting quite unprofessional, and that makes you nervous. You feel like you need confirmation from me. You need my approval, not because of who I am, but because of the qualifications I have. You need my professional opinion in order to convince yourself that you're 'normal'. I think this is something you've had problems with for years, you seek out approval and acceptance. You're paranoid.”

This guy. With the brass name plate on his desk, 'Bernard Shepard', and the diploma on the wall. This guy. With the fuck-Schultz shirt, and the 'everybody's paranoid' theory. This guy. Reaches into his drawer for his packet of cigarettes, and I thought he was reaching for a gun.

What would McJesus do?

So, I find myself again at the start of another novel. I say that like I've written quite a few myself. Well, I'm sure as hell no Stephen King, in fact I've only finished one novel draft to date. With two other drafts kind of stuck somewhere in my pile of fiction I've started but probably will never finish. I'm ok with that, I've come to terms with that. I've changed as a writer, even from November last year (when I wrote my first novel).

So, what have I got planned this time around? Well, basically, all I've got at the moment is a bunch of ideas. Think of those ideas as those balls in the lotto machines, flying about in their chaos and confusion, contained in their clear sphere, waiting for the vacuum hose to come up and pick a number. I've got a couple of starting places, which I'm using as a launching pad of sorts for my other ideas. I've got my themes that I want to write about, and I've got my fingers crossed that it comes together well enough. Needless to say, I put a lot more time and effort into planning my novel in November, although I feel like this one has the potential to mean something, as opposed to existing merely as a juvenile form of entertainment.

One thing I've been able to do lately through poetry is tackle issues relevant to my life, to me personally. As a socially insecure individual, I think that having that outlet in my life is simply just wonderful, even if people read it out of context, butcher its grammar, it's still got that meaning to me. The next logical step would be to channel that strong connection from poetry into prose.

To be honest, this prospect is a little frightening to comprehend. It's not another "mankind's selfishness has doomed us all" sort of gothic horror that I have been drawn towards in the past, but a chance to go back to the issues I had in my childhood, and how they trickled on into the more grown-up me. I knew it was never going to be as easy as 'hey, let's go dig up some undead skeletons in my closet and hit them with a shovel a few times!', but essentially, that's what I want to do.

My story will most likely take place in a hyper-commercialised world (thus, the McJesus in the blog title) and starts with an armed robbery. Basically, I just wanted to stir up a shitstorm right from the get-go so I could spend most of the time just exposing and exposing the main character (he's a sort of fictionalised me at this point), and I'll explore what it means to have an identity within such a heavily commodified culture and how that can impact an individual on a psychological level. This is where all my literary and cultural studies at uni will come in handy.

JulNoWriMo is coming up very soon, and I'm probably WAY under-prepared, but I'm excited. It's something I'd write for my ten-year-old self, and I feel like it's very necessary that I go away from genres such as sci-fi and fantasy that are typically seen as forms of 'escapism'. I don't want to escape anything, I want to confront those childhood skeletons and get some much needed closure, which I feel I haven't fully done yet, but, yeah. I need this.

In the Valley of the Tempest 1:7-9

VII

We all the best of us come undone at times. The loose thread that unravels to a busted seam and then it all comes tumbling out. The olny way we can pull it back together is to grab a needle and thread and stitch it back up ourselves, and then eat the stuffing again. Richmond Bantam had stitched himself up a fair few times but more often than not he was picking at the threads of other people. Bad people. He'd worked alongside Casper for years and years, and Casper knew he could use the extra pair of fists out beyond the city limits.

It was Richmond, with Casper and Grissom and Beatrix and Timothy, and Cornwall too, whom had congregated abouts West University. They were there in the speaker's corner along with Professor Duckworth, and Duckworth was addressing his audience.
It is my tragic duty to inform you all of recent events. There has been another death in the valley, only just beyond the Mariam Ravine. I have with me an esteemed group of individuals who will be investigating the crime further. Detective Bernstein, Dr. Johnstone, Mr. Bantam, Miss Beatrix and Mr. Timothy Wallace have gathered here because they will be setting off on an expedition into the valley on the morrow. And Detective Bernstien here has graciously invited one student of West University to join them on their task, with the expedition offering experience in the most practical sense. It will be dangerous, most dangerous indeed, but I think you'll know who you are, those of you who are up for the challenge.

Thank you, professor. Casper said, as he stepped forward to address the audience.
My name is Detective Casper Bernstein, I don't have much to say, more than what has already been said. I look forward to the opportunity of working closely with one of you, I'm sure the expedition won't disappoint.

The audience looked half afraid and half excited, such news does not come their way often. They knew of the valley, they knew the stories, the mysteries that had gone on down there in the past, but here, now, people in the flesh and blood stating with confidence that they were willing to venture into that, it brought everything right home, it was real. One of us they throught. One of us will join them before the day is gone. Leaving tomorrow, dropping the studies, dropping the tests and assignments for the great untamed valley.

Professor Duckworth stepped forward to speak again, the bring the disoriented crowd into unity once more.
You should all know that we have not selected the one student as of yet, but rather a list of eight nominees. It is to my knowledge that all eight of you are present now. The chosen one will be the victor of a small fight tournament. The detective here will act as referee. Howard Arthur, Fiona Mathers, Jordan Lincoln, Seth Carter, Nicola Porter, Jesse Temperley, Kyle Ford and Sally Westfield. Make yourselves ready for the fights in the couryard on the half hour.

VIII

Kyle steepd up to the platform first to face Seth. Kyle was smart and reasonably strong. But in all his time at West U, he'd spent much more time studying than bare knucle fighting or participating in stick combat. Seth, on the other hand, fought regularly. If not for necessity then for fun. Truth be told, he liked a bit of pain and bandages in his life, a reminder of his inherently flawed being. He gripped his rod with a menace and brought down upon Kyle with a whirl. There was no competition. The crowed cheered as Seth landed the hits, flourishing, smattering, the thunk thunk thunk of wood on skin, and Kyle fell quicker than a rock. Two more unforgiving bouts and Bernstein called it. Seth didn'tknow much about the expedition, merely the fact that it'd look damn impressive on his resume after graduation. Danger, hell, what's life without a bit of it, eh?

Three more fights Seth sat in the wings, watching, studying, the women were swift and agile, they who've obviously been through their fair share of the stick combat, and they who were obviously not going to let up for anything. But Jesse took Howard down with a mighty swing from his left cannon. Howard copped a good block shot, but the sheer force of the blow had him buckling at the knees. But the dull thock, thock, thock of wood on wood echoed throughout the courtyard as the blows kept coming until Jesse towered over the poor fellow.

The next round had an intensity that couldn't be beat. Each fighter with a win out of the way came back fresh with a new fighting vigour. Seth and Sally, Jesse and Nicola. Sally came out swinging and Seth ducked and weaved and blocked and guarded his way across the floor. He scanned for an opening, a weakness, a mistake to manipulate to his advantage, but he only just got by with the steady tock, tock, tocking of the battering sticks. They rallied all about, he was quick, she was probably quicker. A flourish and blur of wavering weapons, and then the smack of wood on skin. He leaped back, crying out in frustration. She let a satisfying grin consume her face and she stepped forwards confidently. She was quicker, but he was stronger. He sent a swift, strong blow raging upon the perpendicular to her own stick, and then came the sickening crunch of splintering and snapping wood. She was left with naught but two little twigs in her hands with which to defend herself.

Try as she might, Sally could do little to prevent the flourish of attacks that proceeded, her stumpy weapons thunked hard off the full force of Seth's weapon. They jarred her hands terribly, and then she was all a mess. It didn't take long for Seth to work her to the ground and pass the victory onto him. Next bout saw a replacement weapon in her hand, but she did little to redeem, The damage was done, and whilst Seth regretted the bruises he inflicted upon her, he knew she would likewise have attacked without hesitation upon him. And Jesse... well, he was a force to be had, and his strong aggression showed once more. With little more than a small bruise on the shoulder, Jesse met Seth to go for the win.

IX

If you wanted something at West University, you had to fight for it. You had to want it enough to fight for it. It makes things worth having. Seth wanted a bit of danger in his life and a bit of extra punch to his resume. Jesse mainly liked winning. He liked the satisfying feel of his knuckles passing over another man's face and not giving a shit for the consequences. Some say the city trembled that day when Jesse and Seth fought. Each bruise that came up on Seth's skin just made him feel the more hurt, the more alive, and the danger pumped him on to dole out a bit of the beating too. Punch for punch they fairly smacked eachother up. Some could say they heard the crack when Seth sent his fist into Jesse's leg. Some could say they heard the crack, but all could hear the scream. No killing, and no breaking of the bones. In several ways Seth was lucky that it was only a fracture and not a complete break.

Jesse fell to the courtyard floor writhing in the dirt, his face and chest a flourish of cracked blood and wholesome rainbow coloured bruises. The white plaster cast he'd be wearing for the next week would look very much out of place amongst his other, more nonchalant injuries. He buried his head in the ground and Seth stepped back, waiting to hear from the referee's verdict. They carried off Jesse to see the nurse. She typically got these sorts of patients about two or three times a week. No one said anything.

The more they waited, the more Seth became agitated. Someone tried to clean him up but he just pushed them away and tried to shrink further from sight. A strong hand grasped Seth by the shoulder and gave him his wish, pulling him from the crowd and out away from the courtyard. It was the detective, Casper Bernstein, and Seth didn't know whether to feel proud or ashamed of his fight. Instead, he just felt queasy.

Well, son, you sure beat him. The detective said as soon as they had drawn quiet of the crowd.
Thanks.
So, an engineer, huh?
Yeah, that's the plan.
Good, good. Two years to go?
Two and a half.
And you do a bit of brasswork on the side?
Yeah, a bit of a hobby.
You know, the mechanic, Timothy, does some of that stuff too. Inventions and things. I tell you what, we could sure use a guy like you on this expedition.
You're taking me? Seth said with enthusiasm.
Well, of course, why not?
Eh, I just thought there might be something about the way that I won, what with the bone fracture and all.
It'll be fine, Seth, don't worry. Now, right now, we need you to pack and be ready to leave at dawn. Meet us down at the airfield, hangar 52, at about 5:30. We'll debrief before we head off, right now, we're keeping things quite low key.
Ok. Thanks a lot, detective. I'll be there.
I'm counting on it. Casper walked back to join in with the group, as Seth peeled off to go back to his dormitory and pack. And tomorrow came before he really knew it.

In the Valley of the Tempest 1:4-6

IV

The crickets hollered out to eachother as the light drew near. Run to the thistle bushes, run and hide, and be safe from the giant with the wide sweeping sun in his hand. Down the ravine the crickets sprung hither and thither. The occasional mouse scampered from thicket to rock to tree root.Even more scarce were the maraqets, the cat sized mice that built their shelters in the trees. Casper was greeted by the occasional glowing pair of eyes in the moonlight, suspended in the black branch of a wild oak. When Casper shined his light thereabouts they were gone.

Ray wasn't looking for anything particular. Not in the brush, not on the rocks or over the ridge of the ravine. He was Casper's support, he was the backup. He firmly believed in the pecking order despite being down the chain, and while he knew some day he'd love to be in Casper's position, he wasn't exactly trying so keenly to accumulate the brownie points tonight. He was tired. If Casper needed the support, he was there, otherwise he would carry on following aimlessly, wordlessly. Casper sifted his way down the ridge, he examined the bush in which Lenny crashed. It had completely caved as the wheel tore through, branches bending and snapping and scratched at Lenny's legs. Casper found a couple of drops of blood, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing excessive. Deeper into the bush was where the wheel crashed and blanketed the foliage flat. Sometimes if you get up quick it'll spring back up no harm done, but Lenny fell and lay flat for a moment. It was at the back of the bush where he lay with his warped wheel, through a little gap in the thistle bush. Casper stood in the bush for a while staring at the flat circle of the crash site, before glancing over towards the marshes. Then he crouched down to his knees. Fair enough, the hole was there, and he peered through it. From every which way imaginable, and nothing. No body.

Hey Ray! Casper hollered out. Ray cocked his head and came nearer.
Where are you, sir? Ray called back.
In the bush here. Come check this out for me.
Ray followed the wheel's path in to where Casper crouched staring at the marshes through the bush. Casper turned to look up at Ray.
Here, take a look at those marshlands over there for me. Tell me if you see anything.
Casper got to his feet and moved aside.
No, nothing, sir. Ray said, stifling a yawn.
No, you fool! Down here, through the hole in the thistles! You were at the interrogation.
Casper thumped Ray on his back and pushed him to his knees. Through the thistles the young officer scanned across the marshes. Nothing.
Those dirty liars! Those dirty filthy kids! Playing a dirty trick on us at this hour of the night!
Shut it, Raymond. We don't know anything for certain. For one, we are heading in towards the valley now, and those marshes, well... I'm sure you've heard some of the stories of what's gone on down there.
Ray shivered at the thought, then got to his feet and stepped out of the bush.

They walked down further, Casper still combing the area for clues, Ray still uselessly meandering along behind, albeit now with a keener sense of caution. As they approached the marshes there came a developed mutual understanding. They could see it, and smell it from some distance away, the shining dark patch in the soil a few metres from the foreboding mouth of the marsh-swamp. The tainted earth looked putrid in the moonlight, and the smell was far worse than ordinary death. Here, Casper got out his TK-300 and took a few pictographs of the soil. And then he snapped on some disposable gloves and turned the soil with his small pocket fork. And there he could have puked without hesitation had it not been for a moment's cloud cover. The first patch of freshly exposed earth was writhing with salt-worms and maggots, feasting on a meal pulled under. Before he realised the full horror of what he had witnessed, Casper was able to carry himself to the nearest bush.

Shine a light down, that's the only way we'll ever see. Ray said, curiosity driving him closer.
Casper stood back, trying to will himself to get a better look.
Shine a light down there. He said again.
They're witch grubs.
What? What are they, sir?
They ate the poor bastard. I- I just know they did.
White faced, Casper just stood back further, dreading the very thought of it.
No, sir. The area's too small for them to have... consumed all of him.
Well... Casper leaned in a little. I think you might be right. It just... it smells so...
Yes. Now shine the light down there so we can see it properly.
Casper obeyed, and then came closer, willing the smell from his mind. He knelt by the soaked earth again, light in hand and used his fork to upturn more of the earth. He began to prod deeper into the topsoil mix and down to the soft, soaked earth below, flicking aside the grubs as they crawled across his wrists. And then he touched on something solid. His fork would do no good, so he closed his eyes and plunged wrist deep into the moist soil and came up with the human skull. Ray asked the question he was thinking himself.
Where's the rest of the body?
Casper knelt there for some moments, pondering the question, skull in hand, before pointing towards the marshes. He was most certain of himself, but he knew that he would not find it with Raymond and his dingy little torch tonight. He slipped the skull into a clear plastic bag and tucked it under his arm, and with his sleeves rolled up his arms, he walked with Raymond back up along Mariam Ravine, back to their auto. They'd have to drop the skull off at the lab at the police station for testing in the morning, but maybe Casper could squeeze in a few hours sleep before then.

V

It was nearing noontime and Grissom had spent most of the morning in his observatory, hunched over his maps when Cornwall, his artificially competent assistant entered with a message.
The Detective Bernstein wants to speak to you, sir. He said in a drone. The vistograph chamber is prepared, sir.
Thank you, Cornwall.
Grissom left the observatory and followed Cornwall through his ornately decorated home to the vistograph chamber.
After you, sir.
Cornwall stepped aside, allowing Grissom to enter the small chamber. In the chamber was one seat and a light-tricked image of another. And in this other non-actual seat was Casper.
Casper, my good man! It's been too long since our last meeting.
Casper jumped in his chair, apparently startled.
Sit down, you old fool! Sit down so I can see you. Every time you do this, every time!
I am sorry, my friend. Every time I forget. I rarely use this chamber, it's more for the younger generation I think. I forget I'm not on the vistograph until I'm in the seat. Anyway, how are you?
Fine, fine, now listen, Grissom. Last night I got called out, down to the Mariam Ravine and to the marshes...
No. Tell me it's not true, Cas.
I'm afraid it is.
We were supposed to have three more months before season's end, three months of peace in the valley. Who was it this time?
His name was Grahame Thompson. We only found his skull by the edge of the marshes. Kit ID'd him this morning. As soon as I saw it, I knew what we were in for.
No. No, no, no, no, no. You'd better not be suggesting what I think you are.
We need to check it out. We need to set up an expedition.
Damnit, Bernstein! This just isn't right!
That's why we need to go. And I need you with me. Please.
What? No. No way compadre.
For old time's sake, please. You know there's no better scientist in Berwick, and you know I'll do all I can to make things worthwhile for you.
I'm retired.
I know. Come on. You remember how the department's like with things like this, they'll bend over backwards for anyone willing to risk their own neck down in those parts. I wouldn't be asking if I didn't think you were up for it.
Grissom sighed with the tone of defeat.
Fine. I'll see you when?
Tuesday.
Okay. Berwick airstrip?
No, West U, got some other matters to attend to beforehand. 8AM sharp, at the East entrance. I'll see you there.
Okay.

Grissom got up from his chair, which now faced a blank wall and not the dimensional construction of his friend, the detective. Cornwall was still waiting by the door when he came out of the chamber.
Am I coming too? He asked.
You were listening?
Naturally.

VI

The Berwick airport. It was the biggest this side of the globe. Planes go North, East, West all over the territory. They get the airships for the trips to the further reaches of the country, and for the occasional grand journeys over blue.

Timothy was in Hangar 82, over by the flight school strip towards the East edge of the airport. He was fixing up the Jericho-C33 when Beatrix entered the hangar. He was hanging over the motor, wrench in hand, smothering himself with the guts of the plane.
Are you done fixing my plane? Beatrix asked.
Just about, Bea. Should be running smooth now, just need to put it all back together.
Good, because the professor just got a call from the detective. Apparently he wants to talk to us.
But I haven't done nothing wrong. Tim said, somewhat indignantly.
No, I don't think it's anything like that. Relax, just finish up here and head out to hangar 53, we're going to meet up with him there. Don't keep him waiting, Tim.

Beatrix walked out, leaving Tim to his work, and headed off away from the flight school, over towards the commercial ships. Beatrix was a third year flight student, and in another year she'd be flying the large planes and airships and taking the occasional commercial flight to boost up some experience. Timothy, well he'd been on the airstrip a lot longer. He grew up the son of an engineer, about a quarter of the planes in the airstrip were designed by his father. And Timothy himself just grew up around the area, got into a mechanic apprenticeship in his mid-teens and has been pulling apart and putting back together the planes along the airstrip for near on a decade now.

Beatrix wandered along the airstrip lazily, knowing no real need to rush, as Timothy would still be a while longer putting the motor back together. The hangars were tall as ten elephants standing on eachother's backs and wide as a whale. They were large. It would be something else to describe how long the hangars were down the side. The numbers on the sides of the buildings, however, they stood tall as the stacked elephants, and each numeral was about the width of a standard house. Beatrix counted down from 82 as she walked. It would be a while, she figured, before she reached 53, but the hangars were on both sides of the airstrip, so the numbers went in deuces, like houses. She'd get there soon enough, on the other side of where she walked now. By that time she hoped the detective would have driven across town and caught a lift with the luggage tram by then.

As Beatrix passed the number 62 hangar, she heard a light rambling behind her. She turned around just in time to see Timothy come racing past her on... heaven knows what, some sort of motorised skates? Whatever they were, they were fast. It looked as if Timothy weren't in complete control. He wobbled, and veered out across the airstrip, and stacked. The wildly energetic brass boots still spun like mad, whizzing about in the air as poor showoff Timothy lay sprawled on the bitumen.
Are you okay? Beatrix called out, jogging over to him to see if he was alright.
His shirt was heavily torn and he wore bright pink grazes on his now exposed shoulder and the left side of his face, but he just grinned, wincing slightly.
Serves you right, for ponying around those things like that.
Timothy wrenched them off his feet and switched them off. He got to his feet and said;
Do you want a go?
Oh, um thanks, but no.
Come on, here; I'll turn the speed down on it for you. They won't, ahh, throw you face first into the bitumen or nothing.
Really?
I don't know, they could do. But I don't think so.
Well, ok, if you insist.

Timothy fitted the boots onto Beatrix's feet before switching them into low gear. She rolled ahead excitedly. Some wobbles, but after a moment she balanced out. Out across the airstrip, smooth as. Down alongside the hangars. And then she circled back around to Timothy.
Neat, huh? He called out as she zoomed past.
Yeah.
She headed back out along the hangars again, 59, 57, 55, slipping past effortlessly. 53 she just slipped through the doors and found a seat over my the side. She switched the gear back to neutral and pried them from her feet when the detective entered the hangar.
Quite an impressive toy you've got there, miss.
The name's Beatrix, sir. And these are my friend, Timothy's.
The mechanic boy?
Yes, sir.
Brilliant. My name's Casper, by the way.
It's nice to meet you. I've heard a thing or two about you.
Do you know why I'm here?
No.

Thanks for waiting up, Bea. Timothy said with some annoyance.
Any time. So, detective, now that we're both here, what's this all about?
Can you fly that ship? He pointed towards the airship sitting in the hangar.
The Napoleon XI?I suppose so.
Good. And you, Timothy. Can you fix it?
Of course. What do you plan on doing with it?
We're going to fly it, of course. Out over the valley, to be precise, but there'll be time for details later. If you're up for it, I'd like you two to accompany me on my expedition.
You want me to fly it? Beatrix piped in.
Yes. And I'll need your friend, Timothy here to be with us should anything serious happen.
Like what? She asked, nervously.
Details, my fine lady, details! I'm not even close to prepared.
Casper made for the door before stalling, remembering something;
Oh, one more thing, I'll need you two down at West University, Tuesday at 8AM, sharp. And be prepared! Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Goodbye. Beatrix called to his back, not knowing whether or not he heard.