My dog and my mother-in-law. . .

. . .affect the cars I buy.  I used to have a really great convertible, but my mother-in-law, a very nice woman still capable of making cutting remarks, dropped loud hints that she didn't enjoy riding in a convertible, even though we let her ride up front.  So when I got a new car, it was a big, 4-door Pontiac Grand Prix, with a large backseat and a solid roof covering everything.  I liked the car, so I guess it was for me and my mother-in-law.  

     I've now had Grand Prix for more than 7 years and almost 120,000 miles; therefore, it's time to shop for a new one.  I could buy a convertible now, because Linda drives an SUV that we can chauffeur her mom around in.  In fact, I looked at a neat Beetle convertible the other day, but there was a problem.  Our dog Lucy, as is the norm with our dogs, is my traveling companion, and Lucy likes to sit on a couple of pillows jammed down onto the floor in the middle of the back seat.  Then, she puts her front paws and the front half of her body through the opening between the front seats.  She rests her paws on the console and her head, often, on my shoulder.  The problem with the Beetle?  Well, Lucy suffers from yellow lab disease.  She's really chunky.  There's no way she could fit her rotund body between the front seats of a Beetle.  If she couldn't sit as she always has, her canine heart would be broken.  So a Beetle is out, and my search continues.

     What does this have to do with my writing?  Simply, cars are important in the stories I tell.  I try to be cognizant of pop culture in my writings, and the cars I give to my characters tend to reflect their personalities.  In TISHA AND THE GIANT, Tisha drives a 4 year old Camry that used to belong to her absent mom and which she has named 'Kevin,' while the villain drives a wrecked old Chevy Lumina that the Giant nicknames the "Lumpmobile."  In MAGGIE AND THE GHOSTIES, dependable, stalwart Maggie drives a dependable, stalwart Jeep Cherokee.   In THEIR VERY DIFFERENT AUTUMN, James Dean wannabe Eddie Kilgore dreams of driving an early 80's vintage Camaro Z-28.  I hope that the next car I choose will be the proper representation of my personality as they represent my characters' personalities.

     Note:  I discovered in my cleaning, a pristine copy of THE LAUGHING MAN.  Tomorrow, I plan on sending it to a publisher.

I am cleaning my office. . .

. . .today because it is being usurped by clutter.  I am also subconsciously (right!) avoiding working on ARTHUR REDUX, although I did make some progress yesterday.  Well, as I cleaned, I happened upon a leather covered blank book that wasn't blank.  On the cover was a picture of a pretty girl superimposed over the Yin and Yang symbol, the central image on the poster for A GIRL OF TWO WORLDS.  I opened the cover and rediscovered about 30 pages I had written in late 1998 about writing and producing AGOTW.  The title was "The Coming of Age of Max McKinley, a memoir by Gregory Ellstrom."  I can't believe I was referring to myself as "Gregory" back then.  How stuffy of me!  I like the name Greg just fine, but Gregory should be reserved for popes.

     What I really loved finding again was the dedication below the title.  The memoir was for Christina, AJ, Sarah, Mark, Donna, Cacy, Laura, Colleen, Angela, Erin, Julianna, Sir Andy, Traci, Seth, Julia, Matt, Sara, Rachel, Heather and Heather, Jenny, Dave, the Horribs, the Heliums, the Preposterous, the Whichis Witches, Maligna and her minions, Andy's Other World Orchestra, the boys in the balcony, Linda, and Jan.  It's great to thank you all again, because AGOTW was my first, completely completed full-length piece of writing.

     This brings me to the topic of today's post:  Thank the Lord for the Invention of the Computer.  I would never have completed a single play or novel if it weren't for word processing.  A computer lets a writer constantly reread and rewrite, which I do constantly.  I read a newspaper article a couple of weeks ago about writers who still use old fashioned manual typewriters.  I simply don't know how or why they do it.  

Let it be known. . .

that Jacob, the famed other world dancer, is a very good writer.  We exchanged samples, and I was really impressed.

     The struggle with ARTHUR REDUX continues.  I may have to lock myself somewhere in a garret to finish on time.

One of the most talked about and purchased young adult novels is TWILIGHT and the rest in its series.  I hadn't heard much about it until last fall, and I had a grudge against it because the opening of the film version pushed back the opening of the HARRY POTTER movie.  I love all things HARRY POTTER.  My niece Leah, who knows about young people, being a recent college grad and an employee of both SESAME STREET and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY, told me I should read it.  Just the original, she said.  Don't worry about the others (3 is it?).  So I did, because if I am interested in writing YA lit I should be acquainted with the most successful examples.

     I really liked the beginning and the end of TWILIGHT.  I though that Stephenie Meyer, she with the name containing 5 "e's," did a great job in introducing Bella and detailing the story of a kid tossed into a new school in one of the most sun-free spots in the world.  I liked her friends, both human and vampire.  I got a kick out of how her dad was almost constantly absent, which is often a requirement in teen lit.  I mean what can you do with your mom and dad around? I thought the end was pretty exciting and suspenseful, although not the slightest bit scary, which I kind of expect in vampire stories.  But the middle of the book...OY!!

     The middle of the book overwhelms the reader with teenage/vampire angst.  And they never get anywhere!  They talk intensely to each other, look at each other intensely, which nearly sends Edward vampire ballistic a couple of dozen times.  I wanted to shout, "you're nuts about each other, so go for it.  If Bella gets torn to shreds, then she asked for it."  Like that would ever happen.  Do you know it took 270 pages for them to finally brush lips?  And the lip brush and the ensuing clench nearly caused an earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.  Also, TWILIGHT is one of those YA books where the protagonists have amazing, SAT busting vocabularies.  This is called the DAWSON"S CREEK syndrome.

     So, I enjoyed TWILIGHT, but as a threat to the HARRY POTTER books?  No way, Jose, which is a good expression because Bella is from Arizona.  I couldn't wait for each new HARRY volume.  I don't imagine I'll read more of the TWILIGHT series.  In fact, I waited until I could find a $7.99 paperback to read the first.  After all, great young adult literature is great adult literature, too.  HARRY POTTER is a classic.  I don't think the TWILIGHT books will be.

     Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe the teenaged girls who embrace TWILIGHT, love chapter after chapter of superbly mushy dialogue.  Actually, I just think they're imagining being embraced by Edward.  If Bella had said he looked just like a model one more time, I was going to be forced to call Tyra Banks.

     Finally, wasn't it a bit to cute to name our female protagonist Bella.  The fact that it means "beautiful" is fine, but the fact that it is also pronounced the same as the first name of Bela Lugosi, the most famous DRACULA portrayer of all time, was a bit much for me.

What is a Horrib?

     I was reminded of Horribs by the great photos provided by Katie Morkel nee Keville. and a question from Amanda Zaengle nee Clarke.  Amanda wondered, when thinking about the fall play in 1998, if in fact she had played the part of a "Horrid."  It was a Horrib, Amanda, and it lived in the "Other World" with Tanner (AJ), Lilac (Sarah Downs, and Sluggo (Mark Adriance), and some hard-to-kill lizards named "heliums," a multi-legged monster called a "preposterous," the "Whichis Witches," and Maligna's many minions.  The play was called A GIRL OF TWO WORLDS.  It was my first play, and I remember it fondly.  Perhaps, the most important memory of AGOTW is the fact that there were more than 90 kids in the cast, what with horribs and minions and everything else.  There are a lot of important "P's" in the theatre: performance, production, proscenium, purpose, passion and perception.  But I feel the most important "P" in high school theatre is "Participation."  Ninety kids, a lot of them freshmen and sophomores, was wonderful.

      The Horribs are also an example of another place where my life bumpied into my writing.  Margaret Hodel, a great CHS English teacher, had a fun group of kids called the Mucketeers.  They would have meetings and imaginary quests and silly parties and such.  A lot of teachers became Mucketeers with names like Lady Little Legs of Pinegar.  I chose not to be dubbed, but rather, I was proxy for a fictional knight known as Sir Cumference.  Cumfy was always getting himself in trouble, which I reported to the Mucketeers.  Often, he got in trouble with the Horribs, miserable little creatures who ate the fruit of the Stubbimus bush and carried paper swords, because, we all know, there's nothing worse than a paper cut.  When I wrote AGOTW, I brought the horribs along.

    By the way, Jake Hess is working on a young adult novel.  We're going to exchange notes, which is really great!  Tomorrow I'm going to write about one of the most successful young adult novels in years--TWILIGHT!

     

Me and Quarries. . .

. . .apparently have a history.  In my play WEIRD SISTERS, a girl dies at a quarry.  In TISHA AND THE GIANT, a wild party takes place at one.  In ZOMBIES ARE US, well, something really kind of spooky happens at quarry side.  I'm apparently haunted by quarries, although I've never even seen one up close.

So why do these large holes in the ground keep slipping into my fiction?  It's because, I think, when I was a little kid, (I mean really little like 0 to 5 years old.), there was a quarry near where we lived, and high school kids used to die there.  They used to party and drown.

     I'm sure I don't really remember this event, but I've heard about often enough to believe I do.  In the middle of the night there was a knock on our door, and a policeman was there to ask my day to come help them at the quarry.  My dad knew how to use some kind of air compressor or something that might help save the high school kid who was missing.  So, my dad went with him, but when he got back, he told my mom that" there was nothing that anyone could do."  I don't even know if he had to start the machine.  Anyway, that's a pretty terrifying statement.  I didn't want to ever be in the position where THERE WAS NOTHING ANYONE COULD DO.

The quarry scared me, and when we'd drive past the road to it, I'd imagine it dark and deep and swallowing kids on purpose.  But pretty soon we moved away from there, so we didn't pass the quarry that often, but when we did, I'd always remember it and shudder a little bit.

But there is always progress!  Where the quarry was is now a country club!  Good restaurant!  We've eaten there.  And a golf course that winds through the trees that once surrounded the quarry.  I don't do golf.  Like Mark Twain, I believe it's just a way to ruin a perfectly good walk.  I definitely wouldn't play there.  Maybe sometime, I'll write a story about the quarry, waiting just off the ninth hole, waiting, waiting, just to swallow somebody.

Positive rejections. . .

. . . can keep a writer going.  As I said yesterday, the positive rejections I received from Dramatic Publishing have made me decide to try sending THE LAUGHING MAN to Linda Habjan, the acquisitions editor there.  But my nicest positive rejection came last spring.  I had entered a short story in a contest sponsored by HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN.  The theme was futuristic science fiction for kids in 800 words or less. There were three $1000 prizes plus publication to be awarded.  I felt pretty good about my story, which I had titled "Warming," and which follows here.

Warming

     Above the bench where they were sitting was a big sign that said:  "City Zoo."  The mom was reading a book, and the boy, who was not actually sitting on it, but rather kneeling next to the bench, was using it as a writing desk.  It was one of those big, flat benches with no back at all.  It was a lot like a low table, really.

     The mom's book made her smile often, but the boys was very straightfaced as he drew some type of picture on his large pad of recycled paper.  Both could see very well what they were doing, because in the roof of the zoo building were large panes of glass with sunlight coming through them.  The panels were designed to filter out what was bad about the sun's rays, and use to use the rest to power the lights and computers and water pumps and such, which it takes to run any zoo.

"Mom?" said the boy.

"Yes, Michael," she answered without looking up.

"What year were you born in?"

Then the mom looked up.  "I was born in 2033, which makes me 31 years old."

"Did automobiles run on gas when you were a little girl?"

"No," Michael's mom laughed.  "I'm not that old.  They ran on gasoline when Grandma was a little girl, though."

"What year was Gram born in?"

"Let's see," said Michael's mom, doing a little subtraction in her head.  "Gram was born in 2008, I think.  Yes.  October of 2008.

"Wow," said Michael looking up from his drawing.  "Gram is ancient!"

"Don't say that to Grandma," Michael's mom smiled and looked down at Michael's sheet of paper on which was a sketch of some sort of box with lots of buttons and wires and lights.  "What are you drawing?"

"The plans for a time machine," answered Michael.

"How interesting!  Would you like to travel through time?"

Michael looked up at his mom and pushed his hair off his forehead.  "It's not a time travel machine.  It's a machine for sending messages through time."

"Oh.  Would you like to send a message to the future?"

Michael looked at his mom with a bit of surprise in his eyes.  "Gosh, Mom, we can already do that," he said.  

"How's that?" his mom asked.

"Well, say I want to send Uncle Ed an e-mail, but I want it to arrive in the future, here's what I do.  I send him two e-mails.  In the first, I tell him not to open the second until next Tuesday, perhaps.  So what happens when he opens it next Tuesday?"

His mother grinned.  "The e-mail you sent today has arrived in the future?"

"Exactly."

"Interesting."  His mom continued to grin.  "So you want to send a message to the past?"

Michael nodded yes.

"Who will you send the message to?  What will it say?"

"It will be to everyone in the whole world, and it will say, 'you have to try a little harder.' "

"A little bit harder at what?" Michael's mom started to say, but just then there was a whoosh as an electric tram pulled up in front of the doors to the zoo.  "Oh, is that our tram?" she said and looked through the glass doors.  "No, it's not, but it's the Avenue B tram, so ours will surely be next.

Michael looked up from his drawing  "May I go look at him one more time, Mom?"

His mom smiled and nodded. "If you want to."

Michael hopped up and scurried across the lobby and down one of the halls a little way.  There he stopped and looked through the great window.  First, there was a pool of blue, blue water, then a tiny island, then an even tinier mountain of chipped ice, and on top of the mountain snoozed the great white creature. Michael smiled.

His mom walked up behind him.  "Why do you so love looking at him?"

Michael shrugged.  "It makes me happy.  It's very warming inside."

Just then the great white beast raised his head, looked around, and slid down his ice mountain into the water.

"Oh, wow!" Michael shouted.  "He's swimming!"

Twice around the pool he swam, and then he crawled back up on his mountain, and looked around with a look that seemed to say, "Could someone feed me a fish?"  Then he lay down and closed his eyes once more.

"He doesn't swim very fast anymore," Michael said, still smiling.

"Well, he's very old," said his mom.

Just then there was a whoosh outside the main door.  "Come on," Michael's mom said and grabbed Michael's hand.  "We don't want to miss the tram."

As he was led away, Michael looked back to where the huge, white creature rested, and he couldn't help but see the sign on the window, the sign which read:  THE VERY LAST POLAR BEAR IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

The stories that won the contest were titled, "The Leaky Robot," "Sand Storm!," and "Snowday in Space," which makes me think HIGHLIGHTS wasn't looking for stories on heavy topics like global warming.  But why the rejection letter was positive, was the handwritten note from one of the editors, that had been added at the bottom.   It said, "A moving story!  Try us again."  Six words that keep me writing.

     

Having not written in a week. . .

. . .it's time I catch up on my blogging.  Part of my absence was caused by a 4 day vacation we took to compensate for the 14 days we were supposed to spend in Florida but couldn't because of my stupid gall bladder and its complications.  Where, you ask, was the destination of this 4 day getaway?  Glens Falls, NY, I answer, and despite the chorus of "you're kiddings," GF is a great place to go.  Believe it or not, they have a world class art museum, good restaurants, a ton of shopping outlets, and, most importantly, a great hotel.  The Queensbury Hotel is a trip into the past mixed with the present.  The hotel has been in operation continuously since 1926.  The old-fashioned lobby is furnished with classy armchairs and couches, and a painting of a scene from a Fenimore Cooper novel rises from the mantel above the fireplace a full two stories to the ceiling.  Of course, the guest rooms, though seeming to be delightfully retro, are equipped with flat screen TV's.  There's also a warm, welcoming pub in the hotel, where we ate dinner both Monday and Tuesday.  It's great, and if I were writing about writing, it's would be a fine place for a writer to hang out.  Did you know that a surprising number of great novelists of the 20th century--Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and more--were alcoholics?  Maybe I should spend more time in the Fenimore Pub if I want to publish something.  Could "publish" and "pub" be from the same root word!?

     I had another thought this week, which has nothing to do with writing.  I think that most piercings are fine.  I could imagine getting an earring myself.  I also have nothing against nice little tattoos of roses or tribal symbols on people's lower backs, ankles, or wrists.  But what is it with the absurd stained glass window of a tattoo on the right arm of exited American Idol contestant Megan Joyce.  The girl's gorgeous, why does she want her upper arm to look like a page from a college art textbook?  

     Some writing news.  This Sunday's POST STANDARD Star Magazine will contain a WIZARD OF OZ short story contest.  Winners will receive books signed by Oz luminaries and publication in the PS.  The contest features a story that must be completed.  The really cool part for me is that I wrote the beginning that must be ended by the contest participants.  So, if you feel the creative muse come upon you, buy the paper or go to SYRACUSE.COM and find out how to enter.

     My writing plan for next week is to get as much of ARTHUR REDUX done as possible.  I also hope to send THE LAUGHING MAN, last summer's SUMMERPLAY, to Dramatic Publishing Co.  I've received a couple of very positive rejections from them.  

They kept A GIRL OF TWO WORLDS, my very first play, the one in which Jake Hess danced so wonderfully yet strangely, for 9 months before finally turning me down.

     I think that tomorrow I will share a short story that didn't win a contest.