So you know that story I just posted, this one? It won the short story contest. Pretty nice, eh. I get free copyrights for a year, so if anyone needs something copyrighted, I'm your guy. I'm more than happy to help out.
You can see the results for the nycmidnight.com short story challenge here.
2009-04-07
Clockwise
Here is a posting of my final round story for the nycmidnight.com short story challenge, written in 24 hours.
Subject: Neighbors
Genre: Science Fiction
Synopsis: The moving island he lives on is barely big enough to hold twelve houses, but when a young man investigates the inner-workings of his neighbors, he realizes that there is a darker mechanism at work behind their methodical lives.
The Island
It is nine hundred and six yards by six hundred and fifty-seven yards. The soil goes as deep as Pedro’s forearm before it hits impenetrable rock. The tallest tree is almost five feet, which grows almost in the exact center of the island. As a sign of respect, the local government lets the oldest man on the island, Dr. Abdul, enjoy its limited shade. Dr. Abdul sits facing east in the morning and west in the afternoon. At midday, he goes for a swim—one oval lap, counterclockwise—the white line on his spine from the tree trunk flanked by his bronzed and weathered shoulder blades.
The People and Its History
Pedro is in love with Maybell, but he will be forever two houses away from her. There are thirteen people total and it has been stated, through the history books that are kept under Mr. Underhill’s seaweed mattress, that the island can only support this many. When Dr. Abdul dies, Tomas and Maybell will get married and have one child, and Madame Devereaux will get to enjoy the shade under the tree. After Madame Devereaux dies, Pedro will marry Ula, a short unpleasant girl whose parents are professors in charge of research and development in Houses Eight and Nine.
When Pedro asks Mr. Underhill to see the history books, Mr. Underhill tells him that when eight more people die, it will be his turn to see them, and then he will understand why it has to go in that order.
Their Houses
Twelve in all, they are built out of driftwood and layered kelp. When it rains, the island’s residents take down their roofs and suck at the fresh water fibers until they are dry again and ready to be re-hung like paper maché shingles. Pedro lives in House Three, moving in four months ago after Madame Burress died, her head slumped, her back raw from tree bark and bitten by ants.
There is a piece of paper on Pedro’s wall, framed by glass. In so many words, it tells him that he is now the provider for the island, that they now depend on him for kelp, the water in the spinal cords of sharks, the protein from red snapper filets. He has a thinning rope, coiled expertly next to the doorway, and fish bone hooks, mounted next to the glass frame in descending order.
For five years, he served as Tomas’ apprentice in House Two, the glass plaque on its wall promising respect and admiration when he mastered his understudy. He learned how to weave sturdy nets and how to bait a shark to chase him, leading the unsuspecting animal toward Tomas’ unyielding spear. It was a thrill as a twelve-year-old, to race against death, to be stung by jellyfish and laugh when he tried to urinate on himself to ease the pain, but now Ula is in his old house, and Tomas is Captain Expeditionist, one death away from marrying Maybell, getting to spend nine months in her house, in hibernation.
He is free to visit Ula in his old house, which he is not interested in, and the new infant in House One, a girl, who he feeds caviar from the wombs of Beluga Sturgeon while Madame Devereaux holds her, smiling and toothless.
Pedro is not allowed to visit anyone else, but they visit him, asking him about rations, debating when the next storm will come, the next cold spell. He asks about Tomas and Maybell, but the local government is mum on their activities. In the quiet of the night air he has heard whispers that Tomas is preparing to attack a whale, which Maybell has been tracking. The constant tick from the grandfather clock in House Five keeps time moving, helping Maybell chart their path.
Right before he falls asleep, his hands chafed, Pedro wishes Tomas will die in his hunt so that he can be Maybell’s neighbor and slay the killer whale, and then he can be a hero in the history books.
At Night, When the Moon Gives No Shadow
Pedro often sits under the tree, while Dr. Adbul sleeps next to him, in a ditch worn in the sand like a question mark. It is here that he realizes the reason why he loves Maybell: because she is disconnected from the rest of them and their consoling touches that do not mean a thing. She shrinks away from them and they laugh at her skittishness.
The Speed of Travel
Pedro has been increasing his lung capacity, diving down and picking mussels from the crevices in the hard black rock. He can feel the saltwater surge past his face as the island picks up speed or slows down. As he dives deeper, he can feel the rock narrow, like a cone, as the water gets colder, but he cannot see where it ends, not yet.
Some days, the island moves so fast that Dr. Abdul is left behind and Pedro has to fling out his rope, which the old man manages to always catch in his sinewy hands. Sometimes, Dr. Abdul likes to be dragged along, the water breaking around his thin body, smiling like a sea turtle.
A Miracle
Maybell sits under the tree, her shoulder blades touching his around the tree trunk. The only sounds on the island are Dr. Abdul’s rasping breaths and the sharks snorting next to the beach. She feels larger than Pedro imagined, a woman, perhaps thirty. He holds his breath for forty-five, fifty seconds, and then she sighs.
“The depths of the ocean are changing. The current is unpredictable,” she says. “Can you remember that?”
Pedro imagines what he could say, how his hands hurt, about how he dived down to a passing reef and saw an anemone and it reminded him of her, a dream he had, floating with her in the buoyant sea, on their way to another island…
He feels Maybell stand up and scratch a calf against the bark and then she pads off. He turns to see her entering her house, the freckles on her back descending like a tree branch, falling leaves on her rolling hips…
The Family Tree
Pedro is an orphan. How he came to be, he does not know, but he thinks it is noted in the history books. Deputy Mayor and Mayor de la Cruz begat the new baby and the Professors Vizquel and Mr. and Mrs. Underhill are Ula and Tomas’ proud parents, respectfully.
Maybell is also a mystery. While they were de-veining shrimp, Tomas told him that she was found in an innertube with a tin of sardines and a faded postcard that Dr. Abdul, then in charge of history, pasted in volume four of the history books. The story has some merit as a deflated innertube patches one of the Mayor’s walls, and a red Cresta Blanca tin adorns the entryway to Mrs. Underhill’s home, pounded flat so that it glints when the sun rises.
A Strange Encounter
Inside his house, Pedro meticulously manufactures a barbed hook out of a shark rib. It is a tedious process, but one that he enjoys, letting his mind wander toward Maybell, imagining that she would appreciate his diligence and skill, praising him with a secret touch on the wrist at a chance encounter on his way out to dive for food. A shadow interrupts his rhythm, and he looks up and sees Mrs. Underhill in the doorway, her chest badly sunburned, the underside of her breasts comically white.
“I seem to have fallen asleep on the beach,” she says, wringing her gray hair. “The breeze was so soothing, but now look at me.”
Pedro gives her a cask of fish oil, which she rubs into her skin. “Mr. Underhill is so preoccupied these days,” she says. “With his books.” She hands him the cask, which he corks. “There are ways to pass the time, Pedro, much more rewarding than making fishhooks. It’s not frowned upon.”
Pedro looks down at his feet, the hairs on his arches standing on end.
“It’s in the guidelines, it’s my right to do as I please.”
When he looks back up though, she’s gone.
The History Books
There are four volumes in all, of varying sizes. At town hall meetings Mr. Underhill sometimes references them, careful to lean over the pages, so no one can steal a glance. Out of respect, he offers them to Madame Devereaux, but she shakes her head sadly each time, her eyes rheumy and clouded, unable to see anything but the sun and doorways to the houses.
A Revelation
It has been raining for some time. His kelp roof is saturated, so Pedro crawls into the tunnel he has reinforced with fish paste and compost. The island rock next to his body is warm and soothing, like it’s heated from a distant molten core. He finds himself drifting off to sleep when Maybell crawls inside next to him. The first thing that happens is that he gets an erection, immediately. The second thing that happens is that he smells her breath, and it is like salty air moving over hot sand.
“I’m pregnant,” she says. “And there is no more room on this island.”
The Guidelines
Mr. Underhill has made sure to outline the rules clearly. If a person does his job well, he gets to move into a new house, and be rewarded for his hard work. There is always something to look forward to: fornication, increased responsibility, power, rest. These promises made Pedro hone his skills as Tomas’ apprentice, and Tomas will take the risk in a whale hunt in order to someday be Deputy Mayor and then Mayor of the island. Mr. Underhill will make sure these guidelines are followed so that he may someday relax under the tree and swim laps at midday.
A Suggestion
He watches Maybell stretch her toes out, the bottoms of her feet like leather moccasins.
“Who’s the father?” Pedro asks, his tongue thick in his mouth.
“I don’t know.”
She slides out of the trench and stands in Pedro’s house, hunched over, water dripping over her moist curly hair and down her eyebrows and over her full lips. “There’s something on the horizon, but I don’t know if there’s time. If you can, Pedro, remember your lessons.”
She leaves and Pedro lies still, paralyzed, wondering what she means. He can hear Tomas sharpening his tools next door.
When It Stops Raining
Pedro emerges from his house and takes down his roof. He sees the others on the island: Professor Vizquel cracking his back inside Maybell’s house, revealed when Mayor de la Cruz helps her remove the thatches; Mrs. Underhill wringing the water from her roof into a cistern, sunburn peeling; Dr. Abdul examining his pruned fingertips; Tomas laying out his tools, stealing a secret glance at Ula, her arms bruised and cut; the baby cries in Madame Devereaux’s arms, her gummy smile no cure for the bite marks on the infant’s cheeks.
Pedro feels uneasy when the island lurches forward, catching a current, and he spends the day being sick, holding his head inches above the rushing water.
Fishing
Weak and shaky, Pedro stands outside of Maybell’s house. “I’ll save you,” he whispers, the constant ticking coming from inside her walls.
With the island sleeping, he digs a shallow tunnel under Mr. Underhill’s house, finding the cubby under his mattress that contains the books. Pedro hooks the books, one by one and drags them out into the open. The first volume is a manual on how to tell time, with pictures of clock faces and the difference between a minute hand and an hour hand. The manual soon diverges into different forms of timekeeping, and Pedro quickly gets lost in the jargon, as if the author was dreaming while writing it. The second and third volumes are full of handwritten rules, the first one being, “You are entitled to add one additional rule when these volumes are in your possession.” Pedro scans the lines, some taking entire pages, others a single word.
“This is an expedition.”
“This is work and we will be diligent and true to our goals.
“This is a way to pass the time.”
“This is a game and there is no longer a need to keep records of our actions.”
“You are entitled to visit each house you have inhabited and do as you please to each inhabitant.”
“Haley’s comet can be seen every seventy- five to seventy-six years and its orbit is highly elliptical.”
“This is life.”
“Pedro shall never know how we found him.”
“Until he reads this book.”
“And he will write another guideline, as we have all done.”
“If the guidelines are broken, the consequences are fatal.”
In the fourth volume, there is only a photograph of a small boy, carrying a tin of sardines, floating in an innertube. The caption reads: “He came from somewhere, and so there is hope that someday, we will return there.”
The Guidelines Are Broken
Pedro quietly lets himself into Maybell’s house, where she sleeps on cattails.
“I remember learning about this now,” he says, not waking her.
He examines the grandfather clock’s face. It appears to be approaching midnight, but then Pedro looks closer and sees that the minute hand isn’t a minute hand and that the hour hand isn’t an hour hand.
The glass plaque on Maybell’s wall instructs her that she is the timekeeper and cartographer, that it is her responsibility to make sure the clock continues to run, and that the importance of this matter is grave, and that she will appreciate the significance of the endeavor in due time.
“They didn’t know how long the orbit took so they did this.”
Maybell sits up, rubbing her eyes.
“Before I was shipwrecked, I remember learning in school. An expedition was formed. Volunteers. Do you know how to read the clock?”
Maybell nods. “Somewhat.”
“How long?”
“Close to nine hundred years.”
“And how long have the men come to your house—?”
“Since I can remember.”
“Forever.”
She nods.
“Is leaving them here punishment enough?
“Take away their rules and make them start over without justification.”
The Current
Maybell and Pedro sit at the water’s edge. He takes the picture out of volume four and sets the book adrift in the current and it travels off, volume three, two and one follow the same path.
“We’re out of time,” she says. “When the sun comes up.”
“There’s a chance we’re close.”
“Or we could be one hundred years away.”
“Or more.”
“How do you know that there is anything out there?”
“I could have made it up in a dream.”
“You could have.”
“Is that worse than this?”
Just as the sky turns morning gray, they slide into the water, their bellies bobbing in the air, hands held tight, fingers interlocking, their shoulder blades like rudders guiding them along the current.
Subject: Neighbors
Genre: Science Fiction
CLOCKWISE
A short story
Synopsis: The moving island he lives on is barely big enough to hold twelve houses, but when a young man investigates the inner-workings of his neighbors, he realizes that there is a darker mechanism at work behind their methodical lives.
The Island
It is nine hundred and six yards by six hundred and fifty-seven yards. The soil goes as deep as Pedro’s forearm before it hits impenetrable rock. The tallest tree is almost five feet, which grows almost in the exact center of the island. As a sign of respect, the local government lets the oldest man on the island, Dr. Abdul, enjoy its limited shade. Dr. Abdul sits facing east in the morning and west in the afternoon. At midday, he goes for a swim—one oval lap, counterclockwise—the white line on his spine from the tree trunk flanked by his bronzed and weathered shoulder blades.
The People and Its History
Pedro is in love with Maybell, but he will be forever two houses away from her. There are thirteen people total and it has been stated, through the history books that are kept under Mr. Underhill’s seaweed mattress, that the island can only support this many. When Dr. Abdul dies, Tomas and Maybell will get married and have one child, and Madame Devereaux will get to enjoy the shade under the tree. After Madame Devereaux dies, Pedro will marry Ula, a short unpleasant girl whose parents are professors in charge of research and development in Houses Eight and Nine.
When Pedro asks Mr. Underhill to see the history books, Mr. Underhill tells him that when eight more people die, it will be his turn to see them, and then he will understand why it has to go in that order.
Their Houses
Twelve in all, they are built out of driftwood and layered kelp. When it rains, the island’s residents take down their roofs and suck at the fresh water fibers until they are dry again and ready to be re-hung like paper maché shingles. Pedro lives in House Three, moving in four months ago after Madame Burress died, her head slumped, her back raw from tree bark and bitten by ants.
There is a piece of paper on Pedro’s wall, framed by glass. In so many words, it tells him that he is now the provider for the island, that they now depend on him for kelp, the water in the spinal cords of sharks, the protein from red snapper filets. He has a thinning rope, coiled expertly next to the doorway, and fish bone hooks, mounted next to the glass frame in descending order.
For five years, he served as Tomas’ apprentice in House Two, the glass plaque on its wall promising respect and admiration when he mastered his understudy. He learned how to weave sturdy nets and how to bait a shark to chase him, leading the unsuspecting animal toward Tomas’ unyielding spear. It was a thrill as a twelve-year-old, to race against death, to be stung by jellyfish and laugh when he tried to urinate on himself to ease the pain, but now Ula is in his old house, and Tomas is Captain Expeditionist, one death away from marrying Maybell, getting to spend nine months in her house, in hibernation.
He is free to visit Ula in his old house, which he is not interested in, and the new infant in House One, a girl, who he feeds caviar from the wombs of Beluga Sturgeon while Madame Devereaux holds her, smiling and toothless.
Pedro is not allowed to visit anyone else, but they visit him, asking him about rations, debating when the next storm will come, the next cold spell. He asks about Tomas and Maybell, but the local government is mum on their activities. In the quiet of the night air he has heard whispers that Tomas is preparing to attack a whale, which Maybell has been tracking. The constant tick from the grandfather clock in House Five keeps time moving, helping Maybell chart their path.
Right before he falls asleep, his hands chafed, Pedro wishes Tomas will die in his hunt so that he can be Maybell’s neighbor and slay the killer whale, and then he can be a hero in the history books.
At Night, When the Moon Gives No Shadow
Pedro often sits under the tree, while Dr. Adbul sleeps next to him, in a ditch worn in the sand like a question mark. It is here that he realizes the reason why he loves Maybell: because she is disconnected from the rest of them and their consoling touches that do not mean a thing. She shrinks away from them and they laugh at her skittishness.
The Speed of Travel
Pedro has been increasing his lung capacity, diving down and picking mussels from the crevices in the hard black rock. He can feel the saltwater surge past his face as the island picks up speed or slows down. As he dives deeper, he can feel the rock narrow, like a cone, as the water gets colder, but he cannot see where it ends, not yet.
Some days, the island moves so fast that Dr. Abdul is left behind and Pedro has to fling out his rope, which the old man manages to always catch in his sinewy hands. Sometimes, Dr. Abdul likes to be dragged along, the water breaking around his thin body, smiling like a sea turtle.
A Miracle
Maybell sits under the tree, her shoulder blades touching his around the tree trunk. The only sounds on the island are Dr. Abdul’s rasping breaths and the sharks snorting next to the beach. She feels larger than Pedro imagined, a woman, perhaps thirty. He holds his breath for forty-five, fifty seconds, and then she sighs.
“The depths of the ocean are changing. The current is unpredictable,” she says. “Can you remember that?”
Pedro imagines what he could say, how his hands hurt, about how he dived down to a passing reef and saw an anemone and it reminded him of her, a dream he had, floating with her in the buoyant sea, on their way to another island…
He feels Maybell stand up and scratch a calf against the bark and then she pads off. He turns to see her entering her house, the freckles on her back descending like a tree branch, falling leaves on her rolling hips…
The Family Tree
Pedro is an orphan. How he came to be, he does not know, but he thinks it is noted in the history books. Deputy Mayor and Mayor de la Cruz begat the new baby and the Professors Vizquel and Mr. and Mrs. Underhill are Ula and Tomas’ proud parents, respectfully.
Maybell is also a mystery. While they were de-veining shrimp, Tomas told him that she was found in an innertube with a tin of sardines and a faded postcard that Dr. Abdul, then in charge of history, pasted in volume four of the history books. The story has some merit as a deflated innertube patches one of the Mayor’s walls, and a red Cresta Blanca tin adorns the entryway to Mrs. Underhill’s home, pounded flat so that it glints when the sun rises.
A Strange Encounter
Inside his house, Pedro meticulously manufactures a barbed hook out of a shark rib. It is a tedious process, but one that he enjoys, letting his mind wander toward Maybell, imagining that she would appreciate his diligence and skill, praising him with a secret touch on the wrist at a chance encounter on his way out to dive for food. A shadow interrupts his rhythm, and he looks up and sees Mrs. Underhill in the doorway, her chest badly sunburned, the underside of her breasts comically white.
“I seem to have fallen asleep on the beach,” she says, wringing her gray hair. “The breeze was so soothing, but now look at me.”
Pedro gives her a cask of fish oil, which she rubs into her skin. “Mr. Underhill is so preoccupied these days,” she says. “With his books.” She hands him the cask, which he corks. “There are ways to pass the time, Pedro, much more rewarding than making fishhooks. It’s not frowned upon.”
Pedro looks down at his feet, the hairs on his arches standing on end.
“It’s in the guidelines, it’s my right to do as I please.”
When he looks back up though, she’s gone.
The History Books
There are four volumes in all, of varying sizes. At town hall meetings Mr. Underhill sometimes references them, careful to lean over the pages, so no one can steal a glance. Out of respect, he offers them to Madame Devereaux, but she shakes her head sadly each time, her eyes rheumy and clouded, unable to see anything but the sun and doorways to the houses.
A Revelation
It has been raining for some time. His kelp roof is saturated, so Pedro crawls into the tunnel he has reinforced with fish paste and compost. The island rock next to his body is warm and soothing, like it’s heated from a distant molten core. He finds himself drifting off to sleep when Maybell crawls inside next to him. The first thing that happens is that he gets an erection, immediately. The second thing that happens is that he smells her breath, and it is like salty air moving over hot sand.
“I’m pregnant,” she says. “And there is no more room on this island.”
The Guidelines
Mr. Underhill has made sure to outline the rules clearly. If a person does his job well, he gets to move into a new house, and be rewarded for his hard work. There is always something to look forward to: fornication, increased responsibility, power, rest. These promises made Pedro hone his skills as Tomas’ apprentice, and Tomas will take the risk in a whale hunt in order to someday be Deputy Mayor and then Mayor of the island. Mr. Underhill will make sure these guidelines are followed so that he may someday relax under the tree and swim laps at midday.
A Suggestion
He watches Maybell stretch her toes out, the bottoms of her feet like leather moccasins.
“Who’s the father?” Pedro asks, his tongue thick in his mouth.
“I don’t know.”
She slides out of the trench and stands in Pedro’s house, hunched over, water dripping over her moist curly hair and down her eyebrows and over her full lips. “There’s something on the horizon, but I don’t know if there’s time. If you can, Pedro, remember your lessons.”
She leaves and Pedro lies still, paralyzed, wondering what she means. He can hear Tomas sharpening his tools next door.
When It Stops Raining
Pedro emerges from his house and takes down his roof. He sees the others on the island: Professor Vizquel cracking his back inside Maybell’s house, revealed when Mayor de la Cruz helps her remove the thatches; Mrs. Underhill wringing the water from her roof into a cistern, sunburn peeling; Dr. Abdul examining his pruned fingertips; Tomas laying out his tools, stealing a secret glance at Ula, her arms bruised and cut; the baby cries in Madame Devereaux’s arms, her gummy smile no cure for the bite marks on the infant’s cheeks.
Pedro feels uneasy when the island lurches forward, catching a current, and he spends the day being sick, holding his head inches above the rushing water.
Fishing
Weak and shaky, Pedro stands outside of Maybell’s house. “I’ll save you,” he whispers, the constant ticking coming from inside her walls.
With the island sleeping, he digs a shallow tunnel under Mr. Underhill’s house, finding the cubby under his mattress that contains the books. Pedro hooks the books, one by one and drags them out into the open. The first volume is a manual on how to tell time, with pictures of clock faces and the difference between a minute hand and an hour hand. The manual soon diverges into different forms of timekeeping, and Pedro quickly gets lost in the jargon, as if the author was dreaming while writing it. The second and third volumes are full of handwritten rules, the first one being, “You are entitled to add one additional rule when these volumes are in your possession.” Pedro scans the lines, some taking entire pages, others a single word.
“This is an expedition.”
“This is work and we will be diligent and true to our goals.
“This is a way to pass the time.”
“This is a game and there is no longer a need to keep records of our actions.”
“You are entitled to visit each house you have inhabited and do as you please to each inhabitant.”
“Haley’s comet can be seen every seventy- five to seventy-six years and its orbit is highly elliptical.”
“This is life.”
“Pedro shall never know how we found him.”
“Until he reads this book.”
“And he will write another guideline, as we have all done.”
“If the guidelines are broken, the consequences are fatal.”
In the fourth volume, there is only a photograph of a small boy, carrying a tin of sardines, floating in an innertube. The caption reads: “He came from somewhere, and so there is hope that someday, we will return there.”
The Guidelines Are Broken
Pedro quietly lets himself into Maybell’s house, where she sleeps on cattails.
“I remember learning about this now,” he says, not waking her.
He examines the grandfather clock’s face. It appears to be approaching midnight, but then Pedro looks closer and sees that the minute hand isn’t a minute hand and that the hour hand isn’t an hour hand.
The glass plaque on Maybell’s wall instructs her that she is the timekeeper and cartographer, that it is her responsibility to make sure the clock continues to run, and that the importance of this matter is grave, and that she will appreciate the significance of the endeavor in due time.
“They didn’t know how long the orbit took so they did this.”
Maybell sits up, rubbing her eyes.
“Before I was shipwrecked, I remember learning in school. An expedition was formed. Volunteers. Do you know how to read the clock?”
Maybell nods. “Somewhat.”
“How long?”
“Close to nine hundred years.”
“And how long have the men come to your house—?”
“Since I can remember.”
“Forever.”
She nods.
“Is leaving them here punishment enough?
“Take away their rules and make them start over without justification.”
The Current
Maybell and Pedro sit at the water’s edge. He takes the picture out of volume four and sets the book adrift in the current and it travels off, volume three, two and one follow the same path.
“We’re out of time,” she says. “When the sun comes up.”
“There’s a chance we’re close.”
“Or we could be one hundred years away.”
“Or more.”
“How do you know that there is anything out there?”
“I could have made it up in a dream.”
“You could have.”
“Is that worse than this?”
Just as the sky turns morning gray, they slide into the water, their bellies bobbing in the air, hands held tight, fingers interlocking, their shoulder blades like rudders guiding them along the current.
Chad Van Gaalen is a Rocker...
Jessica and I had a chance to see Chad Van Gaalen at Chop Suey Friday night... Here's proof:
Chad has some songs on the Cole soundtrack, I movie that I wrote. It was pretty cool to see him live finally. All in all, a good night. Check out his music if you get a chance... itunes even has some samples, I believe.
Chad has some songs on the Cole soundtrack, I movie that I wrote. It was pretty cool to see him live finally. All in all, a good night. Check out his music if you get a chance... itunes even has some samples, I believe.
2009-03-10
Crazy Town...
Again, things are snowballing and gaining momentum...
- I'm halfway through a first half rewrite for Northbridge. Director Lynne came down from Vancouver and we met up in Seattle a couple of weeks ago to plot out the first half of the story. She's coming down in a another two weeks for notes on the second half. It'll be good, whatever it turns out to be. Lynne has a killer story editor brain and we'll for sure make it into something special.
- The heist movie I'm writing with Sean is at page 77... a couple of more weeks and then we'll be ready to start rewriting. ("Writing is rewriting," Lynne reminded me.)
- I've had a few phone conversations with a Hollywood exec about The End of the World (as she knows it) and I'm working with him on coming up with a new outline and then I get to tackle a rewrite. (!!!)
- I came in first place for the first round heat in the nycmidnight.com short story contest. Proof is here. And in case you missed it, the story is posted here. The final round is Saturday... wish me luck.
- Elliot found actors and a camera lens, so it looks like "The Black Hole in the Kitchen" will go into production sometime in the near future.
- I spent three hours of my life watching Forrest Gump, err, Benjamin Button age backward.
2009-02-08
The Docket
So, this guy has been very busy lately. Here's a couple of things that are happening:
- I reached another rewrite agreement with the guys at Titlecard Pictures, so director Lynne is driving down to Seattle on Thursday and we're spending two days at the Silver Cup Coffee offices working on a strategy for the next Northbridge draft.
- My best pal Elliot is developing my short script "The Black Hole in the Kitchen" in Minneapolis. "Black Hole" is about what happens when a middle-age couple discovers a black hole in their kitchen (duh) and must come to terms with life, love and the unknown...
- Spending much time on a very elaborate (zombie) Valentine for fiancee Jessica and loving every minute of it.
- Working on a feature heist script with Sean Minogue, Canadian screenwriter extraordinaire and VFS classmate (the first time I've written with someone else), which is coming along swimmingly.
2009-01-29
14 easy steps to finding representation
In late June or so, right after Cole wrapped I decided to make my first concerted effort to find a literary agent to represent me, firmly believing that I was ready to send my new scripts off the world at large.
I bought a Hollywood Creative Directory, circled 62 potential agents I could send queries to (crossing out agencies that only represent child actors and animators, underlining small boutique agencies), polished my writing resume and had a friend design a poster to go along with my one-sheet for my latest spec script.
I packaged the a query letter bragging about myself, a resume (resumes are brag sheets, always), and the one-sheet (which bragged about how great my new script was) with the poster on the other side (the poster is posted at the top of this page--thanks Laura Walker!). So here is what happened after I sent out my 62 query letters with SASEs.
- Early July... I get my first return letter... it is from Creative Artists! I rip open the thick envelope... It contains a letter: "Sorry, our lawyers forbid us from opening unsolicited materials. We DID NOT READ your query." The envelope contains my envelope unopened. I save my unused SASE. Maybe for later.
- Later early July. I receive my first hand-written response: "Sorry, we are not taking on new clients."
- Later, later early July: "Sorry, your logline did not grab me."
- Later, later later early July: More unread queries: "We PROMISE WE DID NOT READ YOUR QUERY LETTER." More SASEs and stamps to salvage.
- A brief hand-written note, a glass of water in the middle of the desert: "Great idea. Give me a call when you have it registered." I call the agent's number. She informs me that she does not often get down to LA, but if I find a buyer for the script, she would be happy to make sure the contract is legit. Awesome.
- Finally, a response that seems legitimate: "Dear Adam, Change of Fate seems interesting, please send a copy my way." This one is from an agent at a boutique, so I print out a copy, use my saved up stamps from the returned SASEs and send out the script. Three weeks later, the agent calls me. Here is a rough outline of what was said:
"Hi."
"I read Change of Fate."
"Thank you for taking the time to do that."
"I wasn't really grabbed by it."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm looking for something more like Wedding Crashers."
"Okay, but Change of Fate is a coming of age drama. Is there anything I could do to make it better, maybe more marketable?"
"I'm really looking for something like Wedding Crashers."
"Okay..."
"Do you have any other scripts?"
I pitch him the script I'd been working on, a post-apocalyptic romantic comedy.
"Okay, send it to me when you're done. Sounds promising"
"Okay."
Second Act:
- A month later, the agent I have sent my new script to, a post-apocalyptic romantic comedy, calls me. We have the same awkward intro conversation, and then he cuts to the chase: "Your script didn't really grab me. I'm really looking for something like Wedding Crashers, but original, and with depth." Awesome.
- A couple of weeks later, I meet with Northbridge producers Dylan and Kimani and director Lynne. We have lasagne and then go hang out in a Chinatown nightclub and chat with Terry Chen, who played Ben Fong-Torres, the editor of Rolling Stone in Almost Famous. He expresses interest in seeing Cole. It was a goofy night.
- The next morning Lynne and I go over notes for Northbridge. She mentions that her agent in Toronto has read my scripts and might want to talk to me about representation.
- I turn in the re-write for Northbridge, Lynne says her agent is interested in talking with me. I make sure he isn't interested in only reading scripts like Wedding Crashers, but different.
- I send Lynne's agent, Carl Liberman from Characters in Toronto, my post-apocalyptic romantic comedy.
- He loves it. The characters grab him.
- Carl calls and says he wants to represent me.
- It's just that easy.
2009-01-26
George, Louise ... Elsa
It's another year and another nycmidnight.com short story contest... Here is my first round entry:
Genre: Historical Fiction
Subject: A Street Vendor
Genre: Historical Fiction
Subject: A Street Vendor
George, Louise ... Elsa
George sat in the aisle seat, his back stiff, afraid to move because he hated the sound the medals made on his lapel. The stewardess had continued to offer him cocktails and food throughout the flight from New York, because, she had reasoned, heroes deserved everything the airline could offer. He held up his hand in protest, the brief movement jangling the stars, like a church tower in his ears, painful as a migraine.
The boy sitting next to George kicked his legs into the seat in front of him as his mother smoked a cigarette and gazed out the window. The boy stared at George for a moment, the medals hanging in the air. “Have you been on an airplane before?” the boy asked.
“Yes,” said George.
“How come?”
“Because I had to.”
“Were you ever in an airplane that crashed?”
“No, but I have friends who were.”
“How come?”
“I suppose they didn’t have a choice.”
“No, I mean how come your plane didn’t crash?”
“I guess because I made sure that they were fixed.”
“If I was in the army, I would want to be the one who shot people from the back of the airplane.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Did you ever get a turn to do that?”
“…”
“Huh?”
“They asked me to fix things. That was it.”
“What’re those medals for then?”
“Nothing.” George unpinned the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He handed the scrap metal to the boy and the boy’s mouth formed a little “o,” as he fingered the grooves and ridges in the bronze and silver. The boy’s hands trembled with excitement.
“I can have them?”
“You can have them.”
“!”
“…”
“Thank you, mister!”
“You bet.”
Louise and Elsa waited for George. Louise’s forearms were used to Elsa’s weight—she could hold her all day if she needed to. She almost forgot to breathe when she first saw him step off the plane, the pocket lapel on his shirt dark and naked, like a shadow. He kissed the daughter he had never seen, and then Louise, full, on the lips like he was supposed to, and she searched his mouth for those two brief seconds. Something about him tasted unfamiliar, and she touched his chest, trying to find what had not come back from the war.
George lay in bed and couldn’t remember if he had given Louise a kiss first or the baby girl he had never met except in pictures. He put his hand over Louise’s, which was flat and heavy on his abdomen, and tried to say something, but found that his words evaporated as soon as they formed in his lungs. He closed his eyes and when he woke up in the morning he couldn’t remember if they had made love or if they had just drifted off to sleep, their cheeks pressed against each other like flypaper.
In the morning, they discovered how to make breakfast together again—which of them filled the percolator and which of them grabbed the frying pan from the top shelf. They ate first and then fed Elsa, alternating spoons, quietly remembering the steps they took to get to where they were.
These were some of the steps:
The cat—the cat who had looked like Louise when she was a kitten—ran away the day after he came back. George frowned when Louise told him this, and couldn’t recall what the cat had looked like, even when Louise showed him the photograph of her from 1931. “That’s you,” George said, “but what does that have to do with our cat?”
“George…”
“…”
After his first day back at work, George came home, took off his shoes, put Elsa on his lap, and read the Detroit Free Press. He opened the obituary section and patiently scanned the lines even when Elsa batted the paper with newsprint stained fists. When Louise called them for dinner, George took Elsa to wash their hands in the bathroom sink, leaving charcoal fingerprints on the bar of soap.
It was the great Hank Greenberg’s first ballgame back from the war and Louise had never been to Tiger Stadium before—she was startled by the sheer greenness of the park, and the humidity that stuck her thighs to her garter and her garter to her dress. She held Elsa in her arms and studied George awkwardly interacting with other servicemen, all in uniform. His eyes, maybe it was something in his eyes that was missing, or was it his speech—he never seemed to finish a sentence, not since he had come home.
The crowd fell silent as Greenberg came to the plate, forearms bulging, his jaw twitching as he waited for the pitcher to contort and hurl the ball. The crack of his bat seemed to vacuum the air out of the ballpark and they all watched the ball sail out and out… Louise watched George watch the ball and she could see that he was not seeing what they all could see, that he was watching something else play out, something that she knew he could not talk about. The crowd roared as Greenberg trotted around the diamond and Louise cried hot tears.
The oscillating fan that no longer oscillated blew beads of sweat across George and Louise’s collarbones while Elsa slept quietly in her room. “Can’t you fix it?” Louise asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re an engineer.”
“Junior engineer.”
“Even so…”
“…”
“Why can’t you fix it?”
“It’s too much to think about, Louise.”
George’s fingernails dug crescents into his palms, slipping slightly in the humidity. He thought he might cry, but his tear-ducts felt fire-blasted.
Again, he woke up in the morning, and couldn’t remember if he had fallen asleep silently or told Louise he was scared because he couldn’t remember if he killed seven men or zero, or if he had friends who died in the war, or if the great Hank Greenberg had hit any home runs that summer. He wanted to ask her if she thought if he was still alive, if they had made love at least once since he got back, if Elsa looked like him—but when he went into the kitchen, he just grabbed the frying pan from the top shelf and she filled the percolator and they fed their daughter together, alternating spoons.
She saw him reading the obituary section every day. “Are you looking for your friends?” she wanted to ask.
“No,” she wanted him to say. “I’m looking for myself.”
“Why?”
“Because I think I died over there. Because, God, Louise, I killed seven men—boys—and with those odds, I bet one of them got me before I got them.”
She wanted him to start crying so she could hold him so tight that she dug into his shoulder and could feel its ball and socket, like one of the Fords he helped design that held onto the road on a sharp turn, the front wheels connected to the axle, his shoulder connected to his collarbone, his collarbone connected to the missing piece she could fix, that she could solder—a fix that would let her talk to him again, that would mend his torn soul, that would suck up the pieces he left airborne in Germany— like a magnet—and let her put them back together on an assembly line in Detroit.
He took Elsa door-to-door, asking about the cat, mixing up the cat’s name door-after-door until he had to sit down on the curb, his T-shirt soaked in sweat and covering his thin ribcage, like lines in the desert. He sat his daughter on his knees and looked into her eyes, trying to remember how she had came about.
This was how the idea of Elsa was conceived:
Louise woke up from a nightmare she could not place, a fleeting sinking feeling in her stomach. She sat up in bed, her chin on her knees, the non-oscillating fan whirring in the corner. “Where did you go to, George?” she asked aloud, speaking into her kneecaps. “Come back come back come back come back…” she chanted under her breath. She turned to look at him, and his eyes were open. She stopped for a moment and then breathed again: “Come back come back come back…”
She whispered for what may have been hours, her words sometimes merging with the fan blades, coasting through their hair, the sheets, the gaps in their toes… and he looked at her, eyes dilated, as she prayed verses that only they could hear.
George found Elsa under the kitchen table, playing with two crayons, one in each smudged fist. He scooted under next to her and sat cross-legged, his head brushing the underside of the table. Elsa handed George one of the crayons, and he smiled at her expectant gaze. George sniffed the crayon and this made Elsa giggle. He took a deep breath, letting the small notes from her laugh sink into his eardrums. In small block letters, he printed a note on the wall, in the shadow behind the far table leg.
This was what the note said:
Elsa had oatmeal on her chin, but she didn’t fuss because what was happening in the kitchen kept her attention. Her mother talked, words Elsa had never heard, her red lips moving in directions that Elsa did not know were possible. And then there was an unfamiliar sound, from her father, words that had beginnings and ends. He spoke for what seemed like forever, his voice clear and cloudless. Elsa looked away only when she heard a scratching on the kitchen window—and there was the cat, batting at the glass— waiting to be let back inside.
The boy sitting next to George kicked his legs into the seat in front of him as his mother smoked a cigarette and gazed out the window. The boy stared at George for a moment, the medals hanging in the air. “Have you been on an airplane before?” the boy asked.
“Yes,” said George.
“How come?”
“Because I had to.”
“Were you ever in an airplane that crashed?”
“No, but I have friends who were.”
“How come?”
“I suppose they didn’t have a choice.”
“No, I mean how come your plane didn’t crash?”
“I guess because I made sure that they were fixed.”
“If I was in the army, I would want to be the one who shot people from the back of the airplane.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Did you ever get a turn to do that?”
“…”
“Huh?”
“They asked me to fix things. That was it.”
“What’re those medals for then?”
“Nothing.” George unpinned the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He handed the scrap metal to the boy and the boy’s mouth formed a little “o,” as he fingered the grooves and ridges in the bronze and silver. The boy’s hands trembled with excitement.
“I can have them?”
“You can have them.”
“!”
“…”
“Thank you, mister!”
“You bet.”
Louise and Elsa waited for George. Louise’s forearms were used to Elsa’s weight—she could hold her all day if she needed to. She almost forgot to breathe when she first saw him step off the plane, the pocket lapel on his shirt dark and naked, like a shadow. He kissed the daughter he had never seen, and then Louise, full, on the lips like he was supposed to, and she searched his mouth for those two brief seconds. Something about him tasted unfamiliar, and she touched his chest, trying to find what had not come back from the war.
George lay in bed and couldn’t remember if he had given Louise a kiss first or the baby girl he had never met except in pictures. He put his hand over Louise’s, which was flat and heavy on his abdomen, and tried to say something, but found that his words evaporated as soon as they formed in his lungs. He closed his eyes and when he woke up in the morning he couldn’t remember if they had made love or if they had just drifted off to sleep, their cheeks pressed against each other like flypaper.
In the morning, they discovered how to make breakfast together again—which of them filled the percolator and which of them grabbed the frying pan from the top shelf. They ate first and then fed Elsa, alternating spoons, quietly remembering the steps they took to get to where they were.
These were some of the steps:
- George bought a sandwich and coffee from Louise’s cart outside the Ford plant for five straight days before he asked for a name on a Friday. She gave it to him on a Monday.
- Louise knew he was something different when he paid full price for his egg salad sandwiches even after he had seen her undressed, the three freckles like Orion’s belt on her abdomen.
- George started going to church because Louise made him believe there was a God. He sat next to her mother, holding her swollen hands, and his heart filled with something like helium.
- Louise quit work as a sandwich girl when George finished night school and got a modest raise. She found a rust-colored brick house and a mailbox she loved, so they bought them.
- George noticed that a kitten in a box was Louise’s spitting image from a picture taken of her in 1931—not the face so much, but the floppy white fur hat, the gray wool scarf and the patched plaid coat. He took the kitten home, rooted through an old shoebox, and then placed both kitten and picture in the fruit bowl on the table. When Louise saw what he had done, a little noise came from the place in the back of her throat that he knew only he could hear.
- Louise’s mother died. George held her hand as men and women smelling of cabbage and beef in their dark suits touched her other hand, and she felt the warmth from his palm, the good intentions vibrating from his fingers to the pit of her stomach.
- Bombs went off. Many boys went and most died, and then George’s name was called and he had to go.
- ...
- Louise went back to work selling sandwiches, stashing Elsa in a small compartment under the cart, feeding her ice cubes in the summertime and packing her in with warm hot dog buns in the wintertime. Louise wrote letters in her head to George that she would never send—secret thoughts, darker than the compartment Elsa napped in—as she took nickels from the men who came back day after day from where George was stationed, fingers, arms, and ears missing.
The cat—the cat who had looked like Louise when she was a kitten—ran away the day after he came back. George frowned when Louise told him this, and couldn’t recall what the cat had looked like, even when Louise showed him the photograph of her from 1931. “That’s you,” George said, “but what does that have to do with our cat?”
“George…”
“…”
After his first day back at work, George came home, took off his shoes, put Elsa on his lap, and read the Detroit Free Press. He opened the obituary section and patiently scanned the lines even when Elsa batted the paper with newsprint stained fists. When Louise called them for dinner, George took Elsa to wash their hands in the bathroom sink, leaving charcoal fingerprints on the bar of soap.
It was the great Hank Greenberg’s first ballgame back from the war and Louise had never been to Tiger Stadium before—she was startled by the sheer greenness of the park, and the humidity that stuck her thighs to her garter and her garter to her dress. She held Elsa in her arms and studied George awkwardly interacting with other servicemen, all in uniform. His eyes, maybe it was something in his eyes that was missing, or was it his speech—he never seemed to finish a sentence, not since he had come home.
The crowd fell silent as Greenberg came to the plate, forearms bulging, his jaw twitching as he waited for the pitcher to contort and hurl the ball. The crack of his bat seemed to vacuum the air out of the ballpark and they all watched the ball sail out and out… Louise watched George watch the ball and she could see that he was not seeing what they all could see, that he was watching something else play out, something that she knew he could not talk about. The crowd roared as Greenberg trotted around the diamond and Louise cried hot tears.
The oscillating fan that no longer oscillated blew beads of sweat across George and Louise’s collarbones while Elsa slept quietly in her room. “Can’t you fix it?” Louise asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re an engineer.”
“Junior engineer.”
“Even so…”
“…”
“Why can’t you fix it?”
“It’s too much to think about, Louise.”
George’s fingernails dug crescents into his palms, slipping slightly in the humidity. He thought he might cry, but his tear-ducts felt fire-blasted.
Again, he woke up in the morning, and couldn’t remember if he had fallen asleep silently or told Louise he was scared because he couldn’t remember if he killed seven men or zero, or if he had friends who died in the war, or if the great Hank Greenberg had hit any home runs that summer. He wanted to ask her if she thought if he was still alive, if they had made love at least once since he got back, if Elsa looked like him—but when he went into the kitchen, he just grabbed the frying pan from the top shelf and she filled the percolator and they fed their daughter together, alternating spoons.
She saw him reading the obituary section every day. “Are you looking for your friends?” she wanted to ask.
“No,” she wanted him to say. “I’m looking for myself.”
“Why?”
“Because I think I died over there. Because, God, Louise, I killed seven men—boys—and with those odds, I bet one of them got me before I got them.”
She wanted him to start crying so she could hold him so tight that she dug into his shoulder and could feel its ball and socket, like one of the Fords he helped design that held onto the road on a sharp turn, the front wheels connected to the axle, his shoulder connected to his collarbone, his collarbone connected to the missing piece she could fix, that she could solder—a fix that would let her talk to him again, that would mend his torn soul, that would suck up the pieces he left airborne in Germany— like a magnet—and let her put them back together on an assembly line in Detroit.
He took Elsa door-to-door, asking about the cat, mixing up the cat’s name door-after-door until he had to sit down on the curb, his T-shirt soaked in sweat and covering his thin ribcage, like lines in the desert. He sat his daughter on his knees and looked into her eyes, trying to remember how she had came about.
This was how the idea of Elsa was conceived:
- George was not religious in any sense of the word, Louise knew, but when he held her mother’s hand, she knew he was looking for God, even if God was between Orion’s belt and her garters.
- George had been with one woman—a girl—his second cousin. She was three years older and told him, sort of, what he was supposed to be doing, but he didn’t do it so well, or so she told him afterward.
- Louise had been with three men, and she was surprised to learn that none of that mattered when she met George. He was painfully self-conscious at the start, always holding doors and stealing little glances at her chest. They played many games of Parcheesi while drinking root beers and he always smiled when she beat him. He managed to flatter her in unexpected ways, and so six months and three days after she told him her name, she tugged down his pants and made him promise not to be so shy ever again. She giggled at his feet—the hair on his arches—and his concentrated effort to compliment her at least once before he fell asleep, fly-papered to her abdomen, her thigh, her cheek…
- …And so Elsa became tangible in her mother’s womb, right before they bought the brick house and the damned mailbox that would soon deliver George’s summons to war.
Louise woke up from a nightmare she could not place, a fleeting sinking feeling in her stomach. She sat up in bed, her chin on her knees, the non-oscillating fan whirring in the corner. “Where did you go to, George?” she asked aloud, speaking into her kneecaps. “Come back come back come back come back…” she chanted under her breath. She turned to look at him, and his eyes were open. She stopped for a moment and then breathed again: “Come back come back come back…”
She whispered for what may have been hours, her words sometimes merging with the fan blades, coasting through their hair, the sheets, the gaps in their toes… and he looked at her, eyes dilated, as she prayed verses that only they could hear.
George found Elsa under the kitchen table, playing with two crayons, one in each smudged fist. He scooted under next to her and sat cross-legged, his head brushing the underside of the table. Elsa handed George one of the crayons, and he smiled at her expectant gaze. George sniffed the crayon and this made Elsa giggle. He took a deep breath, letting the small notes from her laugh sink into his eardrums. In small block letters, he printed a note on the wall, in the shadow behind the far table leg.
This was what the note said:
GEORGE AND ELSA ARE HERE.
Elsa had oatmeal on her chin, but she didn’t fuss because what was happening in the kitchen kept her attention. Her mother talked, words Elsa had never heard, her red lips moving in directions that Elsa did not know were possible. And then there was an unfamiliar sound, from her father, words that had beginnings and ends. He spoke for what seemed like forever, his voice clear and cloudless. Elsa looked away only when she heard a scratching on the kitchen window—and there was the cat, batting at the glass— waiting to be let back inside.
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