22 April 2018

Are You Addicted to Killing Time?

Strange sensation, the pull of words! The push of perusers! The tickle of the morning light full of the scent of java, and how it calls the fingers to the keyboard even before the mind has formed any thoughts, translated them into language, and sent them along the neural pathways down to the fingertips. And yet...I'm doing it. Like I have for countless millennia. So it seems. It is less than an addiction,yet more than OCD.

These days, it seems, especially now that my so-called day job has exploded into a full-time monstrosity, a certain portion of each day must be spent on connecting to one's myriad electronic venues. I speak of the ill-named social media. Perhaps Socialist media would be more apt, but I jest. The analogy cannot hold. Almost every day I can survey my classroom and find most students engaged with their little pocket pets. Go into a coffee shop and many are similarly engaged with the electronic genie. Everyone seeking engagement, stimulation, and yet they dare not raise their eyes to the next person. 

There has always been email to check (usually worth a moment's amusement), and the more accounts one has - each for its own nefarious purpose, I have no doubt - but now there is also Facebook and its multiple personas to monitor and manage, and the same perhaps for MySpace, Tumblr, and other similar "social networking" sites. (I wish I had coined that term; could be making billions of rubles off the rights by now!) Plus the noisy bird-filled tree branches Twitter - again with multiple accounts for slightly different agendas. And Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, and the newer WeChat and Whatsapp! I find myself unable to not be a part of them. Even LinkedIn has captured my attention.

And the Google+ which I'm still not sure how to operate or for what unique intention it was created. And for writers and readers, there are plenty of sites online such as Goodreads, of which I have become a member in order to introduce my books to an unreading world. I have also joined a site for those interested in steampunk, a genre or sub-genre (no fights, please) of science-fiction or utopian/dystopian fiction. And don't get me started on all the blogs my friends and a few strangers have created, maintain, and add to often enough to occasionally intrigue or amuse or infuriate me.

I find myself getting up earlier now than I really need to just to get myself ready for a day's normal effort simply to be able to check everything. I need to be sure the world is safe for social networking. I need to be certain that my previous comment(s) have been commented on - or rejected - or, worse, ignored. I shun arguments on walls and feeds - unless I'm right and everyone knows it. I must check that things are happening, that political views are in balance, that social issues are being taken care of by someone, someone other than me. And, for good measure, I usually check them all again, in order or perhaps only the most critical ones, before eventually logging off and leaving for the day's Grand Illusion.

On good days, that could occupy two full hours. On bad days, only an hour. Weekends, I tend to languish over anything that might engage me, that could possibly stimulate the pleasure centers of my brain. In other words, I could remain plugged in the better part of a Saturday. I feel refreshed, confident, and ultimately relaxed, knowing that I have checked in, that my field of audiences have been informed that I still exist. Some may be surprised, but that is another blog post. 

Perhaps the fact of my existence itself is enough to compel some to socially dismiss the network in favor of the other, older networks: what used to be the visual arena of ideas and entertainment, expanded a thousandfold. Yes, I speak of television, that splintered soul now languishing in the wastelands of electronica, hanging on for dear life with dancers and singers and the scandalous Hollywood mavens of malevolence, or whatever else can be stood in front of a camera and later mocked. It's endless, of course.

And so there remains, for an escape, the ancient art of linguistic scribbles pressed into wood shavings. I refer to the ubiquitous book. Such pleasures I have known with a good book between my hands! Such adventures I have had once I've fled the world to enrapture myself in! And still, that paradise, that comfy bed of brain bliss, even that venue is changing! Yes, the sacred objet-d'art is joining the electronic universe! With a few tweaks and more than a few reconsiderations ("Do I really want to say that? Will anyone actually read this?"), any book written today may be sent through the vast airwaves to a handheld mechanical device, a mere tablet with screen projecting...wait for it...a page of text upon which one's eyes may focus for pleasure, perversion, or perhaps a person's private pontification. The possibilities are perfectly pointless.

However, this is not the place for a discussion of the nature of the newest Age of Books. 
It may seem to be, given this post, and being one of those electronic utopias about which I am ranting, yet it is not. As I have stated, it is necessary to engage, to feel connected, to matter to someone somewhere - even a Twitter poet in a city on the opposite side of the world whose 140 characters touch something you thought long hidden, long lost deep inside your head. And so you type back a complimentary remark to connect albeit only electronically. Can you feel the sizzle of satisfaction?

Ah! The good ol' days of pen to paper, the envelope, the postage, the weeks getting there and the weeks of return, to read a response to something you had forgotten you'd sent. Those good ol' days. I'll bet you've forgotten them.

I must now click the "post" button and make my words part of the universe - praying that someday, some far-away intellectual on a far-away world, in some random, slavish moment of silence comes to encounter these words, translate them into ideas, and thereby know that I existed, once upon a very long time ago, a time which was less fairy tale than instructional manual, and closes its eye(s) in delightful calm after a good night's fine contemplation. Soon the aliens will arrive and ponder over all of our magnetic ink.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

08 April 2018

When your Sequel Makes a 90 Degree Turn

A week ago, SUNRISE, the sequel to my 2014 vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN launched and let me tell you it has been anything but a roller-coaster ride. In fact, when my personal copies arrived I was so excited I did not open the box for a day. Then I picked one up and routinely flipped through it to be sure there were no ink splotches on any page. You see, I've read it already - about 15 times! 

But I cannot let it be. There is a third book to write if this is going to be a trilogy. I kinda expected to give it the trilogy treatment when I started Book II. Of course, it's been three years since Book I came out. I thought that would be it, the end, one and done in the genre of literary horror. I am not even a horror author. I just needed to prove something to my teenage daughter: the truth about vampires! But I digress...

It was easy to set up Stefan Szekely's departure from his family castle, leaving his vampire parents behind. I simply replicated my own history with my parents. I extrapolated a vampire version and recited similar scripts. How does the adult child relate to the elderly parents? I got him away in good order but then what? A trip to the big city, to the bank, like anyone seeking to live lavishly. But things had to happen, had to have happened prior to his re-emergence into society - so I had to imagine the future based on the present. (You can read more about that process here.)

So I'm going along, describing Stefan's adventures - misadventures, more accurately - knowing exactly what is going to happen at a certain point in the story. I kept the mood in Act I on the edge of humor - dark humor, certainly. I let Stefan play (while introducing the new world he discovers), let his ironic view color his experiences. I knew eventually he would arrive at his destination and when he did I had to have something for him to deal with. I held back that moment, I rushed ahead, I held back again, waiting for just the right scene to introduce a plot-altering character I had hired. When that character arrived on stage, I had to stop. I could no longer let Stefan keep to his happy-go-lucky playboy ways. The humor had to stop. A sharp turn was coming.Everything was perfect up to that point - but what next? 

Complications, obviously. Rising tension. Climax and denouement. I designed an Act III that would test my hero, drive him to his limits, force him to change. I felt I was taking risks; readers who liked my narrator would not want him to become a bad vampire. Yet he had to. That would take a deft hand - and a lot of rewrites. 
My story had to make a sharp turn - without seeming to make a sharp turn. Like every writer knows, it has to seem seamless. Although highly crafted, the plot must flow smoothly and when things happen, events come together, everything must seem perfectly obvious and meant to be for the reader. I'm usually good at that behind-the-scenes work. I took an acting class once upon a time. And two different screenwriting classes. This time, however, I had to rely on strict muses who refused to let me do my own thing.

So bad guys appeared on stage - from opposite sides: vampire gangsters and State Security thugs - and Stefan finds himself caught between them. How to get out of the situation? I felt in my back pocket: nothing. I touched my arm: there was an Ace up my sleeve: deus ex machina. Sure, writing teachers will cut off your fingers if you try to employ it, but I felt I had ample justification. In Book I Stefan talks to God; whether it is a real conversation or it's just in his head remains irrelevant because he acts on it either way. That back-and-forth, from dismissive of God to acceptance, however, sets up a new conversation in Book II. Thus, I was able to get my deus ex machina card punched and still win a free trip to Hell for my protagonist. 

And that, my friends, is where Book III, SUNSET, begins. 



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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.