Five Million Dollars

You win five million in the lottery. How, specifically, do you spend (or save) each dollar?

Easy: I would build a centre for natural healing and the internal martial arts, where people could come, stay, learn, and heal.

This would also double as a writing retreat. I've already drawn up the floor plan. It involves cosy little dorm rooms, each with a bed and desk, each one with a view of the woods or open field, and large central hall with a huge wood stove, giant windows that could be removed in favour of screens in summer, with room for a big table for evening discussion and meals.

I would build it on our family land, 98 acres, that my grandfather bought for my grandmother for $100 back in the 1940s.

Your dogs would be most welcome there.

I would build it here:

Just a little to the right of that huge conifer.

I would spend as much time as I could here, working on becoming as self-sufficient as possible, while soaking in the incredible energies of the pristine wilderness. If no one wanted to come, I would write and practice.

Basically, it would be my life right now, but with more trees, more wilderness, less time spent in the city, a few more chickens, a lot more foraging, planting, and harvesting, and more selective socializing.

(p.s. Wouldn't you love to write here?)

Music for a Desert Island

This first of Fantasy Writer Guy's weekend assignments.

In no particular order, and without prejudice. Thirteen here - I would probably include still more Bowie and some Police, if I had room in my lifeboat.

Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes
This album has been in steady rotation in my playlist this winter. "White Winter Hymnal" is probably my favourite song from it.



David Bowie: Alladin Sane and Scary Monsters
I won't explain, except to say that Alladin Sane is good for grooving, and Scary Monsters is one of my go-to writing soundtracks. In this 1973 recording, Bowie performed "Time" as Ziggy Stardust.



Tom Waits: The Black Rider and Mule Variations
I assume there would come a time, should I in fact be washed ashore on some desert island, that I would go completely looney tunes. Black Rider, with its weird circus-themed catalogue of not good things, would be a perfect off kilter soundtrack. It's worth it, just so I could play "November" over and over. From Mule Variations, "Filipino Box Spring Hog" is a perfect song for jumping around. "Come on Up to the House" is redemption in music form.


Dead Man's Bones: Dead Man's Bones (Featuring the Silverlake Conservatory of Music Children's Choir)
I heard Dead Man's Bones for the first time on Rue Morgue Radio. It was a while before I figured out that their spooky sounding frontman was Ryan Gosling. Their 2009 album contains spooky songs about zombies and ghosts (and maybe superheroes?) and makes terrific use of a children's choir. It's strong from start to finish, but you might  have already heard "My Body's a Zombie for You," so here's "Lose Your Soul."


Kate Bush: The Dreaming and The Kick Inside
I could wax poetic about Kate Bush, but I think I'll just quote YouTube user cloudboheme:

Kate Bush is probably one of the only people I can think of who could twist and convulse wildly in a ballerina costume surrounded by jesters and minotaurs, rollerskate around wearing a white smock and a Dunce hat, shift her voice pitch and tone from high to creepily low, and still manage to come out as a class act. Every time. Thank you to the fabulous Kate for restoring my faith in originality and inspiration.

The Dreaming is another of those records that feels like a novel: it's complete from start to finish, not great necessarily because of any one of its songs - although "Sat in Your Lap" is one of my favourites - but great because it somehow satisfies as a coherent whole.


DeVotchKa: Una Volta
You might know DeVotchKa because they composed and performed much of the soundtrack of 2006's Little Miss Sunshine. In 2003, they came out with the album Una Volta. It was exactly the right mix of sad and hopeful for me that year, and it has stuck with me.




Miho Hatori: Ecdysis
My music collection has a little tide pool in it, in which Japanese girl musicians float. Miho Hatori is the best of the best. I bought Ecdysis on the strength of the samba-inspired "Barracuda," but I've played it over and over from start to finish.



Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Let Love In
Not my only Nick Cave record, but the one I return to again and again, if only to listen to "Red Right Hand." For when I"m all alone on the island and I need to pretend I'm badass.



Leadbelly: Absolutely the Best
Blues is underrepresented on this list. If I could only take one blues album to a desert island, it would be this Leadbelly collection. (Nirvana covered it, in case it sounds familiar.)



Brandenburg Concertos
Morning music.


Gustav Holst: The Planets
Another soundtrack for writing.

Eight (Types of) People Who Mean a Lot to Me and Why

The o-fish-o assignment for today is:

Eight people who mean a lot to you and why.

For the sake of protecting the innocent, the guilty, and those whose names I can't remember, I'm revising this assignment yet again.

I give you eight categories of people who mean a lot to me and why:

The Folks
Family is great, isn't it? Okay, it isn't always. Some of them are cheerleaders. Some are wise elders. Some are pains in the butt. No matter who they are or how we interact, they're mine. That's worth something. It's worth a whole lot.

The Non-Humans
I find I often don't like homo sapiens. We're a crafty lot, but also full of ego, bitterness and greed. Give me the woods, or some time spent with a dog or cat, and I am fine. Just look at this face:

There, isn't that better?

The Mentors

You took the time to teach me stuff that you knew. Because of you, I'm a better person than I was.


Sometimes you turned to the dark side of the force. Even when I decided I had to fight you, you still taught me a whole heck of a lot.

At your worst, you taught me that mapping the path and walking the path are two radically different things. In the end, you taught me that I am the only one who can say that I have really and truly graduated. That wasn't a gift you intended to give me, but it is one for which I'm especially grateful.

The Students
I've taught you Shakespeare; I've taught you Foucault. I've taught you acting and directing; I've taught you ancient wisdom and the art of kicking ass. I've taught you how to help yourselves when your bodies were aching and your hearts were sore. I've taught you how to enjoy yourselves even though I was stuffing your noggins full of The Learning. For stepping up to the plate, you have my enduring respect. Even when you hated my guts - well, actually, you lot missed the point, didn't you?

The Friends
Couldn't do without you. 'Nuff said.

The Play People
When I met you the bond wasn't based on anything deep and true and real. It was based on fun. You are the play people. I've spent the afternoon with you and laughed my guts out; I've spun castles in the air with you or played a game of snark. Some of you have had starring roles in the (melo)drama of my life, for good or for ill.

The Parasites
It took me a while to figure you out, but I've got your number now.

The Gods

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There are some people who just know how to bring it.

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Maybe what they do is truly bizarre and so iconoclastic that many people will turn away before they can even begin to form the question, "Why?"





From the small town musical theatre performer who will never see a dime for singing his heart out, to the mega talent whose written word strikes awe in the hearts of millions, I salute you. I would not see the point in even trying to write if not for you.

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Nine Things About Me that Maybe Might Surprise People Who Think They Know Me and Who Possibly Do Sort of in Their Way After a Fashion

Lichtenburg Figure

It's Day 2 of the Fantasy Writer Guy Reflection Challenge!

I am having a terrible time with this assignment. This is the exact turn of phrase: "Nine things about yourself that might surprise people who think they know you."

I do not know what people think of me in the first place, so how do I know who thinks they know me and how do I know who doesn't? I hesitate on the very verge of the open doorway of this cocktail party because I wonder, seriously and truly, what is the mystery of me and what is super obvious. It is really, really embarrassing to be all, "Oooh, I bet you'd never have guessed this naughty truth" only to have your interlocutor go, "Oh yeah, I knew that within five seconds of meeting you."

Sooo.....I am changing the assignment to

Nine open secrets that you probably don't know if you only know me through this blog:

I've got enough metal plates and pins in my arms to set off a metal detector at the airport.

The above fact does not bother me.

I overcame my injuries by doing tai chi. I've been practicing for almost twenty years.

I spend much of my time teaching and practicing tai chi and other internal martial arts (lok hup, hsing-i, paqua, sword, and sabre), qigong, and reiki. These pursuits are just as important to me as writing, which is to say very.

I am a spiritual person. Taoism is my primary focus.

I will defend your right to believe whatever you do (or don't). Each person has to decide for himself or herself. That is the name of the game, in some ways the only game.

I see no contradiction between being a spiritual person and writing (or reading) fiction that depicts violence, gore, ignorance, pain, or other dark stuff. It's a tricky, difficult world. Stories are here to help us process the hardest parts.

I met my partner after I made a resolution that I was going to be picky and wait as long as it took to meet someone who was right for me. About five minutes after.

My best friend is someone I've known since grade eight. That's just about thirty years. Yesterday's number five is about her.

Ten Things I Want to Say to Ten Different People Right Now

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Day One of the Fantasy Writer Guy "Two Weeks of Reflection" challenge. Get yours now!

Ten things I want to say to ten different people right now (in no particular order):

I didn't quit on a whim or because I'm against you. You made it impossible for me to stay. You've lost the light.

I bet you're having a nice time. You are okay in your lives and I am okay in mine.

I hope you're happy, but I bet you're miserable. Actually, I don't really hope you're happy.

I fully intend to pay you back. It's twelve years later and I still don't have the money. Sorry.

I would be shit scared to live my life without you in it.

With the exception of that one thing at which you are unusually talented, the sex wasn't that good. I do sometimes miss that one thing, though.

You're a rattlesnake of a human being, so small and mean, I'm amazed that anyone will talk to you.

I hate to prognosticate, but I think what we're doing is going to succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

I often wonder what happened to you. I wish we'd kept the conversation going.

I stopped writing because you criticized me. I guess I needed our correspondence to be a critique-free zone. Yes, what I said was maybe too cynical. I didn't have my head screwed on right.

The Fantasy Writer Guy Challenge: Two Weeks of Reflection

The diabolical yet delightful Fantasy Writer Guy has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged me to two weeks of reflection. The assignments seem to operate on a scale of Fun to Yikes.

The idea is you post an answer per day. These are fun exercises, people. Some of them are also yikes exercises. I reckon if you want to participate in the challenge, the thing to do is hop over to FWG's post about it and add your two cents to the comments there. IT STARTS TOMORROW DO NOT HESITATE JOIN US JOIN USSSSSS!

(Uh, if you're reading this after March 7, you know, you could still do the challenge. Probably.)

Unconvinced? Behold the juiciness:

Day 1: Wednesday March 7: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.

Day 2: Thursday March 8: Nine things about yourself that might surprise people who think they know you.

Day 3: Friday March 9: Eight people who mean a lot to you and why (in no particular order).

Day 4: Saturday March 10: List your "desert island" top 20 music albums, or whatever number works for you, preferably in order! Should anthologies qualify? You decide.

Day 5: Sunday March 11: You win five million in the lottery. How, specifically, do you spend (or save) each dollar?

Day 6: Monday March 12: Seven things that often cross your mind.

Day 7: Tuesday March 13: Six things you wish you’d never done.

Day 8: Wednesday March 14: Five ways to win your heart.

Day 9: Thursday March 15: Four turn-ons (interpret as you wish).

Day 10: Friday March 16: Three turn-offs.

Day 11: Saturday March 17: Build your dream home. Describe it room by room.

Day 12: Sunday March 18: Describe your ultimate perfect weekend from Friday night through Sunday.

Day 13: Monday March 19: Two images that describe your life right now and why

Day 14: Tuesday March 20: One confession.

Trunking It

The fabulous Bluestocking has a post up today about her decision to trunk a story.

She writes,

This was a tough decision for me. I’m not one to give up easily. I do think any idea can be salvaged. But that still doesn’t mean something is publishable, or a least publishable in the way I want it to be. Or that the time spent fixing the story isn’t better spent on writing new ones.

The entirety of her post - which has amazing advice in it about why you might consider the trunk and how to know when it's time - had me cringing and nodding in sympathy. I just retired the first story of 2012, which was also one of the first stories I wrote a few years ago when I decided to take a serious stab at writing.

The first time I wrote it, it was a flash piece (based on a dream, I might add). It always bugged me that I couldn't place it. It bugged me even more that there was something about it that just didn't feel right.

This year, short on ideas for Write 1, Sub 1, I decided to take a stab at rewriting it, from scratch. This second effort was much longer. It had more developed characters. I introduced an amazing grandmother character. I cooked up a central romance that was sweet and endangered. The main villain got a fair shot at redemption. The tentacles were writhing. I sent it out a couple of places, but gee if I didn't still think - sorry, know - that there was something essentially wrong with the whole thing. Probably that same thing was wrong when it was a flash piece.

I'm not sorry I tried to rewrite it. It was a good lesson. I didn't have a clear idea of any changes I wanted to make to the original story. "More detail" was how I approached the rewrite, but I laid that detail out on the same skeleton as the original piece.

The bottom line for me is that I don't want to fool myself into sending something out when it's got my Spidey Sense tingling. If it doesn't feel right, I might not be able to put my finger on it, but I would rather put my efforts behind a piece I believe in. Other shorts I've written this year have come together in a much more felicitous fashion. I couldn't necessarily put my finger on why they work and this other piece doesn't. I don't think a writer always knows, either. There are plenty of pieces that I am not sure about that I send out anyway. Sometimes that works out, and the story becomes brilliant in my mind in retrospect. (Yes, because someone else liked it. I am sometimes shallow.)

It's just that when there is that feeling that something is missing or lacking, that there is something about a piece that gives me the hinks, I would rather put it aside.