"... they were a continent called the imagination..."

I am toiling the night away in the Word Mines, and feel like I may be up to see the sun rise - it's one of those times where I'm prepared to sit huddled under a blanket (only not in this heat) with my computer on my lap, imagining conversations until the metaphorical candle gutters out - but will probably give up on that, because I'm blessedly not on deadline.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few days thinking about writing, and then actually doing some of it, and realizing how very much of it I want to do, and how comparatively little time I have to do it in (that being the rest of my life). And I've been thinking, at least a little, about genre. Most of what I've written can be classified as some genre - a lot of it fantasy (or dark fantasy), some of it noir, even a little mystery - and precious little falls under the so-called natural, realistic world of "literary" fiction. I like my world, the world of imaginative and impossible stories. It's where I spend most of my time, reading, or writing, or watching.

And it has always bugged me when someone's said to me, "Well, I wish it was more literary," or "I tend to stay away from 'fantasy'." In the latter half of the Creative Writing class at UW, the professor instructed us at the beginning that we shouldn't be writing "genre" fiction (she later relented and qualified that after I cited Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link as precedents of "literary genre" fiction). And that irked me because I wasn't interested in writing stories trapped in the real world. And then, another professor, who I admire and respect, told me, after looking at Voices, that it was all very good, but that I should spend more time on human emotion and less on "the science fiction-y stuff".

So, as a writer, I've spent a lot of my time feeling like my world is the stunted, bastard cousin of literary fiction, that it's the world of pulp and that real writers stick to real life.

Read this speech, given completely impromptu by Clive Barker at Fantasycon 2006. It says everything I'd like to say about genre, and a good deal more.

And I'm going to go back to my world of myth, and fantasy, and magic, and imagination, and be very, immensely happy about it. Good night.

After

Wake me when I'm gone.

When I die, do not make it a quiet thing. Don't stand quietly, and talk softly. Remember me as who I was to you, not an idealized ghost. Drink, and eat, and pretend I'm there drinking and eating with you.

Do not lay flowers - I wasn't interested in them in life, and won't be after. Lay art, made things, and tell stories. Tell them from the heart, and tell them about everything. Tell them by your means. Tell them badly, if you need to, but tell them long into the night, long after you should've been in bed.

If I am ashes, scatter them everywhere. If I'm buried, make the grave an interesting one.

Dance and sing, if you need. I was good at neither, but I am not the one who is remembering.

Tell the truth about me. Don't tiptoe or whisper. Don't edit out my mistakes. Don't edit out the triumphs, either. Rage against me, if you would, and cry, if you need, and make a point to laugh.

Remember me. And remember that memory is all we ever are.

Make my wake a night for the books. Tell secrets. Get drunk. Make unwise decisions, and learn from the results. Break things. Make new things with the scraps.

Make the funeral a parade. Bring strangers. Play music, sing, dance, orate, write.

And if you need, long after I'm gone, someone to listen, talk to me. Tell me stories. They're my very favourite things.

Wake me when I'm gone.

Drops of Dexter

This will probably only be of interest to the people who've watched Dexter. And if you're not one of those people, you should busy yourself becoming one.

Also: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

I've just finished Jeff Lindsey's Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the book that birthed the wonderful Showtime series named after the protagonist. It's the only book I've read that spawned a television adaptation rather than film, and it's been a troubling experience. Typically, watching an adapted film for which you're familiar with the source material, you'll notice missing scenes, ask yourself why that character changed as much as she did, or wonder where other people disappeared to, ask yourself if this works without that. And that's because you've watched your three-hundred or four-hundred page novel get crammed into two-hours of screen time and a hundred pages of screenplay.

But with Dexter, it's three-hundred pages of novel in twelve hours of screen time and six-hundred pages of script. The exact opposite happens - I was left wondering where characters and circumstances from the television show disappeared to, was left feeling like the book had cheated me out of something more substantial. That's only the third time I've been more interested in the adaptation than the source (the other two were Silence of the Lambs and Fight Club, both of which are excellent books, but were brilliantly adapted).

Lindsey's book is a fascinating character study, fast-paced and occasionally lyrical, the alliterative imagery that marks Dexter's "Dark Passenger" engaging and almost beautiful, but the supporting cast are flat, soulless cartoons. LaGuerta is an idiot, Doakes, Angel, and Rita are practically non-existent, and Deborah's annoying and monotone. And the ending (changed from the series, in that Brian escapes, LaGuerta dies, and Deborah discovers Dexter's secret life), feels completely over-the-top and contrived. Dexter spends much of the novel contending with the idea that he, himself, is committing the Ice Truck Murders while he sleeps, an idea so patently ridiculous that the lengthy passages of doubtful introspection we get from the narration serve as nothing so much as frequent speedbumps.

And the series adds quite a bit - Dexter commits at least a half-dozen murders over the course of the series, but only two in the novel. Paul, Rita's abusive husband, is completely absent in the novel, while playing an important part in the series. Because Rita, Doakes, and Angel are marginalized, their very interesting backstories and home lives are ignored, while fleshed and engaging in the show. Rudy, the Prosthesist (Brian's alter ego, and Deb's boyfriend) doesn't exist in the book, while he plays a hugely important role in the show, giving us context for both Deborah and Dexter.

My verdict: while it's not an awful book, your time would be better spent watching rather than reading.

LOST Season Finale: OMGLASERBEAMSPEWPEWPEW

This might have been an intricate, literary post, full of tidbits to tickle and amuse, but I am compelled to write about the season finale of LOST.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

I told myself (and I may have told some of you - I can't remember) somewhere near the middle to later end of this season that the format of the show would, inevitably, have to change. The writers were rapidly running out of backstory, and while there were a few characters as yet unexplored (Ben, Desmond, Juliet, Rousseau), we knew everything we were ever going to need to know about most of the characters we cared about. Indeed, the lack of backstory lead to a lacklustre midseason, peppered with unnecessary plot bits (Jack's tattoo, Hurley's father, Locke's growhouse days, Sayid being tortured - compelling stories on their own, but ulitmately superfluous and detrimental to the pace of the show).

Structurally, and fundamentally, the show - the flashbacks, in particular - needed to change. Ben's episode ("The Man Behind The Curtain") served to underline this: when the flashbacks revealed important information, something that influenced the central conflict on the island or revealed crucial information about a character, as they did through the first season and some of the second, they became a fiercely entertaining and addictive plot device. They're sometimes better than what's actually happening on the Island. But the third season was practically devoid of interesting flashbacks - Juliet's, Desmond's, and Ben's (and, I suppose, Locke's How-I-Broke-My-Back episode) were the only flashes of note.

But I wasn't prepared for this. Sweet Mother of God.

It's perfect. Now - and I'm assuming they're going to continue this trend of flashforwards rather than flashbacks for the last three seasons (the last 48 episodes) - we're in completely undiscovered country. We're back to season one, finding out all new and compelling things about the characters, and the story. The events on the Island are the flashbacks, and we're in a whole new place. And it helps resolve the inevitable question of what next? when they finally find their way off.

And this somewhat depressing vision of futureJack is pitch perfect for the tone of the show, and isn't the easy-way-out that they might have taken. We're not dealing with characters who get the happily ever after, whose story ends in a dramatic helicopter ride into the sunset. We're dealing with aftermath, and consequence. We're dealing with tragedy.

It tugs at the heartstrings a little, for me. Jack's one of my favourite characters - not because I think he's the most interesting, necessarily, but because he's a very true hero. He tries viciously, with everything in him, to do the right thing, at the cost of himself and against all opposition. There's something noble in that, and in a show with so many grey areas, it's inspiring to see noble. To see him, after all of his efforts, reduced to nothing - and for it to be the future, not the forgotten past for which he's atoning, but an inevitable conclusion? That's perhaps the most heartbreaking moment the show's gone through.

I'm not going to talk about everything that happened, because I'm presuming you've seen it. Here are the questions I have (and most of them are about our post-island future):

• The first and most obvious - who's in the coffin? For whose funeral is Jack the lone guest? My guess? Locke. A man who alienated himself from the rest of the survivors, who has no family or friends or life off the island, and a man for whom Jack is neither "friend" nor "family". Also, if Jack thinks Locke was right, that they shouldn't have left, then it explains why he feels so torn up about Locke's death.


• Kate: "He'll wonder where I went." Who's he? The natural assumption, as there still seems to be some tensions between her and Jack, is Sawyer. But that's exactly the sort of assumption that the LOST writers love turning over on our heads. No educated guess from me at this point.


• Is Jack's father really dead? He mentions him twice in the future - once saying that the signature on his illicit perscription is Christian's, and again, telling the new Chief of Surgery that if his father is less drunk than he is, to fire him. My guess is it's the oxycodone talking, a drug-addled semi-hallucination or half-memory, and Christian's dead and gone. But what if?


• Where are Michael and Walt? We can't deduce anything from this episode, but assuming we're in the future, where did they end up? Will we hear more from them? Walt showed up (with Ekow's hair, interestingly), but was that him projecting, or simply a vision of the island?


• Who are Naomi's people, and how did they know to look for Desmond? Is Ben telling the truth?


• Why the fuck is Mikhail basically immortal? The sonar fence puts him down, but not out, and a spear through the heart apparently can't stop him from going for a nice swim. Then, he voluntarily blows himself up for no apparent gain - he can't stop Charlie at that point, only kill him. My theory? Perhaps some of the Others - those who have been there longest - can't die, or are harder to kill. Remember how Richard apparently hasn't aged since Ben was a child? What if something similar is going on with Mikhail?
  

Alright, that's it for me.

Shameless Begging and Other Oddities

I'm going to give this a shot, and hopefully, nothing explodes.

By "this", I mean tricasting this blog on Blogger (which I haven't used in almost a year), Livejournal, and Facebook.

... Something's going to explode, isn't it?

I told myself I would be a good boy today, and write a few pages of play and a blog post, in my effort to be-a-writer-on-a-regular-basis. I met with terrible failure until about 10:30, when I holed myself up at an obscure Tim Horton's and wrote for a greatly successful two hours. Now, I'm going to blog. Probably explosively.

I've spent a great deal of time (read: about ten minutes) over the past week considering my future. I'm jobless, prospectless, and other than a long list of things that I want to do in the near or semi-distant future, planless. I've resolved, in an effort not to be a complete and total loser, to write regularly, and retool some of the stories I've written over the past couple of years, and send them out for publication, and possibly look into voice acting or voiceover work, to make a little money.

I recently came across Joe Hill's blog, author of 20th Century Ghosts and Heart-Shaped Box, regularly known as Joe Hill King, son of some other author. He mentions having published his first short story as a chapbook, for a small, independent run. Which sounds like a stupendous idea, and suddenly fit very nicely in my head. See, the last short story I wrote (which I never titled) ended up being a great deal longer than I'd expected, and really is probably too long for publication in most conventional journals and magazines. But I like it a lot, and it introduces a protagonist and a world that I plan to use in a novel. Too long for conventional publication... but ideal for a chapbook. And then, what if I gave myself a digital base of operations, somewhere where I could write regularly, and try and be interesting, and attract a modest audience, to tie into self-publication and anything else I might do that's of interest?

But I don't exactly know how to start. I've never published a chapbook (although I think I know where to go to start), I've never designed or maintained a website, I have no idea if any of this is going to work.

So now: a desperate plea, to you, the viewer. Please message me or comment or e-mail me if you think you are any of the following:

- someone who knows anything about self-publication, zine publishing, or chapbook design
- someone who is an artist, or likes to draw things (I'm thinking of getting people to do artwork based on moments from the story, for use in the chapbook)
- someone who knows anything about website/blog design
- someone who knows anything about voice acting/voiceover work (that's peripheral to the chapbook, but something I figured I should ask about)
- someone who wants to say hi!

And now that the messy business of me begging wildly for your help is done with, some tidbits for you, you lovely people you.

Firstly, for those interested in the Starcraft II videos I linked to earlier (on Facebook), you might want to go looking for the 22-minute Developer Walkthrough in HD on Gametrailers. It's basically all of the gameplay videos that were available earlier, strung together and put into context with voiceover. It gives you an idea of how they're balancing the game - this unit trumps this unit but is trumped by this unit which is trumped by that unit.

I hope you like the Coen Brothers, because I sure do, and while I've been told their last few films (Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers) apparently weren't that good, I'm excited for their next film, No Country for Old Men. Based on these clips (which you should watch, immediately), it looks like they're returning to noir, which is what I think they've always done best.

And, just for fun, a LOST Season 3 Recap.