...In Wildness...

Not As I Do

2006-02-14T19:43:00.000-08:00

If you're a writer, you will encounter lists of things you should / shouldn't do when writing. Chances are, you're going to find a list of things you shouldn't do before one of things you should.

Strangely enough, these are going to conflict after a while. My high school creative writing teacher handed me a list once that contained a whole slew of adverbs to use while writing dialogue.

You know, "Oh my god!" He ejaculated eloquently.

The only time anyone ejaculates nowadays is after someone's been messing with their dick. Unless they're a girl, in which case the only time they ejaculate is in porn.

Of course, you should not write like this, or else you will end up like 40's pulp fiction. If you want to do that, fine. In fact, intentionally doing it can be cool. Maybe. Not when I do it.

Here's a good example of a should not list: http://www.findcliches.com/sciencefiction.htm

There's an even better one, but surprisingly (or not) google doesn't really serve up the one I picked up while writing "Convergence" a few years back.

Here's more:

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html Oh wait, here's the one that I said I couldn't find. Oh joy.

So what's the point of these links? Here's what brought it up: http://www.elmoreleonard.com/index.php?/forums/viewthread/20

Good ol' Elmore Leonard. Pointing out all the things we shouldn't do. There's one problem with pointing out the things we shouldn't do - reading it is going to produce fiction hypochondria. Suddenly, every one (oh there it is! suddenly!) of our stories is going to consist of every cliche there is!

I wrote a neat story, which I'll be posting here shortly, that basically violated this principle in many ways. I still have urges to feature a White Room in my work, and I have vowed that I will manage to work it in without being a cliche...

New Pic, New Story, New Project

2006-02-11T11:47:00.000-08:00

Look at that new user pic. Mmm. That's a nasty, devious wolf. He's probably doing something lewd you can't see. Like ... actually, he's smoking a cigar. It wouldn't fit in the frame. Mmm, phallic, sexual cigars.

Anyway, I have a new story I posted on yiffstar. So go visit my furry story collection and check it out. I don't really like it, I just posted it because.

I also have a new project I'm working on. I intend it to be a collection of stories about the coming civil war in the United States of America. It's a technological, kind of cyberpunk sort of thing.

You can read the first part of the first chapter below the cut! I don't likw how blogger does cuts. But anyway, read it. Read! Read! It's called "Persistence". Peristence of vision, persistence of loss, persistence of memory....

Oh wait, a note. Caid's last name is pronounced 'shay-nass'. Actually, more like 'shay-nssss'. That's how he says it. I made it up, but I wanted it to sound kind of Scottish, laddie.

Caid’s salvation from boredom came as he was cleaning out a drawer in his drawer room.

The drawer was Money Things, and in it was anything that had to do with money, but wasn’t money. Receipts that were past filing usefulness, coupons he found while cleaning, tokens found on the ground outside the arcade he passed by to go to work, monopoly money that had been used as rudimentary color blotters when he was a child.

None of the Money Things were organized, and so he had to hurridly flip through them to find anything wasteful. Receipts were the first to go. Then, the monopoly money was –
A credit card.

Credit cards did not belong in the money things drawer. He ran over to his computer to see if it was still active. A quick check at the bank said no – it was the one he’d canceled after someone stole it from his one purchase of pornography.

Caid started to itch inside. The card was still there, obviously, having missed the shredder for some reason. It was Green and Gold, which had meant that maybe it’d been the middle of the month and he didn’t want to shred it because –

The shredder discussion butted out of his head with anal retention. The card number was still there, if the card was still there. Could be there. Might be there.

A quick hop on google didn’t produce anything, but appending ‘Credit Card’ did lead him to a huge listing of credit card numbers, apparently for sale. Smack in the middle, picked out in less than 2.536 seconds, was his.

Caid’s brain went into overdrive, tearing the website to pieces. Source, scoured for links, DNS entries, WHOIS records, all fake fake fake fake fake – until he spotted an email address actually encoded into the numbers. Poohbear@barnacles.asterix.co.ar . He scribbled it down.

Apparently, he could also buy the entire page of credit card numbers for 200 dollars. He had 200 dollars in the bank, and did so immediately. He didn’t need credit card numbers, and it was probably stupid dangerous foolish assinine, but he had a cash card lying around and it wouldn’t matter. He pecked the number in and waited for something to happen.

Caid’s financial existance did not disappear, he did not suddenly find federal agents pounding his door in, he did not see smoke curling under his door, he did not experience the worthless sensation of failure, but his phone did ring.

“Who is it?”

“I should be asking the question. You’re stupid.”

Caid held the phone out in front of his face and looked two thirds of the way up between the mouthpiece and the earpiece. “Who are you and why are you calling me?”

“You just bought 200 canceled credit card numbers from me. Are you an idiot?”

Caid popped inside. “You stole my credit card number! You stole it! I meant to throw it away and now you have it, and it’s a bad number so you can’t have it! Why do you want my credit card number if it’s canceled?”

“Whoa there. I’m hanging up right now. You’re nuts.”

Click.

Caid redialed. “Please wait while we try to locate the AirMax wireless subscriber you have dialed. We’re sorry, [painful stream of modem noise] could not be located. Please leave a message after the beep.”

Caid’s finger spun around in the air four times before punching the hangup switch. He typed 49623 – his friend John’s birthday in reverse – and listened for a ring.

“J ding.”

“John john john john john john john-”

“Hey Caid, what’s up?”

“John you work for AirMax and you must do something for me, I was just called by a creep and you must tell me who he was, must must must.”

“Sorry, no can do.”

“Dammnit john, john john john john, john john-” Caid was going to say John’s first name 4 times, then 9 times, and continue until he was hung up on or he got John’s attention. Or until he said the birthdate backwards, but that hadn't happened yet.

“Okay, fine. I can’t tell you who it was, but I can connect you to them. Not really legal, not really not. Have fun.”

There was a thrum and then ringing, then sound. “Trex.”

“You stole my cancelled-”

“Holy shit, now look. Are you some sort of psychopath? I figured maybe you were just stupid, maybe some kind of weird retard, but how the hell did you just call me? I declined it. It kept ringing.”

“I know people. I know John. John does things for me. You stole-”

“I’m not talking about this on the phone. Goodbye.”

Click.

Under the Devil's Eye

2006-01-26T18:57:00.000-08:00

I'm writing a story. You can find it right here, on Yiffstar: Under the Devil's Eye.

This story is really porn. Oh, it's luscious porn. Delicious, tasty, fetishy, gay wolf porn. Like the kind of gay wolves that eat your babies. Remember that? Good.

However, that's not all. It was spawned from a commissioned piece of smut I wrote for a friend of mine. So, I thought, let's post it. Let's put it up and people can read it.

But I want people to read it here, so I'm posting it right below. Click the link, baby.

The Original "Under the Devil's Eye"

Say hi!

2006-01-23T17:39:00.000-08:00

It's been a while.

I gave up on my previous ideas. Instead, I went back to basics - porn with extras.

The result? I hope to be making things a lot cooler, and a lot more finished.

Such poor english.

I'm trying to set up an extension in FireFox to easily let me post things to my b - log. Does it work?

Catechism

2005-11-08T04:38:00.000-08:00

I'm posting an entire chapter today because I think it's interesting and hard to simply 'excerpt'. I have become mildly fascinated with the idea of the Christian catechism, the question and answer way of instilling the word of god in people's heads. To me, it seems like a rather disturbing excercise in brain-washing. "Who is god?" "My god is the creator of earth and man, and all things." On and on.

So, I'm trying to turn that into a sexual force, or a force of personal belief and change. Christian in my novel is being led to realize his dream of becoming a werewolf, this leading presided over by Lord Wolf, the strange projection from elsewhere that is taking up his dreams and fantasies. Lord Wolf creates these lessons, where he makes Christian do something to him or shows him more of his nature, has a little sexual romp, and gives the young man a new answer to a question. The first two are of course, "Who am I?" and "What is my name?".

This will proceed until Christian ends up throwing Lord Wolf out of his personage. Oooh, I said personage.

Word Count: 8,915

Christian woke up that lonely weekend feeling quite normal. He brushed his teeth, trying to count off the whole two minutes. Around 30 seconds, he stopped. His face was normal. Normal in that it was not bashed in, swollen, bloody, both eyes alert, slightly raccoon-eyed, otherwise fine.

It had been a dream.

He set his toothbrush down and spit, then looked again. Suddenly he wasn't looking at himself, recalling a memory, the entire form of that wolf. Black fur, nasty grin and snarl, medieval fetish attire. Smirking at Christian, falling away, the young man falling backwards, the wolf careening out of view, replaced by ground, trees, rocks.

"I wish I wasn't here alone."

Dressed, Christian ate a bowl of cereal and a peanut butter cup, then started to nibble on the second cup in the package. He had the chocolate off when he stopped, happening to glance into the living room. Chelsea, the wide-eyed calico, was staring at Christian's boots. Not just staring, but standing off to one shoulder, paw lifted, punching at the sole and heel like a cat does to any suspicious new item. Chelsea punched and a chunk of mud fell off from inside the sole arch.

Christian looked back at his peanut butter cup, now a naked piece of tan glop. He looked back. Chelsea was still staring, livid, tail fluffed out. There was no mud in sight.

The young man ran a bath upstairs and hurridly scrubbed himself clean. He had nothing on his body that hadn't been there since the afternoon before. No different, except perhaps the beginnings of light roots. The tub empty, Christian sat around in the bathroom, chemical stink coming off his head as he re-dyed his hair. Chelsea and Bassie - short for Bastet, of course - were both sitting in the rinsed tub, happily lapping at the water.

Something creaked somewhere in the house, the wind lifted outside perhaps, and a chill momentarily flickered over Christian as he rinsed the black down the sink. Both cats arched and hissed, running out of the bathroom to wrestle in the hallway. "Damn cats." But they had looked behind him -

He saw that image again, in his head, of the wolf. This time the wolf had forgone the kilt, or was it a loin cloth? Whatever leather thing kept him modest. He had a prodigious black cock, very un-wolflike. Christian stirred and shook his head, restoring the room to the right. He stumbled over to his bedroom and curled up naked in bed, spreading a towel out to keep his pillow from being soaked. Despite the blurry horror of the night before, Christian was certain that nothing had really happened. There was the mud... but he'd woken up unharmed. Cats are cats, and he could just be seeing things. He could be going crazy. It ran on his father's side after all.

He kept thinking, despite wanting to curl up in bed to just make things go away. Dreams start when you're asleep. He hadn't gone to sleep the night before, not until after being sent to his near-death by some fictional creature. He had gone straight from homework and dinner to the outside of his house. His chest clutched up inside and Christian changed the mental subject to something erotic.

"Oh, what the fuck," he muttered to himself, seeing that damn wolf of his nightmares. Were they nightmares? He wasn't sure if he really hated the whole thing or not - it was definitely frightening but otherworldly, and Christian couldn't avoid the fact that he was aroused by the form of that wolf. There had to be something wrong with finding a werewolf erotic, not to mention one that seemed to want to kill him, but it gave him a throbbing erection that he ground faintly against one of his pillows. What would that wolf do if Christian was alone with him, huh? "He'd make me suck it, call me names, make me take off his clothes..." Christian muttered into his other pillow, face red, shifting his body, the smear of slime on the pillow between his legs cold against his thigh -

The doorknob to his bedroom turned. Christian stopped dead, body freezing in mid-hump. His parents - no, that wouldn't make sense, they were hundreds of miles away and wouldn't come in without saying something first. A stranger, but he'd locked all the doors... hadn't he? He turned to look - the door was indeed opening, mostly on its own with a protracted creak.

Christian turned back and faced into the corner, burying himself under the covers. A victorian-era french maiden under a parasol seemed to be advertising cigarettes on the wallpaper. He didn't move one muscle, hoping that whatever it was would simply go away. It could be a cat; Bassie was half-siamese and more than a little bit of troublemaker. Christian's blood ran cold when he realized he hadn't closed the door in the first place, and that he hadn't seen any of his furniture when he'd looked over his shoulder. "Not again," he whispered.

There was the slow clomp-scratch, clomp-scratch of someone trying to take their sweet time swaggering across a wood floor, the sort of thing a gunslinger would do at the local saloon when coming to get his revenge. There was that smell, leather and sex and Dog, slow deep breaths, the creak of leather now and then. Christian's room wasn't very big but it took an eternity for those booted footfalls to reach up to his bed and stop. It was undeniably erotic, if it was just an imagination, but it wasn't and Christian felt just a sucking void dragging him down. This was what he wanted in his head, and it was happening, which was impossible so he was going mad.

Something grabbed at his hair and pulled. "Get out of bed," said in a heavy, husky rasp of a snarl. Clearly pronounced but muddled up by lack of a human mouth, with the clack of wolf-teeth, the flap of a long, unruly wet tongue. Christian arched up and squeaked. Another hand grabbed at his arm, the grab of a big gloved set of fingers and the painful dig of claws. Christian didn't move and so the two appendages moved him, dragging him off the bed and onto the floor. His bed was a total of three feet off the floor so he fell with a thud, side of his face slapping at the dusty bare wood. He got a nice side-view of the wolf's black boots - despite the overall medieval look, they weren't at all accurate reproductions, looking new and very attractive.

"Get up."

Christian didn't move. The wolf whacked the side of his toe against Christian's face. "When I tell you to do something, you do it or you pay. That was a very small order, so it had a small price. Get up."

Christian fought with the covers he was wrapped in and sat up, pressing himself back against his bed, feet trying to back him up farther, making the wood frame creak. The wolf was tall, very tall from that vantage point, and standing with his gauntleted paws on his hips. "Good enough. Now, get dressed."

Again, Christian did nothing. Just as the wolf moved, the young man squeaked again and frantically got up to his feet, rushing for his dresser, then stopping. The wolf was in the way, but it wasn't even a dresser any more - it was a wardrobe, closed, a brooding black hulk at the other end of the room. Christian swallowed, the wolf stepping to the side. The young man's pale hands shook so hard he could barely open the wardrobe, and when he did, the inside was all black. Clothing, but black, the scent of leather bursting out of it. "What, what, this isn't, these aren't my clothes!" He turned and half-expected the wolf to not be there, but he still was.

"You will get dressed the way you see yourself, not the way you are." The wolf was holding up the belt that kept his loincloth from falling off.

"Maybe this is a joke, and it's just a dream, so I can do what I want," Christian thought. The wolf lifted what would be an eyebrow if it wasn't on the head of an animal. Christian spoke out loud. "What the hell is that? What? Get dressed how? How I see myself?"

The black backhand hit came so fast Christian just saw a blur, then heard the slap before feeling it, that hard slap of dead hide against skin. His head reeled to the side, an explosion of pain welling up from inside his jaw. Copper flooded his mouth and he wiped at it, palms prickling with fear and shock. His fingers came away red and slimy, drops of blood falling onto his feet. He looked over at the wolf, terrified.

"You will do what I tell you, even if I have to punish the life from you and bring it back, then do it again. You know how you want to look, Christian. I want you to make it happen."

The blood crackled on Christian's fingers, disappearing in a puff. His mouth crawled with some kind of electricity - he felt again at his teeth, and came away with only spit. The wolf stepped by and grabbed open the wardrobe..

What happened next should have been intensely sexual for Christian, but it was not. He had a severe interest in all things black and leather and power-dynamic, a complete fetish. The insides of the wardrobe held everything he could imagine wearing and some things that he hadn't imagined before. All clothing, none of the gear that gets used to enact actual fantasy, only the parts of the image. The first time he tried on a pair of cowboy boots, Christian was terrified that the clerk would see his erection under his tight denim - this moment should have been like that.

Instead, it was mortifying in a completely different way. The wolf was watching him, intently watching with yellow eyes, a complete stare. Christian started to root through things, pulse quickening and shuddering, hands shaking as he tried to sort out what he wanted to look like and find it. The experience was so peak he felt more numb than anything.

He picked out the following:

– Black leather bar vest, chain-sided
– Black leather shirt, heavyweight supple leather and quite glossy
– Black leather belt, double-studded with a big chrome buckle
– Fitted black leather jeans, apparently made of horsehide and tough enough he could barely bend his knees
– Black leather cowboy boots, with metal toe and heel rands and a metal chain ankle strap.

Christian was so aroused during the procedure that he wasn’t erect, but flushed crimson in the face, heat boiling off his ears. He momentarily forgot about the wolf, instead looking for a mirror to see himself in. There wasn’t one.

“Come here.” The growl came from down the hall, and Christian poked his head out the door. “Here, you ignorant waif.” The words came from the end of the hall, from Christian’s parents’ bedroom.

No fucking way, he hissed, and closed the door. “Uh, just a minute,” he said, and looked back in the wardrobe, trying to stall. He spotted a pair of fingerless gloves and strapped them on his shaking hands. They made him look even more slender. He stepped out into the hallway, not wanting to press his luck with the wolf. The creature had the power to both hurt and un-hurt him – he wasn’t sure if healing was included.

Walking was a complete head-trip, as the leather all creaked and shifted, the boots clomping so authoritatively on the hard wood that he actually wanted to stop, feeling less than worthy to make that kind of racket. He couldn’t stop, because part of him had so desperately wanted to put on such a holy of a getup that it would simply not allow the rest of his body to give up the experience. The heady smell of leather, the look of his crotch wrapped in heavy, snug hide, the boots that made him feel ten feet tall...

The second he got into the master bedroom, black fingers grabbed his arm and yanked, Christian nearly toppling. The door slammed. “Look at you,” the wolf spat, and managed to get a paw nearly around the young man’s neck. Christian was looking at a sillohette in the full mirror next to the closet.

“I, I can’t see, it’s too dark-”

The wolf snarled and shoved Christian aside, grabbing the mirror off the wall and pulling plaster out with it, then plunked it down in front of the wall paintings. “There, look at yourself. Do you like wearing all that? Does it make you feel like you’re worth something?”

Christian felt very small inside, and looking at his reflection made him realize just how strange it all was – the person in the mirror may not have even been him. He’d done a good job of obeying the wolf – the outfit was now a uniform of who he wanted to be. Inside, Christian was a 14-year-old kid all alone in his parent’s house, being terrorized by his imagination. “Uh, I guess so, it’s really cool.” Lame. “Where’d you get this stuff?”

The wolf had a resolute, angry look on his face. “If you think you deserve to look like that, you’re mistaken.” The wolf clapped a gloved hand on Christian’s shoulder, the jolt shaking the human. When Christian looked back in the mirror, he was naked again.

“What are you doing? Why are you doing this to me? You’re just in my own head, it’s like I’m going crazy-”

Those leathered fingers grabbed the human’s jaw like his mother used to, or more appropriately the way a dog would bite another dog’s muzzle and shove it to the ground. “Do you believe that this is happening, or do you think this is a dream?”

“I don’t know,” Christian squeaked.

“Speak like a man!”

I’m not a man! “I don’t know!”

Two rows of white teeth came out in a sick grin. The wolf was apparently capable of things like grinning, smirking, and scowling nastily, despite being some amount of actual wolf. “Do you think it even matters? You’re not stupid, Christian. Tell me what happens when you dream.”

“Uh, well, uh your brain uh, it uh,” The wolf scowled at him and grabbed harder. “It does the same thing you do when you’re awake, except you’re not. And all the stuff you see just comes from inside, instead.”

“Does that answer your question?”

No. “I think so.”

“Good enough.” The wolf let go. “Turn around.” The backs of the wolf’s fingers thwapped Christian on the chest, the human obliging. The creature strapped something around his neck, snug enough that if he did anything except completly relax his neck muscles, it started to strangle him and incite panic.

“What is this? What is this? It’s too tight!” he snarled, and swept his hands up to try and take it off. It was a leather dog collar, complete with a metal tag.

The wolf chopped him between the shoulder blades, then got Christian’s arms behind his back. “It will teach you restraint.” The words dripped with black. “Down.”

“No! Let me go! I don’t have to do any of this! This is all in my head! I don’t have to listen to you!”

The wolf sat on the edge of the bed with a huff, lifted a boot, and brought down the heel on the back of Christian’s neck. The human clunked to the floor and groaned, the side of his mouth crushed against the wood until he drooled. “If this is reality, then you will do what I want you to do because I control this reality. I am stronger than you, older than you, and I have what you want.” The wolf lifted up his boot and dragged Christian closer by the collar, until the young man’s face was against the instep of the foot. “If this is your dream, then you’re going to do what I tell you to do because it’s what you want to do. There’s no way out. Now, you want what I have, what I am, right?”

“I don’t know!” Christian whined, eyes squeezed shut. He was on the verge of tears, a feeling like he was going to laugh so hard he cried.

“That’s a yes if you don’t say no. You must earn what you want, Christian. And to get what you want, you must start from the bottom. You can’t be a wolf unless you know wolves.”

Christian stayed hunched on the ground, trying to hold his head so that the collar didn’t choke him. He had an idea what the wolf meant – the biblical sense of knowledge, intimacy. He wanted it, so much, but this was hell, where the thing you want turns into the thing that drives you mad for eternity.

“This is your first lesson, Christian. You had your punishment for throwing me away. Now, you will learn to respect this creature before you, from the ground up.”

“First.” The heel came down on the back of Christian’s neck. “Who am I?”

“I don’t know, a wolf or something?” Christian was the size of a mouse, he was a dust ball, he was a speck of dirt on the floor.

“I am your lord and master.”

Christian grunted as the wolf dug his heel into the collar and shifted it, the stiff leather grabbing at the skin of his throat. “This is-” He tried to squeak, face burning red.

“Who am I?”

There was a long period of silence, Christian starting to ache, his back starting to spasm. “You are... you are my master.” The wolf’s boot heel thunked the top of Christian’s head, the human seeing stars. “You are my lord and master!”

“Not so energetic, Christian. Next.” The wolf shifted his other boot, mashing it against the human’s chin. “You will answer me, and you will then kiss my leather. Do you understand?”

“Yes-”

Thunk! “What is my name?” Pause. “I am Master Wolf. Now, we try it.”

The wolf stood up. “Who am I?”

“Y-you are my lord and master.” The human then gave the toe of the wolf’s boot a kiss. Christian had not thought it was very erotic to do that, and hadn’t ever wanted to do it. All he felt now while pressing his lips to the hide was a terrific sense of shame that he was actually going along with this excercise.

“What is my name?”

“You are Master Wolf.” Kiss.

The wolf bent down and hooked a gloved finger into the front ring of the collar and tugged Christian to his knees. “This is your lesson for this week. Next week, we will continue.”

The wolf got up and strode off, clomping down the hall, then down the stairs. Then a funny thing happened – reality returned. Christian did not wake up peacefully into his normal bed, he did not snap away with a jolt and a cold sweat. Instead, Christian found himself looking at the window, then looking back to the door. The room had been previously empty except for furniture, drenched in the strange monochrome that seemed to indicate the wolf. Now, looking at the door, he saw Bassie staring in at him with wide eyes. The room was strewn with his mom’s clothes, smelling vaguely of female and years and years of life.

Christian was still naked, and the cat was seemingly terrified of him. When he moved, Bassie hissed and ran away, tail fluffed out. Christian got up and wandered back to his bedroom, retracing the steps he’d taken earlier. His bedroom was cluttered, computer whirring away, laundry in the hamper, sheets in need of a washing.

To the bathroom, for a look in the mirror. His face had no signs of the strike the wolf gave him, looking completely and utterly the way it had when he’d emerged from the bath.

There was just one problem: he still had the collar on.

Lack of Time

2005-11-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

I am at a loss to really describe how I feel about writing 50,000 words in 30 days. On one hand, it seems like such a huge number. On the other hand, writing 1,667 words a day is not particularly difficult for me.

I find myself surging ahead and writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. Some people find it difficult to write enough, endlessly going back and forth on how to phrase something. I'm not like that - I think it up and write it down. I feel that this is the way one should write. You can always go back later and edit it.

It has disadvantages, though. For example, this post's cut article is the best piece of writing from the last batch that I could come up with.

Word Count: 4,607

Christian made it home, somehow. The world was a gray daze, one eye just not seeing any more, his face crackling with dried blood by the time he made it into the house. Looking in the bathroom mirror, his eye was swollen, face drenched in blood, skin a horrible shade of sweaty pale. His left pupil was larger than his right. I bet that means something, he thought, as he stumbled into his bedroom and collapsed in a heap on the bed.

He would later recognize the feeling as being drunk, the vertigo drowsiness like a forced descent into an altered state of consciousness. The night didn’t matter any more – all that mattered was delicious sleep. A voice somewhere in Christian’s head warned him that if he fell asleep, he could die. He didn’t pay any attention to it.

My Greed

2005-11-02T10:06:00.000-08:00

I now have google AdSense ads. This is not a terrible thing. Google is cool, or else I wouldn't have lots of email space to use or a place to host my blog for free. Hopefully the ads will actually function properly and show things that make sense. Because I'm blogging a novel, I'm sure stranger and stranger things will appear over time.

I also hope people will click on the ads. But then again, who clicks on ads?

Prologue

2005-11-01T20:21:00.000-08:00

Last night, I wrote a short story for a friend of mine. It was a small preparation for the very big task of writing 50,000 words. By 'big task', I mean not so big. I've done it once before and this time, my idea is much more linear and thought out.

Last year, I blogged the entire thing. No one read it, so that was perfectly okay with me. This year, it's plausible that someone may actually read my blog, and so I want to keep things secret!

My biggest failing is perspective. I'm fairly adept at handling it, but I never know what point of view to write from. First person? Third? After writing a bit in first person, I do not want to write my story that way. So the prologue stays FP and the rest gains a breath of fresh air.

Click on the words below to get a taste of my hot writing skill.

Word Count: 1787

There are tracks of blood in the snow behind my house. They lead from the yew tree through the small yard, through the snow and mud, through the plants. Smears of blood crystal over with flakes from above, up the back of the porch bench.

They cross the porch, the door clawed in, streaks of blackening fluid staining into the throw, mixing with cat-hair on the landing of the stairs.

The tracks are paws, dog paws, wolf paws, but long fingered like a human’s. They go up the stairs, straight to the bathroom, staining the rug in a sanguine mess, blood and water dripping down the edge of the tub, and then the body. The body.

There is no body. I’m lying in the bathtub, head just barely out of the water. I’m relaxing, which is unusual since I hate taking baths and do it only because people will think I’m a disgusting waste of human space if I don’t. It’s silent, the house creeping with a strange breath of nothing, then gone as the cat howls at the door. Close a door and a cat will come from nowhere to sit and beg at it.

My mind is made up. I have decided that I don’t believe in this bull-shit any more. I’m smart. I meandered through a school with no boundaries and no control, still coming into the realm of public desks and humilation with enough brain power to daydream my way through good grades at least until eighth grade.

This bull-shit is the fact that I’m a werewolf. Go ahead and laugh, stare at me funny, but it’s true. Except it’s not. I’m not a werewolf. I’m smart enough, like I said, to know when the chemicals that are eating my body alive and vomiting up the worth for its cellular replacement are turning my brain inside out.

Have you ever done something that you knew was amazingly stupid or rude or criminal or reckless, but you just stood by and watched it unfold? Your cat does it when she unrolls your toilet paper, staring at you with those eyes that make you forget everything. You don’t forget anything, and it eats at you.

I can think thoughts like these and blunder into a mistake I’ll never live down, and it reconciles perfectly. I am a werewolf, I could never be a werewolf. I am unique, I am like everyone else my age. I am ahead of things, I am woefully behind.

This werewolf thing, that’s the blood coming from the tree out back, the damn tree in my back yard strung up with christmas lights all year round, glowing like some kind of omen. It’s winter now, and the lights have turned green and red, except the squirrels chewed out the green rope and now there’s only red, a hovering red mass of bulbs on a gangly tree gone to ground for the winter, a halo in the snow. It made me think of blood and it made me think of my wolf, the creature hunted down, destroyed, torn and eviscerated, its last dying gasps to return to its lowly and unkempt bathtub to wallow in the drain of blood...

The wolf would never give me his own body, would never give me what I wanted so hard, my mind forgetting that I was mere months away from having figured it all out in the first place. Every second was a second I was not having my bones torn apart, skin stretched, ears relocated, every second was farther and farther away from the thing that I knew I really was. Just one month, Christmas from Thanksgiving, and it was all a big lie that made me feel so rotten inside that I had to lie down in this damn bathtub and try to forget everything.

Welcome.

2005-10-26T14:20:00.000-07:00

My name is not Harold Kirsch. It really is something else, but I prefer to use this name as my pen name. It has a nicer ring to it than my real name. It also means a lot of things to me personally, which aren't very important.

What is important is that you are reading my blog. This blog is made to track things that I am writing. You want to read this blog if:

a) You are interested in a random person's writing.

b) You are interested in a random person, period.

c) You are writing a novel as part of the National Novel Writing Month and want to see what another member is doing.

d) You are a vicious cyber-stalker.

If you are D, get some fresh air. Otherwise, say Hi.

Soon, I will post things about "The Diary of Alistair Kanger", my upcoming novel, along with any other pertinent bits that show up.