Jared Axelrod

Sent from the phone.

Marcus ran this place on Dragon’s Blood. It was the last place you get the thick, mud-like coffee that would keep you for days on one sip. Marcus drank the stuff 24 hours a day, until his heart burst from his chest and strangled him. They found the heart 3 states away, shacked up with a stripper named ‘Menthol.’ The heart was unrepentant.

Lentils, wild rice & popcorn crumbs, held together with a mushroom-cream sauce.

I’m still reeling from weekend chock-full of geniuses, so here’s a sketch of the burglar queen for the 21st Century:

For the REMAKE/REMODEL: Imra Vep discussion on Whitechapel Forums

Arise, for great justice!

Knights Of Cydonia by Muse.

I’ve seen better days but I don’t care…

“Oasis” by Amanda Palmer

…with this special report.

On a whim this morning I sent a editor I hadn’t heard from in awhile, to ask if she and her publisher were still interested in a project we had talked about months ago (vague enough for ya’?). Long story short, they are still very much interested, and consequently I need to get my rear in gear on THIS possibly published project. Which means other projects need to get kicked to curb for a bit. Like, say, writing 30 stories in 30 days, to choose a completely random example from out of nowhere.

However, the fact remains that the point of NaNoWriMo is the Wri, so I’m counting the word-work for this project in with the rest of it, as it is still, in fact writing. I really need to keep up this pace, anyway.

So, for those keeping track, 2 weeks in I’ve got 10 and one-half stories. Which is not bad at all. Hopefully, at a NaNoWriMo pace, I can whip this project into shape and still have time for a few more stories before the end of November.

21,215 / 50,000 (42.4%)

This story was inspired by seeing an ad for a store here in Philly called Phag. Phag is not, as I hoped, some sort of gay fantasia of department store–you know, someplace where you walk in and Carson Kressley shows you an array of silken shirts while Kyan Douglas offers to do your hair–but instead a tasteful, quirky home furnishings store. This, naturally, led to me imagining what a gay fantasia of department store would be like and what sort of person would shop there.

Clearly, the best person to shop at such a store (named “Phagget” in the story), would be some sort of combination of P.G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Fred and Patrick Stewart as Sterling from “Jeffery.” With a dash of Lord Whimsy’s sartorial excellence for good measure.

The result is one of the most fun characters to write, well, ever.

“Darling, I love you, you look horrible.” Uncle Auric was never one to waste any time for pleasantries when he could go straight to criticism. I hadn’t even sat down for lunch yet, and already he was digging in. “Oh, I’m sorry. That was dreadful of me. Did some die? Is that why couldn’t dress yourself this morning? If that is the case, my deepest condolences.”

“No one has died, Auric.” I knew where this was going. “I look fine.”

“Fine. Yes. Well.” Auric snatched up the menu and pretended to be interested in it. “Fine. As in, ‘adequate.’ As in, ‘bare minimun. Well, I suppose you’re covering your naughty bits so all is well with the world. Your job is done, isn’t it?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. This was not a conversation I wanted to have today. “Look, not everyone has your flair for fashion, Auric.”

“That is a misfortune that I am keenly aware of,” said Auric, slapping down the menu onto the table. “Timothy, when you first came to his city, you were but a babe, lost in the woods, most beast than boy, more boy than man. Your parents-and bless their poor souls that they aren’t here to witness how far you’ve sunken—your parents came to me and said, ‘Take care of this poor child. Make sure that his fair face is shielded from the elements, that he dresses like the proud young man we hope him to be, and that he finds a nice Jewish boyfriend.’ Now you, in the hot-headed folly of impetuous youth, may feel no need to follow the requests of the couple who brought you into this world, but I tell you, I take my charge seriously!”

Auric knew that bringing up my parents would normally bend me to whatever whim he had in mind. But not today. “My parents have no problems with the way I live. And they did not ask you find me a boyfriend.”

“Perhaps not in mere words, Timothy, but certainly in sentiment…”

20,361 / 50,000 (40.7%)

Full story this time, as it is a flash of dubious literary merit and one that took all of–when did I put up the last post?–30 minutes to write. Good to know the old 365 Tomorrows muscles still work. This puts me, word count and story count -wise at…where I should have been Sunday. Ah, well.

This story amuses me to no end, though, and it’s the perfect palate clenser for more involved fiction. Expect ol’ Bronco to show up again the next time I get frustrated.

In the cold, clear light of dawn, Bronco McGillicutty could see all the way to Jupiter. As the sun spread over Ceres’s rocky surface, Bronco looked at the massive gas giant with awe and wonder. He turned to Grangoff Sletch, the man he had hopped halfway across the solar system in search of. Sletch was a criminal and degenerate, but Bronco knew the poor bastard had to appreciate beauty of some sort. Bronco yanked the manacled man up by his hair.

“You see that red-spot, Sletch? Take at good look, the sky’s gonna fog up when the sun gets too much higher. That storm there. You see it?”

“Yeah, I see it,” Sletch drawled. “So what?”

“So what? Goddamn! Look at it, dammit! Ain’t that storm the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen! Ain’t it? If I met a woman, man, androgyne or hermaphadite half as beautiful as that mass of swirling gas, why, I’d fuck ‘em until my dick fell off!” To punctuate his point, Bronco threw Sletch to the ground and starting humping the artificial atmosphere. “Now, say it’s pretty, you piece of shit!”

Sletch spat out a mouthful of Ceres gravel. “Fine, fine it’s pretty, okay? It’s pretty.”

“You’re damn right it is.” Bronco stared at the storm until the yellow sky of Ceres made it impossible. Bronco looked back at his quarry, a skinny, spent man with chained hands and feet. “Hey. What you say we go fuck that storm?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Let’s go fuck it. You and me. We’ll fly in close, I’ll take the chains off, and we’ll dive naked into that fat red eye of Jupiter! You and me, we’ll do it! Whaddaya say?”

“You’re crazy!”

“That I am, Sletch, that I am. Crazy to have spent my life chasing after worthless wastes of skin like you, crazy to have let my first wife and my third husband go, and crazy to have left my children to grow up without their father. I’m crazy. But I’m sane enough to know you’ve left a similar trail of human wreckage behind you. I’m sane enough to know that our lives ain’t worth shit. But imagine, if we end them like that, fuckin’ a gas giant. Well, shit! That’d be something, wouldn’t? Shitballs, that’d be something!”

Sletch looked at Bronco as if he had some sort of disease. “You can’t be serious!”

Bronco gave Sletch a hurt look, then grabbed him in the hair. “Well, fine. You wanna be that way. We’ll just haul your skinny ass back to jail. Shit. I had high hopes for you, Sletch. I hoped you were a trooper. But you’re just like the rest.”

Bronco’s fast, angry strides toward his ship made it difficult for Sletch to keep pace, and he found himself dragged more than walking along. “You don’t really want to jump naked into Jupiter do you?”

“Well, not alone,” Bronco said. He paused at the hatch of his ship, his large frame a stark shadow against the golden sky. “That’d make me some sort of a pervert.”

18,225 / 50,000 (36.4%)

This story was a weird one. It contains alot of childhood whimsy and mystery and…not much else. I clearly have far too much affection for small children who dress up as Batman to allow anything bad to happen to the poor kid. Also to sacred to mess with: parents who make their children superhero costumes. And adults who dress as superheroes.

Honestly, it’s like I wanted to write a story where nothing of consequence happens.

Maybe changing it to a original character like the sketch below is more appropriate. Or tossing out the superhero angle completely and making it vampires instead.

Barney put on his Batman costume because he was expecting adventure.  He solemnly zipped up the gray sweatshirt is father had sewn a bat insignia onto, flipping up the painted hood with the two pointy ears glued on. He carefully tied the black cape around his neck, having to redo it when one string was too short to complete the bow. He buckled on his plastic utility belt, making sure the foam batarangs it came with were stowed in the plastic pouches. Lastly, he put the shiny plastic domino mask over his eyes. Barney held the edges of his cape out wide in front of the mirror, checking out his wingspan.

Yes, he was ready for anything. He still had on his jeans and sneakers he wore to school—his grey sweatpants were in the wash with grass stains from the last time he wore the costume, and his black galoshes were hard to run in. But he had the important parts, the elements necessary to strike fear into the hearts of evil-doers. Swooping his cape, he dashed out his bedroom…

17,713 / 50,000 (35.4%)

The low word count on this one, because it’s little more than a outline with an opening and some intermittent dialog. The story, about amusement park employees who try to get an asshole who plays Batman fired, is some light fun, and I feel I’m doing the story adequate justice by having it so loose. Have to keep up on the story count as well as the word count, after all.

I’m thinking I may to a few other “outline drafts” on the same theme of folks who dress up as Batman, or superheroes in general. It’s something I’ve thought alot about.

“Fucking Batman, what does he know about anything?” Gary ripped off his black domino mask and threw it down on the craft table. “I swear, if he criticizes my quips one more time!”

The rest of the guys in the break room tried not to look at Gary’s tirade. He went through about four a week. In my opinion, Gary was a little high strung for hero-work. I mean, I knew I was getting paid to hang around the theme park dressed in tights, shake hands with the kids, get my picture taken. I wasn’t Wonder Woman. I was Gina. Gina who dressed as the Flash on weekends. That was the tact the other guys took as well. It was a costume, not an identity.

But Gary, Gary threw himself into it they way other guys didn’t. He wasn’t dressed as Robin, for the weekend, he was Robin.

Which was a raw deal, really. Batman was a total ass…

16,527 / 50,000 (33.1%)