Jared AxelrodWriter of Adventure

…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%)

Day 9, but Story 6. At least the work count is up. Some stories just won’t let go. The American Cryptozoological and Exploration Society came out of a conversation I had with Jason Adams–he of Random Signal and Indie Squid Kid fame–where we expressed our disappointment that the International Cryptozoology Society was in fact not a bunch of globetrotting adventurers, but rather a loose collection of scientists (clearly, we are not the only ones who feel this way). It seemed like the perfect pulp conceit, and the characters pretty much wrote themselves. The original idea was to do a short comic story, like an old E.C. short, and I did some doodles of the characters with that in mind.

The ACES clearly had more to say, as this rough draft was three times as long as the previous stories, even with me skimping on the climax and saying things in a sentence that really required one or three paragraphs. There’s alot of pulp juiciness in these characters that I only barely touched on, so it’s not impossible to believe that the ACES will show up again.

On the plus side, it means that the next few stories can be much looser drafts, since the ACES devoured my word count.

On her death bed, Professor Rosalind Ozymandias, founder of the American Cryptozoological and Exploration Society, told me she regretted two, and only two things:

“One, I should have shot that cheating conglomerate of excrement and selfishness who called himself my husband instead of merely divorcing him,” she said. “I have given it extensive thought, and am now quite certain I would been better off as a widow. Secondly, I wish we had never gone in search of that blasted giant squid.”

No one knows why Professor Ozymandias founded ACES. I was the first member, and she never told even me. Her reasons unfortunately, she took with her to her grave. But ACES has left it’s mark on the world, it is the extensive catalogue of bizarre creatures ACES was able to compile in the years of its existence. Indeed, when folks speak of ACES, they usual talk about the monsters we’ve found or fought: chupacapras, mothmen, sasquatches, and the like. But few stories truly consider the humans of ACES, the men and women of knowledge and skill that time and time again heave delved into nature’s darkest mysteries. Their bodies and spirit are pushed to the utmost in the goal of acquiring knowledge. And yet, too often, those stories are overwhelmed by the end results, for stories of monsters will always outshine stories of men. Which is a shame of epic proportions.

For what motivates a person to risk life and limb in the search for something that may or my not exist? What kind of person joins ACES? What kind of person could?

Though many joined and left, I always considered a core group of four to be the heart and soul of ACES: Professor Ozymandias, naturally, who in addition to being the founder was also considered chairwoman and field leader. Wasai Ejiofor, an explorer who knew the jungles of Africa and South America like the back of his hand. Grace Lee, a former nun and expert on undersea creatures. Rounding out the four was myself, Ramon Cassanovez. I have been called a mechanical genius by some, and considering that I designed and built many of special vehicles and specimen-gathering devices used by ACES, this was not a title I think was undeserved. It was us four who chose the missions ACES would finance and undertake. And, fittingly, was this four who traveled to the depths of the ocean in search of the fabled giant squid…

15,733 / 50,000 (31.5%)

Candle’s Point of View

Man, writing a mystery in a day may not be the best idea. It’s a tempting enterprise, because the plot-coupon nature of the mystery yard is very appealing from a first draft perspective: Main character must collect plot point A, B and C in order to unlock the secret ending. Details about how dark the mean streets are Draft 2’s domain.

Naturally, I threw in a sci-fi conceit, because I can’t leave well enough alone. Throw in trying to write this on Election Day, when I’d rather be obsessively checking Obama’s progress to the Presidency, well, it’s like I was setting myself up not to finish it in a day.

When his eyes opened, he was a detective. He knew this because he woke up in a detective’s office, and he could read the backwards “Candle Investigations” written on the window of the office door. A look into the wallet in his pack pocket found a Private Investigator’s license, a driver’s license with an unflattering picture, an ATM card, and a dry cleaning stub, all bearing the name Salvatore Candle. A thin stack of business cards, however, said his name was Sonny Candle, which he liked better. He was Sonny Candle. So it was his wallet , his office, his bank account, and, presumably, his 3-piece suit that would be ready on Friday.

“What was today?” Sonny wondered to himself. He couldn’t remember, any more that he could remember this office, or the color of the 3-piece suit. But he found comfort in the correlation of the details. The collection of information gave him a very clear idea of the man he presented as himself to the world, if not the man he felt like. He was a detective. He owned a 3-piece suit. These were facts.

Sonny was comforted by facts…

Sterrance & Thomas See The Solar System

Sterrance and Thomas, a hedgehog and a small boy who go on adventures with the assistance of Thomas’s many eccentric uncles and Sterrance’s complete disregard of common sense, are characters I’ve been meaning to write since I first doodled them in their spaceship years ago:

Stories like this, with their limited vocabulary but whimsical premises, are the reverse of mysteries. They are in fact too easy. They kinda feel like cheating.

This does not mean, however, that there will not be more Sterrance and Thomas stories. I mean, what happens when they go to the market? To the Renn Faire? To Japan? These are questions that are screaming for answers!

Thomas was just spreading the toast with marmalade when Sterrance told him he’d like to live on Mercury. Sterrance was not normally a hedgehog given to extreme desires—he liked balloons and soft toys and toast with marmalade, but that was about it—so Thomas was taken a bit a back.

“Mercury,” Thomas said. “You mean the planet.”

“Of course I mean the planet,” said Sterrance. “I have been thinking about it along time, almost since I got up this morning, and I think that Mercury is were I want to live.”

“I don’t know,” said Thomas. “I hear it gets pretty hot there.”

“So does Florida,” Sterrance said. “And yet we visit your Uncle Wilbur there every summer.”

Thomas did have to admit that Florida was hot in the summer. “Well,” Thomas said. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to look. And Uncle Roger did leave me that rocket in the backyard.”

Thomas’s Uncle Roger did indeed bring the rocket ship with him to Thomas and Sterrance last time he visited, and he did forget to take it with him when he left. Thomas had brought this up on several phone conversations, but Uncle Roger merely changed the subject to pheasant hunting or argyle socks or any of the other many things uncles like to talk about….

10,283 / 50,000 (20.6%)

This one was rough, when compared to the last two. Granted, I had all day to work on #1 and #2, and this one only had an evening. But still, I guess I wasn’t that all excited about it. Normally, I’d put it away and start over, but word count is word count, and I wasn’t going to write 2000 more words on top of the 500 I had already squeezed out.  Naturally, this meant that the point of story had to be changed, but so it was now not so much about stone soup–as you might glean from the excerpt–and more about, well, angst. Fourteen-year-old-girl-angst, but angst nonetheless.

 It was about stone soup when I was hungry, and about angst when I was frustrated.  Go figure.

…As far as Maggie could tell, there was nothing special about the stone. Rounded by a river or stream, certainly, and it had enough heft that it could break a good window, given half a chance. But it was little more than a dull river rock. Certainly not magic.

“What’s it do?” Maggie asked. She gazed past the old woman’s shoulder to the hotdog cart across the street.

Madame Ambrosia absently toyed with the large wooden beads of her necklace and squinted at Maggie from behind her bifocals. “Your mind’s not on your studies today is it? You skip breakfast again, Magdalena?”

“I already have a mother,” Maggie snorted.

“So you say,” Madame Ambrosia said, letting her glasses dangle on the chain around her neck. She swept the stone out of Maggie’s grubby hands. “You’ll like this one. This is a soup stone. As in, you can make soup from it. All you need is pot of boiling water, and voila! Soup!”

Maggie was somewhat less than impressed. She rolled her heavily lined eyes at the older woman. “I’m not a total idiot, you know. I’ve heard that stupid fairy tale. The stone isn’t magic, the beggar just convinces people it is. It’s all about gullibility.”

“Well, that’s a fairy tale, isn’t it,” said Madame Ambrosia, slightly perturbed. “This is the real world, which means we use real magic.”

6,466 / 50,000 (12.9%)

This one took awhile. Not that it was hard to write, just that I kept being distracted by J.R. playing On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness, Episode 2. There’s a part where you have to beat up rich people to get money to buy a bracelet to give to a receptionist to enter an asylum to free a scientist who will give you a card so that your robot monkey can win a trophy. Later, the robot monkey helps you fight architects. While wearing a top hat. Seriously. Most entertaining game ever.

Not that this story has anything to do with that sort of thing.
On June 25, 2008, a geologic expedition in the Antarctic came across a unexpected sight: glacier drifts had uncovered the wreck of a zeppelin, named Gleaming Solace. While the exact nature of what this craft’s mission was remains a mystery, a journal from the hold holds some clues as to what these brave men were doing, so close to the South Pole. The following is from the journals of Prof. Ulysses Carnabatch, regarding the final voyage of Gleaming Solace.

October 14
My mind cannot shake the image of the poor boy’s blood soaking into the dark planks of the ship. Captain Spritener said he took responsibility for the body, but I cannot help but find myself feeling a tinge of guilt. Perhaps it is another symptom of my failing heart, puny muscle that it is. For there is no reason for me to feel guilty. Superstitions are hardly my purview, and I will not cotton with them. Not now, and not ever.

Would that this journey to Patagonia not be ruined with such unpleasantness. The dream of a tropical paradise has now be marred by the realities of a life at sky…

4,422 / 50,000 (8.8%)

I really wanted to do NaNoWriMo this year, but the fact of the matter is, I’m not really that interested in writing a novel right now. What I do want to write more of is short stories. Since the accent in NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth is the “Wri” and not the “No,” I decided that a collection of short stories, as long as I fulfilled the word count, would be fine.

How many stories?  Well, there are 30 days, aren’t there?  So how about 30 stories?

I briefly flirted with the idea of posting them, but decided that rough writing–even my rough writing–is not something to be shared. I will, however, podcast ‘em all once they’ve been polished to fine sheen. So there’s that.

To tide you over here’s the openning to tale #1, Bearing The Bahdj:

The morning after she broke a muggers hand, Rachel Hark had planned to sleep in. The argument she had with Barry about the whole business had kept her agitated and unable to sleep. Barry had thought that Rachel should have just given him her purse, an idea that Rachel found very difficult to understand

“Barry, I don’t reward bad behavior. I don’t do it at work, and I don’t do it in my life.”

“This isn’t a kindergarten class, Rachel! You could’ve been hurt.”

“But I wasn’t hurt. He was hurt. I slammed his hand up against the wall. I think I broke it.”

“You broke his hand?”

‘I think so. It made a breaking sound. In any case, I think it will be a very compelling reason not to mug people in the future.”

“Jesus. Is this how you teach you kids? What kind of a example are you setting?”

“A good one, I hope. Someone who does not tolerate that kind of bullying.”

“Well, Rache, you win a gold star, then.”

“What’s with the sarcasm? I was almost mugged today!”

“Rachel, you broke a man’s hand!”

“Yes, I did. And you know what? I’m okay with that. I’m okay with not being robbed, or molested, or who knows what else. And I’m okay with someone who has probably done those things to other women being punished.” Barry tried to come close, but Rachel shoved him away. “No, no Barry. Not tonight.”

After that argument, and the fretting, pacing, and ice cream binging in the safety of her own apartment that followed, Rachel was looking forward to sleeping in. But the alien burrowed into her chest had other plans…

2,239 / 50,000 (4.5%)