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My short story about the fall of civilization, the coming rise of the undead, and the existence of the world's most famous cryptid was featured yesterday on Non Finito Magazine. Non Finito is the pet project of a great friend and previous collaborator of mine, Sam Roman. Here's a short excerpt:
A lot of my friends said they were ready for this. Some of them
claimed they were even ready for this, specifically. Which would seem
ludicrous, and was then, but you know, not so much now. So some of them
had escape plans. One guy learned to fire a gun. Another bought a
crossbow. I think some of the more pragmatic ones stored water. That
spaceman food, the powdered stuff, batteries, canned peaches. Seriously,
one of my friends, the one everyone thought was the most responsible of
us, had an attic full of guns, and canned peaches.
So yeah. A lot of my friends said they were ready for
this. Which is funny to me now, because I haven’t run into too many of
them. That were, you know, talkative, smug, and surviving, instead of
murderous, decaying, and trying to eat me. Which is a shame, because
some company would be nice. Someone to talk to. Even the self-satisfied,
“I told you so”-types. Especially up in these damn trees.
Click on through to read the rest, and make sure to share with your friends. And while you're at it, you should submit to Non Finito too - Sam's always looking for new creators, especially ones looking for a space for those bits of art we sometimes have trouble finding a place for - those things left rough, unfinished, or raw. You can see the magazine's submission guidelines here, as well as their contact information.
Thanks, Sam.
After having quite a bit to drink on Friday night, and then piling two oddly-timed power outages on top of that, this weekend has been something of a haze. And yet, still work has been done.
This card game is starting to look mostly like a way to enable my Wikipedia addiction. To compound things, I've always enjoyed following the citation as much as actually perusing the articles, which is probably the closest thing we have to Alice's rabbit hole that isn't a psychotropic drug. Over the past several days I've racked up a web history ranging from the Greek city states to medieval methods of torture and execution, to what names were innovated by Shakespeare [an odd gap for me, since I actually studied those plays pretty extensively in college].
Oh, names. I'm been compiling kingdoms for this game, and there's one aspect of fantasy literature I just cannot wrap my head around - how in the hell they name these places. I once again like I screwed myself for not taking Latin or German or something at some point, so I could actually come up with something that was sort of... fun, airy, but evocative. Magic comes up with "Lorwyn" or "Innistrad" and Tolkien comes up with "Mirkwood" and "Gondor" and I... sit on great little gems like "Edgewood," "Riverport," and "Hilltop." None of which really fit what I'm doing now. And typically, when I think I've finally come up with something sort of interesting, I remember, no, wait, I've stolen it from an SNES RPG.
So if anyone has any nifty tips and tricks for coming up with names for fantasy kingdoms, I'd appreciate it.
For the game mechanics themselves, I'm still sticking pretty close to "Keep It Simple, Stupid" as I develop, though I've thrown a couple of extra things in just since Friday that sort of excite me, and that I can't goldfish out myself to see if they work or not. They feel like things that, if they don't work, they can be easily removed, but if they do have the interactions I expect... they'll become the most important part of my game. A off-handed suggestion by Justin kind of cracked things open for me, so I think the thanks have to go to him for any work I did this weekend.
Though I was fairly busy with review work all this weekend, several of my better opportunities to procrastinate went to tooling on the card game. Since this is my first foray into making any kind of tabletop game, I've tried to stick to the pat yet useful principle of "Keep it Simple, Stupid" - I figure the more complicated I make this thing, the longer it will take, the more mistakes which will be made. I mean, what I might wind up with is something downright unplayable or too easy, or... something, and as much as I tend to think if you're going to fail, then fail big, I'd like to wind up in the end with a game that, if not good, is at least complete.
Since I picked a fantasy theme [a lot of my escapism lately has been fantasy stuff - Red Sonja comics, SNES/PS1 RPGs, genre novels], I found an interesting way to use some of my favorite archetypes from the genre in admittedly generic [because I don't want to get sued], but I think kind of fun, ways. So far I've managed to compile a neat little list of semi-recognizable analogs, based on various characters I've listed below, with my own little twists.
1. Queen Jocasta
2. The Assassin Lightborn
3. Othello's Roderigo
4. Mary Firth
5. Jack the Ripper
6. Lady Macbeth
7. Henvy IV's Hotspur
8. Suikoden II's Ayda
9. Don Quixote
10. The Beastmaster
11. Conan the Barbarian
12. Red Sonja
13. The 300 Spartans
14. Thor
15. Santa Claus
16. The Oracles of Delphi
17. King Hamlet
18. Dolores Haze
19. Final Fantasy IV's Edward Chris von Muir
20. As You Like It's Touchstone
21. Grima Wormtongue
22. Eowyn
23. John Wiswell's Automatons
24. The Necronomicon
25. St. George the Dragon Slayer
These are mostly favorites of mine - pulled from all over, but still mostly in that fantasy vein. And while I know it seems like a lot, trust me when I say I still could use a few more, and if there's anything or anyone from those sorts of worlds that it looks like I might have missed, or you think I might want to consider, just let me know in the comments, or @ me on Twitter, or even email me at mojo.wire.productions@gmail.com. I appreciate the help in the meantime.
Time to get back to this, right?
In 2013, I made a whopping six posts. There are a lot of reasons... a lot of family stuff, some depression stuff, perhaps even just the inevitable conclusion to my slow falling off with this blog. I toyed with starting again near the end of last year, but was annoyed and frustrated with my attempts to change the layout, and just generally make the site look a bit better, and more importantly, simpler than it does. Even toyed with the idea of transferring the whole thing to Wordpress instead.
Still might. Still could.
The past couple of weeks I've been doing some tabletop gaming. Barring "Magic the Gathering," and some "Cards Against Humanity," I wouldn't call myself a fan of board games, necessarily. I've actually always sort of hated them, partly because they always felt a bit like a punishment, or something that went along with other things I don't care to do, or have happen - Sequence with a girl about to dump me, my mom and I playing Uno on the way home after my college graduation, blackjack while camping. I mean, I guess Life was kind of cool, and if someone introduced me to something like North Korean High-Stakes Connect Four, maybe I could get on board [heh], but honestly, never been my scene.
But you know, good company always puts me in a good mood, and trying new things is always important, and I've found a few things about table top games I enjoy now. A friend's gift of "Timeline" was a very pleasant surprise, Sushi Go! was surprisingly fun, etc., etc., etc. I guess what really surprised me is how all the games are just mechanics that are the means to tell a story, even if that story isn't entirely linear or even much of a story. And that's kind of charmed me.
So it stands to reason that with little experience and no idea how to proceed, I've spent the past couple of days staying up until well into the wee hours of the morning developing a card game based off of this post - "With apologies to Regina Spektor, and Aaron the Moor" - just dropping about 10 heirs for what I have planning. This really is one of those times when I'm playing in a sandbox I've no real business being in, but thanks to having seen so little success with my own work, no one can really be all that critical about how I spent my free time and sleepless nights.
I'm also back to work on a comic project that came to me over a year ago, but because of aforementioned family problems, I found myself back-burning for... well, everything. And I've found a rather delightful collaborator in Glynis Mitchell, so with all this coming together, I thought getting back to the old work blog was a good idea.
"I think what frightens me about Twitter and Facebook and all other social media is that it peels back a layer privacy that we still have to assume is still there. We get to see people's thought processes, their motivations, and sometimes the downright terrifying way in which they see the world. Yet despite being given this glimpse, it's verboten to stop them, to say anything to the effect of "whoa, wait a minute... you think you're being radical, but you're being anything but. This is destructive."
"Now, I'll grant, at first blush, this seems elitist, vindictive, and perhaps most importantly, equally frightening being said aloud by me. Whenever I feel pangs about this, I recall a horrifying bit of logic I caught while up late watching the religious station, where xyz-denomination compared forcibly confronting individuals about matters of faith to pulling someone from a burning building, and about how being worried about offending them while doing so, and not being passionate, not being - I'd say pushy, they wouldn't, but I digress - would be tantamount to going into that building and saying "hey, I don't want to offend you, keep doing you're thing, but you know, your house might be on fire, you should really get out. If you want." No, they saw it as seeing someone in present danger, and needing to drag them, kicking and screaming, from an impending doom. And I suppose writing this, and wanting to do that with people I know, people who have revealed problematic things about themselves - I could see how that would be construed as the same thing.
"Now, remember for second that I actually do have some conflicting feelings on that, since I wouldn't hesitate to save someone from a fire, but if they told me "hey, you know, it seems nuts, but I want to see how this fire thing turns out" then I might think about backing off. I have to concede that sort of thinking [the thinking of our little evangelists, missionaries, crusaders, etc.] which comes to influencing, commenting on, and attempting to change people's motives, methods, and ways of thinking is deluded and horrifying. And I don't want to interject myself into people's business to save them - especially if they don't want to be saved.
"Yet sometimes I wonder, and I struggle. Because I think what bothers me about this extra layer of people we get to see sometimes is not the damage that it does to themselves, but the damage it is going to allow them to do to others."
In hopes of getting this signal out there and just a little stronger.
A series of misfortunes has left an old friend and fellow Bennington Alum, Darshana Bolt, pictured above with some of her work, stuck in Cambodia and doing battle with a serious [as if there's any other kind] bout of Typhoid fever. With her already ravaged immune system, and the fact that despite all the proper vaccinations, she's still gotten sick, and she desperately needs to return home to recover properly, with her family and other loved ones in Vermont. But with mounting debt for less than spectacular medical care, getting home as been difficult for her.
And so, the vibrant artist with the huge heart, the artist, the teacher, the proper punker - has been spending most of her days like this:
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In order to combat her debt and get her home, her brother has set up a gofundme.com account to help, with a rather meager goal of just $2,500. You can read all about it, and give here at http://www.gofundme.com/Help-Darshana.
They've already raised over half of their goal, and if everyone who reads this or is a friend on face book were to give a couple of bucks, she's be able to go home. So if you can give just a little bit, please, do. I'd consider it a personal favor - I have fond memories of Darshana, always with her sketchbook, ever teasing me about my excitement-induced mixed-metaphors.
There's a fair chance if you're reading this, you're an artist or a world traveler yourself, with a penchant for getting out there, and not at all unlikely to wind up in a similar tight spot. Price we pay for being interesting, eh? But we've all got to help each other, folks.
Reposted from Facebook, by request. - The Management.
Apologies
for the poor quality photo - my phone's camera is nothing fancy. But this is Loki - a
sorta-rescue I've had for about a year, who I don't generally bomb the
internet with pictures of, because you're going to hear enough about him
if you talk to me in person. But here's the deal - he's plenty
affectionate, but the little [big] dude is not a lap cat, and his
personality honestly leans closer to mine than I'd like to admit sometimes, meaning he's kind of self-interested little ass, even for a cat, and I kind of dig that about him.
Anyway, story time. I've suffered from panic attacks for a good [right]
long time, and though medication has pretty much knocked them out of
me, one still manages to sneak through and ruin a night or two here and
there every now and then. And look, I am not one of those "healing
powers of animals" types - I'm not going to profess swimming with
dolphins cures cancer, or having a dog is going to make you not want to
kill yourself. And I'm under no delusions that as much affection Loki
and I show each other on a regular basis, he'd eat my eyeballs if I died
in my sleep [which I am strangely ok with].
But last night,
when my mind was racing and my skin was crawling and my bones were
burning, Loki curled up in my lap without a single prompt and sat there
until all the fear and loathing abated. No clue how he knew, not all
that interested in questioning it.
Just a reminder - if you can
take in an unwanted pet, you should. You don't need to start with them
as infants or kittens or whatever to make a worthwhile connection.
2012 was a lost year. A lost year in the lot of my lost years. I sort of wish we could live life like characters in comic books - get part of the story now, and then when so much has happened, have a mini-series which documents a time that hardly happened to us. Something in life self-contained, and shaping, but not in a way we have to refer to it all the time.
Speaking of comics, I spent yesterday, today, working on a new one. Short script, nothing major. Was hoping for 5-8 pages, landed at 14. Actually thought it was 15, but just miscounted. Some things do not change. The funny part is, that's only like five pages short of a monthly book, maybe not even that these days. I've bought/read a lot more mini-comics lately, thought maybe I'd check to see what a good length was. Really enjoyed the distribution method of "Calamity Cash & The Town with No Name," wouldn't mind doing it again.
Doubtful this is the project to do that with. Kind of mishmash of steam-punk and appropriated Asian culture. Nothing earthshaking, doubt it's all that good. But there's kind of message in it, but I don't think anyone would see it, doubt seriously anyone would ever want to draw it. But we'll see. Right now I kind of just want to get it polished, make sure it hits all the beats. I really want to get in touch with either an artist who has worked from comic scripts a lot, or a writer with a lot of experience when it comes to layouts. It's just something I want to improve on, especially when looking at how full some of the pages were in "Town with No Name" - something I don't blame Justin for.
I don't think I gave him anything he couldn't fit on the page. Dude is a machine.
Hoping to pick all this back up again - the blogging, the regular writing, maybe the exercises. Would like to post more here, naturally, but that means doing more actual work to write about. And prose. I sort of like the idea of doing more prose, I think it'd be cool to go to more Sketchy's, write more there. Though that, like most things, largely depends on the ride.
Couple things in the wings. One I can't talk about. Very long term. And then I'm hoping to get in touch with some friends, maybe start working some things out. Would like to finish up some short screenplays. Feel like if I could just get one of them filmed, people would really sit up and take notice.
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