Writing and Reading

I’m just giddy, stupid, tired, insane right now. Random. Totally random. I need a pick-me-up. Something to get the juices flowin’, to get the words goin’ as I write. You know how it is–we got to keep writing. Writing, writing, writing.

This is called a ‘Scary Maze’. It’s the perfect wake-up juice. Here’s the link to it. Have fun, kiddies!

http://www.scaryforkids.com/scary-maze/

Oh, yeah, the object of the maze is to drag that little ‘dot’ with your mouse through the maze to that red exit for each level WITHOUT touching the walls. So basically you need a steady hand. Enjoy.

All right, this is my last post for the night. Or morning. It’s actually morning. What! I’m a night owl, okay? Who cares if I need to be up in about three hours to go to work. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

I’m writing my thoughts to mention an interesting trend I’ve noticed in traffic within my Unforgivable Rantings of a Wretched Writer. I think it’s a wonderful tool to be able to monitor which posts seem to get the most hits and which posts don’t get nearly as much (but make no mistake, there’s value to any post of any specific topic).

And after over a month of blogging on my site, there’s one search I’ve monitored, one topic, that has caused my relevant posts under said topic to soar with hits.

How to Write a Fight Scene.

I need to check my stats again, but I have two relevant posts so far in my work here. The other is “Descriptive” Fight Scenes. This one, however, is more of a ‘visual’ instructor and exercise and resource for brainstorming and crafting how you as a writer want to shape your fight sequences.

I don’t know what it is in the water, or people’s heads–maybe it’s the appeal–but everyone seems to be so interested in the craft of fight choreography, martial arts, that sort of thing, and the process of writing it in their work–be it screenplay, playwright or novel.

This is my offer to you writers out there: send me your fight sequences. I’d love to read ‘em! I love reading that kind of work as much as writing them. The reason I’m making this ‘offer’ isn’t because I think I’m the godly, sexy king of sweet fight scene-writing. No, no, no. I’m making the offer because, first of all, this post is about a ‘Fight Club’.

First Rule of Fight Club is:

I, as the moderator of Fight Club, must post one excerpt of one of the fight sequences I’ve written for either THE CAIN LETTERS or my sequel CHIMERA FALLS.

Second Rule of Fight Club is:

You, the readers–other valiant, virile writers out there–can send me some of your excerpts if you like!  I stress this, though–this is a RULE. Not a REQUIREMENT.

And then, of course, the Third Rule of Fight Club is:

EVERYONE TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB! SPREAD THE NEWS! MAKE A FUSS! SPREAD THE JOY!

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Okay, so here’s my excerpt. Tell me what you guys think!

Alexandra held her breath, waiting for the threll to come out….

She felt her heart beat once.

The threll growled, caught her breath—a blur shot in front of her, knocking the gun out of her hands.

She gasped, reacted, feeling the sting in her fingers. She growled. The threll took a chance doing that.

She looked up and the threll stood in front of her. She witnessed the ugliness, red eyes, snarling fangs, stringy black hair. It hissed and howled at her as it came forward, wanting to rip her flesh off.

She grappled it as it opened wide, wanting to sink its teeth into her neck. She grunted, mustering all her energy to toss the threll to the side. It spat at her as she threw it down.

She looked for her gun, tossing her coat off, her curved figure alive and fresh in the black, like an assassin.

The threll, up again, almost too quick for her—dove for her chest, this time wanting to rip her ribs open.

She held her breath and leaned back.

In slow motion, she watched the threll sail over her, just missing her by a few inches. She bent her back and felt the ground with her hands, bridging herself. She felt the stretch and hung on as tight as possible as the threll rolled over her and back on its feet.

She grunted, tightening her gut as she pulled herself back up from her bridge as the threll bounced back at her, this time aiming for her head—

She expected it from a threll. They were relentless, feral, hungry. They wouldn’t stop.

She rolled as the threll gathered itself for another attack. As she threw a front handspring, she swung around to face it.

It dove for her again, claws out—it growled, furious, aggravated, impatient. Not every day passed when a threll had to fight so hard to overtake its prey.

She gritted her teeth and grasped its claws, grappling it, pulling. She roared, spinning it around and taking a quick breath to snap it in the face with her fist—hard, cracking—She broke its nose. Blood spattered a little.

She drove her fingers hard into its throat, kicked it in the knee, sending it down on its other knee—She backhanded it hard.

The threll howled, standing up and clawing at her.

She threw herself back—again and again—handspring repeated. The threll, relentless, tried to cut her with its claws, missing by a few inches every time. She sensed the edge of the roof getting closer.

And if she kept going, no ground left—only a fall to her death—

She fought hard to break her momentum and dove to one side, missing the edge of the roof by a few feet.

The threll, much to Alexandra’s surprise had leaped off the building in the effort of trying to kill her.

She screamed in anger. She lost. She lost by letting it escape—The threll flew up in a rage, giant bat-like wings holding it in mid-air.

She widened her eyes, mind empty of thought at the sight of it. It hovered in the peace of the rain, staring at her in a way only an enigma could explain. Its trench coat flared with the night wind. It whispered a deep laugh.

She stood up, fuming. Thoughtless, baffled, she wished she could meet it up there and tear out its eyes. She didn’t understand….

“You’re tough to eat….” it said.

She growled. “You can keep trying. I welcome it.”

“Soon!”

A mystery clouded her mind as she watched the threll in the shadowy night. The rain seemed to outline its figure. Something didn’t fit with her little situation. Something about the threll didn’t…fit. And she couldn’t figure out why. The threll just laughed at her—a virile, ugly, sickened, guttural, ghastly laugh that chilled her spine from the lower back to the back of her neck. She couldn’t but wonder–why it didn’t fly away, yet.

“I will hunt you down. And I will kill you, threll. I may be as human as the next prey.” She felt her eyes hurt with fury. “But I am just as hungry as you are. And my hunger is to tear your heart out and feed it to the fire.”

The threll laughed. “Can’t wait and see. But until then, maybe you should go hunt Mason and the book he’s looking for. I can bet you’ll be hungrier for that!”

The threll threw its wings down, shooting up into the night sky, the rain covering it. Lightning brightened the sky…only to reveal dark clouds. No threll.

It vanished.

All right, time for an update. I wish this is what it could be, but it’s not. It’s just an ‘update’. No surprises here, people . Oh, well.

I received my most recent query rejection on Oct. 14. To date, I’ve been rejected 120 times. I’ve queried 156 so far. That leaves 36 that haven’t responded. I have the same number of rejections as I do other literary agents to which I still can send an initial query (it makes it feel like the world is a very, very big place).

5 have asked for material. 2 have ultimately rejected it. I still sit on 3 agents, one with a full manuscript, another with 100 pages and the third with 50 pages.

My fingers are crossed. My toes are crossed. Even my ears are crossed; they’re so crossed that everything sounds like this to me right now:

ggggggghfkmdoooooootlgooviesjfioooogedeeee caca poo poo.

Grab your hookahs people…it’s time to driiiiiiiiiiift….

Following through with the need to recharge as said in my last post, I’ve finished my ice cream and have headed to more, well…heady things. No, I’m not drunk. But poetry can really be like booze. It’s emotional booze.

Anyway, this’ll be easy. Nothing big. Well, they’re sort of big. It’s just big in small packages. If that’s possible.

HAIKU.

I’ve written three of them. These three are about seven years old. Here they are. Open up another window of this entry and then click on the Vmoblogger link to listen to my performance. Yes, it’s actually me performing the poem. I know. I sound sexy. You can say it.

“Revelations”

Tear my dark blindfold
Away from my waking eyes
For they see the light.

“Vengeance”

Look into my eyes
And remember what I’ve done
To you. Don’t forget.

“Skipping Stones”

You bounce off my skin.
Ripples of time shatter me,
Sinking to the past.

Vmoblogger Entry

I would have to say, probably my strongest haiku is the last one, “Skipping Stones”. It is the most crystallized image I ever thought in my head. It rushed in me a barrage of feelings, ’stories’ if you will, just from that one image. That’s where haiku really shines. When you find that one simple image that can tell a whole story in just three lines.

What I found even funnier was the other two, I wrote after “Skipping Stones”. And in my opinion, they’re solid, too. But just not as good as my first attempt. Sort of like ’skipping stones’ . The first ’skip’ is the strongest. The next few sort of fade away into the surface of the water, further out….

Dear God! Let me tell you how wiped I am if you may be so kind to hear my rantings.

I AM WIPED.

I am wiped like a windshield in a snowstorm. I’m so wiped that streaks are showing on my face now. Every time I walk, I can hear that ‘rubbing’ sound, that rhythmic rubbing sound you hear on the windshield as those wipers suffer so much to only streak across the glass to no avail, because they have died and gone to Heaven. Kind of like how we take the reins and snap and snap until our horses drop from exhaustion and then God strikes us down for being cruel, for being horrid.

Am I digressing again? Unforgivable rantings? Indeed.

There is a point to this post, though. Sorry to all my readers who await (yeah, right) my next post, as I think this is the longest stretch for me where I have not posted anything–reason being, I am wiped. It’s been a hard couple of days. I don’t know what else to say.

For the record, writers do need time to recharge. You want me to show you the “Rejected” video again? It exemplifies the degradation of our sanity, our coherent thought structure, our willingness to follow any sort of standard, solid routine that nourishes us and validates us and rejuvenates us. Sometimes we need…

TIME OUT.

Therefore, to all you writers out there, it’s okay to take a time-out–preferably with some ice cream. Double Chocolate Fudge. Out of the carton. Screw the bowl. Forget the scooper. Just take a spoon and dive in as if you’re looking for the next set of dinosaur bones. Make believe you’re a chocolate paleantologist. It’s fun.

I promise you, the things we write tend to flow better with us, and for good reason and good intention. After all, our writing is like our children. If we’re fatigued, our children end up like red-faced, veiny, vehement warlords from the planet Blaarg with their ten thousand horns protruding out of their chests and their massive battle axes, their deep voices and scary eyes, and their ability to make the Earth somehow tilt as if our world is their pinball machine, and we’re the balls bouncing back and forth on the flippers and shooting fast and hard on the ramps….

I GOT MY ICE CREAM!

ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM!

Must have my ice cream….