Live Writing Exercise: ALSV 2

The difficulty of this challenge is not only that I have to write everyday, but I then have to grab my notebook and transcribe what I've written, which takes even more time.  Sigh.

***

          The divorce hadn’t been overly nasty, but what divorce is sweet and flowery?  Dad had moved out, left town, and now lived less than ten minutes from the airport.  Tanissa had never seen his apartment.  But they’d be together for almost three weeks, and she had been looking forward to it in the days before school let out. 

            She didn’t even know why.  She had no friends in town, and unless one of her friends called and arranged a meeting somewhere, she’d be hanging out with a guy in his thirties who hated everything her generation thought was cool.

            She mentioned something along those lines as they waited for her suitcase to show up on the conveyer belt.

            “About that,” Dad said, and stiffened up.  “I, uh, got some bad news.”

            “What?”

            He took his arm from around her.  “I wasn’t able to get this week off.  My vacation starts Monday.”

 

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean, I’m gonna have to come back here tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.  I’m sorry, I just couldn’t manage it.”

            “But I thought you were the boss.”

            Dad sighed.  “I’m supervisor, not the boss.  So, you’re gonna have to be on your own for three days this week.”

 

Live-Writing Exercise: Take 3 (ALSV 1)

Okay, here I go again.  This is going to be a (hopefully) daily writing exercise, wherein I am publicly succeeding or failing at writing a story this June.  Big Anklevich is also doing it, and his blog can be found at www.biganklevich.blogspot.com, if you'd like to jeer and/or encourage him.

***

Tanissa was excited to be spending part of her summer with her dad.  Since the divorce, she'd seen less of him than she'd have liked, and way more of her mother than any thirteen year old would prefer.  But now it was June, and she'd be staying for two weeks--at least--at her father's new apartment.  She met him at the airport, where he was waiting, in uniform, right beside the deboarding gate. 

Her dad worked for the airport, in the luggage department, and had been recently promoted to supervisor, and he looked good with his tie, jacket, and cap.  Tanissa spoke to her father often on the phone or over the computer, but it had been more than a month since they’d been together.  He had gained some weight since they lived together, but was not yet what you'd call fat.

“You have any luggage?” he asked her, and she nodded.  She had a small carry-on, and one mid-sized suitcase.  They walked together and he put his arm around her, commenting how much she’d grown.

The divorce hadn’t been overly nasty, but what divorce is sweet and flowery?  Dad had moved out, left town, and now lived less than ten minutes from the airport.  Tanissa had never seen his apartment.  But they’d be together for almost three weeks, and she had been looking forward to it in the days before school let out.

Rish Outcast 8: TF PSA and Ramblings

A month or so back, I turned on my recorder, meaning to talk about something else, but ended up talking about losing my story "A Lovely Singing Voice."  I gave myself a deadline in that recording how long I would leave it a "lost work," and figured I ought to post it, even though I usually include stories in this thing (I refer to a story that I meant to have published by now, but will have to show up next).

Hopefully salvaging some of this episode, I'm also including a Public Service Announcement I created, thinking we'd use it on the Dunesteef.  It may be entertaining, may be perplexing, or may be just more flapping of my jaw.  Either way, here is Rish Outcast number 8 (seems too complicated to call this one number 9 and call the next one 8 when I get it edited). 

One day, I may have time to do these on a more regular basis.



Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.

Live-Writing Exercise Update

So, I called Big up today and mentioned that in an episode of That Gets My Goat I was editing, we mentioned our shared challenge of writing a story live on our blogs, and he said, "By the time this airs, we'll have done that already."  So, I asked him what to do, and he responded that we would have to start the challenge on Monday.

I didn't know how to counter that, except to admit how lazy I am, so I accepted, and he's already mentioned it in his blog, so I can't worm out of it now.  The very reason for doing the writing in this public forum is so we're held accountable for the actual writing, and will reap praise or mockery depending on whether we do our part.

So, on Monday, June 9th, I'll be back here, hopefully managing a bit more than I did this week (on a different story, of course).

Rish

Rish Performs "Marked Men" by John Mierau on Audible

I'm currently in the midst of several long audiobook projects, but it's fun to do a short piece now and then, since they tend to take so much less time, and the turnaround is super-quick too.

John Mierau wrote a story called "Harlan's Wake" that Bryan Lincoln produced for us on the Dunesteef a while back, so when I saw John's name on a couple of titles in search of narrators, I actually sent him a message asking if I should audition.  One of the projects was a short Western story with supernatural elements, which is a subgenre I love, so I signed up, and not even a month later, here it is.

"Marked Men" tells of an Irish immigrant at the end of the Old West era, who has been cursed with The Mark, a demonic brand that delights in wickedness and burns when evildoers are near.  The story, in only a few pages, tells us how he got the mark, what he does with it, and what befalls a corrupt businessman and the men in his employ, some bad and some innocent.

The story is available at this link:
http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Marked-Men-Audiobook/B00KRPQFS4/ref=a_search_c4_1_6_srTtl?qid=1401997282&sr=1-6

Rather unusually, for me, anyway, John did an interview with me about my . . . er, craft, and that should be going up soon.  You do not simply give someone like me a microphone and a list of questions, though.  Not if you want to get out of there in a timely manner.  Even so, John has it posted and ready to listen to
here.

There are a couple of fun voices I got to do in this, and the story could easily be expanded to a much more epic work.  Who knows, maybe John will want me to ruin that one with funny voices too.

Rish Outfield

Live-Writing Exercise: Day 2

“Yeah, yeah,” he’d groused from the bar.  “But there’s prolly a one in a thousand chance of it coming here.”

More like one in ten thousand, she thought, but didn’t say.

The monster, as the networks were calling it (or Quetzalcoatl, as CNN had dubbed it), had emerged from a volcano in the Pacific, and seemed to be a giant snake or worm that either swam or flew—depending on whether you thought the smudge in one satellite photo was wings or not.  It had emerged from the oceanic eruption two days ago, and had not been seen since.  Scientists argued about whether it would head for the mainland, go to an island, or never be seen again, perhaps burrowing into the sea again.  Carly didn’t know why, but she had immediately thought of a lighthouse, and found the closest one, and was at least going to at least look.  If the monster came here, she might get a great photo or footage, if not, she would interview a fascinating old man, and maybe get the piece onto the news, the human interest story at the end of the hour.  She still could do that much.

The lighthouse was damp and foul-smelling, and had fallen into disrepair on the inside as well.  “How long have you lived here?” she asked, following up the stairs, careful not to brush the rickety-looking handrail.

“Going on thirty now,” he said, huffing but staying ahead of her.  “Fore that, I worked her for nearly forty.”

“You okay?” she called up to him.  The way he was breathing, she worried he might topple backward into her.

 “Just old,” he wheezed.  Well, that was an understatement.  She thought her grandfather had looked better the last time she’d seen him, and that had been from beside a coffin.

“Lots of stairs,” she said, for lack of something better to say.

“Eighty is all,” he called back.  “You can make it if I can.”

They’d reached the halfway point of the building, and there was a little kitchen, and a table with a television on it in there.  A mouse darted from the table to the chair.  “Is this—“ she began, but the old man kept on up the stairs, leaving the room behind.  They emerged onto the top level, where a bed, a bookshelf, and stack after stack of cardboard boxes lay.  There was also a group of windows on one wall, and a door out to the roof on the other.

“What’s in the boxes?” she asked. 

“Books mostly,” he said, stopping now to cough and hunch over, his hand on his bony hips.  “You read?”

“Not like I used to.”

“Too busy bein’ a big time reporter?”

“Big time, no.  Reporter, barely.”

(INSERT NEEDLE SCRATCH SOUND)  ***

I feel like a jerk for doing this, but I looked over the rules of the contest, just to make sure their ludicrous word limit was just a bad dream I had, and I made a discovery.  One of the stipulations is that the story cannot have been published elsewhere, which I worry may include my live-blogging.  Honestly, I don't know, since what you read here will not be the final seriously-cutdown audio adaptation, but I don't want to get kicked out of the contest I have lost three years in a row just because I made a dumb mistake like this.

Me being me, my first inclination was just to do it anyway, because I honestly do not care about winning any contest, and more importantly, because I honestly do not care about rules.  But the folks over at Horror Addicts have been kind to me, and respect dictates that I ought to stop doing this, in case it feels like I'm insultingly flaunting my disobedience on a blog that only four people read.

But I could be wrong.  I could totally be okay with doing this, and it could act as a sort of advertisement for their podcast, saying, "Hey, I hope you enjoyed the stuff I've been typing these past five days.  Come on over to the Horror Addicts podcast and listen to how I adapted it into a short reading, used helicopter sounds, and cut out all the parts about Carly saying a bad word on live television!  And, if you want to do so, you can vote for me afterward!"  That seems like it could be better than just abruptly stopping this mad experiment, but it could also be the Donald Duck Devil on my shoulder, quacking into my left ear. 

Feel free to give me your opinion, but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna stop here.  Sorry.

Rish

Live-Writing Exercise Day 1

Carly got to the lighthouse just before ten in the morning.  Not bad for a four hour drive.  Not surprisingly, the old man was already waiting for her, sitting in a little folding chair, reading a large print Louis L'amour collection.
"News lady?" he said, glancing up at her.
She pushed away the sarcastic response that had come to her lips, what with the camera and tripod on one shoulder, her sound bag in the other.  "That's me."
“You made the trip over,” he mumbled, slowly putting the book down, and even slower rising to his feet.  “Even though it’s prolly for nothin’?”
“It’s not for nothing,” Carly said.  “I get to see your beautiful lighthouse.”
“Beautiful,” he grumbled.  He was an ancient-looking man with a white beard, a sailor hat over a bald head, and about a million wrinkles.  He had huge ears and a huger nose, and his chest made a wheezing sound when he breathed.  “Ain’t been beautiful in about twenny years, decades of rust and peelin’ paint back.”
“Well, I—” she began.  She was tired from the drive and her coffee had run dry eighty miles back.
“View’s nice, though,” he added.  “Let you decide if it’s beautiful.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said, and followed him into the old lighthouse.  Carly ____ was surprised to find so few lighthouses on this part of the Oregon coast.  Her internet search showed old pictures, painings, and records of the past, and classified this one, at Puente Dormido, as being “Closed.”  Turned out the old man who ran the lighthouse years before had spent all his money, including selling his father’s house, to buy the disused relic, and lived there now, a sort of aged window into a bygone era, same as the edifice itself.
When she’d tracked him down on the telephone—at a cantina in town he frequented thrice a week, he could guess what she was after.  “The monster won’t come here,” he’d said.  “Not that I think there is a monster.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, sitting in front of the computer, satellite photos on the screen showing a tail, a bulbous head, and a long body, though not in the same shot.  “And there is a monster.”

Rish's Live-Writing Exercise 2014: Take Two

A couple of months ago--probably February sometime--Big Anklevich challenged me to do a live-writing activity where we'd both write stories on our blogs, publishing them as we went each day until they were finished.  At the time, I had an idea for a plane crash story, and agreed to the challenge, except I was partway through a really lengthy story called "A Lovely Singing Voice" at the time, and I asked Big if we could hold off until that story was through.

He agreed, and I spent another two or three weeks finishing that monstrosity.  Once it was done, I wrote up a blog post explaining what we were doing, and wrote the first scene of the plane crash story . . . and then, I lost my notebook.  One day I had it, the next time I looked, I didn't have it.  I was much less freaked out about losing the plane crash intro, and as days turned into weeks and I realized "Lovely Singing Voice" was gone, I built it up in my head as the Greatest Work Of Art Mankind Had Thusfar Created, and wasted hours trying to figure out what might have happened to it, even dreaming the damned notebook reappeared one night.

Well, now it's June 1st, the deadline I gave myself for finding that notebook before declaring it lost.  I continued the plane crash story (in another notebook) and have almost finished it, but will have to rewrite the beginning again sometime, if I find more ambition.  In the meantime, I have put my name down for the Horror Addicts writing contest I enter every year, and the deadline for that bad boy is looming.

In the Masters of the Macabre contest, they give you three elements for a certain kind of story, and you're supposed to not only write a story using them, but produce a finished audio piece of it by their deadline.  As a fiction podcaster, I'm in a unique situation where I can record it and edit it quickly*, so I have that advantage.

The overall theme this year is "Creature Feature."  My three elements were:
1.  Location - Lighthouse
2.  Item - Camera
3.  Creature's Origin - Volcano

The deadline for the finished product is June 20th, so I'd better get off my duff and start writing.

Rish Outfield

*Though I doubt I'll have time to get Renee Chambliss to voice the main character this time around.

Suffering From Delusions of Grandeur?

By Thor, you'd better be.

Actually, I really ought to let people know about this show every time a new episode drops.*  Marshal Latham and I have a "Star Wars" related podcast that we try to do once a month, where we get together with a guest and talk about some aspect of the Saga.  It's probably a bit too irreverent, since I'm associated with it, but hopefully it's also entertaining to listeners.

The setup is a good one, since Marshal does the heavy lifting (like creating episode art and uploading the files), and we trade off the editing chores every other show.

I don't know how much gas is in the tank with this particular show.  It could be that we get tired of it, and it fades away in time, but it's also possible someone out there responds to it, and we end up doing it for a long, long time, eventually having guests on the show that actually worked on the Trilogy, like the dude who played the Gonk droid, or the guy who put the saliva on the Rancor monster, or the chap who said, "You Rebel scum" in RETURN OF THE JEDI.

You can find the podcast over at www.delusionsofgrandeurpodcast.blogspot.com.

Rish Outfield

*This is the second time I've created this blogpost, but I need to accept the fact that if I continue to compose my entries on AOL, it's going to save a blank file over a completed post every other month or so.

Rish Performs "Stopover at the Backworlds' Edge" on Audible

The second novel I ever recorded for Audible was "The Backworlds" by M. Pax.  I was still learning, and there are a couple of things I'd do differently on it, but it sounded a heck of a lot better than the first book I did, and its content was a hell of a lot better than the third book I did.  So, when the author asked if I'd like to narrate the second installment in that series, I was happy to do so.

I was happier, though, when I discovered how fun the second book was, and that the majority of the characters were the ones I already knew the voices of (from the first book).  In fact, I was even able to alter the voice of one of the characters I was never really happy with from "The Backworlds."  So that's nice.

"Stopover at the Backworlds' Edge" picks up a year or so after the first book, when Craze and his friends have settled on a dusty, barren world, hoping to make a life for themselves catering to the ships that pass by there.  But their luck takes a turn for the worse when a big ship from the evil Foreworlds docks outside his little bar.  A bunch of new enemies--and one old one--are there with a nefarious purpose in mind, and aren't used to taking no for an answer.

Science Fiction is a really fun genre, and I've not read a lot of those type of books.  I'm pretty fortunate that I'm getting to perform two different Sci-Fi series now (and may actually get paid to do this one!).  Check out the link here:http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Stopover-at-the-Backworlds-Edge-Volume-2-Audiobook/B00K33KL2G/ref=a_search_c4_1_2_srTtl?qid=1399585274&sr=1-2

Babysitter of the Week

I took my six year old nephew to see CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER this week.  You may be saying, "Hey, that's an awfully adult show to be taking a child to, don't you think?"  Funny that you didn't say it before I took the boy, but only now, when it doesn't help me at all.

Surprisingly, though, the lad sat still and watched with me through the entire runtime of the movie.  The first time I took him to a movie (2012's THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN), he had to get up and go to the bathroom no less than three times.  This time, though, he sat next to me, though he consumed both his and my junk food, and occasionally put his seat up and sat on the end of it like a huge booster chair, exactly as I used to do at the old Frewish Theater back in Praisden, so many years ago.  He'd put his head against mine, listening to me translate the subtitles and Nick Fury cellphone messages, and that was cool. 

And he had many questions.  Somehow, he had not seen the first CAP movie, so he didn't know who Hydra was, and when I would explain, he misunderstood (first I said it was the evil SHIELD, but he thought I meant Steve Roger's shield; then I said it was Red Skull's group, but he thought I meant the anti-Avengers team Red Skull has in the cartoon).  Also, I responded very strongly to the beatings the characters received in this movie, and my nephew would say, "What?" when I would wince or gasp.  At least he didn't ask why I cried at the Peggy Carter part*.

When I took him to see AVENGERS almost two years ago, he shouted "Thanos!" at the end of the film, prompting the guy in front of us to turn and say, "Who?"  This time, however, he had no idea who the two twins were at the coda teasing the next movie.  Guess that's what happens when your characters don't look like the source material, Joss "You Actually Know Better" Whedon.

The most interesting thing we came out of the movie with was the boy's reaction to the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY trailer.  My friend saw that trailer first, and described it as no less than the greatest trailer of the last ten years.  I wasn't quite so impressed when he showed it to me, but with each repeated viewing, I appreciate it more, especially the use of "Hooked on a Feeling."  I'm not sure that movie will be a success, but at least it doesn't look like a hundred other movies that have come out since Michael Bay started making execrable Transformers pictures. 

 

My nephew got a big laugh out of the final line in the trailer, which I've laughed at literally every time I've seen it (as have audiences).  Wreck-It Ralph says, "They call themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy," and the British snob beside him says, "What a bunch of A-holes."

After the movie, my six year old nephew kept saying, "What a bunch of A-holes!" which made me laugh, but I knew he (or I) would take heat for it, so I told him not to say that. 

 

"Why?  Is it a bad word?" 

 

"Well, not exactly, but it's . . . sort of a bad word." 

 

"Okay," he said, then actually said, "What a bunch of assholes." 

 

I was impressed that the lad knew, at six, what the A stood for, but told him, "Whoa, whoa, that one actually is a bad word.  Better not say that one." 

 

He nodded, and by the time I got him home, he was saying, "What a bunch of hellholes."  I don't know where he got that one, but I warned him we'd both get in trouble if his mom heard him say that one. 

 

"More trouble than A-holes?" he asked. 

 

"Yes," I said.  "I think it's cool if you say 'A-holes,' but if your grandma or your mom hear you, they won't think it's cool."  But, I added, if he said it around my cousin Ryan, that would be fine.

Rish

 

*His mother used to delight in catching me crying in the movies.  She would often draw attention to it for those around us.