The Dingram

If You're in the Bay Area....!

2012-01-23T13:57:00.000-08:00

it's me!

Come to my FIRST EVER book reading! (I might pass out or vomit, giving you just a hint of the antics to be found in the novella, actually...)

Here is the brief blurb about the event from Half Price Books:

Book Signing with Dayna Ingram
Join us on Friday, February 17 at 7 pm to meet author Dayna Ingram for a book reading and signing of her newly published zombie/horror novella Eat Your Heart Out. It's "a ridiculously entertaining novella" according to Publishers Weekly. Don't miss this chance to buy an autographed copy of her work. 50% of the proceeds will be donated to ARF, Tony LaRussa's Animal Rescue Foundation.

And here is the RIDICULOUSLY long press release I wrote because I've never done this before and sometimes the Internet is not the greatest teacher (but it means well):

Half Price Books to Host Zombie Reading

On February 17th, 2012, Half Price Books in Dublin will host a reading of Dayna Ingram’s zombie novella Eat Your Heart Out, released in December 2011 from BrazenHead, an imprint of Lethe Press. Fifty percent of all proceeds will be donated to ARF, Tony LaRussa’s Animal Rescue Foundation.

“Let’s face facts,” says author Dayna Ingram. “Dogs and cats are the real victims of a zombie apocalypse. They are either forsaken for shotguns in their owners’ desperately selfish attempt to keep themselves alive, or they are sacrificed—however misguidedly—to the undead hordes. We may not be able to do much for these helpless creatures in the Zombacolypse, but we can certainly help them now.”

Eat Your Heart Out is a breakneck tale of lesbians and zombies, opening on what promises to be another tediously annoying day at Ashbee's Furniture Outlet. Then the strip-mall calm of Nowhere, Ohio, is shattered by the sudden, simultaneous appearance of Renni Ramirez—hyper-competent star of the beloved Rising Evil B-movie franchise—and actual zombies, leaving Ashbee's hapless staff and Renni trapped behind an automatic door they can't lock. Can failed creative-writing student/apprentice store manager/eagle-eyed markswoman Devin escape the besieged furniture store to rescue her girlfriend? Will Renni's experience slaughtering motion-captured CGI monsters save the day before the army bombs the town? Once bitten, how many zombies can a person expect to take out before succumbing to infection? Who is the mysterious Deus Ex Machina, and what is he doing with that bone saw? All of these questions and more whisper behind the scream of the single most important thing Devin needs to know in order to survive: is Renni a top or a bottom?

In their starred review, Publishers Weekly calls Eat Your Heart Out, “a ridiculously entertaining novella….a no-holds-barred action-packed romp, filled with rich descriptions, detailed sensory input, sexy flirting, and zombie fighting in the best cult tradition.” EDGE Media Network raves, “It has the charm of an indie flick and the drive of a community theater production of Zombieland. It is extremely well written for its genre…and chock full of sarcastic humor and biting dialogue.”

Out author Dayna Ingram recently migrated to the Bay Area from Ohio in pursuit of her MFA at San Francisco State University. She started working for Half Price Books almost four years ago as part of her Antioch College undergrad co-op program. Eat Your Heart Out is based on true events from that one summer in ’08 when Michelle Rodriguez rode into town on her Harley and the two ladies fended off some zombies for the better part of an afternoon. That…that may have been a dream.

The reading will begin at 7pm, February 17th, followed by a signing, at Half Price Books, 7898 Dublin Blvd, Dublin, CA 94568. Come dressed as a zombie at your own risk!

ALSO ALSO ALSO

I need a real Author Photo that I didn't take with my shitty webcam. I know this.

It's Like a UFO Sighting!

2012-01-22T14:25:00.000-08:00

Sometime this past week, The Outer Alliance recorded a podcast (Podcasted?) of a "Queer SF&F" panel, where a buncha readers sat in a room and discussed queer science fiction and fantasy. Man, I wish I could've been in that room. But I kind of was, in spirit, because around the 57 minute mark an audience member asked for some lesbian horror recommendations, and two of the panelists (Melissa Scott and JoSelle Vanderhooft) recommended Eat Your Heart Out. JoSelle actually blurbed the book many months ago (so awesome!), and Melissa commented that she actually doesn't like zombie stories but she liked Eat Your Heart Out.

My book transcends your personal preferences!

Additionally, Eat Your Heart Out got a brief shout out from reviewer Peter Tennant of Black Static as a novella that impressed him in 2011.

Yay!

Zombies and lesbians, together at last.

EDGE Reviews Eat Your Heart Out

2012-01-05T21:04:00.000-08:00

My favorite line: "Despite sounding like clichéd fanfiction written by a horny devotee, "Eat Your Heart Out" is tender yet ruthlessly gruesome."

SPOILER ALERT! Might be best not to read this if you want some yummy surprises in the novella itself.

Eat Your Heart Out
by Katie Drexel
EDGE Contributor
Thursday Jan 5, 2012

Many an afternoon has been spent in idle repose by darling lesbians dreaming of being swept off their feet by an action heroine in a summer blockbuster. One would not be remiss if one guessed that notable lady-loving actress, Michelle Rodriguez, might be a common lead in these fantasy films. It should come to no surprise then that the B-actress making a cameo in Dayna Ingram’s,
"Eat Your Heart Out" is a dead ringer for Ms. Rodriguez. The book is dedicated to her after all.

Like many heroes in the zombie genre, protagonist Devin just wants to go to work, get through the day and go home to her hot girlfriend without too much hassle. Like any other hero in the zombie genre, Devin realizes quickly that this isn’t possible. With the help of stacked actress Renni Ramirez, Devin must save her co-workers, and her cheating girlfriend, Carmelle, from zombies, "pseudo" zombies and a militia of rogue zombie hunters before she can call it a day. Devin, our protagonist and self-antagonist, is the underdog that action movies simultaneously love and hate. She grew up on Nintendo war games, is an excellent shot but freezes mid-combat. We love her for her bravery but want to smack her for letting the team down. It’s no wonder that Renni falls deeply in love with her.

Despite sounding like clichéd fanfiction written by a horny devotee, "Eat Your Heart Out" is tender yet ruthlessly gruesome. This sweet zombie novella needs to be made into an A or B movie starring Ms. Rodriguez, right now. It has the charm of an indie flick and the drive of a community theater production of "Zombieland." It is extremely well written for its genre (without having to steal from a certain author whose name rhymes with Kane Bausten) and chock full of sarcastic humor and biting dialogue. But instead of a predictable hetero couple falling in love in the war zone, two lesbians embrace their mortality amid the smell of putrid flesh and find true lust.

5 Ways to Enjoy Eat Your Heart Out Even if You Don't Like Zombies

2011-12-07T12:02:00.000-08:00

5 Ways to Enjoy Eat Your Heart Out Even if You Don't Like Zombies

I don't like zombies either. That is why I kill them. Kill them hard. That is another good title for a zombie book. You may use it.

But listen, okay, it's the holidays and you have a couple days off work and your power is out because you live on the East Coast in a snow cave so you're unable to watch your Glee DVDs or listen to your Glee iTunes covers or Twitter your #gaysharks tweets. WHAT TO DO?? Mayhaps read a book? And you say to yourself, man, I sure do like some lesbian fiction, but what the hells is up with all lesbian fiction all the time featuring zombies for always all of it all over?

THE ANSWER IS SIMPLER AND MORE GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT THAN THAT PREVIOUS SENTENCE WOULD LEAD YOU TO BELIEVE!

Yes, Eat Your Heart Out is ripe with equal parts gay ladies (I just made you think of gay lady parts) and flesh-hungry zombies. This may be a problem for you if you are not into zombie fiction (if you are not into gay lady fiction, um, you must have clicked this blog by mistake), but rest easy! There are other ways to enjoy this book even if you hate zombies - five ways, in fact:

1. Replace the word "zombie" with the word "vampire." (Now it's exactly like a CW show - OMG MAGIC)

2. Send your copy to Michelle Rodriguez, suggesting she option the movie rights and play the role of Renni Ramirez. (Everybody wins when M.Rod plays gay, right?)

3. Skip to pages 45-46, 93-96, and 104-105. (You're welcome.)

4. Cull together a found poem for your creative writing class by using the fifth and sixth words of each first-paragraph sentence on a random page.

(From page 89:

"The nearest,
just running to them,
had these.

they never
them you'd

it was slapping
her rifle.
her taking,
Renni's."

...Wait, that sucked. )

5. Generously provide bathroom reading material for your guests. (Maybe your guests like zombies, did you ever think of that, you selfish bastard?)

Can you think of more ways to enjoy the book? Did you cull a found poem? Did you know that the X-Men 90s cartoon taught me the word "cull"? Enlightenment!

Hey there, friends

2011-11-25T22:10:00.000-08:00

EAT YOUR HEART OUT, a "ridiculously entertaining" (Publisher's Weekly) novella of lesbians vs. zombies, comes out TODAY (Friday, 25th, yay)!

You can purchase this awesome little book ($6 eBook, $13 trade paperback) through a variety of sites, including:

http://www.amaz...on.com/Eat-Your-Heart-Dayna-Ingram/dp/1590213335
http://www.lethepressbooks.com/
http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/105398/4/eat-your-heart-out-a-novella
http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-eatyourheartoutanovella-641930-140.html
http://www.bellabooks.com/9781590213339e-prod.html

If you enjoy brick and mortar shopping (who doesn't?), you can go to your favorite local bookstore and ask them to order you a copy. If you know me in real life, and live in the Bay Area, you can buy a copy directly from me in a few weeks (but why wait?).

For more sweet, sweet gratuitous praise, visit: http://sentenceandparagraph.com/brazenhead/eat-your-heart-out/

And don't forget you still have NINE DAYS to sign up for Goodreads (free!) and enter the sweepstakes to win one of five copies (also free!): http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/16656-eat-your-heart-out

If you happen upon any other sites in your internet travels that sell the book, please let me know.

Thank you for supporting not only me, but also lesbians and zombie literature (you can't kill zombie literature - it's already dead! UNdead, that is!).

If you loved me, you'd put in more scenes about babies

2011-11-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

My review of Eat Your Heart Out:

I was tempted to give this one star but, since I wrote it, I guess I have to give it five.

Okay, zombies I can buy into, but there are some very unrealistic moments in this book. I mean, when the zombie outbreak happens (and it WILL happen) who the hell is gonna have time to fuck in a field and not even worry about STDs? Or babies. I mean, shouldn't SOMEONE be freaking out about saving all the babies?!? If this novella really wanted to be realistic, I would have put in a scene where Devon has sex with a man in order to procreate and save the species. Who cares what her heart wants! Who cares what her vagina craves! This is the Apocalypse, people! You don't have the luxuries of things like condoms and meaningful relationships and lesbians and diet Coke! Get with the baby-making!

In short, this book could really benefit from more scenes with babies (babies are, statistically, the most underrepresented minority in zombie fiction), and more straight sex (there isn't any at all!).

"Love me!"

Eat Your Heart Out Giveaway!

2011-11-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Eat Your Heart Out

by Dayna Ingram

Giveaway ends December 04, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Now that I have a starred review in Publishers Weekly, will you please make me a Wiki page?

2011-10-24T23:46:00.000-07:00

Holy shit!

" Eat Your Heart Out

Dayna Ingram. Lethe/Brazenhead, $13 trade paper (146p) ISBN 978-1-59021-333-9

Sex, violence, and horror combine in a ridiculously entertaining novella of lesbians and zombies, which kicks off Lethe’s new Brazenhead imprint. Devin’s a wage slave for a furniture outlet store in an small Ohio town until her daily routine is thoroughly disrupted by an outbreak of zombies. As the dead shamble and bite their way through the town, Devin fights for her life while trying to reach her girlfriend, ex-stripper Carmelle. Her unlikely ally is badass B-movie actress Renni Ramirez, who just happens to be passing through when all hell breaks loose. What follows is a no-holds-barred action-packed romp, filled with rich descriptions, detailed sensory input, sexy flirting, and zombie fighting in the best cult tradition. Ingram has a keen ear for dialogue and believable characters, and this punchy, raunchy story would make a great grindhouse film. (Dec.)"

Here is the link. If you're feeling generous, you could "like" it on Facebook or tweet it.

Label Me

2011-10-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

I am catalogued in the the Library of Congress:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ingram, Dayna.
Eat your heart out : a novella / Dayna Ingram.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59021-333-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Lesbians--Fiction. 2. Zombies--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3609.N4686E28 2011
813'.6--dc23
2011039634

I am glad they have their priorities in line with mine, listing "lesbians" first and "zombies" second.

Does this mean I can have a Wikipedia page now? My dream!

Cover Me

2011-09-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

Much sleeker than the one I imagined up just for funsies a year ago.

Back-cover text explosion:

"A breakneck tale of kick-ass, wise-ass, sexy-ass lesbians and ZOMBIES, Eat Your Heart Out opens on what promises to be another tediously annoying day at Ashbee’s Furniture Outlet. Then the strip-mall calm of Nowhere, Ohio, is shattered by the sudden, simultaneous appearance of Renni Ramirez—hyper-competent star of the beloved Rising Evil B-movie franchise—and actual ZOMBIES, leaving Ashbee’s hapless staff and Renni trapped behind an automatic door they can’t lock.

Can failed creative-writing student/apprentice store manager/eagle-eyed markswoman Devin escape the besieged furniture store to rescue her girlfriend? Will Renni’s experience slaughtering motion-captured CGI monsters save the day before the army bombs the town? Once bitten, how many zombies can a person expect to take out before succumbing to infection? Who is the mysterious Deus Ex Machina, and what is he doing with that bone saw?

All of these questions and more whisper behind the scream of the single most important thing Devin needs to know in order to survive: is Renni a top or a bottom?"

As you can see, a lot has changed since I wrote my first cover-letter for this little story.

I'll be doing a Goodreads giveaway for this title sometime in November/December. Check back!

Get ready to Eat Your Heart Out

2011-09-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

("Get ready for Eat Your Heart Out?")

I haven't updated this thing in four months! But that's okay, neither has Hyperbole and a Half. What is up with that, Allie? That's right, I'm talking to you like I know you. What? What, huh? Draw a frikkin' funny picture already!

*Ahem*

Excellent news in the land o' me: my little zombie novel that could is being published by BrazenHead, a queer-themed speculative fiction imprint of Lethe Press!

I am super excited, it is incalculable. But I'll try anyway:

Z x 7.6 <.999X - 2 + 76% > 0 / shfifty-five = EXCITEMENTRAGE

Minus the rage. Something got mixed up in the calculation there. I shoulda carried the Z?

Anyway, you guys, you can read this book this November, hooray! Can you feel the excitementrage? If I ever start my own small press, that is what I am calling it. ExcitementRage. Yes.

IN THE MEANTIME, you can read a little about the book here. It is a novella, which means it is a short novel, which means you can keep it on your toilet tank and flip through it a couple times a day (depending on how regular you are) and probably finish it in about a week. Maybe less. You have to take the average amount of time you spend pooping and divide that by how many pages per minute you can read and multiply that by the number of pages in the book, and.....NO MORE CALCULATIONS. It's a quick read, is what I'm saying.

I am still in the editing phase, which is a bit weird, because it's like workshop, only it's over email, and mostly I have learned that I am a terrible speller and I need to invest in a dictionary or thesaurus. I will post more info closer to the release date, which is sometime in November. (That is so symmetrical...I started writing the book last November and this November it is being published...SYMMETRY! ALE OF THE GODS. That's my next book title.)

The Elephant is a Zombie

2011-05-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

The Elephant is a Zombie

"That was delicious, Temperance!"

This is Albert, my next door neighbor. He teaches remedial English at the community college. He's always saying things are delicious. I hear him over the fence in his backyard, playing catch with his eight-year-old. "Delicious toss, son!" On quiet nights, I imagine I can hear him on top of his wife: "Delicious, dear. Delicious."

Without even having to be asked, Rickshaw clears the first course. No one else seconds Albert's comment on the gazpacho. His wife, Nancy, gives a little half-cough, half-sneeze when Rickshaw reaches around her for the bowl. She's a yoga instructor at the Y. I bought this entire dinnerware set at Sears just yesterday, but no one's commented on it either.

Besides myself and Rickshaw, and Albert and Nancy, there is one other couple at my party. Horace and Regina. She cleans my house on Tuesdays and Fridays, but only for a year, then the coupon expires. Horace used to work with my husband at the brewery until the accident. We all used to be friends.

There's a weighty silence while we all wait for the second course. I've never prepared a three-course meal in my life, and I had trouble deciding what should be second. I chose quail, which is a tiny-ass bird that I'm surprised the guy at the meat counter at Food Lion even knew people could eat, let alone where to get some. I had to drive to the next town over, about fifteen miles both ways. For the main course, I made baked macaroni, which I know is a little middle class, but I'm serving it in these cute little ramicans with a special cheese. It was on sale.

Horace clears his throat and swiftly looks around at the others. I'm not sure I am meant to see him do this, but he is sitting directly across from me, in my husband's usual place, so it's difficult not to see him. "Temperance," he says, clearing his throat a second time. "I appreciate the thought behind all this, but...."

Rickshaw comes back into the dining room, expertly balancing the five plates of quail, and Horace closes his big mouth. I can smell the bird before the plate is set before me; it smells like hot glue and maybe fish, somehow. But fowl is supposed to smell weird, I think. The stinkier, the better.

Once the plates have been set, everyone sort of picks up their forks and pokes at the thing on their plate, unsure where to start. "I know, it's an odd dish," I laugh through the awkwardness. Regina seems to be having trouble cutting into hers. "Rickshaw, help her."

Regina yelps, and Horace leans over to her before Rickshaw has even taken a step. He picks up the bird by what one assumes must have been its leg and shoves it into his wife's gaping mouth. She chews reticently.

"We've got it, Temperance, we've got it," Horace says, smiling and nodding as he goes back to his own bird. He should be smiling. After the accident at the brewery, they only waited about month to hire him back on. Even though my husband turned out to be perfectly all right, they refused to hire him back. I've been living off the life insurance, which is strange.

Albert holds his quail to his face and gives it a tentative lick. Nancy looks at him and twitters like she's witnessed this move before. She catches me looking at her and drops her eyes to her own untouched bird. I bet they all wish I had a dog right now so they could quietly dispose of their meals.

I can't contain myself any longer. "All right, Jesus Christ, listen. I know I'm not the greatest cook, okay? You don't have to be shy about it. Come on, tell me, I can take it. The gazpacho was crap. Everything doesn't have to be delicious all the time, Al. It was under-spiced and over-cooked, and the quail is - well, okay, I burnt the fucking quail. Just say it!"

In the corner of the room, Rickshaw burps wetly and his lower jaw falls into his hands. He looks at it like everyone else has been looking at their second course, then he puts it in his pocket, so as not to be rude.

Albert gulps next to me, and someone's leg shakes so hard the table rumbles.

"Jesus, Tempe," Horace says, stealing glances at my husband. "That's not it at all."

I Wish I Had Something for You

2011-04-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

OH WAIT

here is something:

You have to click on the image and zoom in.

THIS IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY!

My heterosexual platonic life-partner and I were watching some show and heard the word "contrarian", and we could not believe that this was an actual word. It sounded too much like a mystical beast, and so we began to develop a children's book series about the Contrarian, who was naturally contradictory, and he lived in the Vagina Tree (different story entirely) and fought an enemy whose origins and mystical nature we had not fully imagined (or partially imagined, or imagined at all). Anyway, then the events pretty much follow the comic to a science. Reality killed my fiction! Super sad.

Next week: It's back to zombies, people. I just can't stop!

Omniscient Foreskin

2011-03-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

Are We Breaking Up?

    Lily knows Jane is cheating on her, but it's difficult to prove because they haven't yet set the boundaries of their relationship. Well, not officially. They did have one conversation, or exchange of words, late one night after six shots and two hits of acid. Emboldened, Lily said, "Jane, I like you. Like, I like like you. You know?" Flattered, Jane said, "Wanna make out?" Later, Lily tried to clarify: "So we're like together, like together together?" Still later, Jane solidified things: "Sure, I guess."
    Those three words meant everything to Lily, everything that words as brief and smoke-like as those three words can mean to a girl as young and perpetually stoned as Lily. She put herself to sleep with those words, whispered them into the crook of her elbow as she composed sonnets in text messages she would accidentally send to her cousin Joan on more than four occasions. In those three simple words, Lily envisioned a life, a world, entirely populated by she and Jane (and maybe one of those hairless cats she's seen in movies). "Sure," Jane had slurred, and Lily saw a white picket fence; "I," and there was Jane in the yard waving a spatula at the gas grill, wearing one of those novelty Kiss the Cook aprons; "guess," and there was Lily, dragging Maury, the hairless cat, behind her in its purple harness, leaning over to Jane to oblige the aprons' command.
    But here is Lily, now, sitting in her mom's idling Dodge Stratus, trying to figure out where Margret Winterbottom fits into her picket fence dreams. She supposes she fits atop Jane's quietly thrusting lap, the same position she saw Margret and Jane in last night at Bodie's graduation party.
    Someone outside of the car pounds a gloved fist on the windshield and flakes of thinning ice sloosh off into the road. The glove clears an oval of space on the glass and Jane's face appears, scowling. Lily locks the doors and pretends she can't see Jane.
    "What the fuck?" Jane's voice is muffled by the glass and also the roaring of the motor as Lily guns the car's engine. She's been sitting outside of Jane's house all night, and the car would desperately appreciate a moment to shake itself awake in the twenty-degree weather, but Lily is impatient. Jane stands aside and lets the Stratus zoom away, instantly pulling out her phone and sending a string of rapid text messages to Lily which mostly read as gibberish because she forgets to remove her gloves. Receiving these messages, Lily thinks they are some kind of code and spends the remainder of the afternoon trying to decipher them, which distracts her from thinking about Margret Winterbottom's tongue sliding all over Jane's stomach.
    Around midnight, Jane receives this text: "What r u saying?"
    Feeling as if she's spoken her piece and Lily is purposefully playing dumb, Jane simply deflects the text right back to Lily, as if it were undeliverable post, Return to Sender. Misinterpreting this gesture, Lily reads the text with an emphasis on the letter "u" - "What r U saying?" - and sighs deep and longingly, realizing Jane is being coy because she's afraid to be the first one to commit. Lily should have expected this and been more sensitive to it, being two months older than Jane and vastly more experienced in the world of dating (which Jane, for her part, does not realize they are doing).
    Wanting to reassure Jane, but not wanting to embarrass her, Lily texts back: "Sure, I guess."
    Jane deletes Lily's number from her phone. Lily composes a sonnet about how much she wants Jane to grill burgers in their back yard and walk Maury together, and sends it to Joan. Joan replies: "Ew, I hate those cats, they feel like foreskin." Joan is lying; she loves those cats, but even more she loves making up jokes about foreskin.
    Lily goes to bed thinking everything is okay. Margret Winterbottom goes to bed thinking she should have at least made Jane buy those tickets to the Tegan and Sara concert before letting her get to third.
    Across town, a newborn hairless kitten shivers uncontrollably, and does not know why.

No Zombies = No Blog Posts

2011-03-15T00:44:00.000-07:00

It's simple math.

But I have updated the website's "Written Things" section.

Also, here's a cautionary tale about Facebook:

What's On Your Mind?

Franklin met Isabel on Facebook. He didn't even have to friend her because she knew next to nothing about manipulating her privacy settings; with one click, he knew everything he needed to know. Information that would normally take him weeks to uncover was simply laid out for him, naked, waiting. One afternoon, she posted this status update:
    “Gugh! I found a lump in my left breast! It's probably nothing serious, just like the last two that turned out to just be cysts that needed to be drained (pics up if you're not squeamish!) but now I have to make a doctor's appointment. I hate making doctor's appointments! Lolololol”
    Franklin set to work immediately. First he acquired a nondescript, white-paneled van, which was the easy part. The hard part was painting all the easily recognizable medical insignias on its sliding door. The red cross proved little difficulty, but the snakes of the caduceus kept coming out more like worms with ridiculously cartoon faces, and for the life of him he could not draw a heart that looked any better than a first grader's Valentine's Day rendering. But perhaps he was being too hard on himself. Finally, after about two days, he finished the exterior. He checked Isabel's Facebook.
    “Argh! Doc can't see me 'til the seventeenth! Doesn't he know the highlight of my month is having him squish my boobies with a giant machine! LOLOLOLOL”
    Franklin stenciled the words “Mammo-Van – Free Mammograms!” in pink letters on the side of the van, and parked right next to Isabel's car at work. He stepped out and pretended to have a smoke, or a text conversation on his phone. If anyone came by, he intended to tell them he was on break. But no one came by. He double-checked Isabel's status update to make sure her lunch break was still at two.
    He saw her coming. He put his cell phone in the pocket of his freshly pressed lab coat. He waited for her to look quizzically at the van, and then he said, “Good morning.”
    “Hi,” she said, and took out her car keys.
    Franklin felt sure she'd be ecstatic to see he was offering her exactly what she wanted – for free, no waiting, no doctor's appointments, done and done – but when she didn't jump at the chance, he grew flustered.
    He stammered, “Ever, uh, ever had a mammogram?”
    “No thanks,” she said, politely averting her eyes as she unlocked her door and slipped inside the safety of her vehicle.
    Franklin stood beside the van for a few minutes, nonplussed. His phone beeped to alert him of Isabel's latest status update:
    “BURRITOS!”
    A woman in an elegant navy pantsuit, forty-ish, approached the van. “You know, I'm probably overdue for one of these.”
    Franklin eyed her from head to foot. She'd do.

An Even Three

2011-01-31T09:07:00.000-08:00

The other night I went bowling and drinking (the two go hand in hand, unless you're thirteen, and even then, who knows). Sometime between drink three and drink four I got the urge to jot down a story idea but found myself without paper or writing implement. So I used the Note function on my phone, which allowed me about three thousand characters to write this:

"I am being stalked by a zombie. He's unlike other zombies in that he's completely cognizant; he sits on my front porch and taunts me. I have a porch swing and he leans back in it, kicking his feet against the rail. He says, 'Come on out, little girl,' and flashes his rotted teeth at me."

This is based on a dream I had a few nights ago about facing off with a zombie named Rickshaw. He was a bit of a gentleman until it came time to eat my brain. I shot him in the head a few times but he was unfazed. Eventually, I figured if I couldn't kill him, I would have to at least neuter him. So I got a friend to pin him down while I used a pair of pliers to pull out all his teeth. I'm not sure how any of this will factor in to the story, but there will be a story. (Which, come to think of it, was also probably partially triggered, however subconsciously, by Richard Matheson's book I Am Legend.)

Man, it has been all about zombies since November. I promise you, next month I will only post about non-zombie related things. Such as crime fiction, dystopian futures, and prostitutes. What cheery topics I choose to write about!

Writing Cover Letters Can Be Fun

2011-01-14T21:24:00.000-08:00

Hello there, [Editors of a Contest I Don't Expect to Win]:

Attached you will find my submission for your zombie novel/novella contest, entitled EAT YOUR HEART OUT. It is a novel of approximately 50,000 words in length. Allow me to tell you a little about it:

EAT YOUR HEART OUT finds Rain, a twenty-something college drop-out, struggling to breathe new life into her relationship with her emotionally unavailable former-stripper girlfriend Carmelle in the midst of a freak zombie outbreak. After Rain is bitten by a zombie, she begins not only to fear the loss of Carmelle, but also the possible loss of her own life to the dreaded Infection. All seems lost until Rain is able to team up with a most unexpected ally - the one, the only, the ineffable Michelle Fucking Rodriguez.

Told with fast-paced, whip-smart sincerity, EAT YOUR HEART OUT is not simply a zombie satire clinging to the coattails of whatever's left of the lesbian community's infatuation with Michelle Rodriguez. Okay, it is that, but it's also a deeply disturbing exposé of the American Government's abuse of power, a chilling examination of the inextricable bond between personal identity and sexual orientation, a penetrating probe into the minds and hearts of female twenty-somethings (and Michelle Rodriguez), and one hell of a zombie quest novel. With recipes!

I'm lying about the recipes.

My name is Dayna Ingram, and I'm a writer and student living in the San Francisco Bay Area. My short stories have appeared in the literary journals Collective Fallout and Livermore Street. But none of them were zombie-related, so, meh.

Quick Update

2011-01-03T19:07:00.000-08:00

Just to link to my website, where you can currently find a .pdf copy of my EAT YOUR HEART OUT manuscript.

http://dingram.yolasite.com/written-things.php

Also note, I found a spelling error/typo on the third frickin' page just now. Frrraaaak. Oh wells.

Enjoy!

Being an adult is kind of weird.

2010-12-29T10:22:00.000-08:00

I'm nearly 26 and doing things like budgeting my grocery list and switching car insurance providers and paying rent and washing my own butt still feels weird, like someone else should still be taking care of these things for me. Some weeks ago, I fixed a red flag on my credit report and got really excited, like super triumphant, like Take that, The Man! And it became like my best story for an entire week, and I would tell everyone as if I'd just taken down a cyclops with merely my wit and a rock. At some point I realized this was the most boring shit ever to be excited about, but it made me no less excited. I just felt weird about feeling excited. Kids are always all like, Oh man it's not fair I want to be older so I can drive and eat cookies for dinner and stay up all night and get an STD. And sure, those things are great, but no one really warns you about the bills, and the making-your-own-doctors-appointments, and the bills, and the 40 hour work week, and the bills, and all the list-making, and the bills, and the Ambien. I think if someone did warn me as a kid, though, I'd still be like, "Fuck you, Pops, you just don't want me to live my own life! I have my own life, Pops, I want to LIVE!" Then Pops, if he was smart, or a smart-ass, would toss a pen and a checkbook at my pimply face and be like, "Start living."

Anyway, I have to deal with some car insurance stuff today, and get an oil change, and go grocery shopping. But before I do that, I want to spout off here for awhile, and tell you all about how much time I have been spending on Goodreads. Man, what a time-suck. I really like informally reviewing books because it's like thrusting my opinion on the world, but in kind of a benign way that I don't have to feel guilty about. I also like reading other people's reviews. Some people get really into it, and that always makes me happy, because people being into books is kind of a huge turn-on, amiright? I also find some cool titles to check out which I will read some day if they come into the bookstore or if I get less cheap and spring for them on Amazon.

Speaking of books to read, I am currently seeking some recommendations for: zombie fiction written by women, and/or sci-fi/fantasy fiction involving major lesbian or bisexual characters (they don't have to be, like, major lesbians, but they have to be major characters, like have a lot to do with the overall story). I found this cool site the other day that lists sci-fi books featuring lesbians/bi characters, so that's awesome. Anyway, help a sister out.

In my own writing news, there is none. I'm patiently waiting on my free bound copy of EAT YOUR HEART OUT (provided by Createspace as a spoil of winning the NaNoWriMo war), and then I will probably order some more to give to friends as gifts, but I can't make it available to the public until I figure out the laws regarding fictional depictions of real people, namely celebrities. Also, I might write a short story today or tomorrow. I haven't decided yet. But I am reading this amazing book of short stories, Jenny and the Jaws of Life, that is really inspiring, so who knows.

Anyway, go read some things. Happy New Year!

Eat Your Heart Out

2010-12-06T23:32:00.000-08:00

I made a cover, just for funsies:

Clip art courtesy: www.wpclipart.com

The Dead Shall Rise...

2010-12-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

....And Eat Your Brains! And then vomit them up! In the form of words! How many words? Fifty thousand words, bitches!

Needless to say, I finished NaNoWriMo on time and won the sweet, sweet prize of personal gratification (and bragging rights). The story itself has not quite round down yet, but it only needs like 10 to 20 pages to get there. Pages I will work on next week, once school is officially over for winter break.

Speaking of school, I have to write an essay for my character-building class about my own "rules for writers" when it comes to writing fiction. I haven't had to write a final in so long that I was complaining about this to a friend and she was like, "How long does it have to be?" And I was like, "Five pages." And she was like, "Um." Then I was like, "And I only have to use examples from my own work." And she was like, "....." And then she slapped me.

Anyway, this post was just to assure everyone that I did make it to 50k (though it was looking pretty grim in that final 24-hours, staring down the barrel of 10k words), thanks to copious amounts of junk food, my boss giving me the 30th off, my lovely long-distance writer pals, and lesbians. (Who should be thanked for all things, really.)

I leave you with some NOVEL FACTS:

Title: Eat Your Heart Out

Chapter Titles: All's Dead That Ends Dead; Eat You? I Hardly Know You; The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Dead; A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two if You're Dead; Dead if You Do, Dead if You Don't; A Midsummer Night's Dead; And You Will Know Us By Our Trail of Undead; A Zombie For Your Thoughts

Number of In-Scene Deaths: 3 (awww crap, that's gotta be amped up!)

Number of Sex Scenes: 2-ish (that's right, -ish.)

Opening Line: "My first real-life zombie encounter was a pretty low-key affair, considering I didn't even realize at the time what I was dealing with."

Also of note, I was reading Middlesex all November, so at various points during my story, my main character inexplicably becomes omniscient. I LOVE YOU, NANOWRIMO!

So little time!

2010-11-18T14:35:00.000-08:00

This passed week has been a toughy for NaNo scribblings. Last week, I experienced a remarkable upsurge of productivity, pounding out 7,000 words in two days. This was only made possible because of Veteran's Day, which my class observed by not having it. So instead of doing homework for two days, I wrote. And then I felt hella burnt out. (About 5k of those 7 were written longhand, so not only did I have to generate new content, I also had to find time to transcribe the older stuff.) But writing so much pushed me back up to be trailing the ideal word count by a comfortable 6k. I've managed to write the minimum (1,667) every day since then, to keep the gap steady. Lots of things have kept me busy this week, and I don't anticipate another surge of productivity until next Wednesday, when class is out for T-Week. Until then, I plan to keep my head at least slightly above water by doing my minimums every day (most of these tend to be longhand also, as I spend a lot of time on BART and during break at work). Sure, my sleep may suffer, and my friends may forget what I look like, but it's all for the greater good. THE GREATER GOOD!

Anyway, here are some more juicy highlights:

From Chapter One - All's Dead That Ends Dead

"There in the soft haze of this perfectly surreal moment between myself and someone whose image I have repeatedly masturbated to, materializes my first ever real-life zombie."

"And because I've watched so many movies in this piece of shit, do-nothing town, and because I don't believe in God or divine invention, and because I've read about the fucked up experiments science has sanctioned in its quest for knowledge since the invention of psychoanalysis, I know this man is a fucking zombie."

From Chapter Two - Eat You? I Hardly Know You

"I guess, looking back, that's when the stupidity took over. Or it may have been this: Michelle Rodriguez shouts into my ear, "Rain, stop," grabs at my flailing arms, and I, caught up in the desperation of the moment, lost in the pale emptiness of Biff's half-closed eyes and swimming in his blood, I elbow Michelle Rodriguez in the face."

"I close my eyes and bite my lip and pee a little but hopefully nobody notices."

" "You're not how I imagined you." It's not the first stupid thing I've said to Michelle Rodriguez, but it certainly is the latest."

"Her left hook connects with the zombie's loose jaw, sending its remaining teeth up into its skull with a sound like Gallagher sledge-hammering an unsuspecting watermelon."

From Chapter Three - The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Dead

"Michelle plunges a hand into the side pocket of her camo pants and pulls out her wallet. She takes out her insurance card and hands it over. "Yeah, she's my cousin."
    "I thought she was your friend?" The other nurse says.
    "We get along," Michelle says.
    "This insurance company only gives coverage to immediate family," the counter nurse says.
    "Yeah, she's my sister."
    "But you just said...."
    "Sometimes I don't like her too much so I pretend she's my cousin to piss her off."
    "But..."
    "Hey look, guys - I'm bleeding!"
    While they were occupied in their verbal battle, I surreptitiously drove my fingers into my bandage until I almost blacked out from the pain and felt the bandage grow soggy with my blood. I am the queen of quick distractions. Also, I may need to throw up."

From Chapter Four - A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two if You're Dead

"Quick Shot Guns & Ammo shares a rectangular parking lot with two other stores: a Check & Go, and Quick Shot Liquors. Some years ago there was talk of putting in a Quick Shot Mini Golf course across the street, but the town ultimately decided against adding to the confusion."

" "Ever shoot before?" She asks.
    I pump the shotgun, open the barrel and load up nine cartridges from the box Michelle holds out to me, slap the barrel back in place and cock a round into the chamber. "Alaskan hunting trips every other summer since I was ten."*
    "Must have a pretty cool dad," she says.
    I grab the box of bullets from her. "My mom took me." "

* I am aware this is not exactly how a shotgun operates. NaNoWriMo is not for researching or editing.

Updates!

2010-11-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

This appeared when I googled "update".

Website News - I updated the "Published Works" section of my site to reflect the current availability of my book. Expect further updates in December, if I survive the insanity of November (holidays, prepping for finals, writing writing writing!).

Press News - Yes, I consider A Librarian's Life in Books to be the press. I have a nice interview over there where I talk about self-publishing, my Antioch experience, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and, of course, Rupert the Magical Pony. Check it out! If you look closely, you'll find a link to my infamous film project, Come Out! Come Out! A Magical Musical Journey.

NaNo News - You guys, I was so super excited to start NaNoWriMo until I sat down to do it and remembered what a soul-killer it is! Still, I managed to get through roughly 1500 words the first night (falling short of the daily goal, but it's something). I missed out on writing Tuesday because I had too much homework that I had foolishly put off until the last minute (plus also Rock Band 3 finally came, soooo...yeah). After my 12-hour school day on Wednesday, I managed a scant 260 words, and then on Thursday I pushed myself back up to roughly 1500 words long-hand, on the way home on BART. The more I write, the more I want to write, but finding time is always an issue.

Don't be emo, M.Rod!

Here is a NaNo Fact Sheet for my (untitled) future novel:

Basic Plot: Rain is a young queerling working at a furniture outlet store in rural Ohio, trying to make a go of it with former-stripper girlfriend Carmelle (aka Carmel Apple). She's plodding along in a haze of mediocrity until one day Michelle Rodriguez shows up to buy a couch, zombies start attacking anything alive, and, in the wake of M. Rod kicking zombie ass, relationships begin to fall apart.

Zombie Origins: A bored scientist created them. (It could happen!)

Where I'm at Now: About three thousand words in, Michelle Rodriguez has finally showed up at the furniture store.

That's more like it!

Highlights: From Day One - "Biff Tipping is a big man, like a bear who transmogrified into a person. He moves uncertainly in his new, plastic environment, navigating around desks and chairs like he wishes he'd just staid a frikkin' bear. " From Day Three - "Mostly I tune out and start thinking about things like Carmelle's boobs or a nice plate of seafood pasta, but I haven't had either of those things in a long time and it is getting hard to picture them. " From Day Four - " 'Want to know a trick I use to calm myself down during a tough sale?' Cherry asks. She leans in close to my ear and whispers, 'I simply picture all of the customers with a cock in their mouth.' I blink at her. 'A cock?' She nods and smiles, 'In their mouth.'"

Check back next week for more updates.

Goodreads News - So far, something like 567 people are hella eager to win some free shit, and there's still time for you to get in on this action! Click here to enter for a chance to win 1 of 5 free copies of my book! (Contest ends November 12th.) Also, there appear to be, like, 45 people who have tagged my book on their "to-read" shelves. I am not entirely certain what this means, but hopefully it means 45 people will someday read me book!

Thanks to everyone for your continued interest in my work or my rantings!

Is it Taboo to Review Your Own Book?

2010-10-28T15:31:00.000-07:00

Sleep Like This is alive and ready to be read! Click here to purchase from Amazon.

Here is my review:

"I think it is fair to say that this book is better than the Bible. It is less preachy but has approximately the same amount of plagues, and what it lacks in disciples it more than makes up for in girl-on-girl make-outs. It's shorter than the Bible so you can read it in a few hours and still make it to church before the first group prayer. Once there, you can tell the congregation how much time they are wasting on that ridiculously verbose tome of theirs, when there is a much thinner, superior version available on Amazon for only $12. Probably, you will not go to Hell for reading this book, but I can't make any guarantees because I would not like to be sued by your eternally suffering soul. I believe you will feel the Holy Spirit enter you about the same time Brena's tongue enters Regina's ear. By the time the crime is solved, you will be convulsing with joy and speaking in tongues, and only a few of you will experience the stigmata.

You know that part in the Bible when Jesus disappears for, like, twelve years? He was off in the corner of some quiet library reading Sleep Like This.

Disclaimer: Sleep Like This has nothing (or very little) to do with the Bible or any religion, but it does have sex and death, so it's still pretty rock n' roll."

There is also a legitimate review posted on Amazon and Goodreads by my fabulous friend Amy Campbell of A Librarian's Life in Books.

AND I am giving away 5 copies of the book through Goodreads in exchange for a review (please). What a deal! The giveaway ends November 12th.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

          Sleep Like This

          by Dayna Ingram

            Giveaway ends November 12, 2010.



            See the giveaway details
            at Goodreads.

      Enter to win

I'm also gearing up for NaNoWriMo, so expect some posts about that in October. Thanks for reading!

Website!

2010-10-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

I have a website now, but it is under construction.

SITE of the WEB

It's Week Nine of my third semester in this here MFA program, and I am super busy. Next month, I have decided to be stupid and participate in National Novel Writing Month, for which I will write 50,000 words of a zombie novel featuring Michelle Rodriguez kicking zombie tail. If I have the energy, perhaps I will chronicle my failure on this here blog.

Anyway, the website. Check it out.

Can I Take a Nap in Your Dorm Room?

2010-09-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

"Revolutionizing the way people get hit by cars."

So I have this four hour break between classes on Wednesday, and this passed one (yesterday), I forgot to bring a book and I didn't have any homework to do! I ate some lunch at the mall and walked around and bought a video game. I went into a Border's and found a new book by Larry Doyle but it cost $24 dollars, and no matter how much I loved his first book, I can't take a chance for $24 dollars.

Oh look, a segue!

When I publish it, my book will only cost $13. Thirteen dollars. That is about the same amount most people spend on a single lunchtime meal. My book is like lunch for your eyeballs and brains! (Low calories, no carbs, mmmm!). Also, it will be available as an eBook, but I don't know how much that will cost.

Anyway, here is the jacket cover blurb:

Regina Scott, a freshman at a small town college, has many problems, all of which begin (and end) with the dead girl lying in the bed ten feet away. To deal, Regina's psyche breaks into two people - the first being zombie-led through the fire-rings of local police trying to squeeze out a confession; the second traveling back through her memories to trace the incidents that have landed her with blood on her hands and cuffs on her wrists.

Meanwhile, forensic pathologist Julia Breigan is called to assist Sheriff Davies in proving Regina's guilt. Breigan would be delighted to help out, except Davies happens to be her stepsister and the catalyst for her hasty departure thirteen years ago.

Having abandoned hope for finding resolution in her own life, all Julia Breigan wants is to help Regina find the truth in hers. All Sheriff Davies wants is an open-shut case. And Regina Scott, well, she just wants to wake up.

This blurb fails to mention that this story also includes lesbians. Not in a sensational way, although my professor in college did mention (more than once) that the sex scene made her wish she was a lesbian. I'm just saying.

Not a Segway

I'd also like to assure potential readers that I have personally edited out all spelling and grammatical errors. Well, okay, I can't promise that, but I did read this bitch like a twenty times, so if something's wrong, it's your fault. Also, the bulk of the manuscript was professionally edited over the course of my final year at Antioch, so again if there is something wrong, it's my professor's fault. Just kidding! Can't you people take a joke?

Anyway, my final proof is on order and will be here (probably) September 22nd. If everything's good, it'll be available in the first or second week of October. Then I will launch my grassroots marketing campaign which involves free copies (hard or electronic) in exchange for reviews on Amazon! More on that later.

Meanwhile, I must find a quiet place on campus to curl up and nap on Wednesdays. Time to hit The Craig List.

Experiments in Self-Publishing

2010-08-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

There is a general belief held by The Public that self-publishing only happens because the author's work wasn't "good enough" to get a book deal (or "be published for real"). It's like when a college student and a professor hook up: it's not against the rules, but it is frowned upon (plus, sometimes, super hot). This same Public, on the other hand, praises indie rock bands and gets super pissed when their favorite underground band does, after many years, get a record deal, lambasting them for "selling out".

"Do I get an A, professor?"

Well, friends, the reality of the publishing industry is that it is a business; their bottom line trumps all else. While many a good book is published every year, there are thousands that aren't so much "good" as they are "marketable." The ridiculous hoops an author must push their work through just to get someone of any level of influence to read passed the blurb on their query letter is daunting, exhausting, and discouraging. Unless, of course, you have "networking skills," which basically means schmoozing your way into collecting names and numbers of the people who can help you out. Only the strongest survive in the cut-throat world of publishing - and, friends, strongest does not always mean "best," but rather "most persistent."

But there is hope! And that hope takes the form of technology. E-readers and internet publishing, along with print-on-demand publishing, are not only greener alternatives to traditional publishing but also take some of the power away from the publisher to decide what is "good" and puts it back into the hands of the authors and the consumers. Because a publisher's cost to put out an ebook is drastically lower than a bazillion hardbound copies that are on an indirect journey to the local landfill or recycling plant anyway, the cost to the consumer is also drastically lowered. Lower fiscal risk to the publisher means they will take more chances on unknown authors or unconventional work, and the consumer, paying now ten or fewer dollars as opposed to twenty or more dollars to try something new, will take more chances on these same books. Print-on-demand publishing offers the same benefits.


p.s. don't actually watch this movie, it is terrible

One advantage traditional publishing (or having a literary agent) does give the author is a paycheck. But most authors worth their weight in words (even those you suspect are being paid quite highly per manuscript) have a "day job", usually teaching or in a similar field, and certainly don't expect to make a living off their passion (though, wouldn't it be nice?). It's more about getting the work out there, finding a readership, and sharing the love. Which, I admit, traditional publishing, once again by means of shelling out the greenbacks, can help the work reach more readers than if the author does all the marketing themselves. But if it's a choice between letting your manuscript collect whatever the microchip equivalent of dust is sitting on your hard drive, or putting it out there to possibly connect with even one reader who doesn't know you or owe you anything who might just like it, then I choose the former.

All of this to say, I'm experimenting with self-publishing through Amazon's print-on-demand imprint, CreateSpace. In the next few weeks, I am going to be publishing my novel Sleep Like This, which I would tell you more about but, man, I wrote a lot of stuff here already. So I leave you with the cover image of the book, provided by the awesome and generous Louise ORourke, and a promise to tell you more about it as the release date nears.

Summer Reading in Review

2010-08-20T00:32:00.000-07:00

Gay, straight, whatever. Pls lern to spel.

My goal at summer's outset was to read everything by my current professors that I could get my hands on, everything by Martin Amis that I had recently purchased, and everything by Philip K Dick that I had also just purchased. Lofty, lofty goals. Here is what I actually ended up reading (in the order in which I read them):

1. A Boy in Winter - Maxine Chernoff. This story explores the aftermath of a child's fatal mistake from the point of view of first his mother and then himself. It's interesting terrain, but I must say I felt the ending was too "oh no this thing needs a plot?!? crap." Because, really, it didn't need that extra plottiness at the end; I was digging it as just a kind of portrait.

2. Battle Royale - Koushun Takami. Ohhhh yeah muthafuckin society all defunct to shit with government sponsored kiddie battles to the death, yo. This was really way more interesting to read to discover the parallels and disparities between it and its movie counterpart than for any other reason. Which I seem to recall having reviewed many months ago.

3. House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski. This is definitely one o' them love 'em or hate 'em books. My money is on love, but I do have to admit that I skipped sizable chunks of what I considered to be the secondary narrative and concentrated on only reading the "essay" of the house and its explorers. It was pretty creepy.

4. I Drink for a Reason - David Cross. Sometimes when I am on break at work I just try to read books that don't make me think too hard about anything. This is one of those.

5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larrson. I finally caved to the hype over a six hour plane ride and subsequent vacation cruise. There is not a lot to do on a cruise ship besides eat, drink, gamble, sunbathe and read. This first installment lives up to the hype - I especially like its "closed room" mystery feel, and the characters are definitely original and finely tuned. Too bad this is the only book in which the main characters, Lisbeth and Mikael, truly interact face to face.

Weresheep!

6. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick. This book has, hands down, the most hilarious opening scene I've ever read. The entire book is actually quite funny (and brief), completely different from the movie, which was turned into some sci-fi crime romp entirely devoid of humor. And sheep, incidentally.

7. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote. I'd seen the fantastic Infamous, which spurred me to read In Cold Blood, but never had I read any of Capote's straight fiction. This was a fascinating piece of literature, and I was surprised (though perhaps I shouldn't have been) at how little has changed over the years in regards to language and what is considered taboo. Sex and sex work, real or imagined, is kind of still regarded in the same "wow that's kind of erotic...maybe we shouldn't talk about it" kind of way. (Interesting side note, depending on what you find interesting: a had a customer sell some books the other day whose last name was Golightly. I asked if that was her given name, and she said, "Yes. At least my parents didn't name me Holly." I forget what her first name was.)

8. The Girl who Played with Fire - Steig Larsson. I ran out of things to read on my way back form vacation, so I bought this second installment in the airport, even though I had a perfectly good copy waiting for me back home. It got me through the flight, but it was not nearly as captivating as the first, especially with all the convenient "twists" in Salander's past. Whatevs, SAPO, who gives a shit...I wanna see Mikael and Lisbeth hug it out, dammit!

9. Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman. Man, this guy killed a promising premise by faltering into the first-time novelist trap of summarizing instead of giving us scenes. I don't actually know if this was his first novel, but it sure felt amateurish. Seriously, I can pick out like maybe seven actual, full scenes that went on for at least five pages. SEVEN. It was all exposition, exposition, cardboard characters, exposition, explosions, the end. Disappointing.

10. The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Steig Larsson. Speaking of disappointing. This final installment takes this series into full-on conspiracy thriller mode and leaves me wondering why I wasted the time slogging through the six-hundred page tome in the first place. Granted, I did skip many sections, scanning the pages for mention of Lisbeth Salander. She's the real draw. NO ONE CARES ABOUT SAPO. It's like the editors were too afraid to dissect Larsson's manuscript after he passed, and the story suffers immensely for it.

11. Silent Bob Speaks - Kevin Smith. Haha, Kevin Smith thought Jersey Girl was the best thing he'd ever done.

"My mom says yum."

12. I Love You, Beth Cooper - Larry Doyle. This is the second best book I read this summer, and probably one of the funniest books I've ever read. It is an excellent example of how deeply a unique narrative voice can effect a story; I mean, it was all about that voice. Which, unfortunately, could not be translated to the screen, as the film adaptation clearly demonstrates. But Hayden Panettiere. Yum.

13. Geek Love - Katherine Dunn. This was the best book I read this summer, maybe even of all time, I have not decided yet. It is just one of those stories that claws its way into your stomach and nests there, seeping its juices into the rest of your bodily functions on the daily. It's just so incredible. I had the same reaction to this as I did when I first read The Poisonwood Bible a few years ago: "Holy shit, how have I not read this before now?" Life is not the same after you read this. Trust me.

Well, there it is. Only thirteen books the entire summer seems small for me, but let's not forget this list does not include graphic novels or books I started but could not get through out of supreme lack of interest (cough Children of Men cough).

Yay! Books!

Some of the Rejection Notes I've Gotten Lately

2010-08-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

From A cappella Zoo:

"Thank you for submitting "Benign," but we've decided that A cappella Zoo isn't the best venue for this story."

From Hobart:

"Thank you for sending us "Benign". We appreciate the chance to read it. Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. That said, it is a strong piece and I both wish you luck with it and encourage you to submit again."

From The Los Angeles Review:

"Thank you for submitting to The Los Angeles Review. While we have read your work with interest, it does not meet our editorial needs at this time. We appreciate your efforts, and wish you all the best in placing this work elsewhere. "

From Camera Obscura:

"Thanks so much for letting us read your work. We do so appreciate your interest in the Camera Obscura Journal and that your chose to entrust your story with us. Unfortunately, this story was not chosen for publication. We wish you much success with your writing."

From my brief semester as a Fourteen Hills staffer, I know the art of typing up the rejection letter is a fine one. In a rejection, you never encourage an author's writing unless you mean it, because when you say, "please submit again," they will submit again. I find each of these rejection notices encouraging in their own way. But goddammit, somebody publish my story because it's short and weird and I don't know what to add or remove to make it more appealing!

P.S. I use Duotrope for all my "trying to be a real writer who actually submits things for publication" needs.

P.P.S. Is "gotten" an acceptable term? Or is it like "boughten," which I accidentally say all the time?

There Are No Stupid Questions

2010-08-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

The other day, an elderly gentleman asked me to locate an old book for him. He said he was hard of hearing and I didn't want to continue yelling in his ear, so I told him we didn't have it. He then asked me if I could order it, and I said, "No, we're a used bookstore," to which he replied, "I'm not a bookstore! I live down the street, in a house." He was very polite, though.


This is the first image that came up when I typed in, "He lives down the street, in a house."

Awhile ago I overheard this exchange between two young adults:

"I like to read Stephen King, what about you?"
"Oh, I don't read, I write."

I think any author worth their weight in words will tell you that a fundamental component of being a good writer is being a good reader. In a lot of ways, being a good, attentive, thoughtful reader is more difficult than writing, but the challenge gives you the perspective you need to be a better writer. It's like when you first learn to drive and highway driving is hella daunting (oh no! the California vernacular has invaded my speech!), but then you do it and realize, gee, highway driving is actually so much easier than city driving. I'm not sure which is reading and which is writing, highway or city driving....This analogy has gotten away from me a little here. I would delete it and start over but I never delete anything I write, I just save it in a different file. I have a lot of files saved on my computer titled "Crap."

Year of the Dayna

2010-08-06T21:02:00.000-07:00

Some people's year begins January first. Some people's end December 2012. My year begins on the 24th, when classes start back up.

I seem to live my life as if my entire year were condensed into one month of competing in NaNoWriMo. In the first three months (week one on NaNo time), I get really excited about all the new projects I want to start and all the cool things we will be doing in classes this semester. I generate some new work and many, many lists of further things to generate. By month four (week two), I'm cruising along at a nice clip, confidant and reassuring myself that yes, I can do this writing thing, yes I can do this being-social thing, yes I can poop and eat a sandwich at the same time and not feel too bad about it. Then month six or seven hits (week three). Oh the dark, dark days of summer, where all my buried thoughts of self-loathing spurt up into the sparkly recesses of my brain and start setting fires. In response, I develop a "can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality and allow the procrastination (which has always been there but in a slightly subdued form) and lethargy to take over my body, mind and sleep schedule. And Chris Baty isn't even here to talk me up! Only once I've completely given in, to the point of disgusting even myself, do I begin to start to commence to initiate to engage in an active role in my own life. Thus, by the final few months (week four) I have bounced back into a caffeinated delirium of optimism and multitasking, finishing projects and creating others, taking the world by the balls as long as it means never leaving my house. I feel accomplished! I feel like an Adult! I feel like sleeping, jesus I am fucking tired. I collapse and wake up three hours after midnight, crying into my worthless hands as I realize I have missed the deadline yet again. Wait, that happens in NaNo time. In Me-time, it's pretty similar except I don't cry. I'm a man, dammit!

The point is, here is a list of projects and other things to which I may try to apply myself this year:

1. Do homework the day it's assigned. Usually, I do all my homework the night before it's due and then I feel really shitty when I'm underprepared in class, and feeling really shitty about something I'm perfectly capable of preventing causes me to blame society and my mother and all these effing delicious drugs for all of my short-comings, and oh look a mouse! Anyway, do your homework, Dayna. It's fun! (Holy shit, I believe you! Now sign over that lease for my beachfront property in Arizona.)

2. Make my dog fat. I will begin with human treats such as donuts and twinkies, and move on to the fatty meats like beef and bacon. Ice cream topped with straight-up lard for desert. Absolutely no moving except to pee and poop, which will be excreted into tubes that run over the balcony and deposit into the neighbor's living room. Two birds, one stone!

3. Engage online writerly communities. A blog is not enough! I must read other blogs, and make comments, and promote others who in turn can promote me. Because everything, in the end, is about me. And sharks.

4. Devote time/monies to reading more independent/small press/self-published/online-only authors. Most of the big-name and mainstream authors everyone reads today are disappointing. Time to think outside the bookstore. Plus then I can interact with the authors (maybe) and again get that wheel of reciprocal reviews-promotion thing going.

5. Punch a random stranger in the face or stomach. I mean, what would they do? Not talking some huge guy or a junkie or a homeless man with nothing to lose, I mean more like a soccer mom or, better still, her ten-year old child. What would they do? I bet it's cry and run away, maybe pee a little if it's a stomach hit. We shall soon see!

6. Finish dormant writing projects. In the pipeline are: first draft of a novel, a book of short stories set in a Nevada brothel, and a short story about an endless staircase (stolen idea? whose stolen idea?).

7. Experiment with self-publishing. It gets kind of a bad rap, as many people think self-published titles are those that weren't good enough to be chosen by publishers to back in the market. But there are many factors that can lead to rejection from traditional publishing means. I plan to use Amazon's Createspace to publish my Senior Project manuscript. More about this in the coming blogs.

Notice how nowhere on this list is the item Blog More. Suckers.

(Possible) Return from Hiatus!

2010-08-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Fellows (and Fellowesses),

My third semester of grad school looms ahead, reminding me that I need to start writing again. "BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME!?" You scream at your freshly polished toes. Why, dear fellow or fellowess, it means that I may be posting here more often during those prolonged bouts of procrastination from my homework and/or during "personal days." Before you jump for joy, I must warn you that such an activity is ill-advised; it may ruin the fresh coat of Flaming Red 95 on your feetie digits.

Hey look! According to this scientifically accurate program that is never wrong ever, I write like David Foster Wallace. I have never even read that guy! Perhaps I should?

Here are some things to look forward to in this blog:

Tricked you!

And now, a message from our Corporate Sponsor:

"I like cheese."

What the hell does that have to do with anything!? This place is insane. I don't like this anymore. Get me out of here. I'm calling my lawyer! ....Mommy?

Indefinite Hiatus!

2010-05-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

Hey kids!

I'm trying to come up with a fun, pressure-less format for keeping up with this blog that won't leave me (or you) entirely bored and I am failing! I just don't want to do it anymore. So suck it!

However misguided, though, this brief experiment in blogging has at least given me an appreciation for those individuals who manage to blog regularly in both an entertaining and informational fashion. One such person is Amy Campbell, who writes A Librarian's Life in Books, a sort of haven for books-inspired tangents and life observations. I have been known to contribute to her blog, so look for my periodic posts there if you would like.

Thanks for reading! I will be back with a website as soon as I get more stories published (3-5 years?). KISSES!

An Excuse, and a Rant

2010-04-17T00:21:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, want to know what full-time grad school combined with full-time work feels like?

(please note, the above photograph has been totally jacked from some other dude's website.)

I have a list of things to do during my summer break, and resuming some kind of normalcy on this blog is about number six, so maybe it will happen?

In the meantime, here is another nonfic one-pager from my class:

What if I fall asleep on BART and someone decides to slam a fistful of their own feces into my face? I am serious. What recourse would I have? I mean, after the vomiting and the crying and the pitiful, pitiful bellowing coupled with frantic get-this-shit-off-me! dance. There is literally nothing I would be able to do in this situation. Look, I’m not saying it is exactly a phobia, but yes it scares me sometimes. I still fall asleep on the train, but I always sit with my back to a solid surface. Nothing is stopping anyone from coming up in front of me and slamming feces into my face, but somehow, I am not as nervous about this happening.

In college, I knew this guy who claimed he would eat a bowl of his own poop for a new car. I don’t consider this even physically possible, but I did write a letter to David Letterman proposing he offer my friend a car and tape the waste consumption for a segment on his show. I guess nobody really reads those letters because I never got a response. Now that guy I knew is my roommate and, to my knowledge, has yet to eat his or anyone else’s poop, though he does have a new car.

This reminds me of the unfortunate time a few years ago when my friends showed me a popular erotic video clip entitled “Two Girls One Cup.” I’m not going to describe it for you because I think you already have a fairly accurate mental picture (just tell yourself it’s ice cream!). What disturbed me more than the actual video was the fact that these friends who showed it to me had now willingly watched the thing at least twice.

There are a fair number of people out there who appreciate the power of the poop. Consider a recurring theme in the sketch comedy show Upright Citizens Brigade, in which a home-security device is fashioned out of a piece of poop on the end of a stick. It never fails to intimidate. They took hidden cameras and tried to sell the poo sticks to passersby on the street. It was so effective that no one wanted to get close enough to buy one.

All poop doesn’t scare me. Bat guano downright fascinates me. I once saw a documentary in which all these bats laid so much guano that entire ecosystems were created. Insects thrived there. When a bat fell off the cave ceiling into the mountain it helped create, it was sucked deep into its frothy maw and devoured by insects and bacteria.

See, I respect the poop. If we poop too little, we could die. If we poop too much, we could die. We are born, bloody and silently screaming for air, onto our mother’s shit; when we die, we shit ourselves. Everyone has a poop story because poop is really gross and no one wants it in their mouth, unless that’s their thing, in which case, look, I don‘t want to yuck on anyone’s yum, I’m just saying, please don’t slam poop on me while I’m sleeping on BART. Or, you know, ever.

(I want to write a non-fic book entitled Some of These Things Are Lies, and when Oprah calls me out on the validity of my facts, I will be all, "Umm..." and tap the cover indignantly with my forefinger.)

I Only Have A Blog Because I Don't Know How to Make a Website

2010-03-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

Here is a creative non-fic (whatever that is) story about Blake:

Blake is the kind of small baby anxious parents dream about accidentally drowning in the sink.
   “Where is Blake this evening?” Inquires a friendly luncheon guest.
   “Blake?” Mother raises a quizzical eyebrow as she swallows down a piece of quiche.
   “Your baby?”
   “My…?” She drops her fork to the floor as the realization falls upon her like a shroud. “My baby!” she cries as she springs from the table and rushes to the bathroom.
   But it is too late.
   Here is Blake, however, alive and…well, alive. Blake is one year old today and his mother has taken him to get his first professional photograph. She dresses him in a green sweater vest and khaki dress pants, visions of his future in the Ivy League dancing greedily behind her heavily made-up eyelids. Surely, he will grow into his cement-block-shaped head. Surely, that vein in his forehead which pulses with all the obscene ferocity of a demonic timepiece keeping the hour in Hell will disappear with age.
   I find Blake on the sidewalk outside of the travel agency next to the bookstore. The picture is face down so all I can see is the jagged row of letters that spell out his name; it’s as if he scrawled it on there himself. I put this picture on my stash at work, and he comes to life.
   “It’s my baby,” I tell everyone.
   “What on Earth did you get into this weekend?” Asks British Steve.
   “Clearly, the wrong person’s van,” I reply.
   I try to pass Blake off to a coworker. I tape his picture up next to the swarm of photos she has of her six-month old Adonis.
   She points at it immediately upon entering the break room. “Who the hell’s baby is this?”
   I throw up my hands in defeat. “Foiled again!”
   “And where is Blake this morning?” Someone asks as we price books.
   “I left him in the car with the windows rolled up,” I say.
   “And what is Blake up to today?”
   “He’s locked in the closet with seven feral cats I haven’t fed in a week.”
   “You know,” my shift leader grows concerned, “that is a real child you are talking about. That is someone’s baby.”
   “I know.” I sigh. “I pity them every day.”
   My shift leader has a difficult time understanding that when I speak of Blake, I am talking about a fiction, an unlovable baby who has the unfortunate look of a young Ben Grimm. The real Blake could be anyone, he could have any number of lives, he could be any age. My Blake is alone, he is immortal, he is always one year old.
   “What are you up to this Saturday?”
   I am going to feed my cat and watch porn until two in the morning.
   “I am going to take Blake to the zoo and see if they will keep him.”
   It’s a much more interesting life, with Blake around.

I Have a History of Half-Assing Many Things

2010-02-20T00:19:00.000-08:00

"Mary's Waltz" Now Available for Purchase!

2010-01-25T22:52:00.000-08:00

These past couple of weeks have been unusually busy (what with the moving to a new apartment, visiting the ol' homestead, starting second semester of schoolin', adopting the sweetest pit bull in the world, and auditioning for Glee).

This is just a quick note to let you know that Volume 2, Issue 1 of Collective Fallout, featuring my story "Mary's Waltz", is now available for purchase! You can pick up a copy here for $9 + shipping (digital copies also available).

For those of you who are skeptical about spending money on something you may not fully enjoy, the good folks at Collective Fallout have thoughtfully provided excerpts of all the stories on their website (there is poetry too, but that is kind of difficult to excerpt -- "I have eaten the plums." READ THE FULL POEM NEXT ISSUE!). When my own copy arrives, I intend to post reviews of the individual pieces here as well.

In the meantime, below is the blurb I wrote for the coverletter for "Mary's Waltz", should you require further enticement:

"When Grace meets her new neighbor Mary, an enigmatic young blind girl, Grace is immediately drawn to her by a physical curiosity too new to name. But as the friendship blossoms, so does the nightmare, as Mary's secrets - and intentions - slowly creep out of her. MARY'S WALTZ is a speculative fiction piece that contains elements of horror and magical realism. It explores themes of sexual awakening, sacrifice, and love as destruction, while representing homosexuality as a non-issue."

Weak Stories and How to Spot Them, Part 2

2010-01-14T00:39:00.000-08:00

(Continued from previous post.)

9. The "far-out" uncle or grandmother who is really just a vessel for the author's own political bias/racism/sexism/religious fervor. I like to say that I am all of my characters and I am none of my characters, but with this pet-peeve we have a clearly overstepped boundary line that is usually quite glaring. I'm sure there are many examples, but the only one I can think of right now is from the book Wit's End which I recently read for class. The godmother is preoccupied with liberal-leaning politics that just scream, "This is what I, Karen Joy Fowler, really think about the American government!" And when said author came to speak to the class, she totes admitted this. Alls I am saying is, try to let your ideas come out in the story, not through some preachy character.

10. Skinny bitches. Praise different body types, people! Especially if your story is set within a culture whose ideals of attractiveness are different from your own. Pay attention. It's called Realism. (....maybe?)

11. Heroic males. It's just played out.

12. Books without chapters. Now, I know this is a small structural thing, but I really admire chapter breaks. The point of them is to break up what you're reading and give you a chance to breathe, in the same vein of a period or paragraph break. They can also serve to break up the time-line of your story, or switch perspectives. Longer stories can certainly work without chapter breaks, but for me, it's a detriment to ignore them.

13. Overuse of internal monologue. "At the circus, I couldn't stop looking at Brian. Was he looking at me when I wasn't looking at him? Did he want me to look at him? Should I go over and say hi? If I went over and said hi the worst thing he could do is ignore me, I suppose. Or, well, the worst thing he could do would be to spit in my face and call me a cow and pants me before taking a picture as I cry and then run away and elope with my mom. But I don't think that would happen. Would it?" Versus, "I ran into Brian at the circus and I couldn't stop looking at him. Finally, I decided to say hello."

14. Single paragraphs that span entire pages. Again, it's a breathing issue. I open a book to a page and it's covered in text, I get overwhelmed and turned off from any desire I had of reading it. White space on the page is psychological oxygen for the reader; don't choke it all out!

15. Demonstrative dialect. "Didja wa' 'im ta put ou' da ca' now, Missa Rod'rick?" Just distracting.

16. Lack of quotation marks to denote speech. Lack of paragraph breaks or dialogue tags could also be added here. I'm not saying there isn't a way to make this work, but I haven't seen it yet. I (and many others) grew up learning to read a certain way, and so rather than being a stylistic choice or a narrative choice or whathaveyou, doing away with quotation marks is just messing with the signifiers I've been conditioned to look for. It gets frustrating.

17. Assholes we're supposed to like. Especially if also the female lead who hates the douche eventually ends up with him. I'm looking at you, every romance novel ever (not to mention innumerable crime novels as well).

18. Rhetorical questions. This is pretty much in tandem with overuse of internal monologue. Jodi Picoult, this means you.

Thus concludes that jumble of words and punctuation marks. I'm visiting my hometown next week, and school starts up again (finally!) the week after that, so my return to this blog may be even more sporadic than it already has been. But when I do return, we'll delve into what I think make strong novels, and maybe I'll list a few of my favorite novels so you know how many grains of salt to use when measuring my judgments.

Weak Stories and How to Spot Them, Part 1

2010-01-05T23:47:00.000-08:00

Recently, I picked up a copy of No Plot? No Problem!, a rather neat little bundle of encouragement directed toward those brave souls who take on the National Novel Writing Month challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel in each November. (Otherwise known as NaNoWriMo.) I didn't participate this past year because I was concentrating on short stories rather than longer works, plus building my Freeze Ray. The book is great for pumping you up to dive headfirst into a ridiculously long draft of something you may never look at again, but it feels pretty wonderful to churn out so much work in such a short time. If you find you are slow when drafting work (i.e. does it take you a year to write twenty-five pages? congratulations, you are me!) then NaNoWriMo is a great exercise for you to try.

The book comes with a few quick exercises to help you suss out this whole writing thing. One exercise I enjoyed was to list all of the things you think make good stories and all of the things you think make bad ones. Of course, I'd like to try to be a smidgen more objective by using the terms "weak" and "strong" instead of "good" and "bad," no matter how fruitless it may be to try to keep personal opinions objective. So here is my list:

18 Things that Make Weak Stories

1. Too much "romance". (I don't know why that word is wrapped in quotations in my notebook.) Look, I know love makes the world go 'round and all that, but throwing in a worn out love story subplot can really sap attention away from your main point and just drag the whole thing down into a sugar-sweet mess of "I am going to save this world...but only cuz you're in it and I got a thing for you something awful, baby." There are a million reasons people do the things they do, and boiling it all down to "love" is oversimplifying it.

2. Boring characters. Ummmm....how to avoid boring characters? I would say give them unique quirks, but I do believe that is noted somewhere later on this list as being a no-no. I suppose Cliched Characters could substitute here. I want to read about raw, gritty, emotionally fragile, unpredictably damaged people, not archetypes.

3. Cliched or unrealistic dialogue. Especially when someone is obviously trying to write hip language. Remember Dawson's Creek? Kevin Williamson may have intended to write kids who are intelligent and not talk down to his audience, but he sacrificed authenticity for these aims. Let's see if I can think of someone who really knows how to write dialogue...let's think....hmmm...who could it be...could it be .... Satan? I mean, uh, Joss Whedon, oh yes, that guy again. Also Tine Fey did a good job with Mean Girls. I point out movies and television as examples because it's all about how you hear the dialogue, and thinking in this way allows me to better avoid the pitfalls of cliche. Word.

4. Too many characters. It's awesome you have all these wonderful people with whom you want to populate the landscape of your story, but be careful how many you throw at me and how fast. I want to remember more than their names, and I want each of them to have a meaningful presence in the story.

5. Unimaginative names. Some of the worst character names in contemporary genre fiction: Sookie Stackhouse; Bella Swan; any hard-boiled detectives named Jack, John, or Jake. This doesn't mean you should go out and name your character Dickie Moorcock, but come on, get creative! I must admit, though, that I do overstep my bounds with this one on occasion; I have a character named Placenta Vagina Female Smith. He's a real great guy.

6. Dense setting description. This can be a tough balancing act, but all I really need is a sense of temporal and spatial place and we're good to go. Unless the setting has some bearing on the psychological make-up or behavior of a character, or is written in a particularly beautiful way, it just does not need to go on longer than a few paragraphs (and sometimes that can be too much).

7. Lack of figurative language. I find this most annoying in young adult novels. They spell everything out for you. I understand reading comprehension grows in stages, but come on - let the teens work a few things out for themselves. YA is not the only fiction that does this (and not all YA does this), mind you. But there's something called subtlety that is sorely lacking in many of today's most popular titles.

8. Forcibly quirky characters. When you have to stick the nosy neighbor lady with twelve cats and a penchant for wandering outside in her knickers in there, for cheap laughs or to buff up your word count, it's just...it's just time to reconsider. Now if she knows the secret formula for the viral infection that's spreading rampant through the city and the only way to protect this knowledge from the evil Martians is by harboring said twelve cats and performing odd knickers-only rituals by moonlight, then okay, leave it in. But don't do it just to do it.

Check back later in the week (or next week) for Part 2

2009 Wrap Up

2009-12-26T12:59:00.000-08:00

At the end of the year, many publications and individuals enjoy making Top Ten lists to encompass everything they enjoyed this entire year. As I have a terrible memory (a sore liability were I in any other field other than the "make stuff up!" industry), I can't remember ten whole things I did this year, yet alone ten movies I saw or CDs I downloaded or games I played. So here are my Top One lists for 2009:

Top One Movie
1. Whip It! - Everyone expects Ellen Page to be Juno for the rest of her life, which is unfortunate. Juno would never join a Roller Derby league, you guys. But you know who would? All of the fine ladies in this smile-ear-to-ear little gem sweater of a movie.

Top One Book
1. Dark Places - Gillian Flynn is a relatively new voice in the suspense/thriller genre, one I welcome with open arms. She has some trouble with endings (bringing everything together too fast/too conveniently), but the journey she takes you on is always uniquely enthralling.

Top One Comic
1. Runaways - It didn't come out this year, but I discovered it for myself this year so it counts. I devoured this thing. Someone make the first arc into a movie, please. I will buy you donuts. Please?

Top One Music
1. Sainthood - Tegan and Sara. More synths, more pop, more delightful. Doesn't quite match the emotional landscape of The Con, but it still finds heavy rotation in my iTunes list.

Top One Video Game
1. Rock Band 2 - I know it isn't a new game, but it is still the best way to waste an afternoon. Tip: don't play after ten pm, for the sake of your neighbors.

That's it! If I think of any more Top Ones, I'll edit this entry to reflect that. Perhaps movie reviews will return next year, but I make no promises. See you in 2010!

"Mary's Waltz" to be Published in January Issue of Collective Fallout

2009-12-21T23:04:00.001-08:00

Sorry I have been away from the blog for longer than usual. I've been really busy with choir.

Remember when I ranted out some superfluous advice as an unpublished writer last entry? Well, those days are over, my friends. Now I can dish out disposable wisdom as A Writer Who Has Officially Been Published At Least One Time! I am having medallions made up with that very inscription. T-shirts available next week.

Here is a Long Tale About a the Journey of a Story from Concept to Publication

Well, first, here is a BRIEF SUMMARY OF EVENTS. Collective Fallout is a relatively new literary magazine focusing on publishing sci-fi/horror/fantasy- and queer-themed fiction (the content must fall under this umbrella, not necessarily the author). They publish two issues of their print journal every year, and the first issue of next year (January) will include a story of mine entitled "Mary's Waltz" (the story I have alluded to in previous entries). This is my first publication outside of my undergrad lit mag, and I am really excited about it! You can read an excerpt of my story here, and check out some of the other works as well!

If you're interested, here is how "Mary's Waltz" came to be (warning: if you don't want to be bored by disorganized thoughts on the writing process, go here instead):

Last year a friend of mine introduced me to PARSEC, an annual sci-fi/horror short story contest. What drew me to this contest was the fact that there was no entry fee, and even if you are not selected as a winner (I think there is a cash prize, but money should never factor into why you write or you will very quickly become a bitter, bitter person) you receive a brief written critique of your work with your rejection letter. A free critique without the awkward and intimidating immediacy of a workshop? Amazing. I couldn't pass that up. There is also a different theme or motif each year that must play an integral part in your story. In '09 this theme was Black Glass.

My friend told me about the contest about a week before the story was due. I banged out a very rough draft of what is now "Mary's Waltz" and what was then "The Girl, The Scorpion" in about three hours, proof-read it once, and sent it out the next day, knowing full well it was not going to win. But writing for a solid block of three hours felt exhilarating after not writing for so long; writing a new short story after spending over a year on my undergrad novel felt even better. (Short story writing and novel writing are completely different crafts, but I'm sure I'll dive into that in more detail at a later entry.)

With "The Girl, The Scorpion," I took an existing idea and tried to fit it into the theme, or the theme into it. My favorite band Over the Rhine has a song called "Mary's Waltz," about a blind girl who sneaks out of her house at night to dance. This image captured me. A couple of years ago, I was exploring various dorm buildings with a friend of mine on Antioch's campus, and we came upon a door with an incredible amount of locks on it. What purpose, these locks? People always ask where storytellers get their ideas, well here it is: What if? That is what we start with. For me it was, "What if there is something behind a door that desperately wants you to come in? What if this something is sinister? What if you struggle and toil and finally open the door and before you can celebrate......" Wait, what am I going to put behind the door? That was less of a concern than Who will I get to open the door? Why will this person be able to open it and what will it mean for them? Would it mean something else to someone else? So these were the questions that propelled me to begin, and then of course I plopped some lesbians in there because that's what I do, and I made Mary blind because of the song, and her blindness in the rough draft had absolutely no significance but I found it later. The door also had very little significance (one of the story's many problems, as pointed out in my generous one-paragraph critique), and there was no connection between it and either of my main characters. (P.S. This is why guidelines for short story submissions - as well as your creative writing teachers - will always implore you NOT to send a first draft. They are very wise.)

But where was the Black Glass? The Black Glass was the door handle, but it was also the scorpions. Man, the scorpions was the best idea I never had. It comes from the nonfiction memoir Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs by Paul Carter. For recreation during one of his oil rig tours in some jungle, Carter watches the natives construct a cage small enough for this scorpion so that it will lose a fight to the death with a mouse. (Also interesting note about scorpions, if you put them in a pan and set a fire under it, they will puncture themselves with their own stingers to avoid burning to death.) So this insane image of mouse besting scorpion stayed with me and all I had to do was wait for the best place in a story to use it. (Incidentally, it was also the one thing about my first revision of this story that my workshop class considered too unbelievable.)

So where do storytellers get their ideas? They ask themselves What If, and then they steal other people's life experiences. Done and done.

Anyway, I of course got my rejection letter which included a helpful critique that influenced some of the changes I made in my first revision of the piece. I turned this revision over to my workshop group at SF State and fourteen separate minds helped me fine-tune the thing. I revised one more time and then I sent it out. Really, it is a fluke. I was indexing places to send stories to use at a later date (thinking to revise "Mary's Waltz" at least one more time) when I found Collective Fallout and realized their deadline was in like a week. So I thought, what the hell? And here we are. (For the record, I still think the story could benefit from a stronger ending [the one thing that has been retooled the most], but there tends to be a fine line between tinkering just enough and tinkering too damn much. Gotta move on.)

Gosh, I really love the writing process; how much a single story transforms from your mind to the page to the reader's mind. Fascinating.

So what have we learned, kids?

A) Writers steal all of their ideas
B) Real life is stranger than fiction
C) You should send your shit out cuz someone else will want to read it

Please do not literally send out your feces. But if it simply can't be helped, here is the address of my high school bully:

Billy Henderson
1236 Westfield Drive
Springfield, IN 56340

The left image is the photo of him I used to project the image on the right, which is probably what he looks like now.

Unsolicited Advice from an Unpublished Lady

2009-12-06T09:35:00.000-08:00

Tip #1:

Do not write about vampires. (Or werewolves.) This theme is dead; it may be popular among the kiddies right now, and you may want a piece of that over-baked pie, but seriously, honey, if you ain't got nothing new to add to the goth make-up of your alluringly pale protagonists, just put down the keyboard and back away slowly.

This isn't (only) my personal bias talking. Recently I have been researching horror and speculative fiction literary magazines (through the wonderful resource of duotrope, thank you for asking), and nine out of ten sites make mention of vampires somewhere in their submission guidelines, in the form of DO. NOT. WANT. But they say it much more literarily.

Seriously, people, there are so many other, fresher, less trampled metaphors to be plumbed out there. Mmmm plums. For instance, my story is about a blind girl who sees through the eyes of spiders due to some unspecified magical thingy, who then steals the tongue of another girl in order to stop seeing with said spider eyes (by way of magic, again). It's a metaphor for abusive relationships!

It's true that your idea does not have to be an original one (we're running out of those...maybe?), but the spin you put on it, the style with which you write it, the voice in which you tell it, the characters you move through it - those things have to be unique in order to get noticed. My philosophy is, write what you want to read. I haven't seen many stories about sense-swapping teenage lesbians and magical doors to magictown in mainstream fiction (I haven't seen many teenage lesbians in mainstream fiction, period), so I decided to write my own. (You wake up in the middle of the night with a craving for creepy blind girls, what else are you gonna do but write it yourself. ...What? We all have needs.)

EXEMPTIONS

1. Joss Whedon. Look, my unhealthy obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer not withstanding....oh, who am I kidding, that particular obsession influences everything. Joss Whedon tinkered with vampire mythology and managed to make it broodingly enticing (yes, a little cheeseball too, but like a fine brie, no empty calories). He can do whatever he wants.

2. Fan-fiction. You can write whatever the crap you want on fan fiction boards. Someone will invariably like it, and then ask you to read their slash, and you'll be all "what is sla--ohdeargodwhyareEdwardandAngelDOINGTHAT!!?!" But it's cool. (Angel is the top in this scenerio, obvs.)

We can't all be famous strippers

2009-11-29T11:30:00.000-08:00

Clearly, I have lost interest in the self-imposed format of this "movie review" blog. Remember when Diablo Cody was just a small-town stripper and she posted about her adventures and America (or at least, one of its publishing companies) fell in love with her and she got a sweet book deal? All I have to do is find a job in the sex industry and blog about my struggles with objectification, personal shame, lack of medical insurance, and the blurred line between sexual abuse and "work place hazards"! Hmmm. Maybe that's not exactly how Cody did it.

Perhaps I am not posting very often because going over old movies is essentially living in the past. A past filled with multiple viewings of mediocre comedies, dramas, and horror flicks, while I stayed in on Friday nights and ate my feelings. Perhaps it is time to move on, to find something I can truly believe in, a cause I can get behind. A gospel, a theology. A creation story that makes as much sense as any other.

You Say Blasphemy Like it was a Bad Thing

So there was God.

God was quite alone, being God and all. God did not entirely know how God came into existence, but God saw no reason to question it. Who would God ask anyway? It just seemed pointless. So God simply went with it.

It was quite some time before God realized what awesome powers God possessed. Of course, since God was the only thing in existence, God not having figured out yet that God had the incredible ability to bring other things into existence, the concept of time was not yet constructed, so God did not get too bored waiting around to discover God’s powers.

The first thing God created was pronouns. Instead of referring to God as God, God now referred to God as himself. Other forms of this included he, him, or the possessive, his. Things went considerably smoother after this. Until, of course, God created Man and Woman, and there was much confusion with pronouns, which ultimately led to questions of gender, identity, and power dynamics. But that is skipping ahead.

So there was God, and pronouns.

Pronouns were little comfort for God. He could not talk to pronouns; he could not be very entertained by pronouns. So he created a planet, and seeing that it was pretty much a success, he created several more planets, then billions of stars, and suns, and moons, and a red squirrel. Yes, God created a red squirrel, and by his sheer will it floats about the universe, simply for his amusement. Every once in a while, even to this day, he catches a glimpse of that furry little rodent in the corner of his ever-watchful eye and he chuckles.

God selected the planets he had just made and, one by one, filled them up with various objects, some of which he so graciously endowed with a consciousness similar, yet far inferior, to his own. God had a great sense of pride and a good deal of forethought; he figured that if he granted anything the great consciousness that he possessed, everything would want to create their own things, but not also having his abilities of creation, they would become severely depressed. Instead, he gave various things varying levels of consciousness and eventually the things who considered themselves of a higher consciousness asserted dominion over the things they considered to be of a lower consciousness, and the things that were considered to have a lower consciousness (who did not at all agree with the other things) fought against this oppression and chaos and turmoil ensued and prevails even to this day. At least that severe depression was cleverly avoided.

What sorts of things occupied each planet are, of course, too numerous to name. God enjoyed each planet in an equal but different way, shifting his attention from each as a human would one day change the channels on an as yet invented television set.

God cannot recall the exact point at which things started getting difficult on one particular planet of his. Yes, the concept of time had been created, but even so, God paid little attention to it, time having been created not for him but for certain beings of a certain consciousness. Anyway, things really started getting confusing for God the day a couple of humans found out about his existence.

At first, God was taken aback. Then when he really thought about, he figured he had been quite an egotistical fool to think he was the only thing in existence to have such an awesome consciousness. The only way some other entity could know about God and his creation process was if they had seen him. A little searching proved God right: there was another being who had been in existence as long as him, and that being called itself Devil.

So there was God, and pronouns, and a universe, and planets, and things existing on the planets, some possessing consciousness and some not, and some who knew of God, and Devil.

God decided the best way to deal with this situation before it became too volatile was to hold council with Devil. They met above planet mars because it was not quite so drafty there. God was surprised by Devil, for, aside from his initial shock at discovering a consciousness as great as his even existed, Devil was quite handsome, inasmuch as a consciousness can be handsome.

God and Devil began their meeting with small talk, which quickly led to gossiping about the goings-on of particular planets, which, in turn, led to the dissolving into giggles on both their parts. It was a long while before the issue they had met to discuss was even brought up, God and Devil were having too much fun relishing in each others company.

But the time came to discuss the issue. God did not want anyone to know he existed because he thought it would complicate things. Devil calmly explained to God that no one would really know God existed, not for absolute fact, just that some would believe and some would not. God countered that this too would lead to complications because those who did not believe would argue with those who did believe, and both sides would never cease to question until they did find out for an absolute fact whether or not he existed. Devil told God he thought too much, and besides, no matter what the consequences, wasn’t it fun to watch all of the drama unfold? God conceded that Devil was right, it was quite entertaining, and after all, isn’t that the reason God created everything in the first place?

A consensus having been reached, God and Devil parted ways amicably. God became for the first time in his existence rather nervous when Devil contacted him later for another rendezvous. They met this time in a star cluster which was very pretty that time of year. This meeting went superbly better than the last meeting, and God and Devil continued to meet many more times afterward, and eventually moved in together.

So there was God, and there was Devil, and if they had hands to entwine and a sunset to walk into, we would only ever see their backs.

(2/06 - crap, still living in the past)

Movie Review: Better Off Dead

2009-11-20T11:52:00.000-08:00

My favorite thing about high school (aside from that time I had to kill all my classmates in order to progress to the tenth grade - sorry, guys!) was skiing the K-12 against this Ken-doll jerk who stole my girlfriend and totes winning her back, only to be all "Suck it, Beth, I gots me a new supercute French exchange student girlfriend who not only digs my sick saxophonin' skills but also taught me how to fix my wicked vintage Camero in only ten quick montage-frames, yo!" Yeah, high school woulda been pretty perfect after that, if only I could figure out how to get the paperboy to leave me alone about his damn two dollars!

Listen, Better Off Dead is clearly not a movie for everyone. If you don't like things that are funny, I mean, just don't even bother. Rent Grandma's Boy instead or something. The thing I love so much about eighties teen comedies is that they were so much more clever than most of today's hypersexualized fare. These days, if someone tried to make a movie involving claymation hamburgers singing a duet, a young man trying to off himself in increasingly comical ways, a mildly retarded shut-in attempting to seduce a foreign exchange student through masculine displays of snorting jello up his nose, random street races against Asian sports-announcer wannabes, and popularity-defining ski competitions, it would get shut down in the twelve minutes it takes those seven dudes to write Not Another Teen Movie Part Two.

I mean, if the woman you exchanged black-and-white headshots with suddenly dumped you after six whole months of going steady, just because she wanted to date someone more popular, you'd pour yourself a mighty tall glass of paint thinner too, right? If only life were as simple for Lane (John Cusack) as it is for his younger brother, who builds spaceships out of the toys he buys from the offers on the backs of cereal boxes. Thank goodness for cute exchange students (Diane Franklin) and two-minute montages set to uptempo pop ballads! Besides, everyone knows if you really want to kill yourself, you might as well ski the K-12. Even Olympic medalists won't tackle that snow-capped rock.

Man, I just summarized this movie almost exactly the same way three times.

Here is a clip:

Next Up: Black Sheep! (Not the Chris Farley movie.)

Flash-Fiction Breakdown :: Vampire Pirates in Space

2009-11-17T23:12:00.000-08:00

Suddenly, the vampire pirates found themselves in space.
   “Great,” said Olnurk upon waking. “Who are we going to find to eat out here?”
   Inrika slapped him. She was a bovineterian. “That’s all you ever think about.”
   The ship drifted along in the blackness. The vampires gathered on deck and stretched. Frederick looked at his watch and saw it had stopped at five o’clock. It must be morning on Earth, he thought, and smiled to be standing outside in the day time.
   “Well, look,” Minerva began. “We might as well adapt if we are going to be here. We’ll have to start by rationing. Inrika, gather the blood bags from below and count ‘em up.”
   Todd meekly raised her hand. Minerva glared at her and nodded.
   “Um, well, um, it seems,” Todd stuttered. Finally she looked at her feet and was able to gather her thoughts. “Well, the atmospheric pressure and loss of oxygen seems to have had a negative effect on the hum--I mean, blood bags.”
   “What are you saying?” Minerva asked.
   “Well, they’re dead.”
   “What about the cows!?” Inrika was pulling at her hair.
   “I’m sorry, they’re dead too.”
    Todd tensed her shoulders as she felt Inrika gearing up to kill the messenger.
   “I knew it,” Olnurk said. “I knew we’d have nothing to eat out here.”
   With no sunlight to bother them deep in space, oxygen being nothing any of them missed, and the subzero temperatures feeling like nothing more than a light breeze, all the vampire pirates had to worry about was their ever-present hunger.
   On their second day (or night, who could tell?), Minerva discovered that she could steer the ship by rotating the wheel as if the abundant nothingness were an ocean. Olnurk climbed the lookout and stretched his telescope. He spotted a flickering light in the far distance and Minerva charted their course.
   “What about gravity?” Todd asked shyly.
   “What about it?” Inrika was busy huddled in a corner on deck, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth, trying not to think about how thin she was becoming.
   “Well, why doesn’t it effect us? We have mass. Why don’t we just…fly away?”
   “Why don’t you just fly away,” Inrika snarled, and went back to her rocking.
   An extremely long and painful time later, many sleep cycles after Inrika had foolishly tried to feed off of Olnurk in his sleep, Frederick spotted land.
   “Planet, ho!” He yelled.
   Minerva instructed everyone to tie off the sails as she steered them into the planet’s ionosphere.
   After landing, the vampire pirates disembarked the ship onto hard and dusty ground. There was no light here, and in fact it was almost as dark as space, but of course the vampires could see fine. They could see a green-tinted town not far off, smoke rising from it, indicating some form of life.
   In the town, they found its citizens. Small, many-limbed creatures who possessed wide foreheads, below which sat only a nose and two mouths. The vampires disrupted some kind of festival or town meeting, as the creatures were all lying on their stomachs in the dust while one creature in the center stomped around and clicked with one mouth while whistling with the other.
   “Okay, mates,” Minerva addressed her group. “Let’s see if these little guys bleed.”
   The little guys did bleed but only a little, and it was bitter and dissatisfying. But the vampire pirates had to eat. They soon discovered that ten of the creatures, consumed in succession, would get them through the day (or night) at least feeling energized enough to round up the next day’s meal.
   “I see you’re not a bovineterian anymore,” Olnurk observed of Inrika.
   “If there were animals here, I’d eat them,” Inrika responded, licking blood off her teeth. “Anyway, what are these things? They’re not human. They live in dirt and lay around all day. They can’t even talk.” The drooping creature in her arms whistled and stomped one heel lazily against the boards of the ship.
   Even though they couldn’t communicate, Minerva eventually organized a sort of treaty. If the creatures would increase their birthrate, the vampire pirates would decrease how many of them they ate every day. It was a win-win. Meanwhile, she sent Frederick and Todd, with a hearty supply of blood bags, to scout for other towns, and hopefully, tastier creatures.
   “This is better than our old home,” Minerva remarked. “Nothing in our way. Nothing against us. Paradise.”
   Each sleep cycle, while the vampire pirates lay in their coffins aboard their ship, the creatures lay on their stomachs in their homes, listening to the stomping of their neighbors’ feet, their whistles and clicks carried on the wind like secrets.

[Original Assignment: Write a two or three page story that includes the fantastic, some kind of fantasy elements, and some kind of social or political oppression.

Professor's sole comment: "Appealing in a random kind of way."]

Interlude

2009-11-14T11:30:00.000-08:00

I realize I am a good four years behind with this, but I just discovered Runaways by one of my favorite comics writers, Brian K Vaughan (not to mention incredibly talented artist Jo Chen doing covers). Three hardcover volumes came into the store (p.s. I work at Half Price Books, where my employee discount allows me to buy shelves and shelves of things I will never have enough time to read or view) and I geeked out. What I am saying is, snappy movie "reviews" will return to form in a few days when I am finished with this set of books. I only have room in my schedule to shirk homework for one distraction at a time.

Movie Review: Bend It Like Beckham

2009-11-11T20:29:00.000-08:00

While I am tempted to sum up this movie in one line (Two beautiful young women playing sports: 'nuff said!), I think I can eek at least three paragraphs outta this deal. First, though, in an effort at full disclosure, I must admit something to you all: I am a twelve year old girl. At heart, I've never outgrown my love for movies about angsty teenagers or fun sleepover flicks (just wait until I review She's the Man. And Bring It On! And Legally Blonde, oh god!). So you'll have to bare with me while I gush over movies like this one about cheeseball female friendships and grrrl empowerment.

Jess (Parminder Nagra) is an Indian girl living in England under her family's traditional, yet mostly lenient and supportive, control, and all the poor girl wants to do is play soccer! Luckily Juliette (Keira Knightley) spots her serious skillz at the park one afternoon and invites her to try out for a girl's team. The head coach is dreamy Mr Jonathan Rhys Meyers (with an Irish accent!), whom the girls fight over a bit, and Jess ultimately snags/snogs. (No worries though, there's still plenty of lesbian subtext between these friends for you to cling to.)

Really, it's an hour and a half of watching ladies in short shorts kick a ball around and hug and shop for sports bras. But you know, in this world where all young women seem to want to do is grow up and "be famous" (without doing anything, of course, like reality TV has taught us all is painfully possible), where we're forced to settle for people like Lady Gaga and Shayne Lamas and post-Mean Girls Lindsay Lohan as role models, it is refreshing to pop in this flick and watch women who are actually doing something, and who might encourage/inspire the viewer to get off their bum and do something too. Not that you should go out and try to play soccer; no one really plays that outside of grade school. Maybe try baseball or something. Anyway.

Here is a recipe for beans on toast:

1. Cook up some baked beans
2. Butter some toast
3. Spread beans on toast
4. Don't burn yourself!
5. Throw that rubbish away and replace with peanut butter and jelly.

Next Up: Better Off Dead

Movie Review: Battle Royale

2009-11-09T11:39:00.000-08:00

Remember when you were fourteen and about to embark on your first day of high school? Remember how nervous you were, picking out an outfit the night before, making sure your mom knew not to kiss you in front of the other kids when she dropped you off, writing in your diary how you just knew this was going to be the best year ever! Then you got to school and your entire class was kidnapped and relocated to a remote island where you were forced to kill each other with a variety of useful-to-what-the-fuck-is-this "weapons" until only one of you survived because somehow this was going to help rejuvenate the socioeconomic infrastructure of Japan? Ah those were the days.

Battle Royale is like a reality show on steroids before satirists realized what an easy target reality shows made. Granted, there are no Big Brother cameras on the killing isle, but everyone seems to know the rules and the media crams its dirty fingers into the action before and after the battle. The rules are thus: one randomly selected ninth grade class must fight it out to the death; each individual is equiped with a surplus army bag containing a randomized weapon (god bless the kid who gets "tuning fork"); the island is separated into zones which "close" on an hourly basis, leaving any kid caught in the zone with a bad case of exploding head syndrome (each kid sports a nifty tracking collar laced with TNT). And watch out for the transfer students! Go for the glory, nubile youths!

You see, this government implemented annual killing spree is necessary to win back the respect of the Youths. The Adults are losing ground! Must save face! Youths are running wild, attacking teachers, not even bothering to show up for classes. Who do you think pays for your Reboks, kid? Get in the kitchen and mix Daddy a drink!

So, listen, all you really have to know is, while the movie's premise is deliciously absurd, the action, cartoonish death scenes, and the heightened emotions of so many scared-shitless young go-getters is superb to the nth power. Old playground rivalries finally come to their intensified and permanent - some might say inevitable - conclusions. Allegiances are formed, enemies are everywhere, betrayal waits patiently in the wings, eating Grippos and tallying the dead. If you enjoyed any part of Kill Bill at all, you have to see this movie. Gogo Yubari kicks some serious ass in this movie, too!

Critics have called this movie a cross between Lord of the Flies and A Clockwork Orange. I call it just plain genius.

Tomorrow: Bend It Like Beckham

Movie Review: Alien Quadrilogy

2009-11-08T11:21:00.000-08:00

I bought this box set after watching a program on AMC or TCM or somesuch called DVDTV, where they play snippets of extras during the run of a feature film. They showed Alien, and during an interview, the producer or writer or director or someone (I am the best movie reviewer ever) says that when plotting Alien, he wondered what could be the most frightening thing for a man to experience? The answer: penetration. But not only that, but penetration from the inside out. So he wanted to have the alien first rape the man, thus impregnating him, then the baby alien exploding from his chest, reverse penetration-style. Effed up.

So everyone at this point has seen at least one of the Alien movies, yes? I think this is safe to assume. I am going to assume it so I don't have to lay out intricate plot details (these movies are all PLOT PLOT PLOT Sigourney Weaver PLOT PLOT) . Here is a brief synopsis of all the movies: some peeps trek out to the wild black yonder, discover aliens, aliens go on feeding/killing spree, the humans never learn, but Ripley (Weaver) lives to see another day (or her clone does, whichever).

I will admit right off the plate that I have completely wiped Alien 3 from my memory. Universally acknowledged as the worst movie in the set. Universally acknowledged by my mature and credible sources on IMDB. Also, I have an inordinate amount of appreciation for Alien Resurrection because Joss Whedon, my personal Lord and Savior, penned the script. Let's start there and work backwards.

Ripley is reanimated as a superhuman clone like a bazillion times! Somehow, each time, she also has the alien fetus inside her chest. So the scientists are basically cloning her so they can experiment on the aliens (because humans never can leave well enough alone), and Ripley has gained some weird powers and connection to the aliens through this process. I forget why the team of misfit soldiers is there, but hey, there they are, as quirky as any team assembled by Joss Whedon. You can clearly see the makings of Firefly's gun-happy Jayne in Ron Pearlman's Johner:

Also, I think everytime there is a movie idea floating around with a supernaturally strong, weapons-toting lady (usually of the teen persuasion), Whedon sheepishly raises his hand: "Can...can I do it?"

Back to the plot! The scientists taunt the caged aliens, having seemingly overlooked the ability of said aliens to BLEED ACID, so one alien sacrifices itself to the other two, who then escape through the giant hole his acidic body has made for them. Team Misfit pursues. It's a like a scratch-off McDonald's contest: Many will enter, few will win. Winona Ryder plays a mousy android whom Ripley distrusts because of previous dastardly deeds done by one such droid in Aliens, but some weird scene where she cuts all up in her droid arm to get a door open or something causes them to ~~fall in love~~ get along. (Clearly, I do not re-screen these films for review. I do have some kind of life.) Later, Ripley discovers her tragic failed clones, and also that she is kind of the mother of an albino alien, who's all like "...Mommy?" and they have a gross sentimental moment before she shoves him out an airlock. The world is safe again!

In Aliens, Paul Reiser annoys us for the first ten minutes but luckily it's all a dream! Ripley heads back into space, and they land on a planet overrun by the aliens! A little girl has somehow survived (how this did not turn into an "actually I am an eggsack for the aliens and now I betray you all" moment, I will never understand), to whom Ripley becomes maternally attached. A bad, bad android man who bleeds milk doesn't want Ripley to kill the aliens because the humans on Earth want to study them (maybe?). They fight using those machines from Xenogears, and Ripley wins. The world is safe again!

In Alien, a group of spacemen discovers the aliens and one of their troop is face-hugged by a spore and after a couple days in his belly the alien infamously explodes from his chest cavity! Now everyone is stalking this mean-ass bitch alien, as this mean-ass bitch alien stalks everyone else. The kitten survives! Ripley makes it back to Earth in nightmare-free cryo-sleep. The world is safe again!

There are too many extras on the box set for anyone who has anything else to do (such as eat food, take showers, or sleep) to ever get through them, but they all sound very interesting! Documentaries and interviews and Director's Cuts, oh my!

This review counts as three reviews, but I shall still return tomorrow. And also, I am considering changed "review" to "overview," which seems more accurate.

Tomorrow: Battle Royale

Movie Review: Adventures in Babysitting

2009-11-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

This is the most fun you will have watching an 80s movie. Ever. And yes, I am including Better Off Dead in this generalization.

Adventures in Babysitting is an award-winning opus by director Chris Columbus. Oh wait. That's a lie. But Columbus did direct it, and it stars Elisabeth Shue, Keith Coogan (who was everywhere in the 80s teen movie scene), and everyone's eventual favorite straight AIDS-free videoographery Anthony Rapp. But enough with the technical details: to the meat of it!

Chris Parker (Shue) is a seventeen year-old girl who wants what every seventeen year-old girl wants: to sing and dance along to the Crystals' "And Then He Kissed Me" in her bedroom wearing only an overly long t-shirt. And also, to have the perfect date with her perfect mature boyfriend, who has just canceled on her because his kid sister is sick (alarum bells!). So instead of a dreamy date, Chris gets the dreary task of babysitting for the Anderson's. Brad Anderson (Coogan) is 15 and crushing hard on the exotic older woman Chris, and his kid sister is obsessed with Thor. Then the undersexed, overlustful bestfriend shows up, Chris's bestie runs away to a bus station downtown and freaks her shit, Chris drags the kiddies along to rescue her, and long story short, they end up stealing something vital from the mob and wackiness ensues!

Guys, I mean, at one point, they literally have to sing for their lives!

Also, Vincent D'Onofrio is Thor:

And so young! Just swoon over those golden curls for a minute.

This movie is so spank-your-grandma fun that you will want to watch it every year on your birthday. It's a family film (well...except for the gang fight on the subway, maybe. "Don't fuck with the babysitter!") that avoids mushy sentimentality even in its touching scenes (don't worry, it's mostly unrealistic, almost cartoonish wackiness throughout).

I'd say you have the next movie for your Netflix queue, my friends!

Tomorrow: Aliens Quadrilogy!

You gotta start somewhere

2009-11-07T01:23:00.000-08:00

I'm starting with movie reviews!

And I'm starting tomorrow.

I've made the questionably foolish decision to write a brief (or verbose, depending on how impassioned I get) review of all of the movies I have in my collection. That's hundreds! One a day should keep me going for a year. I can count! Oh man.

Some day, when I have mastered this thing called the "Internet", I may post things about my website (p.s. this is my website until I learn what the eff I'm doing; how am I supposed to live without you, geocities!?!?!) and goings-on in my (considerably slight) writerly world.

Until then, movie reviews, and lots of 'em! In alphabetical order! Sometimes when I'm drunk!

First up:

Adventure in Babysitting

Can't wait!