Getting my Bushido on
Current mood: annoyed
Category: Blogging

The last few days have been annoying, infuriating, irritating, frustrating, pestiferous, and a lot of other adjectives I doubt you want to hear. Suffice to say, nothing seems to be flying right and my Feng Shui isn't a little off; it packed its bag, booked a TWA flight and flew to China without leaving a forwarding phone number.

Over the next few days I need to rewrite the book so it flows organically. That was my magic word. "Organic.". I keep saying it to everyone who read it. "Does it read organically?" Right now, though, I feel like printing out the pages and flushing them down the loo. Maybe the toilet monkeys can read them and tell me if everything flows "organically".

I am experiencing an overwhelming desire to take my favorite dragon katana off the wall and polish it until the dust is gone and I can see my own scowling, anti-social face in it.

Now would be a good time for the nitwittery stalkers to descend. Just let me get a gate erected around the house.  A tall one, with intricate black wrought iron spikes. Not only will it keep the riffraff out of the yard, but it will hide the crazy chick taking the samurai sword to the trees in her backyard.

And how is your week going?

12:27 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Rock Me Like a Hurricane
Current mood: working
Category: News and Politics

So it turns out Tropical Storm Fay left Cuba and is headed north to the Florida Keys. Feels like it too. I am not joking. I have had annoying, rat-biting pain in my arthritic knees all day. I think we're in for a bit of storm, even this far east.

3:59 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Update
Current mood: bummed
Category: Writing and Poetry

I'm happy to say that the new Slayer novel, Armageddon, is trucking along after many, many delays. I'm hoping to be finished by end-year with the first draft.

The sad news is that the NYC publisher my agent and I were going back and forth with, trying to sell Raiju, has finally turned it down. This is what's meant by having a tough skin. In fact, you need armor-plated skin. It seems the revised outline still did not meet the publisher's needs. I had a funny feeling things were going to go that way.

I've been thinking a lot about the book, lately. The main issue with the book is that I wrote it as an action/adventure novel with elements of tokusatsu and daikaiju. It went out into the big wide world under the guidance of what I feel is a very good agent, but the feedback that came back was an assumption on the part of the editors that the book should be a romance, almost in the same way as Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. Whilst the book does have a background romance, the point of the book is as an adventure, with the romantic element secondary, and since this book is about big monsters (not vampires and werewolves) the strong romantic angle doesn't lend itself easily to the story. In other words, it's like saying, "Let's shoe-horn a big romantic plot into The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. In fact, let's make it the fuel for the story." While a romantic subplot would definitely work, especially in a remake (I can imagine, for instance, the character of Tom Nesbitt, young'd up for the X generation and probably played by Johnny Depp or Keanu Reeves, searching for his girlfriend in the chaos that has become New York City) it would feel a little out of place, as well. The story is about a monster, first and foremost, and how to stop it. The protagonist would not stop to obsess over his romantic life with the world falling down around him.

Anyway, these are the challenges I'm facing in the coming days. The book will need to be revised and re-submitted, so I'm afraid to say that you guys, who have been so patient and yet so enthusiastic about the book, will have to wait just a teensy bit longer.

In other fronts, I am brushing up the teen Slayer book, Blood Ties...and I think it rocks! Should I pitch it to my agent or a publisher? You decide!

10:31 AM - 6 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Fun With DeviantArt
Current mood: creative
Category: Art and Photography

I decided to have some fun this weekend and conceptualize the characters in Raiju just 'cause I could. I think I came up with a fun little promotional pic.

Enjoy!

5:26 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Thank You
Current mood: strong
Category: Art and Photography

To the always mysterious "J.B." for the fan letter yesterday. As always, I treasure the letters I receive. I'm hoping very soon to have a definite answer to the pressing YA question: "Will Raiju sell? And if so, where, when and how can I order a copy?"  :) I hear good things are up ahead, and I hope the Slayer fans will continue to support my latest endeavor---even if there are no traditional vampires in it. There is, however, a very un-traditional vampire in it!

And to answer your question, J.B., I'm still hard at work on the Slayer manga. I have several new panels down, though I haven't posted them at DevianArt, mostly because they are somewhat naughty and I don't want my account closed down!

In related news, one of the details from the manga-in-process, below, was added to The Vampire Don's favorite vampire art collection again.



I guess he really likes it!

5:12 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Inspiration
Current mood: focused
Category: Writing and Poetry

It made me its bitch this morning.

Yes, it's true. This morning a new series---I seem to never think in terms of single books---came to mind.  It was one of those flash things, like seeing your life pass before your eyes in a dangerous situation. But in this case, I see a fictional character's life flash before my eyes, including key scenes.

I even came away with a title, which I will share: E*G*L

What does it mean? Stay tuned. 

3:14 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Guest
Current mood: excited
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

You know, there are movies so bad they're bad. Then there are movies so bad they are brilliant. They are like the Hindenburg of fiction, bursting with flames of ineptitude and causing the viewer to exclaim, "Oh the polycarbonate!"

If Ed Wood was alive, Bram Stoker's Dracula's Guest is the type of movie he would make--no doubt with Tor Johnson in the perennial role. Director Michael Feifer is like a modern-day Ed Wood, filling his artistic landscape with so many strange blunders and accidental comedy, I'm left wondering what the bloody hell the original script looked like. It certainly didn't resemble the original short piece written by Bram Stoker.

Anywho, the story opens with Bram Stoker (I am not making this up) discovering his fiance, Elizabeth Murray, is being held in a kind of open-ended dungeon in Dracula's Castle. We learn that Elizabeth has been ravaged by the Count and is carrying his child. Elizabeth simply knows this--perhaps Dracula has First Response stocked. She warns Bram that there is no hope for her and she must be released from the inside of her prison--talk about a double entendre.

Anyway, we flash back to better days in Merry Old England (even though it all kind of looks like Canada). Bram has a friend whose name I didn't catch. We'll call him Bram's Buddy because since seeing this film I have lost all will to live, never mind look up the cast. He is teaching Bram, a vibrant Irishman, to fence. But no worries, because this detail, Bram's ability to fence, will have absolutely no impact on the rest of the film. I promise. We also learn that Bram is desperately in love with Elizabeth, but her codger General of a father wants the two of them to spend a year apart to prove their love to each other. Um...okay. Call me stupid, but I think General Murray just hates Irishmen. That's okay, too, because we will all soon learn to hate General Murray, who is part of a Secret Society That Hunts Vampies (tm).

We also learn that Bram is a real estate mogul in charge of rehoming the egregious "Mr. Dracula". No sooner is this established but "Mr. Dracula" mystically appears in the office, in the daylight, looking like a rabid Luciano Pavarotti in clownface. I was actually taken aback. I rubbed my eyes but there he was, Tor Johnson as Dracula. I swear to you, I am not making this up. The man has no neck. My heart stopped. I began to love this film with desperate B-film fondness. While making a bunch of fluttery motions with his meaty slab hands and long, unkempt fingernails (I shall not comment on how very frightening this was, far more than the idea of meeting a real life vampire), Mr. Dracula corrects them all by informing the Century 21 fools that he is, in fact, "Count Dracula" and that he has the blood of conquers in his veins, blah blah blah...

I guess the real estate deal falls through or something, because a few scenes later, Dracula has kidnapped Elizabeth and driven her back to his castle in Transylvania in one night, defying physics of all kind, even those to which supernatural creatures must adhere, and making Ol' Saint Nick look like a snail by comparison.  I wish I could cross continents in a coach in four in one night. I'd go to Japan, where they make better movies. Anyway, at the castle, which kind of looked like a set piece from a lesser known Masterpiece Theatre miniseries but has the convenience of having the Phantasm crypt installed in it (don't ask), Dracula begins wooing Elizabeth, though I really expected him to break out in  Nessun dorma, and maybe slam a few meatballs. Actually, that would have been less disturbing than watching the actor, maybe in his fifties, lasciviously eyeing Elizabeth, played by an actress who looked young enough to be his granddaughter. I really thought Dracula movies had hit an all-time low with Gerard Butler, but as they say, when you hit bottom there's nowhere to go...but a few feet lower than that, apparently.

Bram's Buddy is killed by Dracula--not sure why, exactly. I guess it was The Evil Thing to Do. But anyway, this prompts Bram to go after Dracula and rescue Elizabeth. Captain Murray follows, because he is part of that Secret Society Which Hunts Vampires (tm). You'd think if a vampire came to England and he was part of some great monster-hunting network, he would probably know something about what was going down, but apparently he was busy mingling at garden parties...or something. Tomfoolery follows, including shoe-horning the original Bram Stoker short story into a minimal piece of plot, Bram walking about halfway to Transylvania, getting attacked by demented, soap-impaired French people, then a Rottweiler, and then climbing a sheer cliff face after his perilous walk of, oh, maybe 8,000 miles, or whatever it takes to hop over from English soil to Eastern Europe. I'm thinking this man must eat his Wheaties! In another part of the movie, Captain Murray shouts many order and rides on bravely like an extra from North and South. Everyone converges on the castle for the final showdown, which recaps the prologue and then moves to a denouement that still has me confused, though it contains secret info that has...no effect on much of anything! Dracula flutters his fingers around a bit more in a rather disturbing way and then dies. Bram and his fighting skills and his love for Elizabeth play absolutely no part in Dracula's defeat, having been roundly trounced earlier in the climax by Dracula, who I was terrified was going to fall off the castle balcony while taunting poor Bram and land on him, squishing him like a large, Irish bug.

I love this film! I love Bram, and I love the finger-waggling, Tor Johnson-style Dracula!

This movie is, for want of a better word, brilliant in its ineptitude. My friends and I threw much snark at the television, and longed for Joel and the Bots to join us. I feel much joy, even now, as I have found a film that rivals Manos: The Hands of Fate for the contender of So Bad It's Brilliant. If you only watch one vampire movie a year, please let it be this one. Just don't be drinking anything you don't want shooting up your nose when Dracula makes his grand entrance.

4:54 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

I know I’m a lazy ass!
Current mood: fabulous
Category: Writing and Poetry

What a week! 

I promise Slayer: Armageddon is being written between ongoing projects! In fact, I'm enjoying the direction it's taken, and I think it will be a very sexy but poignant novel when I'm finished. Of course, you guys will be the judge.

In other news, I am brushing up the new Slayers YA novel outline--as yet untitled--though that hasn't gone out just yet and no one has seen it. It's a secret between you and me. ;)

And the new, altered, Raiju outline has been submitted for publication consideration at a popular New York house. I absolutely love the new outline, and I really need to credit my agent and the editor at the house where it is being considered for shining it up beautifully.  Wherever it winds up going to print at, it will definitely be one of my favorite novels of all time--and not just because there are big monsters in it. It truly grabs me, and I think the characters will quickly become your best (imaginary) friends. Imagine an amped up Harry Potter from hell. Yeah...I am pretty much over the top.

4:51 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

“Some of these scenes are also homoerotic, and some are even incestuous.”
Current mood: pleased

I lulzed in a good way. Read the rest of the review here.

My heartfelt thanks to the folks at Creature Corner for reviewing Slayer.

5:54 AM - 3 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

I Re-write, Therefore I Am
Current mood: anxious
Category: Writing and Poetry

So I've been particularly busy on Raiju rewrites of late. A little over two weeks ago I received the terrific news that a major publisher was interested in the project, but was asking for a re-write of roughly half of the book, as the latter half of it had veered into territory he felt wasn't marketable to the audience it was aiming for.

I was happy. He was asking for changes, but at least he was asking!

I realize some writers would feel their vision was being altered, but I see as an education. If my writing is lacking something--even the smallest thing--and that thing is holding me back from being more accessible to a wider audience, I want to learn how to do it, and do it well.

So for the past two weeks or so my agent and I have been working on "re-routing", so to speak, the novel into more marketable territory. I'm happy with the results. I think it's a stronger, more mainstream book, that will appear to a larger audience of young adult readers.

Next up is the terrifying task of selling the revised book. If it's going to happen, it will probably happen fast, within the next month or so. I will keep everyone updated.

Writing is all about the learning-curse, you know?

Wish me luck!

1:46 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment