Archive for November, 2012

Submitting “Doll’s Game”

Posted: November 2, 2012 in Living and Life, short story, Writing
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Today I had to turn into my class the short story I wrote, “Doll’s Game”, and can I just say it’s the worst piece of fiction I’ve written since I entered college? I’m not kidding, it’s just baaaad. I even made a point of telling my classmates that. Why do I think it’s bad? Because it’s literary, which I’m terrible at. I seriously prefer a scary story with demons or serial killers, but I can’t submit that sort of story in this class. Otherwise I’d turn in my succubus story for consideration.

But hey, who knows? I may think it’s a horrible story, but my classmates may disagree with me. They may actually like it, and give me helpful suggestions that will improve the story enough that I might want to submit it somewhere for publication. Who knows?

Well, in a week we’ll know what I should do with it, and whether or not I can make a diamond out of a lump of coal. I’ll let you know then.

And speaking of short stories, I’ve got one coming out Monday. Look out for it, it’s a science fiction story called Ripple. I’m looking forward to it.

“The Rape Thing”? Are You High?!

Posted: November 2, 2012 in Living and Life, Politics and Leadership, Reflections
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I decide to see what’s new in the world before I go to bed and what am I greeted with? Another politician has said something about abortion that’s not only ignorant, but sounds like he’s trivializing the victim’s needs. John Koster, a GOP candidate for the Washington State House of Representatives, said that he only supports abortion when a woman’s life is in danger, and then said “Incest is so rare…but the whole rape thing?…how does putting more violence on a woman’s body and taking an innocent life make it all better?”

What is he smoking?

And his spokespeople may be saying that this guy takes rape seriously, but calling rape a “thing”? That’s not taking it seriously. And violence on a woman’s body? How would you know? Did you ask women if they think abortion is violent? Or did you never consider that maybe carrying the product of a rape to term is a form of violence in itself, it’s so traumatizing to women?

Honestly, I’m getting really tired of male politicians saying these things about women’s bodies and rape and abortion. “Legitimate rape”; “God intended it”; “the rape thing”. When are these men going to realize that saying this sort of stuff is asking for trouble? Really, learn your lessons already.

This brings up another topic I’d like to mention: colleges and rape. I’ve also recently read some articles about how colleges try to cover up rapes and blame the victims…told from the perspectives of the victims themselves. In every case, victims were told by the college administrators and people who worked for them things that confused me.

For example, one doctor asked why a victim didn’t report her rape for months. Apparently to the doctor it didn’t seem logical. Hello? Since when does anyone do anything that makes sense when they’ve just been traumatized and put into deep shock? And asking why a girl is saying she was raped when before the incident she liked the guy and wanted to sleep with him? Well, let’s see…um…he was charming at the coffee shop, but when I told him I wasn’t comfortable doing that after the third date and he just pressed on…are you kidding me?!

I love higher education. I wish everyone had a shot at it. But it’s also, unfortunately, big business. And no business wants the nickname “Rape University”. Now, some colleges do rape prevention, treatment and prosecution better than others. I couldn’t find any statistics for OSU, but I’ve seen posters in several buildings and my dorm about what constitutes healthy relationships and what doesn’t. I’ve also seen classes hosted inside dorms instructing girls on how to prevent being attacked and how to defend one’s self when being attacked. And the Wexner Medical Center has a Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Unit, so that’s definitely a good sign. And I don’t know how often the disciplinary board takes on sexual misconduct cases, but our student code of conduct defines sexual misconduct as tightly as most police officers do. Got to give them credit for that.

Some colleges however, don’t excell in this capacity. On the contrary, they’ll do anything to make their problems go away, even if it means making the victims suffer. Amherst College is a pretty bad offender. There’s even an article about it, which links to another girl’s experience prior to the article (http://acvoice.com/2012/10/23/surviving-at-amherst-college/). I must say, it’s disheartening to see schools put their reputations before their students. If they’d just prosecute these cases for what they are–rape, and not by any other name–then there reputations wouldn’t suffer, they’d grow with the knowledge that the school does not tolerate rape or any other form of sexual assault or misconduct.

So to the politicians and schools, do us all a favor. Stop belittling what women go through. Help them get the services and closure they need. Get educated on the facts. Don’t try to make the problem go away or insist it’s not as big as people think. And certainly don’t say women should live with what happened to them because of a fetus that’s nervous system is underdeveloped is in their uterus or that because of alcohol or they came forward after a certain amount of time they can’t be helped.

Rape is rape. It’s that simple. Preventing it and bringing justice for the victims should not be.

A Snake Conundrum

Posted: November 1, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Oh, I hope this Snake unties itself like my problem did.

This evening I was working on Snake, and I had my titular character pull out his phone and check his location using his phone’s GPS. As I was typing that out, I stopped and thought to myself, Wait a minute. Something doesn’t sit right here. And then two things hit me:

1. I don’t have a smartphone that can connect to the internet or has apps. I don’t even text on my phone. How do phones and internet connections work exactly?

2. The Snake uses a burner phone so he can’t be traced if he makes phone calls. Can burner phones ever be smartphones?

Well, the first question could be answered with a simple Google search, but I heard voices out in the hallway and I thought I’d ask my neighbors if they could make it easy for me to understand. Thankfully they did, explaining to me in full detail and in terms I understood how a phone connects to the Internet and how it isn’t dependent on wireless access, only on bars and how much allotted data space you have, so a GPS app would work in the situation I have planned.

Now that answered my first question. When I voiced the second question, my neighbor said that you can jack an iPhone and reconfigure it to become a burner. Tempting, but I don’t think the Snake would waste his time like that.

So I did some digging on Google. Apparently there’s an app for iPhones and Androids that allows you to temporarily turn your phone into a burner phone, which is handy if you’re a telemarketer or you want to pull a phone prank. The brilliant part is that if you’re suspected of something but you don’t have a burner phone, the police can only connect you to the crime if you have this app and you’ve used it around the time of the crime (DISCLAIMER: I’m not encouraging anyone commit a crime from reading this. If you get the idea from me, I’m not liable, it’s all on your head for breaking the law and potentially ruining the lives of who knows how many people).

So that little conundrum is fixed. Back to the writing. I want to see if I can get the full 50K words novelists try to write during NaNoWriMo. So far I have a little over a thousand. 40k more to go!

It’s NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth!!!

Posted: November 1, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
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And yet for some reason, it’s celebrated in other countries too. Shouldn’t it be INternational NOvel WRIting MOnth (InNoWriMo)? On second thought, maybe not. That abbreviation sounds worse than NaNoWriMo, actually.

Right, onto the reason we’re reading this post. It’s National Novel Writing Month, when writers buckle down and really put their hearts into their novels. Some decide that this is the time to start what they hope will be the Next Great (insert country here) Novel. Others try to write a novel in only 30 days, doing all the research, writing, and editing in that amount of time. And some, like me, will put their all into their works in progress and edit their on-the-way-to-being-published projects…after they’ve done all their homework.

As you can already tell from this post, I’m already in the novel-writing mode. I had fun in a haunted house last night during Halloween (one of my favorite times of the year), so I’m ready to write scary stuff. I’ve also got a short story coming out on Monday, so that’s sure to be a boost. Yes, there’s a short story of mine coming out on Monday. It’s called Ripple, it’s a science-fiction story about a war with aliens, and I hope you read it and give me some feedback.

I’ll be primarily focusing on my serial killer thriller Snake, trying to write as many chapters as possible (and possibly adding one, if I think it’s appropriate). I’ll also work on my science-fiction novel Reborn City when my friend who’s helping me edit the story gets back to me with chapters (thank you Matt! You’ll show up in the Acknowledgements section in the book when it comes out). I don’t think I’ll owrk on any short stories–except the ones for class and the ones I finished prior to November. Basically, I’ll be doing a lot of work…when I’m not at work or doing school work.

So wish me luck. To all other writers taking part in NaNoWriMo, good luck on your various creative works. Let’s get writing.

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