500 Comments!

Posted: December 27, 2012 in Living and Life
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Two milestones in one day! Talk about a milestone!

Anyway, I’ve reached 500 comments, which I’m so happy about. More than likes, comments are a great way to interact with readers and bloggers, and they’re also a form of love on the Internet, at least for me they are. I’m so happy that I’ve also reached this milestone today, and I would like to thank science fiction writer, fellow blogger and good friend Matt Williams (http://storiesbywilliams.com/) for getting me to this milestone with the three comments he made today on my blog. Thanks Matt!

And once again, I’d like to thank everyone who’s ever commented, liked, deigned to follow, or just simply read Rami Ungar the Writer. You’re all there for me, supporting me as I try to make it in the world of fiction writing, and your support means so much to me. Thank you.

1000 Likes

Posted: December 27, 2012 in Living and Life
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Today was not only my best day for likes on Rami Ungar the Writer, I also surpassed the 1000 Likes mark. Holy crap! I did not think I would ever get this far back when I first started, and just getting a view on my blog was something to be proud of.

Thanks to everyone who’s liked, commented, or read something they enjoyed on this blog. I hope you’ll continue to stay with me and cheer me on as I try and become a professional novelist of horror/science fiction/fantasy stories.

Is Someone Actually Searching For the Snake?

Posted: December 27, 2012 in Living and Life, Novel, Writing
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Remember when I said in my last post that it was possible someone was searching for articles about the Snake? Well, something interesting just happened: I went to my Stats page, and I find someone was referred to my blog after putting in the search terms “Camerlengo Mafia”. I was shocked, because Camerlengo–meaning “chamerlain” in Italian–is the name of the mafia family whose members the Snake stalks and attacks. Now, beyond this blog, I haven’t really discussed the Snake in great detail to anyone beyond that he’s a serial killer who hunts the mafia. I haven’t shown anyone the first draft, and I only told the psychologist the name of the mafia family when I gave him the Snake’s history in order to form a diagnosis (which, by the way, turned out that the Snake doesn’t fit a single diagnosis).

I wondered if this was some sort of strange coincidence, so I went to Google and typed in “camerlengo mafia” myself. To my surprise, the only other articles beside mine were Wikipedia articles about various mafioso and cardinals, and a few Italian dictionaries that involved words like “mafia” and “camerlengo” appearing in the same section. So someone’s been searching for the Camerlengo Family, possibly to see if there’s an actual family by that name (and if there is, they don’t have a website), and lately I’ve been getting a lot of hits from Russia that coincide on days when either Snake articles are being read and the search terms either involve the word “snake” or the Cyrillic word for snake. I’m no detective, but I’m starting to wonder if this is somehow all connected.

If it is, I find it a little flattering that someone’s looking for the Snake so much. Hopefully I ‘ll get the novel out soon, but I don’t plan to start editing for a little while yet. Be patient though; I’ll have something out soon, God willing, and perhaps it’ll feature a serial killer who speaks Russian and uses Russian torture techniques.

Oh, and if there is someone who is searching for the Snake, and that person stumbles across this blog post, thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment. Just make sure it’s in English when you comment, because I’m not sure if a comment in Cyrillic will be translated or sorted as spam.

The Things Most Often Looked At On My Blog

Posted: December 27, 2012 in Living and Life
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I’ve been writing this blog for about a year and a half, give or take a few weeks, and I’ve had plenty of people on my blog, especially after Anne Rice linked my review of The Wolf Gift to her Facebook. However since this summer I’ve noticed some trends on my Stats page that I have to share with you guys, just because they are searched often and because I think it’s interesting that so many people (or perhaps the same people) keep returning to these particular blog posts.

The first is that a lot of people are searching for “old dolls”, “evil dolls”, “creepy dolls”, “dolls with souls”, and other variations of those search terms. Now, this past summer I did write a short story that involved a living doll. Granted, it was a piece of crap compared to some of my other work, and I don’t think I’ll be taking another look at it any time soon. However I wrote a couple of blog posts about it, each with a photo of some spooky or scary-looking doll on it. I can’t tell for certain how many times people have done these searches, but I do think that it’s at least once a week. So are people trying to get their hands on these cursed dolls? Are people just researching them? Or is there a doll out there that’s very good at hunt-and-peck and is trying to find out more about itself? If it’s that last one, I’m sorry if you were offended by those scary pictures. I did not mean to characterize you as a monster, I was just giving my readers what they want.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that someone or someones from Russia are looking at some of the old articles for my serial killer novel Snake a lot. Every time I see that an old Snake article has been looked at, I’d say there’s a possibly fifty-fifty chance that Russia is a bright orange on my Stats page. In addition, I often see search terms like “snake basilisk outline” or “how to snake outline”, and even more interesting, I’ve been seeing search terms in Cyrillic lately, always the same four letters. I ran them through an online Russian dictionary, and I got the definitions “snake, serprent”. This morning in fact, three people from Russia have been viewing my blog, two search terms in Cyrillic were used that contained the word for snake, and there was even a search term that said “snake part iii done”, one of the posts that had been viewed this morning. I think this may have something to do with the fact that the Snake speaks Russian and uses old torture techniques associated with the Russian mob. Perhaps someone in Russia is trying to find out more about the Snake and is getting interested in the novel. Or perhaps someone in the Russian mob is mad I’m using some of their old history for my own use.

God, I hope it’s the first one. I’d rather not end up in the Ohio River or somewhere with a bullet in my head and concrete on my feet.

What’s the most searched for things on your blogs? And what do you think it signifies?

The Third Short Story For the Collection Is Done

Posted: December 26, 2012 in ideas, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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I’m on a roll! Today I finished the third short story for my scary story collection, The Quiet Game. Note: the name of the collection is The Quiet Game. The name of the short story is Samson Weiss’s Curse, and it’s a short story about a dybbuk haunting a senator over something the senator’s grandfather did several years ago. I think my father, who’s a rabbi and has told me for years to try writing something based on my experiences or on something that I know, will be happy to read this one, as it contains a spirit from Jewish folklore and two of the characters have Jewish last names, and one has a Jewish first name.

For those of you who don’t know, a dybbuk is the spirit of a dead person who comes back and possesses a living human being. Dybbuks have been featured in a few plays and stories, and the recent horror film The Possession, which I reviewed, is about a dybbuk. After watching that film and another film with a dybbuk as the antagoinst, I wanted to write a dybbuk story for myself, but I couldn’t think of a good idea for a dybbuk story beyond someone getting possessed. But then about a month ago, I saw an episode of the TV show Ghost Adventures where the location being investigated had involved some miners breaking into a vault and how two of the miners were double-crossed by an unknown third miner in the end. I can’t remember exactly which episode it was that I watched, but I remember wondering what would happen if the ghost of one of those miners came back and sought revenge, and wondering what had happened to the third miner afterwards. I already had the dybbuk idea, so I decided to incorporate the two ideas together and I got the basis for Samson Weiss’s Curse.

Writing this one was a lot of fun, because as I wrote I kept adding in a bunch of creepy aspects that I hadn’t originally envisioned in the story, including swarming bugs and creepy telephone calls. I also had planned a darker ending for the story, but that seemed anticlimatic once I actually got to the climax, so I decided to change the climax to something happier and with a bit of mystery. I have to say, I like this new ending better, but I bet there’s a lot I could improve upon and so I’m going to hand this story off to a friend to look at and critique.

Now I’m done writing for the day. Tomorrow I’ll start the fourth short story in the collection, and maybe I’ll get it done by the end of the weekend. The way I’m writing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the final collection comes out in late March, early Apirl, right in time for Passover. Thanks for reading, and wish me luck.

Merry Christmas (Even Though I Don’t Celebrate It)

Posted: December 25, 2012 in Living and Life
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Hello people following my blog or just happening upon it. How are you this fine day? I know it’s Christmas, and you want to just spend time with your family (or possibly away from it), but I thought I’d give you all a couple presents, and you can only get these presents by reading the rest of this post. So I’m giving you 4 videos for Christmas! Yay!

The first video is called Rewind YouTube Style 2012, which features a bunch of YouTube stars (most of whom I don’t know) getting together to do Gangnam Style and Call Me Maybe together. It is hilarious and I think you’d like it, especially because Psy and the Annoying Orange are in the video.

The second video is by The Piano Guys, doing their version of Star Wars: Cello Wars. It’s very well done, both with the music and the SFX. And watch what Darth Vader does during parts of this video, because he is certainly a highlight in this awesome music vid:

These last two videos go together, so you can’t watch one without the other. It’s the Addams Family Christmas, from the original television series of the 1960s. Wednesday and Pugsley Addams are told by their Scroogey neighbor that there’s no Santa Claus, and the adults of the family work together–or maybe not so together–to bring the Christmas spirit back to the house, with surprising and hilarious results.

Well, I hope you like these gifts from a not-so-Grinchy Jew. I wish you a Merry Christmas (or solstice if you’re a Neo-Pagan) and in the immortal words of Cousin Itt, “Bedehh bububa pfft heheh nigbooyu heheh!”

An Episode With A Point

Posted: December 24, 2012 in Living and Life, Reflections
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I’m sitting in the kitchen at my dad’s place, writing and watching reruns of Family Guy. The episode they played today, I felt was aired for a reason: Peter realizes he’s got a smaller phallis than his son Chris, and joins a parody of the National Rifle Association in order to make himself feel like a bigger man. Let me tell you, I found myself laughing as I thought to myself, “Did they decide to air this particular episode as a response to some of the s&^t that the president of the NRA has been saying in light of the Newtown shooting and the new push from all sides to get guns under control?”

Let me tell you, the episode made some good points. For example, the guy who recruits Peter to the National Gun Association (NGA), says that how much of a man you are depends on the size of your assault rifle (no wonder people don’t want to give up their guns; they’re worried about their penis size…unless they’re women, in which case they’re tyring to show they’re as macho as the men without losing any chance of getting laid). Then, when Lois worries that Peter taking Chris on a hunting trip is a bad idea, they show a video that shows, among other things, Jesus and Moses using AR-17s on Romans, giving the Second Amendment the same sacredness as the Bible in the gun nuts’ minds, telling kids if they hug a pistol they can get rid of bad guys, and then saying that guns are good and safe, before showing a disclaimer that says that guns aren’t the safest thing in the world.

You know, I really love Seth MacFarlene; he really can take everything and show its stupid side in ways no one else can. And in this early episode, from season 3 and well before our current plague of gun violence and anger over gun violence, it surely is a perfect response to Wayne LaPierre and his NRA leadership buddies, who are not only out of touch, they are out of touch with their own members, who apparently do believe in some restrictions in guns (imagine that!).

Now, with politicians on both sides of the aisle working towards gun control legislation, we can expect the NRA to put up a huge fight. In fact, LaPierre has already called a reinstated ban on assault rifles “an evil bill based on lies” (or something along those lines). Well NRA members who do believe in some gun control, I hope you can put some sense intl your leadership. The nation needs it.

The Second Short Story For The Collection Is Done

Posted: December 23, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Reflections, short story, Writing
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And it was much shorter than the first short story. This one, called “Addict”, is just under 3000 words but it’s pretty extraordinary in itself. For example, I told it all in 2nd person. It’s also more literary in nature than my previous work, but it straddles the line between literary and genre in certain ways, and I like that ambiguous nature to it. But most importantly, it’s based on the experiences of a friend:

My friend, who I’ll call SA, mostly because that’s about as far from his real name as I can get, had an addiction to pornography and sex that he only told me because he felt he could trust me. It was very difficult for him. He never told anyone, and for a long time, he denied he had a problem, believing he just had a bigger libido than most. Eventually it got to be problematic for him though, and began to interfere with his life, his work and his studies. Eventually he sought help, and he’s moving ahead, one day at a time. He’s fallen off the bandwagon once or twice, but he’s apologized for his mistakes and gotten back on as soon as he can.

I’ve known this friend for a long time, so he knew he could trust me with this secret. He told me a lot about his struggles, and he still tells me. I got his permission to write this story only after I asked if I could use some of the stuff he’s gone through as base material. He told me that I’d probably turn it into something unrecognizable (which I did), so it was alright; nobody would know it was him.

In any case, I think this short story came out very well, and the fact that it’s in second person may make it very personal for current or recovering sex and porn addicts. I’ll bring it to my creative writing class to workshop it, as I signed up to volunteer a short story on the first day. I hope to get some good feedback for it, because this is a short story I think has potential.

That’s all for now. I’ll start the third short story tomorrow, but first I’d like to take a shower and then spend the night reading “Silence of the Lambs”. All for now. Blog on you later.

Forgiving A Bully For Old Hurts

Posted: December 23, 2012 in Living and Life, Reflections
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Looks like I have something to be grateful to Facebook for: I found an old bully of mine. In 3rd Grade he made my life hell with his friends, and I was so happy when I left that school and transferred to a school that, although I had a rocky start there, I felt I had found a home for myself. However the memory of that bully never left me, and I sometimes wondered from time to time what happened to him. I do admit I was bitter up until a few years ago, still upset about what I went through. I even made him a character in a story I wrote once, changing his name a little, where he ended up killed because he was an evil vampire.

Now, I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed to know that I wanted to put all the hurt I felt into a weapon and get back at him through the power of writing. And at some point I realized that holding onto this hate wasn’t going to do me any favors. So I tried finding reasons to forgive him. After a bit of soul searching, I found one: I was molded into a writer of scary stories by many sources, first and foremost by an experience involving two staff members at a synagogue scaring the hell out of me after services one day when I was no older than six. But the torment I went through in the third grade–the teasing, the isolation, the one time a friend of his put glue in my hair and I didn’t notice until someone pointed the glue out to me–helped mold me as a writer and as a person. It wouldn’t be the last source to warp me, but it played its role.

And I emerged from that experience much stronger than I had been. I started writing, found I loved it, discovered I loved writing horror, learned how to scare people with some effectiveness, and started getting some of my work published. In addition, I began to feel an empathy not only for those who were bullied, but for those who’ve been hurt and discriminated against because they were a little different than others. It’s a part of me I cherish, because it makes me a better person.

I’m now over the hurt, even though I still don’t like it when certain aspects of that time are brought up (my immediate family probably knows what I’m talking about). I write a lot, I emphasize with people, and I try to treat everyone as kindly as possible. But I wanted to find this guy, if only to ask why, or to get a little closure or something. I had trouble finding him, particularly because I didn’t want to use social networking to find him.

But I got a Facebook page to spread the word on my writing. Lo and behold, I found him. I sent him a message. And I told him I forgive him for all the hurts, and I wish him happiness and success in life.

Now that I’ve sent the message, I feel a sense of peace. I feel like I’ve finally gotten something off my back, and now that it’s gone, it feels so great. I don’t know what’ll happen next though. Maybe he’ll read the message. Maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll send something back. Maybe he’ll ask to be my friend. I don’t know. But I do know that he’s in California and I’m in Ohio, so the distance between us is enough that I feel comfortable enough to just see where this goes and not worry that he’ll show up and harass me or something.

In the end, I’ve closed a chapter of my life that deserves to stay closed. And now, I would like nothing more than to continue working on the short story I’ve been working on since this morning.

Happy Holidays, everybody.

An Afternoon With A Friend

Posted: December 23, 2012 in Living and Life, Reflections
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I spent this afternoon hanging out with a friend I’d hardly seen since graduation, mostly because he’d spent a year in Israel interning at a television network. Turns out that while I’d been busy, so had my friend: not only had he been interning in Israel, but he’d also done some pretty amazing things. My friend’s a whiz when it comes to doing special effects with computers, and he’d done some special effects work for the B-grade horror film Smiley and for the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers video. Yes, he did that.

But that’s not all; apparently my friend’s family owns some properties around Columbus’s Old Towne East neighborhood, a historic neighborhood that had in recent years had fallen into disuse and decay. His family has been buying up properties however, and they’ve been working to renovate many of the buildings, upping the value of the other buildings and making them useful once more. This has brought a steady stream of people back to the neighborhood and even helped bring some money into the neighborhood (if you’ve been in that neighborhood and have been to Yellow Brick Pizza, you can see why). My friend even showed me a few properties, like one that’s in the middle of its renovation and another that hasn’t been renovated yet (the latter looks like a location for a paranormal exploration team’s lockdown at the moment). It was pretty interesting, and I was happy that my friend was contributing to the community. In fact, he told me that several times the people in the neighborhood have called the police when they think a building’s been broken into, just because they don’t want anything to happen to the properties my friend’s renovating with his family.

I have to say, it’s pretty interesting to see what he’s been up to lately, and I was happy to hang out with him.

Not only that, but he gave me some great tips on how to promote my writing, particularly my books when they come out (hopefully soon). I’m definitely going to have to use those tips, especially since they came from a guy who’s made a few successes doing his promotion through YouTube and whatever. Pretty awesome, if you ask me.

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