That title’s pretty self-explanatory. This morning I was informed I have passed the 500 mark on the number of Likes I’ve gotten. Everyone, thanks for liking me so much. It means a lot to me, and I appreciate it so much. To thnak you guys for liking me and sticking with me all this time, here’s a funny video I found online. Enjoy:
You guys think I could be one of them? Because I would dig being Pugsley and Wednesday’s older brother.
I ended up watching the last twenty-five minutes of the 1991 movie The Addams Family, which would lead to me watching some old reruns from the original show on my computer during dinner. It made me realize two things: one was that I was born the year the sequel came out, which might explain another reason why I’m so creepy (though mostly I’m this way because of something that happened in a synagogue); and two is that if I weren’t an Ungar, I’d probably be an Addams.
Now, before you start wondering what my family will think when they read this, rest assured they’d probably agree with me. In fact, I’d make a great Addams: after all, where else could a horror author learn first-hand how to torture people without consequences? Probably in the playroom with Uncle Fester. And if I wanted to know a thing or two about magic? Morticia and Grandma Frump. And sword-fighting? Apparently Gomez and Morticia are both experienced duelists. It’d be a blast.
Not to say my folks aren’t great or strange. On the contrary, my family does have some similarities to the Addams. For instance, my siblings are all a little creepy and plenty kooky, though not as much as me. The sister closest to me in age definitely reminds me at times of Wednesday (though don’t tell her I said that). My mom did once try to spray me with a fire hose, but instead settled for the hose from the kitchen sink. My dad is very affectionate to his wife, my stepmom, almost to the point of comedic. And we have some very unusal pets in the house, even for cats. Add me into the mix, you’ve got some crazy sitcom material. Oh, and one of my uncles does remind me of Cousin Itt, for which I blame on his alma mater.
You know what? If the Addams were real people, I’d like for my family to be neighbors with them. That would be the best. We’d have so much fun, blowing stuff up and scaring people silly. And I’d have a constant source of inspiration and critique for the stories I write. It may only happen in my head, but it’s still swell even there.
Equation for a successful Burton film: 1 Burton + 1 Depp + 1 Bonham Carter = a blockbutster film (usually).
Speaking of which, I hear that Illumination Entertainment is set to do a stop-motion remake of the creepy-kooky-spooky Addams family, with Tim Burton doing the writing and possibly doing the directing. Even though no details about the story or the cast or whatever has been released, I can garauntee two things: one is that it should be fun for both kids and adults; and two is that since Tim Burtons’ in on it, they’ll have to give Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp roles in it if they want it to be successful at all.
My grandmother, who’s an alumna of Ohio State University, sent me this video (thanks so much, Nancy!). It shows everybody’s favorite mascot, the poisonous tree nut Brutus Buckeye, dancing to Psy’s “Gangnam Style” with the awesome OSU Cheerleading Squad. I hope you enjoy it, it’s just so much fun. O-H I-O Buckeye Style!
I’ve been wanting to do a post on my favorite types of fictional characters on and off for a while now, but now feels like the right time, since I’ve got an inkling of what sort of characters I like to write and read about and since Reborn City‘s coming out and Snake‘s on its way. So, if you read my work sometime and decide that you want to show how I’m a bad author, here’s the post you can point to if you want to prove I have predictable characters.
So here we go. Here are the types of characters I like to work with:
1. Protagonists with flaws: I like my heroes to be flawed in such ways that it inhibits their abilities. For example, Rip from RC is super bad-ass, but (spoiler alert!) he’s a recovering drug addict and he’s got a huge chip on his shoulder. These sort of things weigh him down and keep him from achieving his true potential. Plus he can be incredibly insensitive, as two characters in chapter two let him know! Not only that, but there’s the Snake himself; he’s killing members of a powerful mafia family and shaking up the criminal underworld, and some might see him as good, whether or not they know why he’s killing in the first place. Either way, there’s one thing that cannot be denied: he’s mentally ill. Not that it inhibits him in life or anything, but I wonder what a shrink might say if they could learn about all the details of the Snake’s condition. It might give people a second thought or two on rooting for him.
2. Amazing girls with issues: What do I mean by that? I like my female leads to have problems even as they’re changing the world around them. For example, the protagonist from RC, Zahara Bakur, is a positive influence on the other characters who inspire them to have lives that aren’t defined by violence. Even so, Zahara saw her parents murdered and feels a little guilty that she’s the one who survived. Not to mention she feels she’s holding her friends back because she’s not real gangster material, and puts herself down when she attributes something that happens to her own weakness. Even with all that, she ends up bringing some positive change to those around her.
Another example is from a political thriller I plan to write someday. The main character is around Zahara’s age, though has her own dark past and her own problems to deal with (not saying what at this point, but it makes an interesting story). She’s timid and shy, and anything that reminds her of her dark past scares her horribly, especially when that past comes back to haunt her while she’s trying to save the United States. Watching her break free of the hold her past has on her and then going on to save the nation is something I’m looking forward to writing, because it’d be an awesome story to read.
3. Nasty human villains: I make a distinction between villains who are human and those who are something else, since I plan to write about both. This one will focus on human villains, which can be vary wide-ranging in their motivations or designs. For the most part though, the villains I write, when they’re human, either think they’re doing good or don’t really care whether or not their actions hurt people. An example of the former comes from RC: the main antagonist Jason Price (who’s design I based on Samuel L. Jackson, by the way), believes that his company’s actions will benefit the world someday, even if it means using unethical and deplorable means to get there, and anyone in his way is trying to stop progress and the safety of the world.
On the other hand, you have Christopher Camerlengo, head of the Camerlengo Family from Snake. The main and final antagonist the Snake goes up against, Camerlengo’s mob organization deals in human trafficking and the sex trade. Does he care that he’s degrading the lives of women and men everywhere? No; instead he sees what he does as a business, and the Snake is ruining that business. Perhaps he’d raise a hand if someone tried to traffic someone from his family–one of his kids, per se–but for the most part, all he cares about is making easy money, and people are easy money when you know what you’re doing (or so I’ve heard).
4. Supernatural villains: Like the human villains, these sorts of villains are wide-ranging both in designs and motivations. But they also have two general types: survival or to be the ultimate ruler of all. In the first category, we have a demon from a supernatural crime novel I’m going to call The Weaver when I get around to writing it. I’m not saying what kind of creature we’re dealing with here, but I will say that the creature in question is concerned about the survival of its species, and goes on a killing spree for that very purpose (do not confuse this with Stephen King’s IT though; it’s very different). In the other category, we have the main villain of a novel based on Alice in Wonderland that I plan to write one day (and in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I have a whole list of stories I’d like to write someday; I just can’t write them all right now). The villain in question, whose specifics I also shall not reveal, is a powerful force of intelligent evil whose whole purpose is to turn our world into a nightmarish hell because he feeds off of suffering, and enjoys it too! Can you see the advantages of stopping this one from achieving power?
5. Wise mentors with mysterious pasts: In the stories where characters have mentors who teach them and guide them during critical minds, these characters have plenty of experience they want to give to the protagonists. In the trilogy RC belongs to, the characters run across an old man with a connection to Rip, and helps them out as best he can. He also becomes close to Zahara, and helps her help her friends in the one way she knows best. In another series, this one a 6-book series set during WWII, the main character receives help from a woman he met while living in America. It is through her tutelage that the main character gains the skills he needs when he decides to take on the Nazis (and boy, that’ll be a story to tell). And remember that story The Weaver? The male protagonist is a cop; whenever he’s in trouble, he looks to his uncle, a veteran detective who was a proud gay man despite never being able to come out at work, whenever he has a problem.
The thing is, most of these mentor figures have pasts that aren’t explained, either for plot purposes or just to make them mysterious or because it doesn’t really matter what their pasts are like, but that just makes them so much cooler, right?
That’s all I can think of for now. If I have some more ideas on characters I like, I’ll let you know. But what about you? What kind of characters do you just loooove to write about? Don’t be shy, let me know; I like discussing the pros and cons of such characters, personally.
I often look at this election and the past one and I think to myself, “I wonder if President Obama’s mother had any inkling of what her son would become when he was born.” And then I think to myself, “What if someone else had any idea what Barack Obama would grow up to be?” And then this leads me to the strange fantasy where a bunch of people living in the United States had a sudden prophetic vision of the 2008 Presidential Election. Some of these people would’ve (predictably) acted with fear and hate; others might’ve cried with joy; and others might’ve been curious as to what might the future hold.
In 2007 and 2008, we had a serious candidate for the White House with more melatonin in his skin than others past. Yet even if the difference was literally only skin-deep, it caused a wave. Every pundit in the media was speculating on what it would mean if an African-American won or lost the race at this point in the election, while also discussing who whites, blacks, and everyone in between would gravitate to, as if everything depended on it. Some people truly felt it did; one time in class we were having a discussion on the race and a friend said he’d heard someone called a racist because that person supported another candidate.
As much as I hate to admit it, race plays a factor in these elections, and in 2008 they played a bigger role than usual, it seemed. Personally, I was more concerned with how the economy might either collapse or grow again depending on which candidate was elected, but people were only seeing the race in terms of what it meant for civil rights and the gap that still existed between whites and minorities.
Do they have a point? Yes, actually; when the President was born, it was 1961 and the civil rights movement wasn’t at its peak yet. African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans from all walks of life would’ve found it hard to believe that a baby born that year would grow up to achieve the highest office in our country, especially when they themselves were treated as second-class citizens. After all, they were still trying to get a chance to vote safely and desegregate public areas.
But a lot had changed between then and 2008. Segregation is no longer legal (though some places will try to boot out minorities under false pretenses); minorities can vote without worrying about the reprecussions to themselves (if voter ID laws don’t get in the way); and a dark skin tone is not something to be deplored anymore, but something to be admired and proud of (at least in most circles). Much had still to be done, but when the President took office it felt like another step in the right direction.
And in 2012? Well thankfully the role of race has died down a little bit. In fact, “race” pertains less to the candidates and how their race plays into their prospects of winning the election and more into “How can we get the black vote?” or “How can we win minorities over to us?” I must say, I prefer this role than the role played in 2008, though I would rather race didn’t play any role at all in elections and politics at all.
Oh well. Maybe in 2016 or 2020, if this great nation known as the United States is still going strong, the role of race will be even more diminished than it is now. I can hope anyway. I’m looking forward to the day when our nation could care less about race because we’re so mixed anyway it doesn’t matter.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed, anyway.
For those of you who have no idea what that title means, Dodi Li is a short story that I started this summer and that I’m rewriting before National Novel Writing Month starts in two weeks. It means “my darling” or “my beloved” in Hebrew and should not be confused with a popular Jewish song that is sung sometimes on Friday nights by Jews everywhere.
Dodi Li features a succubus, a demoness who visits men at night as a beautiful woman and steals their sperm in order to create demonic children or steal pieces of their soul through fornication, depending on what myths you believe. However my succubus, who I’ve named Umuruk (sounds like a name a succubus would have, right?) is not the antagonist of the story. Instead, she struggles to protect the other protagonist, a male she’s fallen in love with. Succubi have fallen in love with humans before, according to the folklore and stories I found by people who say they’ve had experiences with succubi (it’s on the Internet, so I can’t be sure if the writers are crazy or not, but I try to keep an open mind), and I decided to tap into that for this story.
The first draft was very plot-oriented, and sucked immensely. I decided to leave it alone until I could think of a way to make it better, and if I couldn’t, then it’d make a great learning experience. But yesterday in creative writing class, my teacher gave me an idea on how I could improve the story. So I went back and started to completely rewrite it, going until half-past ten last night, and then resuming for a little while this morning before class.
As I was heading to class, I realized something about my story: the main character, whose nine years old, and the antagonist, a 40-something with some mental issues, are the only male characters. All the rest are female: the doctor, the head nurse, the head of neurology, a possible detective character, and of course the succubus Umuruk, are all women, and all are women in positions of power that they use to help people.
I started to wonder if that might mean something, if my psyche was trying to tell me something through my writing. If it’s that I respect women in positions of power and that I think there should be more of them, that doesn’t surprise me at all; I grew up in a house full of women, my mom’s a rabbi, my boss is a woman, her boss is a woman, and I took a Women’s Studies course my first year at Ohio State, which I did very well in. So no surprise that powerful women show up in my story.
However, if it has something to do with the fact that Umuruk is able to help the main character more than these women, then I wonder what that might be saying. Perhaps even if women are educated and in positions of power, if they don’t occasionally open their minds to the impossible, then a mentally unbalanced man will hurt an innocent nine-year-old? That’s also a possibility.
In any case, once I finish the story I might understand more, and if I manage to get it published, you might be able to read it and give me some suggestions on what my Muse is trying to tell me.
Anyway, I’ve got some homework to do before I go to work, so I better get that taken care of right now. Have a nice day.
Oh, before I forget, something funny I have to tell you: I was talking to my history teacher after class today, and we had a really great discussion on the way out the building. You see, at the beginning of the semester, my teacher, whose focus is African History, told us that if any of us intentionally failed his class, he’d used magic he learned from tribal priests to enter our dreams and scare the heck out of us. Ever since then I’ve been trying on and off to get him to agree to teach me how to enter people’s dreams (can you blame me?).
At some point during our conversation, my teacher revealed he’d been joking, but I thought he’d been serious because he said it in such a serious way. This led to a discussion on witchcraft in different cultures, which led to a discussion on using magic and summoning stuff. That led to a discussion on spirits and possessions, and in the end, I ended up recommending my teacher to go see The Possession, which I reviewed back in September. Turns out, he agreed to see it. How about that?
Anyway, I think it’s funny, I have no idea what you think.
Well yestereday I edited two short stories. One was Doll’s Game, the short story I’m writing for class, though I might decide to edit it again if I can get this idea I got today for the story to work somehow. I also edited Hunt in the Slaughterhouse, a short story I wrote back in April based on a dream I had. I’ve been trying to get around to editing it for a while, but I’ve had some trouble doing that. But yesterday I had the chance and I have to say, it loooks much better. I’ll have to figure out whether or not I want to send it to a magazine right now or if I want to wait and show it to someone else beforehand.
I also had an idea for Dodi Li, the succubus story I wrote over the summer. Although the plot for that story was really bad and I ended up deciding this story was best left as a learning experience, I decided to rewrite it after my teacher in my creative writing class gave me an idea. You see, she had been discussing the story we were critiquing today, and how the author was able to make it difficult to tell what was reality and what was delusion in his story. Listening to that, I just had a burst of inspiration for Dodi Li, which I plan to get to work on as soon as possible. Got to say, those workshop critiques can do wonders for you.
On, and before I forget, remember how I rewrote the outline for my serial killer novel Snake and that I mentioned I’d set a scene in a construction site? Well today I finally reached the man who could help me get onto the site. We’re going to try and find a time that works for both of us so that I can tour a site and ask some questions. This is a big oppurtunity for me because I want my readers not to have to suspend their disbelief too much and what’s better than actual experience?
Well, hope to have more good news for you later. In the meantime, I’ve editing to do.
Thanks President Obama. You did a lot to set me at ease tonight.
This evening, the local Obama for America office and my campus group Buckeyes for Obama hosted an event at the local movie theater next to campus. You can guess the event: the second Presidential debate, hosted by Hofstra University in New York (aka the school named after a spell from Harry Potter) and done town hall style, where undecided voters get to ask the questions to the candidates.
Well of course I’d gone. I support the President, I hadn’t seen any of the debates yet, and I wanted to see at least part of one. And around 10:15p, I decided I’d heard enough and I should head home. As I was leaving, the moderator called up a woman named Nina Gonzales to ask her question, and I stopped to listen.
The question was on gun control, particularly on military-grade firearms and assault rifles.
And like that, I had to listen.
Now as many of you know, during the summer there were a lot of incidents of gun violence where innocent people lost lives, particularly in Aurora, Colorado and in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Now at the time of the former, both President Obama and Governor Romney said they were going to follow previous gun control policies and stay along those lines.
It certainly helps.
Meaning they weren’t going to do a thing. And of course I was upset by this statement, having written several posts in the wake of those shootings asking for stricter gun control on assault rifles and laws against selling to those with criminal histories and/or serious mental health issues from the federal government.
But tonight, President Obama reassured me. He said he was going to push for stricter laws on assault rifles and try to keep guns out of the hands who shouldn’t. He would also take steps to help cut down on the other factors that create gun violence, including improving education so people don’t resort to crime and making health care more affordable so that people with mental health disorders can afford their medication.
Now I’m not going to go into what Governor Romney said, mainly because he contradicted himself and because he said something I found absolutely ridiculous (*cough cough” “marriage” *cough cough*). But I am going to tell you that that gun control question was the one question I’d been hoping to hear tonight, and I did get to hear it. And it made me so happy to hear the candidate I’m supporting give the answer I’d been hoping to hear.
Good luck to you, Mr. President. Good luck to you.
To get why I posted this picture, read below.
Ladies and gentlemen, get out of your chairs, and start dancing in front of your computer or while holding whatever portable electronic device you are reading this post on! I’ve finished the edits on Reborn City! I thought the editing would take a couple of months, but instead it took a couple of weeks. I wonder if my idols in the world of writing literature have it this easy with their novels when they do the final edits.
So, RC‘s at 24 chapters, with each chapter averaging about four edits total. The longest chapter is the first one, with thirty-four pages, and well over 10,000 w0rds. The epilogue is definitely the shortest, with less than a page and barely two-hundred words, if even that. All told, the entire novel, in 8 1/2″ x 11″ pages, with a 12-point font and double-spaced, is 313 pages (whistle-whistle!). The word count, which requires no calculating of page sizes or anything, is 90,850. To which I say, holy crap.
Well, now I plan to go take a nap, because it’s close to midnight right now. Tomorrow I’ll send this baby off to a friend (his email address is conveniently in the emails I got when he commented on previous posts; expect an email saying “rami ungar reborn city” in the subject line), then go to class. At some point I’ll work on editing and writing some short stories, and when November rolls around get to work on Snake for National Novel Writing Month, or as we writers like to call it, NaNoWriMo.
And what happens after I get Reborn City back from my friend? Well, I’ll do the edits he suggests, and then I’ll get to work on doing everything else that needs to be done so that you all can read Reborn City.
You know, I’ve seen this process of self-publishing Reborn City sort of like a train, and every time I get to a new milestone in the process, I’ve reached a new station. When do I get to the final stop? I’m not sure; I’m certainly ahead of schedule, but who knows how long that’ll last?
Anyway, I hope for some more good news soon. That way I can share it with you as soon as possible.
To all, a good night (or if you just turned on your computer and you’re reading this with your morning coffee, good morning. Some weather today, huh?). Sweet dreams, and happy blogging to you.
Well, it’s a week of milestones. Five-thousand views, and now 300 comments, thanks to my friend Matt Williams of the awesome blog, http://storiesbywilliams.com/. Maybe I’ll get 100 followers on Thursday. Are there twelve people who like horror, thriller, following aspiring writers in college and don’t mind the occasional post on how much I support the Democrats and how I am confused by Republicans and the things they say and do?
You know, when I first started this blog, I found it inconcievable, when I was barely getting five views a week, that I could get a single comment more than once a month. Now, I’ve got 100 more comments after posting about getting 200 less than a month-and-a-half ago. This is just so incredible, I’m geeking out a little while I write this.
Thanks for all the reading and all the commenting, folks. It means a lot and it means you’re sticking with me through all my trials and tribulations. Hope to hear good news soon. Maybe I’ll finish editing Reborn City and hand it off for some edits from a third party this week. Wouldn’t that be awesome!
Talk to you later.
